We're all heretics now? | Livestream AMA

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🎵Outro

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Music🎵 Welcome, welcome, welcome, welcome everyone to Wise Disciple Live!

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We have made it to 6 ,000 subscribes! 6 ,000!

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Yeah, yep, and that is because of you, so I'm very grateful to you for subscribing, for watching, for liking, for sharing, all the things that you're doing is helping

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Wise Disciple reach more people in the name of Jesus Christ. If you're watching for the very first time, howdy!

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My name is Nade Sala. I am not from the South, so I don't know why I said howdy just now.

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So, I was, I was actually born in American Samoa. Any Samoans with me in the chat?

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Let me pull up the chat here. Any Samoans? Okay. Any Usos here?

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No? Talofa and Faftailava for watching? Nobody. That's fantastic. Like The Rock, I am half

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Samoan, and apparently there's not a lot of us out there, so we are rare birds. Me and The Rock.

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Well, okay, again, if this is your first time watching, I'm the president of a Christian nonprofit organization called

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Wise Disciple, and here at Wise Disciple, we're helping you become the effective Christian that you were meant to be.

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What does that mean, Nade? Thanks for asking. It means that we're helping you to think, speak, and act more effectively as a

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Christian in today's culture. Because, you know, let's face it, the culture is becoming more and more anti -Christian every single day.

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It's getting harder and harder to be a Christian in today's kind of climate, you know? More and more people are getting angry, and they're clashing with each other than ever before.

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We have actually reverted—I was talking to William Lane Craig about this, I think it was a couple years ago—we have reverted right back to the polarization of the late 1960s.

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So how do we navigate our faith in this environment? Well, we're showing you.

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This channel here, with each video that I make, we're showing you. So stick with me. Click that subscribe button, like the video, so that we can hit the algorithm and do all the things that I don't even really truly understand, but it's what other people say, and I'm saying it, too.

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What I'm getting at is more people can become aware of what we're up to if you subscribe, and you like, and you share what we're doing.

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Well, anyway, I have two things for you in this live stream as a huge thank you for 6 ,000 subscribes.

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If you're joining, just come on in. Oh, we got Puerto Ricans in the crowd. Okay, there we go.

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Puerto Ricans. Yeah, so I don't—Ray Naldo, and also

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Paul. Or Paul's not Puerto Rican. But is anybody—so

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I was born in—I don't want to okay, but I was born in a hospital on a

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U .S. base in American Samoa, okay? And so I came to the

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States when I was a baby, like, you know, so there's no accent here. There's no—and I'm fully, you know,

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Americanized. But what is the experience?

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I always grew up thinking, you know, I don't really belong anywhere. I don't quite look like other people.

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I don't, you know, I—and so I kind of did this weird thing. Put it this way, when I was growing up as a child, Superman was my favorite comic.

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Because Superman—I got Superman. Superman comes in. He walks among people.

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He kind of looks like other people, but he's not like them, and he feels the awkwardness, and he feels out of place.

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And that's what I felt. I'm half Samoan, and I'm part Syrian. As far as I know, there's nobody else with that combination of ethnicity out there in the world.

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So I don't know. If anybody—if you know what I'm talking about or what it feels like, that sort of angst,

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I really felt that as a child. And so if that's how you feel, then I get you. We get each other. Well, anyway, thanks.

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Come on in. Come on in, everybody. Thank you for joining me for the livestream. So anyway, I have two things for you in this livestream.

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I have questions that you sent me. So I posted this in the community tab. I haven't done a livestream in so long now.

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I'm realizing I needed to pull all this up ahead of time, and I didn't. And that's fantastic.

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I'm a professional. So here, let's just—let's go ahead and do this while I got this going here.

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There we go. I think I'm good. Anyway, but before we get into those questions, let's take a look at a recent survey that came out—I think it was in September.

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This survey is about American evangelicals. So if you are an American evangelical or even a

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Christian, this should be troubling to you. Okay, I'm going to go ahead and pull this up here. Bear with me.

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I know what I'm doing. There's the article, right? And the article is from Christianity Today.

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It says—so it's top five heresies among American evangelicals. It says it's 2022, but Arianism and Pelagianism are steadily making a comeback, according to the

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State of Theology report. All right, so buckle your safety belts. Did anybody see this article when it came out?

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Anybody in the chat, you already are aware of this article? Yeah, it's an eye -opener. So let's just go ahead and read some of the article here.

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So it says, American evangelicals' grasp on theology is slipping, and more than half affirm theoretical views of God in this year's

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State of Theology survey, released Monday by Ligonier Ministries and Lifeway Research.

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Okay, I'm not the first person to say this. Boy, it really has been a long time.

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Can you see everything in here? All right. I'm not the first person to say this, but I have been talking quite a bit about biblical illiteracy.

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As a matter of fact, I was talking to Greg Cockel about this recently, where he shared my concerns here.

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Biblical illiteracy is one of the fundamental issues with Christians of all stripes in America today.

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Now, I know somebody's watching, and maybe you're in the chat right now, and you're thinking to yourself, no, my denomination is great.

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It's those Presbyterians over there. It's those Baptists over there. It's those Protestants that are ignorant.

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No, it's not. We're all largely biblically illiterate. I'm going to focus on American evangelicals, but this is across the board, ladies and gentlemen.

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Biblical illiteracy is across the board, and we all need to develop our understanding of theology.

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And I guess along those lines, we all share the blame, in some sense, for this. And if you're one of those who's—you're more aware of things, and you have a developed understanding of theology, you should be, and I hope you are, pouring into other brothers and sisters around you so we all grow in this area.

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Amen? Well, anyway, this is what happens. These heresies that are floating around—we're going to read some—are what happens when

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God's people become biblically and doctrinally illiterate. All right, so let's read the article.

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It says, overall, adults in the U .S. are moving away from orthodox understandings of God and His Word year after year.

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More than half of the country, 53%, now believe Scripture is not literally true. Okay, up from 41 % when the biannual survey began in 2014.

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Researchers call the rejection of the divine authorship of the Bible the clearest and most consistent trend over the eight years of data.

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This view makes it easy for individuals to accept biblical teaching that they resonate with while simultaneously rejecting any biblical teaching that is out of step with their own personal views or broader cultural values, the researchers wrote.

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So let me skip down here. This is where it gets interesting. In the 2022 survey—this just came out, like I said,

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I think it was September when it came out—around a quarter of evangelicals, 26%, said the Bible is not literally true, up from 15 % in 2020.

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Okay, now, I haven't seen that survey, the one that they're referencing in this article, all right? I'm just reading the article here from Christianity Today.

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When this live stream is over, I'll put this in the notes below. I don't know about the kinds of questions that were asked in the survey to lead to the 26 % number.

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I mean, I think that's probably an accurate representation of Christians, I mean, just considering, again, how illiterate we are compared to generations past.

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But it is possible that the way the questions are worded in the is maybe ambiguous enough to bring that number down from a more accurate representation of where evangelicals are.

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Again, I don't know. I'm speculating here. I haven't seen the questions for the survey.

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The reason I say that is, it's possible that a more educated

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Christian is going to see the phrase, the Bible is literally true, and go, okay, but wait a second, what does that mean, right?

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Because a more educated Christian is going to recognize immediately that the Bible is a collection of 66 books spanning multiple authors across multiple centuries.

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Many of these authors were geographically removed from each other, some vastly removed in time and location, and so there are a number of different genres that the

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Bible is written in, some poetic, some prophetic, some are written in terms of recounting history, which should be taken literally, by the way, but not all of it is in one genre, and so that could play into these numbers being so low.

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It really just depends on whether the word literal is key to the survey and how respondents understand that word, but again, who knows?

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I haven't seen the questions for that, so I'm just speculating, but let me keep reading here. They also became more likely to consider religious belief a matter of personal opinion and not about objective truth.

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38 % said so in 2022 compared to 23 % in 2020. Now, that's a problem, right?

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If they're more likely to consider religious belief a matter of personal opinion, they're not getting that from the scripture.

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They're getting that from the culture and maybe, you know, from politics.

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I don't know. Barack Obama more recently shifted our constitutional right to express our religion in the public square.

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He did this in some of his, you know, presidential speeches. He tried to say things that—and shift things and kind of say that, well, we have a right to express our, you know, we have a right to express our religion in certain designated locations.

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That's what he said, certain designated locations, and that's not true. If you look closely at our

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First Amendment rights, we have the right to express our religion in the public square. That's what free exercise of religion means.

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See, man, it's more than just biblical illiteracy, guys. I mean, this is civics.

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This is basic civics. Like, if you had graduated high school in the 1950s, you would be way more educated than—well, anyway, okay.

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Former high school teacher talking here. I'm diverting. The point is, the

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Great Commission that Jesus gave us is not meant to be understood as private and subjective and a matter of personal opinion.

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These are marching orders for every Christian, and so if you're watching this video and you're a Christian, you should be fulfilling the

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Great Commission in some capacity in your daily life on a weekly basis. If you're not, put the video down and start doing it.

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Amen? Anyway, all right, we're getting into the five top heresies of American evangelicals.

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Everybody still with me on the live stream? Y 'all still good? All right, here we go.

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Let's do it. More than half, 56—oh, excuse me. Number one, Jesus isn't the only way to God, okay?

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More than half, 56 % of evangelical respondents affirmed that God accepts the worship of all religions, including

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Christianity, Judaism, and Islam, up from 42 % in 2020. And while the question doesn't include all religions, it indicates a bend toward universalism, believing there are ways to bypass

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Jesus in our approach to and acceptance by God. This contradicts orthodox theology found in the scriptures, in which

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Jesus affirms that, I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me, all right?

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That's John 14, 6. It gets more involved than that, okay? The God of the

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Old Testament says, you shall have no other gods before me, right?

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I am the first and the last. Besides me, there is no other God. I mean, these are all not merely descriptions but injunctions to recognize only

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God, only Yahweh, the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, the

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Father who sent his son Jesus to die for our sins, as the one true God that must only be worshipped by us.

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So you have to put all of that together with Jesus, saying to his disciples, no one comes to the

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Father except through me, right? If you do not abide in Jesus' words, you are of your father the devil.

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These are things that we need to put together. It makes a framework for us to understand what's going on here in terms of salvation.

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And by the way, none of this in this biblical framework leaves any space for any other path to the Father. It is not true that all roads lead to Rome, as it were.

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Jesus said the gate is wide and the path is easy that leads to destruction, but the gate is narrow and the way is hard that leads to life, and few find it.

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Again, put that all together, and you have no liberty to conclude that Jesus isn't the only way to God.

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Of course he is. And those who do conclude that he's not are simply biblically illiterate, which is where a lot of this comes from.

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I think that's kind of my take on this, right? The thrust of the article and why

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I'm going over this is not for us to simply go, these are the five heresies that American evangelicals suffer from. No, there's something going on underneath that that I want us to think about, and I think it's biblical illiteracy.

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At least it's one of the major factors, right? The heresies that pop up in our churches are simply due to our biblical and doctrinal illiteracy, and that's a real shame.

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All right, let's keep going. Number two, so that's heresy number one.

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Heresy number two, Jesus was created by God. A surprising 73 % agreed with the statement that Jesus is the first and greatest being created by God.

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This is a form of Arianism, a popular heresy that arose in the early 4th century.

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Those believing it caused such a stir that it led to the gathering of the very first Ecumenical Council of Church Leaders.

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They discussed and denounced these and other unorthodox beliefs as heretical for being contrary to Scripture.

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I mean, it gets worse than that, you know? Arius was a bit of a rabble -rouser, if you know your history.

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He was unabashed in his views, able to rally his troops, so to speak, proclaiming that the

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Father and the Son were two separate beings, and that one was subordinate to the other.

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And this came from Arius's understanding of Oregon, although, as far as I remember, Oregon wasn't as weird in his beliefs as Arius was.

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But, nevertheless, Arius got all of his followers so up in arms about his beliefs, and then also, like, the response to his beliefs that the

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Arians got out into the streets and they started marching. So Arius was, I mean, like, if there's, like, a parallel to today, right?

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He was a bit of an activist. His people, his followers, got out into the streets and they started marching. And the same is true of the opposing side.

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The opposing side also came out and they started marching against Arians in the street, you know?

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And then both groups met each other in the middle, and then it turned into a Scorsese film, you know?

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It just got—it was a riot, and they just, they went at each other. It's—that's how crazy this got, ladies and gentlemen.

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Let's keep reading. Out of the council of Nicaea came the Nicene Creed, which states, in part, that Jesus was not made, but eternally begotten and one in being with the

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Father, as found in passages including John 3 .16 and John 14 .9.

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Okay, very good, right. So the council of Nicaea comes together, and this is where folks who don't understand the history of the

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Church, they start going all Da Vinci code and saying that Christianity was formed at that point, you know?

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The doctrine all came together and the Bible came together because of the councils. No, it didn't. The doctrine of the

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Trinity was not invented by the councils. It was a word that was used as a shorthand for all the scriptural passages that provide a basis for the doctrine.

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So it starts with Scripture, and that's the problem with Arianism.

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It can't hold up to the full teaching of Scripture. There's an article that I did—I was just talking about this with somebody.

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I'm a professional. I'm doing this live. Let's see if I can do this. There was an article that I wrote years ago.

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So by the way, I have a website. I'm more than just a channel. I actually have a team behind me.

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We have a board. We're a non -profit. And so there's not just this YouTube channel. There's also a website, wisedisciple .org,

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if you're not aware. And I encourage you to check out the website where you can find articles like the one that I'm about to pull up here.

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And I don't know if that's going to be cut out. I don't know if you can see that. So I called this article

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Bible Blueprint. All right. Wrote this years ago. And what this article is going to do—so again, after the live stream,

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I'll go ahead and put the link in the notes for you to take a look at this more closely. But right now, if you're on the chat, just google

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Bible Blueprint Trinity, and it should come up. Anyway, so if you just go through the article, the article is going to give you the biblical basis for the

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Trinity. It tracks along certain key things that are taught in the Bible. So go to this article, use it as a resource for you, because check this out.

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You know, there is only one God, right? This is what the Bible teaches. The Lord is one

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God, Deuteronomy 4 .35, Deuteronomy 6 .4, Galatians 3 .20. There is no other

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God, Deuteronomy 32 .39. Then you go down to—well, Jesus is God, right?

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The Word is God, John 1 .1. Jesus is in very nature God, Philippians 2 .6.

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Jesus and God are one, John 10 .30 -33. So this is going to be an encyclopedic resource for you for all of the references where you find the biblical case that is made in the

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Bible for the Trinity. And so again, the Trinity was not a word that was invented I know there's some hay made by Jehovah's Witnesses about the

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Greek word sort of being adopted and used for the first time to describe the essence of the

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Trinity, and there's truth behind that. But the point is that this word is meant to be a shorthand for everything

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I'm showing you on the screen right now. Look at this. Jesus has God's attributes, right?

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Jesus is eternal. It's taught in Colossians 1 .17. Jesus is immutable. That's in Hebrews 1 .10

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-12. Jesus—look at this. Jesus has the same title and uses the same title as God.

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Jesus is the I Am, John 8 .24. So anyway, this is a really great resource. I encourage you to check this out.

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It's Bible Blueprint, the Trinity. There. I'm a one -man team.

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I'm a one -man—I was just talking about this, by the way, in a short video about Jehovah's Witnesses.

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I thought, legit, I was about to lose my voice, and I was. I was coming down with something. By the way, took some zinc, cleared it right up, okay?

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So I'm not a spokesperson for zinc vitamins, but did the trick because I'm feeling a lot better. I thought

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I might not be able to do this live stream, and so I made a video really quick about Jehovah's Witnesses on Friday.

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The question I got was a little strange. I was trying to work with the question I had, but it was basically, how can we, from the

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Scripture, talk about Jesus to Jehovah's Witnesses? Now, part of the issue—and

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I barely scratched the surface with this in the video—is that Jehovah's Witnesses have crafted their own interpretation of the

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Bible, and they call it the New World Translation. And in certain places, they are butchering the

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Greek in order to get at their own pre -established theology. So instead of, as I mentioned a moment ago,

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John 1 .1 stating, the Word was God, they have to add an article that does not exist in the original

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Greek in order to say, and the Word was a God. In other words, they're just inserting words that do not exist in the original language.

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So Jehovah's Witnesses flunk Greek in order to establish their theology that Jesus was a

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God, separate from God the Father. And that's just one of many reasons why Jehovah's Witnesses are a lot like the

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Aryans. They're the Aryans of our time. But, I don't know, apparently a lot of American evangelicals are following suit, and that's very concerning.

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That's why I'm going over this article. So let's keep going. Heresy number three. There should have been a drumroll.

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I should have planned this better. There should have been a drumroll. Heresy number three. Jesus is not God. Okay?

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So given the above beliefs on Jesus as a created being, it's not too surprising that 43 % affirmed that Jesus was a great teacher, but he was not

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God, which is another form of Aryan heresy. This effectively denies the divinity of Christ and his unity with God the

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Father as an equal member in the Trinity, who is one

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God. He is one God in three persons. This has been considered classic

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Orthodox belief since the early church, and is based on many biblical passages, like where Jesus says,

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I and the Father are one, John 10 30. Right? And for this, he gets accused of blasphemy and threatened with stoning by religious leaders for claiming to be

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God. Right. And, you know, this is what I was just saying. If anyone tries to tell you otherwise that, for example, these concepts like the

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Trinity and Jesus divinity were invented by one of the councils, this just goes to show that they don't know church history.

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Period. The end. And I'm not even an expert in church history. That wasn't, like, the area of my focus for my theology degree.

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But the bottom line is, we all need to understand a bit of church history as Christians, just so we can safeguard ourselves against heresies, because apparently, they're making a huge comeback.

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You know? Heresies and, I don't know, Jimmy Carter -style leadership that leads to recession.

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Can I do that? Is that too soon? Can I say that? Some things are making a huge comeback, right?

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So it had to be said. Come on now. Anyway, so we need to read up on church history. We need to understand how the church thought and spoke, because many have dealt with these things in the past, and they have refuted them soundly.

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Which, again, means that the reason these heresies that were refuted in the past have popped up again is because we just don't know our history.

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We don't know our theology. We don't know our doctrine. And those who don't know their history, as Santayana says, are doomed to repeat it.

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Amen? All right, let's keep going. Heresy number four.

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After this, I'm going to take your questions, and I'd love to give answers to those. Okay, question number four.

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The Holy Spirit is not a personal being. So, speaking of the Trinity, 60 % of the

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Evangelical Survey respondents had some confusion about its third member, believing that the

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Holy Spirit is a force, but is not a personal being. To be fair, the

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Spirit of God is often described as an impersonal force throughout the Bible, sometimes as a dove, a cloud, fire, wind, or water.

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But these are all just metaphors for the Spirit's personal presence. The Scriptures clearly affirm that the

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Spirit is fully God. Just like Jesus and the Father who sent us the Spirit, including the time when

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Ananias was described as simultaneously lying to the Holy Spirit and to God.

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Okay? There's a great book by Dr. Michael Horton. It's called

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Rediscovering the Holy Spirit. It's a great read. I think—so, I just want to give you a couple books on this.

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Francis Chan maybe wrote a book on this a long time ago, Forgotten Holy Spirit or something like that.

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I mean, the fact is, the article is correct. Many of us neglect our understanding of the Holy Spirit as a person and as a personal being.

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We have no idea what it means for the Holy Spirit to dwell inside us. And I think many of us oscillate too far into opposite categories, right?

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When we do try to understand the indwelling Holy Spirit, we sort of—it's almost like teeter -totter.

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We're either of two extremes, you know? Some veer way far over into the idea of the

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Holy Spirit having long conversations with them on a daily basis. All right? They speak in tongues, and they're having long conversations with God.

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And then I said to God, and then he said back to me, but then I said back to him. Okay? And then you have—so that's the one side.

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And then on the other side, others veer way far over into the Holy Spirit being this,

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I don't know, like, initiating mechanism of salvation at the moment of conversion and then doing almost nothing for the believer ever since.

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Both of these extremes misunderstand the Holy Spirit, and we need to understand him. We need to understand his work for us, because the reality is, there is no way that we can truly appreciate and understand and even say what the

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Apostle Paul said in places like Galatians 2 .20 or Philippians 2 .13,

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right? Galatians 2 .20, it is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me. In the life

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I now live, in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God who loved me and gave himself for me, right?

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Philippians 2 .13, it's God who works in you, both to will and to work for his good pleasure. We can't—we can't even yes and amen these things on a deep sense even say these things about ourselves if we do not understand the

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Holy Spirit and his daily role in our lives. The Holy Spirit is absolutely a personal being, friends.

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He convicts folks of sin. He is the agent of regeneration for a person who becomes born again, but he's also a teacher.

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He teaches us and guides us into the truth of what Christ has taught, the truth of his words.

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The Holy Spirit transforms our moral and spiritual character in order to conform into the image of Jesus Christ.

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All of these things, by the way, you are incapable of doing in your own strength or flesh, right?

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To—to born again yourself, you can't do that. You know, you can't convict yourself of your own sin.

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You can't guide yourself into the truth of Christ. You can't transform yourself morally and spiritually.

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You can't do any of those things on your own. It is the work of the Holy Spirit in you, and it is your submission to his work that causes these things.

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Anyway, that's a—that's a whole series of videos right there, maybe for another time.

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Finally, heresy number five, humans are not sinful by nature, okay?

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Interestingly, 57 % also agreed to the statement that everyone sins a little, but most people are good by nature.

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So, in other words, humans might be capable of committing individual sins, but we do not have sinful natures.

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This response indicates that many American evangelicals believe humans are born essentially good, which leans toward a heresy known as Pelagianism.

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This denies the doctrine of original sin, which is based on a number of biblical passages, such as Romans 5 .12. Even David acknowledged in the

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Old Testament that humans were born in sin. I know exactly where this comes from, okay?

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And it's not—how do I say this? It's not exactly

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Pelagianism, although the connection is absolutely valid to Pelagianism. This is not exactly

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Pelagianism. This is actually from the Enlightenment, okay? The Enlightenment was a time of—it was a time when the culture moved away from viewing the

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Bible as an absolute, divine, authoritative revelation, okay?

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Textual criticism came to the fore during the Age of Enlightenment. Academics started criticizing the

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Bible. Out of the Enlightenment came the Industrial Age, where a lot of folks, they transitioned out of agrarian -style living, you know, like farm -based, open -country lifestyles, which, ironically, like every farmer's market, we're trying to return back to that.

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I mean, I live in Las Vegas, so that's another—anyway, so, but in the Industrial Age, you had people basically all living in an agrarian -style economy and living in agrarian -style homes, and then a lot of them leaving that and living in the cramped, cobblestone cities with the smoke in the factories, you know, like a

31:28

Charles Dickens story, essentially. And many people liked industrialization, and then many people did not like it, okay?

31:36

Many people thought staying in the country was where it's at. And around this time, a movement emerged that desired to return to nature, and they really deified a lot of the process of being in nature, and they were called

31:49

Transcendentalists. Anybody familiar with them? Transcendentalism, right? They were connected to the

31:56

Romanticists of the European period, of this kind of going into nature.

32:02

But this is where, essentially, poets and thinkers like Ralph Waldo Emerson and Walt Whitman, they were talking about, you know, going back into nature in order to discover the divine.

32:12

But instead of returning to, like, the traditional Orthodox view of Christianity, which is that reality begins with God, is revealed in His Word, and then shapes our understanding,

32:23

Transcendentalism starts with me, puts the focus on myself, and on my experience as discovered in nature.

32:32

And then there's this discovery of the divine inside ourselves, right?

32:39

So you see the difference there. So the emphasis is on seeking the self, personal experience—any of this ringing a bell ?—and

32:49

finding transcendent experience. And again, it's rooted in the Romantic era. In the

32:54

Romantic era, the emphasis was on self and experience, and there were these fundamental assumptions that went along with it, you know?

33:01

And one of them was that the only way to know truth is to know yourself through personal experience, right?

33:08

This is Matrix going to see the Oracle, and above her door, it says,

33:14

Know thyself, you know? The great sort of axiom that is communicated through the

33:21

Matrix, right? Know thyself. This means that personal experience became the way to know ultimate truth.

33:28

Not only that, but this period ushered in a view that humanity is inherently divine and good.

33:34

Now, I had to learn all of these things just so that I could teach English in the high school here in Las Vegas.

33:42

And so as I'm walking through these things and learning about Transcendentalism and Romanticism, I'm sitting here as a

33:47

Christian going, wow, there is an explanation for why human beings today believe that deep down we're just all good people, right?

33:57

Because that's what happens. You put all these ingredients together—rejection of the church and the Bible as the divine authority from God.

34:06

And then you put in elevation of the self and experience as divine and the way to experience real truth.

34:12

And then what happens next? The idea that we were born sinners in need of a savior is rejected, and it's replaced with, well, you know what?

34:19

We're born good. And anything that's wrong about our experience, well, it must be because we're being manipulated from externalities, from outside forces that seek to change our innate goodness, right?

34:32

And then fast forward to today, and there are still so many people, particularly in America, particularly in the

34:39

West, who are—they're zoomed in, they're hyper -focused on their own individual selves and thinking that they deep down are just really good.

34:48

And that's not true. It is completely anti -biblical. Boy, where do we go from here, right?

34:59

Where does all this lead? American evangelicals' grasp on theology is deteriorating.

35:04

Where is all this going? It's going to deconstructing. It's going to progressive Christianity. It's going to false religions like Jehovah's Witnesses and Latter -day

35:14

Saints. And this is a problem. And you read articles like the one I just read to you—by the way, not the first article to come out saying stuff like this, okay?

35:24

But you start thinking to yourself, man, this is hopeless. No, it's not. No, it's not. This is where I wanted to go with this.

35:31

I just want to leave with you. The same God who saved you is the same one who will sanctify you.

35:39

And so your job as a Christian is to deepen your relationship with God. And that requires that you spend significant portions of your day, your week, your month, and your year seeking to know

35:52

God more than you did yesterday. And I don't mean learning a bunch of academic things about God in a

35:59

Greek sense, you know, being a student or a disciple in more of the Greek sense. I mean more in the

36:05

Jewish sense. I mean more in the way that Jesus explained this. And that comes down to exploring real relationship with God, where you put the focus on him and you sense his presence in your life.

36:20

If this is you, if you're thinking, I don't have that name. I don't feel that in my life.

36:26

Let me encourage you. This is what it means to be a Christian. You can reach out to me when the live stream is over.

36:33

You can email me, hello at wisedisciple .org. Let's chat about it. Let me just—just tell me what your story is.

36:38

Tell me what's going on with you. You can go find a church and get plugged in, you know, start going to a small group and walk alongside older, wiser

36:48

Christians who can mentor you. These things are available to you wherever you are, okay?

36:53

Let's fight heresy together. But it starts with you. It starts with one person at a time going deeper each day in their knowledge of God and then walking alongside other brothers and sisters, preferably the next generation, amen, and helping them to understand what you have been—what

37:12

God has been teaching you and what you have been gleaning from his word. By the way, knowledge of God is eternal life, okay?

37:20

John 17 3, Jesus said, this is eternal life, that they know you, the one true God and Jesus Christ whom you have sent, amen.

37:28

You with me? All right, it is question time.

37:34

It is really hard for me to talk to the screen and then look at the comments and then try to—I'm so sorry, guys, if you've been saying stuff,

37:44

I'll try to catch up here. Catechesis, Melissa says, amen. That's exactly what

37:50

I'm talking about, okay? John Gee says, I had

37:56

Go read Into the Wild. Into the Wild, and it talks about transcendentalism. Into the Wild, is that the one about the guy who stars to death out there?

38:05

Depressing, depressing story. Francis Schaefer wrote about heresy number five.

38:11

I don't know, but you know what? Francis Schaefer—so I was just sitting with a very smart young man.

38:18

He's an atheist, but he's very friendly to the Christian faith, and I spent like two and a half hours with him just recently, and we were sitting and talking.

38:26

He's a philosophy major, so, you know, we're at that level. We're having conversations at that level, and Francis Schaefer came up.

38:42

There's a great book that—so this is where I'm going with this. Somebody just distracted me by texting me. I'm so sorry, but this is where I'm going with this.

38:48

Francis Schaefer wrote some great books, but it's collected together in a trilogy. It's called the

38:53

Francis Schaefer Trilogy. Not the first time that I've talked about this, by the way, but what a great primer in some of these areas.

39:01

Francis Schaefer was definitely a seminal influence on me when I first became a Christian. All right, let me go ahead and jump over to the questions, and then, you know, if we have time,

39:12

I'll see if I can—so my cutoff is 6 .30 because I got to go spend some time with my little homies, but let me see if I can—I'm so bad at this, guys.

39:25

I'm so bad. Let's wait and do a live stream in another couple months. Okay, here we go. So I posted this creepy photo of me with—what's now?

39:32

What's different? Something's missing. Hmm, what's missing? So anyway, let's go down, and I said, hey, send me your questions, and you guys questioned me.

39:46

Okay, so let me go ahead and answer these questions. Effie Zoo, all right?

39:52

So we're going to switch gears, answer some questions. Again, 6 ,000 subscribes, y 'all. Come on now. 6 ,000 subscribes, that's what we're here for.

40:02

So grateful to you guys for subscribing. What a blessing. Let's keep going. Let's just keep walking together, and let me help you in any way that I can with these videos.

40:11

All right, first question is from Effie Xu. I think that's how you pronounce it. Hi, Pastor Nate.

40:16

Thank you for all you do. I find your channel to be very informative and encouraging. My question is, since Christians are pre -selected, how can we accurately explain the concept of God's will versus human freedom to non -believers?

40:28

Effie. Okay, this always comes up. So it's a great question, and different Christians answer this question differently, okay?

40:40

Let me just go ahead and give you the punchline here. I'm not going to tell you what my position is on this answer. I have a position on this answer.

40:47

I'm not going to tell you what it is. Why? Well, because I do a Debate Teacher React series where a good portion of the videos are

40:56

Calvinism versus Arminianism. I think it's a distraction if I sit here and start talking about my view.

41:06

My goal on this channel—now, again, I have a position—is not to get into all of those things. All of those things would be a distraction.

41:13

What I want to do is I want to get down to the debates, and I want to see who won and who lost.

41:19

So because of the nature of the series that I do, I don't talk about my view. If you meet me privately in Las Vegas, I'll tell you all about it.

41:26

Anyway, let me just break this down for you, Effie. If you are an Arminian and you kind of hang out in that camp—a lot of Molinists are on this side of the fence as well—then the answer is

41:38

God does not overrule a person's free will to either choose or reject him, okay? And this is where the question of Pravini Grace comes into the discussion.

41:49

You know, it's got to come in because all Christians affirm that all have sinned. All have fallen short of the glory of God.

41:55

There is no one good, not even one, right? All Christians affirm that.

42:01

That's Romans 3. That's a rehash of the Psalms. So the answer within that framework is

42:08

God knows who will choose him ahead of time, and he pre -selects those whom he foreknows in that sense.

42:14

He calls those folks the elect, and he identifies them before the foundation of the world. There's a really good book.

42:20

I couldn't find a better one on the subject of Molinism. A lot of my friends, people

42:27

I rub shoulders with, Christian apologists, stuff like that, they're Molinists. There's a really great book called

42:34

Salvation and Sovereignty by Kenneth Keithley on the subject, and Effie, if you're a student and you want to read more on this,

42:41

I encourage you to read that book. Now, other Christians will say, no, wait. God is fully in control, and he has the control over someone's ability to either choose him or reject him.

42:54

So again, we're faced with Romans 3. We're faced with the Psalms teaching on this. All people reject

42:59

God. Every single Christian agrees with this. This is the effect of the curse going all the way back to the

43:06

Garden of Eden, and so in this framework, then, God chooses to override a person's rejection of him in order to make them born again, to change the heart of stone into a heart of flesh.

43:20

And, you know, so those are the two camps. Again, because of the nature of this channel, I don't talk about where I fall in this discussion, but just to finish the thought from, like, the second position here, if God is in control of people's wills in this sense, then it seems like mankind does not have freedom, okay?

43:37

Well, this camp says not so fast. Some Christians in this camp, they counter and say, well, we are free.

43:45

We're just not as free as people take for granted or believe that we are, okay? Instead of being free to do anything, we are only free to do what we most want to do.

43:55

And so in that sense, we are locked into certain freedoms because of the desires of our heart.

44:01

And if our heart desires to reject God, then we will never choose God. We will not have that freedom to do so.

44:09

But the blame for that does not fall at God's feet. It falls at the feet of humanity. So again, what

44:15

I've been trying to characterize here very quickly, and obviously people are going to take issue with this because I'm going too fast.

44:23

There's a difference between, say, Molinism and Calvinism, right? And even, like, within the

44:29

Calvinist camp, Compatibilism, okay? So that's, you know, that's where things are.

44:37

There are plenty of wonderful ministries that help folks figure this out. I encourage you to do your research and take a position based on good, sound reasoning.

44:44

But guess what, Effie? That sound reasoning must come from the scripture. It has to stand on top of the scripture.

44:51

Okay. Thank you for the question, Effie. Let me go to Mark. Oh boy.

44:58

How do you say your last name, Mark? Eakin. Eakin. That's not your last name. Come on, homie. What is that?

45:04

Okay. Nate, my question is about Sin City. Here we go. Is it harder to be a

45:10

Christian in Las Vegas than in, for want of a better phrase, a normal town or city?

45:17

Yeah, I get that phrase. Normal. Yeah, I get that. I doubt it's about personal temptation, but do you sense extra headwinds?

45:25

That's a great question, Mark. Being in Vegas is weird.

45:34

All right? It's weird. Anybody in the chat from Vegas, can you just give me a,

45:40

I don't know. I'm trying to see. It's hard again to speak and see the comments. Anybody in the chat from Vegas? Okay.

45:48

Yeah. But anyway, it's weird being in Vegas, guys. It really is. I, on the one hand,

45:57

Sin is very visible and upfront in a lot of key areas in this town. It's very visible.

46:02

In some cases, it's flaunted, like right in front of your face. If you go to the strip, the Las Vegas strip, particularly just walk up and down Las Vegas Boulevard, it's pretty bad.

46:15

It's very hard not to see drugs, to see pornography, to be tempted with regard to greed, right?

46:26

Isn't that what major casinos want? They want you to come in so you can win money because money is the most valuable thing that people value over and above their own relationships.

46:36

You know what I mean? They're playing with all of these things. Prostitution is legal in the state of Nevada, by the way.

46:42

Anybody know that? Prostitution is legal in the state of Nevada. I used to work on the strip.

46:50

I'm going to get real with you just for a split second. I wasn't saved until I was 30. This was back in my 20s.

46:57

Before getting saved, I was the hotel manager at the Hard Rock Hotel for years and years.

47:03

Saw a lot of celebrities, saw a lot of bad things. I was a cards dealer for a while, blackjack, poker, roulette.

47:14

Learned how to count cards, if anybody...never mind. Out of bounds. I've had lots of different jobs in this town when

47:23

I was younger. I was a bouncer at an after -hours nightclub for a while until somebody got shot in the chest, point blank.

47:29

Then I was like, you know what? Probably not a job I'm going to retire at.

47:35

I've seen a lot. The sin in Sin City is flagrant at times, but because of that, it sets your mind right if you're a

47:45

Christian. You have to walk as a believer in a much more cautious way, in a way that is way more intentional about your faith, because these sins are so open and brash out here, and it's available to lots of people.

48:02

Actually, because of those safeguards and the intentionality that you are kind of forced into if you really want to do this

48:08

Christian walk seriously in this town, that's a good thing. It's a good thing.

48:14

The unintended consequence of open sin in a city is that the people of God are much more cautious, they're more aware, they're more intentional about their faith, and safeguarding it.

48:25

Especially when you contrast that to a city where sin is not visible, it's way more sly and subtle.

48:32

You know, the drugs, the pornography, the temptations, they're not out in the open as much. If you're not very careful, then it's easier potentially for those sins to catch

48:41

Christians off guard. Whereas over here, it's hard to get caught off guard.

48:49

It's like everywhere. At least that's my take on it, okay? I just really appreciate that the darker a city or a neighborhood is, the brighter the light is that we shine as believers in Jesus Christ.

49:01

Amen? And so there's a give and take to this city that's both good and bad. By the way,

49:07

I say all of this right before my wife and I are planning to move out of Las Vegas, and we're planning to move somewhere else.

49:13

And there are a lot of reasons for that, but it's not because of what I just said. It's not because of the blatant sin or the gospel opportunities that arise from it.

49:23

So that's all I'll say about that. If you're planning on moving to Vegas, I can say more, Mark, okay? So just hit me up and we can talk.

49:30

But that's my hot take on your question there. Let's go to a question from C. Neal.

49:38

C. Neal. Is that your God -given name? C. Neal. He says, Sir Nate, love your channel.

49:43

My question is, what is biblically correct is that us humans are three parts, body, soul, and spirit, or just two?

49:53

Body, soul, and spirit are one. Much love, bro. Thank you, C. Neal. Thank you for the question. It's a great question.

50:01

And Christians are divided on this, okay? But I'm going to tell you what my position is. It seems that the Bible teaches different things on this issue, okay?

50:09

Sometimes the Bible seems to treat us as a trichotomy, okay?

50:14

Body, soul, and spirit, right? And the more well -known passage of this is

50:22

Hebrews. You know, what is that? Hebrews says that the Word is living and active and sharper than any two -edged sword, penetrating to divide the soul and spirit, right?

50:34

Joints and marrow, okay? And so it seems like there is this division between soul, spirit, body, okay?

50:43

There's probably a better passage that fleshes this out. This is what came to mind. And so my issue with passages like this is very often the biblical author will—and this is a

50:55

Jewish style of writing—the biblical author will appear to differentiate parts that are not really differentiated.

51:05

So in other words, they'll speak differently and differentiate parts, but what they're referring to is the whole thing.

51:10

It's the same thing. And by the way, we do this today, right? My son just lost his glasses at the park, which has been such a fantastic search, because I hadn't found it.

51:22

I was up and down. It's another story. But he lost his glasses at the park, and so I had to go looking for it.

51:28

Literally this morning, I dropped them off, went looking for it in the bushes, trying to find it in the rocks. What if I told you that I went to the park and I looked high and low for those glasses?

51:38

Now, you'd know what I'm saying, but you would not think to yourself that there are two parts to the park—high park and low park.

51:45

No, you understand that I'm just using an idiomatic expression to refer to the whole park, and that's what

51:51

I'm trying to communicate. Similarly, when a biblical author says something like, you know, division of joints and marrow, you know, he's not saying that the

52:01

Word of God seeps through individual parts in a particular order. Rather, what he's communicating is that the

52:08

Word of God affects the whole person, affects the whole body. So when we get to the soul and the spirit,

52:14

I take that—this is my position—to just mean spirit. Okay, I hold to what's called dichotomy, and that is, if I'm not mistaken, the majority view of Christians, okay?

52:25

Dichotomy just means—let me put this back up here—dichotomy just means, see, Neil, that we are composed of two elements, body and spirit, and when we say spirit, we mean this synonymously with soul, all right?

52:41

And I think that this actually fits better with the teaching of Scripture. I think that the expectation, particularly from the

52:48

Jewish perspective, was to divide this body -soul, but then also to keep this unity of body and soul together, okay?

52:56

Such that if body and soul are separated, we should feel that something's off. We should feel the urge to bring them back together.

53:03

This is what the Apostle Paul was talking about. He was saying, you know, he's talking about our longing to be clothed with a new body in 2

53:11

Corinthians 5, you know? We're not supposed to be people that just desire to float around after death disembodied, you know?

53:20

We're supposed to be embodied, to retain the unity of soul and body. So that's where I stand on this, but, you know, on the other hand,

53:29

I'm open to hearing more on this subject and perhaps changing my mind. So thanks for the question, see, Neil. We got a question from Romy Rock.

53:37

Romy, you rock. Okay, Romy, you rock. Nate, do you know basic strategy?

53:46

Yes, I do. Another question from John Waltz. John, I mean, come on.

53:54

If the question is going to be that vague, then that's going to be my answer, Romy. Romy, you vague.

54:00

Am I right? That was a dad joke. Last question. So Christian Monarchist, grats, my bro.

54:06

Thank you. John Waltz, here's the last question. Oi, John, there are so many questions here.

54:18

Look, I have a few minutes left here, John. Let me—let's do this. Let's talk about discipleship, because I don't have a whole lot of time.

54:26

Disciple is part of the name here at Wise Disciple, and also I don't think a lot of us

54:32

Christians really understand biblical discipleship, and maybe, John, I can circle back around and answer some of these other questions later in a future video.

54:40

Okay, so let's hit it. Discipleship, what is it? Great question. Great question. I can tell you what it's not first, right?

54:48

A lot of churches treat discipleship as if it's a class that you take for a couple of weeks, and that's where you get introduced to church and theology, and those classes are good as far as they go, but after a couple of weeks, you graduate, and then you just go sit in the big sanctuary every

55:03

Sunday, and that's the extent of discipleship. Nope. That's not it.

55:10

I remember a couple years ago, I was invited to be a consultant for a huge youth organization.

55:16

Huge. Huge. I mean, these guys were putting on gigantic youth camps and seminars every year.

55:23

I mean, it was impressive, the numbers of students that were coming in, but their developers, they were developing an app, and they wanted me to come take a look at their discipleship app that they were putting together, and so the

55:37

CEO was very kind. He flew me out, and we sat down and had some meetings. I looked at their app and how it worked, but what they had done was they created an app that would essentially disciple the students.

55:50

Did you hear that? Did you hear what I just said? The app was essentially going to disciple the students, and the idea was you get a group of students together in a little small group situation, you pull up the app on someone's phone, and then you just kind of put it in the center of the group, and then just press play, essentially.

56:10

Now, these guys, their heart was in the right place, but this notion that an app can accomplish discipleship for you, or it's a class that you can take online for a couple of weeks, is so egregiously wrong, friends.

56:24

Jesus was a first century itinerant rabbi. He's our model for discipleship.

56:31

Jesus traveled around with next to no money. He taught wherever he went, and he had a group of young Jews.

56:39

By the way, I think it's my sort of supposition that the

56:45

Jews, the disciples of Jesus, they were teenagers, okay? They were of teenage years.

56:51

They were known as the Talmadim. These were his disciples, and Jesus followed a very uniquely Jewish customary system of discipleship, all right?

57:00

I think the biblical model of discipleship is captured quite nicely in Luke chapter 6 verse 40, which is, by the way, the first sermon that I ever preached on.

57:08

That's how so important it is, in my opinion. Luke chapter 6 verse 40. A disciple is not above his teacher, but everyone, when he is fully trained, will be like his teacher, okay?

57:19

There's kind of our broad sort of overview of discipleship. Today, we have a word for this.

57:24

It's called apprenticeship, wherein you have like this master teacher that brings an apprentice under his or her wing, and then shows them everything about how they perform certain tasks, and then the apprentice practices what they learn, so that they can then, after a set amount of time, they can go out and perform those tasks on their own.

57:44

I had to do this as a public school teacher. I had to go through this process where I had a master teacher, which, by the way,

57:51

I was at the worst school in the district. There were gangs everywhere. There was a pig farm not too far away.

57:58

Every morning, the scent of pigs and mud and, I don't know, blood, it was just like permeating.

58:04

It was disgusting. It was awful, but I learned my craft by coming under the wing of my master teacher, and she taught me, and she evaluated me, and then she sent me out to my own classroom.

58:15

That's discipleship, friends. You see examples of this not only with Jesus, but also with Elijah and Elisha, where, you know, towards the end there,

58:25

Elisha was so close to Elijah, he traveled, he did everything with him, that towards the end, he was crying out, my father, my father, when

58:34

God took Elijah away. You know what I mean? That's the dynamic of relationship that we should be seeking to employ today, and I'm going to, if I can,

58:43

I'll circle back around, because I think I see this on the question here. You know, like, what does this look like practically today in church small groups or whatever, right?

58:50

I'm going to talk about that, but let me just say this. If we look at Jesus, there was a very specific way that he accomplished discipleship.

58:59

You know, there's a book, Bill Hull has written a lot of great stuff on discipleship,

59:04

H -U -L -L, Bill Hull, and so my focus at the church that I was pastoring at for years was on discipleship and training up leaders in the area of discipleship and discipling other people.

59:17

And so when I was doing my research and giving these talks and all that stuff, I was really trying to study

59:24

Jesus' model of discipleship, but I relied a lot on Bill Hull's scholarship because it's pretty thorough.

59:30

So there's a great book that he wrote. He wrote a number of them. One of them is called Jesus Christ Disciple Maker.

59:37

I encourage you to look at that. Robbie Gallaty is a pastor in Tennessee. He's also someone who has written on the subject, but he's more for laypersons, you know, so not as seminary -like.

59:48

And he wrote a book called Rediscovering Discipleship. That's a great book. So anyway, I'm just bringing them up because, you know, their books on this issue are very helpful.

59:59

So anyway, but Robbie Gallaty suggests that Jesus essentially followed four phases of making disciples, okay?

01:00:07

Number one—now track this, okay? Number one, Jesus ministered and the disciples watched, okay?

01:00:13

So in the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus taught God's truths while the disciples observed and they listened and they learned as part of the crowd, and so that's in Matthew 5 through 7, right?

01:00:24

When Jesus, when he went into the synagogue and he healed the lame and he cleansed the lepers and he gave hearing to the deaf, the disciples were there to watch him through all of those things, right?

01:00:37

So that's the first one. The second one—and you'll notice and you'll track this transition, and it's subtle, but there's a shift—the second one is that Jesus allowed the disciples to assist him in ministry.

01:00:49

So they go from observing to now assisting, and Jesus is still leading. So when Jesus—perfect example—when

01:00:55

Jesus fed the multitude, he broke the bread, he performed the miracle, but the disciples were the ones that distributed the supernatural meal around to the hungry crowd, and then they went around and collected the surplus, right?

01:01:06

So that's the second one. Here's the third one. The disciples shifted, so now they're doing the ministry and now

01:01:12

Jesus is assisting, okay? This was Jesus' model of discipleship. So after his transfiguration, his perfect example,

01:01:21

Jesus came down from the mountain and he walked straight into a crowd that was in a total uproar, right?

01:01:27

The disciples had been trying to cast out a demon from a boy, and they were failing miserably. And so in utter frustration and desperation, the boy's father turns to Jesus, and he wants him to intervene.

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You know, I brought my son to your disciples, they couldn't do anything. And so, you know, the father's distraught, the boy's still possessed, so Jesus steps in, casts out the demon, and made the boy whole.

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And then later, Jesus turned and rebuked the disciples, who were powerless on their own, by saying, you know what, this kind can't be driven out by anything but prayer.

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In another place it says prayer and fasting, right? So that's the disciples doing the ministry themselves, and Jesus coming alongside to assist them.

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What's the last step? Finally, here it is, Jesus watched while the disciples went out and ministered to others.

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Jesus sent them out with instructions to go into the world. Wise disciple. Our name comes from the moment that Jesus sends out the disciples, okay?

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Matthew 10. He says, go into the world, you know, cast out demons, preach the gospel. And then, so they do that, then they come back, and they say to Jesus, Lord, even the demons are subject to your name, or to us, right?

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In your name. And so, anyway, this kind of brings me to the second question here, right?

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How does one partake in biblical discipleship, okay? Yeah, we—so how do you translate this?

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That's how I take the question. We have to maintain the model of Jesus' discipleship that we see in the New Testament.

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And so I've taught this to others, I've run this kind of a structure of a group multiple times over the last number of years,

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I'm in one right now, but there's a very simple way to translate Jesus' model for today's church, and it boils down to this.

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Get a group of folks together, preferably same -sex, right? Preferably men with men, or ladies with ladies, okay?

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They get them together, they have to decide to get together for an agreed -upon duration of time. This is not a fellowship group where we're going to make a lot of delicious food, and we're going to get fat and old together.

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No. This is only for a duration of time, so that they can accomplish a few things together.

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And here's how the structure is. Pray first, confess sin, and hold each other accountable, and exhort and encourage each other.

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By the way, Christians? Horrible at this. Horrible at this. Horrible at hearing other people's sins, and horrible at exhorting, you know?

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Encouraging. Horrible at it. So we need to get better, let's do this, let's get into these groups and do this thing. So pray, confess sin.

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James wrote that, you know, faith by itself, if it does not have works, is dead.

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It's not about knowing things about God, but applying what you know as you submit to the change that God is making in you.

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That's why we got to confess. That's where spiritual growth comes in.

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And you just can't grow spiritually if you're not confessing your sin, if you're not warring against the flesh with the help of your brothers.

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And again, ladies, you need other ladies around you in this time of confession, all right? And maybe also part of the accountability, you know, for the group is that you do things as kind of like homework, right?

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So maybe you set up a and your goal is, well, I'm going to share the gospel with at least one person before we meet again together next week.

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Then I want you to hold me accountable to that. I want you to ask me, have you done it yet? You know, what are the opportunities? You know, get me to be thinking about it and to be intentional about it, because that's how it's going to happen.

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Let's face it, right? Or maybe another goal is to, you know, serve your other brothers and sisters in some capacity the way that Jesus did, right?

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But this is all under the broader category of accountability. So it's pray, confession, and accountability.

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Then it's read the Scripture together, read the Scripture together, okay?

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And then it's memorize Scripture.

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So I don't know if you're noticing, but I'm kind of spitting things out pretty fast, and that comes from memorizing the Scripture. I kind of look at it, memorizing

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Scripture, as allowing the Word of God to surround you so that the

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Holy Spirit can bring to mind the appropriate memorization passage when it's needed. Because that's what's been happening in my experience, is the more that you memorize the

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Word, the more that you memorize Scripture, something will happen out in the real world, and you'll be like, there it is, right?

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My dear brothers and sisters, take note of this. Be quick to listen, and slow to speak, and slow to get angry.

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For human anger does not produce the righteousness that God desires. Amen? So it's got to be read the

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Scripture, memorize the Scripture, and then pray again. And that's it! Okay, that's it. And you do that one time a week, get about three to five guys together, three to five ladies.

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It's a very simple formula, and you just keep doing it over and over again for a short period of time. Maybe nine months, maybe twelve months, maybe a little bit longer.

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But the group should stay rather small, okay? You get a little bit bigger, beyond five people, and then you end up getting sort of bogged down.

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You need to be able to stay focused in a smaller group environment, and so that's just—that's been my experience running these kinds of things.

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But anyway, after all of this is done, you need to break the group up so that they can go and disciple more people, okay?

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That is the way that the Great Commission is fulfilled. Once you pour into somebody as a discipleship leader, those people should have what they need to go be discipleship leaders and start their own groups.

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And towards the end of the group, you should be praying with everybody, who are you going to bring to me, Lord, so that I can start my own dGroup?

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We call it dGroup, right? And so this actually leads to the last question. Does discipleship end?

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The discipleship structure, John, never ends, right?

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If you follow the model that I've just laid out, it never ends. You either are discipled by a dGroup leader, or you are the dGroup leader, but you're constantly staying in a discipleship structure, and you should.

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Why? Because we are constantly being sanctified. We should constantly be sanctified. We should constantly mature.

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We are constantly running our race. And so we need to surround ourselves with brothers and sisters who can help us run our race well.

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The moment that we think that we can get away with doing this Christian walk on our own, that's when we get ourselves into all kinds of trouble.

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We were not meant to be alone as Christians. There is no such thing as a lone ranger Christian. When somebody says,

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I'm a Christian, I don't go to church. So the discipleship structure never ends.

01:08:13

All right. I went over. I am so sorry.

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I didn't really plan this out. Okay. Let me just see very quickly.

01:08:28

Got a lot of interaction here. Thank you so much, everybody, for watching. I really do appreciate you.

01:08:35

I'm sorry. Next live stream, okay? And we'll do this again, and I'll practice so I can get better at this.

01:08:40

Next live stream, I'll interact with you guys in the chat way more. But I just want to thank you all for joining me for this live stream.

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I hope that something here that was said blesses you in some capacity, that you have something you need now so that you can go and you can affect others for Christ on behalf of God and His kingdom and establishing

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His kingdom here on earth. So I'm just so grateful that you are subscribing, that you're watching what I'm doing here at Wise Disciple.

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My goal is to help you follow Jesus' injunction to be wise, especially in today's kind of culture.

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That's where my heart is in ministry. That's where these videos come from. More videos are coming soon.

01:09:19

Okay, friends? I should do a debate teacher react soon, shouldn't I? But anyway, I'm going to take a break, but in the meantime,