So Much Heresy, So Little Time (with Matt Slick & Eli Ayala)

All right, welcome back to another episode of Revealed Apologetics. I'm your host, Elias Ayala, or Eli. No one ever really calls me Elias, but my name's Eli. And today I have a very special guest. And that word special can be understood in a wide variety of ways.

There is the uppercase special, the capital S-P, Eshel. And then there's the lowercase special. Lowercase special is kind of, you know, it's special, but someone who's special special, that can mean all sorts of things.

And so if you guys know who my guest is, Matt Slick, he's very, very special. You can interpret that in any number of ways. Before we introduce him formally or give him an opportunity to introduce himself to folks who perhaps are not familiar with him, I just want to just make a couple of announcements real quick.

This Saturday, I will be having Chris Bolt back on. Chris Bolt, if you're not familiar with him, he was formally from the website Choosing Hats, which was a website committed to promoting and popularizing the presuppositional apologetic method.

And so I had him on a couple of months back in the episode that we had, we talked about transcendental arguments, and it was one of, one of, not the, I'm sorry, Chris, was one of my favorite episodes.

We got into some really deep issues with regards to transcendental argumentation. So he's gonna be coming back on, on Saturday. I also have a debate with an atheist on Marlon Wilson's show, The Gospel Truth.

The debate topic is going to be, is there evidence for the God of the Bible? And so you might want to check out The Gospel Truth on Saturday. I believe that's at 7 p .m. I better check that out before I mix that up.

So with that said, without further ado, let me introduce and welcome Matthew, is it J, J Slick? Look at that. I know you really well. Matthew J Slick from karm .org. Why don't you say hello to everyone?

Hi, everyone.

That's it, all right. I'm giving you a hard time already, aren't I? You're kidding me.

Because we have so many good conversations, I thought I would just start off real low key. Well, we'll amp it up here a little bit.

All right. Why don't you talk, I know people are more familiar with you than they are with me, but why don't you, I would imagine there are people who follow my show who might not be familiar with what you do.

How's that possible? I don't, you know, I've actually spoken with some apologists and I've asked them, have you ever seen, have you ever visited karm .org? And they're like, what? I've never heard of that.

So not everyone knows about it. They're all heretics. Well, that's the topic for today. So much heresy, so little time. One heresy that I think we're gonna cover is the heresy of not visiting karm .org.

And it's definitely a here. That and Ayalaism. Ayalaism.

A lot of heresy. Very, very, very, very popular amongst Hispanic. Let me stop because these are sensitive times. So we'll leave that there. But why don't you tell folks a little bit about yourself if people haven't heard of what you're doing?

Sure. My name is Matt Slick.

S-L-I-C-K, my real last name. And sometimes people don't think it's my real name, but it is. Born with it. And I've been doing apologetics for 40 years. I'm 63. And roughly 40 years. We don't know a little bit more, a little bit after, but let's just say I started in 1980.

I have a Master's of Divinity. I'm a hardcore fundamental, I have a belief in Calvinists, or as I like to say, I'm a five-point Amillennial, pedobaptist, non-cessational, covenantal Calvinist. And I used to have a T-shirt that I'd wear.

It said all that. And people would just walk away from me when I would enter a room. It was great. So anyway, that's what I do. And I'm on like, I don't know, 15, 19 radio stations, daily show, which I'll be on in three hours.

My website, karm .org, has had over 100 million visitors. It's almost 25 years old. We've got 60 ,000 people on a newsletter. Just finished my seventh, eighth, or ninth book. So, you know, just basic stuff, through TV sometimes, and debates, and I do a lot of writing, and teaching,.

And things like that, impromptu debates and stuff. We have some really good conversations, you and I, about all kinds of topics. Yeah, yeah. Just some folks, some background. Matt and I are friends, mostly through our phone conversation.

We have a phone relationship. It was, I think we were both, I think the first time we met is when you were here on the East Coast in New Jersey. I think it was the Jersey Fire Conference. Andrew Rappaport, I think Justin Peters was there.

And I remember walking into the main area where the conference was being held, and I saw you from far away, and you were in the midst of a heated discussion on paedo-baptism. And you were talking. I was like, yep, I'm in the right one, probably.

That's right. You're in the right place. I'm a paedo-baptist. That's right. Not for salvation. I believe it's a covenantal sign. We can talk about that if people want to. Are you gonna give the thing out so people can call in, or get in, or ask questions, or anything like that?

Well, there is a live chat on the side, and I was going to let people know that Matt will be, you guys know my show. At the end, all of my interviewers, I just run them through the gauntlet. We go through almost all of the comments.

I've actually got some pretty top-notch scholars willing to actually stay that long. Usually they're kind of like, all right, we're done. I don't know who you are. I'm done. But usually they entertain a whole host of questions.

And so hopefully Matt does that for a living. So I'm sure he wouldn't have a problem with that. But yeah, if you have any questions about apologetics, theology, some view that you think it might be heretical, now's the time to ask it.

Well, rather type it. And then later on, towards the back end of this episode, I will read through them, and Matt and I can address them. So just keep that in mind as we are going through to type in your question, and hopefully I won't skip it.

Some people message me, hey, you've skipped my question. Listen, I'm not very tech savvy. The comments come in and the little scrolly area moves along. And so I don't always

Scrolly area? You see, that's how bad I am. That's something my wife would say,.

The scrolly thing. Listen, I like to give people a taste of reality. On the one hand, they hear me talking about transcendental necessities and whatnot. And then when I talk about technology, I say things like scrolly thing.

I'm gonna try my best to follow this scrolly thing and get questions in when that time comes. So, all right. Well, without further ado, let's begin with the first question. And again, I don't have a list of questions.

I think I've asked this off the top of my head, and I think folks would enjoy it. But by the way, Matt, I usually prepare my questions, but I figured, you know.

Not for me, where you don't have to. Because I always got stuff to say. That's right.

That's right. Listen, I would say that the conversations that we've had over the phone that have not been recorded are worth recording and selling them for a couple of bucks.

Money, for cash, to buy you a new shirt.

That's right. Maybe I can get a different color shirt. What do you think? Yes, instead of salmon, get trout. Rainbow trout, that'd be good for you. Oh, fuck. My wife dresses me. I'm like a Ken doll. She just goes shopping for me, and I just go.

Hey, but a Ken doll's a good looking. Hey, I think I'm pretty good looking. I mean, come on. I wouldn't know.

I'm a guy. So it's not in my avenue here.

I don't know. Well, before we start flirting with heresy there, let's begin here. So I wanted to go, just off the top of my head. You deal with cults. You deal with false doctrine. You deal with apologetics that are both external, against unbelievers, and internal.

That you're doing apologetics with believers. Why don't you explain why is that important to do apologetics both outside the church and inside the church?

Why don't you explain that for folks? Because judgment begins with the household of God. We've got to know what the truth of God's word is. In the Bible, it's a revelation of God. In every single word that's there and not there, in patterns, in phrases, and everything in the original, in Hebrew, Aramaic, and Greek, is there by the inspired word of God, the aspired intention of God.

And we're obligated as Christians to focus on what God says in his word and to learn it. God's created the universe by saying, let there be light. He spoke and it occurs. The word became flesh and dwelt among us.

We have the word in written form. And what we need to do is study that word. So the Christian church needs to believe the word of God. It needs to trust the word of God. And Satan was the first one in the garden.

In Genesis 3, 1, when he said, indeed, as God said, you shall not really eat from the tree. And the first thing he did was doubt God's word. The Christian church is doing the same thing in a lot of areas.

It's not believing the word of God. What it's doing is submitting it to the preferences, presuppositions, assumptions, political correctness, social justice, whatever's of the society, and then interpreting the word of God in light of that.

It should be reversed. So the Christian church is moving towards apostasy in a lot of areas. And the only way to stop it is by studying the word of God. And actually, a new concept, this is a new concept, a lot of people have not heard of, but the word of God, actually believing the word of God.

It's a new concept. And I think people should really do that. And that's what I think Christians should do. And if we were to do that, believe the word of God, then most everything will fall in place.

And because we're not believing the word of God, the church of God, the church of Christ, Christ's church as a whole, is not being effective in the world to nearly the level that it should be, can be, is promised to be, if they were to take God's word at face value and do what they're supposed to be doing.

Yeah, I had a couple of episodes. I think it was the last episode. I had Saiten Bruggenkain on, and I asked him a question about apologetics, and he gave his very simple answer. He says, the key to apologetics is reading your Bible and believing it.

And that's so simplistic, but I think a lot of heresy, a lot of false doctrine comes out of reading the Bible and just not submitting to what it says. I think that, I mean, there's obviously more in there.

Obviously we have to interpret and kind of understand concepts, but ultimately it gets down to that issue of just not believing what God says, and we try to mold scripture into something that it's not, and make it say what it's not actually saying.

So I think that's very important. Now, a lot of people who are familiar with you know that you are, you have a machine gun approach with regards to the ease with which you can quote scripture. And I think this is very important.

Before we get into some of the views that you think are heretical and things that we need to be careful of, why don't you explain to people the importance of memorizing scripture, number one, and number two, how has that served you in your own ministry?

And perhaps give an example as to how you've been able to do apologetics effectively while having scriptures there at your fingertips.

The reason we need to memorize scripture is because Isaiah 55, 11 says, the word of God will not come back empty without accomplishing what he desires. And Romans 1, 16 says, the gospel is the power of God is salvation for everyone who would believe for the Jew first and Gentile second.

And also in John 12, 32, Jesus says, if I lift it up from the earth, I'll draw all men to myself. We need the power of the word of God, the gospel focused on and focusing on Jesus Christ because he is that real gospel.

We need to be able to quote the word of God, to cite the word of God in order to use the power of that word of God. It's not like a word of faith thing where you say a certain sentence and it's sorcery, you know, and it has certain power attached to it.

No, it's the power of the word of God that by the decree that God has given through the use of his very word, his elect will hear, the unbelievers will hopefully be affected, be changed for the better.

So this is why we need to have that because God wants us to use the word. In fact, Jesus, God in flesh, John 1, 1, verse 14, Colossians 2, 9, Philippians 2, 5 through 8, what Jesus did was quote the Old Testament.

Numerous times, Paul did, Peter did, John did, they referred to the Old Testament. And that is the word of God. And 1 Corinthians 4, 6 says, you're not to exceed what is written. And we are to study the word of God.

2 Timothy 3, 16 says that the scriptures in 17, the scriptures are profitable. They're inspired, they have new stuff, inspired and worthy of our study. That's a short version of things. And we need to study that word of God.

And how has that helped in apologetics? Well, it helps a lot because when I'm inside the Christian church talking and someone says baptism is necessary for salvation and they quote Acts 2, 38, Acts 22, 16, might go to 1 Peter 3, 21, might go to John chapter three, verses three through eight.

They might go to these various verses and I encounter them by going to other verses and like Acts 10, 44 through 48, we can go to John three, excuse me, Romans 3, 28, Romans 4, 5, Romans 5, 1, Galatians 2, 16, 2, 21, and not use super to contradict scripture, but to teach people how to harmonize them.

Inside the Christian church, what happens is people too frequently are using the word of God to only do the work of supporting their preconceived agenda. And that needs to stop inside the Christian church.

And I have a habit and I have a way of demonstrating how a lot of people believe things in the Bible that are just not true. And I show this, I did this a couple of nights ago, I was on an interview Sunday night with a Muslim ministry and we got talking off topic about the issues of this kind of stuff and I showed them some things.

So that's necessary. And when you're talking to unbelievers, you need to be able to quote the word of God. And when somebody psychologically, when they recognize that you can quote scripture, you know where it is, you know what it says, you know its context, they're far less likely to challenge you about what the truth of something really is.

Plus it gives you a lot more credence and it's just the thing that you should be doing. And I can teach people how to memorize scripture if they want for 1995, you just email me.

Very good, very good. Now, I think it's very important what you said here. It's not an issue of just memorizing specific texts that back up specific views that we wanna promote. It's really this issue of understanding scripture as a system and how the scripture you're memorizing here is connected with the scripture over here and seeing the Bible not as this disjointed collection of 66 books, 39 in the Old Testament, 27 in the New Testament, how these all fit together.

And I think you've done that wonderfully, especially when addressing the topic of baptism. For those of you guys who are interested, Matt just recently did a debate on the view of, what was the title of the debate?

I know it was over baptism, but what was the, is it necessary for salvation?

Was that the topic? Yeah, is water baptism by immersion necessary for salvation? And he lost the debate by agreeing to that topic.

Well, I think besides that, he further lost the debate because you brought many scriptures to bear that he couldn't answer. And if you wanna know what it looks like to argue powerfully from scripture, if you know enough scripture and you know how to connect all these things, you will be able to have the miraculous ability to debate your opponent from the bathroom.

If anyone can walk in and see.

You gotta explain the context of that. Yeah, okay, okay.

Matt is debating this gentleman who believes that baptism by immersion is necessary for salvation. Of course, Matt is destroying him, using scripture, claiming and countering each point. But then he gave the guy some scriptures to meditate on, and then he had to use the bathroom.

And so Matt goes into the bathroom, his microphone is still on, and you see this poor gentleman grappling with the text that Matt had left him with. And so he's reading the text, and you can see kind of like he's reading it.

And then he says something, and then under his breath, I think Matt might've heard it, and then he responds. You can still hear him talking to the guy from the bathroom. And it just, apart from it being funny, it just added more to the, you know, if you know scripture, all joking aside, if you know scripture, it really isn't that difficult.

Granted, if someone else knows the scriptures, you're gonna have to go back and forth and go into some details. But for the most part, equipping yourself with the word of God is enough, and it's sufficient to refute the heretical position, which the idea that baptism is necessary for salvation is a heresy.

Perhaps we'll go into that in a little more detail. All right, well, again, I do encourage people to look at that debate. It was pretty good. All right, well, it's pretty bad, but it was good.

Yeah, he did not know what he was doing in a lot of areas.

He seemed like a very nice guy. What I appreciated, and I told you that afterwards, you didn't let up on him. As nice as he was, you pummeled the view even when the average person probably would have said, I probably should stop right now.

And that was my first inclination. I said, you know, I think that went a little hard on the guy. And then I was thinking about how confused and deceived this person was that I actually recanted my thought and said, you know what?

I'm glad that you publicly destroyed and exposed that view for what it is because it's destroying people. And so there is a place you crush a position into powder for the glory of God. Yet, as long as we're doing that with gentleness and respect as 1 Peter 3 verse 14.

I was gentle and I was respectful, but it were several times where I got very tough on the guy. The reason I'll do that is because he's violating one of the essentials of the Christian faith. If we're gonna debate pedo-baptism, like you don't believe in pedo-baptism, from what I remember.

If we're to argue, I'd go, okay, well, let's move on to something else that's not that big a deal. But this, the issue of salvation itself, I'm sorry. I'm gonna take the cue of Jesus Christ and Paul the apostle.

They just lambasted the false teachers who were teaching a false gospel. They did it respectfully, but they said it like it was. And so that's why I do that. You're teaching something that's false to the level of damnable heresy.

That's a whole nother genre of topics. And I'm gonna take it very seriously. In fact, I offered the guy, if you remember, I said to him, what I suggest you do is to say, I'm not sure what to do with these verses.

Let me get back to you later. I said that to the guy and he still wouldn't take the opportunity and he still wanted to argue. Okay, it's on buddy. And so it went down and I tried to show everybody, this guy's preaching a false gospel.

This is important stuff. And so I'm very passionate about that kind of a thing. But you and I have disagreements on things and I never get on you about you being wrong about something that you disagree with me on.

And it's all good. No, I really much appreciate that. You take my jokes pretty well too.

Yeah, yeah. So sometimes they go over my head. My favorite one is when you said that my name sounded like a Muslim war cry. That was Yalla, yalla, yalla. That's right. When you first said that, you had me, I bursted out.

You had me a couple of times burst out in laughter. But it's true.

You made me Like a Muslim, except for the pink thing. But you know.

You've made me laugh the hardest when it's not even through conversation. It's when I'm listening to you respond to someone else. Maybe I'm watching your show. And because I know the way you think sometimes it kind of makes me laugh.

The way you address certain issues. You know what I'm doing. I'm setting them up for something a lot of times. Right, right, right. Can you put your hand into this bear trap please? Yes, right here. Thank you.

That's right.

Okay. Now, why don't we differentiate between damnable heresy and just heresy? So remember I said that I had a special guest. Uppercase S and lowercase S. Why don't we differentiate between uppercase H heresy and lowercase H heresy?

What is the difference between a damnable heresy and a non damnable heresy?

Well, the difference between a damnable heresy to non damnable heresy is one damns you, one doesn't. Okay.

Now, that's a simple. I know you're joking and you're giving a quick answer but there's a profound truth to that. There's a simple way of seeing these but we need to dig into the weeds a little bit more because people might be asking, how does one differentiate between a damnable heresy and a non damnable heresy?

Not merely by appealing that one damns you, the other doesn't. How do we determine that from scripture? That a denial or affirmation of something is damnable or not damnable?

Well, I am so glad you asked that question, Eli. It's almost as though I gave you the question which I did not. But that's a good question. What I would suggest people do is go to my website, karm .org, C-A-R-M dot O-R-G and look up Doctrine Grid, Doctrine Grid, Doctrine hyphen Grid.

And you'll find this article that I've written and I have had a lot of comments over the years about this article. A lot of people have been very grateful about it. I wrote it in November of 2008. So it's been around for 12 years almost.

And what I did was through my thousands of hours of reading the scriptures, debating the scriptures, debating with cults, debating with just various people. Remember, I've been doing this a lot. I do this a lot, okay?

So I do full time for years. So I discovered through the scriptures, I would gradually list them out when I'd be reading. Go, wait a minute, that's an essential. For example, Jesus says in John 8, 24, unless you believe that I am, you will die in your sins.

So what he's doing is he's saying, you gotta believe that he is the I am. In John 8, 58, he says, before Abraham was, I am. They pick up stone to throw at him and he hit himself. And so we see that there's a statement with a warning or a consequence associated with denying it.

Unless you believe that I am, you'll die in your sins. So that obviously is an essential doctrine. You have to believe that he's the I am. Now, most Bibles will translate it, I am he. The he is not in the Greek.

It just says, ego me, I am. That's what it really says. And he's using that specifically for that reason, that he should be in italics if you're in a decent translation, which means it's not there in the Greek.

Now, that we have that one, we also have the idea that Jesus rose from the dead. You can go to 1 Corinthians 15, 14 and verse 17, and it says, if Christ be not raised, our faith is in vain. So let's talk about the physical resurrection.

I can relate that to John 2, 19 through 21 and 1 Corinthians 15, 35 through 45. We're talking about the necessity of the resurrection and the same body Jesus died in as the body he rose in. You can cross-reference that with also with John 20, 25 through 28, put your hand into my side, et cetera.

So when Paul said, if he's not raised, our faith is in vain, you could falsify Christianity by demonstrating that Jesus never rose from the dead. If you could prove it somehow, Christianity is false. That's how important this doctrine is.

And so there's a warning with that. There's another warning with the issue of salvation. And we know from various verses, I've already quoted some of them, but I didn't get into, or the addresses of some of them, didn't get into Galatians 5, 1 through 4.

And Galatians 5, 1 through 4 talks about, if you receive baptism, Christ will be of no benefit for you for you who are seeking to be justified by the law, you've been separated from Christ. And so the issue of circumcision, excuse me, is a ceremony doing one little thing, adding one little ceremony to the work of Christ.

And you're severed from Christ, circumcision severed, you get the pun and things like that. So I can go into that, but I won't go into too much more, but that's an essential doctrine because it's warning.

We also have the nature of the gospel in Galatians 1, 8, 9, if we are an angel from heaven should preach to a gospel, contrary to what he preached to you, let him be accursed. We also go to a monotheism and that's out of Exodus 20, 1 through 17, the 10 commandments on the Lord, your God brought you out of the land of Egypt.

You shall have no other gods before me. And it goes in and he says, there's visitations of punishments upon them if they were to deny that. Now, what I've done here, I know I'm going quickly because there's so much to cover.

That's okay. The thing is I'm doing is showing you that there are certain scriptures and certain statements in the Bible that declare their essential nature. And because of that, I call them primary essentials.

This is just me. This is my designation. I say primary essentials because they designate a warning. Unless you believe that I am, you'll die in your sin. That's primary. A secondary essential would be something like the Trinity.

Now the Trinity is an essential doctrine of the Christian faith that properly describes God, but there's no statement in the Bible that says, unless you believe that God is one, there's only one God and three distinct simultaneous co-distinct persons.

Then nothing like that, but we know that Trinity is true. So I call it a secondary essential. It's an essential of the faith, but there's no warning given to affirming or denying it. Not specifically.

Let me ask a question real quick then.

Let me ask a question. So someone, I know people have asked this question often is that if, and maybe they've read some of your articles, if the Trinity is a secondary essential, can someone be saved while denying the Trinity?

There's a, when people ask me these questions, I say technically, yes, but they have to understand what I mean by technically, because you could have someone technically who could be regenerate and has been taught some bad stuff and just doesn't understand the doctrine of the Trinity.

I've had this happen before, where I've actually talked to someone who says they've trusted in Christ, believe in salvation by grace alone, but they deny the Trinity. And I said, well, the Trinity is an essential doctrine.

He goes, no, it's not. And I said, well, yes, it is. I said, can I talk to you about what the Trinity is? They said, sure. And I said, well, you know, it's one God in three persons. And he went, really?

I thought it was three gods. He said, no, it's one God in three. Let me show you in the scriptures. We spent a half hour through the scriptures and the guy went, well, that makes sense. I believe it. So in the technical sense, he was denying it, but not really.

But the point here is that he, because he's regenerate, will end up believing the truth. So when I say technically, yes. You could have, you know, in that sense, yes. But then you could also have people who were saved who have no idea what the Trinity is.

They're not denying it. They just don't even know. A lot of people don't even know that Jesus is a man right now, which is an essential doctrine. So I gotta modify this and put it into a secondary essential.

There's a reason for it. A lot of pastors don't even know that. A lot of pastors don't even know it. And the reason, and I need to modify that, put it in number nine here, move all the numbers up. But he's a man right now.

And the reason that's important is because if he's not a man right now, he can't hold a priesthood. If he can't hold a priesthood, he can't be our intercessor. And that gets into Hebrews 5, 6, 7, and 8.

But at any rate. So, you know, I learn as I do this. So technically the answer is yes, they can be Christian and deny the Trinity, but not in a real sense of denial, not at a continued sense of denial.

They're gonna come, the true believers are gonna come to the faith. That's what I mean by that. And also another non, it's an essential doctrine, but it's not a primary, it's a secondary, the virgin birth.

You can't defend the deity of Christ, a hypostatic union, communicatio idiomatum. You can't defend this without the virgin birth being real, but no statement says, thou shalt believe in the virgin birth or your anathema.

And Jesus is the only way to the father, John 14, 6. No man goes to the father, but by him. Things like that. There's no warning on that, but it's an essential doctrine. So when we have these kinds of things as essentials, we understand what it is, then everything else is what we call adiaphora.

Adiaphora are non-essentials. Like I'm a pedo-Baptist, not for salvation, but as a covenantal perspective. Now you don't agree with that. Okay, maybe you're right, maybe you're not right. Maybe I'm right, maybe I'm not right.

I don't think there's any way to really know until we get to heaven. And that's okay. I'll tease you about it and mock you about it and things like that, but you always laugh back at me and stuff like that.

And so, I'm all millennial. I believe that the wicked will be taken before, the good will be taken when Christ returns. I believe in the new heavens and the new earth and things like that. And if you don't agree with those things, okay.

So this is how we know what the faith really is by looking at the scriptures. And there's more information on other primary and secondary essentials and moral issues, because that's another area we gotta look into.

But for now, that's what we have. So if we know these things, then we're able to have a scalpel of truth that we can divide truth from error. And that's what we need to be able to do. So, but you'll find that even though a lot of times here, I'm very to the point.

A lot of people don't know I have Asperger's. I have this autism spectrum thing. And so I'm very focused, but in real time talking to people who I'm not in a debate with or preaching heresy, I'm very congealed, very, very nice, very patient with them, very caring with them and working with them through things.

When I'm in a teaching mode, it's a different thing. I go direct and to the point, stuff like that, so. Yeah, I love your short answer. I remember once someone asked you,.

I think it was an atheist years ago. They were like, so God can do anything, right? You're like, no. It's just the one, no. He's like, oh, well, you believe God can do it? He's like, no, I don't. It's a good thing.

You just, you have these snippy, but then when you meet, when I meet you in person, you're very, you're much different than you are, you know, when you're doing the show and stuff like that.

You know, I'll do that for fun sometimes. No, because it's fun. And another thing is I want them to ask another question. Sure. And that's, I got a reason for it, you know? So it's like, no, I don't wait.