Debate Review w/ Paul Day!

Well, hello and welcome to The Apologetic Dog.

I'm your host, Jeremiah Nortier.

Thank you so much for joining me.

We were almost on time, but better late than never.

If you're new to the channel, hopefully you see 1 Timothy 6 .20 somewhere embedded in that apologetic logo

where it's our heart's desire to guard and defend the gospel of grace.

And please hit that like button.

That helps my content be able to be circulated all throughout the YouTube worlds.

Appreciate that so much.

I have a couple announcements before we dive into our episode this evening.

I'm really excited about this.

I will be speaking at a conference coming up in February.

I believe it starts the 20th through the 22nd in Tullahoma, Tennessee.

This conference is called War.

It's the battle between the flesh and the spirit.

And so we have so many amazing speakers lined up at the conference.

Keith Foskey will be one of them along with Sam Waldron.

And my boy Marlon Wilson will be out there too.

And so like I said, all these gentlemen will be speaking at this conference.

And so you don't wanna miss it.

And I just wanna let people know, please sign up.

Seats are filling up.

We have a lot to look forward to.

We have a pre -conference evangelism bootcamp is what I think they're calling it, and that's February 19th.

And you boys, get back here.

I am the last event of the conference, which will be a debate.

And I'd love to show you that graphic.

The debate is between me and a good friend, Lucas Curcio.

I believe he identifies as Wesleyan Armenian, and he's a Methodist.

And so we will be debating on if a believer can lose their salvation.

No, they can't.

So I'll be basically defending eternal security.

I'm really looking forward to this opportunity.

And it's not gonna be a dumpster fire debate.

Me and Lucas Curcio, we have a kindred spirit.

I count him as a dear brother in the faith.

And so we're gonna be able to charitably, oh my goodness, this actually pertains to this episode this

evening a little bit.

But me and Lucas, we will be able to get into the scriptures.

We will be able to smile and have fun and really talk about the substance of what

this debate is going to be centered around.

And so that will be at the end of the conference, the Open Air Theology Conference in

Tullahoma, Tennessee, coming up in February.

So like I said, please sign up for that debate.

Another announcement is I just started having membership availability on

YouTube.

And so I'm gonna be pumping out some fresh content to those that have been able to

monetarily give and support the Apologetic Dog.

That helps so much.

Ever since I've started working in ministry full -time now, this is a platform that I wanna be able to spend

more time, and my church family has said, yes, Jeremiah, please pursue apologetics.

How can we help you do that?

And so you can join the ministry by becoming a member or becoming a Patreon,

going to the Apologetic Dog website for more information about those things.

So really excited to be able to tell you about the membership.

Last announcement is next Tuesday, so a week from today, I will be having

Tony Costa from Toronto Apologetics on the Apologetic Dog.

I'm so excited.

I've been trying to get Dr. Costa to come on for a long time.

Dr. Costa, from what I understand, he is a Reformed Baptist.

And I've had so many people send in questions saying, Jeremiah, what do we do about the

historic doctrine of baptismal regeneration?

Has it been the case that all of church history has unanimously believed this doctrine universally,

that baptismal regeneration has always been this sacrodotal means of receiving the grace

of God?

No.

And so Tony Costa's gonna help us navigate those waters, pun intended, and how

Baptist evangelicals, how we would account for church history.

And so yes, there are many patristics, early church fathers, that have written about baptism.

And it seems to be that it would be the case that they would affirm a kind of baptismal regeneration.

But we're gonna be talking about not all of them.

And for those of us that hold scripture as the highest authority in our life, ultimately we have to

judge church history in light of scripture itself.

So that's gonna be a great episode.

That will be a week from today, where Dr. Costa, Tony Costa, and myself, we're gonna be

discussing baptismal regeneration in relation to church history.

So without further ado, I have a guest on with me this evening.

Paul Day, what's going on, sir?

Hi, excited to be here.

Always willing to discuss anything related to the scriptures and how they

apply to our life.

Scripture is not just a subject for theologians, it's everyone is a

theologian.

So these matters are important to every one of us, no matter how young or old you may be in the faith.

Yes, such a great point.

Have you read R .C. Sproul's book, Everyone's a Theologian?

I haven't gotten to that one yet, but I need to.

It's very good.

And it basically just echoes what you just said.

Everyone's a theologian.

And the question is, are you a good one or not?

And so I highly recommend that book.

But Paul, this is your second time on The Apologetic Dog.

Last time I got to interview you about your journey out of the church of Christ, how God

saved you by his amazing grace.

And so I'll definitely plug that in the link below after the video.

But please tell us a little bit more about yourself and where people can find some of your content.

So you can find a lot of my content just by searching under YouTube,

under Paul Day, or you can also use my tag name, Reformed Udays.

And in that channel, I discuss a lot of things that have to do with how reformed theology

interacts, particularly with theologies that are coming out of the churches of Christ.

And one of my main goals in my presence on YouTube is trying to seek

to establish better conversations, better dialogues with members of the churches of Christ

to hopefully provide better apologetics and improve our methods of

evangelism so that we can have better results when we interact with our friends and neighbors of the

churches of Christ.

Well, that's so wonderful to hear because one of my primary areas of emphasis here at The

Apologetic Dog is to evangelize the church of Christ.

And Paul, I get called a meanie all the time, and that's the nice way of putting it.

But I do not think that the church of Christ believe in the one true gospel that can

save.

I think what the church of Christ teach is problematic at its very core.

As we get into this debate that I participated in, they have a different anthropology.

They have a different nature of being where you are born innocent, sinless, and

you become a sinner by the things that you do over time.

And so we have a fundamentally different understanding of who man is, and the church of Christ have a

different understanding of who God is.

I would argue a sub -sovereign God, a God that's just merely a bigger version of man.

And then when we start getting into the gospel of grace, I believe they add works, their own personal

works, to the finished work of Jesus Christ.

And we'll hopefully get into this a little bit, but I believe that crosses the line into a Galatian one heresy, because you gotta

believe in the right Jesus, and you have to receive the right Jesus by faith apart from your own works.

And so talking with you in the past has been a tremendous, you bring great clarity, because

I don't carry that experience like you do coming out of this.

Church of Christ are just all in my backyard, and I evangelize them in Jonesboro, Arkansas.

Yeah, that's one reason why I've tried to keep at this, because when I made the decision to leave, I wanted

to make it for the right reasons, not because I had personal beef with anybody, I wanted it to be

because this is what the Bible says, this is what they teach.

I cannot be a part of something that is so fundamentally opposed to

something as simple as what we would consider simple as the substitutionary

atonement of Christ, or even a visceral denial of the imputed righteousness of Christ.

Those things are something I'm very passionate about.

I like it.

Well, I've summoned you, especially for this episode, because there's a lot of

smack talk going on out there in the YouTube worlds.

And so I asked Paul Day here if he would listen to that interview that Caleb

Robertson and I had, where he interviewed me.

And we did a debate a few weeks ago, and the reason I put it in air quotes, me and you talked about this,

it's because I don't feel like Caleb actually debated.

I think he just kind of wanted to rally the troops.

You know, he kind of had the one -string banjo going on and made very emotional, I'm all for

emotional points, things that resonate with people, but when that's the only card in your hand

and you're not addressing my arguments, then, I mean, people are gonna see kind of right through, like, oh, there's not gonna be

any good correspondence.

But before we dive into any of the clips, what were some of your initial thoughts when you watched the debate,

if we can call it that, and the interview that maybe you watched afterwards?

So it did seem like to me there was only one side there that was actually willing to debate the issues.

One thing I think we'll get to in this discussion is Caleb really pretty much shot out

right out of the gate, stating what his true intentions were during the debate.

And I don't believe it was God honoring, and I'll let you actually play what he had to say so

people won't say that I'm making up what he had to say.

And when it came to the actual interview itself, what seemed like a genuine offer to listen

to what you had to say instead was a session to try and

make fun of you, to try and accuse you of trying to be smarter than everybody else in the room.

And then when it was actually released in public, you see something that they didn't do,

like for their interviews with the different brands of detergents of Christ they'd been putting out

publicly, they decided they didn't cut it up so you couldn't say that they

had cut it up, but they put all kinds of commentary, verbiage all over it.

So it was not an honest effort to let you speak.

It was another way that they could grab soundbites and try to go after your character

so people wouldn't listen to you.

The interview was interesting because, as we're gonna play here in a moment, Caleb, before he

aired the interview, he basically was telling people, no, Jeremiah wanted to basically act like he's the

smartest man in the room, and he just told his audience, I think you're gonna be very bored listening to

Jeremiah.

Well, I listened to that.

I was like, dude, he's poisoning the well hard before he even gives me a chance, Paul.

Even before, I didn't even have a chance yet to say anything.

But people can find that interview that's out there.

Caleb, I asked him, I was like, hey, can I share the interview on my page?

And he said, no, I want this to be a Bible, what does the Bible say, exclusive.

And so I was like, okay.

I still might do a reacts video to that in a few weeks to come.

But yeah, I may put a link in the show notes afterwards so people can go listen to the interview.

And I will say, the interview was mainly asking me about the distinctions of being Reformed Baptist, how is that

different than Southern Baptist and Presbyterians.

But you know what?

That's what it was subtly trying to do, of saying, aren't y 'all basically just like the Westboro Baptist people

that are hyper -Calvinist?

And so the debate into the interview, I had a lot of groundwork to try to distinguish

myself from those categories.

Because Caleb doesn't like me saying that he doesn't understand our position.

And then they'll even say, oh yeah, yeah, we know.

You don't think we understand you.

Calvinists always say that when we got them pinned against the wall.

And here's the thing.

I really wish they would represent us properly because that's what we're trying to do as we critique their

viewpoint.

But when you straw men, it's up to us to let people know that's not what we believe.

You didn't even try to say that that was an entailment of our position.

So do you remember us getting into any of that as far as straw men are concerned?

Yeah, I did.

I would add, definitely want to encourage people to listen to that interview

that y 'all did.

There's one point in that interview that you can really tell what's really going

on.

Where you tried, you explained perfectly the difference between

Reformed Baptists and Presbyterians on the mode of baptism and the reasons for

baptism, infant baptism, believers baptism.

You explained the different perspective.

And he goes, what?

You couldn't just say that by just saying the Presbyterian sprinkle and the Baptist dunk people.

To me, he says he understands that stuff.

But when you make such cocky and arrogant comments like that so belittling and condescending,

it's a major turnoff.

But if you do want to hear a good explanation of the difference between Reformed Baptists and

Presbyterians, that's not done in a way to gaslight or

misrepresent.

You should definitely listen to what Jeremiah said.

Because if you listen to Caleb, you would think he didn't know anything.

But you could get a very good primer on those issues by listening to that interview if you could drown

the other guy out.

Yeah, because like you said, if people go listen to the interview, there's a lot of

distractions going on.

Meaning, not only did he talk about how it was boring, which cracks me up.

I'm like, let the people be the judge of that.

But as I'm speaking, he has like a movie.

You see the purple backdrop here to, I guess it's my right, your left.

There's constantly changing of slides as I'm talking on the interview.

So it's distracting, but that's why I wanted to maybe do a Reacts video to it.

Before we dive in, I want to bring up this comment that Carl Henry made out there, but I also want to tell everybody else,

if you have any questions throughout our live stream, send that in and you may have to preference it with a question, you may have to

post it a few times.

Or if you want to send in a Super Chat question, that gives me a special notification because I want to bring y

'all along as we go.

Now Carl, Carl and I are friends.

Now Paul, do you know Carl out there?

Yeah, I've seen him in your videos.

Yeah, so Carl says that I am somebody that constantly poisons the well against

the Church of Christ.

And so Carl, what I want to say is, that's not my aim.

Now I want to warn people, but this is what I want to do differently than Caleb.

And Carl, I think you'll respect my heart in this, whether I'm perfect at it or not is a totally different story.

But I don't want to poison the well by like saying that Church of Christ are Pelagian.

I believe at the core Pelagius and Church of Christ teach almost

identically the same thing.

Now there may be are some differing things, but what I'm getting at Carl is, as I

warn people according to my conviction about the Church of Christ, I don't want to poison the well.

I don't want to misrepresent and stack the deck before people actually go explore for

themselves.

And so my attempt is to steel man the Church of Christ position.

And I don't think that's what Caleb can do.

And so Carl, my heart is not to poison the well in a malicious way, but I do want to warn people

according to the conviction that I have.

So hopefully we can be on the same page with that.

Oh, the Tatted Theologian is out there.

I just want to give a shout out to the Tatted Theologian

and Sparky Zimod out there and Miss Leanne Ferguson and her book she

wrote, Christ Rescued Me from the Church of Christ.

That being said, Paul, I want to play maybe the opening minute or so from

the interview because you were able to check out both of these and I was like, man, I'd love to hear your thoughts on both of these.

And so in this first minute or so, I want us to kind of talk about was the debate fair?

And maybe we can get at some of Caleb's true motivation for doing this

debate.

Sound good?

Yes, sir.

When the debate was done, Jeremiah and I sat down and he knew it was coming.

We talked about it beforehand, doing a post -debate interview.

And I only really had maybe four, like four questions that I knew we wanted to talk

about.

It's about 45 minutes long.

There'll be some excursions that we take along the way, but there's just really only a couple of questions I wanted to ask him.

And I have to tell you, I do think that Jeremiah contradicted himself a number of times inside of the debate.

The interview is worse.

I want to say, I don't mind people like Caleb saying, Jeremiah contradicted himself because on one

hand, 1 Corinthians chapter two talks about the natural man.

It's not going to understand the things of God.

So I think Caleb's being honest with what I explained to him.

It is contradiction.

So it's not those things that bother me.

The interview will be filled with contradictions of his Calvinistic viewpoints.

And there'll be a lot of what you hear tonight through the interview that you will sit there and you'll say, I don't have a clue

what this guy is talking about.

And I would say, I get it.

It's sectarian mumbo jumbo.

Like there's only going to be a select group of people who have a clue what he's talking about.

And I say that to him in the interview.

I'm like, tell it, say it in such a way where people who don't have all this stuff going on can understand what

you're saying.

I think it's ridiculous to talk that way.

This isn't a smart guy competition.

I understood the stuff he was talking about, but I'm just saying, I'm not in this for, you know, to make

this about a scholarly pursuit or anything like that.

I want it to be plain.

We want to get to the heart of the matter.

We want to understand what the conclusions are.

And I think a lot of these guys just want to come out and they just want to sound intellectual.

I, you know, that's just what I think about it.

And I'm not basically having a moment of, you know, beating him up, but I'm saying, I think that a lot of y 'all will get into the

interview and say, this is boring.

And I'm saying it's because he just starts pontificating about their systematic

theologies and on and on and on.

It's not great, but it.

Well, you know, I was answering his questions.

So anyway, do you want me to keep playing it or do you want me to cut off there?

Let's see, there was.

I keep playing it.

We might listen to another minute or so if we need to.

I think if, I think my biggest thing was, but that first, the opening period there of the

actual interview, it's that beginning part of it.

I think that's the most eyeopening.

Would that classify as poisoning the well?

Telling everybody, uh -oh, get ready for this boring interview.

Jeremiah's just pontificating a lot.

Well, if Jeremiah was intending to be fair and hospitable, he should have

prefaced it saying, we wanted to continue this discussion a little bit and Jeremiah was gracious

to continue and answer a few extra questions I had.

It's here for you to listen to and you can make up your own mind about it.

So that would have been the nice thing to do, but the Robinsons aren't exactly known.

For that sort of thing.

Yeah.

Paul, it was, I will say this.

When I got to Virginia and I met Caleb and his dad, Johnny, beforehand, they

were super kind to me before and after.

And during the interview, I thought Caleb was a totally different person because the debate felt like a tech.

And we'll get into more of that here in a little bit.

But after about halfway through the debate, I started feeling a lot better.

I could, took some deep breaths, said a few prayers and realized, hey, God has a purpose in all

this, a redeeming, sanctifying purpose.

So I'm gonna trust him in that.

And I finally started to enjoy the rest of the evening.

And so I'm not trying to be uncharitable towards Caleb and Johnny.

During this interview, I thought it was very nice.

So what people are seeing right now is Caleb giving his opinions about the

debate afterwards before he actually plays the clip.

And so I thought it was kind of bizarre that he just told everybody, hey, Jeremiah contradicted himself, which I'm not,

that's totally fine for him to think that.

But then to kind of just tell people, hey, it's just gonna be so boring.

So basically get your popcorn and try to make it all the way through.

I just was like, oh, it hurts my feelings.

I'm okay though.

So yeah, did you have any other thoughts?

I know we were already kind of setting this up, but he kept mentioning how he believes

salvation should be so simple and it's the Calvinists, it's the reform that really

complicate things.

Yeah, that was a, when that came up, really the first thing that came to my mind wasn't a

book of theology.

I didn't think about R .C. Sproul.

I didn't think about John Calvin.

I didn't think about Augustine.

The first thing that came to my mind was Luke's book of Acts and the

epistle of second Peter, where somebody who's showing their ignorance really of the

content of scripture make statements like, well, when you're speaking about salvation, it shouldn't be

very complicated.

We should just be able to spit it out and be done with it.

Actually, the Bible says a different story about that.

There's two sides to that.

Before we play this next clip, I wanna thank Carl.

Like I said, me and Carl are friends.

You gotta think in a different life, man.

If he could have been on the right side of the gospel, we would have been even better friends.

He did ask this question.

Want you to share your thoughts on this because the whole debate centered around, well,

Jeremiah thinks that some babies go to hell.

That sounds so awful, regardless of what the scripture actually teaches.

On that emotional point, Caleb wanted everyone to forget everything else that I said.

And so he asked a good question.

And if we had a good debate, I could have maybe answered some of this.

And this comes out a little bit in the interview.

And I saw Caleb's eyes get big, like, oh, wait, you don't think babies go to hell that die in infancy

that are non -elect?

I'm like, no.

And I wanna bring some clarity on this.

So I'll start with Carl's question here.

He goes, Jeremiah, did Caleb get you to admit that all babies go to heaven?

Disagree with essentially the 1689 and James White's position.

This is so huge.

Well, this may be huge to some people, but there is an ongoing discussion in the Reformed

world, especially throughout church history.

Now, the 1689 Westminster, they affirmed the elect infants.

And what I've always said, what I've always said is God is sovereign in salvation.

Romans nine talks about God gives mercy to those whom he sees fit to show mercy.

And I just say, it's God's prerogative.

If it's to save all babies or not, that is up to him.

And so that's the Reformed position is God is sovereign, whether it's infant salvation or adult

salvation.

My position is I don't think the script, you can find one single verse that says all babies that die in infancy

immediately go to heaven.

We have to look at inductive principles.

And we do look at verses that say, for of such are the kingdom of heaven, which we're gonna get into.

And what's the immediate context of being taught there and what are we to learn?

Well, we do see principles all throughout scripture about God and his goodness and his love and his grace.

And so what I've told people is inductively, I trust the just judge of

all the earth to do right.

And God is free to save all infants if that's what he wants.

But that is just my opinion, looking at all of scripture.

I have so many Reformed friends that say, well, since scripture is not clear, we don't know and we know the elect ones do.

And I'm high -fiving them saying, that's exactly right.

And so for a debate with the church of Christ, I'm not gonna give them an inch and let them try to poison

the well, but that's exactly what Caleb did, is I just let him know on a personal level, I just

believe after reading the scriptures, studying the character of God and saying, it looks like maybe,

possibly, all infants that die in infancy go to heaven, not because of their goodness, but because of

God's goodness and his grace and his mercy.

So did you wanna speak to that any?

Yeah, that reminds me of something that I heard R .C. Sproul Jr. say one time.

He said that if infants go to heaven, they will not go to heaven apart from faith in Jesus

Christ and being regenerated.

So that has to be, and that's one thing we'll get into later, when the clear texts of

scripture speak, there's a clear emphasis on people having

faith and a moral character that aligns with that confession of faith.

So it is a complicated question.

I land more on your side of things, because a lot of the verses that people put

forward concerning whether infants are safe, as those in the

churches of Christ would say, they are not as

emphatic or actually proving or addressing the point that they're being used to prove.

So I do not believe that this is a subject that God has

given us definitive revelation on.

But what I tell people is this, and this comes from someone who

my immediate family, we have there's three siblings.

Before me, there were two siblings who died before they were born.

So this issue affected our family from the beginning.

What I try and say is this, children are a gift from the Lord.

They are ultimately not ours, they are His.

We are entrusted with them for whatever time that we have.

And should God decide to take them away, that is His prerogative.

And we don't have a right to have a beef with God for taking

back what He has given to us.

So just like he had mentioned before, we ought to have the kind of faith that Abraham had,

that he could, when faced with what seemed like something was

horrendous, no matter what the outcome was, he knew that

surely that the Lord would do right.

He was the righteous judge.

He would always do what's right.

So our focus should be the scriptural focus, the method of spreading the gospel,

trying to win lost souls for Christ.

And when it comes to speculations, things that you would think the churches of Christ would

resonate with us on, we know we need to speak where the Bible speaks after all, and be silent

where the Bible is silent.

So I'm just doing what they tell me to do.

On this issue, I do not believe God has chosen to give us all the answers that we want.

The secret things belong to the Lord, but what He has revealed to us, He's revealed those things to us and our

children forever.

And that should be enough for us.

That's so good.

And I think someone sent me a clip of Caleb and Johnny saying, Jeremiah changed his position

after debate.

And I kind of chuckled.

I was like, at this point, I can't be charitable and think that they're just doing

things out of ignorance.

I really think they're trying to lie and manipulate because I didn't change my position.

In fact, Caleb never heard me throughout the entire debate.

That's why in the interview, his eyes got real big when I told him, I don't think any babies that die in infancy go to hell.

He was just like, you don't?

But James White, James White is a good representation of showing people that these are

hard issues to work out because scripture does not tell us explicitly.

But the big takeaway is any infant that goes to heaven, it's not based on their own goodness.

And so Leanne posted, cause I put this video in the debate, is Caleb

says that babies do not need Jesus.

And I thought that is so problematic because Jesus is very clear in the gospel

account.

He says, no one comes to the Father except through me.

And he says, no one.

He says, I'm the way, the truth, and life, no one.

And so even in Church of Christ theology, you would think that they would have to better reconcile the

words of Jesus and all the exclusive statements of how Jesus is the only door, he's the good shepherd, he is the

only way to salvation.

And so the Church of Christ have another way of salvation for infants.

And so I don't think that's what you should be saying because anybody that's equipped with what the scripture, what the

Bible says, Paul, did you hear me say that a lot in the debate?

I tried to wear that out a little bit for their audience.

But if anybody knows what the Bible says, well, of course, infants need Jesus.

In that conclusion, it's problematic when they go to proof text of saying like, for of such is the kingdom of God these little ones.

Well, what they're really now implying is, oh, you gotta be like these little ones that don't need Jesus.

And then you're like, well, then you can't make any right application for yourself.

So it's a hot mess.

So do you have any more thoughts with that?

Well, the only thing I would add is, just in reading up on the issue and the history of the confession and why it was written the

way it was, I would think that people, it should be something that people within

the Church of Christ would take a lesson from, because

clearly when you read the authors of this confession, not all of them had the same

opinion on the subject.

Some of them affirmed that all infants were elect.

Some of them would affirm that some were not.

So the confession was written in such a way that all sides could walk away from the table

agreeing on something and uniting on the things that they agreed with instead of splitting on the

things that divided them.

So they were able to properly differentiate between primary and secondary issues,

and they were willing to state things in such a way that didn't drive each other away.

So I think it's actually a good object lesson for how we should handle theological differences, recognizing the differences

between primary and secondary differences, and how to construct things in a way

to say we agree on this much, and that's a good thing.

What's up, everybody that's joining in the side chat, Justin Stazny, aka Richardson out there.

So Carl, I just wanna make sure, because you've been sending in those super chats, so I feel like I gotta make sure that we're

understanding each other a little bit.

Carl says, never ever have I heard a member of the body say we don't need Jesus.

Carl, I'm gonna give you the benefit of the doubt.

We're talking about how Caleb said infants and babies don't need Jesus, and we're

saying that's a problem based on the words of Christ himself, because he says, no one comes to the Father

except through me, and our position is, well, that would include the least of these, infants.

So I just wanted to help bring some clarity on that as well.

Let's continue with the next portion where, Paul, salvation is

simple, man, and you just complicate things.

Instead of saying, and I'm saying, pay attention to the contradictions, and do not get lost in all the

boring jargon of the Calvinist position.

Systematic theology, attempted pseudo -intellectualism.

It's 1 Timothy 1 .7, these guys desiring to be teachers of the law, understanding neither what they say nor wherever they affirm,

just riddled with contradictions.

James 3 .1, be not many masters.

I mean, he's propping himself up as being the teacher coming in to educate, and I just try to keep it simple to the conclusions.

1 Timothy 3 .6, not a novice left being lifted up with pride.

You fall into the condemnation of the devil.

Everybody, if you can stick with it, is gonna see the inconsistency.

2 Timothy 3 .7, ever learning and never able to come to the knowledge of the truth.

I think 2 Corinthians 11 .3, it should be simple.

So your mind should be corrupted from the simplicity that is in Christ.

Their stuff is so complicated, and you know, when I was debating with him, one of the things that he said more than like seven

times, Caleb, you don't understand.

Caleb, you don't get.

Time.

Turn it off.

So yeah, so let's just get all the cards out on the table.

Newsflash, the churches of Christ do have a systematic theology.

They just don't write it down, and when you come in there and try and teach something against what they're teaching, you find out

how quickly they do have a systematic theology.

So really, their belief is, we have a systematic theology.

Anybody else who goes against what we say is obviously wrong so this idea of systematic theology is

wrong, and we just won't call our systematic theology.

It's just the Bible.

So what really rubbed me the wrong way was this idea, like when you're

talking about things of salvation, all this complicated verbiage stuff, this

highfalutin theological myths, I mean, you don't find anything like that in the Bible.

It's all simple, it's cut and dry, nobody had a hard time understanding things, and

I don't know how familiar everybody is with Caleb Robertson, but he has made a statement before

in one of his broadcasts where he stated that it was impossible to convert somebody

in one day.

He literally said it is impossible.

To convert somebody in one day.

But this, it's simple, it's simple, just another one of those double standards.

But what does Scripture actually have to say on the issue?

Well, Scripture addresses that as a yes and a no answer.

You bet you, the gospel is a simple issue.

It's so simple, like when you read the conversion account of the Philippian jailer in Acts

16, where after all that what happened, the jailer comes out and he says, sir, what must

I do to be saved?

And they tell him, believe in the Lord Jesus Christ.

And you will be saved.

Just stopping right there, when would they ever give the answer to anybody?

When would they ever state that it's always qualified, we always have these five steps of salvation?

That's complicated.

Here's something simple.

And as they were going on, contrary to what Caleb has to say, the apostle

had full confidence in the word of God that he could convert a pagan in the

same hour of the night, that the issue was so simple.

It literally says that, that this all happened in the same hour of the night.

It triggered a response of repentance from the Philippian jailer.

It triggered a response of baptism at once.

So yes, the gospel is simple.

It's not complicated as those in the churches of Christ try and make it, but there's

another side of this coin.

Salvation can be something that is something hard or difficult to

understand.

And to that, I would refer you to Peter's words in 2 Peter 3, 15

through 16.

So as he was discussing the need for the character of a Christian, how he

should be and the patience of the Lord, he picks up and he tells his readers to count the patience of our

Lord as salvation.

Now watch this, just as our beloved brother Paul also wrote to you according to the

wisdom given him, as he does in all of his letters when he speaks in them of

these matters.

Now, what does he say about these matters?

There are some things in them that are easy to understand.

No, no, no.

Hard to understand, which the ignorant and unstable twist to their

own destruction as they do the other scriptures.

So no, Mr. Robertson, the answer is more complicated than you try and let on.

Yes, the gospel should be simple.

In contrast to the gospel that you preach.

And yes, the subject of salvation can be something that is difficult to understand, which might

require those highfalutin words you talk about.

So he is very ignorant on this subject.

Something else I wanted to chime in and get your thoughts on.

Okay, so I've been studying the Church of Christ theology, restorationist movement,

going back to Alexander Thomas Campbell for a while, and I hit up you all the time saying, am I right here, Paul?

And Paul, you've even corrected some of my understanding.

So like, I'm trying.

I even message A .K. Richardson some, I talk to Mike Hysall, because I'm wanting to be charitable.

One of my conclusions, so this is Carl, this is not what the Church of Christ would say, but this is my opinion

after watching and analyzing the Church of Christ, is the Church of Christ are a

very common sense religion.

If you want better grades, you work really hard.

If you wanna get stronger, you go work hard at the gym.

And if you wanna go to heaven one day, just work really, really hard to be good.

And the more I think about this, I'm like, you know, Paul, they say certain phrases about if you have open hearts and an open

mind, and the Bible's so simple, right?

They say some of these words that appeals to the natural man.

And I thought, man, that really is kind of the deception going on, is if anything gets

outside the small parameter of what they call clear and simple, well, then you must be a false teacher,

because you're just complicating things.

And I remember I spent hours talking to this local Church of Christ preacher who would put articles in the mail.

Like I said, I called him up, and he said, Jeremiah, you're just complicating everything.

I said, okay.

I said, tell me what's more complicated, faith alone, a trust in

Jesus's finished work, or you have to hear the word, repent,

believe, confess, be baptized, and continue to remain holy with the hopes of one day going to happen.

I said, y 'all have a five -step -plus formula, and we're saying there's one step.

Those who put their faith apart from trusting in their own accomplishments and their own obedience, they're declared

right before God.

And so even the simple game, as you were bringing out, I feel like they lose that.

But what they're trying to do is that's their M .O.

If they can come across more simple, well, maybe this low -hanging fruit can kind of rally together more

of those that, I don't know, that appeals to that common sense.

So what do you think there?

There is definitely an appeal.

The way they market themselves is the idea, we just want to do what the Bible says.

Don't you want to do what the Bible says?

And that's why a lot of people, they can be attracted to

movements like this because they just want to do what's right.

There's a lot of these folks that are wrapped up in these groups that they're not interested in working their way to heaven.

They want to love God.

They want to love Jesus.

What they are being told about us is, we don't think you have to live holy lives.

We think you could go around and sleep around with your neighbor's wife.

We think you could commit all the sins from idolatry to murder and still go to heaven.

They're still, to this day, quoting a tract from that particular quote, Sam

Morris' tract that's used in every debate I've ever heard in any Church of Christ debate.

These guys believe that you could commit every sin from idolatry to witchcraft to murder and you could still go to heaven.

So if you market it that way and you point to a passage in the Bible that demands holy leaving,

you could scare people off.

You could poison the well to keep people from trying to listen to what these other groups have to

say.

But the last thing that I would add is, on this notion of being simple and complicated,

it's very hard to find any one group of Church of Christ that agrees on what that sixth

step is.

They're all divided as to what is important.

For most of them, everything is a primary doctrine.

You could divide over a kitchen in the church.

You can divide over multiple cups in the Lord's Supper.

You could divide over a whole host of things, whether or not to pay a preacher, whether or not to have a Sunday school.

All of these things for people within the Churches of Christ, and this isn't poisoned in the well.

You could look this up on any internet resource and there are hundreds of differences

within these groups over what they believe are primary and important issues.

Now, they'll deflect from that and they'll say, well, I guess you Baptists aren't so divided now, are you?

Yes, Baptists are divided, but most of us have the common sense to say there's a difference between a primary

and a secondary issue.

And with a lot of our friends and neighbors in the Churches of Christ, they see no difference.

So in this interview, I asked Caleb, I said, does theological triage

mean anything to Hugo's surgery?

I'm like, okay, yeah, yeah, it carries the imagery.

But I tried to tell him theological triage is trying to distinguish primary gospel issues

versus those secondary important matters, but aren't gospel.

And so that's why the denominational world is supposed to be a good thing, as we all rally together around the

gospel of grace that's to be received by faith apart from works.

And then we have a different understanding of church polity and even the mode of baptism and so on and so forth, but we

still unite together around the primary thing.

And to your point, Caleb, he just looked at me like a deer in headlights, like I was speaking gibberish.

And I guess to him, it sounded like contradictions.

So with that being said, I just wanna remind everybody, if you have any questions, please ask us in

the side chat, Carl, because we're getting accused of some things out there, but I tell them, hey, thanks for joining us.

If you have any questions, engage with us.

And that goes for Carl.

If you wanna ask us any particular questions, just put it in the side chat.

But thank you all for your support thus far.

And let's move on to this next point.

This'll probably be our last point with the interview once again.

I wanna encourage people to go watch it and get ready for the, you know, him saying that,

be prepared to be bored.

But something else Caleb gets into is he kind of accuses the Reformed Baptist as being just a

club.

Do you remember him talking about that?

Yeah, that, as someone who doesn't fit the descriptions of

the club, I took offense to that.

Before we jump into the club membership, do you know Micah Martin out there, by chance?

Yes, sir, I do.

Yeah, well, Micah reached out to me afterwards and basically was like, Jeremiah, what have you done?

I was like, hey, man, I'm trying to follow in the footsteps of Micah.

Micah, you know, had an interaction with Caleb and, you know, it wasn't good.

And I remember taking notes of just saying, well, you know, I'm getting into this same thing.

And so when I felt the personal attacks come at me, Caleb, or Micah, just know, it was tough.

It was tough, like I said.

Definitely felt the prayers of the saints interceding on my behalf.

And I think God's gonna use that to just preach the gospel grace to that broader Church of Christ audience.

But thank you for joining us this evening.

And so if you have any more questions or comments on the side, just let us know.

But let's hear it from Caleb because being Reformed Baptist is just a club.

Reformed Baptist, for sure, is just a club.

It's the let's grow a beard club, put on our flannel shirts club, drink craft beer club, use

the ESV club, you know, just fall at the feet of James White Club.

And Jeremiah doesn't even believe like James White.

James White openly said babies were going to hell.

What's wild, Paul, is he did not like me showing how him

and another Church of Christ preacher disagreed about the indwelling of the Holy Spirit.

And to me, this is not a minor disagreement, a secondary or tertiary.

If you deny that the Holy Spirit ontologically, sorry, that might be me pontificating, if

the Holy Spirit personally indwells a saint, well, I already know Caleb's position.

That view is heretical.

Well, that is the primary Church of Christ view.

What Caleb holds to is the Word -only position.

So back in your COC days, where did you land on that discussion?

So in my time during the COC, the prevailing

Orthodox view was, in the conservative Churches of Christ was, yes, the Spirit of God indwells

Christians, but how?

He does throw through the Word.

So it's an indirect kind of thing.

However, as time went on, I started noticing that there were other

prominent Churches of Christ that had prominent ministers in them that weren't taking the same position,

which I thought was bizarre because I thought we had to be lock, stock, and barrel.

They tell everybody, no matter where you go, you always hear the same thing from us.

And then these guys would say, yes, I believe in the personal, literal indwelling of the Holy Spirit.

It's okay to believe that as long as it doesn't do anything, as long as it's nothing miraculous.

I mean, what's the big deal?

And then these guys were like, ah, we give him a pass.

It's not doing anything, but if he does anything, he's a Calvinist.

Get rid of him.

So I saw the differences and a lot of the accepting of the idea that one can have

a personal indwelling of the Spirit that doesn't do anything, had a lot to do with politics.

They didn't want to divide.

You would actually hear those words a lot.

We don't want to divide over stuff, over these little issues.

And then just knowing their history and the things that we would hear constantly harped about in the pulpit, the

differences between our church and these churches, this constant drumbeat of these differences, and

now we're giving these guys a pass.

There's something very inconsistent about that.

But however, I do have a lot of respect for those within the Churches of Christ that are more grace -leaning,

who do adopt a policy of a belief that the Holy Spirit does do something

in the literal indwelling.

For example, Mike Hossall.

I greatly appreciate that man for stepping out and saying that.

That is a dangerous thing to say among a lot of the conservative churches of Christ.

We would disagree sharply on a lot of stuff, but on that issue, hats off to you, buddy,

for being willing to take a stand on what you believe the Scriptures have to

say and let that be the reason for why you have to say it.

So there is, a lot of the hardline COC is dying

off, but their voices sure are really, really loud.

So loud.

Particularly these particular voices that are on the internet, the Robertsons and their

following that they have.

Very loud.

Paul, where's your beard?

That's part of your membership to the Reform Club, apparently.

Yeah, I think I forgot to put that on today.

Hey, there are some ladies in the side chat that are offended that in order to be reformed, you have to have a beard.

And to me, that's so silly.

I mean, Caleb's only listening to a handful of Reform people, and that's one commonality that he sees.

It's funny, because he also says the ESV Club.

Like, what in the world?

All these are double standards.

Imagine, Paul, if I just said, well, in order to be Church of Christ, you gotta say baptized.

Because guess what?

All these old school Church of Christ, I've seen how they all talk a lot.

They all sound the same thing.

And I will say this, Travis Thomas is definitely trying to emulate Johnny Robertson.

I was listening to him give a little bit of his review of the debate.

And to me, it's just all the same song and dance.

To your point earlier, when I talk with A .K. Richardson or Mike

Hysaw, it is a breath of fresh air to talk to these guys.

And A .K. is kind of swimming up dangerous waters, too, letting people know that, hey,

I don't see a huge divide between the Baptist world.

We're wrong in his mind, but we're not wrong in a gospel -dividing way.

And so it's like, okay, I can continue to have these conversations with A .K. and

Mike Hysaw.

Something that he doesn't like, apparently, but I think this is implicitly defending Caleb and them,

is he doesn't like me playing that clip.

Because you better believe there's gonna be some grandma's church at the end.

He's like, Jeremiah, how dare you mock Travis Thomas?

I'm like, you're talking about this grown man that puts his content out there that constantly slanders me.

I'm not allowed to put a remix to one of his own words.

And he just said, he has a family.

I'm like, he's the one doing this.

That is different than Caleb putting a picture of my son on Tel Aviv's

program and then making that the core of his.

I just told Hysaw, I said, I can't help you if you think those are the same things, but that's okay.

Any more thoughts before we transition away from the Reform

Club?

Because I remember you said, we gotta talk about that.

I mean, he said something else, that we just all bow at the feet of James Wyatt.

I wanna be the first to say that if we put any man on a pedestal, whether that be

a John MacArthur or R .C. Sproul or James Wyatt, then yeah, we do need to check ourselves.

And I just wanna be the first to say, we can always acknowledge those that are giants of

the faith that have walked before us and contributed many great resources for us to learn and study.

But our heart's desire should be to always test their teachings to the word of

God.

So when he's, I kept getting that the whole time, is well, you don't believe like your teachers do.

You don't believe like Augustine or Martin Luther.

I'm like, dude, you gotta deal with my arguments.

And so like I said, when we had our interview, like when I was explaining things, he was just looking at

me bug -eyed like, you're not supposed to be saying these things.

Yeah, the notion of the James Wyatt Club.

So as I've made mention on my channel before when discussing these

issues, when I first started moving to what was a reform view on things,

it was not because I picked up a book by James Wyatt.

I was studying the scriptures and I was coming to some of the same conclusions that I had heard

being demeaned in the pulpit.

I was like, I have been hearing this stuff for years, how bad this was.

I would like to hear what these people actually have to say because I see what they teach

lining up to the positions that I'm taking right now.

So yes, the first book that I found in the books a million was a book called Debating Calvinism by

James Wyatt.

I read that and which had at the back of it, the web address to aomen

.org.

So you could watch the dividing line.

That's how I found out about the dividing line.

I do listen to the dividing line from time to time.

I don't always listen as much as I used to.

I would say, I don't agree with a lot of the newer positions that Dr. Wyatt has

taken on some issues.

He's evolved on other issues.

Like his eschatology?

Yeah, he used to be, he came out as all male and at one point, and he gave his reasons for doing that.

And he's a human being.

He could come to a different conclusion if he wants to.

And he stated his reasons for why he did so.

He even was honest enough to admit.

He said, you know, I read a book about this.

I think it was a book on the four views and he decided that he would land on all male.

And then until he finally started investigating it more and he had some more questions.

So he talked to people like Jeff Durbin and some of the elders at Apologia.

And so he was able to go to a different position.

I don't share that view.

I'm not gonna kick him out of the kingdom for doing that.

Dr. Wyatt was informative for me as far as to help me

systematize a lot of the stuff that I was thinking about.

But he's not the only person I would read.

But I would add, Caleb Robertson is the biggest hypocrite in the world.

So is his father.

Because they talk about Alexander Campbell nonstop and tell people to read these books.

And he's given books to his son, telling them to read.

He's even said that they meet together with friends and they study Alexander Campbell.

So that's my thoughts on it.

Not to get too riled up, but it's extreme double standards.

You know what I gotta say about that?

Got him.

No, thank you for sharing that.

And I didn't really know about the Robertson crew other than the Duck Dynasty Robertsons.

And I don't think there's any connection there.

But a lot of people were saying, hey, reach out to Johnny, Caleb, debate them.

Because I was trying to recruit somebody for my debate coming up in Tullahoma.

Couldn't find any Church of Christ advocates, Paul.

Actually, I had one gentleman accept it.

And then two weeks later, backed out of it.

And so I was like, that gummit.

He committed just long enough to then go watch my content and then not wanna do it.

So that's why I'm debating my Methodist friend.

So I wanna answer this question for Kurt.

Because apparently we're dodging this.

And to me, this is real easy, consistent.

We've already kind of addressed this.

But Kurt said, answer my question.

I gave you already.

What age does automatic election stop?

Two years old, five years old, eight year old, 12 year old, 14, 15, 16.

My position is scripture is not clear.

And so I don't hold to an age of accountability.

But I do see a recognition, a self -awareness of the law and recognition of creation and so forth.

I'm not gonna build a whole doctrine out of that.

And so I don't know if that looks different for every person.

I simply trust God with these things that scripture does not tell us explicitly.

And so if someone says, I don't know if all babies that die in infancy go to heaven, but I

trust God with it, I'm saying I'm right there with you.

I would just lean that way when pressed enough of saying I don't have a Presbyterian view of the

covenants and the covenant children are the only ones that go to heaven.

I don't have that systematic theology.

I'm not bound by it.

So my whole claim is scripture does not tell us.

But inductively, which Kurt, induction means I don't have a deductive conclusion,

a conclusion of certainty.

But looking at all the facts, this is something I inductively conclude in terms of probability.

So yeah, I don't think scripture gives a cutoff age nor does it need to.

Do you wanna follow up with that, Eni?

I would just add something of a practical nature.

Within the churches of Christ, there is a very strong feeling on this point about when they accept

baptism of children.

Just to share a personal story of mine, when I was 13, when I wanted to be baptized,

I was refused.

I was said I was too young.

A lot of them get upset even when somebody 18 years old tries to come for baptism, depending

on the nature of conservatism within the churches of Christ.

But I would just say this.

If David can say in Psalm 22, nine that he was caused to

put his trust in the Lord from his mother's bosom, from his mother's being weaned in

his mother's side, what does that tell you about the power of the Word of God and the understanding of children?

My advice to you would be this.

Bathe your children in the gospel and in the Word of God and leave those results

up to God and do the ironic thing of all ironic things, pray for them.

And remember, what are you exactly praying for God to do?

What more under your theology can God do than what he has already done?

The consistent thing in scripture is preach the gospel to every creature

and leave those results in the hand of God.

Pray for them and be amazed at what God can do through your children.

Thank you for that.

Well, Carl, how is it that you're the one sending in the most Super Chats?

It blows my mind.

But he did say Caleb won't debate Paul Day.

Caleb is afraid.

I'll say this.

I'm sorry, but Caleb can't debate.

He refuses to have a moderator.

He wants to have his Bible software program, which is fine in and of itself.

But what's wild is when I showed up to their little studio setup,

I got there hours early, Paul, and I tried all I could to make sure my slides could get transferred over properly.

We spent four hours, and you saw the production of it.

So anyway, my point is he's not looking to travel to do an actual debate with a moderator.

That's unbiased.

That just wants to keep structure.

And I think everybody sees that he has an ax to grind.

He just has his couple talking points.

But there was no interaction with the substance.

So anyway, Carl, thank you for your Super Chat out there.

But I believe everybody is just kind of saying the same thing of what they observed in the debate.

So with that being said, I want us to transition to the debate itself, starting in Caleb's

first speech.

Now, some of the notes that you sent me, maybe in the first minute or so, maybe let's talk about Caleb's

true motivations.

Was it more emotional -based, or was he really going for that exegesis?

We'll make our conclusions.

My time is going.

I'll start going.

Come on, Caleb.

Okay, good evening, everybody.

Usually in a typical debate, what ends up happening is that the participants will bat back and forth proof texts

and we're discussing total depravity.

Does the Bible teach it?

I do not think so.

I think that your babies are born innocent.

If you have a baby that dies or a child that dies in childhood, I think that it will go to heaven.

It has no sin.

It doesn't have a sinful nature.

And the way that...

Yeah, they don't need Jesus.

We already know.

Typical debate would go with something like Jeremiah would say, look at Genesis 6, verse number five, and then I throw out another one and say, well, no, look at

Genesis 6, 12.

He says, Psalm 58, three, then I throw out another one.

No, look at this one.

He says, Ezekiel 33, 26.

I say, look at Ezekiel 18.

And we just go back and forth for two hours.

But tonight, what I wanna do is I wanna ask this question.

If Jeremiah is right, what does it mean?

What are the conclusions?

That's what I want.

All right, get them, Paul.

So when I sat down to listen to this debate, I tried to approach it the way I do when I've taught my students.

I've tried to teach them how to engage in critical thinking, how to make

logical arguments.

At this point, I could see myself in my old room sitting there at the desk and just

putting my hands down and just say, stop.

This is not what I trained you to do.

The function of the debate is if he's gonna take a positive presentation, he's supposed to give a

positive presentation for his view and then allow you to do the negative following after that.

But instead, he says this.

And for me, I found this to be extremely offensive.

What if Jeremiah is right?

I want everybody to think about what he just said.

What does that imply?

What if the Bible is actually teaching this?

What does it mean?

Atheists say this.

Christian preachers don't say this.

You're putting emotions as what you decide is what your theological conclusion is.

When you come to a decision about what scripture is teaching, you've got to read scripture first

and then ask, what does that mean?

How does this apply to me?

But instead, he wants to do that backwards.

To me, it reveals what really is going on.

Who is the true God in the system that Caleb Robertson is advancing?

Is it the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob is found in scriptures?

Or is it a construction in his own image?

I believe that opening statement would tell you everything about the theological

assumptions of his system.

He is out to create a God in his own image, and that statement proved it.

When I heard the statement, we're not gonna really engage with the scriptures.

What if Jeremiah is right?

I just want to deal with the ramifications of that.

I remember literally putting my head down, paw, and thinking, uh -oh, oh boy.

Because think about what he's saying is, let's not get into the proof text and examine context.

I want you to hear how awful Jeremiah's position sounds.

Now, here's the thing.

I'm all up for a reductio ad absurdum.

That's me pontificating, I guess.

I'm all for taking an argument to its logical conclusion, and if

it's absurd, okay, we can deal with that.

But paw, he didn't even represent my position well enough to be able to do

a proper reductio ad absurdum.

So I love apologetics.

I'm all for, for the sake of argument, granting someone's worldview and doing the internal critique, but you

have to really do your homework to properly represent.

They teach this, and because they teach this, this, and this, it seems like the

conclusion would be this, and everybody would deny that, including them.

But there wasn't that.

It was just the rally cry of look what their creeds say, look what some of their teachers say,

and I'm going to disregard everything that Jeremiah says in terms of argumentation.

But if people go look at the debate, that's all Caleb did.

He really wanted to avoid dealing with any substance because, I got our list, there's

a number of proof texts that he ended up bringing up, and I tried, paw.

I don't know if you could tell, but I was trying to interact in the rebuttal times

with some of the points that are made.

Now, I want to also say this.

Caleb should not have went first.

I went back and looked at our emails, and so he did kind of give, hey, he's going to go first with

these three speeches, and then I will get, and so this was on me because I thought he was

just saying like a general structure of a debate.

I thought he was just saying, hey, this is what our own times look like because debate is always

the affirmative goes first, and the job of the negation is to make everyone say, hey,

if he did not convince you with 100 certainty, and if there's any room to doubt, then the

negation has done their job.

So my point is, I knew at the very onset that we were in for a long

night.

So I don't know, could you tell some of that was going on?

Yeah, I could tell you were having, and everybody has to do this in a debate.

There's only certain things that you can get to, and you were having to pick and choose what you could respond to, and that's something that

people like Caleb and Johnny thrive on, oh, he didn't answer this, he didn't answer that.

You only have so much time to participate in a debate, and you have to try and pick what you think would have the most

impact, but this is really part of the shtick of Johnny and Caleb Robertson, as what

Johnny said on one of his subsequent shows, he said, that's not how we roll about going off to these different places.

There's a reason why they wanna go first.

They wanna go first to have the first word, and they wanna go last to have the last word.

It is a show.

It is a rallying cry for the troops and a way to raise money for their cause.

So yeah, really, formal debates typically always go with the person who

does the affirmative goes first, and then the person who has the negative goes after it to try and

disprove what they have to say, and then at the end of the debate, the affirmative is allowed to go last

as they went first.

So since they don't wanna play by normal, formal debate rules, which, by the way, a lot of people

who do debates in Churches to Christ will do, which that's something that the

Robertsons don't do.

They will insist you follow by Hedges' rules and follow formal debate rules.

They don't want anything to do with that because it's a show.

They got to make, you're a guest, not really a guest, you're a play thing.

You're somebody they can make memes out of.

It's not serious Bible study, and I would say this with all honesty.

It really is shameful.

If you think you have the truth, you should give the other side a respectable platform and say, this is what they

believe.

They are adopting a position that's incorrect from Scripture, and based on it being incorrect from Scripture, it has the

following negative implications.

So I would say they have a lot to learn from people who have been doing debates longer

than they have and have done it in a respectful way, and it just, it

really is, it's something that I know a lot of Churches of Christ frown upon,

and the Robertson attack people who don't agree with their methods.

By the way, do you know who Pat Donohue is?

Yes, sir, I do.

He's actually from my area.

I believe he's in the Huntsville area.

He has his own radio show on Sirius, Bible Crossfire, and also in the

90s, he came and did some debates with his colleague, Tommy Thrasher, and they traveled

around at the time with, I think was a Reformed Baptist preacher, Wayne Burkett, and they

did a couple of debates in our area, and also he came a few years later and did a debate, I think

with, I want to say, is one of the Catholic answers apologists at one of our local

Catholic Church.

So yeah, he's a big deal here.

The reason why I bring him up is because me and him had a long chat, a few phone conversations months

ago when I was trying to recruit somebody to debate at the Tullahoma Conference coming up,

and he was excited because he's done a number of debates, and you know the thing that made him

turn down the whole invitation is when I started explaining what the cross -examination portion

of the debate would be, and he said, Jeremiah, I'm not gonna give you the

opportunity to cut me off.

I said, understand the spirit.

It's not to cut you off to be mean.

It's if I want a concise yes or no answer, and I feel like you're answering something else,

it's within my right to say, hey, that answer you gave is sufficient.

I want to move on, or I feel like you're running from it, and so I tried my absolute best to

debate Donahue, but he straight up told me that the way that I wanted

cross -examination is not how true debate works, and I tried to explain, that's how you see true clash in

real time is when someone's able to control their time, and I said, that

privilege would be extended to you, you know, in the negation or however we structure that, and he told me, absolutely not, no thanks,

and here's another thing.

Caleb did not want to do that either.

When I told him about Donahue turning me down, Caleb said, well, I'll work with you more than Donahue.

I just said, we need to have a good cross -examination.

That's what everybody tunes in for, a good clash of worldviews, so I just want to let everybody know, I think

it's odd that, you know, they're kind of the group that claims to want to debate everybody, but they don't want to

have a true cross -examination.

I want to read this question because I don't know if this is being sincerely asked, but it might be helpful for other people

tuning in.

Kentucky Lee says, question, are people elect that love God, but thinks Calvinism is heretical?

And what I've always told people is, you don't have to adhere to Calvinism in order to be

saved.

Calvinism is the theology that undergirds the sovereignty of God

and the responsibility of man.

And so, no, I believe Arminians are saved as long as they're trusting in Christ alone, by

faith alone.

Now, I want to ask them about, you know, what it means to be united in Christ, right, and the entailments

of any position that says, well, a believer can walk away from the faith and become

unborn again or unregenerate.

I want to talk about the consistency of that.

But no, I don't think that you have to adhere to the five points of Calvinism to be saved.

What counts is what Michael Selesky said in the side chat, is what Romans 3, Romans

4, what the New Testament teaches about the gospel of grace, how it's Christ and His perfect obedience, Christ and

His finished work, that's what you have to put your trust into, not your faith in Christ

plus your own obedience to a ceremony.

So do you want to speak to that, Eddie?

Well, I certainly do agree with those sentiments.

When I first started my journey out of the Church of Christ, the Reformed issue was a big deal

because the Churches of Christ made a big deal of it.

Everything that they say, a lot of them say, is there's a Calvinist, basically a Calvinist under every

bush, every rock.

John Calvin is the reason why everything is so bad.

So it was a big issue when I first started, but what quickly became an issue was the gospel itself.

And I think that's reflected well, like within my body of work.

You'll find me more talking about the view of the Churches of Christ on what the gospel is and

its implications.

I have more content now on that than I have anything on Reformed theology because that's the

central thing.

When you realize, the Reformed theology can open you up to the

possibility that you could be wrong, that you misunderstand the doctrine of

salvation by faith and what it means.

And once it, Reformed theology is a theology driven by scripture.

It's not driven by Augustine.

That is one of the most ridiculous things I've ever heard of.

Yes, John Calvin quoted a lot of Augustine, but there's a lot of stuff he disagreed with Augustine on.

For example, Augustine had a different view on the perseverance of the saints than John Calvin or

Reformed people do.

There's differences in that opinion.

But really, the gospel is the central thing.

If we don't understand who Jesus is, what he did in his life, and what he

accomplished on the cross, and what he communicates to us by faith in him,

we don't have a foundation for any type of theological framework we're

trying to construct.

I would say if you don't have this main and plain thing right, you're not as

wise as you think you are, you're lost.

You're lost in the weeds.

You've got to have a clear picture of what Jesus did for people who

put their faith and trust in him.

And for me, I can't get away from that anymore.

That's one of the things I think about constantly now.

The Reformed issue has become a secondary issue for me instead of a flashpoint from when I

first left.

Mm, mm.

Well, thank you so much for that.

Let's continue on.

In Caleb's first speech, he brought up every Church of Christ favorite verse out of

the prophet Jeremiah.

I really think this is about the only verse they know.

But I believe it comes out of Jeremiah 19, verse four, where it does talk about infants that are being

sacrificed and calls them innocent blood.

So let me see if I can find that portion.

Children are blameless.

The children are acquitted.

The children are guiltless.

The children are free.

They are exempt, and they are clean.

Now, probably he's gonna get into Romans 5 .12 tonight.

I don't know why Calvinists like to start at Romans 5 .12 and say, look, all have sinned.

That means -.

Let's stop right there.

So yeah, he's fixing to jump off on his classic Romans 5 spiel that's pretty typical for

Churches of Christ.

But that Jeremiah 19 thing, that is something that I

think is horribly misused.

If you actually bring up Jeremiah 19, four through five, you can make a better

case of who these innocent people are.

Because when you bring up in verse four, it says that the people have forsaken me and

profaned this place by making offering in it to one, other gods,

whom neither they nor their fathers nor the kings of Judah had known, and two, because they have filled this place

with the blood of innocents.

Three, have built high places of Baal.

So notice how this went from multiple gods, the killing of

the innocents, and then this third issue.

It's a third separate issue.

The high places of Baal to burn their sons in the fire as burnt offerings to Baal, which I

did not command or decree, nor did it come into my mind.

But this particular phrase, the innocents, is used in other places in Jeremiah, and it's

crystal clear who it refers to.

Jeremiah two, verses three through four.

Also on your skirts is found the lifeblood of the guiltless poor.

You did not find them breaking in.

That makes perfect sense what the innocents is now.

These are people who were doing what they were supposed to.

Instead, they were being harassed because they were being poor.

Jeremiah 22 and verse 17.

But you have your eyes and heart only for your dishonest gain for shedding innocent blood and

practicing oppression and violence.

And that brings light, actually, even into the famous Ezekiel 18 passage, which they

claim to have a high ground on in verse 29.

Yet the house of Israel says the way of the Lord is not just.

O house of Israel, are my ways not just?

Is it not your ways that are not just?

He said this, they were saying this in response to God saying that it is wrong to put to death a

child for a father's sins.

This is what the people of Israel were doing.

That is what that's all about.

And not only is that an issue you have to look at, there's also that string of passages that he

listed there, supposedly about what innocence means.

I would encourage every one of you to look them up.

At first, when I was listening to the debate, I got kind of confused.

At first, it seemed like he was trying to say, well, this is all about in these passages about infants and children.

I think what he was going for was, this is what innocence means in this passage, therefore, this is what it's talking

about.

But you can look at these things, this is what he cites like in Genesis 24 and 41

about Abraham's servant who went to go find a wife for his son

Isaac.

He told him that he would be free from the oath if he couldn't bring the lady back.

What does that mean?

Abraham made him swear to go find the wife.

If he couldn't bring back the wife, then that's not his problem.

He hasn't done anything wrong.

You see, there's a positive and a negative aspect to this term of innocence.

That's one thing you see over and over again in these scriptures that he cites.

Like in Genesis 44, 10, you see the same thing about Joseph's brothers

and Benjamin about being free from blame.

Well, who's free from blame?

The person who didn't steal the cup from Joseph.

We could go into a lot of these scriptures and I would encourage everyone to inspect every single

scripture he cites.

And you're hearing that right.

I am telling you to look up what he says.

Listen to what he says and look it up and then compare that against what he asserts.

And in each and every one of those instances, he is making something out of

these passages that do not exist.

So I remember bringing this up in the debate because remember, it's just the wave of the

hand that innocent blood, that means that children are born innocent.

And I tried to bring this up in Jeremiah, I believe it's 26, 15 that you referenced earlier or verse 17 in the

context.

I brought this up in the debate because I think it's a defeater to show that innocent blood in the context

of Jeremiah is not referring to their state of being the moment that they're born, but it's in a context of

saying someone that's not guilty of a particular crime and particular sin.

If they're murdered, that's innocent blood.

And one of the best ways to illustrate this, and I loved the numerous passages that you cited, but I tried to at least reference this

in the debate because I was trying to salvage it, Paul.

I was trying to engage with some of his points even though nothing that I said he was trying to engage with.

But this verse says, "'Only know for certain that if you put me to death,' Jeremiah the prophet says,

"'you will bring innocent blood upon yourself.'".

And so the question is, is Jeremiah, did he never sin at this point in his life because he's

referring to himself as innocent blood like in Jeremiah 19, four about the

innocent blood of babies being murdered.

And so the point is, no.

If they were to murder the prophet here, well, they would be guilty of murdering innocent blood, a

crime that Jeremiah was receiving that it wasn't just.

So I tried to bring that up on the fly to show people how you have to look at the broader context.

And yeah, so to echo what you said, I just wanna encourage everybody to go back at Caleb's slide and look at all of

those proof texts and study the surrounding context.

And so another verse that he brought up that I'd like us to talk about is Matthew

19, 14 and how he's applying it to infants.

And so we're supposed to speak where the Bible speaks, speaks in there, right, Paul?

Let's see if Caleb has that.

Yeah, that is the watchword.

Rats, blaspheming rats, doomed from the womb.

And it's right there in his creed, the London 1689 Confession.

Now I'm gonna stick with what Jesus said.

Of such, these little children of such are the kingdom of heaven.

And Jesus also said, humble yourself as a little child.

And you mean those that don't need Jesus?

Oh, sorry.

You have all these passages, Paul saying to in malice be children.

You have all these passages where Jesus also says, out of the mouth of babes comes

perfect praise.

Well, how are they lying?

And then Jesus using them as a symbol to say, these are the people that you get the honest truth from.

Now, I wanna say this too, as I conclude.

Some people might say that it's out of place, out of etiquette and untoward for me to talk about his son, JJ.

Hey, I've got a son, you can talk about my son, that's okay, he's cute.

You know what I was tempted to say in that moment?

I was tempted to say, no, Caleb, I'm not gonna talk about your son because only someone who's totally depraved would sink

so low to do it.

I didn't do it, I didn't do it in the bait.

But yeah, I was just thinking, I'm gonna stick to the game plan.

So let's back up and talk about him talking about how we must humble

ourselves as little children.

So this seems to be a proof text to somehow justify that

infants are innocent and pure, and apparently, according to Caleb, don't even need Jesus at all.

Well, he also claims that these innocent children who don't know the difference between right and wrong

are somehow humble people.

I would think people who know the difference between right and wrong are humble people.

So really, that is not a very good objection, but I do think we need to focus on the big one,

that Matthew 19 passage.

That is something that people throw that around a lot.

Well, Jesus said that, I can just dismiss what you have to say about total depravity, original

sin, corporate guilt.

We're engaging in those discussions.

But when I go back and read Matthew 19, and I start in verse 13, where it says, "'Then children were

brought to him "'that he might lay his hands on them and pray.'.

But his disciples, his disciples of all people, tried to keep them away from Jesus.

And Jesus said in verse 14, "'Let the little children come to me "'and do not hinder them,

"'for to such belongs the kingdom of heaven.'".

And it's literally here, the idea that this possession, that these little children,

the kingdom belongs to them.

So what exactly is this going on?

Is he talking about these infants who are safe, as they would say?

But Jesus also said in verse four, "'Whoever humbles himself like this

child "'is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven.'".

So this child that supposedly is safe, who doesn't know the difference between right or wrong, can do

something right that is commended by Jesus.

How does that make sense on any type of theological discussion they're trying to have?

But as you keep on going, the subject of this child comes into clear

view in verse six.

"'But if anyone causes one of these little ones "'who, what now,

believe in me to stumble.'".

The Greek there is those people who are pisteuontone, ace, amae.

It's one of the standard expressions for saving faith in the New Testament, being described

of these little children.

So Jesus asserted that, contrary to a lot of people in the churches of

Christ about their views on childhood evangelism, probably having some similar ideas to what

his errant apostles were trying to do, saying, no, go away, this isn't for you.

Jesus welcomed them, why?

Because they believed in him.

Was this Matthew 18, the one you're referencing?

Whoever humbles himself like this child is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven?

Yes, Matthew 18, verse four, and it continues on through verse six.

Yes, so Jesus makes it clear who they are.

Yeah, those who believe in Christ, that's the point.

And, man, that's so good because children, they don't have any works, they don't have any accomplishments of their own.

They're trusting in their provider, in their parent, and I believe he's also saying that's the kind of trust, trust in me,

in my finished work, trust in me to be a savior.

And that's the big takeaway out of these passages about being like these little ones is that

childlike faith, that trust in someone else wholeheartedly for provision.

And so these cannot be proof text to undermine

the biblical understanding of the nature of man.

These aren't the clear text.

That's why I staked my entire case, Paul, in Ephesians chapter two, because

all of mankind are born as,

their nature is one of born under wrath.

And so that's why I was like, I don't understand why we're going to these wild proof text when

Paul in Ephesians, or in Romans chapter five, or Ephesians two, I'll just pull it up real fast if you didn't catch the debate.

But he says, yeah, all of mankind were by nature children of wrath.

So this is a good passage talking about man's ontology, what has happened in light

of the fall of Adam, those that are born of two parents.

So that's why I was trying in my debate to really key in on these three Greek words,

tekna, fousi, which could also be translated birth, and then orgeis, this possession

of wrath.

This is what unites all of mankind together.

And then that is the chiasm.

Sorry, probably pontificating again.

But this is the chiastic structure, the contrast that now begins in verse four, but

God, we were dead in our sins and trespasses, but then God was rich in mercy,

and he saved us with his great love.

So sorry for pontificating a little bit there, like I get accused of.

So yeah, any more thoughts about, oh, I know one more I wanted to share.

You know, Caleb said something like, well, how can Jesus say out of the mouth of babes can kind of

come forth this truth?

I thought they were liars doomed from the womb.

And I believe that passage that Jesus is quoting from the Psalm is those that are

singing praise, hosanna in the highest.

And so all the people are saying that, even the little children, his point is that they are proclaiming

truth in this particular context.

So do you know, would you agree with me if that's what's being imbued there?

Yeah, I would definitely say you're on the right path for that.

For one thing, the translation he gave of that verse was just horrible.

And you provided that, you actually stated that in the debate, that the actual text

doesn't say perfect praise, it's more like ordained or perfected, or that they should

be doing praise, that type of thing.

But it's really grasping for straws, it's such stuff like that.

But I do think there's one other thing that we could bring up in regards to this one particular point.

And I think this is a point you can learn from church history and also see from the biblical text.

You cannot hold to the idea that there are innocent children, and at the same time, believe in

baptismal regeneration.

There are too many universal texts that they would say applies to baptism that would

exclude infants from salvation.

And the big one is John 3, 5.

Jesus answered, "'Truly, truly, I say to you, "'unless one is born of water and spirit, "'he

cannot enter the kingdom of God.'".

If infants enter the kingdom of God, Jesus said they have to be baptized.

That's as simple as it goes.

So if you hold to this view, you would have to say that Jesus commands baptism of infants.

Is that really where you would like to logically go?

A lot of people in the early church did.

That's how they justified infant baptism because of passages like this.

And also the idea that infants were dying.

For them, if Jesus says nobody gets into the kingdom unless you're born of water and spirit, and for them, that

means baptism, then you better dunk your babies.

And that's the way they took it.

So there's a consistency problem here.

I liked when Caleb just said, it says all Jew and Gentile are under sin.

Well, Jeremiah and the Calvinists think that this is talking about babies.

This is a conversation between Jews and Gentiles.

I remember literally shaking my head, thinking, oh, Caleb.

Paul in Romans three is trying to be as exhaustive as he possibly can.

Guess what, Caleb?

There are Jewish and Gentile babies.

That's the whole point that he's getting at is all of mankind are under the wrath of God per Romans one.

From birth, we go astray, we suppress the truth and unrighteousness, and we don't have to be taught these things.

We can be taught further in our depravity, but our very nature opposes the things of God.

And someone sent me another clip about the Robertsons.

They did not like me saying all of mankind hates God.

They're like, oh, where does it say that?

And I remember thinking, really?

I guess I shouldn't take anything for granted.

But Romans eight, along with, I believe, James 4 .4 kind of has this

antithesis that the world and the things of God are contrary to one another.

But I don't know if you caught that, if you've kept up with them very much, but it talks about

the mind that is set on the flesh is hostile to God.

And so the unregenerate man does not love God, does not seek out after him.

Indeed, he cannot.

In fact, those that are in the flesh hate God or hostile at war with.

So anyway, I just thought these guys, I know it's not how they roll, but Paul, I

don't think they could actually engage in a true debate where you do exegesis and you cross -examine

one another on the context of a particular passage because the things that they're saying now after the debate,

I would have loved for them to have brought that up in real time, you know what I mean?

Well, see, this just brings out another point of inconsistency with their side.

They get to say things like when you were baptized, you contact the blood.

When you asked for the scripture on that.

Well, that's just stupid.

You can't say something like that.

Of course, it says something like that.

There's a lot of things like that.

They feel like they have special privileges.

They can use all sorts of unbiblical language.

When it suits them.

But when you use something that's not exactly spelled out the way you said it in scripture,

suddenly you're guilty of some great crime.

But they want you to believe that you contact the blood in baptism, that you must be baptized with the understanding that

you must obtain the original in order to obtain the remission of sins.

And if you don't have this understanding, you're lost.

Well, what's the scripture on that?

Oh, it's just what Acts 2 38 says.

So it's a double standard.

Right.

Well, this kind of moves us into Caleb's second speech where he says Reformed Baptists

lack assurance of salvation.

And so I've heard this from a number of groups that Calvinism will basically spiral you into

despair and you can never really know if you're one of the elect.

And I guess for some people, this has been an issue in the past.

But the whole point of having this really biblical,

balanced sovereignty of God, he is the one that has transformed my heart.

There is something in me that testifies.

My spirit testifies with the Holy Spirit that I'm a child of God and I cry out to him in

faith, in salvation.

I've recognized his grace.

So I think what's going on is there is a conflation, Paul, where they're saying, well, you can never

know any of the elect, including yourself.

Well, I can have assurance of my salvation.

I just can't have that epistemic certainty.

I guess that's another pontification of mine.

Go study philosophy and theology.

But I can't have that level of certainty for somebody else's salvation.

So let me see if I can pull up the clip where he's basically questioning if Reformed Baptists can have any assurance

of salvation.

One has received this gift so long as he is alive still.

For if he falls before he dies, he is, of course, said not to have persevered.

And most truly, it is said.

What did Augustine just say?

If you're a Calvinist, you can never, ever know if you're truly saved.

Now, that goes against 1 John 5 .13.

I can't believe he's trying to quote 1 John 5 .13 at us.

You know what I mean?

They're the ones that cannot know if they are going to receive everlasting life or not

because they may fall away.

Their baptism might not have been valid.

They may choose to not remain faithful one day and choose to disobey rather than obey.

How is it, Paul, that Caleb is accusing us of not having assurance of salvation

when he's the one that can know he has everlasting life?

Well, for one thing, I would point out this fact.

There are so many disagreements within the Church of Christ.

How can he even know that he has finally rediscovered New Testament truth?

Does he know with absolute 100 % certainty that he has rediscovered New Testament Christianity?

What if when he passes his, if we wanna talk about children, what if his son discovers

something that he has erred on?

Is Caleb going to hell now?

See, there was an issue I saw in this debate.

They kept wanting to say, well, Augustine didn't have, he said, flat out said, you can't have

certainty so you can't say you have certainty, and which is a difference between

strict Augustinian thought and in Reformed thought, and you brought out that difference.

And they seemed to mock the idea that someone could be deceived that they're not saved.

What always comes to my mind when somebody says something like that, if that's the case, that there

cannot be any such type of uncertainty, or somebody being

so ignorant of their own spiritual condition that they could be deceiving themselves, why did Paul say in 2 Corinthians 13, five,

test yourself to see if you're in the faith?

Why do you have to tell people that?

Because people deceive themselves.

It's just like what James says in James 1 .25, but the one who looks intently at the perfect law of liberty

and abides by it, not having become a forgetful hearer, but an effectual doer, this man will be blessed in what he does.

He talks about people who looked at the word of God, saw what kind of person they were,

and they forgot all about it.

There are people who have the moniker of a believer who say they are Christians,

but they do not examine themselves to see if their confession of faith is

valid.

That is on them.

That is not on me.

That is not on Jeremiah.

The scriptures call for this type of testing to occur, and if it calls for that type of testing to occur,

it better be applied to people within their own group, and if it is applied to people within their own group, then guess

what?

There are people within their own group who should not have certainty of salvation either.

Yeah, and I get this question all the time for members

at 12 .5.

It's like, Jeremiah, there are seasons in my life where, man, I'm

really doubting the things that are going on in my life.

What shall I do?

I wanna bring up a passage in 1 John chapter three.

To me, this is so practical when we're getting into this question.

I believe it's around verse 19.

By this we shall know that we are of the truth and reassure our heart before him,

for whenever our heart condemns us.

I just wanna pause.

When there's a lot of introspection about who you are, your sinfulness, your disobedience, I

try to use those words more when I'm talking with Church of Christ.

Well, then very quickly, you will spiral into doubt.

The more you focus on yourself, how could I ever be saved?

But, all right, because our own heart condemns us, right?

But God is greater than our heart.

As you begin to look to Jesus Christ and his promises, then those that have been saved

by amazing grace, the remnant talked about throughout scripture, how could I not be saved because of how wonderful

and beautiful and magnificent and worthy of praise is Jesus Christ revealed to us

in the word of God?

And so my point is, when you look at yourself, your heart will try to condemn you

because you know yourself well, but you have to go back to the word of God who's greater than our

subjective experience that often misleads us.

God knows everything.

So it goes back to what I have posted back here is John 17, 17,

thy word is truth, because this is where we get certainty is when we go

to the word of God and it's Romans chapter eight, starting in verse one, those that are trusting in Christ, those that

are in Christ by faith alone, there is therefore now no condemnation on our account.

So when you go back to the word of God, when you reflect on the promises that Jesus

Christ has accomplished salvation and you love him, not with a perfect love, but if you love

him at all, then you can know with certainty then that kind of faith is nothing

from this world, not conjured up by man, but what Jesus told Simon Peter.

He said, this was revealed to you from above.

And so that's where I get my certainty is the word of God, the scriptures that cannot be broken and that

testifies with my own heart, with this heart transformation.

And so Paul, when I'm talking with Church of Christ, many have not experienced that.

I'm talking to the natural man.

What I'm saying to them sounds like contradictions.

And so what do I do?

Pray for him.

I contend for the truth.

I share the truth.

I've been talking with Carl on the side chat.

I like Carl.

And I'm sure one of these days when he drives through Jonesboro, we'll go out for a coffee and he'll tell me how I need to obey

and I'll tell him to rest in Jesus and obey to give him glory, not to earn or keep your salvation.

So any thoughts with that?

They're very spot on.

I do want to add this one thing.

Caleb talked a lot about how you didn't understand your own confession of faith and made quotes

about it within the debate.

I thought this was so entertaining because there's a whole chapter in the 1689

Confession of Faith on this subject of the assurance of grace and salvation.

And I would just like to read just one paragraph.

I would encourage Caleb to read this chapter before he debates again.

Paragraph two says that this certainty is not a bare conjectural and

probable persuasion grounded upon a fallible hope but an infallible

assurance of faith founded on the blood and righteousness of Christ

revealed in the gospel and also upon the inward evidence of those graces of the

spirit unto which promises are made and on the testimony of the spirit of adoption witnessing

with our spirits that we are the children of God and as a fruit thereof keeping the heart both humble

and holy.

So contrary to all this stuff, quoting Augustine back at you, saying you must believe what

Augustine says and also at the same time hold to the confession of faith, this

just shows really a serial behavior that I see a lot in Church

of Christ debaters, even of a more better persuasion than the Robertsons.

This cherry picking isolation of other things that are said in regard to our material

to make it look like it's saying something else is very deceptive and it's

beneath a character of someone who claims to be a minister of the truth and wants to be

a professional debater.

If you wanna know what we believe about something, well, here it is.

You can even get these confessions of faith now with cited passages of scripture from which they

are based.

There is no excuse for this type of behavior, none.

Yeah, and I think one of their selling points too is see, they follow creeds out there.

They don't stick to just the Bible and what they miss every single time is Jesus has been

building his church for 2 ,000 years.

So this is a historic faith and so we look at creeds and confessions as guardrails.

They're not infallible, but this has been a testimony of the saints throughout history and there

ain't nothing infallible about these creeds that can't be improved upon and talked about.

Well, hey, we need to test these things with scripture and so I think the 1689, wonderful,

awesome.

But when you start asking me about my views about the Sabbath, hey, I have some opinions about what that looks like and in

relation to the Christian walk and I think the 1689 does a great job, but I have a

lot of clarity that I would like to bring to some of these things and all creeds and confessions are

like that.

That's why I'm gonna have Tony Costa on next week to talk about what did the early church

believe in relation to baptismal regeneration.

Guess what?

A lot of the early church got many things right and some other things, it seems like they contradicted themselves and we

are to be noble Bereans and test their teachings to the word of God and many of the early church fathers would say,

oh yeah, we're not gonna get all these things right.

Hold us to the bar of scripture as well.

So if you're okay, I'd like to transition on to the next point about apparently, we

think Adam's disease is stronger than Christ's cure.

Is that something that you said back in the day?

Yeah, that's a popular turn of the phrase within the people I

used to treat with.

Basically, this issue is really complicated.

I've posted my thoughts on my channel where when I work through these issues, I've posted how I

came out of that position and literally walked through step by step.

So if you want something really in depth, I would invite you to that series on Romans 5 and defending

original sin to look more of what we will be discussing with this

issue.

But basically, the idea rests on the fact that since the

Romans says this affects all men, there has to be a consistency here.

So they'll play it back on us saying, well, if all men have this condition,

then Christ also says that this also has to be all men the other way.

So you would have to be, to be consistent, you would have to be a universalist.

So that's normally how they'll play that.

But for me, the biggest issue is the same thing can be said back to them.

For them, the all is everyone of accountable people who made this decision

to sin have gotten into this position.

Well, the same text of scripture says all will be

basically restored.

So really, it's a kind of a self -defeating objection in my view, it doesn't make a lot of sense.

Even with the Robertsons, if you've ever listened to what they have to say, they like to move,

particularly Johnny Robertson, he doesn't like to talk about Adam at all in this passage of scripture.

They want to get away from Adam and move you to somebody like Abraham.

Johnny Robertson is on record for saying that you can't refer to Adam anyway because his line died out in the

flood.

Now, let that sink in.

Johnny Robertson says that Adam's line died out in the flood, so why are you talking about Adam?

You just, just, just, just dwell on that.

But the focus on Romans 5 .12 is on between

two individuals, the two different one -mans, what Adam did and what Christ

did.

So that is the focus that Paul wants to place on this.

Caleb, on the other hand, when he first started, he wanted to jump in on that and sow

all sin.

So he said, well, just as Adam, just as me.

But he's playing a super fast and loose switching of the words on you.

When Paul makes these connections here, just as, so

also, those type of phrases, it's always between what Adam

did and what Christ did.

So his idea to just, to seize on that, one, breaks the flow of the

entire thought of Romans chapter five.

It's always Adam Christ, Adam Christ.

But also, he wants to make it about him.

So in Romans 5 .12, therefore, just as sin came into the world, so

is this one of those points you're talking about that they would highlight?

In the same identical, univocal way that Adam sinned, the implication

is this is how we also sin.

And what's wild to me is just as Adam made a decision according to his

nature, I would say that is true of us.

We, according to our nature, choose to sin.

And so there's great continuity with Adam rebelling, resisting, and

running away, ultimately, from God.

Adam did that, and he represented all of it.

It's what we all continue to do.

And so is that, that's the argument, right?

Just as Adam sinned, and he was created innocent and pure, therefore,

we are born pure and blameless, and then we sin too.

And I always say, well, you're already not making a 100, you can't

make a one -to -one correspondence in every way because Adam was a man, right?

So you can't say that women are just like Adam, and you can't even say that Eve sinned

like Adam.

She was deceived.

There was something willful on the side of Adam.

So yeah, Adam and Eve were created, and then everybody else is born of two parents.

And so I just, I try to show the continuity, Paul, and the discontinuity when we are related

back to Adam.

It is a good point.

One other thing that was a sticking point for me to leaving their position on this was looking

at the actual text in verse 12, where it says that death spread because all

sinned.

All of this is in, when it talks about those things, death spread

through man, one man sin entered the world, and thus, death spread unto all men.

All of these are what are called aorist verbs.

And basically, when you talk about an aorist verb, you can kind of summarize it

as being a past verb.

It's more of the idea that, addressing that something happened.

In the mind of Paul, this action had been done once and for all by the time he's writing

this letter.

It's not that sin keeps entering the world, people keep dying, it's

sin entered the world, and death spread through sin, and that this death has happened to

everybody.

The fact that he makes an aorist verb argument for these really lends to the

idea that you have to view this in a federal headship or a corporate guilt

sense to make any heads or tails about that.

And besides that, when it says death spread unto all men, how in the world could the

Apostle Paul prove that all had spiritually died?

If he's trying to take this message to the Gentiles, I'm right because everybody has spiritually

died, they'll be like, what are you talking about?

But if I go to everybody and I say, this is the case because primarily physical

death is in view, the reason why Adam and Eve aren't around anymore, why

your great -grandparents aren't around anymore is because of what Adam did.

So those were really big sticking points for me.

And not to get too technical about it, there's a lot of stuff you can say about that, but that's

the biggest thing.

This being a continued, it's not a continuous action, it's something that has done in the past.

We have to view it as federal headship or corporate guilt.

Maybe we're getting a little ahead of ourselves, but a big part of my opening statement and cross -examination

is I wanted to define death, thanatos, which the most basic understanding of death is the

termination of physical life, because you already mentioned the whole shtick of the Church of Christ is this must

be spiritual death.

Spiritual death, it's not physical, because the context is talking about sin and eternal

benefits, and so it's spiritual.

And so that's crazy talk, if, and Caleb, I got him to absolutely contradict himself,

because he made the sweeping statement that Romans 5, 6, and 7 is always talking about spiritual

death.

And I remember I was researching his position, I just thought, well, he's gonna have a fun time trying to explain away

what comes right before Romans 5, 12, which it talks about Jesus,

Christ died for us, right?

And then it goes on to say that his death, we are justified by his blood.

Sounds pretty physical to me.

For if while we were enemies, we were more reconciled to God by the death of his

son.

And so my point is, the death that Paul is talking about is already being explained in the

immediate context of Romans 5, especially we get into Romans 6, and we're talking about the wages of sin is

death.

Well, what's before that is talking about the death, burial, and resurrection of

Jesus Christ.

And so all of that is important in the immediate context, Paul, 1 Corinthians 15 with federal

headship brings up Adam again, and guess what?

All of that is talking about physical death, and we can ground that in Genesis 2 into chapter 3.

So these were the kind of points that I was really looking forward to talking about with Caleb,

but we never

And he still got a depraved nature.

Now, look at this.

We never got the chance to actually hash that out because he kind of was on just

that one talking point.

But do you remember in the debate where I straight up asked him if there's any

physical death in Romans 5, 6, or 7, and he said, absolutely not, and then I brought up Jesus?

Yeah, that really stuck out to me.

I have myself personally wondered about the Robertsons' feelings on that subject.

I really haven't heard them talk about the idea of a substitutionary atonement.

That wouldn't be overly surprising because there are groups within the Churches of Christ who will openly

deny the substitutionary atonement, and it is for reasons like this because if you

insist that the physical death of Christ was in any way a substitution for

you, that causes all kinds of problems for their other position.

So some of them will just outright deny it altogether.

That really did concern me.

I know if I did have a...

If I had a chance to talk to Caleb about that, I would like to know if the

sacrifice of Christ was in our behalf, in our place, in a substitute, and if it was a

physical death, wouldn't it have to be a physical death if it was just solely a

spiritual consequence?

Yeah, because you got to think, I listened to hours of the Robertsons' content in preparation.

Caleb was pretty emphatic that it's not a substitution.

Jesus was making salvation possible, and based on your obedience, you

can achieve an eternal reward.

He kept saying that phrase over and over again.

And so for them, there's no substitutionary mindset, there's no great exchange where our sin

is being put onto Calvary in exchange of getting the perfect righteousness and obedience of Christ.

Fundamentally denies that.

So I think you're right.

I think they would not like the verbiage that Jesus was a penal substitutionary

atonement on our behalf.

If you're okay, I'd like to kind of transition on to Caleb's last speech where we were talking

about children of wrath.

And I tell you what, let me turn to Romans 6 .23 because I really wanted this to kind

of sit as we talk also in tandem with how all mankind were by nature children of wrath.

What I want people to understand is if Romans is talking about physical death and not

to the negation of spiritual death, but death has two sides to it.

It is spiritual, the power of sin, which brings us, returns us to the dust of the ground.

But here's what's at stake.

Infants that die in infancy, if they did not have personal sin, which they don't, you know what I mean,

then what is the cause of their physical death?

This forces the Robertson to say that physical death is something natural, a

part of God's good design.

Now, I even played a clip where he just said death is natural.

And what that means is Adam was, even in his covenant with God, had he obeyed,

in their view, Paul, Adam would have still died 930 years later had he freely

ate from the tree of life.

To me, this just goes against everything that scripture talks about, Genesis 1,

Genesis 2, when God made man, made heavens and the earth, he made everything good,

and death was not a part of the equation.

And that's why death is considered an enemy.

And that's why, you know, I was a hospice chaplain, preached a handful of funerals.

Death robs us of a loved one, a loving relationship, and death is an enemy.

Death is a tool of the wicked one.

And this is why when Jesus died physically, he resurrected, he demonstrated that the pains of

death could not keep him.

He defeated sin, which, you know, guarantees that people die.

He defeated the power of sin by resurrecting from the physical dead.

And so I just wanna really impress upon people, Romans 6 .23, the church of Christ's position need this to be a

mere spiritual death.

So I didn't, do you have any follow -up thoughts with that?

The only thing I would probably add is that I've heard them push back and say,

well, if spiritual death is the consequence for sin, did Jesus

spiritually die on the cross?

There are some people within the hyper -preterist camp that

are closely aligned with a church of Christ position who would state that very fact,

that because sin, the punishment for sin is death,

Jesus did experience a spiritual death on the cross.

Don Preston is unapologetic about that.

And as simply a point of consistency, I think that's

where some of them don't wanna go.

If that's the penalty, and if you believe in substitutionary atonement, you would be

forced to walk hand -in -hand with Don Preston, that Jesus Christ

had to have died spiritually to be a substitutionary atonement.

So I do think there is a misunderstanding when it comes to that.

There's a difference when someone actually sins.

It does, like for the case of Adam, it brought on his physical death.

But the best way to describe this is the image of God was still retained,

but it was effaced.

Great point.

Something happened to his nature because he was the person who initiated the action.

So that type of thing, that hereditary part of it is

associated with what Adam did.

But that definite physical part, which is a huge point in the Old Testament, physical

death, physical death.

It's very hard to find anything discussing spiritual death in the Old Testament because the focus is so much

on physical death.

But there's a lot of tangent issues that we could get in with stuff like that.

But hopefully that's enough to wet people's whistle to get out there and read some more stuff into that.

Because it can get technical.

It can.

I thought it was supposed to be simple.

What I love about the scripture is it is simple enough for someone to look to Christ in

faith alone and be saved and God all the glory alone.

And scripture is deep enough for theologians to ponder and study for an entire lifetime.

And so a big takeaway I want people to understand for the wages of sin is death, is death is

both spiritual and physical.

And when you try to isolate to one over the other, then you're going to have problems.

And so what I articulate spiritual death once again being, it's the power of sin that reigns

in our flesh.

That's Paul's whole point in Romans 5, 6, and 7.

And that's what we see starting to take place when Adam sinned in the garden.

I pinpointed to the moment sin reigned in Adam and Eve's members is when their eyes were

opened, when they experienced sin, it was a guarantee that they were

going to die.

Thanatos, return to the dust of the ground.

So with that being said, I do want to shift gears to talking about this.

In Ephesians 2, 3, all of mankind, and the reason why I keep saying it like that is what

the last part of the verse says, is like the rest of mankind, were by nature children

of wrath.

And so Paul going into this debate is, I know the typical strategy

is to redefine this word fusi right here.

And so I tried to really front load this in my opening statement.

Nature is almost synonymous.

I mean, there's a way you can use nature as a metaphor, like in Romans 11 with the natural branches, but nature is

almost synonymous with the word birth.

And so when you look at the entire context of what's being said, this is talking about children, those who are

born, there's something that we all have in common by our nature, our birth of two parents, and it's that

we possess the wrath of God, his righteous indignation.

And it's because we are all fallen sons and daughters of Adam.

So do you wanna add anything to that before I start bringing up some of his points when he started

touching on how nature is something that you do and that's what determines who you are?

Yeah, I think it would be helpful for to let him speak on it first.

And once he speaks on it, kind of react to what he has to say, because he even, the way he

approaches this verse is somewhat bizarre.

I have never heard a Church of Christ apologist go this far to try,

not just change what Thucydides means, but try to make the

subject of that whole paragraph be something entirely different than what's being

discussed.

Perfect, yeah, let me cue him up.

But now let's talk about Ephesians 2 .3.

He said, we're the children of wrath by nature.

I wanna start with a video.

And one thing he said too was before he got to the debate, he said, hey, if you wanna clip up James White and use him against me,

well, I did.

And now he's saying that I'm not debating James White.

Here is Jeremiah on Ephesians 2, verse number three.

We're dead in our sins and we're the children of wrath.

Well, as you know, Ephesians 2 .3 talks about how we were by nature, children of wrath.

Well, as you know, Ephesians 2 .3 talks about how we were by nature, children of wrath.

And then you, by nature, you have a creature that is corrupt.

Even though we can affirm these categories of federal headship, being guilty and Adam, total depravity, inability

to seek God.

That we are dead in trespasses and sins.

And until you can find a way to make a dead person do anything, you're going

to have to figure out how to fix that hole in your theology.

Dead people can't do anything.

Did y 'all not hear him say that 10 minutes ago?

This is Shirley Phelps.

She's one of the nastiest women in America.

She's a five -point Calvinist.

She believes just like Jeremiah.

Now, he said a moment ago, Augustine has way more credit than Jeremiah Nortier.

James White has way more credit.

So when I quote them and he says, well, you're debating me, these are your teachers.

This is a five -point Calvinist.

She said exactly what you said 10 minutes ago.

You can't get a dead person to do anything.

And that includes his son, J .J.

That includes him.

He doesn't know if he's saved and he's still got his depravity.

Now, it's not just that.

I think, I can't remember his name.

Your preacher at 12 .5, his name is Nathan?

Do anything.

You're going to have to figure out how to fix that hole in your theology.

Dead people can't do anything.

But Ephesians 2, right?

And you were dead in your trespasses and sins.

You were unable, unable to come to him.

If total depravity falls, all the rest fall.

If total depravity is right, you're kind of stuck with limited atonement.

I want to talk about total depravity.

They are the exact same, y 'all.

Any thoughts, Paul?

This is what we call in logic, the genetic fallacy.

Because person A believes like you on another person, then therefore you are that person.

Let's apply that to them.

The Mormon church believes in baptism for the remission of sins.

Therefore, Caleb Robertson is a Mormon.

That's how bad this type of logic is.

It's another attempt to gaslight.

It's another attempt to get people not to listen to what you have to say because they're trying to say you are

nothing more than somebody who's a member of the Westboro Baptist Church.

And I will defend James White here when Johnny Robertson

ambushed him at Apology Church some time ago.

If you can't understand the difference between a Reformed Baptist and Westboro Baptist Church,

you really aren't worth engaging with.

And as far as Dr. White's position is, I believe he should stick with that.

If you can't tell the difference between that, there's really no point in engaging that man.

Their whole goal here, actually, is they want to debate James White.

That's why they're pushing this so hard.

Well, yeah, I think it's funny.

People think me and Dr. White are besties, and I'm like, dude, I barely can.

I email him sparsely.

I want to make sure to respect his time and so forth.

But I think you're right.

The Robertsons really want to debate James, and they will never get that opportunity

because of interactions like the one I had with Caleb.

Absolute dumpster fire.

You know, I have a Facebook page, The Church of Christ Exiles.

I didn't even share this debate on that because I don't want them to have to relive this kind of trauma

interaction.

And so I want to create helpful content of being able to say, hey, true debate, true discord that can be

loving, but standing firm on truth, that's what's edifying.

And so you're absolutely right.

James White, Jeff Durbin should not waste their time with people that can't even understand the issues at

play.

And so here in this next portion, we get into that redefining of foosie.

Now, I don't know if you caught this, but I knew that this was the tactic.

And so what did I say, Paul?

I said something like, well, does that mean if I bark like a dog that I can become a dog one day?

And my point that I was getting people to try to think about with me is you don't get to fundamentally change

your nature by something that you do.

Now, that's the Church of Christ position here is you're born totally innocent.

They have a misunderstanding of Romans 7, 9 that just says, I was once alive, but when the law came, I died,

spiritual death.

Right, I think even Layton Flowers holds that view.

And I'm thinking, oh, man, because that whole context in Romans 7 is Paul.

Paul is saying that he thought he was alive.

He was a Jew of the Jews, Pharisee of Pharisee, circumcised the eighth day, all that rap sheet.

But when he was convicted of his sin, he coveted from the heart, it killed his

conscience.

And he was now awakened to the reality that he's a sinner before God.

When he became alive to the law, when he realized that sin had already existed in his member.

So that's the context of Romans 7.

But for them, you have to be able to change your nature by the things

that you do.

So like you said, let me play a little bit from Caleb, and then you can tell me your thoughts.

Not that they just leave Jesus, not that they leave the Bible, but a system that says God started you out in an uneven playing

field.

And I remember, I don't care that he called me a Pelagian, I'm not, and I'm not an Armenian either.

See, this is really what they want to avoid,

is it's unfair of God.

This is the thing that they don't really wanna talk about, but this is the heart of the issue, if you will.

It's unfair.

If you're born in rebellion and love sin and suppress the truth and unrighteousness.

And so I think that's what he is kind of articulating.

Their fundamental beef with Calvinism, the doctrine of God's sovereignty, is they

cannot bend the knee to a God who is sovereign and has redeeming purpose

in all things.

You're just born a baby, you're ignorant, you don't have a moral compass, you're gonna have parents, you're gonna have the world

pushing on you, and what you're gonna do is act 17, you're gonna have to fill out for God.

Yeah, so maybe I should have backed it up, but what I can say here is in

Galatians 2, 14 and 15, it says, Paul says, we who

are Jews by nature and not sinners of the Gentiles, his

basic point is you're not born a Jew, but you become a Jew the eighth day.

In my, I knew that was his big moment to engage with the word nature, which is almost synonymous with birth,

is if we go back to Genesis 17, well, it's Abraham's male offspring,

those by birth of two Jewish parents, they are the ones to be circumcised.

And so no, you're a Jew by birth, you're a Gentile by birth, that's why Jewish babies are to be

circumcised, and oh my goodness, what about women?

What about women, females that are born, they can't be circumcised, and so according to him, they can't become a

Jew.

And so this is, to me, a sad attempt to say that you become a Jew by ritual or by

custom.

It is true, those that are Gentiles by birth do have to become circumcised in order to be proselytized,

converted into Judaism, but that proselyte Jew was a Gentile by

busi, birth.

So do you have any thoughts with that?

Well, to first off, I would suggest just talking about that Galatians 2, verses 14 through 15,

it really doesn't prove what they're trying to set out to convince everybody of, because we

who are Jews by nature and not sinners from the Gentiles, they don't even go on to read the rest

of that verse.

We who are Jews by nature know the gospel, a list, basically,

the gospel.

To be consistent here, the people who are part of Old Testament Judaism, as Paul

himself indicates in his own writings, were the first in this thing from accepting the

gospel.

So it really doesn't make any sense.

Even to this day, Jews who are Jews by nature don't accept the gospel.

So it's a matter of consistency with this term, even if you allow for it to exist.

But let's just say to entertain, like for this Ephesians 2, 3, if it really does mean