Scripture Memory & Apologetics with Matt Slick

Revealed Apologetics

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Welcome back to another episode of Revealed Apologetics. I am your host, Eli Ayala. And today

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I am very excited to have a guest with us, a good friend of mine, Matt Slick from karm .org.

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That is karm .org, the Christian Apologetics Research Ministry. That website has been available since the time of the dinosaurs.

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It has been on there way back in the early days of the internet.

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Many people who began in apologetics searching material online would be very familiar with karm .org

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because it's been around for a while and has provided lots of resources for all sorts of people, not just here locally where I live, but of course, all around the world.

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So very, very excited to have Matt Slick with us tonight. Now, before I invite him on,

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I just wanna make a couple of quick announcements. Those of you guys have seen on Facebook, perhaps you visited my website, revealedapologetics .com,

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that I've been advertising the online courses that I've been teaching pre -sup U. We are currently undergoing classes now, and I'm meeting with our premium students once a week.

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We just had our first meeting. It was a great time of fellowship and just interacting with the material. But those of you who missed this signup, you can sign up now on the website.

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If you go to revealedapologetics .com and click the menu pre -sup U, and you can sign up from now till February 15th, and there will be the premium option there as well if you're interested in that, and we'll begin meeting weekly from that point on.

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So definitely check that out. I'm very happy with the content that I was able to make, and I think it'll be very useful for folks who wanna learn presuppositional apologetics.

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Also, I have, and finally, I have an in -person speaking event this Friday at a church in my local area.

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And so it's been a while since I've been invited to speak in person, given everything that's going on, but totally excited about that.

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You can book me if you want me to come to your church and maybe do a workshop or a talk or speak at your event.

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That can be set up on my website. If that interests you, you can check that out. And that is it.

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I would like to introduce a good friend, Matt Slick, and we'll bring him on right now.

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How's it going, Matt? It's going fine, buddy. How are you doing? I'm doing good, staying busy, but it's all good busy.

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Good, glad to hear it. Yeah. Every time I call Matt and I say, what's up, he's like, hey, what's going on?

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He's like, it's going. And he always sounds busy. So if you guys are following Matt, you know, he's doing all sorts of things.

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So - While you were talking, doing the intro, I'm looking at Gematria charts. Yeah, I mean. That's right.

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You're always multitasking. By the way, I'm thankful that I, it's funny.

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We were just, he was, Matt was just joking about this a few moments ago, but the topic for today is scripture memory and apologetics.

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And so I reached out to Matt to say, hey, you know, you want to get on early and maybe we'll do like a quick audio visual check.

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And he's like, for what? And I was like, what do you mean for what? You're coming on my show today. So he forgot.

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No, I didn't. That you were coming on to talk about the topic of scripture memory.

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So - I was giving you a hard time. It was about memorization. I said, what are we talking about? I don't know. I don't know.

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It's not the guy who told me this is true story. He's a guy who's like doing college.

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And I found out after a couple of years of knowing him, oh, what's your major? He said, communication. And I went, what?

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And he goes, communication. I said, wait a second. Wait, what? And he goes, communicate. He goes, you're an idiot.

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You are very good at trolling people sometimes. Yeah. Well, you know. I wasn't sure.

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You did sound genuinely like, what are you talking about? I can't show you, but I have like my lights.

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I have like my studio lights in here. I got everything set up. I'm all like ready to go. And Matt's probably sitting down watching a movie, eating

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Doritos, like, hey, what's going on? I thought it was my night off. So - No, I even told my wife. I said, yeah, when

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Eli has me on today, I'm going to give him a hard time. Like memorization. What are we talking about? You know. And so it's all pre -planned.

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It was ordained by God. Okay. Okay. All right. Yes. It was ordained by God. That's right. So I'm super happy to have you on today.

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Because specifically because of the topic, which is scripture memory and apologetics. One of the things that struck me about you when

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I first started listening to your podcast years ago was that like periods at the end of a sentence, everything you said ended with a scripture reference.

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And I always thought, I'm like, my goodness, like I wish I could memorize scripture like that. And he would say, he would go, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.

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Galatians 4 .4. You know? So I'm just like, wow. It's so effective to be able to recall scripture that quickly.

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And especially when it's within the context where that specific scripture is needed, whether it's within the context of apologetics or just being encouraging to someone.

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So I'm very happy to have you on to talk about that topic. So let's jump right in then.

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How long have you been a Christian? Let's start there. And then let's move into your introduction to apologetics.

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And then I'm gonna ask you a question related to scripture, which I think you're gonna resonate very much with. So how long have you been a

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Christian? 47 years. Okay. All right.

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And so how long have you been, or how long from when you were a Christian, when you first became a Christian, did you start doing apologetics?

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Oh, we're not exactly sure, but we think it was 1979 or 1980. So I just used 1980.

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And each time it becomes January 1st, I just add one year. So 41 years. Okay.

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I've been doing this longer than you've been alive. That's right. That's right. I'm 38. So yes, that's right.

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That's an immature young, but back in the good old days when I was 38. Right, right, right.

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Yeah. No, it's all good, man. But I remember when, I've heard your testimony a thousand times and I love to hear it.

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We won't get into it now because you can unpack those things and I'm sure folks have heard it before.

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But what was the time span from when you were a Christian to when you started taking apologetics very seriously?

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Or was it right there together? You were a Christian. No, no. No, God saved me in his incredible grace.

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It's something I muse about frequently is he saved me in an incredibly dramatic fashion.

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And then yet I actually slid, back slid for a while and sinned.

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But there was always him there. And why he didn't kill me, I don't know. And then one day,

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I don't know how to describe it. I don't talk about this part of it very often, but I was being convicted by the

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Lord and I actually yelled at him. I yelled at God one night.

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I was with my wife, but she wasn't my wife then. I shook my fist up at the ear of God and yelled at him to leave me alone.

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I still remember that because I knew it was stupid and dangerous, but I was just immature and wanted some aspects of my sin, but I wanted to serve.

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It's just a confusion. And one month after that, and I remember back early, back when

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I was remembering on it, I don't remember that following month. It was completely gone. There was no recollection of it, but I was insatiably on fire for the word of God.

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Insatiably, reading the Bible four, six hours a day, going to Bible studies five, six nights a week.

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I mean, just, it was an incredible thing. And when I reflect about all of this stuff, knowing

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I was involved in the occult and pornography, foul language, fornication, and he saved me.

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And then I still had those old habits that were slowly being honed and I rebelled, but yet I wanted him, you know, it's hard to explain.

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And then he just showered his grace upon me. And here I am, you know, four decades later.

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So all I can say is, God, it is an incredible mercy. I should have been killed.

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I should have been dead. And yet he saved me and is using me in spite of this filthy, foul individual that I still am.

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The only thing good in me is Jesus. That's it. That's a fact. So he's merciful.

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He's gracious. He gets all, all the glory. Amen. Yeah. And I could very much resonate with that.

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I think this is very important too, because when we're dealing with apologetics, I think a lot of people can be captivated with the intellectual aspect of it.

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It's kind of cool to be able to address people's answers and to do debates and things like that. But not a lot of times do people get an opportunity to hear someone who is good at doing that, has kind of a public appearance, but then also see that vulnerable side, which reminds us of the fact that we're all just broken people being used by God.

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And I think that's a very important aspect to discuss as apologists. Now, you did say something that I want you to expand upon.

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One of my question was, and you're gonna understand this right away, explain your initial obsession with the scriptures and how that laid the foundation for your further and deeper study.

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Now, what I mean by that is when you became a Christian, you said you had an insatiable desire to read the word of God.

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Why don't you unpack that? Because that was something that I experienced, which actually laid the groundwork for what

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I'm able to do now when I don't have as much time to jump into the scriptures. So do you resonate with that? Yeah, it was after that month that was a blank, still is a blank.

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It's always been a blank. Curious about it. But just afterwards,

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I just could not stop reading the word. I remember laying on the couch and just reading for four hours.

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And, you know, where can I go to Bible study? And I had a job. And of all, you know, how many times you ever remember what day you started a job?

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But November 16th, 1981, I started a job in Fullerton, California at Kimberly Clark.

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And I was gonna be a mechanical draftsman. Okay. And the engineer was training me that day and he had to go out on the floor, out in the factory to do something.

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And she said, just wait here. And I reached up and grabbed a dictionary and I started reading, look at the word

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Jesus, God, Bible, salvation, hell, heaven, any word I could find in there.

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And just because I needed it. It was like I was a drug addict coming out of something and I needed it.

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And that's all I can tell you. It makes no sense, but I would read so much. It's the voice of Christ.

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It's his word. And I just knew, I don't know how I knew. I just knew it's his word.

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All of it is his, all of it's from him. All of it is true. And I just knew it.

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It wasn't deduction. It wasn't anything. It was something he gave me, something he put on my heart.

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And it's always been that way from then on. It's his word. And, you know, you know me,

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I mean, I joke around a lot, but hey, I'll say it. This is what the word says. If you don't like it, it's not my problem.

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It's yours. You take it up with God. It's what he says. And that's how it is with me. I remember you had a really cool intro segment in your podcast a long time ago.

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And you did this guy, I don't know what his name was, but you were like. E .R. Tickler. There we go.

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That's right. You could rip it out. And here, hold this. Hello, ladies and gentlemen, this is

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E .R. Tickler coming at you from the Feelings Tabernacle. Today's message is out of deuterectomy 1313.

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I've been listening to you for so long. Hearing you do that voice was actually nostalgic. It reminded me when

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I first started listening. Those were so much fun. You had such a fun intro. Yeah, so the reason why

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I asked that question is because I know a lot of people who do apologetics and are strong believers, they've had that moment where they just couldn't get enough of God's word.

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I've told people that I grew up in a Spanish speaking church and I never really picked up the Spanish. And so throughout the course of my years, growing up in church,

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I would just sit in my little bench. We had little wooden benches and I would read my Bible for all the times we had service.

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So we had service Tuesdays, Thursdays, and Sundays. And the services were two and a half hours each. And then on Sunday morning, we'd have a two and a half hour service.

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And then in the nighttime, we'd have a two and a half hour service. And I would just be absorbed in the word.

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And that really, a lot of the things that I know about the Bible now is actually rooted in that foundation that was laid during that time where I felt like I just couldn't get enough.

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It is like a drug addiction. It's almost like, my wife will say, can you go upstairs and can you get, can you bring down the hamper?

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And then I'll go upstairs. And of course I'm missing. And my wife will sneak up and she'll look in the room and the hamper's right next to me.

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And there I am standing reading something on my phone. She goes, I told you to bring that. I was like, I'm sorry. It's almost like you had to get your quick fix for like a millisecond.

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You feel like you just needed it. That's right. Por que no aprendiste espanol?

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Oh my goodness, man. Don't even, it's embarrassing. Now I got the white guy teaching the Spanish guy.

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Listen, man, I'm New Yurican, all right? Wait a minute, what did you say?

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I am New Yurican. Oh, I thought you said Nudurican. What? I'm Puerto Rican and I live in New York.

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So it's really bad when I would go somewhere with my dad and someone would speak

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Spanish to me, you'd see my dad in the background, like, tu no sabe nada. And they go, oh, what do you mean you don't know anything?

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That's right. I feel like such an idiot. I lost my train of thought, but that's okay. Something about memorization.

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Yeah, well, at any rate. You go to the stairs, the hamper, you're addicted. Yes, that's right. So I know a lot of people could resonate with that.

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And I think this is a work of the spirit in our lives. Don't you think? Yes, it is. Why don't you explain, what is it about the work of the spirit and the desire of the believer to be in his word?

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What's the connection there? I don't know. Oh, stop, come on. The Holy Spirit bears witness of Jesus, John 14, 26,

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John 15, 26. And Jesus is the word. I remember you go to John 1, I mean, yeah, John 1, 1 in the beginning was the word, the word was with us, the word became flesh, verse 14.

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We go to Genesis chapter one, verses one through three. It says, you know, in the beginning, God created. So two genealogies, so to speak, in the beginning and in the beginning.

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And in Genesis, it was, and God said, let there be light. And so the word speaking light, if you go to John 1, 1, in the beginning was the word.

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And he says he was the light of men, et cetera, is drawing that connection. The Holy Spirit bears witness of Jesus.

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And Jesus is the word. And the written word represents Christ because Jesus says in John 5, 39, he says, you search the scriptures because in them, you think you have eternal life, but it is either bear witness of me.

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And in Luke 24, 44, he says that he gave them a Bible study about all that was about him in the scriptures, the law of the prophets and the

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Psalms. So that's his word. The Holy Spirit bears witness of Christ. That's his word. So the Holy Spirit confirms in our heart what the word of truth is.

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And Jesus says, John 10, 27, he says, my sheep hear my voice and they follow me.

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It gives eternal life to them. It's the voice of Christ. It's his word. So if you're a true Christian, you wanna hear his word.

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If you're not a true Christian, you don't care. You wanna hear something like Joel Osteen, your best life now.

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Okay, so here's a question. And I think some people might resonate with this. You're a Christian, but you hate to read.

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You love Jesus, but you struggle with opening up the Bible and really just focusing. And then someone could interpret that as, well, am

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I a Christian then? Do I really love the Lord? I mean, I think I love the Lord, but I can't bring myself to just sit down and focus.

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What's going on there, do you think? Maybe you can give some insight into that. Is that just someone needing to develop discipline or is there something wrong with the person that they confess the

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Lord Jesus Christ, but they don't feel this desire to really dive into his word? It just means that they're just not wired that way.

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That's all. They love the Lord to confess the truth, but they're not audible or readable.

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Some people are, there's different kinds of learners. Some are auditory, some are visual, some have to read, some have to be tactile.

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It's okay. They don't deny the word. They wanna read it. They recognize they do.

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They have trouble reading it though because maybe they're dyslexic, maybe whatever. That's okay. God calls us various broken vessels.

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He calls us in different ways. As I tell people, I have Asperger's, which is an autism spectrum disorder and I've been diagnosed professionally.

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And so I have Asperger's. Okay. Oh, someone has another issue.

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Okay. You don't like reading that much? All right, well, put an audio book on, go hear a sermon, and that's it.

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And God can certainly overcome stuff like that. If he wants that person to be involved in something where you had to read the word a lot, you'd give him that desire.

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He did it to us. Sure, yeah. Not a big deal. Absolutely. Yeah, and I don't know about you, but when I was younger, other than reading my

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Bible when I was growing up in church, I didn't like reading at all. I actually used to be in remedial reading and I used to have to be like, go to like special help to help me read.

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And then that stayed with me for my entire, my elementary school, middle school, high school.

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And then it was only when I started getting into apologetics and I really started thinking about like the truth of it and how to defend it where I became obsessed with getting books.

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And I mean, I have a little ministry fund now, but back in the day, when I first got married, it was scary because my wife would be like, did you order another book?

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I'm like, I'm sorry, I'm sorry. I felt like I needed to be reading something. Well, let me tell you this, because I run

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CARM, I just charge every book I get on Kindle to CARM. I can get whatever

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I want, whenever I want. No problems, nobody asks me any questions. I can get whatever I want.

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Not just rubbing it in, you know, I get that. I have hundreds now on Kindle, hundreds.

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Yeah, oh yeah. Oh yeah. Kindle's the way to go, man. That's right. There's my library.

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Ooh, you got the fancy Oasis. I didn't know you rolled like that. Whoa, hey.

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Look at this, I got the poor man's paper white. It works, it works.

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And I have my Galaxy 20 that I use, because it has a pen, you know, a stylus, so I can highlight, and this is bad, but I want the new foldable, the one that folds out when it comes out with a new stylus.

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I don't know how I'm going to justify that. I got to find some rationalization. Hey, you know, we're cross pollinating here.

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We're doing apologetics, but I think this video might start streaming on one of those tech review. Yeah. Hey, they get a lot of views.

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They get a lot of views, so that's actually pretty good. Oh yeah, I love this. I'm a tech guy. I like to take my phone and rub it in my chest a couple of times a day, just because it feels good.

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All right, let's move. We'll move right along. Let's move along. Oh, you're just using it with a motherboard, ho ho.

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Well, before we move on, I want to let folks know, if you're listening in, Matt will be taking questions towards the end.

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So if you have any questions, just preface your question with question so that we can sift through the comments and things like that.

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Yeah, I'm sorry. Yeah, you're sifting through questions because you said questions. Yeah, well, sometimes people have conversations in the comments and I don't know what's the conversation.

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That's why you want the word question. That's right, that's right. It helps. No one ever does it, but it's good to try anyway.

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Well, what's that say about your audience? I don't know, man. They're just doing what they're doing now. They don't care. They're great, they're great.

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I appreciate them. All right, so now I want to hit home the fact that memorizing scripture is very important.

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And then as we move down the list of my questions, we'll make some apologetic application, but why don't we hit kind of, how can

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I say this? Why don't we hit on the topic of what the Bible has to say about the importance of memorizing scripture?

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Because I think people might think just in abstract terms, like, hey, I'm not good at memorization.

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And so they'll kind of just keep it on the back burner. But just as we make a big deal, Matt, about how scripture commands us to defend the faith, 1

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Peter 3, 15, Jude 1, 3, the Bible also tells us to memorize

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God's word. Why don't you go through some scriptures that kind of talk a little bit about that and maybe unpack that for us?

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Well, this is going to sound funny because I don't have any verses memorized about memorizing scriptures. I don't.

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Okay. But the Bible says, you know, I've hidden your word in my heart.

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That's out of the Psalms. But also Jesus quoted scripture and he obviously did a lot of memory.

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And so what I do when I memorize stuff is I memorized stuff that is like grease for the squeaky wheel.

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So if I'm talking about Mormonism and I'm repeating it, I'm going to be memorizing that.

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In fact, I'm talking a lot with Muslims. And so I'm starting to memorize Quran surahs, which are chapters and some ayats, which are verses.

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So I'm memorizing the ayats and the addresses, which I'll tell you about a technique for memorization that I use.

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And so I memorize different things, you know, and then Jesus and Matthew 4, you know, he quoted scripture against Satan.

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That's what we should be doing. Always be memorizing the word of God. And so, yeah. So what does that mean in Psalm 119?

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May I hide your word in my heart that I might not sin against God? Well, obviously David's not speaking of the organ in one's chest, right?

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What's going on there and how does that relate to memorizing? Well, if it's the word of God and Isaiah 55, 11 says the word of God will not come back empty without accomplishing what

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God desires. In Romans 1, 16, it says the gospel is a power of God to salvation. So, you know, the gospel message, which is out of Romans, excuse me, out of 1

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Corinthians 15, one through five, the death, veil, resurrection of Christ. We've got to know these things to be able to speak them.

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Well, the thing is about the word that when it's in your heart, when you have it memorized, it's part of you.

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It's not just here, but it's here. It's a faith thing. Well, then it becomes very useful and it's self -instructional.

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It rebukes you when you know scripture. But then when you're talking and a lot of people don't know this, this happens a lot.

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You'll just start quoting things you didn't even know you knew. Yeah, it happens a lot. And so the more you study the word, even though you may not have an exact address, you know what the word of God says.

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And it's usually that way first, you have the idea and then you get the address later. But I reverse that when

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I do something. I memorize, I reverse it. But that's what we do, you know? And so, you know, we should always memorize it.

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There's lots of reasons why, but we'll get to that on a rush. Hmm, okay. Very good. And when you study scripture yourself, what are your methods of memorization?

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So what do you do for a memorization? Well. I know you have an article on it.

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I remember reading it a while back. I don't know if that's a method you use or you're simply suggesting to people. No, that's what

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I do. Yeah, I memorize. I suggest people memorize the address first, not the verse.

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Okay. If I say John 3, 16, you know, God still loved the world and gave his only begotten son, et cetera. Everybody knows that verse. Well, use that as a representative verse.

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Just remember John 3, 16, John 3, 16, John 3, 16, John 3, 16, John 3, 16.

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Because if you can remember the address, but you forget what it's about, you can go find it. But if you remember the gist,

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God loved the world, well, where is it? I don't know where it is. It just doesn't have that credibility. So I always memorize the address first.

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And if I can share my screen, I'll show you something. Sure. This is what...

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I don't know if it's gonna ask you for permission or whatever, but let me see. We'll find it. And let's see, that should be the right one.

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Okay, while you're doing that and I'll share it up on the screen. I just wanna let people know, if you have questions, keep sending them in.

24:56

I see a couple being sent in now. We'll get to them in a bit, but let me see if I can share the screen here.

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There we go. I don't know if it can be seen, but... So this is my Excel spreadsheet. Okay. And I have a system where I'll put in verses and this is how

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I... One of the things I will review in order to memorize. So you can see,

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I've got a lot and got down to 564.

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It doesn't mean that's how many I have memorized, but so when I have a verse that I wanna memorize, like, you know, go to Galatians 4 .4.

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Well, I'm gonna go down, I'm gonna find Galatians, you know, because you mentioned Galatians 4 .4 that Jesus created, you know, made under the law.

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So I'll just go down and find, you know, Galatians 4. Hey, look at that. I don't have it in there.

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Watch this. So what I'll do is add this. I used to teach Excel. Oh, that's Ephesians, Galatians.

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There it is. Doofus. And so I can sort by this little system I've got here, put the full verse here and I have the address here and I can do some other stuff with it.

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So, and I started doing this. How many have I got memorized? I just haven't gone through them all yet to see so I can start working on stuff.

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In fact, hold on one more time. I'm gonna grab something else. So here we go.

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Just happen to have this out and I'll stop sharing my screen. Memorization cards.

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Oh, the good old index card technique. Oh, wow. Yes, these are,

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I've used three rubber bands because it'll break. And so, you know, go through and memorize them, you know?

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And so what I like, I say to people is memorize the address and the gist of what it is, not the entire verse.

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You know, like 1 Peter 2, 24, he himself bore our sin in his body on the cross that we might die to sin and live for by his stripes, we are healed.

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Well, what's the gist of the verse? He bore our sin in his body on the cross. And I can tell you how a technique is, but that's what you do first.

27:13

Memorize the address and the gist, that's it. And I recommend people take a piece of paper and write it, hand write it out or do, if you're like me or, you know,

27:23

Excel and you can print all this stuff up and all those things. Well, then just carry it with you, print it up, carry it with you.

27:30

You're in a line and you're waiting for something, you get out and you reveal. And there's some other stuff I can tell you too, but that's just, you know, some of the ideas.

27:37

Well, okay, so you obviously were a Christian when you had your kids. How did you teach your kids how to memorize scripture?

27:45

Is it the same thing? How did you incorporate that in raising your children? Yeah, I did it by what's called inculcation.

27:53

To inculcate means to teach by repetition. So one of the things I would do is we had a dining room table, rectangular table, and I would sit at the head, my wife would sit at the other end, and then we'd have dinner and have three daughters.

28:07

And so I would take a Bible, I usually would take a low level translation, nothing too technically accurate.

28:14

But not the NASB, I thought you only use the NASB, that's the translation Paul used. That's how you should use, yep.

28:21

And so I would use a living Bible because it was so casual. We're talking two years old, three year old, four year old, things like that, five, six, seven, eight, and developed into a procedure.

28:32

What I would do is, as things evolve when you do it every night, almost every night with dinner, we do a little devotion.

28:40

And the daughters would sit next to me and I would read like I would, so I'd go to the book of Ruth, for example, and you wanna go to a story and what

28:49

I would do, because you asked. Sure, go for it. And they lifted up her voices and wept again and Orpha kissed her mother -in -law, but Ruth clung to her.

28:58

So that's a verse, right? It could be reading. They lifted up their voices and they were crying again. And Orpha kissed her mother and went to McDonald's and got a hamburger, but Ruth, and they'll go, dad.

29:10

And I say, what? And because they're listening for me to add something ridiculous into it. So that was one of the ways

29:16

I'd get them to remember. And then what I would do, and there's other particulars

29:21

I would do with them, but what I would do is before the study, I would say, okay, ready for the questions. What's the hypostatic union?

29:28

And I'd point. What's the communicative idiomatum? And I would point. What's justification, imputation? And they would answer the questions.

29:34

And I say, what verse is this? What verse is that? And so I raised them to learn doctrine, to learn scripture.

29:43

And we talked about salvation and the whole bit. And this is what we did. And there you go.

29:51

It's stuff you can do. Very good. That's helpful. Because I think in your mind, you're kind of like, hey, these are just the things that I used.

29:58

But in a lot of people's minds, they wonder, well, what does that look like for me? I think that's a good way of kind of giving them a context to do it within their own houses.

30:07

Raising your children to know scripture is so important. This is something that I've dropped the ball on a lot. My wife is so good with the kids.

30:14

I feel like a lot of people look at me like within the realm of apologetics and apologetic methodology,

30:20

I'm considered by many the nice presuppositionalist. But nobody sees me lose my patience when

30:26

I'm at home. And my kids are screaming, I'm not as nice sometimes. And so my wife works better with the kids.

30:33

She enforces those things much more consistently than I do. Unfortunately, I need to up my game in that area.

30:39

But I think it's good for people to hear how you did that and kind of gives them some insight into some helpful ways to do that with their own children.

30:46

All right, very good. I wanna ask a question with regards to the power of scripture. Now we do know that the scripture is the word of God.

30:54

Why don't you unpack your understanding of the power of scripture? What is the power of scripture?

30:59

Now, the reason why I asked that question is because I know it's not the sort of like mystical power.

31:05

There's no mystical thing in quoting words. But why don't you explain the relationship between the word of God spoken and the working of the spirit?

31:13

And how, when we say that verse, the word of God does not come back void. How does that all work out and why is that important?

31:20

Well, because God's a sovereign king who does all things after the counsel of his will, Ephesians 1 .11. And so we have to understand that as we speak his word, what we're actually doing is communicating inspiration.

31:31

Inspiration means it's God breathed. So 2 Timothy 3 .16, all scriptures inspired of God, theopneustos, it's breathed out of God.

31:41

And so what we have the privilege of doing is speaking it. Now, the New Testament was written in Greek, but we don't speak

31:47

Greek, we speak in English. So the question is, when we translate it to English, does it have that inspired nature?

31:54

Yes, it does. Even though it was not the English writings that were inspired, it was the original

31:59

Greek writings. And we have copies of the original Greek writings, then we have translations of those original copies of the

32:05

Greek writings. So some people, when they talk about this, they say the inspiration of scripture occurs when you hear it.

32:12

And they could do some kind of interesting dialogue. So excuse me, and stuff like that. But what

32:18

I like to say is, look, the word of God is what it is. And God speaks to his people.

32:25

He also speaks to the unbelievers. Here's something I've been thinking about recently is that I'm concluding that everybody is under covenant relationship with God, unbeliever and believer.

32:37

When God said to Adam, who represented all people, Romans 5, 18, 1 Corinthians 15, 22, he represented all people.

32:45

He said, Adam, take care of the ground. He broke that covenant requirement.

32:51

But as it says in 1 Corinthians 15, 22, in Adam all die. So they were in him.

32:56

I believe the covenant aspect was given to him. Also in Genesis 2, 17, God says to Adam, the day that you eat of this, you will die.

33:04

They eat of the fruit. He's speaking to all people. So I believe that all people are under covenant obligation, whether believer or unbeliever, to follow the requirements of what

33:12

God has stated. And one of them is to believe his word, that if you deny his word.

33:17

And Satan comes in in Genesis 3, 1 and said, indeed, has God really said? So he doubts the word of God.

33:24

It's a demonic, satanic thing to doubt God's word. It's a satanic doctrine to say, well, did

33:31

God really say? I'm gonna doubt God's word. It's actually a form of Satanism. Well, I want to contrast that with the power of the word.

33:38

Let there be light. And the word became flesh. And we have to realize as Christians that we need to speak the word of God.

33:47

Even when you're talking to unbelievers, speak the word of God. One of the verses I use a lot on Discord talking to unbelievers is

33:54

I will use, it's turning out to be the most commonly quoted verse I give to them. Romans 1, 18.

34:00

They suppress the truth of God in their unrighteousness. And I say this over and over and over.

34:06

I probably quoted it a hundred times in the past month. You are doing what the Bible says. You're suppressing the truth of the unrighteous.

34:13

And they say, well, we don't believe the Bible. I said, well, it doesn't matter. Whether you believe it or not is irrelevant to whether or not it's true.

34:21

Because God's word is true because everything God says is always true.

34:26

And the nature of truth comes from God. Therefore, it's a moral obligation to believe everything that God says.

34:34

So truth and the adherence of truth is a moral obligation. If you deny truth, did

34:39

God really say, or you're like a leftist, wacko, moron, puke face newscaster on the leftist media who says that truth is a commodity to be twisted, then you're actually being satanic.

34:54

They don't realize this, but it's actually a form of Satanism in the denial of the truth of God. So the more I look at this, the more

35:00

I'm seeing the division between truth and lies. You either believe

35:06

God's word or you don't, and you're believing lies. So what we are obligated to do as Christians is to rest and trust in the truth of God's word, speak the truth of God's word, because everybody's obligated to believe the truth of God's word, whether they acknowledge it or not.

35:21

It's our job to preach that word because God, what he will do is use the power of that word,

35:26

I don't know how that works, in the power of the Holy Spirit to convict people, John 16 talks about that, and bring people to faith in him.

35:36

And that's what we've gotta be doing all the time. All right, that's excellent, very good. Now, you said something with regards to scripture that you use when you're speaking with unbelievers,

35:44

Romans 1, verse 18, and I think that that's great. We use scripture regardless of whether they believe it or not, it's the word of God.

35:50

And the word of God does not go out alone, it works along with the spirit, and it works in the way, well, he works in the way that he works alongside the utterance of his word.

36:01

So I think that's very important to keep in mind. Now, you mentioned unbelievers, so now we're gonna make the application here to apologetics.

36:06

So why don't you define, most people are gonna know the definition, but why don't you define for us what apologetics is, and how does memorizing scripture apply to the apologetical task?

36:18

Apologetics is a branch of Christian theology that deals with the defense and the establishment of the Christian faith. And you can go to 2

36:24

Timothy 2 .15 and also 1 Peter 3 .15 for that. And what was the second part of the question? How does it apply to our task of apologetics?

36:33

Memorizing scripture? Yeah. Well, since I do a lot of apologetics, some of the guys in the room here may know,

36:42

I go to Discord and I could go on right now, and I can go into a room and they'll just start firing questions.

36:48

They actually have on Discord server, rooms designated for me to go into where unbelievers line up to ask me questions.

36:55

So what I've discovered, and I discovered it a long time ago, is that they need documentation.

37:02

They want documentation on all kinds of stuff. So one of the things I do is develop outlines, you and I have talked about that, but here's what

37:11

I'm doing. I'm gonna share the screen again. Sure. And our discussion about outlines are super important.

37:19

Yes, it is. I thought it was excellent because after we spoke, I actually made a couple of outlines and they're just completely helpful and useful to help me kind of follow a train of thinking.

37:30

And I appreciate that. So outlines are great. Yes, they are. So you gotta add that in and then,

37:38

I'll show you what I'm doing more and more. Sorry about that. I didn't see that. That's all right. So outlines and evolution.

37:45

So for example, I go over here and I can show people how to do this kind of stuff. Here's dating methodologies and I'll just make it bigger on the screen.

37:53

So look what I'm doing. Documentation. Okay. Documentation.

38:02

Documentation. Documentation. Now this is something I've been developing for a while. And this is on dating methods.

38:10

I found the Achilles heel of evolution. It has to do with geology and dating methods.

38:15

So I'm talking to them and they want documentation. I'm thinking about creating something else on leftist wacko morons.

38:24

Now, one second, Matt. I see the outline that you made. What's that on the far left?

38:30

Is that like kind of a table of contents there? Well, when you do this, so what

38:38

I do is this. So here's one and two. So you come up here, big bang.

38:43

That's a heading. You right mouse click and you can modify and you can get to a certain size or whatever you want.

38:50

The next level, I just do one thing here, explained at level two. And so what happens is level one shows up there and level two shows up here.

39:00

It may be too small for the screen there. But there's a way on StreamYard, there's a single down below.

39:09

There's a single window you can go. And then they can see that.

39:15

So I have one and two, sometimes three, like in dating methods. So I have,

39:20

I do the black, I do purple and I do blue and then green,

39:28

I do documentation. And so the goal is to be able to come over here like dating methods and issues, radiometric dating methods defined.

39:37

Well, what is it? Assumptions of. Oh, these are the assumptions. And so evolution impossible.

39:45

It's a Kindle book I've got. So this is what I do. And if I'm, I have a couple of things I want to do, like for example, a human evolution,

39:53

Australopithecus afarensis. I need to get documentation on these things. Okay. Because these are a lot of my old notes.

40:00

So I just work that way. It's what I do. And so when I do, let's see the

40:06

Canon, Catholicism, let the Catholicism open up. In fact, well, it's counting.

40:14

I'll go back to that. So my evolution thing is 31 pages. Okay. And I'll get to the other one in a sec.

40:21

I also put in index stuff. I'd be willing to teach people how to do this.

40:26

It's easy stuff. And I like to do that kind of a thing because it's helpful. Whoops, hit the wrong key.

40:33

And it helps me because of what I do for a living. I need to have this kind of stuff, but most people don't.

40:40

So my Catholicism outline is 169 pages.

40:46

Wow. 169 pages. And so what I do is I use the same methodology.

40:51

I got to change the colors and I've developed like this one, make it all black and change it from blue to black and bold and stuff like that.

41:02

And so then it changes all the things like that. And I just developed this color outline.

41:08

I'm going to unify all of them under one thing. So documentation is really important. And so for example, if I'm going to go to paragraph 2068, okay?

41:19

Observe the commandments to obtain salvation. The mission of teaching all people and preaching the gospel to every creature so that all men may attain salvation through faith, baptism, and the observance of the commandments.

41:30

Now, for example, this right here, I'll talk to Catholics a lot and I'll quote this a lot. And so because I've quoted it a lot,

41:37

I've memorized from, so that all men may attain salvation through faith, baptism, and the observance of the commandments.

41:42

Well, if I'm going to be talking about that, I need to know other verses. I need to know scriptures. Like Romans 3 .28,

41:49

Romans 4 .3, Romans 4 .5, Titus 3 .5. These are the ones that I will put here.

41:55

So if I'm looking at my outline, I'm having a discussion or debate, I've got this.

42:01

I can just quote this. I can take it, copy it, right? Put it into a chat thing.

42:07

And I can also do this. I can quote these. And so because I do apologetics the way

42:13

I do, I need this kind of stuff and I need information and I need documentation. So Catholics bow before Mary, the same as Jews bow before the ark, therefore it is not idolatry.

42:24

It's what they say, right? And then I go through and I respond to that and I put documentation in it.

42:29

And you'll notice that I need to have scripture. Okay, and I put

42:35

Jesus' words in red. So the idea is to have things done because this is the word of God.

42:46

So when I talk to anybody and I'm talking to Muslims, so Muslims, I will come up here in a sec, their abrogation, this is only 57 pages long.

42:58

So here's the Quranic verses I need to memorize. Okay, and so documentation is critical.

43:06

Here, watch this, 157. Oh, look at this, this is great.

43:14

They said in both, we killed Christ Jesus, the son of Mary, the apostle of Allah, but they killed him not, nor crucified him, but so it was made to appear to them.

43:25

Ooh, wait a minute. Who made it look like someone was crucified who looked like Jesus?

43:32

Who did that? You know, and so I had to find commentaries and I got to redo a lot of stuff here.

43:41

And here's the Tahrir. This is what it says, this is their commentaries. And here's the documentation.

43:48

All right, so you can see that I'm constantly, you know, working in apologetics.

43:55

I'll be in the radio and I've been doing this for 41 years. And plus being autistic, I remember patterns easier.

44:01

I mean, I'm 64. Literally, when I drive down the road, if I see, because up here in Idaho, there you see geese,

44:08

I'll count them. While you're driving? While I'm driving. If I'm walking around the sidewalk,

44:15

I try not to step on any cracks. I'll count how many steps

44:20

I take to a place. I try and be efficient and do things. I have games I play with myself to keep my mind occupied.

44:27

Well, that's kind of whacked, but you know what? Because I see patterns. I see patterns not only when

44:32

I memorize, but I see patterns in the verses and how they relate to them. Then it becomes a group thing, like the

44:38

Doctrine of the Trinity, hypostatic union, justification, imputation. And so when someone talks, if someone were to say,

44:44

Matt, talk about justification. Romans 3 .28, Romans 4 .3, Romans 4 .5, go to James 2, 14 through 26.

44:51

We've got to talk about that. But don't forget Galatians 2 .16 and 2 .21. Those are also important.

44:56

Well, let's talk about the hypostatic union. John 1 .1, verse 14, Colossians 2 .9,

45:02

Philippians 2 .5 -8, Hebrews 1 .6 -8. These are the verses that need to be in that topic. And so I'll go into them.

45:08

And so the thing is that when you're memorizing scripture and you repeat them, and that's something I've got to talk about, is repeating them, they become simple.

45:17

It becomes like another language. Entonces, si quieres aprender otra lengua como español, necesitas estudiar y aprender vocabulario.

45:25

So if you want to learn another language, you've got to study the vocabulary and learn stuff. It's the same thing.

45:31

If so, if I go to Mexico and I'm sitting there for six months, it's - No, no, no, let's make it relevant. You go to Puerto Rico.

45:37

I go to Puerto Rico para vivir and aprender la lengua. I go there to live and I learn a language because I'm not fluent, fluent.

45:44

I'm just semi -fluent, okay? But I want to learn it. You're fluent enough to preach the gospel and get out. That's right.

45:51

And before they realize, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, he said some things wrong. And so it's like learning a language.

45:56

So if I say vocabulary like deleterious, what's deleterious mean?

46:01

Hidden harmful effects. All right. Deleterious, hidden harmful effects, okay?

46:08

That's what that is. First Peter 2 .24, he bore our sin in his body on the cross. Think of the word with the definition.

46:15

That's what you do. Think of a, it's vocabulary like learning a language. People are so impressed.

46:20

I have all these verses memorized. It's not impressive. I'm not being humble. It's not impressive.

46:25

If you were to go to France and live there for six months and you're hearing

46:31

French all the time, you're gonna come back. What'd you learn? Oh, about 300 words. Sure. Is that impressive?

46:36

Not really. You just hear it. It's the same thing. I just do it.

46:42

I go to, I go to, I used to go to pal talk a lot. I go to discord a lot. I'm on the radio, you know,

46:48

I've been doing radio for 16 years, do interviews where I got to quote scripture. So it's frequent. And if you don't use them a lot, you forget it.

46:55

So get the verses you want, get the piece of paper you want and practice it.

47:02

Because not only do you have to know the verse, but in apologetics, you have to understand how to use it and what it means.

47:10

Like Romans six, no, I can go into baptism stuff. Oh, I love messing people about baptism.

47:16

Well, go for it. Just if you want to unpack it and make an application, that's why I have you on, man. Well, how about this?

47:23

I'll do something quicker. No, I'm gonna do baptism. Okay. Okay, why was Jesus baptized? Are you asking me?

47:31

Yeah. Oh yeah, to fulfill the law. Okay. What law? He had to be baptized when you go into the concept of the high priest.

47:40

Okay. Melchizedek priesthood. Yes, the Melchizedekian priesthood. He had to be cleansed with water, anointed by the spirit.

47:50

He had to be at least 30 years old. All those things are connected to Old Testament categories that he was fulfilling.

47:56

That's in Numbers chapter four, Leviticus chapter eight, and Exodus 29. I learned that from you, by the way. I know you did.

48:04

That's right. People don't know this, that I have two seminary degrees. I have two master's degrees, a master of arts and theological studies and a master divinity with a theological focus.

48:13

And people are like, oh my goodness. Like, wow, you probably learned so much in seminaries. Actually, I don't remember anything from seminary.

48:19

Most of my theology is at Carm University. I listened to so much Carm at the beginning of all this that that's where I got most of my doctrine.

48:28

And then I began to kind of branch off into other things. So as you were talking about the importance of doing and listening,

48:34

I wanted to say this because people have heard me say this before, is that when we're doing repetition and trying to remember, you need to engage the material such that the material becomes the background music of your mind.

48:47

It's kind of like, you know, like the words of a... So it's almost weird. You could even know before the words is spoken in a song, you kind of anticipate it.

48:55

And you need to be so familiar with scripture that it's just the background music so that when a context arises to apply a certain scripture, it's like a song's playing in your head and you're able to give the scripture that's relevant to that specific context.

49:07

And so it's a magical thing. It's almost like, it's like, how did I do that? Well, because it's flipping around in your head and it's coming out when it's needed.

49:16

So I did that. Hey, I wish I'd have said that. That's good. But go for it. You were gonna say something about baptism.

49:23

Oh, well, the idea of stuff. I like to mess people up, all right? So I don't go to Bible studies because I mess up Bible studies and people aren't happy because I'll ask difficult questions.

49:34

You know, say they're talking about baptism. Baptism is so important. And I'm like, oh man, all these verses about baptism.

49:39

You know, I could really throw a, just a, you know, just a little grenade. You know, when

49:45

I walk out and the bodies are, spiritual bodies are all over the place. You know, well, baptism means that you're supposed to be immersed in water, right?

49:53

For believers, right? That's what it says. And they say, I say, well, Baptizo, does it mean immersion?

50:00

They go, of course it does. So why was Jesus baptized? To fulfill all righteousness. And so I show them the scriptures.

50:07

I show them what it does. And I said, and the high priest also had to be sprinkled. So he's sprinkled, right?

50:15

And they go, what? And I show them the verse. Thus you shall do for them for their cleansing, sprinkle purifying water on them and let them use a razor the whole body and wash your clothes and they shall be clean.

50:24

So now Jesus didn't do every single thing. It's not recorded, but he's clearly emphasizing and the writer of Matthew is emphasizing the necessity of fulfilling the

50:33

Old Testament law. So it looks like the baptism that Jesus underwent was by sprinkling. People say that can't be.

50:40

I say, oh yes, it can be. And then what I'll do is

50:45

I will go to, I love doing this. I go to, I could just go to here, go to. Oh wait, wait, James White's trying to get into the room now.

50:52

I don't know. Okay, that's fine. I'm like, oh, maybe, imagine, I'm just kidding. He's kind of the

50:58

Baptist boogeyman for Presbyterian. Well, I have no problem with that. You know, it's great.

51:03

I'm totally kidding, he's not there. And I'll show some covenant stuff if you guys want, but this is all connected to baptism.

51:10

So check this out. What does Acts 2 .17 say? Actually, we're starting at verse 16.

51:17

This is what was spoken of through the prophet Joel. And it shall be in the last days, God says, that I will pour forth my spirit on all mankind, right?

51:26

And then you go down to verse 18. I will, in those days, pour forth my spirit and they shall prophesy.

51:33

So this prophecy, and then there's a lot of verses in the Old Testament, I'm just going to Acts because he's quoting them. The coming of the spirit is by the pouring forth, right?

51:42

Isn't that right? Okay. That's what it says. Sure. Go to Acts 1 .5, for John baptized with water, but you'll be baptized with the

51:50

Holy Spirit not many days from now. Now that's Acts 1 .5, I just read Acts 2 .17,

51:56

18. So if Acts 1 .5 says you'll be baptized with,

52:01

John baptized with water, you'll be baptized with the Holy Spirit. What's that baptism of the

52:06

Holy Spirit mean? The pouring forth of the spirit. So the word baptized here must mean pouring.

52:15

That's how it's used in the Old Testament. Is that not correct? When I first met Matt, the way

52:20

I knew where, like I went into, it was in New Jersey. Is it? No. Jersey Fire, it was called, the

52:26

Jersey Fire, whatever. It sounds like a bad club, right? The Jersey Fire. And I walk in,

52:32

I knew Matt was going to be there. I never met him. We'd spoken on the phone for a couple of years before this.

52:37

And so I was finally getting to meet Matt and I was like, where is this guy? And of course, where was he? He's surrounded by a bunch of people trying to convince them of infant baptism.

52:46

So this is a topic - I'm trying to convince them, they asked me. Well, you were also doing some convincing.

52:53

And again, I was - Of course. Of course. And there was the scripture memory there that I thought was, you know, it was very characteristic of you.

53:01

So that's good stuff, man. That is really good stuff. There's a lot more baptism all over. But the point is that as we're talking about this, in my head is

53:08

Acts 22, 16, Acts 2, 38, 1 Peter 2, 21, 321, excuse me.

53:15

Also Galatians 3, 27, you know, the verses we talked about in the Old Testament, Matthew chapter four,

53:22

I've got those issues. We can go into Romans chapter six, verses one through eight. Very interesting stuff.

53:28

And don't forget Colossians 2, 11 and 12, which I cross -referenced with Romans 4, 11. So let me let people know, if you memorize scripture like Matt, you'll be able to do all sorts of magical things.

53:40

I remember listening to a debate, okay? It was on baptism.

53:47

You were tying the guy in knots because of scripture. I mean, you knew the scripture and you left the guy with a scripture.

53:54

You said, I need to go use the restroom. And then your mic was still on and you were quoting scripture from the bathroom.

54:01

Which means - Oh, I was talking to you. I had to, yeah, I had to, yeah, sorry. Which means you didn't have a monitor in front of you.

54:09

You just memorized scripture. So if you memorize scripture like Matt, you'll be able to refute heretical teachings from the bathroom.

54:16

And that's quite impressive. That's right. I remember that. I had to go so badly, excuse me.

54:23

And I'm gonna listen, but he says, I get, wait a minute, that's what it says. It was hilarious because when you left, it was just the guy on the screen and he's struggling with the scripture that you, and he's like, you could hear him like underneath his voice, like reading it.

54:35

And then you like finished the verse from the bathroom. It was like, this guy is like, it was hilarious.

54:42

Sorry. No, you don't have to apologize. It just goes to show, like, I mean, even though it was funny, the fact is you knew the scriptures and you were able to kind of just, you know, make your point.

54:53

And so whether it's in the toilet, whether it's on the street, I mean, I've seen you do street witnessing. It is just an invaluable tool to know

55:02

God's word. And so of course we've had some funny, funny experiences like that. Let's move on to some apologetic application.

55:11

Okay. How has scripture memory helped you in your evangelism and apologetics with Jehovah's witnesses?

55:19

The Jehovah's witnesses know more than the average Christian by far because they're inculcated in their church into cultic thinking.

55:26

So you have to memorize as much as you can. And they're going to use verses and stuff that scripture to show that Jesus Christ is not

55:33

God. You know, John 14, 28, a word, you know, he says, father's greater than I.

55:39

And you get to know about that. You've got to know where those things are. Sure. And you have to know things like they're going to alter.

55:44

You happen to know, you know, I mean, I do this for a living. You don't have to all know all this, but you know, they alter Hebrews 1, 8, you know, where they worship

55:52

God. Worship. I mean, he's worshiped. Hebrews 1, 6. And, but there's a quote from Psalm 45, 6.

56:00

And so I know where to go in the Bible and stuff like that. But I know tricks to show that Jesus Christ is

56:06

God in flesh from using their own Bible. But I'm going to tell you, if you're going to do something like this, you have to have the addresses memorized, you know, and you can say to them,

56:15

I think it says someplace in the Old Testament, I think it says where God appeared.

56:26

Okay, that's nice. What does that mean? I don't know. We can find it. Let's start to sit down and read for five hours.

56:32

Maybe we'll come across a verse. It just, you know, so one of the things is, I'll be talking to, for some reason, they don't come to my door anymore.

56:38

I don't know why. I always invite them in. They want to leave after a while, but then I have to unbolt everything and stuff.

56:45

But, you know, and so I just quote them the Bible. I quote them scriptures. You have, if you can do cult evangelism, you have got to know scriptures.

56:53

That's right. And you've got to know the other stuff. You have to, I'm sorry, but you do. And that's not to say that if you don't, you can't be used of God.

57:02

I remember a story that Chuck Smith said. I never forgot this story. Chuck Smith, the founder of Calvary Chapel. I used to go to his church where my wife and I were baptized by Chuck, and she got saved at Big Calvary, et cetera, blah, blah, blah.

57:14

She said that there was this girl who would go to a park. She was a new convert.

57:21

She'd go to a park and she would witness. She didn't know much at all. And this guy would come up, an atheist guy,

57:28

I think it was an atheist guy, he said, and would ask her all these difficult questions. Hey, ask me the difficult questions, folks.

57:35

Gather around, let's go to town, all right? And we'll talk for 20 minutes about presuppositionalism. And so what she did was said, you know,

57:44

I don't know the answer to that, but I know this, that if you trust in Christ and you believe in him, he will save you from your sins.

57:53

That's all she knew. And she said each week, she would go out and witness, and this guy would come up with something new.

57:59

She didn't have an answer, and she just said that. Happened for several weeks. Here he comes again.

58:06

And she says, oh no, here he comes again. And he just walked up and said, what do I do to become a Christian? You know, yeah.

58:16

Do I have cult reputation versus my website? Yeah. Matt crumbles up his outlines. He was like, oh man,

58:22

I thought I was gonna be able to use my, see, that's fun. It's a funny thing. You could do all this work and you still have to leave room for God's timing and know when to, you know, that's funny.

58:33

There's a warning though. I'm gonna say there's a warning to this. There's a bad side because you start to, one danger is to use your memory, your intellect, your ability, instead of relying on God's spirit.

58:47

And this is, we fall in our strengths as well as our weaknesses. So it's, you know,

58:52

I used to go in the scorched earth policy of slick apologetics and leave nobody vertical.

59:00

You know, everyone's got broken spiritual bones. You're trying to recover. And back in the immature days, now

59:06

I try to be far more gentle as Colossians 4, 5, and 6 says, and 2

59:11

Timothy 2, 25 and 26 says, 24 to 25, that's right.

59:20

I got to sit down. Sometimes you get them mixed up because you got so many in your head. Right, right, right. I remember your cutthroat days.

59:26

I knew when it was coming. Cause I listened to so many podcasts. I kind of knew when your voice would change or if the nature of the call,

59:34

I'm like, oh, this guy's gonna get it. And so Matt will be like, wait one second. So are you

59:39

Jehovah's witness? And I was like, please don't say yes. The guy will hesitate. Should I say I am a

59:45

Jehovah's witness or not? And it'd be like a good solid four seconds of silence. He'd be like, yes.

59:51

And I'm like, all right, it's over. Honey, you get the popcorn. That was hilarious.

59:56

But again, you would get them with scripture. I mean, yeah, you grilled them and they called your show. So they're gonna expect something like this, but I've never, this is my own personal experience.

01:00:06

I know people can say, you know, this person, that person, but I have never seen the power of scripture memory used in apologetics as well as I've seen it when you've done it.

01:00:16

And what I like about how you do it is that you can talk at that scholarly level, but on the normal, you just take this stuff and really just make it applicable to the average person.

01:00:27

And I think that's why, for me, I've been able to remember a lot of the things that you've taught because of the way you phrased it or the way you said it.

01:00:35

So that's very, very important, I think. Yeah, I remember a lot of our conversations on the phone. I'll just say something and you'll go, hey, that's really helpful.

01:00:42

Yes, yeah. You used to test me all the time. You'd be like, we'd be talking and you'd be like, yeah, you just need to know doctrine.

01:00:50

What's justification? I'm like, oh, justification, to be declared righteous before God. Like I had to make sure I knew, but when Matt called, I don't wanna pick up the phone the first time and he calls, the first call is the warning to go to CARM and make sure

01:01:02

I know my definitions. And then when Matt calls me, I'll be like, aren't you gonna ask me what the communicative idiomatum is?

01:01:09

And he's like, nope, I just had a question about something. I'm like, all right. So what is the communicative idiomatum? It's the communication of the attributes.

01:01:15

I don't remember off the top of my head. Oh, man. Is that the difference between the communicable and incommunicable attributes of God?

01:01:24

Is it related to that? No. The communicative idiomatum is the communication of the properties where the properties of both natures of Jesus are ascribed to the single person.

01:01:33

Yes, okay, that's right. Okay, I knew that. It's been a while since I've heard that. Yeah, it's been too long.

01:01:38

I'm gonna have to call you. Start quizzing you some more. Yeah, it's been a while, but all right.

01:01:44

So let us from here move on to the audience questions because we're at the top of the hour here, the bottom of the hour, top of the hour, whatever.

01:01:53

And I just have to put this one on the screen. I love this. Let's see, someone posted it before. Okay, we said it in passing.

01:02:01

And someone put, where is Karm University? I said,

01:02:08

I learned my theology at Karm University. Well, where is Karm University? I wanna know right now. I'm sorry, quiet girl.

01:02:15

Karm University is just my fancy way of saying the Karm podcast. That's litera... And karm .org.

01:02:22

I learned at the beginning where I learned my doctrine, it was just devouring the articles. The beautiful thing about Matt's website is that the articles for the most part are short.

01:02:32

If you need to kind of get a good summary of a doctrine without getting bogged down with like hours and hours of study, it's a great reference tool.

01:02:38

So karm .org, and of course the podcast. So that's where Karm University is. Unfortunately, Matt's your instructor and he's a little crazy at times, but.

01:02:46

Oh yeah, yeah, I got issues. All right, I'm gonna go here. Wait, wait, there's another one.

01:02:52

I'll get my super chat here. Thank you so much, Israel of WizDoomMedia, $5. I appreciate that.

01:02:59

And he asks, what can I do to get some bathroom revelations? I guess that's a reference to you knowing scripture while you were on the toilet there.

01:03:08

In a debate, in a debate. You wanna know how to do this, what you have to do is do it.

01:03:15

So like martial arts, it took years of martial arts. You don't walk into a class and then you know everything.

01:03:22

You have to get thrown a thousand times and you know how to get thrown, you know how to throw. You gotta do it, you gotta do it, you gotta do it.

01:03:30

So you can go to Discord, I just go to Discord and I'm there all the time. I was there today answering questions and that's what you gotta do and it becomes a habit.

01:03:40

Now here's the thing, if you think you wanna do this, don't do it because you think you might need to and you're trying to push yourself to.

01:03:49

It'll kind of burn yourself out. You have to be called to do it because apologetics is difficult.

01:03:57

Apologetics is time consuming. Apologetics requires a lot of knowledge in a lot of areas.

01:04:03

The more you do, like me, if you go to CARM, you'll see I've written I think 5 ,000 or 5 ,500 articles on all kinds of topics.

01:04:12

Well, that's just me. Okay, but you know, some people are called to do apologetics in one narrow area, like Bill McKeever, a friend of mine, he just does

01:04:19

Mormonism. And you know, what's his name,

01:04:24

Malone? Oh, I guess. Bokab, Bokab. Bokab, yeah, he does BHI, Black Hebrew Israelite, you know.

01:04:31

And so then you study those things relative to that. Me, I got to know everything because I do radio and answer questions and we get calls on all kinds of topics.

01:04:39

So that's just different. But you got to understand that when you do this, it can be difficult.

01:04:45

So if you are interested and you want to learn, I seriously recommend you do an outline.

01:04:51

And I'd be good sometime to get on here and show you how to do stuff inside of Word, little tricks and stuff like that, not a big deal.

01:04:58

And you just use it. And I also believe you should use this,

01:05:04

I mean, LastPass, which I could teach people how to use LastPass. It's a password thing and there's tricks you can do to help you and use

01:05:13

Dropbox. Because the reason I'm saying all this is, I used to teach computers and you guys can't see it, but I have four 27 inch 4K monitors and a computer, the only moving parts are the fans.

01:05:31

And I have two, two gigabyte M .2 memory sticks, one for the

01:05:38

C, one for the D. I've got, I mean, I got all kinds of stuff, okay? I'm an electronics guy. I know what it means, hold on.

01:05:47

I know what it means to use technology. And so I can teach people, I mean,

01:05:52

I could do a whole hour lesson. Here's what you do to make your life easier so that when you want to do apologetics, you can do it.

01:06:01

So I can have on here, my LastPass, which is a password manager system.

01:06:08

I have it on my computer. When I put, I go to a site and I type in my password, it says, you want to make this as a password for the site?

01:06:15

Yes, it'll show up here, but also I can put in notes. And this is password protected.

01:06:22

So I can put in scripture references. I can put a whole bunch of notes. I could do it on my computer. I could be waiting in line and I'll just click this and I can go through and look at my scripture references and I can memorize and I can do stuff like that.

01:06:36

And the thing about using the cloud and using stuff is that it becomes universally available.

01:06:42

All you gotta do is remember your password, one password. I could even teach you a technique to remember passwords on a hundred websites and you can do it.

01:06:54

I can teach you a technique for a hundred websites. We have to get you back to talk about like that techie side, like technology, using technology for apologetics.

01:07:03

I think that'd be a good topic in and of itself. Yeah. I use a lot of apologetic. Yeah, well,

01:07:10

I'll have you back on. Maybe you can teach folks how to do the outlines in more detail and stuff. I think that'd be a great topic.

01:07:16

In fact, if they were to do this, they could get their computers ready. I would tell them what to go ahead and get anyway, get

01:07:21

Dropbox, get LastPass, sign up for it, get these things, put them in.

01:07:27

I could teach you how to use stuff and you become that much more better. You won't get better in your grammar, but you get better in your apologetic.

01:07:38

That's right, even more better, that's right. All right, well, let's move on to the next question.

01:07:45

Before I get to the next question, and there's a bunch of them, so I hope you're ready, Matt. There's a couple of them. We'll get through a bunch if that's okay.

01:07:52

Sure, go for it. All right, I just want to let folks know, if you have not already, you can subscribe to the

01:07:58

Revealed Apologetics YouTube channel. So far, we have 1 ,700 and 100 subscribers.

01:08:06

That's fairly small. So if you haven't subscribed, what's up with you, bro? Go there now, subscribe and share this stuff because I've been hearing some great feedback.

01:08:15

People have been really blessed by the content. And if this is being helpful to you, share it. So subscribe, share, and all that other stuff.

01:08:22

All right, let's move on. So here's a question from Davinsky Makalensky, okay.

01:08:28

For both of you gentlemen, where do you see the next big challenges in apologetics, in the apologetics world for the next generation?

01:08:36

Why don't you take that one, Matt? Well, something's been happening in my mind about things. I think the issue of truth is, we need to start focusing on what the issue of truth is.

01:08:45

I think it comes down to that because Satan is gonna deny the truth of God's word. We need to understand what truth is.

01:08:51

The only way to know if something's absolutely true is if an infinitely knowledgeable God reveals it to you.

01:08:57

And that's done in the word of God. And so we need to know that word and we need to rest on that word. But here's something that's really important to people have to understand.

01:09:06

If you go to 2 Thessalonians 2 .3, I'm gonna read it to you. Here's something to think about.

01:09:14

Let no one in any way deceive you for it, the arrival of the second coming of Christ will not come unless the apostasy comes first and the man of lawlessness is revealed as son of destruction.

01:09:27

So that Jesus can't return until the apostasy comes first and the antichrist is revealed.

01:09:33

Now that's important because I talk to Catholics. I say, you're the true church, right?

01:09:38

They go, yeah. 1 .4 billion people, right? Yeah. You're the true church, yeah.

01:09:45

Now say 2 Thessalonians 2 .13 says that before the antichrist comes, the true church, your true church was supposed to go apostate.

01:09:53

And they never thought of that. Well, as a Protestant, we believe that Catholicism is apostate, it's demonic and it is.

01:10:02

So that means Protestantism has to go apostate. Whoa. And it is going apostate.

01:10:09

Turn on TV, you can see a lot of apostate moron wackos who teach out of the book of nonsensicus and excrementicus.

01:10:17

Those two books are their favorites. And so - Those are pseudepigraphal books, guys.

01:10:24

That's true. Pseudepigraphal, pseudepigraphal, that's right. And you see my disdain for the lies that is occurring inside of the

01:10:33

Christian church. It's a battle for truth. The word of God is the truth.

01:10:40

Know the word of God. Speak the word of God. Quote the word of God. That's the truth.

01:10:47

That's the biggest thing we've got to do because it's got to stay true in the Christian church. But here's one of the problems

01:10:53

I'm having now with preachers. Maybe it's just me. But now when I go to, because I don't have a really home church right now, kind of looking between and some friends are looking.

01:11:04

Now what's happening is I sit down and I listen. I almost count,

01:11:10

I almost got a stopwatch. How long before they open scripture and start teaching out of scripture?

01:11:17

Because like I went to one two weeks ago and it took about seven minutes of intro, sermon intro, before he got to the word of God.

01:11:26

And then I went to one on Sunday and it was, I lost train of thought because it was topical.

01:11:31

And the guy said, that's not his normal style and he's reformed and everything. I'll go back again and listen. I remember

01:11:37

I went to one church and it's just a story, five, 10 minutes of stories, intro.

01:11:43

They're trying to make the word of God relevant, which means they don't believe in the truth and the power of that word.

01:11:52

So when I was first a Christian in Southern California, if you guys know who

01:11:58

Robert Shuler was and the Crystal Cathedral back in Southern California, I didn't know anything.

01:12:04

And I'm gonna go check out this guy. And he's the guy who said that Jesus died to sanctify your ego trip, moron.

01:12:13

Anyway, so I went there and I waited to see how long it would take him to say the word Jesus. 20 minutes,

01:12:20

I'm not coming back here. And then I went to Calvert Chapel with Chuck Smith and I said, how long does it take before he mentions

01:12:26

Jesus? First word out of his mouth was Jesus. First one,

01:12:31

I go, I'm here. The word of God is from Christ. And we know that because if you go to John 5 .39,

01:12:40

it says, you search the scriptures because in them you think you have eternal life, but it is these that bear witness of me.

01:12:47

The scriptures are about Jesus. And Jesus says in John 12 .32, if I be lifted up from the earth, I will draw all men to myself.

01:12:54

So we've got to lift up Christ and speak that word. What's coming? The challenge, are we gonna believe truth?

01:13:01

Are we gonna believe truth, the truth of God's word? We need to presuppose the validity of God's word, presuppose the truth of who

01:13:08

Christ is, presuppose the validity, the truth of the Trinity and the power of that word and don't be apologetic.

01:13:13

Memorize it and speak it. It's better to learn that than learn presuppositional apologetics, deontological arguments, epistemological, transcendental ontological arguments and how to refute them all.

01:13:26

It's more important that you have the scriptures. Apologetics, I use it as an illustration. Schuller was a syncretic knucklehead prosperity gospel teacher.

01:13:38

Add moron in there and you got it better. So I look at apologetics as a gigantic field of rocks and thistles and thorns and divots and little things, watch out, don't twist your ankle, that little hole over there and these little boulders.

01:13:57

And in the middle of this big field is a garden and it's a beautiful garden, but there's a high wall, stone wall, impenetrable behind it and there's a single door.

01:14:09

What we do as apologists is lead people through those barriers, through those divots, around the thistles and the thorns, around those boulders and get to that door,

01:14:22

Jesus, and point them to Christ. And then that's between them and the

01:14:28

Lord at that time. But our job must not be to elevate intellect because I'm smart,

01:14:35

I have a high IQ and I have sometimes fallen in that area, I will use my intellect. And that's can only be a tool to get them to Christ.

01:14:43

So Christ has to be the center. And this truth of his word has got to be the thing that's bear witness of him.

01:14:50

So you have to focus on Christ and do that properly, you gotta memorize his word. And everything else will fall in place.

01:14:56

And that's what I would recommend. Yeah, very good. I would say that one of the challenges amongst many is just laziness with regards to younger

01:15:07

Christians. Christians are just really lazy. They're in churches like Matt was talking about where there's not a

01:15:13

Christo -centric and scriptural -centric emphasis. And so a lot of people are just ignorant of what the word of God says.

01:15:21

And so we are raising a generation of ignorant people that are going to church as sort of a social club.

01:15:27

And that has been a problem for years, but I think it is magnified given the fact that social media, cell phones, these types of things that create zombies of young people that they're just unable to think critically because they're just on their phones all the time.

01:15:41

I say that from the perspective of a teacher. So I get to see that firsthand, but it is a real thing.

01:15:47

A lot of people are just woefully ignorant because they just don't have the capacity to really think long and deep about things and they're not getting it from any of their churches.

01:15:55

So that's what I would say with regards to that. Next question here. Eli, what is your method for memorizing scripture?

01:16:01

I'm an audio learner, so I listen to people who memorize scripture. And so I'm dead honest. Most of the things that I would quote,

01:16:07

Galatians 4 .4, he was born of a woman, born under the law. That's why Jesus had to pray. That's why Jesus had to do this, that, or the other thing.

01:16:13

I've learned that from Matt. And so one of the things that I do to help me memorize scripture is to listen to people who are good at memorizing scripture.

01:16:21

And I allow that to be, like I said before, the background music of my mind so that I get better and better at it when it is needed for me to use scripture in the context that God has placed me in.

01:16:33

So that's how I would answer that question. Here's another question. What is your book recommendation for someone who has never read a presuppositional apologetic book?

01:16:41

I assume that one's for me as well. I would say, Always Ready. That's a staple

01:16:46

Greg Bonson book. It's kind of a biblical foundation as to why we do presuppositional apologetics.

01:16:51

So it grounds you and roots you in scripture. And then of course, worked out the methodology based on scriptural principles.

01:16:57

All right, here's a question for you. I would also try another one. He was Bonson's teacher,

01:17:04

John Frame. His book, Apologetics of the Glory of God. That's right. John is super brilliant and he has this way of being able to break it down and stuff, so.

01:17:14

That's right, very good. This is a question from Tanner Terry. Question, Matt, I watched your debate with Father Deacon Ananias.

01:17:21

Do you think you learned anything in that debate? If so, what did you learn? I don't remember the debate hardly at all.

01:17:27

I don't even remember what we talked about, so I can't really say. This is an orthodox gentleman. I think you debated him on Discord. Yeah, what was the topic?

01:17:35

Ooh, I think it might've been related to the issue of the authority of the church, knowing what the scriptures are.

01:17:42

How do you know, something along those lines. Well, generally when I debate people who are pretty good from the other perspective,

01:17:48

I always learn something, but it's usually minutia. It's usually, you know, I gotta get that one quote better in this one area.

01:17:55

It's more fine detail, and so I don't remember too much about it. But what

01:18:00

I do remember is he didn't do very well. I remember that. I remember that as well. I say that respectfully, but I think you exposed some pretty good stuff there.

01:18:09

That wasn't recorded. It might've been recorded. It might be on YouTube somewhere. It was Sola Scriptura, yeah. Maybe it was, yeah, maybe it was.

01:18:15

It was a while ago. Yeah, think what Sola Scriptura is. This is important. Sola Scriptura is that the

01:18:20

Bible is the final word, the final authority in everything it addresses. Doesn't mean we don't look at tradition or councils, but it's the final authority.

01:18:29

And so people deny Sola Scriptura. What they're actually doing is saying, we don't really need to trust

01:18:34

God's word as the final authority, what he says. We need to also look at man's tradition.

01:18:42

That's Satanism. Did God really say? No. All right, thank you for that.

01:18:51

Caroline McKernan, maybe. What's the best version of the Bible? Why don't you take that one,

01:18:57

Matt? The Old Testament Hebrew and the New Testament original

01:19:02

Greek. Those are the best version. Well, I mean, you're not lying there. I mean, if you mean in English, I swear by the

01:19:12

NASB 95 version. Okay, yep. NASB, ESV are the two that I use.

01:19:18

Yeah, very good. NASB is better than ESV in a lot of areas. And ESV is better than the

01:19:23

NASB in some areas. All right. It's like, I bet you the NASB could beat up the

01:19:28

ESV. It has more letters. That's right. Jess Marie Sedgwick says,

01:19:37

I love RevealedApologetics and Karm .org. Thank you very much for that. That's very nice. Shouldn't it be Karm .org and RevealedApologetics?

01:19:43

I don't know. Well, you're on my channel now, so technically it makes sense that that goes first. Yeah, very good. All right, well, let's slide it.

01:19:50

Okay, so Tanner comes, he strikes again with another question here. Which canon is inspired and how do you know which canon ought to be used by Christians?

01:19:57

If the answer is the Holy Spirit, please elaborate on the mean in which the Holy Spirit works. Oh, this is usually asked by Catholics and Eastern Orthodox.

01:20:07

The canon that's inspired is one that we have, excluding the apocryphal books. And I can give you the reasons why that's the correct one.

01:20:13

And how do we know what it is? Because Jesus said that the Christians, his sheep hear his voice and God used the

01:20:21

Christians in the church to recognize the word of God. That's the answer. That is it.

01:20:27

But a lot of what they want is, our church has the authority. We gave you the

01:20:32

Bible and all this kind of vivacy. Yeah. Okay. All right. Thank you very much. So I was thinking this too.

01:20:40

Someone asked the question, is it possible to get those outlines anywhere?

01:20:45

You are making people's apologetical and theological glands water when you were showing all those outlines.

01:20:52

And so someone was saying, are these things available anywhere or is it just your personal notes? They're my personal notes.

01:20:58

However, my outlines on Calvinism are on, I think it's called notes on Calvinism, are on Amazon.

01:21:05

You can purchase them. It's eight and a half by 11. You also have, and I just purchased this one myself.

01:21:12

Let me just put Matt Slick here. You also have a Christian defense manual available on Kindle and it's pretty cool.

01:21:21

It's got little outlines on the top of various topics of theology and apologetics. So folks can pick that up,

01:21:27

I think for like 4 .99 or something like that on Kindle. Yeah. There's a lot of information in there. Yeah. Yeah.

01:21:32

I thought that was excellent. So, all right. I hope that was helpful. Let's see. And I do plan on releasing the other outlines in the future, but they take a lot of work.

01:21:41

Yeah. They take one to 200 hours of work to produce them. Yeah. Sometimes more. Please do.

01:21:47

When I purchased that little Christian defense manual, I mean, I know your site, but everything right there, nice and organized. It was wonderful.

01:21:53

So I highly recommend folks go. Didn't I give you my outlines on Calvinism years ago?

01:21:58

You did. You did. I still have those as well. And I have a physical copy also. And they're really helpful, right?

01:22:04

Yes, they are. Yeah. Okay, good. Just making sure. Okay. Let's see here. There's a good question here by Rational Evidence.

01:22:11

He asks, can you talk about praying through scripture? Use verses as prayers. Two birds with one stone instead of just memorizing by itself.

01:22:20

What's the value of praying the scriptures, Matt? I don't know if it's a good idea to pray through the scriptures because it means, what do you mean by that?

01:22:28

If you are saying, well, I read a scripture and I pray about what it's saying, and you're asking God to reveal that in your heart more, that's fine.

01:22:37

But if you just recite the words as prayers, they're not intended to be recited as prayers. And so that's it.

01:22:45

It's like Psalms are worship. And so sometimes worship is prayerful. And then there's some,

01:22:51

Lord, I pray, like the prayer, our Father who art in heaven. Well, do you pray that?

01:22:57

Well, yeah. But is it meant to be a literal prayer that's repetitious? I don't believe so. So it just depends on what they mean by it and stuff like that.

01:23:05

That's what I would say. But it just depends. All right. And Rational Evidence has another question.

01:23:11

Why spend time memorizing address, I guess the address of certain teachings in scripture in the age of Google?

01:23:19

Alternately, it is sufficient to memorize book and chapter. It forces people to read in context instead of standalone verse.

01:23:26

I'm not sure what the question is. But I suppose, why memorize when we have everything in the palm of our hands?

01:23:32

Well, you don't have everything in the palm of your hand. In fact, if you're talking to somebody about Jesus, as I've already done, what's the

01:23:41

Bible about? The Bible is about Jesus, John 5 39. Because you search the scriptures and then you think you have eternal life.

01:23:48

You'd be witnessing to somebody in a bathroom. You'll be witnessing to someone in a restaurant. You'd be witnessing somebody,

01:23:54

I've done this before, where I jumped out of a situation and went out in the streets in an intersection and told a guy some stuff,

01:24:03

Ms. Carr. You wanna have verses, you wanna have stuff in your head.

01:24:09

But if it's not in your head and your heart, where's the Holy Spirit gonna draw? From what will he draw to use you?

01:24:17

See, a lot of people, they don't realize if you wanna be used of God and you wanna ask

01:24:25

God to use you, then I warn you about that. Don't do that unless you're serious. If you wanna be used of God, then

01:24:33

I would say to you, what I would say is get a piece of paper that's blank and in the upper left -hand corner or upper right -hand corner, put the date.

01:24:44

In the bottom, sign your signature. Put it, get a picture frame, 8 1⁄2 by 11 and keep it, put it on your wall.

01:24:51

That's your contract with God. You date and you sign it. It's blank, no page, no lines, nothing.

01:24:58

God fills it in. If you wanna be used of God, you say, Lord, you fill that in. I don't care what you do with me.

01:25:04

I don't care where you send me. I don't care if I'm single or healthy or poor or rich.

01:25:10

It doesn't make any difference. Do with me as you desire. I've told this to people before, but I also warn them.

01:25:17

If you do that, what'll happen is God will shape you and he will put you in situations where you're gonna be broken, reshaped.

01:25:28

Because if you're building a piece of furniture or building something to sit and use, that you're gonna have, it needs to be shaped.

01:25:37

It needs to be made. It needs to be polished. And God can certainly use rough, inept people, but what he often does is disciple them, press them, refine them in various ways.

01:25:51

And part of that is putting the word of God in your heart, primarily so that God can speak to you about what you are.

01:25:59

And then he'll use you in situations. You'd be amazed. And you're gonna want to have those verses in your head.

01:26:05

So one of the motivating factors for me early on was I'd be out witnessing to somebody and they'd say, well, where does it say that?

01:26:13

I don't know. And it bothered me because I didn't know where the verse was and I couldn't cite it.

01:26:19

And it made me look kind of dumb. So I started memorizing. So then when I'm out,

01:26:25

I can, this says it here. It says it here. It says it here. Or sometimes what I'll do, literally talking to people in cults or Catholics or Muslims, they'll quote me something in the

01:26:35

Bible. I go, I don't know where it is. I go, tell me what it is. Maybe I know the verse, I'll help you out. When you say something like that, that takes years to get to, but you say something like that, what verse are you talking about?

01:26:49

Well, that intimidates them. Not that we want them to be intimidated, but they go, this guy studies and it adds credibility to what it is you're doing.

01:26:58

And we want to have credibility when we're trying to witness. And so I'm not saying do this for carnal reasons, but we need to be practical.

01:27:06

We need to have this word of God in us. And if we're going to be asked to be used, he's going to want that word in us.

01:27:14

It was in Christ. It was in Paul. It was in Peter. They didn't have Google. They committed these things to memory so that they could be used of God wherever they were.

01:27:24

And if you think that you can just use Google, okay, really? You're talking to Jehovah's Witnesses. What are you going to do?

01:27:31

Are you going to type, excuse me, Mr. Jehovah's Witness, I need to type something in right here, but what are we talking about? You've lost your credibility.

01:27:38

They're going to think this guy doesn't know his Bible. He's got to go to Google to help him out. He doesn't study.

01:27:43

Now you've lost respect, lost an opportunity. And this is serious business when we're talking about representing

01:27:49

Christ. So learn scripture. Very good. Very good. You can answer this one quickly.

01:27:55

Do you have the cult refutation verses on your website? Yes. Very good. If you go on calm .org,

01:28:00

there's entire sections on refuting Jehovah's Witness, Mormonism and Roman Catholicism and all sorts of views. So definitely check that out.

01:28:07

Calm .org, C -A -R -M .org. All right, very good. Let's see here.

01:28:14

Joshua Stanley asks, have you found any specific disciplines or practices helpful in memorizing scripture? I think you went through some of those already.

01:28:21

I don't know if you want to quickly summarize something or move on to the next. Get a piece of paper, get something, even if it's electronic, you can have a list of verses that you go to and you can memorize them and practice them and go to a place where you need to use them.

01:28:33

You become proficient when you do something. You do it over and over again. That's what you gotta do.

01:28:39

Become proficient, use it. All right, very good. Sean Shatt asks, can you do a review on Bonson and the

01:28:45

Sproul discussion? Maybe, that actually sounds like a great idea. I've been meaning to get to some debates and do some analysis on that.

01:28:52

So maybe I'll do that in the future. Thank you so much for that suggestion, Sean. Absolutely, let's see here. Also, someone's making a comment here, which

01:28:59

I'd like to turn people's attention to. Calm .org offers schools online as well. I have purchased, or wait, who am

01:29:06

I kidding? I actually, I think you gave it to me. That's right. Matt's so generous. He sells these things online, but he's also given them to people who, at the time,

01:29:16

I think I was flat broke and you blessed me with it. But I highly recommend, people support Calm, and he's got some great online material as well.

01:29:24

So you wanna check that out. That's kind of his website organized into almost like classroom outlines, which

01:29:30

I think are very helpful. All right, very good. Rational Evidence asks, how do you gain memorization proficiency without gaining pride?

01:29:38

Knowing chapter and verse builds so much pride in me, I can't see how it's helpful for my own spiritual growth.

01:29:45

Then don't do it. God's not calling you to memorize scripture. If you cannot get your pride tackled, if it becomes an issue of pride, pride, pride, then remember, memorize verses on humility.

01:29:59

Try Philippians 2. Start Philippians 2 and Colossians 3. Just go through those verses, those sections of pericopes of scripture,

01:30:08

Colossians 3, Philippians 2, and go through and find scripture that deals with the issue that's gonna speak to you about pride, and memorize those, and have those be the basis.

01:30:20

Because you gotta remember something. You're representing Jesus. And I've been prideful many, many times.

01:30:28

And every time I go, Lord, please forgive me for that. Please use me in spite of my pride. And then you go forward, and God gradually hones that down.

01:30:38

But I'll tell you, it will never be gone. It will never be gone.

01:30:44

It'll just be less and less and less. That's just the nature of it as you get older.

01:30:52

Very good, thank you. Julio Jimenez asks, should more apologetics ministries come from local churches as part of their organized ministries, i .e.

01:31:01

Christian education, worship ministry, et cetera? Yeah. Yeah, I agree.

01:31:07

I actually, as a simple answer to that, but it is true. Apologetics is so not emphasized at the local church area that that's why you have people on YouTube doing this.

01:31:19

You know, it's like, hey, apologetics is important. We need to get it out somehow. And so you have YouTube channels, you have podcasts and things like that.

01:31:26

But a lot of that is because it's just not being done in the local church. Now, that's not true of everyone, but it is true on a very large scale.

01:31:34

And so I do agree that apologetics should be done on the local church. Not even a suggestion.

01:31:39

It should be actually something that's part of the ministry, just as you would have men's ministry, kids' ministry, and there's apologetics ministry.

01:31:46

That's something that I think could be a given. Well, one of the things I was suggesting to some churches, I think

01:31:51

I did, but it was an idea at the very least, have 10 churches where they pool a little bit of money and they hire one person who does the circuit and teaches apologetics.

01:32:03

Because it's a wide topic for one person in a church to do apologetics on staff.

01:32:09

You've got to be called like me or some other people to really do a halfway decent job. And I'm not saying I do a great job and they don't.

01:32:16

They can go to get tools and that's great. They can do it, praise God, get it done. It should be the local church.

01:32:22

But sometimes it's just not that practical and you need some more help. And that's where ministries like ours come in line.

01:32:28

Very good. We're almost done, Matt, okay? Just a few more, okay? You're doing great. Oh, thank you.

01:32:33

I was worried. Bill asks, is the NET a good Bible version? I don't know.

01:32:41

He's like, I just use the NSBs. I never read the NET. NET is okay. I've gone through it a little bit.

01:32:46

I'm not that impressed or not impressed. I just don't remember too much. I've done Bible analysis. I had to get a set of scriptures that I would use as a plumb lines to go check various verses.

01:32:58

John 3, 16, Colossians 2, 9, definitely

01:33:03

Romans 5, 18. Now, I think another thing to keep in mind when you're asking the question like what's a good

01:33:10

Bible translation, there are good translations and bad translations. But generally speaking, the answer to that question is going to depend on what you're trying to do.

01:33:19

So if you're trying to do an in -depth study and analysis of scripture, you might want a more literal translation.

01:33:24

If you're using it for more devotional purposes, you might want a looser translation as long as the nature of that translation is not changing really the content and meat of what the passage is intending to say.

01:33:35

Tanner asks, Eli, I'd love to see you review the debate between Matt and the deacon. Maybe. We have dealt with Eastern Orthodoxy here.

01:33:42

I did an interview with Hank Hanegraaff a while back, which is on the channel, which went very well. And then I had

01:33:47

Dr. Tony Costa on for two shows analyzing and critiquing that perspective. So I thought those two episodes were a powerhouse in regards to response.

01:33:57

Again, no person that I would interview would, there's always gonna be someone who says, well, that person doesn't represent our view properly.

01:34:03

And perhaps even Hank says he's not the best in that area. But I do think that our response video did cover a wide range of topics that are brought up and are still useful to take a listen to.

01:34:15

So I thought that was helpful regardless, but maybe, we'll see, we'll see. All right, let's see here.

01:34:20

Bloop, bloop, bloop, bloop, bloop. Good for you, Joshua Stanley, good for you. There we go, yes. Just purchased a

01:34:26

Christian defense manual. Good, yeah. That's good too. Yeah, I totally, totally recommend it.

01:34:32

Okay, we have another super chat of $5. Thank you so much, Israel of Wisdom Media.

01:34:38

I really much appreciate the super chats. Every penny helps. And so I do appreciate any contribution.

01:34:43

So thank you so much for that. But Israel asks, what do you think of planned written prayers, like how the

01:34:49

Jews do it instead of the fresh made improvised evangelical view of prayer? So what do you think about that?

01:34:56

I think it's dangerous to use written prayers because it can become habitual and that's it.

01:35:03

But then again, we have impromptu prayer. My wife and I do, we pray for the same things. Is it habitual?

01:35:09

Well, yes, but it's intentional. So I think the intention of the heart is the issue.

01:35:14

If that's what helps you, written form, okay. If you're praying through it and meaning it and you're concentrating on it, that's fine.

01:35:21

If you're just saying it because you got to say it, that can happen whether it's written or spoken. Yeah. Yeah.

01:35:28

All right, very good. Tanner says, what scriptures would you use to describe what's going on with the Trinity at the cross?

01:35:34

I don't know what that means. In particular, how is each person of the Trinity involved in that act? I suppose in like the crucifixion or something like that?

01:35:41

Yeah, then you have to get into the era of patripastianism. You also got to get into doctrine of the economic

01:35:46

Trinity and the ontological Trinity, but in particular the ontological Trinity, the nature of the incarnation. Then you got to talk about the hypostatic union, the communicatio ideomatum and why they relate.

01:35:56

And then you have to get into the perichoresis and divine simplicity. So these are some of the doctrines that all interrelate to talk about potential interactions of the whole of the

01:36:07

Trinity in the one person's incarnation because perichoresis means that each person of the

01:36:12

Trinity indwells and is inside of, indwells, permeates the other persons.

01:36:19

So how does that work in the incarnation? We don't know because there's just certain things the Bible has not revealed to us and then it becomes speculative.

01:36:27

Yeah, and don't be intimidated by a lot of the fancy terminology that Matt just used there. A lot of the theological terms are just fancy terms which mean simple concepts.

01:36:35

Sometimes they mean complicated concepts, but for the most part, you can look up those words and kind of, oh, okay,

01:36:41

I see what that means there. So you might want to listen back at this and look up those terms in like a systematic theology or something like that.

01:36:49

Terry Tanner gives another super chat. Thank you so much. He says, thank you for your time, guys. And we appreciate that.

01:36:55

Thank you. And Standing for Truth says, Matt Slick will be on my channel tomorrow night for a debate on morality.

01:37:01

All right, very cool. Definitely want to check that out. What's the name of the, the channel is called Standing for Truth?

01:37:07

Is that what it is? I think it is. I've got it on my calendar. I got a busy day tomorrow. I got a meeting at 10 o 'clock in the morning at 1233, another one at one and another one at seven.

01:37:19

And then I got radio at four. It's gonna be a long day tomorrow. Wow. Helen Pettycord asks, are

01:37:29

Eli and Matt agreeable of teaching young children apologetics? So I suppose we believe, yeah, absolutely.

01:37:35

Absolutely, yeah. And it can be done. There are ways to simplify it. For those who follow me for more specifically the presuppositional stuff,

01:37:44

I mean, Greg Bonson was an analytic philosopher who placed a great emphasis on epistemology.

01:37:49

But when asked this very question, he said that you can teach these biblical apologetical principles to a child.

01:37:56

And then he went to go through a proof for God's existence. He called the toothpaste proof for God's existence.

01:38:02

And he showed how to prove God's existence through using toothpaste. He says, so you can contextualize these things.

01:38:08

That's why it's important to master these concepts because when you master the concepts, then you have the freedom to contextualize what you've learned and apply it to whether you're speaking to a young person, an educated person, a somewhat educated person, or the guy with the big forehead who's drooling from his mouth and doesn't know much.

01:38:26

So - Can I show you something? Sure, sure. All right, I'm gonna share the screen, okay? Yeah. Talk about children apologetics.

01:38:35

I've been thinking about resurrecting this and working on it to finish it. Let's see what people think of this.

01:38:43

And, I don't know if you can see that or not, if it's visible enough.

01:38:51

It's a little blurry. I can only make it so big. This is, okay.

01:38:59

This is something I started working on. Spiral bound right down here in the middle.

01:39:05

Okay. This is for children, for mom and dad, and their 2 .3 children to use to teach them at the dinner table.

01:39:14

And so it has scripture. You can't see everything. Scripture, it has, if you only have a few, a minute or two or whatever, you can almost highlight those things down there.

01:39:26

It's just, you can go through these, these questions here. Here's learning points, commentary on this.

01:39:34

If you want to get even further, you go into more information. And I've got it set up for creation days,

01:39:40

Adam and Eve. Is this being sold or you're just working on this to release it? Working on this. Okay.

01:39:46

And a covenant theology, Tower of Babel, Abraham, offspring. The pictures are for a coloring book so the kids can color.

01:39:56

And Sodom and Gomorrah, I do representative things. And I'm about, I think it's about all they've got.

01:40:01

24, how many less? 25, 26, 27. Yeah. So I've only got,

01:40:06

I'm only at Moses and the burning bush. And the goal is, this is where I would stop.

01:40:13

The goal is you read scripture, ask questions, you go through and demonstrate the, mom and dad give the answers.

01:40:22

Here's little bits of teaching and there's more information on the right -hand side. The next day, they just go to the next lesson.

01:40:28

Okay. So it's always the lessons on the left side. It'll have an index table of contents and it's designed in such a way that you can go through it.

01:40:39

Once you're done, you can go through it over and over and over again because mom and dad know how to bring different levels of information that are inside of this thing.

01:40:47

This is for children apologetics. It's a teach, have mom and dad teach your children.

01:40:53

The various things that are necessary. Like, look at this. Something really, I love this right here about Moses.

01:41:00

Moses spent 40 years in Egypt, learning he was someone. Moses spent 40 years in the desert, learning he was no one.

01:41:08

Moses spent 40 years being used by God as no one. Wow. Very cool.

01:41:14

There's little things that are useful. And so that's, I've had it field tested. I haven't picked it up in five years.

01:41:20

I got to do that. I think it's something that is very necessary, especially lately, but it takes a great deal of work to produce it.

01:41:28

All right, very good. For folks who are asking about the Christian defense manual, I just put the link in there in the chat. So people can check that out.

01:41:35

I think you can get a physical copy and a 499 Kindle copy. I got the

01:41:41

Kindle copy, so I have it in my back pocket. So good stuff. Well, that is the final, that was the final question there,

01:41:47

Matt. This was an excellent discussion and I hope folks have found this content really helpful.

01:41:53

They should definitely check out karm .org. There's just so much stuff there. I mean, I have two articles on my own website.

01:42:00

Matt has, I don't even know how many articles you have. Over 6 ,000, 6 ,500 or something like that.

01:42:05

I remember asking you a long time ago, I was like, Matt, why don't you write a book? And you were like, why? I have like thousands of articles.

01:42:12

You put that together. It's like an encyclopedia. And if I sell a book, only a couple of people get it.

01:42:17

You know how many page views I get on karma? That's a good point. I mean, you got countless and countless of material that can be kind of like multiple books.

01:42:26

So people should definitely check it out. Well, guess how much, I did accounts last month.

01:42:32

I finally updated everything. We've had 145 million visitors. Oh my goodness.

01:42:38

That's amazing, man. That's awesome. By God's grace. By God's grace.

01:42:44

I love, you used to, maybe you still do, maybe you have it with you, but I remember you, and this is a good way to wrap things up, to kind of bring things into perspective of, it can be intimidating for folks to hear all this and be like, how the heck am

01:42:56

I gonna start doing apologetics? I mean, there's so much stuff to learn. It is true that there's a lot to learn, but we,

01:43:04

Matt and I, are not some special category of people such that we can do this and no one else can, right?

01:43:10

Matt used to have a little cup that had a little crack in it. And you -

01:43:16

Still have it. That cup, and it would remind you that you're a broken vessel.

01:43:22

And I think that's a good reminder. We are not perfect. We're not particularly smarter than everyone else.

01:43:28

Yet God has, by his grace, seen fit to use us in the context that he's placed us in.

01:43:34

And God can do that for anyone else who's willing to really just submit to his word and to step out in faith, trusting in God's provision to just speak the truth in a world that needs to hear it.

01:43:46

So I wanna encourage folks with that. Now, I thought that was the last question, Matt, but did you wanna say something?

01:43:51

And then there's one more question someone asked and gave a super chat. I really appreciate it. Second Kings? Yeah, Second Kings.

01:43:58

We'll put it on the thing whenever you're ready, but did you wanna say something beforehand? Sure, I can answer that. It's when the bears came out, ordered by Elijah to come out and kill the children.

01:44:07

Okay. Moral dilemma there. First of all, there is no moral dilemma because anything that God does is always right. But contextually, it's because a bald man to say, hey, go up, you bald man, go up.

01:44:18

He was Elijah. Elisha has already gone up before it was at the reverse. It already been ascended into heaven, which means he was gone.

01:44:26

Go up, bald man. So they were threatening him, maybe threatening to kill him because they're saying, go up, like the guy before you had, he's no longer here.

01:44:36

So you go up, bald headed man, which is a sign of disrespect to an elder. Plus, where are their parents and why are they not with their parents working and doing what's necessary as they take care of their family because they're obligated to do that.

01:44:51

It was going up by the way, young lads came from the city out and mocked him. So they're disobeying their parents.

01:44:58

They're disobeying the law and they're mocking a man of God. Go up, you bald head, go up, you bald head.

01:45:04

And when he looked up, he saw them, he cursed them in the name of the Lord. Two bears came out and destroyed 42 of them because they were mocking

01:45:12

God. They were not at home, they're supposed to be doing. They were threatening his life as a group of 42 of them, which is a mob, were threatening him.

01:45:23

And God says, nope, not having any of this, wiped them out. And that's what happened, that's why, okay? And suppose you just heard that answer and said, well,

01:45:31

I don't know if I can remember that and share it with someone. Then go back to the beginning of what Matt said.

01:45:37

Everything that God does is right, okay? That is sufficient in responding to that question.

01:45:43

Because this question, when people bring up moral problems, it is usually something that God does or allows that people say, well, wait a minute, there's something wrong with that.

01:45:53

As though there is a standard of morality by which God is being judged and he's not acting in conformity with those things.

01:46:00

God in his essence is righteous, perfect, and holy. And so everything he does is righteous, perfect, and holy, even when he does things that you don't like.

01:46:07

It's as simple as that. There's no problem there. If anything, it's simply an emotional problem. And for us, for our purposes, for purposes of truth, that's really irrelevant to the truth of that particular passage there.

01:46:17

So there is the detailed answer, which is useful. And I think you should know how to answer in that regard. But if you're in a tight spot,

01:46:24

I mean, just it always goes back to the character of God and he is the standard. And so appealing to God as the standard,

01:46:30

I think is sufficient in various contexts, okay? All right, so that is it.

01:46:36

That was the final question. Thank you so much, everyone, for listening and giving your support.

01:46:41

Those who gave a super chat, we really appreciate it. Just one more quick reminder. If those who want to still learn presuppositional apologetics, you can go to revealedapologetics .com

01:46:51

and sign up for PresuppU. And the deadline for that signup is going to be February 15th.

01:46:57

So if you're interested in that, get to the website and sign up whenever you can. All right, Matt, would you like to share anything before we close off?

01:47:06

No. All right. I can't think of anything. Well, on that awkward note, we're gonna end.

01:47:14

Thank you so much, guys, for listening in. We appreciate your support. And until next time, take care and God bless.