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

Revealed Apologetics

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All right, welcome back to another episode of Revealed Apologetics. I'm your host Elias Ayala, or Eli.

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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.

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There is the uppercase special, the capital S P Eshel, and then there's the lowercase special.

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Lowercase special is kind of, you know, it's special, you know. But someone who's special special, that can mean all sorts of things.

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And so if you guys know who my guest is, Matt Slick, he's very, very special.

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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,

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I just want to just make a couple of announcements real quick. This Saturday, I will be having

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Chris Bolt back on. Chris Bolt, if you're not familiar with him, he was formerly from the website

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Choosing Hats, which was a website committed to promoting and popularizing the presuppositional apologetic method.

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And so I had him on a couple of months back in the episode that we had.

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We talked about transcendental arguments and it was one of, one of, not the, I'm sorry, Chris, was one of my favorite episodes.

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We got into some really deep issues with regards to transcendental argumentation. So he's going to be coming back on, on Saturday.

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I also have a debate with an atheist on Marlon Wilson's show, The Gospel Truth.

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The debate topic is going to be, is there evidence for the God of the Bible? And so you might want to check out

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The Gospel Truth on Saturday, I believe that's at 7 p .m. I better check that out before I mix that up.

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So with that said, without further ado, let me introduce and welcome Matthew, is it

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Jay? Jay Slick. Look at that. I know you really well. Matthew J. Slick from Karm .org.

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Why don't you say hello to everyone? Hi, everyone. That's it.

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I'm giving you a hard time already, aren't I? Because we have so many good conversations,

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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,

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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.

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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

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Karm .org? And they're like, what? I've never heard of that. So not everyone knows about it. I don't know.

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They're all heretics. Well, that's the topic for today. So, so much heresy, so little time.

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One heresy that I think we're going to cover is the heresy of not visiting Karm .org. That is definitely a heresy.

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That and Ayalaism, a lot of heresy. Very, very, very, very popular amongst

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Hispanic. Let me stop because these are sensitive times.

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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?

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Sure. My name is Matt Slick, S -L -I -C -K, my real last name. Sometimes people don't think it's my real name, but it is, born with it.

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And I've been doing apologetics for 40 years. I'm 63 and roughly 40 years, a little bit more, a little bit after.

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But let's just say I started in 1980. I have a Master's of Divinity. I'm a hardcore, fundamental,

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I have a belief in Calvinist. Or as I like to say, I'm a five -point, amillennial, pedobaptist, noncessational, covenantal

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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

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I entered 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

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I'll be on in three hours. My website, karm .org, has had over 100 million visitors.

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It's almost 25 years old. We've got 60 ,000 people on a newsletter. Just finished my seventh, eighth or ninth book.

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You know, just basic stuff, you know, through TV sometimes. And debates and I do a lot of writing and teaching and things like that.

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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.

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Matt and I are friends, mostly through our phone conversation.

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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

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East Coast in New Jersey. I think it was the Jersey Fire Conference. Andrew Rappaport, I think

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Justin Peters was there. And I remember walking into the main area where the conference was being held.

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And I saw you from far away and you were in the midst of a heated discussion on paedo -baptism.

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I was like, yep, I'm in the right one. That's right. You're in the right place. I'm a paedo -baptist, not for salvation.

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I believe it's a covenantal sign. We can talk about that if people want to. Are you going to get the thing out so people can call in or get in or ask questions or anything like that?

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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,

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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.

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Usually they're kind of like, we're done. I don't know who you are. I'm done. But usually they entertain a whole host of questions.

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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.

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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.

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So just keep that in mind as we are going through to type in your question. And hopefully I won't skip it.

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Some people message me, hey, you skipped my question. Listen, I'm not very tech savvy.

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The comments come in and the little scrolly area goes, moves along. And so I don't always...

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

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Listen, I like to give people a taste of reality. On the one hand, they hear me talking about transcendental necessities and whatnot.

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And then when I talk about technology, I say things like scrolly thing. I'm going to try my best to follow the scrolly thing.

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And get questions in when that time comes. So, all right. Well, without further ado, let's begin with the first question.

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And again, I don't have a list of questions, I think I've asked myself off the top of my head. And I think folks would enjoy it.

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But by the way, Matt, I usually prepare my questions. But I figured, you know... Not for me, where you don't have to.

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Because I've 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.

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That have not been recorded are worth recording and selling them for a couple of bucks.

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Money, for cash. To buy you a new shirt. That's right. Maybe I can get a different color shirt.

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What do you think? Yes, instead of salmon, get trout. Rainbow trout, that'd be good for you. Oh, fuck.

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My wife dresses me. I'm like a Ken doll. She just goes shopping for me. But a

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Ken doll is good -looking. Hey, I think I'm pretty good -looking.

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I wouldn't know, I'm a guy. So it's not in my avenue here,

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I don't know. Before we start flirting with heresy there, let's begin here. So I wanted to go just off the top of my head.

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You deal with cults. You deal with false doctrine. You deal with apologetics that are both external against unbelievers and internal.

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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?

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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.

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In the Bible, it's a revelation of God. And every single word that's there and not there, in patterns, in phrases, and everything in the original, in Hebrew, Aramaic, and Greek, is thereby the inspired word of God, the inspired intention of God.

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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.

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He spoke and it occurs. The word became flesh and dwelt among us. We have the word in written form.

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And what we need to do is study that word. So the Christian church needs to believe the word of God.

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It needs to trust the word of God. And Satan was the first one in the garden. In Genesis 3, when he said, indeed, as God said, you shall not really eat from the tree.

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And the first thing he did was doubt God's word. The Christian church is doing the same thing in a lot of areas.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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It's a new concept. And, you know, I think people should really do that. And that's what

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I think Christians should do. And if we were to do that, believe the word of God, then most everything will fall in place.

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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

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God's word at face value and do what they're supposed to be doing. Yeah, I had a couple episodes.

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I think it was the last episode. I had a Satan Bruggenkadon, and I asked him a question about apologetics, and he gave his very simple answer.

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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

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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.

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But ultimately, it gets down to that issue of just not believing what God says.

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And we try to mold scripture into something that it's not. I make it say what it's not actually saying. So I think that's very important.

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Now, a lot of people who are familiar with you know that you have a machine gun approach with regards to the ease with which you can quote scripture.

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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?

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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.

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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.

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And Romans 1, 1, 16 says the gospel is the power of God to salvation for everyone who would believe, the Jew first, the

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Gentile second. And also in John 12, 32, Jesus says, if I lift it up from the earth,

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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 to use the word.

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In fact, Jesus, God in flesh, John 1, 1, verse 14, Colossians 2, 9, Philippians 2, 5 through 8, what

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Jesus did was quote the Old Testament. Numerous times Paul did, Peter did,

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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.

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And we are to study the word of God. 2 Timothy 3, 16 says that the scriptures in 17, the scriptures are profitable.

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They're inspired, theopneustos, inspired and worthy of our study. That's a short version of things and we need to study that word of God.

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And how does it help 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

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Acts 2, 38, Acts 22, 16, might go to 1 Peter 3, 21, might go to John chapter 3, verses 3 through 8, they might go to these various verses and I can counter them by going to other verses and you know, like Acts 10, 44 through 48 and go to John 3, excuse me,

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Romans 3, 28, Romans 4, 5, Romans 5, 1, Galatians 2, 16, 2, 21 and not just super to contradict scripture, but to teach people how to harmonize them.

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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

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Christian church and I have a habit and I have a way of demonstrating how a lot of people believe things in the

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Bible that are just not true. And I show this, I did this a couple nights ago. I was on an interview Sunday night with a

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Muslim ministry and we got talking off topic about the issues of this kind of stuff and I showed them some things.

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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.

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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.

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Very good. Now, I think it's very important what you said here.

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It's not an issue of just memorizing specific texts that back up specific views that we want to promote.

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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

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Bible not as this disjointed collection of 66 books, 39 in the Old Testament, 27 in the

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New Testament. It's how these all fit together and I think you've done that wonderfully, especially when addressing the topic of baptism.

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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?

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I know it was over baptism, but what would be, is it necessary for salvation? Was that the topic? Yeah, is water baptism by immersion necessary for salvation?

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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 want to 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.

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If anyone can walk in and see. You gotta explain the context of that.

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Okay, okay. Matt is debating this gentleman who believes that baptism by immersion is necessary for salvation.

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Of course, Matt is destroying him, using scripture, explaining and countering, you know, each point. But then he gave the guy some scriptures to meditate on and then he had to use the bathroom.

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And so Matt, 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.

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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,

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I think Matt might have heard it and then he responds, you can still hear him talking to the guy from the bathroom.

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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.

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Granted, if someone else knows the scripture, you're going to 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.

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Perhaps we'll go into that in, you know, a little more detail. All right. Well, again,

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I do encourage people to look at that debate. It was pretty good. All right. Well, it's pretty bad, but it was good.

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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, you didn't let up on him.

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As nice as he was, you pummeled the view even when the average person probably would have said,

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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.

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And then I was thinking about how confused and deceived this person was that I actually recanted my thought and said, you know what?

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I'm glad that you publicly destroyed and exposed that view for what it is, because it's destroying people.

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And so there is a place who crushed a position into powder for the glory of God. Yet, as long as we're doing that with gentleness and respect, as 1

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Peter 3 verse 15. I was gentle, I was respectful, but it would have, it were several times where I got very tough on the guy.

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The reason I'll do that is because he's violating one of the essentials of the Christian faith. If we're going to debate pedo -baptism, like you don't believe in pedo -baptism, from what

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I remember, if we're to argue, I'd go, okay, well, let's move on to something else. It's not that big a deal.

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But this, the issue of salvation itself, I'm sorry, I'm going to take the cue of Jesus Christ and Paul the apostle.

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They just lambasted the false teachers who were teaching a false gospel. They did it respectfully, but they said it like it was.

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And so that's why I do that. You're teaching something that's false to the people, to the level of damnable heresy.

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That's a whole nother genre of topics, and I'm going to take it very seriously.

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In fact, I offered the guy, if you remember, I said to him, what I suggest you do is to say,

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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.

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Okay, it's on, buddy. And so I went down and I tried to show everybody, this guy's preaching a false gospel.

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This is important stuff. And so I'm very passionate about that kind of a thing. But, you know, 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.

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It's all good. No, I really much appreciate that. You take my jokes pretty well, too. Yeah, yeah.

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Sometimes they go over my head. My favorite one is when you said that my name sounded like a Muslim war cry. That was

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Yalla, yalla, yalla. You never said that. You had me, I bursted out. You had me a couple of times burst out in laughter.

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But it's true. You're going to look like a Muslim. Except for the pink thing, but you know.

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You've made me laugh the hardest when it's not even through a conversation. It's when I'm listening to you respond to someone else.

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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.

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You know what I'm doing. I'm setting them up for something a lot of times. You're right. You're right. Can you put your hand into this bear trap, please?

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Yes, right here. Thank you. That's right. Okay. Now, why don't we differentiate between damnable heresy and just heresy?

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So remember I said that I had a special guest, uppercase S and lowercase s. Why don't we differentiate between uppercase

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H heresy and lowercase H heresy? What is the difference between a damnable heresy and a non -damnable heresy?

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Well, the difference between a damnable heresy and a non -damnable heresy is one damns you, one doesn't. Okay. Now, that's a simple...

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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?

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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?

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Boy, I'm 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.

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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

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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.

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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.

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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,

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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,

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I would gradually list them out when I'd be reading. 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.

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So what he's doing is he's saying you got to believe that he is the I am. In John 8 58, he says, before Abraham was,

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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.

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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

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I am. Now, most Bibles will translate it, I am he. The he is not in the Greek.

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It just says, egoimi, I am. That's what it really says. And he's using that specifically for that reason.

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The he should be in italics if you're in a decent translation, which means it's not there in the Greek. Now, then we have that one.

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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.

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So let's talk about the physical resurrection. I can relate that to John 2 19 through 21 and 1

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Corinthians 15 35 through 45. We're talking about the necessity of the resurrection and the same body

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Jesus died in as the body he rose in. You can cross -reference that with also with John 20 25 through 28, you know, put your hand into my side, etc.

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So when Paul said, if he's not raised, our faith is in vain. You could falsify

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Christianity by demonstrating that Jesus never rose from the dead. If you could prove it somehow,

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Christianity is false. That's how important this doctrine is. And so there's a warning with that.

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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.

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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.

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And so the issue of circumcision, excuse me, is just a ceremony of doing one little thing, adding one little ceremony to the work of Christ.

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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.

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But that's an essential doctrine because it's a warning. We also have the nature of the gospel in Galatians 1 8 and 9.

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If we are an angel from heaven, should preach to a gospel contrary to what you preach to, let him be accursed. We also go to monotheism and that's out of Exodus 20 1 through 17.

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The 10 commandments, I'm the Lord your God who brought you out of the land of Egypt. You shall have no other gods before me.

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And it goes in and he says there's visitations of punishments upon them if they were to deny that.

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Now what I've done here, I know I'm going quickly because there's so much to cover. The thing is

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I'm doing is showing you that there are certain scriptures and certain statements in the Bible that declare their essential nature.

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And because of that, I call them primary essentials. This is just me. This is my designation.

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I say primary essentials because they designate a warning. Unless you believe that I am, you'll die in your sin.

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That's primary. A secondary essential would be something like the trinity. Now the trinity is an essential doctrine of the

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Christian faith. It properly describes God, but there's no statement in the Bible that says unless you believe that God is one, there's only one

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God and three distinct simultaneous co -distinct persons. Then, you know, nothing like that.

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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.

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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?

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There's a, when people ask me these questions, I say technically, yes, but they have to understand what I mean by technically.

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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.

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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.

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And I said, well, the trinity is an essential doctrine. They go, no, it's not. And I said, well, yes, it is. I said, can

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I talk to you about what the trinity is? They said, sure. And I said, well, you know, it's, it's one God in three persons.

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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.

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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.

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But the point here is that, uh, what do you, he, because he's regenerate will end up believing the truth.

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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 to have no idea what the trinity is.

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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 doctor, which

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I got to modify this and put it into a secondary essential. There's a reason for it. A lot of pastors don't even know it.

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And the reason I need to modify that, uh, put it in number nine here, uh, moved all the numbers up, but he's, he's, um, a man right now.

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And the reason that's important is because if he's not a man right now, he can't pull the priesthood. If he can't hold a priesthood, he can't be our intercessor.

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And, uh, that gets into Hebrews five, six, seven, and eight, but at any rate, so, uh, you know,

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I learned as I, as I, as I do this. So, uh, so technically the answer is yes, they can be

27:16

Christian and not, and deny the Trinity, but not in a real sense of denial, not at a continued sense of denial.

27:24

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

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You can't defend the deity of Christ, the 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.

27:47

Um, and Jesus is the only way to the father, John 14, six, no man goes to the father, but by him, things like that.

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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.

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Then everything else is what we call audiophora. Audiophora are non -essentials.

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Like I'm a pedo Baptist, not for salvation, but for as a covenantal perspective. Now you don't agree with that.

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Okay. All right. You know, 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, get to heaven.

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And, uh, and that's okay. You know, I'll tease you about it and mock you about it and things like that. But you always, you know, laugh back at me and stuff like that.

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And so, you know, it would, I'm all millennial. I believe that the wicked will be taken before, uh, the good will be taken when

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Christ returns. I believe in the new heavens and the new earth and, um, and things like that.

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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.

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And there's more information on other primary and secondary essentials and moral issues, because that's another area we've got to look into.

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But, 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.

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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

29:17

I have Asperger's, you know, I have autism, autism spectrum thing. And so I'm very focused, but in real time talking to people, you know, who aren't,

29:28

I'm not in a debate with or preaching heresy. I'm very congealed, uh, very, very nice, very patient with them, very caring with them and working with them through things.

29:38

When I'm in a teaching mode, it's a different thing. I, I go directly to the point, stuff like that. So, yeah, I love your short answer.

29:43

I remember once someone asked you, uh, I think it was an atheist years ago. They were like, so, so God can do anything, right?

29:49

You're like, no, no, he's like, well, you believe

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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

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I meet you in person, you're very, you're much different than you are, um, you know, when you're doing the show and stuff like that.

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So, you know, I'll do that for fun sometimes. No, because it's fun.

30:12

And another thing is I want them to ask another question and that's,

30:18

I got a reason for it, you know? So it's like, no, wait. Okay.

30:24

And I'll say, sometimes I'll say, you need to ask me another question about this to help them out.

30:30

I get a list of questions. You can ask me if you want, it'll help you out. I like what you say. I'm going to ask you a question.

30:36

You have your like, I'm going to ask you a question. I'm trying to trap you, but I'm just trying to make a point.

30:48

Yes. I do that too. I'm going to set you up. Are you ready? Yes. Yes. I'm ready to set me up.

30:53

Okay. Here it goes. I do that with Christians a lot because I want them to know I'm not out to hurt them, you know,

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I'm there to help. And I'm not saying I certainly don't, but when you do it so much, you know, you learn stuff and that's why, because you brought it up, memorizing scripture and quoting scripture.

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That's why I did that for a little bit here, just not to show off, but to show, yeah, you know, it does help when you know these verses and we can talk about how to do that if you want and some tricks and some stuff like that, but.

31:24

Well, I definitely will get into that at some point, maybe towards the end, before we get into the questions.

31:31

Okay. The audience, I might ask, you know, just kind of, let's touch that towards the end. How can someone do, you know, be better at memorizing scripture?

31:38

I think people would find that very useful. All right. So when we're talking about within the church, what are some of the most prevalent heresies that you've come into contact with within the church?

31:51

Within the church? Yeah. Jesus is not a man right now. You had to be good to keep your salvation.

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That's a big one. That it's up to your free will in a sinful state to choose

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God. Those are the three biggest ones that I know of. And then the fourth one

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I would say is not really believe in the word of God and having a high view of it, of what it really is.

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Right. Okay. I'm surprised you didn't mention women pastors and elders. That's a good of five, you know, women pastors.

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But the reason women pastors is such a bad thing is because of the failure of men. And the reason that's the case, because they're not believing the word of God.

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And so I lump that kind of stuff underneath. Believing the word of God is a very serious thing. You know, when

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I go to the scriptures, like you brought up women pastors. First Timothy 2, 12 and 13,

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Paul says, I do not allow a woman to teach or exercise authority over men, but to remain silent for Adam was first created.

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The word silent in Greek is hesokia. And hesokia means to keep it down.

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It means you're still talking, just keep it down. Not sagao, which means absolute silence.

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And so Paul is saying that this is the state that women are to be in the context of the authority issue because Adam was first created.

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So it's not a thing. And then I can go to first Timothy 5, 17, which talks about the pastor by definition is an elder.

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We go to Titus 1, 5 -7 and first Timothy 3, roughly 1 -6. And you can go into those areas.

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We can discover that the pastor, the elder, the elder, excuse me, because the pastor is an elder.

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The elder is to be a man of one woman. And women can't do this.

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Now let me teach a little bit of something to show people something. When Adam and Eve were in the garden, they both sinned. Now she sinned first, but she gave the fruit to Adam and then

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Adam sinned, but sin entered the world through Adam, not through Eve. Romans 5, 12 says that when they hid themselves, the pre -incarnate

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Jesus was walking in the garden and said to the man, where are you? Not to the woman, to the man.

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Why do you address only the man and not the woman? Because he was in the place of federal headship.

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Federal headship is the teaching that the male represents the descendants. We take this doctrine of federal headship.

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We can go to Romans 5, 18, 1 Corinthians 15, 22. We can go to various doctrines of places of scripture and unpack it.

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But the thing is this relates to the issue of women pastors and elders. The reason women are not to be pastors and elders is because they're women.

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That's it. Men are the ones who are ordained by God with that authority position and federal headship to be the ones who represent

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God in that authority structure within the church. That's how it's supposed to be. So when men don't accept this, they are abdicating their responsibility to the female, which is not her position and not her job.

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And in my research, 80 % of the denominations, 80 % of denominations that adopt women pastors and elders, within two generations start adopting pro -homosexual stances.

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80%. Why is that? Because they're not believing the word of God. Instead of what they do, lift their finger, put it up in the air and say, which way is the social doctrinal wind blowing?

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How can I make the scriptures fit what needs to be done? And I'll tell you something, the church is not for babysitting believers or unbelievers.

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It's not designed. A church meeting is not supposed to be to get unbelievers in the church. That's not what it's for.

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If you go to Ephesians chapter four, verses eight through 12, and you can read that the pastors and the five, it's not a five fold, it's actually four.

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At any rate, for the equipping of the body for the work of ministry, that's what we're supposed to be doing in the Christian church on Sundays and during the week as well, equipping the

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Christians for the work of ministry. This is another issue. And the way to do this is to get men off their lazy rears and start believing and teaching the word of God and getting out there and start being men of God and saying to their wives, love you, dear, but that's not your place.

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And then they move on and do what's right. And the fact that women pastors are there is because men aren't doing their job.

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That's what the reason is. That's a fundamental thing. I think a lot of people also who have a very passing knowledge of this debate, but usually pull their hat into the discussion, they'll say something to the effect, well, that was for the biblical times.

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Back in the day, women weren't very educated as men were. And so it made sense for men to take that position because women in that culture weren't in a place to do that adequately.

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How would you respond to something like that? Because I know that's, if we're talking about, by the way, this would be under the category of non -damnable heresy, but all heresy is important and all heresy.

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But be that as it may, how would you respond to someone who uses the education argument that men were more educated than women were?

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And so that's why Paul was addressing, that wasn't a place for women to be in that time.

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Well, how do you know that men were more educated than women? And in what sense were they educated more?

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In a formal sense, just because a man is more educated than a woman doesn't mean she doesn't know more than him in various areas of necessity.

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That's not an issue. It's a bad argument. And besides, 1 Timothy 2, 12 and 13 lays us at the feet of the created order for Adam was first created.

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It is not cultural. It is biblical. And I tell people this, if you don't like it,

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I can help you with that because I can, we can get on Amazon and we can work together.

37:33

I'll help you find the black marker and we can order that. So you can, when it gets to your house, we can go to the scriptures that you don't like, and we can mark them out, scratch them out of scripture so that they don't bother you anymore if you want.

37:46

And along with that, we can send you some pampers, some diapers. We can help you with those too, because if you don't like what it is, and then you go diaperinian on us.

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So I say, man up, believe the word of God and stand on the word of God.

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You will screw up in the process. Trust me, I know. You did good with keeping the serious face.

38:08

Cause for a moment I was following you and then the pampers came out. I was like, that was good. That was good. You kept the serious tone.

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I'll help you. I'll help you. And we'll get your very good. Well, again, this, this does address the issue that we said at the beginning is read your

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Bible and believe it. I mean, you're going to read things in the Bible that you're not going to like. If you're committed to Christ, you're committed to the authority of scripture, you know, tough cookies where we understand and submit that God is good.

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God is perfect. God knows better than we do. And if the Bible speaks clearly on a specific topic, we need to humble ourselves before the majesty of his word.

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And so I think that's something that a lot of people struggle with because we are approaching these things from a democratic perspective.

38:52

We live in a democracy, but the kingdom of God is not a democracy, right? We serve a king. Can I interject something?

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Sure. Because you said democratic and I know what you mean. And you said, you know, with the old mocking tone, if you were to go to Genesis chapter three, this is the heart of the problem.

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Genesis three, one through seven, but verse six, this is where Satan said to Eve, did he really say then

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Eve modified God's word, then Satan contradicts God's word. And then verse six, this is humanism.

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Humanism is the teaching or the position of, of judging truth by your feelings, your knowledge, your ability, or the societies of humanistic ability collection.

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What it is, it's a submission of truth to your feelings and what you want. Now, listen to what it says here.

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When the woman saw that the tree was good for food, when she saw this, that it was a delight to the eyes, that the tree was desirable to make one wise, she took from its fruit and ate and gave it to her husband also.

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So not only did her humanistic ideology move right there, but she wanted her husband to be involved with it as well.

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Now, I'm not saying women are worse than men and men are better than, that's not it. This is the issue. And why did

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Satan go to Eve and not Adam? Because of federal headship. I can go into that tangent back, but I won't. This is the entrance of humanism, man -centered thought, human -centered thought as the measure of truth.

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This occurs in the Christian church a great deal, particularly in an instance like this, when someone says, how did you get saved?

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And you get a, you know, an explanation. Oh, I heard the gospel. I decided to walk up forward and I decided to believe in the trust in Christ.

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And the reason I did that, if you ask them more, is because, now they won't say it this way, but they'll say, because in the wisdom of my own heart,

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I saw what was needed. Now that's really what's going on in this kind of a thing, but we have to understand that the

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Bible says you're born again, not of your own will, John 1 .13. That you're caused to be born again, 1

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Peter 1 .3. And that we are granted the act of believing, Philippians 1 .29.

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Our believing is the work of God, John 6 .28 .29. We're granted repentance, 2 Timothy 2 .25,

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because we've been ordained to eternal life, which is why we believe, Acts 13 .48. And we're chosen in Christ for the foundation of the world and Christ to be for salvation.

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And that's, you can go to Ephesians 1 .4 and 5, 2 Thessalonians 2 .13. This is what the scriptures are teaching.

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In other words, what I'm trying to show people is the reason you're born again is because God did something in you. It wasn't your own wisdom and it wasn't your own ability.

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Now, having laid that groundwork here, what we're talking about is biblical theology versus humanistic theology.

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Humanism says, I will judge truth by my experience. I decided, I walked up,

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I, me, me. This is how I'm going to approach the word of God. It's the same thing.

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And so, as you know, I'm a Calvinist and I'm reformed in my theology and I can defend it very, very well.

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And when I show people things in the scriptures, they'll say, oh, you're a Calvinist. I just read the scripture to you.

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And they're rebelling against the sovereignty of God and replacing it with their own.

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This is the issue out of Genesis 3, 1 through 7, that Christians need to study and see how are they guilty of it?

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Me too. But this is where humanism entered into the church and it's alive and well. And the cure is read the word of God and believe the word of God.

42:27

That's right. That's right. Very good. Now, what about outside the church? What are some heresies that you come across that are damnable, but are popular and are being promoted and are finding a very influential foothold in the church and in society today?

42:43

Relativism, for one thing. And truth is a commodity to be bought and sold, traded, twisted.

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This is basically the number one issue is that, and if you think about it, has indeed has

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God said it's an attack on the very nature of God's truth. That truth is whatever conforms to the mind of God.

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And so what humanistic philosophy does and humanistic practices does is join

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Satan in doubting the very nature and the word of God. Even those who deny that God exists are doing the same thing in effect and totality.

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And so the very thing of the nature of truth, and the reason this is important is we need to have truth because with truth, we can then build a foundation, a foundation of action and presuppositions.

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And on top of that, we can work on particulars of how we're to implement the issues of truth.

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And the thing is that we have to have transcendentals. We have to have universals because these things are truths that are beyond us.

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And so in the secular world, the issue of universals, of truths that are always applicable to everybody, which necessitates that there's something beyond us and greater than us, which refutes and works against the humanistic self -centered philosophy.

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And so because of this, then what happens is relativism comes in and then we have the fragmentation, like a tree limb upside down, you know, dendrite, how it all comes out.

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And you have the fragmentation, the trickle -down heresies and false doctrines that work into all kinds of areas in our social structure, in schools, in politics, in business practices.

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And so what'll happen then is that the more relativism comes in, the more fragmented the idea of truth becomes.

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And then pretty soon we have contradictory ideas of truth. We have oppositions of ideology, oppositions of philosophical thought and approaches.

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And when that takes root, it leads to ultimately war. And we're seeing the manifestation of this kind of a thing in the riots that are happening with the morons in America right now, who are using an excuse to pillage and to steal and to imitate the enemy,

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I mean, enemy of Satan. As Jesus clearly pointed out in John 10 .10,

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the enemy comes to destroy, kill, etc., etc. That's what's happening. Sorry, I did a little modification there.

45:08

So relativism, the denial of objective truth, that's an issue with outside the church and inside the church.

45:16

Yeah, it is, more so outside. That's right, more so outside. But then you also get it inside where you have the flip -flopping of doctrines and the picking and choosing because there's no objective truth, no objective feature of reality that can be known.

45:30

Again, it's overdone in a lot of presuppositional discussions, but I think it's very good to point out that relativism is self -refuting, right?

45:40

When you deny the reality of objective truth is, you know, people make objective truth claims even when denying objective truth.

45:46

And so I think it's important to point that out. People hear me often talk about the importance of engaging in worldview critique.

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And so when we do internal worldview critique, we hypothetically grant the truth of the other person's perspective and show the absurdity that it leads to if granted truth.

46:03

So if someone says there is no objective truth, you simply ask, is that objectively true? They either say yes, which refutes their position, or they say no, and then they're in an infinite regress.

46:12

Well, is that objectively true? So to deny objective truth is self -refuting and apologetically useful for us to point those things out to show the absurdity of a position that does that.

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So I think it's a very important tool when we're doing apologetics and just rational thinking altogether. Relativism.

46:29

What are the other heresies that are popular, even religious? It doesn't even have to be atheistic views or humanistic views.

46:38

What about some religious perspectives that seem to be affecting the church or maybe Christians are having a difficult time responding to?

46:44

Cults, maybe? Distortions in doctrine outside the walls of what we call Orthodox Christianity?

46:51

Well, we have, you know, heresies such as Mormonism, which teaches that God used to be a man on another planet.

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He became a God of this world by following the laws and the ordinances of that God on that planet.

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And he brought one of his wives with him to this world. He has a body of flesh and bones. She has a body of flesh and bones.

47:08

They have sexual intercourse in heaven to make spirit babies and inhabit human bodies. And if you're a good Mormon and you go to the

47:14

Mormon temple, after you get a 10 % tithe recommendation, temple recommend, you paid up your money, you can go to the temple and learn secret handshakes and secret hugs, get some underwear, and hopefully learn how to become a

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God of your own planet. And I've been studying Mormonism for 40 years, folks. That's what it teaches, and a lot more.

47:32

Jehovah's Witnesses, which denies the doctrine of the Trinity and divides people into classes, heavenly class, earthly class, and denies the

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Trinity, denies the deity of Christ, denies the physical resurrection, denies justification by faith alone to Christ alone, has works.

47:48

We have these various heresies. And we also have another something that's going on is the positive confession movement, the new apostolic reformation movement, which are kind of the blend of the same thing.

47:57

And what they're doing is within the Christian church, I know we could regress a little bit here and back into that topic, but what they're doing is implementing a kind of a sorcery.

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And this is a hard thing to see unless you're familiar with the occult. Now, I used to be involved in the occult before I became a

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Christian. And sorcery is basically, there's various forms of it. And one of the things you do is incantations, you say certain things in certain ways, you want certain spiritual results.

48:23

Well, in the secular world, there are plenty of people in the non -Christian world, plenty of people who are involved in various forms of sorcery.

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And now there's the pure atheists, not so much, but that's another something with the irrationality that they think and their arrogance.

48:41

But so we see it in such things as the new age movement. We see it in such things as Wicca.

48:49

We see it in varying forms where certain formulas will give you certain results. And this is sorcery.

48:56

You say this, you get that. It's in the Christian church as well, where God has promised you health and wealth.

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All you gotta do is say the sentence and claim it and a spiritual result will happen. And so people who are not trained, who don't understand the word of God, don't recognize that there's a blending of the secular and the sacred within Christianity.

49:15

Well, and I'm not I mean Christianity generically, not the true Christians. And so this is a problem that's occurring.

49:23

So the reason is because we live in a world that's a pressure cooker. We are inside the pressure cooker and the pressure of the outside world is coming upon us.

49:32

And it's difficult to live that way. But I want to just preach for a second.

49:39

I'll slow down. I want to tell you something. Let me get my back so I can collect offering as well. Okay. Yeah, do that.

49:47

Is that believing the gospel is costly. And Jesus says, pick up your cross daily, follow after me.

49:54

Who does not pick up his cross is not worthy of me. You know, you go to Luke 14, 28 there and I can tell you without getting into it.

50:02

I can tell you details. I'm not ashamed of it or didn't do anything wrong. I can tell you all kinds of stuff, but there's no,

50:07

I mean, unless you want me to, but I won't. The thing is I have actually done this where I have stood on the principles of scripture and it has cost me greatly.

50:17

And I mean, greatly, great problems, distress, emotional, severe stress and strain, but for staying true to the word of God.

50:32

And I'll tell you this, my wife joined with me in that without hesitation.

50:38

She knew her husband had to stand on the word of God and it was going to cost us all. And it did.

50:44

And so I know what it means, but I also know, look where I'm sitting now. And with all the things

50:50

I'm able to do only by God's grace, talk to people on radio, books, debates, website, do a, b, and sat

50:58

TV. Often we're, you know, we want to expand. I got another offer for some, for some radio stuff.

51:04

I got to go call people and see, we can't afford it. But you know, the thing is, look what God can do. Not, I'm not great.

51:10

Look at what God can do with a broken vessel. The thing is you've got to be willing to walk the walk and walk the talk.

51:19

You have to do it and believe it. And most Christians, not most, a lot of Christians are

51:28

Christians on Sunday morning. And, you know, I heard a sermon title years ago.

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I never forgot Friday's here, but Sunday's coming. It's a great title. Friday we go out and party, but Sunday we got to deal with it.

51:41

Friday's here, but Sunday's coming. It should be Sunday every day, living for Christ every day. And Christians aren't really willing to do that.

51:50

In my opinion, they're not really willing to lay it down and suffer for Christ's sake and go through things that are going to be difficult and then end up in situations where you get a $15 check in the mail and you have to decide with your wife, how much do we use for diapers?

52:08

How much do we use for gasoline? And how much would you use for food? And this is where I've been many times.

52:14

And my wife, to her great credit, never complained. She was a good woman, except for her taste in men, but she's a good woman.

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And so you had to have a woman like that too, but nevertheless, or a husband like that too. That's her heresy, by the way.

52:28

That's her heresy. Well, you know, love is blind. And I believe she's predestined for the foundation of the world to marry me because no one else would have.

52:36

So this is something that's really important. And when Christians start doing this, you'd be surprised what will happen to you.

52:42

But I got to warn Christians about this. No, it's John 14, 28, count the cost. That's what Luke...

52:48

I get these verses in my head. Sometimes I get them mixed up. I think it's John 14, 28. I forget. Remember, count the cost, or is it

52:53

Luke 14, 28? I got to find out. It's 923 with the carry of the cross. While you're looking for that,

52:59

I'll just remind you, if you guys have questions, please send them in the comments there. I know a lot of people have already sent a bunch of them.

53:06

That's great. If you haven't, we're going to, you know, we'll grill them at the end. We'll just one question after the other.

53:13

I know he likes that stuff. So bring it on. I like it. Throwing that out there for you guys. All right, go ahead, man.

53:18

Okay. It's Luke 14, 28, where it says count the cost. And the other one was John 9, 23. Sorry. So the thing is that a lot of Christians are not willing to count the cost of what it means to to walking the walk.

53:34

What we like to do is go to Sunday service and then go out to our restaurant and get served.

53:40

And then maybe put a tithe check in that day, maybe not. And then we go to work and we, you know, whatever.

53:47

And we watch a lot of secular TV. We go to church and we've done our part on Sunday. I don't understand that.

53:53

I don't understand that. Seriously. How can you dare do anything like that? If we're

54:00

Christians, we live for Christ. Everything we do, think, breathe is supposed to be for Jesus Christ, not be fanatical and wacky like me.

54:08

But I mean, living for Jesus, you know, a housewife can be glorifying God by raising children for the glory of God.

54:13

That could be her dedication. Praise God. A mechanic can do that for the glory of God. But wherever you're at to ask

54:20

God, I don't care what you do with me, shape me, make me, use me as you desire.

54:25

And if I get, that's why I say to people go to Luke 14, 28, Jesus says, count the cost.

54:31

He will take you as you are, but he won't leave you as you are. And I can tell you, I've been rung through the ringer so many times by the

54:39

Lord. So many difficult things I've had to face and deal with, but I've learned a great deal through them.

54:46

I wouldn't trade any of them. I mean, I buried a son. I've had to go bankrupt. I've had to,

54:52

I've lost a pastorate for an issue of integrity. I've had to move.

54:57

I've been swatted. I have to carry a weapon. I've have threats coming out in a regular basis.

55:03

This is part of the cost of what I do as a public figure. But I'm just saying that these kinds of things, this is the consequence, these kinds of things, nothing's going to happen to you in that level.

55:14

But I'm just saying that you got to be willing and ready to live for Jesus, because think about this. And as a way to illustrate it, you're in a hospital and you've been eating crap for years and years and years, and now you're paying for it.

55:25

You got cancer in your colon or whatever it is, and they're doing surgery on you. And you say to yourself,

55:30

I wish I'd have been taking care of myself. That's what we, we can relate to that.

55:36

You're in heaven. I wish I'd have done more for my Lord. And this is,

55:42

I look at that and I say, I'm here now. And I pray, like I prayed yesterday, Lord, you know,

55:47

I forgot to do it today. I had a doctor's appointment this morning, but Lord, this is your day.

55:53

Let me walk through the day you have given me. May I speak for you, live for you. I know

55:59

I'll fail, but Lord use me in spite of what I am. Somehow, someway, I give myself to you completely.

56:06

And I got to say when I was 17, I'm 63. I'm still seeking the Lord. Don't look to me as an example.

56:12

I've been saying, you know, are you willing to live for Christ like that? And if you are, he will require stuff of you.

56:19

It's worth it, but it's not easy. Always count the cost, Luke 14, 28. Anyway. Now here's the question.

56:26

I think it's a good, a practical question is how does some, I mean, there's so many different views out there, a lot of confusion, a lot of heretical view, depending on the person's context, they're going to come in contact with all sorts of different perspectives.

56:39

What are, what's some advice you can give to the average Christian, how they can prepare for the unknown?

56:46

I mean, you know, people say, well, when the witness comes, I'm prepared to respond to the Jehovah's witness. But what happens when this weird perspective comes about?

56:53

I've never heard of this and people kind of get frozen and then out of fear of ignorance, they don't actually engage with those folks.

57:00

Well, two things. One, there's a really good website on the internet called Karm. And you could go there, become familiar with it.

57:08

I've written, there's roughly 7 ,000 articles. I've probably written 6 ,800 of them or 6 ,500.

57:13

I don't know. But so I did a lot of research there. And so what I'd like to do is write,

57:19

I call it quick and slick. I just get it done. Here's the information, move on. And you can familiarize yourself with that, but you'll notice there's a lot of scripture references and always check out everything a guy named

57:30

Slick says. That's one thing, but here's something that's really practical you can do is that you can't jump into something knowing everything.

57:38

You can't jump into something knowing how to witness in every situation, but the more you do, the more you become familiar with the tools and you can adapt into more situations.

57:49

Always ask questions, always ask for definitions. So some of this is, that's number one,

57:55

I need to write a book on this and I got an outline I'm developing for it. But the idea is that if you meet a group or an individual, they believe in whatever, you're not unfamiliar, say, you know,

58:07

I'm unfamiliar with that. What does it say? What does it teach? You have them teach you. Well, it teaches that there's seven gods.

58:15

You go, oh, seven gods. Okay. Where do you get that from? You're asking questions because what you're doing is you're finding out what they believe and why they believe it.

58:27

Let me tell you something. Only the Christian worldview is without self -contradiction.

58:33

Every other worldview is self -refuting. All you got to do is dig down and find it.

58:39

Find the problems. All of them are. We can get into various ways to do that, but you ask questions, take notes of what they say and practice putting things together.

58:51

The first time you do it, you won't do that well, probably. The second time, man, a little bit better, et cetera, et cetera.

58:58

Pretty soon it's like, bring it on. I don't know who you are. What do you got? Tell me.

59:03

I'm going to talk with you and you'll find out. After a while, there's only so many different venues to go down and you got to study logic for one thing.

59:13

A little bit of philosophy is helpful and a lot of scripture. And if you do those three things, you'll be able to tackle most anything.

59:20

My radio show, people call me up and ask me questions, questions I've never even heard of before. I'm not worried because I have two responses.

59:27

One, I don't know. I'll get back to you on that. The other one is a combination of information

59:32

I've got from so much experience that I can give an answer to. That's it.

59:38

I'm always learning. I'm sure you've heard me say this in the past too. It's very important to do apologetics in the way that when someone asks a question, part of defending the faith is actually interacting with someone in an honorable and respectable way and not to pretend you know something you don't.

59:54

There's great wisdom in just openly saying, that's a good question. I never thought about that before. I think we should be able to do that.

01:00:01

It's very, very useful. And of course, we're able to engage with integrity as believers.

01:00:06

Now, here's a question. Well, real quick, a statement and then a question. You said something about studying logic, philosophy, and of course, the scriptures.

01:00:15

And I remember something that Walter Martin said. For those of you who don't know who Walter Martin is, get out from under your rock.

01:00:21

Walter Martin was an excellent Christian apologist. I think he died in the late 80s. He wrote the famous book,

01:00:26

Kingdom of the Cults. And I think there's another one out there called the Kingdom of the Occult, which is edited by I think his daughter and someone else.

01:00:34

But he said something that when we're engaged with the cults and with any heretical perspective, that we should be so familiar with the truth that we're able to identify error.

01:00:44

And so a lot of people feel burdened with this notion that we have to know everything about every other perspective out there.

01:00:49

But I think you are in a very fine position. If you are so familiar with the Word of God and how everything fits together and you have your

01:00:56

Christian worldview intact, you're conscious about those things, you're able to identify error when it comes.

01:01:02

And then by God's grace, you're able to respond accordingly. Now, that being said, that does not mean apologetics is not an intimidating thing.

01:01:11

So my question for you, Matt, is when you debate and when you engage in whether it's formal debate or informal debate, do you get nervous?

01:01:20

If so, how do you handle it? And if not, why don't you share your secret wisdom as to people that have more confidence in engaging the world of unbelief?

01:01:31

Sometimes I get a little bit nervous, only if it's in an area that I'm not familiar with.

01:01:37

But that doesn't happen very often because I've been doing it so much for so long.

01:01:44

But when you do get a little bit nervous about something, just always go back to, but this is what the truth is and rest on that truth.

01:01:52

And you'll find that you'll be able to do well for the most part.

01:01:58

Now, it doesn't mean that you're always going to be dominating a conversation. I've had conversations with people where I've not done that well, but you know what?

01:02:07

You pick up your pieces and you go off someplace, put them back together and you go,

01:02:12

I was weak. And that's how you have to go. It's happened. And it happens less and less now, but it still happens.

01:02:21

And that's just how it is with anybody growing. So, you know, just trust

01:02:27

God and have the confidence to know that he's there with you.

01:02:32

And also have faith that he'll give you an answer. And if he doesn't do that, then it's him wanting you to go study.

01:02:42

A lot of people fail to understand that God in his sovereignty can ordain that you are in a certain place at a certain time either to do really well or to not do really well by human standards.

01:02:56

And if you do well, it's because of God's grace. And if you don't do well, it's because of your failure.

01:03:02

Well, then go learn. It's still a movement of God's grace in that he's saying, here's an area of your weakness.

01:03:10

So, you know, I mean, I have outlines that I developed now. It's a habit

01:03:16

I've got. I'm doing one on philosophy, one on knowledge, one on the canon, one on Catholicism, one on Islam.

01:03:24

And I have them set up so that I can quickly access information. I think I gave you one of them, didn't

01:03:29

I? The one on the canon of scripture based on Michael Kruger's book.

01:03:36

Yes. Yeah. It's incredible information. And I'm adding more to it. And of course, that was the early stage of the outline.

01:03:42

You're still putting things together. But there's a lot of useful information in there. So, you know, I don't have the ability to memorize everything, but, you know,

01:03:50

I just need tools. And like, I'm looking at you on my camera. I have a really expensive camera with 32 gigs of DDR4 RAM and an i7 that's a 9000.

01:04:00

Oh, it's a great CPU. I love it with a really good graphics card. I've got three 27 inch 4K monitors and I can put information everywhere because this is where I sit in my $400 chair.

01:04:16

So let me get this straight. So when you're looking at the camera and you're saying, listen, and then you're reeling off this information, little do people know is you have the

01:04:26

CARM command center in front of you, feeding you information. That's right. And when

01:04:31

I'm on the radio, I have my Bible program open on this screen right over here.

01:04:36

Let's see right there. That's right over there. And I have a research screen right over here. I have another screen up right over there.

01:04:44

And then what I'll do is I'll see the people on the radio, what their questions are going to be.

01:04:49

And so a lot of times while I'm talking, I'll look up a verse, I'll look up something. And so it makes me look smarter than I am.

01:04:56

That's where it's really nice. But I'll tell people I'm looking it up. I looked it up during the break or this or that.

01:05:02

And, you know, also go to CARM and look up articles on CARM for information. And so, you know,

01:05:09

I know a lot, but there's so much more to know. And it's just what it is, you know, so use your tools.

01:05:16

I should teach a class on how to use tools. That would be, that would be excellent. Maybe something on like how to do what you're doing with, how to multitask behind the screen, but doing it in an efficient way where you're effectively still communicating what you're trying to do, you know.

01:05:31

I wonder if people would want that. I could actually give them some of my outlines or have them buy them a little bit because when people buy something, then they're committed.

01:05:39

We found out they're committed. I love free stuff. Yeah. But you, but you've already convinced me you're committed.

01:05:48

That is a good topic though, by the way. I think that'd be a great topic. Okay. I was going to ask you another question and I completely forgot.

01:05:57

And that's one of the deficiencies of not having my command center. Hold on. I need to use restroom and you can think of that.

01:06:03

That's right. I have no command center. You literally are on my laptop and I have 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10 books under my laptop so that it reaches this level.

01:06:15

So it's pretty ghetto. And wow, I have some pretty good books holding this computer up. So feel honored.

01:06:21

Usually the books that I'm reading are off to the side, but they're actually the foundation under the computer. Just for this interview,

01:06:28

I made sure that they were - Good. So you raised me up to your level. That's right.

01:06:34

I flaunt one of these books often. People know that I'm really big on presuppositional apologetics.

01:06:41

And I showed you that book I had signed by Cornelius Van Til. Oh, yes. I'm coveting. And it's underneath this pile.

01:06:48

I don't know how it got - Wow. There you go. Check it out. But at any rate. Okay. So let's actually get to the comments then.

01:06:58

Start doing the questions because we are now over an hour and I don't want to sell some folks short.

01:07:05

Sometimes we don't get to finish all the questions because of the time. So let's take a look at some, of course, someone called me collared shirt.

01:07:12

Oh boy. Yeah, that's right. These are the shirts I do all my shows. I can't help it.

01:07:18

I need some collared shirts too. If I wear a shirt with a picture on it, people don't take me seriously, but whatever.

01:07:25

Okay. Here's a question by Raul. Who are your top five apologists?

01:07:31

If you have any, do you watch anybody? Oh, yeah. Absolutely. Paul, Peter. Well, Jesus, of course, number one.

01:07:39

And there you go. Those are the top three. I just have top three. Okay.

01:07:45

All right. Very good. By the way, you're joking and you're not joking, but I think again, there is a per to that.

01:07:51

I think a lot of people hoist up these Christian apologists as almost idols and every word instead of actually studying the scriptures themselves.

01:08:00

People have heard me say this in the past that we run the risk and doing apologetics, reading books about the

01:08:05

Bible rather than reading the Bible itself. We want to do a couple of that. I'm going to get this comment on here because I mean, come on.

01:08:14

Ethan says Eli is automatically smarter because he has more books behind him. That's not fair.

01:08:22

You used to have a bunch of books behind you. I think you have way more books than I do. I have lots of books.

01:08:27

I have boxes and boxes. They're all backed up because we're supposed to move and then that fell through. They're in the garage. I've given away hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of books.

01:08:36

Did I ever send you any? I thought I did. Well, I did order a book and I never got it. I think it was...

01:08:44

I'll let you know later. Maybe you still have copies of it somewhere I can get. Who knows? Yeah, we're working on improving everything.

01:08:53

I think you write answers. Something answers. Write answers for wrong beliefs, but that's my first book and that's out of print.

01:08:59

But it was on Amazon and I purchased it and never received it. Yeah, that's not my fault. That's Amazon.

01:09:05

We're trying. I got permission. I know. Well, hey, the novel that I wrote called

01:09:11

The Influence, someone's getting all the money because the publishing house went out of business. They put it up there.

01:09:17

I don't get anything from it. I can't get it. Because now

01:09:23

I have your friendship, that's worth more than your book. I appreciate that. Good. I'm glad I'm getting worried.

01:09:29

All right, Daniel asks, controversial question, can skip. Well, we don't skip questions around here.

01:09:35

If I can help it, I'll get them up there. How do you define Pelagianism and Semi -Pelagianism as currently loads of different voices are saying different things?

01:09:48

OK, Pelagianism is the idea that the human nature is not fallen at birth, completely innocent, not a big deal.

01:09:57

And a person learns how to become a bad person that are basically good. Tabula rasa, blank slate, basically good, that kind of thing.

01:10:05

That's a heresy. And Semi -Pelagianism is the idea that you're born, you're fallen, but you're mostly good.

01:10:16

You're OK. And with Semi -Pelagianism, basically choosing

01:10:21

God is up to you, up to your free will and your ability, because you have the wisdom. All you need is the right information and you'll be able to choose

01:10:28

God. And that's a heresy also. And it's taught in most churches, Semi -Pelagianism is condemned by the

01:10:35

Council of Orange in the 500s. Not that it makes that much difference, but Semi -Pelagianism. So that's the basics behind it.

01:10:42

And Pelagianism would say, we're really innocent. And Semi -Pelagianism would say, hey, we're mostly innocent.

01:10:49

And we're really fallen, we're mostly fallen, this kind of a thing. And so that's what's going on in the mostly.

01:10:56

It's like in Princess Bride, you're just mostly dead. You're just mostly fallen, not always.

01:11:04

And so you got some good stuff in you. That's Semi -Pelagianism slash some forms of Arminianism that work in that.

01:11:11

And that is alive and well, unfortunately, in the Christian church today. Not biblical. Okay. Princess Bride, I love that.

01:11:17

To Bluff, he said to Bluff. He was probably getting caught. That's what he said. The Brute Squad, you are the

01:11:24

Brute Squad. All right. So Nathan asks, what's your take biblically on the issues and things going on with the riots and divisions across America?

01:11:34

How should we view these issues and what should we do about it practically? The anger of God does not,

01:11:40

I mean, the anger of man does not accomplish the righteousness of God. I forgot where that's located, but we know that's in the scriptures.

01:11:47

And what that one cop did to that guy was wrong. Obviously, we saw the film.

01:11:52

It was bad. It doesn't mean that all cops are bad and it doesn't mean that rioting is warranted.

01:12:01

Now, it's a racist thing that's happening and there's really only one race, the human race. But when the devil gets in and divides people, then hatred and anger come into play.

01:12:13

And so, as it says in John 10, 10, the enemy comes to steal and destroy. And this is what is happening.

01:12:20

The enemy of the gospel, the enemy of truth is coming in to steal and destroy. And why? Because a white cop had his knee on a black man and the man died.

01:12:32

And the cop needs to be prosecuted. Okay. In that situation, he was warned. He's had a bad record and things like that.

01:12:39

Okay. That's another issue. But what about this? Now, think about this.

01:12:44

This is the hypocrisy. Hypocrisy is a form of lying. Hypocrisy is a denial of truth.

01:12:51

Hypocrisy. Okay. So, they're rioting because of the white oppressive cop nature over blacks.

01:12:59

And what's the representation of that? White cop, a black guy dies. All right.

01:13:05

Statistically, from what I understand, I actually heard this this morning on the way to the doctor, that more white people die in the presence of cops than black people.

01:13:19

Now, let's ask a question. What would happen? And the media doesn't do anything. The media foments insurrection.

01:13:27

It's what it does. But what would happen if there was a black cop with his knee on a white guy and the white guy died?

01:13:35

Well, are we going to have riots? I want to know if the black people would riot over that. Because it's oppression, isn't it?

01:13:41

It's racism. Obviously, a black cop on a white guy obviously would be racist, right?

01:13:48

Not necessarily. It'd just be abuse of power. He had a bad technique. White guy and a black guy, both.

01:13:54

That has to be racism. That has to be police brutality. And so, they're going to riot only in that situation.

01:14:01

But when it happens in the reverse, the media says nothing. And even if it did, no one's going to do anything.

01:14:08

Because that's okay. It's called hypocrisy. And the reason this exists is because there's a denial of truth and the transcendental nature of truth.

01:14:19

And there's something greater than us. And when there's not something greater than us, we become humanistic. We do what pleases us and crowd mentality and things like this.

01:14:29

So, this is all what's going on there. In fact, I live in Boise, Idaho. Most people don't even know where Idaho is.

01:14:36

I wish you could stay that way. Potatoes. I'm just like, that's the only - Potatoes. That's the potato place, and it's different than Ohio.

01:14:42

You got to keep those - That's right. That's true. And Idaho, if you notice, is shaped like a gun.

01:14:51

So, around Idaho, I'll be driving, I'll see bumper stickers and things in windows because it's a gun.

01:14:57

It's shaped like a gun. And I have a trigger guard on one part of Idaho. And anyway, so,

01:15:04

I have connections, et cetera, and my friends and family and stuff. Antifa is now moving here to Boise, getting here for some stuff.

01:15:17

And last night at the state capitol on the steps, there was, past midnight, people are chanting and doing stuff.

01:15:28

For what? They're chanting, they were saying, George Floyd, George Floyd, and no peace, no peace, and things like this.

01:15:37

They're working themselves up to do something. Now, what have we got to do with this?

01:15:43

I mean, people in Idaho respect the police, and the police here, they're great.

01:15:51

Sure. And so, why are people here rioting or not rioting yet? But what's going on?

01:15:57

There's an agenda behind it. See, when truth is sacrificed, it's sacrificed because of an agenda.

01:16:03

Agenda doesn't mean something's true. Agenda means you have a position you want to be taught in the leftist media, the leftist schools, the leftist society, that what we're having is a sacrifice of truth and the rise of humanism slash secularism.

01:16:17

And this is the kind of things we're getting and is a problem. So, biblically, what are we to do? We're to be praying for our president, our culture, and our country.

01:16:28

Because I tell Christians this on the radio, you better start praying, and you better start doing this because it's going to get worse.

01:16:38

And I'm a researcher. I know some stuff that I don't generally talk about. And let me tell you, a lot of stuff is in place for oppression.

01:16:50

So, just start praying, and start voting, and voice your disagreement, call, be active, because when it hits the fan, you're going to wish you did.

01:17:05

Yeah. I think also just a useful thing to have fruitful discussion to kind of cause people to think.

01:17:12

You can kind of make that apologetical bridge in the discussion between what's happening in our culture, and you're witnessing to your unbelieving.

01:17:19

People who are outraged as to what happened really brings to bear very powerfully the issue of objective morality.

01:17:28

And so, it's interesting to see people who deny objective morality, who deny the existence of God, yet they will cry injustice and cry evil.

01:17:41

And I think that's a useful tool there to point that out. Wait a second. There seems to be an inconsistency in your worldview there.

01:17:47

And so, there might be a useful application of an internal worldview critique. Of course, doing it with gentleness and respect, walking carefully in these kinds of discussions, because you don't want to cause unnecessary conflict such that you cut off lines of communication.

01:18:03

But there's definitely some application there that I think has apologetic usefulness. All right.

01:18:09

Someone says here, I thought Pelagianism was the only heresy the Calvinists acknowledge. That's not true.

01:18:14

We condemn everyone for everything. What's going on? That's of course. It's predestined for them to be wrong. That's right.

01:18:20

All right. Here's a question. Does modern day revelation, prophecy have the same authority as scripture?

01:18:26

No. All right. Next question. You want to unpack that a little bit for the person here?

01:18:33

Well, people will often say that I'm a non -cessationist. I believe in all the charismatic gifts for today.

01:18:40

And people will say, well, isn't that the same as scripture? No, it's not. Not everything Jesus said was inscripturated, though everything he said was inspired, of course.

01:18:49

Not everything Paul said was inscripturated. You go to 1 Corinthians 14, speaking in tongues, word of knowledge, word of wisdom.

01:18:55

And these things are charismatically worked. That means a gift of the Holy Spirit. And so, as the case, it doesn't mean it's inspired in the sense that it's in there for inscripturation.

01:19:07

So there are revelations that can come from God that are not to be inscripturated. And I could use an experience or two that I've had, one where I actually prophesied and it all came to pass.

01:19:20

It was in detail. And it's the only time this ever happened like that, just once.

01:19:26

Well, is that to be inscripturated? No. And I judge it by scripture too. And nothing in it contradicts the scripture, etc.

01:19:33

And so, okay, fine. But, you know, modern day revelation, depends on what you mean by revelation.

01:19:42

Because you could be walking down the road and God could put something in your heart to turn a certain direction for a certain reason, to look a certain place for a certain thing.

01:19:51

He could put it in your heart what to say when you're talking to somebody and witnessing to somebody. Well, that's a form of revelation.

01:19:56

Does it mean it should be inscripturated? No. There are levels of revelation that we can experience and recognize, but doesn't mean that it's all to be inscripturated.

01:20:07

So it does not have the same authority as scripture. The authority of scripture is specifically designed or scripture is specifically designed from the foundation of the world to be there for the universal instruction of the church.

01:20:20

And that's not the case if I get a prophecy about so -and -so, or you speak in tongues about so -and -so.

01:20:27

It's not the same thing to the church. Very good. Next question here. Seeming that scripture does not provide the tools for the

01:20:34

Jesus, how do we know the right way to execute the word of God? And how does this mesh with Sola Scriptura?

01:20:41

Well, what we do is we just use common sense. And common sense is based on logic.

01:20:48

Logic comes from the mind of God. And we can go to the scriptures and see how the scriptures used the scriptures, the first step.

01:20:55

What do the scriptures do? Well, the scriptures, they would cite things as being truthful and authoritative, number one.

01:21:01

So when we read the word of God, we know that it's truthful and authoritative. Now, sometimes, however, when it comes to prophetic scriptures, a lot of things are taken and put into place of the

01:21:10

New Testament. We're going like, that doesn't seem to fit, but we know that it's prophetic and under the inspiration of the

01:21:16

Holy Spirit. So we can see that. And, you know, plus, like I said, common sense, you know, what does it say?

01:21:22

That's what it says. Believe what it says. And then you relate it to other things.

01:21:28

And it's just basic stuff. It's just common sense. And most people agree with, yeah, it makes sense. It's based on logic.

01:21:34

And that's not a violation of scripture. And how does it mesh with Sola Scriptura? Well, Sola Scriptura is a teaching that the scriptures are the final authority in everything it addresses.

01:21:44

Doesn't mean we don't use exegetical principles. It doesn't mean we don't look at councils or traditions. It doesn't mean anything like that, or commentaries.

01:21:52

It means that everything is subject to the authority of the word of God. But yet, at the same time, you got to understand in Romans 14, one through 12, but particularly verse five, it says that each man be fully convinced in his own mind.

01:22:05

And so what he's saying there in regard to the worship days and eating habits and things like that is to be convinced in your own mind, which means that you can check the word of God.

01:22:13

And we know from Acts 17, 11, that the Bereans were more noble -minded because they checked what Paul and Apollos were saying against the scriptures, which the implication is we can read it for what it says.

01:22:25

So the reason this kind of question comes up is because we'll have groups like the heretical church called the

01:22:30

Roman Catholic Church, which is teaching damnable heresies left and right, and which is in league with the devil and teaching false demonic doctrines.

01:22:40

They will say, well, how do you know your interpretation is correct? And then we get into some more sophisticated discussions about some principles and some things like that.

01:22:49

So it's a good question. It's important too that the doctrine of sola scriptura is not the negation of any external sources, right?

01:22:57

I mean, people who hold to sola scriptura still use books on hermeneutics to approach the text, to engage in hermeneutics and exegesis.

01:23:05

Also, we have examples of, or we have the principle that scripture interprets scripture. So we can look in the scripture itself to see how certain scriptures are being interpreted and things like that.

01:23:15

And then of course, we have the notion that the Christian worldview as given to us in scripture provide for us the necessary preconditions for intelligible experience.

01:23:23

And so even though we use exegesis that is not necessarily derived from the text, we know that the

01:23:29

Christian worldview is a necessary prerequisite for the rationality and coherency of the exegetical process itself.

01:23:35

And so we always want to keep those worldview issues in mind when we're asking these questions, studying the scriptures from within the

01:23:42

Christian worldview. So I think those are important things to keep in mind. That's what I said. Yeah, you said that.

01:23:48

It didn't sound as smart because you weren't wearing it. No, you sounded smarter. Yeah, that's for sure. Nathan asks, what is your response when

01:23:55

Roman Catholics claim or say justification by faith was invented by Martin Luther? I often hear this claim and also anytime

01:24:03

Protestants attempt a response, they say that we are misquoting the church fathers. Well, about the church fathers,

01:24:10

I have a saying, my church fathers can beat up your church father. You don't want to go with the church fathers because they contradict themselves sometimes and each other.

01:24:17

Which one are you going to go with? And then it becomes an issue of, I like the one that supports my presuppositions. And that's just not how you want to look at history.

01:24:25

And justification by faith, simple logic. Did Martin Luther invent it?

01:24:31

Incidentally, I have a bachelor's degree from a Lutheran college. Did Martin Luther invent it?

01:24:37

No, he did not. So let me show you something here. Let's see. Let's see. Let's see.

01:24:43

Okay. My cell phone and a cup. We have two things, two things, right?

01:24:51

Cell phone and a cup. We take the cup away. Cell phone is alone.

01:24:57

Okay. Notice this principle, real simple, two things, cup, cell phone.

01:25:03

We take one away. The other one's alone. Real, this is tough.

01:25:08

I know I could go over it five or six more times if you can't get that. I'm so confused right now. Now what

01:25:14

I'm going to do is quote to you Romans 4, 5, which says this, it says, uh, to the one who does not work, but believes in him who justifies the ungodly, his faith is credited as righteousness.

01:25:30

But to the one who does not work, but believes, work, belief.

01:25:36

When it does not work, but believes, no works, belief, right? No works, take works away.

01:25:43

Belief is by itself. To the one who does not work, but believes in him who justifies the ungodly, his faith, his faith is credited as righteousness.

01:25:53

That is faith alone. So it was never something that was invented any place, uh, you know, after the

01:25:59

Bible was written. We also go to Romans 3, 28. We maintain that a man is justified by faith apart from the works of the law.

01:26:05

There's another one right there. Romans 4, Romans 5, 1. Uh, we have been having therefore been justified by faith.

01:26:11

We can go to Galatians 2, 16, 2, 21, which says that, uh, faith that works is without, or excuse me, faith without works is what makes us saved.

01:26:19

Now, people will always go to James 2, uh, 14 through 24 at this point. And they'll say, well, faith, uh, faith alone, you know, it's not by faith alone, but by faith and works.

01:26:29

See Matt, you don't know what you're talking about. And then I say, I'll get a four letter word for you, buddy. It's a four letter word.

01:26:36

Ready? Context. That's a four letter word for a lot of people. You read the context of something.

01:26:44

And when you go to James chapter 2 and you started verse 14, what use is it my brethren, if someone says to you,

01:26:50

I have faith, but he has no works, can that faith save him, right? Her brother or sister is in need. You don't help them out.

01:26:56

And he says in verse 18, but some of them may well say you have faith and I have works.

01:27:02

Show me your faith without works. I will show you my faith by my works. That's called the horizontal.

01:27:08

You show me your faith. I'll show you my faith. You, me, you, me. Horizontal. That's what it's talking about in the context there of James 2.

01:27:17

Justification before people. That's what it's talking about. Romans, uh, four is justification before God.

01:27:24

What should we say then our brethren that our forefather Abraham, uh, found for Abraham was justified by works.

01:27:32

He has something to boast about, but not before God. But what does the scripture say? And Abraham believed God. It was credited to him as righteousness.

01:27:37

Now to the one who works, his wage is not credited as a favor, but what is due, but to the one who does not work, but believes in him who justifies the ungodly, his faith is credited as righteousness.

01:27:47

So that's vertical justification. James is horizontal. That's why, and people need to, uh, to read what the, you know, study this word called context.

01:27:57

Always read the context of something. Yeah. In response to the first part here, what is your response to Roman Catholics that claim or say that justification by faith was invented by Martin Luther?

01:28:05

Uh, that is of course, uh, you need to point out the logical fallacy in that it's begging the question, isn't it?

01:28:10

Because the argument is that we just, and so if scripture teaches and scriptures before Lutheran, so therefore it follows that it that's right.

01:28:18

So again, applying logic there, I think is, is very, um, very helpful. Uh, someone said, uh, uh, with regards to your debate, uh, with that guy about baptism, uh, that was a sad debate.

01:28:30

Hashtag you should have seen the other guy. And my favorite follow -up here, uh, Matt was immersing himself in the tub in case he, uh,

01:28:40

Oh my goodness. Uh, he, he had someone in the background helping him also the other guy.

01:28:47

Oh, that's right. Yeah. Okay. And, uh, let's get to the next question here. Uh, let's see here.

01:28:52

Liberation theology has caused a lot of damage in Latin America. Can you guys comment on that? Do you guys think that it is that it has made entry via social justice into the

01:29:01

U S are you familiar with liberation? A little bit. Um, it's been a long time, but it was bigger in the eighties.

01:29:08

And I think it's the idea of, uh, using theology for social change and liberation of the oppressed using

01:29:16

Christianity. Uh, I don't know if you're familiar with it, but I think that's what it is. And I just, let me tell you,

01:29:22

I typed it in a movement in Christian theology developed mainly in Latin American Roman Catholics that emphasize liberation from social, political, economic oppression as an anticipation of ultimate salvation.

01:29:33

Okay. I didn't put the salvation thing in that would make it completely heretical and taste and just anticipate and dissipation of ultimate salvation.

01:29:41

That's interesting. Ultimate salvation. That makes sense in Catholicism because you're saved.

01:29:46

You're mostly saved in Catholicism. And that's a Catholicism is such a damnable heresy.

01:29:53

It is, Oh, we talked about that for a long time. So, um, we're not, we're not here to use scripture to justify rioting and picketing and, um, and social unrest.

01:30:10

That's not what the scriptures advocate. What the scriptures advocate is peaceful work.

01:30:17

Now in Luke 22, 36, Jesus said to the disciples, do you have a sword?

01:30:23

No, go out and buy one. Sell your cloak and buy a sword. This is for the right of self -defense. Our aggression that we're to exemplify as Christians is the aggression of the presentation of truth.

01:30:35

And we are allowed to defend ourselves if need be. This is biblical principles, the allowance of self -defense, not the obligation, but the permission of self -defense.

01:30:47

So I've taken martial arts for years and, uh, I carry. And so, uh,

01:30:53

I need to because of what I do for a living. And so, uh, I will never be aggressive. I will only be defensive because that's biblical.

01:31:01

That's it. And then even then I don't have to be, I can just take being things happen to me.

01:31:07

And so this is this idea here. So what do we do as Christians in an aggressive sense? We are allowed to picket and to protest, but we have to do it peacefully.

01:31:18

I think Christian protesters, if they're going to protest, they march to the Capitol. I think that if they're going to protest, they should carry signs.

01:31:27

And by the time they've got down to the street, all the litters picked up, they picked up the litter.

01:31:34

A self -cleaning protest. Yeah. Those little vacuum cleaners that they kind of, they just roll around.

01:31:42

They're cleaning up, they're helping old ladies across the street. You know, they're doing things, they're being very respectful, but they are doing what's necessary at the same time.

01:31:52

We can protest. We should be making calls. We should be cleaning up. We should be, uh, protesting, sending emails and we should vote with our pocketbook.

01:32:02

And, uh, I mean, I've just learned some stuff about, you know, like direct TV. I'm going, okay.

01:32:09

I talked to my wife about getting rid of direct TV. You know, and what little things we're going to do. Is it very much? Not much.

01:32:14

Is it going to inconvenience us? Yes. Well, we're going to stand up for righteousness. And there's little ways to do this.

01:32:22

Now I have a plan. I wish some national guy would pick up on, cause I'm not national, not a big wig like that.

01:32:30

But what if, what if what Christians did, they got organized. I mentioned this over the radio many times over years.

01:32:38

What if say in a month of, uh, September, August, doesn't matter, pick a month,

01:32:43

September. And on the first day of that month, uh, say whatever day it is, it doesn't matter.

01:32:51

And, um, everybody with the last name, A, that starts with the last name, A, letter A, right.

01:32:57

Goes down to the Capitol of their state with signs and petitions.

01:33:03

And they're there for the day and they're done for the day. On the second day, your last name starts with a

01:33:10

B and you move forward and you come up. And for that month that this is what happening daily in front of every single state

01:33:21

Capitol all over the United States, we'd have to have lawyers involved and money pay people pay like $5 a month for legal fees in case they get sued, whatever, get lawyers arranged.

01:33:34

That's why some big guys going to have to do this, that kind of thing. And, um, they, they could threaten lawsuits that lawsuits are threatened all the time.

01:33:41

If you don't comply with this, we're going to file a lawsuit. We have lawyers ready. What we want is our rights back.

01:33:48

Okay. We want to be able to have the right to be able to assemble closer than six feet because something comes along and all of a sudden our constitution is trampled underfoot.

01:33:59

Incidentally, Sweden never did what we did and their coronavirus rate of death is the same.

01:34:07

They just let the people govern themselves and be smart about it. Say wear masks, do distancing if you have to for a while until they get a cure for this.

01:34:15

And they didn't shut down anything and no problems at all. We need as Christians to start standing up.

01:34:22

We need to get more vocal because we've been lax so long. We need to be more vocal quicker. And a friend of mine said something that I never forgot.

01:34:31

He studies history. Never ever in any place in history is it ever the case that a nation gradually gets better and more free.

01:34:44

It's always the case. It becomes worse and people have become less free. Never does it work the first way, always a second.

01:34:53

And also history shows the only way to get back to the issue of freedom is by revolt and revolution.

01:35:00

That's how it has done throughout history because people get oppressed and they've had enough and they fight back.

01:35:06

Unfortunately, that's what happens. And blood is shed. People die. I don't want to see that. But what we

01:35:12

Christians can do is if Christians would be united in their prayer, united in their front, united in their purpose, and they were to start demanding certain things like as much as go to the

01:35:26

CNN headquarters and stand out in front of the CNN headquarters with picket signs 30 days in a row with petitions and saying, you know, it's

01:35:34

CNN. We want fair, accurate presentation of the news. And the

01:35:39

New York Times do the same thing. And even Fox because Fox is getting a little bit weak in some areas.

01:35:45

I mean, there are things that strategically can be done. And it has to be done peacefully. And you need protectors because that terrorist organization

01:35:52

Antifa will come in and do stuff. And why is it that Antifa suddenly to go into a place and there's pallets of bricks that have been shipped in already?

01:36:00

Did you know about that? No, nothing about it. Yeah. Why is that? We got people here who want to destroy our country.

01:36:09

And we stand for Christ. A lot of us in this country stand for Jesus. Ultimately, this is an issue of the enemy of the gospel wanting to destroy all nations, but especially

01:36:21

America, where we have freedom and the idea is to destroy it. And one of the ways to do it is to fragment the issue of truth, promote relativism, promote leftist ideology and socialism, which moves eventually to communism.

01:36:37

And in a regime like that, we're not going to have our freedoms. We can already see we're losing them here in America.

01:36:44

And that's political stuff. We can get it at their time. Yeah. All right. We're going to go shotgun. So if you are able, only because I don't want to keep too much time.

01:36:53

I know you have next show to go to. An hour and 20 minutes are going to be on the radio. Okay. So let's go through these rather quick.

01:37:00

If it's a simple answer, just boom. If you need to expand a little bit, go for it. Okay. Here's a question.

01:37:06

Daniel asks, why do you see that a lot of time in debate and conversation, we see the word of God not being brought up by the

01:37:12

Christian apologists. How is the best way to change this trend? Depends on the topic and the necessity.

01:37:18

Sometimes you can't go to the scriptures until the foundation that someone holds to has been thoroughly destroyed, and then you can replace it with scripture.

01:37:25

Sometimes it's necessary to do that. But even then, when I do that, I try to always slip in scripture and the truth of God's word.

01:37:34

And the way to change all this is to remember that the word of God is what is powerful, not our rationalizations, thoughts, excuses, and things like this.

01:37:44

Okay, good. Next question. Patrick asks, is Mark 16, 16 inspired by God? I don't believe it is.

01:37:51

Mark 16, 9 through 20, 11 verses are there. There's 17 non -Markan words found in a non -Markan sense.

01:37:58

In other words, what that means is the entire gospel of Mark, suddenly these 11 verses has 17 words not found in the entire gospel of Mark.

01:38:07

And also, if you go to verse 12 in that pariquet, because 11 through 16 is the issue of 17.

01:38:14

11 through 20, that whole area is disputed. And in verse 12, it says

01:38:20

Jesus appeared in a different form, and no, he did not. And so there's some issue stuff. I'll never preach out of it. Okay.

01:38:25

I'll never preach out of it. I don't believe it. I don't trust it. Textual critical issues that are - Yes, textual critical. Many people.

01:38:31

All right, next question here. How does heresy tie into hermeneutics? Can you comment on the, quote, a true church, a small organization who has a hyper -literal interpretation of all scripture and all doctrinal points are a matter of salvation?

01:38:45

Yeah, they have an agenda over hermeneutics, and their agenda is that their personal beliefs about all kinds of things need to be substantiated by scripture.

01:38:55

And so a true church, I'm familiar with them, and I would love to have a debate with them, say on, for example, limited atonement.

01:39:03

And let's see, because they'll deny that. They call Calvinism a damnable heresy. And so I'd love to have a debate with them on that.

01:39:09

And I would do it for the purpose of showing publicly that they can't exegete their way out of a white paper bag when it comes to something like that.

01:39:18

Okay. All right. Very good. Next question. Is 2 Timothy 3 .16 talking about the scriptures being inspired, or is this referring to the

01:39:26

Old Testament scriptures, or is it referring to the Old and the New Testament? It says, I believe it says all scriptures inspired of God, right?

01:39:34

So New Testament scripture, therefore, the all is inclusive to all. Therefore, that's what it means. Done. That's right.

01:39:41

And there are places in the New Testament which refer to the writings of Paul as scripture as well.

01:39:46

So there's a fuller argumentation there that one could look into if they check out karm .org, which you can search right after the show.

01:39:53

Next question. Is the virgin birth essential? Yes, it's essential. It's a secondary essential, as I call it, because you cannot justify the hypostatic union of Christ without it.

01:40:04

That Jesus has two distinct natures, a divine nature and a human nature. So the virgin birth implies the movement of the

01:40:10

Holy Spirit upon Mary to then have her become pregnant. So yeah, it's essential.

01:40:16

Okay. Next question. If Jesus is a man now, will he be living with us today? This gets into the issue of the communicatio idiomatum.

01:40:25

Jesus has two distinct natures and the communicatio idiomatum, the communication of the properties, says that the attributes of both natures are ascribed to the single person.

01:40:36

The attributes of omnipresence is a necessity in the divine nature. But the attribute of being in one place at one time is an attribute of the human nature.

01:40:46

Now, how these combine and how these work, we don't know. But Jesus did say in Matthew 28, 18 through 20, that he'll be with us always, even at the end of the earth.

01:40:56

So he's claiming the attribute of divinity. So is he with us today in that sense?

01:41:02

Absolutely. Yes, he lives in me. John 14, 23 talks about that as well. And so he is a man, but he's in a glorified body.

01:41:11

But because he has two natures and the attributes of the divine nature ascribed to the person of Christ, and he can say,

01:41:18

I'll be with you always, even at the end of the earth. And there's certain levels and things we can't understand because God doesn't reveal us to it, us about that in that level.

01:41:25

All right. Very good. Question here. How fundamental of a doctrine do you believe infallibility is?

01:41:31

So I suppose he's discussing the scriptures at that point. It's absolutely fundamental. If the scriptures are fallible, how can you trust them?

01:41:38

If you can't trust them, why quote them? Well, if you don't believe in them, then did God really say? You get back to Genesis 3, 1.

01:41:44

That's right. All right. Very good. Jasmine asks, would you say those who don't believe in hell or teach annihilationism, would you say that that is heresy?

01:41:53

Yes. All right. Not damnable, but heresy. Just so you know,

01:41:59

I wrote 180 articles on annihilationism on Karm. Yep. Guys, definitely check out

01:42:04

Karm if you haven't already. There's a lot of stuff there. Very helpful. Very concise. You don't blab on like I do.

01:42:10

I mean, I can't write for my life. Matt, you do a very good job taking a concept and boiling it down to the essentials.

01:42:16

I appreciate that. I told you how to do it. I got to work on it some more. Nathan says, did the

01:42:21

New Testament writers believe they were writing scripture? And if so, where can we see? I don't know what they believed because I can't talk to them and say, did you believe this or that?

01:42:30

So technically the question can't be answered in that sense. Did they believe it? But what we can do is glean information.

01:42:36

Peter said that Paul was writing scripture and Paul said such things as, I say to you, not the

01:42:42

Lord. So he was aware that he was speaking some inspired stuff as well. To what degree and what issues? That I can't tell you.

01:42:49

Good. Next question, would election be a secondary issue? I bring it up over the easy believism that is running around rampant.

01:42:56

Election is never said to be an essential doctrine of the Christian faith. But, you know, if it's a question

01:43:02

I could, if I could find something in the scripture that says that we have to understand and be elect or something like that, then maybe we could raise it a level.

01:43:09

But a lot of times people just don't understand what election is, but I would say it's a secondary issue.

01:43:15

I'd say it's an issue of audiophora. All right. Very good. Would Matt debate a woman? Yes. All right.

01:43:22

She's not my wife. Well, yeah, by the way, I think you've had a woman or you debated a woman a while back, an atheist, a woman where she said something to do.

01:43:32

I remember that. I still remember that conversation. I've only listened to it once where she said that all babies are born atheist.

01:43:37

And you're like, how do you know? She's like, duh, it's two deadlights. She said that.

01:43:43

I go, how do you know that? Yes, I would debate a woman.

01:43:49

I want to debate a woman on women pastors and elders. I would love that. Just ask her, can you bring me a sandwich when we're debating?

01:44:02

That was for fun. I don't know who Brenda is, but she says Matt is not a

01:44:07

Calvinist. Yes, I am. All right, done. There we go. I go to my website, calvinistcorner .com.

01:44:14

I wrote that, calvinistcorner .com. She also says truth is not conformity to the mind of God.

01:44:20

Okay. How would you know that? Yeah. How would you know that's true? Yeah. I had to find what truth is. I think I know who Brenda is, but anyway, go ahead.

01:44:27

Okay, let's see here. We're moving along. We're getting through it. You're doing great, by the way.

01:44:33

Someone's asking, well, I know where the question's coming from. Reformed and Calvinist.

01:44:39

Some people think that's the same thing. Is it the same to say that someone is reformed and someone is a

01:44:44

Calvinist? I think how it works is all reformed people are

01:44:49

Calvinist, but not all Calvinists are reformed. Now, because reformed

01:44:56

Calvinists hold, generally speaking, to infabaptism and covenantal faithfulness, where not all

01:45:03

Calvinists do. Right. So I think those are the main differences, but I use them interchangeably because it's becoming more and more blurred because I don't want to be told

01:45:12

I'm following some guy named Calvin. Right. You know, I follow a guy named reform instead.

01:45:19

Very good. And these terms are their terms. They can be ambiguous. Their qualifications and a lot of these views are, you know, morphing into other things, and it can be difficult to categorize.

01:45:29

Brenda, Eli doesn't know what truth is either. Yes, I do. Truth is that which corresponds to reality or that which corresponds to God, who is the foundation of all reality.

01:45:39

So there we go. There we go. Correspondence theory of truth. That's right. Okay. Unitarianism is a heresy.

01:45:47

I always thought. Okay. Let me see here. We're moving along. These are comments. Now, I know there was a question by let's see here.

01:45:59

Okay. Someone said here, Matt, you've written an article that says playing Pokemon conditions children into accepting occult and evolutionary principles.

01:46:08

Can you demonstrate this conditioning effect? Come on. I like Japanese anime. I should have skipped that question.

01:46:16

It does condition them. And what is conditioning? Getting someone's mind prepared for something or trained in a certain area.

01:46:23

By definition is what it is. And if anybody's involved with it, they're being conditioned for it. It's just simple.

01:46:29

And since I was involved in the occult, I know exactly what it is. And so I did some research on it.

01:46:34

And Pokemon conditions to children to accept and be involved in these kinds of occult and evolutionary things.

01:46:41

It just does. If you've done any research on it, you'd know that. I used to know the entire

01:46:48

Pokemon theme song by heart, all the words and everything. I used to love that cartoon. I know

01:46:53

Gilligan's Island theme song by heart. It's trying people's worldviews, whatever that. Aaron says,

01:46:58

Matt, why in one of the articles you claim that Christ had faith in the father? I'm not sure where I said that or when

01:47:07

I said that or what the context is. So I'm not sure how to respond to it. Right. As a man, logically, would have to have faith and he would have faith in the father.

01:47:16

So there's that kind of context because he's a human being too. And we, by definition, we have faith.

01:47:23

And so he trusted in God, as the Bible says, I forgot where he trusted in God to be with and deliver and things like that.

01:47:29

My wife's calling. Hold on one sec. Sure. I should have the music in the back.

01:47:35

I'm still on the interview with Eli. Is there anything important or okay? You want me to mute?

01:47:43

Oh, thank you. I'll come down and get it later. I'll probably be done in a few. My wife made me something to eat. Yes. Nice. This is not a question, but you might get a kick.

01:47:52

You can refrain from responding because it will take long. But Calvin is Calvinist. Determinism says we don't have any free will about this, but Calvinists don't deny we have free will.

01:48:05

That's right. Original sin is a farce. What say you, Matt? We'll define what original sin is.

01:48:13

And original sin is the sin that Adam first did. That's original sin. So it's true.

01:48:18

And it's also understood to be the transference or the effect,

01:48:24

I should say, of sin upon the progeny. And that's obviously the case, too. So to say original sin is a farce is a demonstrate that you're guilty of original sin.

01:48:32

Okay. All right. Very good. I do have some questions, but they were asked by the same person.

01:48:38

There's a lot of comments here. One question for me. I will honorably take this last question.

01:48:45

Eli, how did your wife like Star Wars? If you don't know, during the quarantine,

01:48:50

I tricked my wife or deceived my wife or conned my wife into watching the Star Wars, all of them, episode one to nine.

01:48:59

Okay. And at the end of the day, she liked it. So I am very, very excited that she is now a somewhat

01:49:06

Star Wars fan. All right. All right. Well, Matt, I think you did an excellent job.

01:49:12

I truly appreciate your friendship, and I appreciate you coming on and talking about this topic and then answering all these questions.

01:49:18

I think you did an excellent job. Thank you. By God's grace. All right. And last point here, if people keep asking me, and one of the things, the result of this show that I've received in personal email is the great interest and growing interest in presuppositional apologetics.

01:49:34

And so I'm constantly asked, what are some great resources to get? So I'm going to suggest a book by Vantill, Christian Apologetics.

01:49:43

It's a thin one, but he lays out his system of apologetics. A very good book. Vantill can be a little difficult to read at times, but I think this one's actually pretty manageable.

01:49:53

Another book that I think is really good, but very difficult to find, actually, a pastor was cleaning out his office and he gave me this.

01:49:59

Really hard to find. And this is a book by Tom Notaro, Vantill and the Use of Evidence, which covers an area of presuppositionalism that a lot of people seem to not understand.

01:50:09

Presuppositionalists do use evidence. Of course, you have John Frames, Cornelius Vantill, An Analysis of His Thought.

01:50:16

But an even better book, sorry, Framians, Bonson's Vantill's Apologetic Readings and Analysis.

01:50:22

I can't show you that book because it is actually holding up my computer at this very moment. There is also this book, a little bit more advanced, but it's called

01:50:28

Revelation and Reason, New Essays on Reformed Apologetics, and it covers a lot of Vantillianism.

01:50:35

An introductory book, We Destroy Arguments by Stephen Feinstein. Introductory, but covers a vast array of issues refuting different worldviews, other religious perspectives as well.

01:50:46

And apparently, last and certainly not least, apparently this is no longer available. And when it is available, it's like $700 somewhere.

01:50:53

The Portable Presuppositionalist. If you don't have this book, I feel bad that it's not available.

01:51:01

But this has the history, a summary of the history of presuppositional thought. It has all of the major categories,

01:51:08

God's existence, logic, the ultimacy of God's word, and it has quotes from Vantill and Bonson's writings that cover all of these other categories.

01:51:17

And towards the end, there are transcripts to multiple presuppositional debates so you see what the methodology looks like.

01:51:23

So if you can get your hands on this book, go for it. I'm sorry if it's not as available as usual.

01:51:30

And lastly, and then I'll kind of conclude with this, a lot of people have been really interested in the issue of presuppositionalism applied to other worldviews, religions.

01:51:39

And so these are introductory level books, but Mike Robinson puts out books that cover all different ways you could apply presuppositionalism.

01:51:48

This one specifically is Presuppositional Apologetics Examines Mormonism. He has one on Jehovah's Witness, atheism, and a whole bunch of other areas.

01:51:55

Introductory, it's from a lay perspective, but definitely some useful information here. You can also download these on your

01:52:02

Kindle. All right. So with that said, Matt, thank you so much for coming on. And I'm sure we can try to snag you on for another episode to cover a different topic, but I very much appreciate it.

01:52:14

Catholicism, atheism, presuppositionalism, you and I could just do our convo things. Get a good question, just go back and forth.

01:52:20

That's right. Awesome. And so a lot of people have found this very, very helpful. Of course,

01:52:26

Humble Clay says another great interview, Eli. Yes, I very much appreciate Matt specifically. And all of the other guests we've had have been great episodes.

01:52:35

If you want to check out my last episode with Scott Oliven, Doug Wilson, and Brent Wasserman, where we speak about the

01:52:41

Trinity and things like that. Definitely check out those past episodes. You'll be very, very impressed by them.

01:52:46

With that said, I'm going to conclude. Thank you so much for listening and joining me for this past hour and 52 minutes.