Interview with Nathan Cravatt pt. 2 (talking Fundamentalism, Deconstructionism, and KJVonlyism

Here I Stand Theology

Subscribe

Download

Share

00

00:00

All right, so tonight we've got a little different view to start us out. We've got Nathan Cravat back with us.

00:07

He's back within seven days. This is a first for the Here I Stand Theology podcast, but we are looking forward to our conversation.

00:14

We're going to continue it, Fundamentalism, Deconstructionism, and KJV -Onlyism.

00:22

Here we go. Here I stand.

00:40

I can do no other. God help me. Will you recant, or will you not?

01:01

Since your majesty and your lordships desire a simple reply, I will answer, unless I am convinced by scripture and by plain reason, and not by popes and councils who have so often contradicted themselves.

01:28

My conscience is captive to the word of God.

01:37

To go against conscience is neither right nor safe. I cannot and I will not.

01:55

Here I stand. I can do no other.

02:04

God help me. All right, welcome to the

02:31

Here I Stand. Wait a minute, that was a little early on that. All right, now welcome to the

02:56

Here I Stand Theology podcast. We are a podcast devoted to a pointed and spirited debate of biblical doctrine.

03:04

The Here I Stand Theology podcast is a ministry of Reformed Baptist Church, meaning we as pastor,

03:10

I am accountable to the elders at the church as well as the congregation. So everything we talk about on the

03:17

Here I Stand Theology podcast should be doctrinally sound and biblically true.

03:24

As we mentioned to you earlier, we have Nathan Cravat back with us today.

03:31

But Nathan, before we bring you in, let me read just a section of scripture. In Acts chapter 28, verse 23 through verse 28, the word of God says this.

03:43

When they appointed a day for him, speaking of Paul, they came to him at his lodging in great numbers from morning till evening.

03:51

He expounded to them, testifying to the kingdom of God and trying to convince them about Jesus, both from the law of Moses and from the prophets.

04:01

Some were convinced by what he said, but others disbelieved and disagreeing among themselves.

04:08

They departed after Paul had made one statement. And this was the statement he said the

04:14

Holy Spirit was right in saying to your fathers through Isaiah the prophet, go to this people and say, you will indeed hear, but never understand.

04:25

And you will indeed see, but never perceive. For this people's heart has grown dull and with their ears they can barely hear and their eyes they have closed.

04:36

Lest they should see with their eyes and hear with their ears and understand with their heart in turn, and I would heal them.

04:45

Therefore, Paul said, let it be known to you that this salvation of God has been sent to the

04:52

Gentiles and they will listen. All right. So the aim and the goal of the podcast tonight is simply to communicate the truth of what the scriptures teach in that we are going to be talking about fundamentalism, deconstructionism, and KJV -only -ism.

05:13

Again, a very concentrated amount. We want to thank our guests. So without any further ado, let's go ahead and bring our guest in.

05:28

All right, Nathan. Was that Lakewood in Houston, Texas?

05:34

Is that what that congregation was? No, I'm not sure. I'm not sure what it was. The guys from Dead Men Walking asked, was it some kind of political convention or something?

05:44

Okay, okay. It kind of looked like Joel Osteen's church. I thought maybe you had a clip from there. No, I don't think it was big enough for that.

05:51

That was more like a coliseum rather than an arena. Yeah, I think so.

05:57

I don't even know if that's the name of Joel Osteen's church. That's just what came out. That shows you how much

06:02

I know about him. I think it is Lakewood Church. I think you're probably right. It's something like that, yeah.

06:08

So how are you making it? I'm making it very well, thank you. Skidded in a little bit late tonight because of a college small group that meets at my house on Tuesday nights.

06:19

But we had a really good weekend. Actually, we're going through the book of Ephesians in our college small group.

06:27

So we covered the entire chapter five tonight. So now you understand why we went over. And it went really, really well.

06:36

It's amazing just sitting back and letting college students talk about what God's Word says, what it actually means, and how they can apply it to their lives.

06:46

I feel like my tank is full tonight. So I'm excited to be back on this awesome podcast with you and excited about the topic.

06:55

Well, thank you again for being back. We've looked forward to this. So you're the very first repeat guest that's been on within seven days.

07:04

So that's pretty awesome. Well, thank you very much. It's funny. I was sitting in this actual seat last night, waiting for you to send the link to me.

07:15

And you were late. And I was trying to figure out what was going on. I checked my email multiple times, checked my text messages.

07:22

And finally, I was like, well, maybe he got caught up with something. So I texted you, hey, man, did you send that link?

07:28

And as soon as I hit send, I realized it was supposed to be Tuesday night. So I drove all the way down here.

07:35

I was so excited about making this appearance on your show, the Here I Stand Theology Podcast, that I came a whole 24 hours early.

07:46

Oh, man. That's pretty awesome. Well, let's get right into it,

07:51

Nathan. Let's refresh the listeners and the watchers on who you are.

07:57

If you would just share a brief bio of who you are, where you're at, what you do. Okay, so I was born into a

08:05

Christian family, independent fundamental Baptist family, was raised in that world.

08:11

My dad was a pastor, was the director of a boys' home. So I grew up in a camp meeting environment.

08:18

We actually had camp meetings at the boys' home and also went to, I think, every other camp meeting within 500 miles of the boys' home.

08:26

I mean, there were weeks, there were months where we were in church almost every day.

08:33

And we went around to a lot of different camp meetings, revival services, and special guests.

08:41

We sang and my dad would preach at churches. So just grew up in that environment, but was radically saved when

08:47

I was about 24, 25 years old. Christ met me in my sin.

08:54

And I had been playing games for a while and really did want to go to heaven and wanted to know that I was saved and didn't have to go to hell, but wasn't interested in repenting of my sins and following Christ.

09:07

And through the brokenness of my sin, very early in my marriage with one child and another one on the way and looking at getting a divorce because of my stupidity,

09:18

God broke my heart, showed me how sinful I was, and I called on Him for salvation.

09:25

And immediately, like I told you last week, I felt the desire to preach the gospel and especially work with youth.

09:31

So just started following the path that God led us on.

09:37

And it has been a crazy 20 -something years. I've been married to Carrie for almost 26 years.

09:44

We have four children, Austin, Elena, Elise, and Mia. And I am one incredibly, incredibly blessed man.

09:52

I was in youth ministry for about 16 years. Then God called our family to plant

09:58

Hope Church in Trenton, Georgia. And that was back in 2016.

10:04

And then last year, about nine months ago, God moved my family to Anderson, South Carolina.

10:10

And I'm the associate pastor and youth pastor at Gospel Light Anderson with Pastor Chad Gamble.

10:18

And my family loves it here. We're excited about this new season of life. And obviously, you know about the podcast,

10:26

The Recovering Fundamentalist podcast. We started over two years ago and just thought, we may be able to minister to a small handful of people.

10:35

And just immediately, it blew up and exploded. And God's allowed us to reach thousands of people and to lead people to Christ, to share the gospel and to help people walk through processing the experiences they had in legalism and fundamentalism.

10:54

So that's a real quick, just about as quick as I can recap. That was wonderful.

10:59

So with the podcast, and I know in listening to y 'all's podcast, watching them, actually,

11:10

I do more watching than I do listening because I'm a visual learner, I think. I do better watching while I listen.

11:18

But y 'all mentioned from time to time, the movement.

11:24

So how quickly has The Recovering Fundamentalist movement gained traction?

11:32

Well, I mean, it was immediate. When y 'all talk about it, what do you mean? So we announced,

11:39

I think, in November that we were starting the podcast, started putting things out on social media and immediately had a huge following.

11:46

By the time we recorded our first preview episode, thousands of people were already immediately listening to it and downloading it.

11:54

I think our first preview episode was like 10 ,000 people just like immediately. It was just like, where did that come from?

12:02

And we didn't know what to do with that. And then we did a second episode.

12:08

And then by the time we got to the first episode, we had over 10 ,000 downloads.

12:14

So through two preview episodes. And we're like, okay, this is bigger than any of us thought it was going to be.

12:23

And it's just amazing how many people this resonated with. And we were, JC and I were both living in Chattanooga at the time.

12:31

Brian Edwards was in Danville, Virginia. And of course, now I've moved to what

12:37

I found out is the Mecca of fundamentalism. And that is

12:42

Anderson, Greenville, South Carolina. And I heard a stat today that there are more independent fundamental

12:47

Baptist churches in Pickens, South Carolina than any other county. And I think in the

12:53

United States. So it's just, this is concentrated independent fundamental

12:58

Baptist world. And that's what I grew up in. Pensacola, Florida was where I was born. That's a huge hotspot for that.

13:06

And then everywhere I've gone, I've just been surrounded by that world. Man, that's awesome.

13:14

That's awesome. So I think someone has asked you this, so I'll let you answer it.

13:21

Is the Recovering Fundamentalist, I said that right, recovering. I'm not saying reforming. I'm trying to discipline myself.

13:29

I'm fine either way. Go for it. Someone once asked,

13:34

I think they asked you, Is the Recovering Fundamentalist podcast a deconstructionist movement or deconstructionist podcast?

13:43

Yeah. And I believe my exact answer to that, I could look up the text message, but my exact answer to that was heck no.

13:51

Just heck no. Absolutely not. We're not deconstructionist by what that term means in this culture.

13:58

Now, I will admit some people need to deconstruct their faith because it's built on a faulty foundation.

14:05

Faith is all about the object, and if your object is Christ, there's no reason to deconstruct.

14:11

But the majority of people that are talking about deconstruction are talking about walking away from their faith and becoming an atheist, agnostic, pagan, whatever.

14:22

And that seems to be glorified even in the church. We're celebrating that, and people are promoting that.

14:29

And I'm all for challenging people, and if they don't have a strong enough faith to know the hope that lies in them, then they need to be challenged on that.

14:38

But for me, I want to encourage people to build their faith.

14:45

And I also went on to tell the guy that asked me that, that we're a reforming movement. We want to see the church purified and reformed, and I believe in the

14:55

Creed Semper Reformanda. I want to see the church always reforming, always coming back in line with Scripture, always coming back in line with the will of Christ.

15:05

Amen. Amen. I love that. I love that terminology, too. That's where Reformanda, we got our name from the term,

15:13

Ecclesia Reformanda, Semper Reformanda, Secundum Verbum Deo. And that's key, according to the

15:19

Word of God. I mean, that was the igniter for the

15:26

Reformation, for a return to the Word of God. Just the Word of God.

15:32

And whether a person is IFB, whether they're Presbyterian, Baptist, Methodist, so on and so forth, we could go on with the denominations all day.

15:42

But the key is always lining up with the Scriptures themselves. Yeah.

15:49

Yeah. And part of it comes down to terminology, because one person may say deconstruction and mean one thing.

15:56

Another person says it means another thing. I remember right when the first Black Lives Matter conversations were coming out, and I was like, what's everybody's problem?

16:04

Black lives do matter. And I was basically taking a stand. I was like, yes, I don't have a problem with that.

16:10

And somebody said, well, have you ever read the Black Lives Matters Creed on their website?

16:16

And I was like, no. And they said, it's not just a sentence. Black lives matters.

16:22

Yes, I can agree with that. Plug any ethnicity into that, any color.

16:28

And I can agree with that. He said, it's a movement, and they've defined the movement, and they have a creed, a vision, a mission.

16:37

And when you start saying that or put the sticker on your car or whatever, wear the T -shirt, you're aligning with that movement.

16:43

And so I went and looked it up. And I found out that they were totally, by their own admission, against the traditional family.

16:50

They're willing to do war against the traditional family, against oppressive, I forget the exact wording, but basically anything that had to do with masculinity, fathers.

17:05

They're against any traditional definition of marriage or the family. They're pro -transgender, everything.

17:12

I mean, they're totally against what a biblical definition of marriage or family or anything like that is.

17:20

So I had to step back and say, hey, I was wrong. And I was the same way with social justice. I was like, the gospel leads to social justice.

17:29

What's the problem with that? Well, social justice means something. Look up the definition. Social justice is referring to basically getting away from the gospel and thinking that social justice is the gospel and so deconstructionism, again, you've got to know what they mean.

17:47

And I wish people would give us the courtesy of finding out what we mean by recovering fundamentalists because a lot of people assume that we are some sort of deconstruction movement or liberal theology movement, and we're not.

18:00

That's the exact opposite of what we are. Amen, amen. Yeah, the

18:06

GotQuestions, do you ever go to gotquestions .org? Yep, I do. They've got some pretty solid stuff on there.

18:14

I won't say all of it, but some of it. But their question and answer page on deconstruction is very good.

18:23

And again, if people would simply put in the time and the effort to research, to research what they say they believe before they step out into it, it's very important.

18:35

That's very, very important. So on their website it says,

18:41

Scripture commands each person to scrutinize his or her faith. And that's true. This includes fact -checking, thoughtful preparation, reasonable skepticism, cooperation with others, multiple perspectives, and an appreciation for all

18:55

God has shown in His creation. I mean, the Scripture itself teaches us as Christians to examine ourselves.

19:04

Every time we come to the Lord's table, we're called to examine ourselves. That means take a deep look at who we are in the light of who

19:12

God says that we are. So, but yeah, I mean, did you grow up listening to rap,

19:20

Christian rap? I didn't grow up listening to it, no. It really wasn't around much when

19:26

I was a kid, but I appreciate some of it now. Yeah, there was a cross movement was one of the solid.

19:34

I don't know if you've ever heard of them, but I encourage you to look up some of their. I mean, they've not been together for a long time, but I remember listening to them as a young Christian, as a teenager.

19:47

And man, I just love their music. But now actually, you know, after all these quote unquote famous Christians who came out, have deconstructed, said they're no longer believers.

20:00

Most recent, a matter of fact, within the past month, one member of cross movement that they were reformed solid

20:07

Christian rap group back in the day. One member, he's called Fanatic Brady.

20:13

I can't remember his last name, but his first name is Brady. But he is one of those that have come out after 30 years in the faith.

20:20

He's now coming out and saying he doesn't believe any of it. And it all boils down to the challenges that he was faced with within as a young man and middle age person in seminary.

20:38

Yeah. I mean, really. So, I mean, I think seminary is a wonderful, wonderful blessing.

20:47

However, too many seminaries, which leads us kind of we'll move forward just a little bit, you know, with what we're going to hear in a few minutes from your debate with Mitch Canuck.

21:01

The cry that he makes is that liberalism has caused a shift away from the

21:07

Bible, which that's where we'll get into the KJV only ism. Yeah. But in reality, again, when it comes down to us taking some, just taking some time and reading up on church history, and even just from the 1900s forward,

21:26

I mean, you know, the fundamentalist, modernist controversy, so on and so forth. There's a lot of those things.

21:33

You had mentioned it in our last, in the last episode, you know, the five fundamentals of the faith, the inspiration of the

21:41

Bible by the Holy Spirit, and the inerrancy of Scripture, the virgin birth, Christ's death, atonement for our sin, the bodily resurrection, and Christ's miracles, right?

21:52

The truthfulness and the true attestation of Christ's miracles. But within the church world, even professing fundamental churches have moved away from the faith that was, as Jude said, once delivered to the saints.

22:16

Yeah. What have you seen along those lines? I mean, in the

22:22

IFB circle and just with your exposure, because you're exposed to a lot of people through the podcast there.

22:30

So what have you seen concerning this movement away from the faith that was once delivered to the saints?

22:36

Well, it comes back to Scripture for me, and that's, we kind of started there.

22:42

We talked about it last episode, and our mission statement, and this kind of answers your last question about deconstructionism and what is the recovering fundamentalist movement, and it answers this next question that we're moving into, that our mission statement says, we exist to help and encourage those whose lives have been negatively affected by fundamentalist legalism in the church and to challenge those who promote tradition over Scripture.

23:10

So you can tell by our mission statement that is not a deconstruction movement.

23:16

We started the podcast not really because we cared what pastors of independent fundamental

23:23

Baptist churches thought of us. We weren't even trying to fix all of them. Yeah, we've spoken into that a lot because a lot of error is propagated in their pulpits, but we exist to help those whose lives have been affected in negative ways through that, and we do want to challenge those who value and promote tradition over Scripture, but that's why people get hurt, because tradition is not on the same level of Scripture.

23:53

I mean, we're not Roman Catholic. That's the whole reason we're Protestant, and I know Mitch Canuff and a whole lot of other people want to say they're

24:00

Baptist. They're not Protestant. They've never been Protestant. Whatever. I suggest you take another church history course or read another book besides the one your professor wrote at your unaccredited

24:13

Bible college. I'm sorry. That was probably uncalled for, but people who claim that Baptists are not

24:18

Protestants, they're not dealing with the reality. And the whole reason the

24:25

Protestants walked away was because tradition was elevated to the level of Scripture, really above Scripture, and then here we are in a movement that came into existence because it was separating itself from that, and now they're elevating tradition over Scripture to the point where we have a debate about things that aren't even in the

24:46

Bible, and I would say it confuses me, but it probably makes me angry more than anything because Mitch Canuff should know better.

24:57

Cody Zorn should know better. When I ask him where he could back that up with Scripture and he couldn't do it. He even did multiple podcasts after the debate trying to clean up the mess that he made.

25:07

He still couldn't back it up with Scripture. So for me, everything comes back to Scripture, and when you have a doctrine that's built on a presupposition or something that, you know, four steps away from Bible doctrine, well, if God said

25:25

He will purify His Word, then that means every language has to have it, and if every language has to have it, then the

25:31

English language has to have it, and if the English language has it, that's the language that the majority of the world speaks, even though it's not, but that's the language the majority of the world speaks, and that means that we must have

25:41

God's Word. Well, you're four or five large steps, miles from where you started, and to trace the trail of breadcrumbs back to the

25:55

Bible is just like a maze, and it's impossible, and anyone who watched the debate can see that.

26:03

So stick with Scripture. Preach the Word of God. Know what it says. Know what it means, and live and die by it.

26:11

Amen. All you old and young preachers that may be watching, pay attention to what Nathan just said.

26:17

That's the truth. Thank you for that, Nathan. Yes, sir. Actually, one of the commentary notes in the

26:24

Reformation Study Bible concerning Luke 1150, let me look at it here,

26:30

Luke 1152, you know, Jesus, through chapter 11, Jesus is rebuking the

26:36

Pharisees, and he says, as he went away from there, the scribes, or I'm sorry, verse 52, woe to you lawyers, for you have taken away the key of knowledge.

26:44

You did not enter yourselves, and you hindered those who were entering. The commentary in my

26:51

Bible here says that through their traditional interpretation of the law, the lawyers had made it impossible for ordinary people to understand the true meaning of the law.

27:00

The Pharisees and the lawyers themselves also used their traditions to evade the demands of the law.

27:09

And again, I think when, as Christians, we devote ourselves, number one, to the

27:16

Scripture, secondarily, to learn from the past, right? Some famous person,

27:22

I'm sure, at some point said this, I don't know who it was, said, if you refuse to learn from the past, you'll be doomed to repeat it constantly, something to that effect.

27:33

But we see this. I mean, from Luke's gospel account, we see the same thing that happened in history with the

27:43

Reformation, right? I mean, the leaning on the tradition, and then we see it repeated over and over and over.

27:51

I mean, you almost literally, from the text we read earlier, a person literally almost has to be intentionally blind and deaf to the reality of the consistency, if you would have it, in the repetition of the same sin by the quote -unquote church throughout history.

28:18

A movement away from the Scripture to tradition or even trying to make a balanced approach.

28:24

That was the whole deal with the Pharisees because their deal with, in Mark, your disciples didn't wash their hands.

28:31

Jesus spoke up and he communicated clearly to them and he said, you're talking about the tradition of the elders and that tradition of the elders,

28:42

I'm sure you know this, but some of our listeners may not, that tradition of the elders that's spoken of,

28:48

I mean, that's in single quotes there in the text, but in any case, he is speaking about the oral tradition.

28:56

The Pharisees and the lawyers held a balanced understanding, but they held a balanced approach, if you would, to God's truth.

29:08

They gave the written word the same authority as the oral tradition, which in reality, the oral tradition was nothing more than constantly trying to get out of what

29:19

God had already said in plain terms. Sorry for going off on that little rant there.

29:25

No, that's good. I agree. And I don't think tradition is a bad thing.

29:33

Tradition is very helpful. Every denomination, every religious tradition has tradition, and it's okay because we use different styles of liturgy, of teaching.

29:50

Every church has a culture, and that's not bad. I'm not going to go into a church in Africa and tell them they're doing it wrong because their traditions are bad.

30:01

Their traditions aren't bad unless their traditions are put on a level of equal with Scripture or above Scripture, or if they go against Scripture.

30:10

That's right. When I start building traditions that can't be found with Scripture, then that's a problem. Everybody has traditions.

30:18

I'm considered more in the contemporary church, the music we do and stuff like that. We have lights that are colored that light up stage or whatever.

30:28

God loves color. He created color. I don't see a problem with that, but people would look at that and say, well, that's wrong.

30:35

That's a tradition. Even contemporary people, even modern churches have traditions.

30:41

The fact that I'll preach in a shirt like this or a flannel shirt or something like that, and instead of wearing khakis or a suit,

30:50

I'll wear blue jeans. That's a tradition. It becomes a tradition, but I don't put it on the same level as Scripture, and I'm not going to embrace a tradition that is against Scripture.

31:01

I was brought up, my dad was a jack of all trades, did all kinds of sheetrock construction work.

31:09

I started doing construction work as a young boy, and as a teenager, made a living doing that. When I got married, my first job was in construction.

31:18

I was on the job one day, and this guy wanted me to cut a whole bunch of boards the exact same length.

31:25

I measured one. I think it was 15 inches or something. We were using them for a specific purpose. I measured it 15 inches, and then put that on the other board and marked it to keep from pulling the tape measure out.

31:35

I cut it, and then I took the one I cut and put it on the next one and cut it. Took that one that I cut and put it on the next one and cut it.

31:43

About 15 or 20 boards later, the guy started yelling at me, the old crotchety boss that had been doing this for 50 years.

31:53

He started yelling at me, what's wrong, boy? Can't you read a tape measure? I was like, yeah, I can read a tape measure, and I know it's right.

31:58

I measured it exact, and I've been careful. He came over and looked and realized that each board

32:05

I was cutting was taking an eighth of an inch off because of the cut.

32:12

I didn't use one standard as my template. I was taking each cut, and every time it was getting a little bit, a little bit shorter and shorter and shorter and shorter, and it was because I didn't have a standard.

32:24

It's that way with scripture. We always correct back to scripture. We're always reforming back to scripture, and if that's not your standard, if tradition becomes your standard, it's a sliding scale, and you can justify anything you want to.

32:39

For me, that was the whole heartbeat of the Recovering Fundamentalist Movement. For me, that's the whole heartbeat of who

32:45

I am as a pastor in a local church is God's word makes God's will very clear to us, and we just need to follow it and obey it.

32:54

Amen, brother. Amen. All right, so let's go to look at some clips here from your debate.

33:04

What was the date of this debate again last year? August 14th. Golly molly.

33:11

2021, the date that will go down in infamy. James White said,

33:17

I walked into the lion's den and walked back out of it. Said it, oh no.

33:24

All right, so this first clip, what we're going to do is we're going to look at your introductory statement in the debate.

33:32

By the way, when the clip plays, our audio will be muted.

33:40

No, no, it won't. No, it won't. I take that back. I take that back. So if you hear me hollering amen, just overlook me.

33:50

Sounds good. And if you want to stop me anytime, we'll do that. So let's play this first clip.

33:55

This first clip is Nathan Gravatt sharing what he believes about the scriptures and biblical doctrine.

34:08

I believe in the 66 books of the Old and New Testament that they're inspired verbally and plenary.

34:16

I believe in the inerrant infallible words of God. I believe the scripture is the very word of God.

34:21

Scripture is our final authority in faith and in practice. Scripture is the primary, is primarily the self -revelation of God.

34:31

Every time we open the Bible, that's the first thing. This is God revealing himself to me. And I want to learn more about God and love him more.

34:38

I believe in the triune God, the father, son, the Holy Spirit existing eternally. He's co -eternal, co -equal in power and glory, having the same attributes and perfection.

34:48

I believe in the literal Genesis account of creation. I believe man is made in God's image.

34:54

I believe in the fall of mankind into sin. I believe we're separated from God and are depraved, wretched, and deserving of God's wrath in our natural lost state.

35:05

I believe in an actual eternal heaven and hell. I believe in the deity, the incarnation, the virgin birth, the sinless life of Jesus Christ, all of his supernatural miracles, his sacrificial atoning death, bodily resurrection, ascension in power and glory, and that he offered one time, once for all, a sacrifice for sins and sat down at the right hand of God because it is finished.

35:30

Amen. And I believe that one day every knee will bow at the name of Jesus and every tongue will confess that Jesus Christ is

35:37

Lord to the glory of God the father. I believe we're saved by grace alone, through faith alone, in Christ alone.

35:42

I believe in the local church. I believe Jesus is the way, truth, and the life, that no one comes to the father except for him.

35:49

I believe in the faith, once for all, delivered to the saints. I believe every one of these essential

35:55

Orthodox Christian doctrines because we have them and they are the testimony of the body of Scripture.

36:02

Amen. We don't have to guess what we believe. We don't get to add and take away from what we believe. And the doctrines of the church are not in flux.

36:09

They are settled and they can be proven clearly from the body of Scripture rightly interpreted.

36:18

Amen. I believe it was Mace Jackson. If Mace Jackson was still alive, you remember

36:23

Mace Jackson? I do. I knew him very well, yes. I believe if he is still alive, he'd say, well, call recess and shout for 30 minutes right there.

36:33

Something to that effect anyway. Yes. Yeah. If that don't bless you, your blesser is broke.

36:39

If that don't light your fire, your wood's wet. We're throwing the countryisms out on them now.

36:46

Come on, man. Yeah, that was what I was raised in. Oh, man. So, I mean, and I'm not saying this because you're on the podcast or because I just genuinely like you.

37:03

I'm saying this because it's an objective statement. I think literally that,

37:09

I mean, you crushed that debate just right there. To me, that was everything.

37:16

And every single point, every time I stood and talked, I came back to the point I was making right there.

37:21

The point I was making by pointing out all of the Orthodox Christian doctrines was that they are

37:28

Orthodox Christian doctrines because they can be clearly found in Scripture, not in conspiracy theories.

37:35

They can clearly be found in church history, and we hold to those because they are the faith once for all delivered to the saints, the deity of Christ, the virgin birth of Christ, the resurrection of Christ, the depravity of man, all those things.

37:51

They are Orthodox doctrines. We don't get to create doctrines.

37:56

The church recognizes the doctrine that the Bible teaches that the apostles taught by the power of the

38:03

Holy Spirit. And as my shirt said, I believe that all Scripture is inspired.

38:09

All Scripture is God breathed. And the problem with King James only -ism is it's just not found in the

38:18

Bible because what it's boiled down to is translationism, or as Timothy Berg calls it, translational absolutism, that one translation is the perfect above everything else, even above the originals.

38:33

And that's just not taught in Scripture. I go on to make the point that the

38:40

Bible has precious little to say about translation except for the fact that it's commanded in the

38:45

Great Commission. He tells us to go into all the world, make disciples, teaching them to observe everything

38:51

I've commanded you. The only way that's possible is if the Bible is translated into their languages.

38:57

And so it is commanded to translate, but the Bible doesn't give us a book explaining how to translate.

39:04

And he doesn't have to because translation, a good translation, is simple.

39:09

Whether it's secular or sacred, you have to be faithful to the original. When you translate something from one language to the other, the original is the standard, and that's how it works.

39:22

Amen. Amen. So on that line, let me look something up real quick here.

39:34

And I can also, while you're looking that up, say that Mitch never answered that point.

39:43

He does not have an answer for that point. If the faith was once for all delivered to the saints, then we have the same doctrines that the early church had.

39:52

We have the same doctrines the apostles had, and we can't wait 17 centuries and introduce 18 centuries and introduce a new doctrine.

40:02

That's not okay. That's not okay. It's not okay for Brigham Young. It's not okay for Joseph Smith.

40:09

It's not okay for Mitch Canuck. That's exactly right, brother. The 1689

40:15

Confession, Section 5 of Chapter 1, actually, it gives one of the clearest and most beautiful annunciations of the

40:26

Holy Scriptures themselves, God's Word, the Bible, no matter whether it's ESV, KJV, whatever the case may be.

40:34

But Section 1 .5 states this, We may be moved and induced by the testimony of the

40:40

Church of God to a high and reverent esteem of the Holy Scriptures and the heavenliness of the matter, the efficacy of the doctrine, and the majesty of the style, the consent of all parts, the scope of the whole, which is to give all glory to God, the full discovery makes it of the only way of man's salvation, and many other incomparable excellencies and entire perfections thereof are arguments whereby it doth abundantly evidence itself to be the

41:13

Word of God. Yet, notwithstanding, our full persuasion and assurance of the infallible truth and divine authority thereof is from the inward work of the

41:24

Holy Spirit, bearing witness by and with the Word in our hearts.

41:29

I mean, it seems like that the KJV onlyists, they only want to go to that style and to that language, and again, they don't want to look at the context that certainly it was commissioned by King James for the church of that time, but it doesn't mean that it was for the church of all time.

41:53

Yeah. All right, so let's move on to this next clip.

41:58

So this is going to be a short clip, about 30 seconds. This is Mitch Canupp introducing some pretty solid names within the

42:10

Christian faith and within our Reformed history, if you would have it there. So let's hear what

42:16

Mitch Canupp says here. For those of you who don't know where the term fundamentalist came from, it was a term of compromise from the very beginning.

42:29

German rationalism came from this country brought over here by Reuben Archer Torrey and by J.

42:35

Gresham Machen, William Whitsitt, and came over here in our seminaries from Erlangen and Coeur and Stuttgart and Berlin and came over to this country and started.

42:48

All right, so let me take that off screen. We'll put us back up here. So to that, he throws

42:55

R. A. Torrey, J. Gresham Machen primarily. Those are the ones I keyed in.

43:01

I'm sure you probably keyed in on them. Oh, yeah. I just want to read just a paragraph, two paragraphs actually.

43:11

So this first paragraph that I'm going to read, the first proof that the Bible is of divine origin and possesses divine authority is the testimony of Jesus Christ to this fact.

43:25

It is very common for quote -unquote advanced thinkers to say that they do not believe the

43:31

Bible as a whole to be the Word of God, but they do accept the authority of Jesus Christ.

43:37

Now, this statement is utterly illogical. For if we accept the authority of Jesus Christ, we must accept the whole

43:44

Bible as being the Word of God of divine origin and of absolute divinity.

43:50

You want to know who said that? R. A. Torrey. R. A. Torrey. Let me read one more real quick here.

43:59

So another quote. Make sure I bring the right one up there. There we go.

44:04

So actually I probably need to apologize, too, for talking through my actions and movements.

44:17

So modern liberalism, it has been observed so far, has lost sight of the two great presuppositions of the

44:25

Christian message, the living God and the fact of sin. The liberal doctrine of God and the liberal doctrine of man are both diametrically opposite to the

44:35

Christian view, but the divergence concerns not only the presuppositions of the message, but also the message itself.

44:43

The Christian message has come to us through the Bible. What shall we think about this book in which the message is contained?

44:50

According to the Christian view, the Bible contains an account of revelation from God to man, which is found nowhere else.

44:57

That was J. Gresham Machen. Now, do either of those statements sound anything even remotely close to liberals who are trying to bring in German rationalism?

45:11

So do you have any idea where he was coming from there? I know you had dinner with him and all that, but did that ever come up?

45:20

No, it didn't. There was pretty light talk while we were eating together and talking in his office.

45:30

But we wanted to save the other stuff for the debate, and I made my mind up before it. I wasn't going to get into that one -on -one until after the debate.

45:39

But interestingly enough, they weren't very interested in talking to me after the debate very much.

45:47

The only way to say it is that he's either ignorant, like massively ignorant, or he's intentionally deceiving people.

45:56

And I believe it's the second one. I think he has bought in so deeply to this conspiracy theory that he's willing to say whatever he has to say to justify himself.

46:09

And when you start speaking lies that are just clearly proven by history and by people's own words of what they believed, like demonizing

46:21

Westcott and Hort, where one of those guys was a really pretty solid guy, and the other one was not.

46:28

But then when you lump them in together and try to misconstrue and misrepresent what they said and what they believed, when we actually have letters, tons of letters written by them saying what they believe and things that they wrote and said themselves, and you're just thinking you can rewrite history because no one in your congregation has probably read that book, or no one could possibly have known them in person.

46:52

So you just twist something they say to sound wrong. That's what politicians do. Preachers should be better than that.

47:00

Amen, Nathan. I wonder how many congregations on a weekly basis hear from their pastor and elders from the pulpit publicly, they hear this statement, do not just take my word for what you're hearing.

47:18

Test everything that you hear according to the Scripture. That's one of the challenges that we give to our congregation each week.

47:26

Take the message. Listen to it again and again and again, not so you can know what

47:32

I said, but so that you can test what I say, so that you can be versed and learned in the

47:38

Scripture, so that if anybody does come, whether intentionally or unintentionally, trying to mislead you or trying to mislead you, that you're able to identify that issue and that problem.

47:51

I believe Spurgeon said something to the effect that it's not enough for us just to know the difference between truth and lies, but to know the difference between truth and half -truths.

48:05

Yes, that's good. I mean, a little poison will kill you just the same as a large dose.

48:11

It just takes a longer time to kill you, but you still end up dead. Except a man be born again, he cannot enter the kingdom of heaven.

48:20

That's what the Scriptures say. It's not a matter of our trying, of our doing, of our trying to convince people.

48:29

Unless the Lord, like with our testimonies, any saved person's testimony is that.

48:36

Unless the Lord convinced us of our sin and our lostness before Him, we would still be lost.

48:42

But thanks be unto God that He has. Amen. All right, so let's watch this next one, another short one.

48:53

And if you believe those five doctrines, then you had fellowship. Hey, you

49:00

Baptist folks, something missing there? What about the inspiration and preservation of the

49:06

Scripture? What about baptism by immersion, which is the only scriptural form of baptism?

49:14

Amen. What about the eternal security of the believer? What about soul liberty?

49:23

That I don't have a right to take this brother, or these brothers, or anybody else here, and shoot you, or cut you, or stab you, or cut your throat.

49:35

So I'm not sure soul liberty is really talking about cutting or stabbing or doing anything to anybody like that.

49:43

But I'm pretty sure liberty of conscience is a whole other thing, right? Yeah, I think it is.

49:51

I see where he's going with that, that you shouldn't be forced into believing something.

49:57

But again, he's changing the whole topic. There's some sermons he has on YouTube that get off into some crazy stuff.

50:05

The thing that gets me about that clip is right where you started it, and he says what he thinks are the five fundamentals of the faith, and then he says, do you notice anything's missing?

50:19

What about the preservation and inspiration of Scripture? Well, the first one is the inerrancy of Scripture, which covers all of that.

50:27

So it was the foundation. It was the foundation of the fundamentalist movement.

50:35

Then he acts like that wasn't even a part of it. I didn't even get a chance to answer that in the debate because it moved so quickly, and I think after that we moved to a different topic.

50:46

But he says he denies fundamentalism while he's standing in an independent missionary

50:52

Baptist church, and half the pastors there saying amen and shouting amen to him were independent

50:59

Baptist church pastors. Yet he's saying he's not a fundamentalist, and that was the whole impetus for the independent fundamental

51:10

Baptist church movement was fundamentalism. Exactly. I know it. I know it.

51:16

So here's the moderator, Cody Zorn, asking, was this the first question or the second question?

51:26

It was the first question, I believe. Do we have a perfect? Okay, here we go. Oops. Question again.

51:35

Do we have a perfect Bible in our hands today? If so, where is it?

51:42

If not, why? All right. So that was obviously a

51:49

King James only jab. Yeah. I mean, right out the box, you know where that's coming from.

51:59

Yeah, and it's important to know that Cody and Mitch wrote these questions.

52:06

Together? I'm sure, yeah. Mitch probably did, but Cody was the one that said he came up with the questions.

52:15

And everybody that I counseled with about doing this debate said you have to change the questions because they're slanted, they're biased towards his position.

52:24

And I said, no, I want to answer his questions because everybody in that, most of the people in that room, there were a pretty good number of people from Recovering Fundamentalists and our friends in non -King

52:38

James positions, but the majority, vast majority of the room was people that were

52:43

King James only. So I wanted to meet them on their turf and answer their questions. And, you know, another, after the debate, another one of Cody's friends and I got into a long discussion and he started asking me this question again.

52:59

You never answered this question. Do you have a perfect Bible? And if so, put it in my hands. I was like, well, first of all, the question is flawed.

53:08

It's a flawed question. It's like me asking you, why did you beat your grandmother yesterday? And should

53:15

I turn you into the police? Well, it's a biased question. It's a leading question and it assumes things that aren't necessarily true.

53:23

So he just kept pressing this question. I kept trying to answer. And finally, I said, OK, I will answer your question.

53:30

Do we have a perfect Bible today? And can you put it in my hands? If you can answer the question for me, did they have a perfect Bible before the

53:39

King James Version was written? And could you put a perfect, pure, preserved word of God in someone's hands before the

53:47

King James Bible was written? Do you want to know what this guy said to me? What did he say?

53:53

He said, well, I don't care what they had before 1611.

53:58

He said, all I know is that now we have one. I said, you have to answer it like that because there's no answer to that question.

54:07

Because if you say that it did exist, then the King James Version changed it and it's sinful.

54:14

And if it didn't exist, then why would we have to have a perfect one now? So he knew that there was no answer to that question.

54:22

So he's like, I don't have to know the answer to that question. I don't even care. All I know is I have one now.

54:28

So that shows you what kind of logic we're dealing with and what kind of dishonesty we're dealing with.

54:34

Yeah, and I don't even mean this in an ad hominem way, but true ignorance, that's what it is.

54:42

It's true ignorance. It really is. A willful ignorance at that, which makes it even worse.

54:48

All right, so let's hear what Mitch Canut says in his answer, part of his answer there.

54:54

Here we go on that. Verse 15, Paul writing tells

55:00

Timothy that from a child that's known the Holy Scriptures, which are able to make thee wise unto salvation.

55:06

And then he talks about his mother and his grandmother Lois that had the Scriptures just like Timothy had. In 2

55:13

Timothy 3, the rest of the chapter says, all Scripture is given by inspiration of God and is profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, for instruction in righteousness, that the man of God may be perfect, truly furnished unto all good works.

55:30

Real quick. So it may be just me.

55:36

I'll ask you this. I think that is one of the kind of verses that the

55:45

King James only will hone in on and even make sure that they pronounce or accentuate that term truly.

55:55

I've noticed that. The word Scripture or Scriptures is rendered 53 times in your

56:05

King James Bible. The standard teaching in most Bible colleges is that 2 Timothy 3, 15 to 8 or 17, referring to the original manuscripts.

56:16

I can hit on Bible colleges. I've taught in eight different ones. But I'm telling you what they teach.

56:23

Some long -tenured Greek professors teaching that that's the original manuscripts. How did Timothy have the original manuscripts?

56:30

And his mother and his grandmother have them. Every time, listen, no exceptions.

56:36

Exceptions disprove a rule. They don't overthrow a rule. But in this case right here, all 53 times in your

56:44

Bible, every time the word Scripture or Scriptures is alluded to, rendered, it's copies of Scriptures that somebody had in their hand that were not the original manuscripts.

56:58

What say you there? I'm saying what I would say there is he proves my point.

57:04

He proves my point that he has a very weak view of preservation. He doesn't believe

57:11

God preserved the original wording, the original languages, and so we have to have a new standard.

57:20

He thinks we lost all the originals. He does not think God preserved the original languages, which is a problem if you understand preservation.

57:29

And so he thinks that God decided, okay, we need a new standard in 1611, and that is the

57:36

King James, and it's better. He actually teaches it's better than the originals. And it's just nonsense.

57:44

Not to mention this whole thing he's talking about. Timothy proves my point more than it proves his point.

57:51

But the way he presents it is very, very dishonest. Yeah, and again, just going back to checking stuff out,

58:00

Blue Letter Bible is an awesome resource. I encourage our listeners to go there because you can get interlinear

58:06

Greek and Hebrew, and you can really proof check what folks say.

58:12

He said 50 some odd times, right? So I ran a search for Scripture in the ESV 32 times.

58:19

That word Scripture is used, as he says, rendered. I searched it on the

58:24

KJV 32 times in the KJV. So even his numbers aren't right.

58:35

That's not the only thing that wasn't right. But, yeah, that's one of the many. The original manuscripts perished many, many years ago.

58:45

The original Hebrew does not exist. The original Aramaic does not exist.

58:51

The original Greek does not exist. But yet they all say the original

58:57

Greek says. They don't have the original Greek. Not only that, but the textus receptus, the received text that made up your

59:07

King James Bible was tampered with in the late 1800s by Frederick Scrivener and Carl Lachman and Constantine Tischendorf, amen, and Samuel Tregellas, who were all

59:20

King James Bible haters. They messed with the textus receptus and there is no longer the textus receptus available.

59:30

It's a textus receptus. It's been perverted. You say why?

59:37

Because God gave you a Bible. Greek, only 2 % of the world spoke Greek. Only 1 % of the world ever spoke

59:44

Hebrew at any time in the history of man, but nearly 90 % of the world speaks

59:50

English. If God is going to give a Bible, he's going to give it in the

59:55

English language. Hold on flag on the play.

01:00:06

When I heard that, when I watched that year debate the first time, oh my gosh.

01:00:11

I don't know if your wife gets on to you or even if she, if she can tell when you're just upset.

01:00:18

I mean, I was livid the first time I heard this, him say this. I mean,

01:00:23

I literally could not believe. Yeah, it's, it's ridiculous. And again, he, he said in that first part of that segment that we do not have the original languages.

01:00:33

So God did not keep his promise to preserve his word because here's the thing.

01:00:39

If they want an absolute perfect word for word, exact perfection, it has to be in the original languages because Theopneustos is not inspiration.

01:00:56

It's not the exact same word. The letters are different. It's, it's, it's just different.

01:01:02

That's not perfection. He's not gonna, he's not gonna let John 3, 16, you know,

01:01:09

God's one and only son be acceptable when the King James says God's only begotten son.

01:01:15

But then he, he claims that I just, it's, it's mind boggling how he can say it's exact, perfect, pure word for word.

01:01:25

The only way you can have an exactly perfect, pure preserved word for word is in the original languages because when you change it, it's a different word that goes to meaning that transitions to meaning and we're all for meaning.

01:01:43

But then he'll get on there and talk about how, you know, the, the different types of translations and how, you know, the

01:01:50

King James is the most accurate because it's a word for word. No, it's not word for word. Even the translator said they were translating meaning, but anyway, then he's translating, oh, it's not the exact word.

01:02:01

It's the exact English comparison of that word, which is finding the word that means the same thing.

01:02:07

So they're leaning on meaning. They're leaning on word for word and they do not have an argument.

01:02:13

It's, it's ludicrous. Yeah, I agree. Well, let's, let's end this on something positive here.

01:02:20

This is Nathan Cravat. Same standard by which he berates other faithful versions.

01:02:28

I'm sorry, but conspiracy theories, numerology, even if you call it numerics out of context, teaching disregard for authorial attempt, symbolism, topology, dishonest and faulty logic will never convince me.

01:02:43

And it should not convince you of the King James version only position. What does the

01:02:48

Bible teach about translating Holy Scripture into other language? We're talking about translations.

01:02:54

They often mix the categories, but we're talking about translating Scripture. What does the Bible say about that?

01:03:00

It commands us to do it in the great commission. Amen. We're commanded to do that because we can't spread it throughout all nations.

01:03:07

If we don't translate the words, but it doesn't specifically restrict or instruct us how to do it.

01:03:15

Why? Because we don't need, it doesn't need to. Translations have one task, whether they're sacred or secular to be faithful to the originals.

01:03:26

If the translation is faithful to the originals, it is a good translation and if it's not faithful to the originals, it's not a good translation.

01:03:36

This is the standard across the board. So by what standard do you claim the

01:03:42

King James version is re -inspired? It had better be Scripture. In context, according to the body of Scripture, I mentioned the deity of Christ because it's seen throughout

01:03:53

Scripture. Clearly, Jesus bears the names and titles of deity in John 1, 1, 18,

01:04:00

Titus 2, 13. I could go on and on. Jesus possessed the incommunicable attributes of deity.

01:04:05

His aseity or self -existence in John 5, 26, his immutability in Hebrews 13, eternality in Micah 5, 2,

01:04:13

Isaiah 9, 6, John 1, 1 -2, Hebrews 7, 3, Colossians 1, 15, 2

01:04:18

Corinthians 4, 4, Colossians 2, 9 -10 in Hebrews 1, 2 -3. Jesus partakes of the prerogatives of deity.

01:04:25

He shares God's glory. He receives worship. He's prayed to. He's believed on.

01:04:30

He's followed. Jesus is attributed with the works of deity, creation, forgiveness of sin, final judgment, whatever the father does.

01:04:39

And Jesus claimed deity that he was equal with the father. You can do a podcast on this doctrine for decades and never run out of clear in context

01:04:48

Bible verses to serve as the foundation of this. Amen, brother. Amen.

01:04:55

And amen. I don't think we could end on a better note there. Dude, I want you to know truly,

01:05:02

I appreciate your stand on the truth of the scriptures.

01:05:08

I appreciate your, what I know of you, your faithfulness to the word.

01:05:15

And again, we mentioned off camera earlier, but I hope we can grow our friendship rather over time.

01:05:20

Yeah, man. I would look forward to that. And thank you so much. Those are very encouraging words.

01:05:26

And it's a little bit surreal looking back on that because so much time and effort went into that and so much prayer went into it.

01:05:33

So many people were holding me up in prayer. And the greatest thing that came out of that was that my own father and my own brother, who are both very strongly

01:05:44

King James users, both came to me and said how proud they were of me, of how

01:05:51

I presented myself and it opened a lot more conversation between us.

01:05:57

And my dad, when he found out about this debate before it happened, he found out and he called me and he said,

01:06:04

I talked to my friend and named this pastor and told him about it. And he said, he asked me if you were going to attack the

01:06:13

King James. And he said, I know my son and my son is not going to attack the King James.

01:06:18

And he said, is that right? And I said, dad, you're exactly right.

01:06:24

I said, you know, I use the King James. You know, I love the King James. You know, I think it's one of the better, maybe even the best translation.

01:06:32

I think that could be argued, but I'm not going to attack it.

01:06:37

And I even told Mitchkin up multiple times throughout the debate. I'm not here to attack the

01:06:42

King James version because what he's teaching can't be found in the King James version. How ironic is that?

01:06:49

But we do have something to stand on. We have God's word and man,

01:06:56

Mitch's podcast. I don't know if you've ever had the privilege to listen to it.

01:07:03

If you got fired up at the debate, you should listen to the podcast. It gets worse. It's crazy how much stuff he says.

01:07:08

But in the podcast, he starts with conspiracy theory. He talks about a tale of three cities and how

01:07:17

Rome and Alexandria and Antioch. How, you know, those three cities define

01:07:23

Bible translation. No, they don't. That's that's not found anywhere in Scripture. And he goes deep into all that and stuff.

01:07:30

But I don't that's shaky ground. Conspiracy theory, shaky ground, tradition, shaky ground.

01:07:35

I want to stand on Scripture and I appreciate you and what you stand for. And the opportunity to come on and and speak about this because I'm passionate about God's word.

01:07:45

And it's the it's our final. It's our final authority and faith and practice. And it's sufficient.

01:07:51

And my problem is I need to live up to it better than I do.

01:07:57

And we're all there. And that's that's that's where we're at. And that's why

01:08:02

I spent, you know, an hour and a half tonight with a bunch of college students walking them through Ephesians, because that's the only thing that they can build their life on that will stand.