Matt Slick Live: September 23, 2024

The following program is recorded content created by The Truth Network. It's Matt Slick Live!

Matt is the founder and president of the Christian Apologetics Research Ministry, found online at karm .org.

When you have questions about Bible doctrines, turn to Matt Slick Live for answers. Taking your calls and responding to your questions at 877 -207 -2276.

Here's Matt Slick. Hey, everybody. Welcome to the show. It's me, Matt Slick. You're listening to Matt Slick Live. Today's date is 9 -23 -2024,

September 23rd. And I just want to say, hey, give me a call if you want, if you feel like it.

I hope you had a good weekend. I walked five miles last night and talked to people online, always trying to witness.

And I have these headsets, you know, Bose headsets and stuff like that. So I go witness.

I like to walk and do stuff at the same time. Then my wife and I watch stuff and have a nice, relaxing evening.

So anyway, hey, look, I hope you had a good day yesterday, a good church day, and I want to hear from you.

Give me a call, 877 -207 -2276.

You can also email me. That's easy to do. Just direct your email to info at karm .org,

info at karm, C -A -R -M dot O -R -G, info at karm .org.

And you can put in a subject line, radio comment or radio question, and I often get to them.

And we have nobody waiting right now, no callers coming in, which sometimes happens during the summer -ish, end of summers.

I've been keeping records for a long time, and for many years, many, many years.

And we've got patterns. During the summer, things slow down. And then about now, they're down.

And then they pick up in the next month. They pick up because people are going back to school.

I don't know what it is, but we have these patterns, and they're pretty steady, pretty steady. I've been graphing stuff on Excel for a long time.

I used to teach Excel, so I know some nice tricks. I do some really cool stuff with it, and I can write all that stuff.

I know a lot of things about, oh, excuse me, whew, I know a lot of things about all kinds of things.

And so I can do pretty good stuff with Excel. I used to love that program.

It's one of my favorite programs. I remember once I had a job working at Sony, and they had this report that I inherited.

It took four days to do the report, when you had the data. Four days of data input and manipulating this and that graph and these tables and stuff like that.

I remember this really well. And I did it a couple of months, once a month, it took four days.

And you get the data, you input the data, and then it took a day for the average person, and then you did all the stuff, right?

All this manipulation of tables and stuff, changing fields. And so once I understood it,

I go, oh, okay. Okay, so I did tricks and set it up that everything ran on two macros, two macros that were attached to a certain page, just do them in order.

And I had all these scroll bars and all this stuff. Well, I used to do 10 -key, and I'm really fast at 10 -key, too.

So one day, I get this report, and I do the 10 -key. I entered everything in like two hours, instead of a day and a half or two days, whatever it was.

I just did it really quickly. And then I just hit go on these macros, and I embedded in there checks, system checks on a certain page so that if something didn't work, they would be red, and it would come up red, and I found one and fixed it very easily.

And then ran the report again, there it was, printed it up, walked into the office to the boss.

You know, like within four hours of getting the data. And I said, here's a report. He goes, no, no, no, no, no, look, you're new at this.

You can't do that that fast. I said, yeah, you can. He goes, no, you can't. I said, we've been doing this for years.

It takes four days. I said, not anymore. He said, what do you mean? I said, look, come here,

I'll show you. And he came over to the desk, and I showed him the tricks I did and the things I developed.

And I said, all you got to do is this, this, that. And he was dumbfounded, and he said, we're going to take this, and we're going to send it to all of the

Sony facilities all over the world, so that they can use the same template for all the reports.

I said, sure, no problem, of course, you know, it's what I do. I remember, it was fun. And then one more story, it was a lot of fun.

So Sony, you know, it's from Japan, and so we had a lot of Japanese there sometimes, and I was watching this one

Japanese guy, and he spoke broken English, good enough English. And I was looking over his shoulder, he's working on Excel, and it's a humongous table.

He was changing fields, and where certain things were, it gets complicated, where certain things we're looking to.

And he had to fill out hundreds and hundreds and hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of them. You know, at the rate he was going, it was going to take him like a half a week, you know, maybe more.

And once I figured out what he was doing, I politely, very politely, asked if I could show him a trick.

And so I saved the file, so that in case something goes bad, I saved it, you know, in a different file name.

I said, let me show you. And I did this in two minutes. I did everything that he was trying to get done, which would have taken him days, did it in two minutes, and literally two, maybe three at the most.

And when he saw what I did, I don't know what he said, but he was talking

Japanese. He was waving his arms around, walking in circles, and then he bowed to me.

Arigato, arigato. I remember that. The good old days, the good old days.

I love Excel. I would marry it. That's how good it is. Let's get to Becky from Tennessee.

Becky, welcome. You're on the air. Hi, thank you.

Hi. I have a question about the Lutheran religion. Is it

Christian -based, or is it Christian, or is it a cult? Lutheranism, like Presbyterianism and like Baptist denominations, have different sub -denominations in them.

So, some Lutheran denominations are really good, and some Lutheran denominations are really bad.

That's just the rule. So, LCMS is good, Lutheran Church, Missouri Synod, LCMS, Lutheran Church, Missouri, Missouri Synod.

That's a good denomination. I don't agree with everything it says in some of the particulars, but you know, it's okay.

So it's good. But the ELCA, Evangelical Lutheran Church of America, that's bad.

Stay away from that. So I've actually got an article

I want to finish on what are different Lutheran denominations and if they're good or not. And so,

I've got ten listed. The Wisconsin Evangelical Lutheran Synod is supposed to be pretty good, too, in that they're

Orthodox. So, here's what you check for to see if a group is good or bad.

You go to their website and look for two things. One is their staff and see if they have any women pastors, women elders.

If they do, it's bad. It's a bad church. Don't go to it. It's just Presbyterian, or Lutheran, or Baptist, or non -denominational, if they have women pastors and elders, just stay away.

The other thing you want to look for is their doctrinal statement. And you want to find out what's their view on, if they have it, on LGBTQ, the alphabet mob.

And if they say that they can be ordained, homosexuals can be ordained, practicing, unrepentant, homosexuals can be ordained, you want to stay away.

Things like that. And there's other stuff, too, and I have an article on my website about what to look for in a church.

Oh. You can check it out. Okay. What to look for. Okay. Thank you so much.

You're welcome. I appreciate it, and I enjoy listening to you every night. You know, I wish my wife said that.

That'd be great. You know. It's all right, though. Usually when

I talk to her, she rubs her forehead and furrows her brow at the same time. I don't know what's going on, so, you know,

I just back away calmly. All right? There you go. Smart man. Thank you so much.

You have a good evening. You, too. God bless. All right. Now, let's get to Carl from Ohio.

Carl, welcome. You are on the air. Thank you much. A question about Roman Catholics.

My pastor was really defending Roman Catholics. He said, we believe in the same thing. I know their whole code of religion is based on breaking the first commandment.

It's all about the idols. So, what can I do? I know that people always, they always use

Christ to legitimize their wicked ideologies. I mean, Jim Jones did it.

Everyone uses Christ because it legitimizes their wickedness. And he just does not understand.

I heard them. As a matter of fact, I was listening to a show, and it was a Roman Catholic service. And, you know, they're

Holy Mary, mother of God, and all of that stuff. And then they eventually got to Christ. So, she came first.

Then they prayed to God. Then they prayed to Christ. So, she was first. And I know that the Pope is supreme. I know that.

But he's defending them, and he's saying that they believe in the exact same thing that we believe in. I know that there is a disfortunate number of, you know, child molestation, class action lawsuits.

They have a bunch of money. But I know if the Pope is supreme, and Mary's venerated before Christ, I know the

Spirit of God cannot be in there. So, what can I tell my pastor? I love my pastor. Your pastor's disqualified from being a pastor.

Flat out. Really? Yes. He's disqualified because he's supposed to be able to teach sound doctrine and refute error.

He doesn't even know the difference between Protestantism and Catholicism. He can't refute error. You should ask him if he believes in the

Trinity, and if he can define what the Trinity is. And is Jesus a man right now? These are some of the basic questions

I would start asking. Any pastor who says, no, the Catholic Church is fine, okay, let's see what else you don't know. What's the

Trinity? Okay. Is Jesus a man right now? He's both God and man right now.

How are we justified before God? By faith in goodness or faith in what? You've got to find out what else this guy doesn't know.

Okay? So, I wouldn't trust him. Now, what you can do is you can go to my website, karm .org,

and if you're interested, if you want, and go forward slash c -u -t, for cut and paste.

C -u -t, okay. C -u -t, for cut and paste. So, you go to there, and it's just cut and paste information, and I developed it to be able to cut and paste stuff into chat rooms, and then

I discovered it became very useful and people started wanting it, and it's helpful on what people, on what things are, very short information.

So, one of the things you want to get to is the issue of justification, and you can do things.

You can ask him. You can ask him stuff. Are we justified by faith alone in Christ, alone, without any works?

Do works save us or contribute to our salvation? You have to ask that. If he says, yes, they do, then you have to go to the elders, and you have to tell them, this guy doesn't know basic Christian theology.

He's not qualified to be a pastor, dead serious, and I'll volunteer to back you up on the phone, go over stuff to the elders to teach biblical theology if they don't know it.

So, I'm dead serious about this, okay? So, Roman Catholicism teaches that you attain salvation through faith, baptism, and the observance of the commandments.

That's paragraph 2068 of the Catechism of the Catholic Church. So, what you can do is you can say to your pastor, what do you think about a group that might say that you attain salvation through faith, baptism, and the observance of the commandments?

And just see what he says. If he says, well, that's really, that's okay, that's fine, well, then he doesn't know what he's doing.

He's out. But if he says, no, that's wrong, you go, yeah, I agree with you, that's wrong.

That's what Roman Catholicism teaches, and that better get his attention. There's a quote on there,

I believe it's on there, about, by her, let's see, by her entering, okay, he should, it's not in that one, you can go to the rest of the website and find the quote.

There's a quote from Fundamentals of Catholic Dogma by Ludwig von Ott on page 213.

It's approved by the bishops that it's true, and it says there, Mary, by her entering into the spiritual sacrifice of her divine son, made atonement for our sins.

It's heresy. Yeah, that's blasphemy. Now, we're going to break, so hold on, I'll tell you some more stuff, and I'll give you some more things to be done, okay?

Hey, folks, hold on, we'll be right back after these messages. Please stay tuned. It's Matt Slick Live!

Taking your calls at 877 -207 -2276. Here's Matt Slick.

All right, everyone, welcome back to the show. We lost our collar about Roman Catholicism, so ladies and gentlemen,

I've been studying it for a long time, and a lot of people do not know how bad the

Roman Catholic Church really is. The, in fact, maybe you heard this, their present

Pope Francis just said that all religions are equally true, and that they all lead in the same path, and that's a sign of apostasy, that the

Roman Catholic Church, represented by his headship, is false. That's one of the reasons. It adds works to salvation, adds baptism to salvation, says you maintain your salvation through participation in sacraments that give grace infused into your soul, and the status of your soul's percentage of infusion determines how much you'll suffer in purgatory to eventually be saved.

And they pray to Mary and, you know, believe that she can hear millions of prayers all over the world simultaneously spoken in thought, different languages, you know, it's just insane.

Their Eucharist is a false teaching in that they are, and I had a conversation about somebody with this,

I'm going to give it to you really quickly, we'll get the two collars going, but I had a conversation about the

Eucharist with, I go in these Catholic chat rooms, and a lot of good guys, a lot of guys in there are particularly good at defending their

Catholic faith, in that they're intelligent, they're competent, they go to scripture. They're not right, but they're good at trying.

And some people just, you know, insult, you're wrong, but these people, they'll actually reason with you and talk with you and act a counter and things like this, we have these discussions.

So I said, one of the things that you do with the Eucharist is you take it after it's been changed into God by the priest, is you put it into a monstrance.

So you have a circle of bread that you bow down before and call it God. They were offended by that, and I said, but it's a circle of bread.

And they said, no, it's not. And I said, it's not a circle of bread? They said, no, it's the body of God.

That's why we worship it. Okay, so you bow down before this thing, and you worship this circle of bread. No, it's not a circle of bread, and I asked them, does it have circularity in it?

Does it have circularity, is it round? And one guy said, he didn't want to say anything, because it's just the body and blood of Christ.

He wouldn't answer the question, because obviously, if it has circularity, and it's a circle, it is bread quality, then how could it be the body, you know, all this stuff.

And some other guy got on, for real, he got on and actually said that it's not circular.

It only has the appearance of being circular, but it's not circular. It just appears to be, but it's not really circular.

Because it appears to be bread, but it's not really bread. You know, it's just the ludicrous reasoning, it's just incredible.

Anyway, those are some of the conversations I've had. Let's get to Nathan from California. Nathan, welcome, you're on the air.

Nathan. How are you, Matt? I'm hanging in there, man. It's been a while. Hanging in there. What do you got, buddy?

I'm doing well. I hope you're doing great. Same for the family. I always said

I was going to ask this question, but I don't know why I forget, but just yesterday

I just heard something on a Bible study that the only person who knows when

Christ will come is God, the Father. But I don't understand that in a real sense, that all of them are in one.

And Jesus, I believe that he said that because of his human side didn't know, but he does because he could do everything, even bring angels from heaven.

I don't know when it started here, but I hope you understand.

Yeah, I do. Do you have a question about it, though? Do you want me to explain what's going on?

I would just like to know who truly knows when he will be coming besides himself?

Will it also be Jesus? God knows. No, no.

And the Holy Spirit knows. So God knows. Now, this is what it says in Matthew 24, 36.

But of the day and hour, no one knows present tense, not even the angels of heaven nor the Son, but the

Father alone. So when we get to this, we have to understand that at the very one point is that it's in the present tense.

Now, Jesus has been exalted into heaven and he, you know, we could say he knows.

Now, what this is talking about also is the wedding feast, because it's the imagery of the wedding feast.

When a man and a woman were engaged for a year, there was preparations for this wedding feast that took a long time.

People would be prepared to travel, to come in, to stay in the area. There'd be a wedding. They'd have food.

They'd have wine, et cetera. And one of the things that was required was that the gentleman, the groom, build an addition onto the father's house.

And then he was to go get his bride and bring him back after the wedding, bring him back to the chamber.

Now, Jesus says, I go to prepare a place for you, and I will return and bring you to where I am. So this is all, these are a lot of allusions to the wedding procedure that was done back then.

And one of the things about that was that the groomsmen, the friends of the groom would say to the groom, when's the father, your father, going to say you can go get the bride?

No man knows a day nor the hour but the father alone. And this was an idiomatic expression used by the

Jews to designate the honor and respect due to the father. And so people would be gathered on a particular day for the wedding, and they had to know when it was within a reasonable period of time in order to be there.

Because if it was known that, you know, maybe the next month, maybe three months, they couldn't have a wedding like that. So they, this was, like I said, a sign of respect.

And then what would happen is the father would then say, okay, go get your bride. And that meant the trumpeters were there, the feast was ready, groomspeople were there, it was all ready.

Now go get your bride. They go get the bride. It was a tradition. You go to the house, and then you grab her, you walk her back, or they would ride her back.

She would be lifted up, and then they'd be carried, she'd be carried back. And it was interesting, like the rapture and stuff like that, be carried back to where he was, but he was kind of with her.

And so that's what's going on there. So, but when it says, no man knows, Matthew 24, 36, not even the angels of heaven nor the son, but the father alone, then the question that becomes, how much is he referring to the wedding feast, and how much is it that he's referring to the issue of what's called the

Carmen Christi, which is the incarnation and the humiliation spoken of in Philippians 2, 5 through 8 about Jesus.

He emptied himself. So questions in theology just orbit around this, the nucleus question of, well, what did

Jesus know and not know? We know that in his divine nature, all things were known, and that had to be the case.

In his human nature, by human definition, he can't know all things. So how does this work together? The attributes of both natures are ascribed to the single person.

It's called the communicatio ideomatum. And the implication here is that the properties of both natures were not always manifested at the exact same time.

Otherwise, we'd have a contradictory problem. So an example is, I can be angry and I can be loving, but I can't be angry and loving all at the exact same time in the exact same sense.

So I can go back and forth between them. And perhaps there's something like that, where God, the

Son, is going back and forth between the properties of his natures and knowing and not knowing and things like that.

And this is one of the things that we think and wonder. And there's a break, so hold on. After the break, we'll get back and get your comments.

Okay, so hold on, buddy. Hey, folks, we'll be right back after these messages. Please stay tuned. Be right back.

It's Matt Slick live, taking your calls at 877 -207 -2276.

Here's Matt Slick. All right, welcome back to the show. If you want to give me a call, it's easy.

Just dial 877 -207 -2276.

Let's get back to Nathan. Are you still there, buddy? I'm right here. All right.

So did that help you? Well, to me, it did a lot.

I thank you for that. But also, the Holy Spirit, Christ, and the

Father, they all know when they will come. Am I correct?

Yeah, yeah, of course. That's what I've always discussed with someone.

I don't know why they are wrong, but thank you. I also wanted to ask you.

I called you last Monday of the day. You said, I live in Bellflower, California.

Oh, I used to live in Bellflower. Nearby. Yeah, you did. Off of Flower Street, and also off of Park Street, right after 9 -1 -1.

Exactly, exactly. I live old. Before, I used to trip out. Before, I used to live in another house.

In a house on Walnut Street. It used to be huge.

But then my grandma and my dad died. We had no money right there, because our business went out.

We had to move, but we still moved. We looked for a place that was affordable, and it was right there in Bellflower.

I tripped out. Living Waters is right there, too.

Yeah, correct, correct, correct. And also, if I'm correct, it was the

Calvary Chapel. Yeah, two of them. I live on the next one. Yeah.

Well, good. And guess what? And guess what? Remember when I told you that I was...

Wait, wait. You believe in the... I'm more into that now.

Do you have a question? Pre -tribulation. Yeah.

You know? I'm a little bit out of it, but I'm more into, wait, the same things you believe in.

Because that's the same thing that... Oh, my gosh. The Bible Answer Man, he believes in.

Well, he passed away already. He believes that he believes differently than some of us.

And I study them, and I go, wait a second. Mine is correct, the way you told me.

That some of it, a lot of it is correct, except for the same thing. Well, I'll tell you what.

Why don't you call back sometime, and we can discuss pre - and post -tribulational rapture. And I'll give you some information.

Well, I thought it was great. Okay. Okay. Well, good.

Okay, brother. I'm going to get going. I'm going to call her. And keep listening, okay? Thank you for your answer.

Great answer. Okay. May the Lord always be with you and family. All right.

Have a great day. You too. Thanks. All right. You know,

I'm just reminded. I used to live in Bellflower, which is in Southern California.

And my dad was in the service. He was in Vietnam, and we could not afford a place to stay. So we stayed with some friends in Bellflower.

And he was one of the people on the Doolittle's Raiders in World War II when they flew over and bombed

Japan in the first retaliatory raid. And they made a movie out of it called 30 Seconds Over Tokyo. He was one of the guys.

Small world. Let's get to Jamal from North Carolina. Jamal, welcome. You're on the air.

Hi, Mr. Slick. Thank you for taking my call. Amen. Always glad when you call. Oh, thank you.

Appreciate that. That's good to know. That makes my day right there.

Well, good. Hey. I did not know that your father was part of Doolittle's Raid.

Is that true? No, not my father. Hold on. But when my dad was in Vietnam, we couldn't afford a place.

And so my mom's friend, her last name was Sessler.

You can look it up. But she said, come on and live with us.

And so we moved in there. And the man of the house there was one of Doolittle's Raiders.

Oh, man. That is so crazy. And also great at the same time.

Yeah, in fact. When I heard about Doolittle's Raid, go ahead. Instead of a five -man crew on that particular plane, they had a four -man crew.

He took two jobs, and they crash landed off the coast of China. And he had to pull one of his fellow

GIs to shore. And then they were rescued by the

Chinese and then brought back. Yeah, that's what happened. Yeah, how about that?

Yeah, that is crazy. Well, when I hear about stories like that from documentaries, movies, and personal testimonies, that gave me an appreciation for servicemen, men and women, actually.

The sacrifice and the grit that it took to do what they did.

I mean, that's amazing. We do owe a lot to them. Absolutely. And they definitely have my appreciation.

But topic for another conversation. So to get to my questions here. Let's see.

Women pastors and elders, can women teach youth classes? Yes. The idea is not to teach men.

And so at what point does a boy become a man? Well, that's a little ambiguous, a little unclear.

So I'd leave it up to the individual church to decide that. But they're not to be in a spiritual authority over men in the church, because Adam was first created.

And that's 1 Timothy 2 .12 .13. Yeah. Okay. All right.

I won't get on that too much, because I have another question. But a quick follow -up. So what about other programs in the church?

Like, can they be organizers? Can they teach? You say nope?

Yes, they can. Sure. Oh, yes. Okay. All right. So the bottom line is you can't teach men in a kind of Bible teaching kind of way, right?

Yeah, they cannot be in spiritual authority over men. That's just it. And, you know,

I've always encouraged women to do as much as they can in churches.

They can do everything except be pastors, elders, and they shouldn't be deacons either, because the

Bible says deacons would be anarmias gudnikos, men of one woman, husband of one wife. So they shouldn't be that position.

Other than that, they can do so much. And they need to be involved, and they should be involved as much as possible.

Amen. Amen. And all this is detailed on CARM, right?

Yes, I've written about it, and I've defended it for many years. And I'll hear it go again is what

I say. I say, all right, everybody, anybody out there wants to do an official debate, like in person, at your church on does the

Bible support women pastors and elders, let's do it. And, you know, we'll get some funds together.

I'll fly out there, and we'll film it. We'll have it live. We'll do everything, and we'll do that, okay?

And I've been offering this for like 20 years, and nobody's taken me up on it. I've offered it hundreds of times.

Nobody takes me up on it. So, you know. I would just say if you're going to get it filmed, taped, and all that, just stay away from those

ABC moderators, you know. Man, it was so biased and so unfair.

I was yelling at the TV, what are they doing fact -checking him and not her? Why are they asking questions like this?

I wouldn't be surprised if, because her hair was over her ears, if she had an earpiece in, they were feeding her information.

I wouldn't be surprised if she got the questions first. I do not trust the left.

I don't trust them. And I don't trust the election coming up. I don't trust it. Oh, man.

Yeah, it gives us some cause for concern. However, I would say go out there and vote anyway.

Don't leave it up to the referees. Don't leave it up to the voting machines.

Overload the machines to where it's bulletproof to where it's tamper -proof.

That's the word I was looking for. If you overload the system, they can't rig it. And that's from a guy that works on the machines.

All right. To my next question, or to my next question. Have you seen the movie

Nefarious? Nefarious? Yeah, about seven times. Oh, good, good.

Because it was recommended by Steve Noble, guy who used to be on Truth Network. And I was reluctant to watch it, but he recommended it.

So I watched it once, and I was like, man, it's pretty good, but it's about demon possession. But I'm not sure if I want to watch it again because I don't want to be focused on it.

But it was good. I wanted to watch it again. So when you say you've watched it seven times, it kind of gives me a little bit of relief. I've watched it many times.

And if you want to hold on, I'll tell you what I wrote about in one of my novels about demon possession.

Oh, good. If you're curious. But hold on. There's a break. Okay, buddy. Hey, folks. We'll be right back after these messages.

Please stay tuned. Be right back. It's Matt Slick live, taking your calls at 877 -207 -2276.

Here's Matt Slick. All right. Welcome back to the show. Last segment of the hour. If you want to give me a call, the number is 877 -207 -2276.

Back on with Jamal. You still there? Yes, sir. All right.

So as I was saying about nefarious, yeah, I've seen it several times. I definitely supported it. I thought it was very good.

There was good theology in it. I might have said things a little bit differently, but, you know, that's just opinion.

But I wrote a novel years ago. I don't know, eight years ago, whatever, called The Influence.

And I just re -released it on Amazon. People are interested to go check it out. And it deals with a man,

Mark, and his wife Kathy. They're both unbelievers, and demons are sent to kill them.

And you see that I describe them and all the demons and all the stuff, and how hideous what they do. And then there's a bad guy named

Leech. That's his nickname. And he's possessed. And I go in and spend several pages discussing, not discussing, but exemplifying in the novel his possession.

And he's not aware of it. And then he gets repossessed, I call it the repossession, by a larger demonic force for a greater evil it wants to do upon Mark, the unbeliever.

But this is what's tantalizing is Mark is allowed to actually have a real conversation with an angel.

And the angel appears to him, you know, scares Mark. But after he gets kind of used to it, they have these conversations.

And he asks these angels all these questions. And the angel's kind of cryptic in some of his answers.

But he answers some things directly and some things not. And he goes on and on and on. And that's the novel and then stuff.

Okay? So. Yeah, that sounds interesting. I'm going to have to check it out.

What's the name of the novel? The Influence. If you were to go,

I just re -released it. So it's had hundreds of reviews. But what happened was the publisher, the publishing house who published it, went out of business.

And they gave me the keys to that aspect on Amazon. And I couldn't get back in.

So the original has a dark cover.

And the second one has a greenish cover with an angelic wing in it, wings. And so I had to re -release it.

I talked to Amazon and they said that's what you have to do to redo it. I've lost control of it.

At any rate. So I had to re -publish it. So that's what I did. And I just recently re -released it. And you can go check it out on Amazon.

Just go there and type in The Influence by Matt Slick. Or I think

I'm curious now. If you go to the CARM homepage, I think there's a link.

Yeah, there's a link. Latest books by Matt. And you can see some of the stuff there.

Yeah, there it is. And it's in Kindle. That's good.

Yeah. And I wrote a sci -fi novel also and a novella.

And these are just the ones I'm looking at are just on Kindle. But I know that I've got, anyway, a lot of work to do.

Okay. So I like writing. In fact, I'm in the mood to write another novel. Anyway, I've got stuff to do.

So knowing you. Yeah, why not? It seems like you have a lot of good writings out there.

One of the reasons why I was, or another reason to ask about Nefarious is after I watched it,

I wanted to look up some other, I guess, productions or other information on it.

And there was this guy who's Catholic. He does cast out demons.

And he said that movie that's exorcism focused on special effects and all that. He said he wasn't too impressed with that, but he said with Nefarious, it focused more on the mental game that demons play, how they deal with a lot of manipulation.

And he was very impressed with that. And I have to agree. So, of course,

I wanted to call and get your interpretation on that. And since you gave the okay to watch it, I'll kind of give my two cents on the movie as well.

It kind of gives you an insight on how the enemy thinks and how to counteract that.

And then it also, in my opinion, should give you more of a fervor to battle against the enemy because ending,

I'm not going to give it away. Ending is a little jarring. And for the people that are demon possessed who are not saved, that movie should give you a drive to go out and save as many people as you possibly can.

If you're willing to let your awkwardness, your fear, get in the way of even talking to somebody and potentially saving somebody, that's a fear you got to get around.

Your fear isn't more important than somebody's salvation. So that movie is

Nefarious. I highly recommend it. If you're going to watch it, you're going to have to order it through,

I guess, your internet provider because it's online now. But again, I highly recommend that.

Yeah, I do too. In fact, through all of this, in late discussions I got another idea for another novel.

And I think it would be very interesting, very intriguing, this concept I have. So if I can get some free time,

I'm working down 40 hours. When I'm down to 40 hours a week, then I can start working on another novel.

But anyway, got to go, buddy. Okay? All right. All right. Thank you, sir. God bless.

All right, man. God bless. All right. Now let's get to Jason from Arizona.

Jason, welcome. You're on the air. Good afternoon, Matt. When you talk about writing novels,

I sure wish you would write the reformed novel that Jesus is not the blond -haired, blue -eyed surfer.

Yeah. The blond -haired, black -occasioned surfer Jesus dressed in a woman's nightgown. Yeah. Yeah, because Romans chapter 9 is definitely probably the most avoided chapter in the entire

Christian community. I agree with you. It is avoided.

But I just wanted to ask you today, Philippians 129, I think, is a very strong reformed verse that's showing that it's

God granting that someone have faith. And if God is granting that someone have faith, then logically he's choosing who's to be saved.

Correct? Correct. That's correct. Absolutely. Very good logic. So when

Paul wrote that God has dealt to every man the measure of faith, he's talking to the church because he also wrote that not all men have faith.

So am I rightly dividing the word? Those that have the measure are the church.

Those that don't have faith are the ones that were not given faith by God. Right. Mm -hmm.

Yep. When I listened to your debate with Leighton Flowers, I misconstrued because you both said, yeah, we agree.

God dealt to every man the measure of faith. Well, Mr. Leighton Flowers, the foremost

Arminian, is saying, oh, yeah, Matt Slick and I both agree.

Every human has faith. Well, I know better that you know more than I know that God has not given faith to everyone because not all men have faith.

So I just noticed you misconstrued that. Well, there's always context of everything.

But it says in Romans 12 .3, the grace of God given to me, I say to every man among you, not to think more highly of himself but to think so as to have sound judgment as God has allotted to each a measure of faith.

So I would say that the salvific faith is only granted by God to the elect, to the believers.

Now, people have faith, but I wouldn't now say that they have that generic faith in other things granted by God like faith in the false god of Mormonism or the false gospel of Catholicism.

So Romans 12 .3, I think, really just means just the believers. Okay? And by the way...

Amen. Yeah. So it's just interesting how during these debates, like certain scriptures are omitted or like people don't do exegesis or...

I noticed when you debated Leighton, you know, he'll talk about every other scripture except what you're debating.

Well, I had a discussion. It really wasn't a debate. But I do need to have a debate with him on this.

But I remember our discussion, Philippians 1 .29, this very verse, Virtute has been granted for Christ's sake not only to believe in him, that he said what it means is

God granted the opportunity to believe. I remember that very clearly. And I told him that's not what it says.

So what Leighton does and others do is change God's word to make it fit what they want it to say.

That's what's happening. Mm -hmm. Yeah, definitely, definitely. I know we're running out of time here, but I'll call back another day.

I enjoy... The show's about to end, right? Yeah, we've got one more caller.

We've got about four minutes. Yep. All right. Well, I'll talk to you soon, Matt. Thank you. All right, brother.

God bless. Okay. All right, now Cole from North Carolina.

Cole, welcome. You're on the air. Hey, how you doing, Matt? Hanging in there, man.

Hanging in there. What do you got? Yeah.

Mm -hmm. So... Yes, what it says in Exodus 20, verse 4, "...or

on earth beneath, or in the water under the earth. You shall not worship them or serve them."

So, now notice what it says. It says, "...an idol of any likeness what's in heaven, on earth, or under the water."

So here's a question. Ask him if you can have a picture of a fish, a beautiful fish, that was on the ocean.

Because if he's going to say consistently you can't have an image of Jesus. I'm going to explain on this a little bit more.

But if you can't have an image of Jesus, and this is the verse he wants to go to, then you can't have an image of a cow, a bird, a cloud, or stars, or anything because of what's in heaven, or on the earth, or beneath the earth, or in the water, or whatever.

The context here is that you would not worship them or serve them, or bow down to them.

That's what's going on. So can you have a representation of Jesus?

Yes, you can. You don't bow down before it. You don't use it as an image. Just like you can have an image of a cross.

I'll wear a cross sometimes on a mountain about. I love astronomy.

I love astronomy. I love this stuff with the James Webb telescope. I love the pictures.

If I were to have a picture of that on my wall, if I'd broken the commandment, no, if I were to kneel down before that picture and start praying to the stars there, that's idolatry.

That's the thing that is prevented. So yes, you can. Technically, you can have an image of the Lord in your house, though I don't recommend it.

It's just an opinion at this point. The reason I don't recommend it is I don't want an image in my mind of what he might look like.

That's exactly right. That was his point. It was just a recommendation.

Because he was trying to say, treat everybody the same. That Jesus, we would have probably, back in the day, we would have probably just overlooked him in a room.

He kind of alluded to your blonde hair, blue eyes, Jesus. Hey, what scripture was that again?

I want to make sure it was the one he said. Exodus 20, which is the Ten Commandments, verse 4 and 5.

Okay. And I have one more question. It's real quick. We're out of time.

The music is going to start in like five seconds. So, sorry. Call back tomorrow, okay? But there's the music.

Okay, buddy. Hey, folks, there you go.

We just ran out of time. May the Lord bless you. And by his grace, we're back on air tomorrow. Hopefully, we'll talk to you then.

Have a good evening, everyone. God bless. See ya. Another program powered by The Truth Network.