Andrew Answers Your Hardest Questions

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This is Apologetics Live. To answer your questions, your host, from Striving for Eternity Ministries, Andrew Rappaport.

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We are live, Apologetics Live, here to answer your most challenging questions about God and the

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Bible. We can answer any question, and I mean any question that you have about God and the

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Bible. If you doubt that, we'll just go to ApologeticsLive .com,

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join the show to do that. You just click on that little duck icon that's for StreamYard, and join us.

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Give me your most difficult question. Just remember one thing. If I say, I don't know, that's a perfectly good answer.

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With that, let me bring in the co -host for tonight, none other than Mr.

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A .M. Brewster. Of course, I put him on right as he's drinking some water. I actually did that on purpose.

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I was like, I'm going to go for the candid. You were playing ninja all week.

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You were just trying to be all stealthy, but it didn't quite work all the time. I did it on purpose.

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Yes. Today will be an open

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Q &A, so any questions you have, we will take them. There's this guy backstage.

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I should bring him in. Already? Yeah, we're going to bring him in. You know him as Tiny Hands.

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Here he is. He looks so much bigger on screen.

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It's all about perspective. When I bring him back, it's less intimidating.

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I'm bringing him in early because he's got his own livestream to do in about an hour, where they're going to make some announcements about next year's conference.

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I guess I don't know if we should announce it, because I already know what some of the announcements are. We should hold off and make those next year.

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Can't steal their thunder. That would be wrong. It'd be like introducing somebody as Tiny Hands as they come onto a show.

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I agree. 100%. That could be. Inappropriate. So, Brayden, we spent the week, both

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Aaron and I with you, at a conference that you guys did at Open Air Theology.

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We've been promoting it here. So, regulars, you know about it. It was the Open Air Theology conference with the topic of why

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Arminianism. Wait, was that it? It was why not

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Arminianism. Well, I thought Leighton Flowers thought it was why Arminianism. Yes, Leighton Flowers actually was in attendance to the

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Why Calvinism conference. Actually, I got to give kudos. He was there for most of the time.

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He came to dinner with us a couple nights. So, that was good.

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We got some good, fun discussions. And I don't think, Brayden, I mean, I don't think any of us were too mean to him.

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He actually said he likes hanging out with Calvinist more. I think we were well -behaved. I didn't see anyone like... I actually saw a lot of people walking up and taking a photo with him.

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Yeah. Hey, hey, listen. I have to say, I actually had never actually heard of the gentleman before this conference.

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In fact, the first time he and I had a chance to talk, I was sitting at dinner together. And I was just getting this vibe.

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Everyone was having fun. And I turned to him and said, okay, just help me get to know you a little bit better. Fill me in here.

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Finish this sentence. Nobody likes me because... It was just this fun thing.

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But I had never met the guy. And I just have to say, he's a sweet man. I really enjoyed getting to know him. Very friendly, very kind, very loving, very encouraging in his conversations.

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So, disagree with him, though we may. Great guy. Yeah. I think the rest of us at the table at that,

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Aaron, thought you knew who he was with that question. It was a real blessing being able to meet him, though.

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I celebrate being united in the essentials of Christianity. And though there are some very strong convictions and reasons why he would not attend my church, right?

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Or likewise, I would attend his in that sense. It was a real blessing to be able to fellowship along with him and have some good conversations, not even regarding soteriology.

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That was one thing I really respected. I did watch his during the... He did not listen to my sermon.

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I want him to go back and listen to my sermon. So, if he sees this, when my sermon goes up, I want him to watch mine.

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I want him to watch Sam Waldron's and Jeff Rice's. And he needs to watch yours, too, Andrew. He missed a little bit of the first day as well.

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Great. And he may have missed yours because that's when I was showing him my predestination free will card illustration.

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That may have been why he missed it. I blame myself. It's all your fault. I blame myself. No, it was really good, though.

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It was a real blessing to be able to hang out with him. And, yeah, it was cool. I only have good things to say about Leighton, not necessarily about his soteriology.

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Yeah. His theology could use a little bit of work. But, I mean,

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I've always said this. Leighton is a really, really nice guy. And it's actually...

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I've said this before. I've said it to him. I've said it privately. You know, you guys heard me say it this past week.

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You know, his debate style actually gives him an air that he wins debates when he doesn't.

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And what I mean by that is he just has such a cool, calm demeanor.

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And this is something good. This is an apologetics show where we teach apologetics. Yes, we can even learn from Leighton Flowers how to do apologetics better.

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Leighton is just such a nice guy that when you get people that are having a hard time because they're used to maybe arguing with people on the street or something like that and they're trying to get a rise, and you don't get a rise out of Leighton.

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In fact, the more you try to get a rise, the less of a rise you're going to get. And what that does, and I've seen him do debates where he debates someone and they're getting upset and angry.

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And he's very calm. He's very sweet about it. And it gives the impression that he is winning a debate not based on his content, but on the demeanor.

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Because there's a lot of people that if you don't feel that don't do debates or don't watch debates, it is a thing where people sometimes are watching the demeanor more than listening to the content.

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I remember watching a debate on Theonomy, and they had two different topics that they were going to cover.

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And one of the ways I knew, I said, regardless of listening to any of the content, I knew the guy that was promoting

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Theonomy lost is because when they had the first topic of discussion, they moved to the second topic.

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That guy was still trying to answer the first question. He used his entire opening, still trying to address the first issue.

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That's how you know a guy knows in his own mind he didn't do well. Can I get a redo?

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A do -over? It was a real blessing being able to hang out with him.

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One of the messages that I thought was really convicting at the conference was Michael Schultz's message on the love of God and Calvinism.

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Is that because it's Michael Schultz, so it's automatically convicting? This is factual.

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He does an amazing job conveying a message that is needed. I do think a lot of provisionists,

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I do think a lot of, even on my side of the camp, Calvinists in that way, don't do a very good job at displaying humility and love online.

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I took my observation from the conference, and I was watching some of the things that were being said, and I was like, man,

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I think I'm seeing the Christianity culture that was raised up, and I know you guys might not have been in this camp, but was raised up playing

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Call of Duty, saying your mom jokes with no repercussions, and now they're Christians and they take that same type of mentality of I can just be obnoxious, loud, arrogant, ignorant, and I can just spout it out and there's no consequences.

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And the reality is, as a Christian, there's lots of consequences. The world's watching how you're behaving.

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It's not glorifying God. It can be sin oftentimes. And so I do think there's several provisionists that fall into that.

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And so on the other side, Calvinists fall into that too. So I just really appreciated the love that was being given towards Leighton, and what

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Leighton was reflecting back towards us. It was a blessing in person. Okay, so Brayden, you used some terms.

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So on this program, we're always trying to teach. We don't want to use terms people may not know.

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You used the term provisionist. So give folks who may not be familiar with that a little bit of a definition and what you mean by that.

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Yeah, so it's a really modern view. I would say it's very similar to Arminianism in several cases.

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It's different. They would not like me to say that it seems to be semi -Pelagian.

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Essentially what it is is it's trying to – I would argue it denies the four points of Calvinism, T -U -L -I, but it holds to perseverance.

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So a provisionist would say that you can't lose your salvation from my understanding. And so the idea of it is that God didn't decree individuals to be in Christ.

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God decreed the outcome for those that would have faith in Christ. So God didn't decree – so the analogy that I've heard, and I hope

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I don't misrepresent, is that when you get on a plane, that plane is predetermined to fly to Texas.

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But it's not predetermined who's going to be on that plane when they start selling the tickets.

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And so that's what I've heard a provisionist say. So whenever you see predestination in the Bible, it's not talking about individuals being in the body of Christ, but it's predestinating the outcome for those that choose to have faith in Christ.

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I think that would be a fair assessment of provisionism. Okay, and now let me just – because there may be some in the audience, like there were some

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I think at that conference who were not familiar with their different theological systems.

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You mentioned an acronym, TULIP. Why don't you just give what each of those letters stand for?

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Yeah, so T, total depravity, meaning that while you're dead in your sins, you can't generate a faith that would be pleasing to God.

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You have to be made alive by the Spirit, a .k .a. regeneration. You would have unconditional election, meaning that Christ did not elect – or God did not elect you by seeing down the corridors of time and seeing the faith that you'd place in him, and therefore he elected you, but that he did it purely based off his forelove, his beforehand love for you.

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Limited atonement, that Christ died definitely and assuredly for the elect, and the elect alone.

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So it would be a – where I would argue an Arminianist would maybe – or even a provisionist would limit the power of the atonement, a

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Calvinist would limit the scope typically. And then irresistible grace, meaning that once the light bulb has gone off in your heart and your mind, there's no denying that.

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And perseverance of the saints would be that since Christ bought you by his blood, the same blood keeps you throughout and you'll be convicted of sin, continue to seek to be conformed to the image of Christ, and never lose your salvation in that process.

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Yeah, so let me get to some of the comments. I don't want to pick up on the prevenient grace. First off, we prayed for Kathy.

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She asked for prayer a couple weeks ago, and so she's just saying, hi, thank you all for the prayers. Hope you'll be able – hope to be able to see the whole show.

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So she was not doing well last time, if those remember. So Melissa said, I think you guys gave

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Leighton more fodder for his audience. There is a – from the

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Celtic Cup. I'm just going to – let's see. I'm going to mute you,

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Brayden, just while you're not talking because there was a hissing noise from your mic. So I think it's probably just because it's a condensing mic, and so it's trying to pick up when you're not speaking.

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So, yeah, if you go – we all got together for breakfast one morning before the conference at the Celtic Cup.

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If you go to – It was a great place. Yeah, it was. If you live in that area, go to the Celtic Cup. It was – you now saw why we had to have a

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Theology Torn Down type discussion there because it really was – I don't even drink coffee, and I want to just live there.

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Brayden and I just went there for coffee last year and just happened – and we both walked upstairs because there was additional seating, and we were just like, oh, yeah, we got to have a discussion here.

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It's like the old -style meeting room where they'd have theological discussions.

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But in that, if you go to Dead Man Walking YouTube channel, he's got the video up, and in there we talk about the fact that Leighton is coming to the conference for material because we gave him a lot of it.

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I do want to point out in that video, Greg set the cameras up really well that the most attractive people in the room were for –

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Brayden, I don't even – were you ever seen in the video? You could hear your voice, but it was so hard to see the way you had the camera set up.

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It must be because, look, Melissa said – oh, wait, no, it wasn't that one. It was here. Melissa said

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Brayden's mustache rocked at the conference. It makes up for his tiny hands. Oh, ouch,

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Melissa. Encouragement in the jab. I'll mix in the one. Well, yeah, but Doreen says

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Leighton was there to give material to Jason. That's the guy who was debating

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James White. It didn't work. Dr. White destroyed him. Yeah, that was – if you watched the debate, that was – yeah.

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In all fairness, though, in all fairness, Leighton likely did and does have a lot of material for his podcasts and his shows.

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But so did all of our guys. I mean Keith Foskey, I mean he had his interview with Leighton not before Leighton could put anything up.

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Yeah, but nowhere near – so you don't know Leighton. You go watch – I get it, like hours and hours, yeah.

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Oh, no, like months and months. Brady is shaking his head, yeah.

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Melissa says Leighton loves to misrepresent the Calvinistic view. I know, and he always claims he was a

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Calvinist. Bill says, Andrew, did you get a chance to see the

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Leighton Flowers rebuttal on James White? I did not, so I'll have to go check that out.

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And then this is one Brother John says, a provisionist. He said, for the record,

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Andrew, I look up words you guys use all the time. That is one reason I watch this show.

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So thank you for that. And what I want to do is cover something that I didn't cover in my message.

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So my message was on the history of Calvinism, and I had a section in there.

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I think, Brady, and it might have been you in our group chat that said you wanted to see this one section where I talked about the

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Calvinism of Arminius. And I think a lot of the guys were like, what in the world are you going to say there?

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And I got a lot of that from R .C. Sproul. There was – I mean, and R .C.

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Sproul makes a good argument, along with some others I found, that basically tried to say that Arminius was actually – and Jacob Arminius did not overlap.

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Arminius was four years old when John Calvin died. So it really was

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John Calvin's predecessor, or successor, I mean, which is Theodore Beza, who was interacting with Jacob Arminius.

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And Jacob Arminius saw Beza going further than he thought Calvin would, and kind of wanted to, in his mind,

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I think, pull him back. But what ends up happening, as usual, is when someone pulls someone back, they start to go and double down on things and go too far a wrong way.

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By the way, I am shocked. Hold on. We have a shocking thing for regulars here. Everyone's going to be shocked at this one.

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There's a comment here, and let's see what it says. It's not that it says Aaron the Ninja. It's that it says

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Habs Addison. He actually went in and figured out how to put his name so it doesn't say

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Facebook user. Congratulations to Habs Addison. Well done.

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I would like to say that I went onto his computer and just did it for him while he was sleeping, but yeah.

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So I want to deal with, though, Braden and Son, that I didn't get a chance to read in my notes.

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And it was really – this is the beauty of the conference you guys did, because I skipped this section, but Keith Foskey, who was preaching on the

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Calvinism of Luther, didn't skip this section. He actually had something about pervenient grace in there.

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But R .C. Sproul makes a great argument. I mean, you look at the words of Arminius, and he uses language to describe total depravity stronger than Luther, Calvin, Augustine, or Augustine, depending on how you want to pronounce it.

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But I have this in there. So there's a section in here talking about pervenient grace.

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And R .C. Sproul says this. The term pervening grace is open to misunderstanding.

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To prevent in modern usage usually means to keep something from happening.

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This is not how Arminius used the term. The word prevent derives from the

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Latin vino, which simply means to come, with the prefix pre - means before.

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Therefore, prevening grace does not keep salvation from happening, but necessarily comes before salvation.

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So the reason I read that is because the way this term is used, that Brandon's used,

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I think, and Brandon, I'll be curious to see what you think about this. Braden, you did it again. Braden.

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Braden, I keep doing that. I've been doing that ever since I met you. Braden. I got your back, man.

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I should just call him Mr. Patterson and be safe. I should just call him Tiny Hands and I won't get caught.

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No, no. Look, I've been called a lot of mean things before. As long as you're looking at me when you say it, which is hard online,

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I'll try to respond. So you're good. So when we think about, like, why does a guy like Leighton Flowers create a new term, pervenient grace?

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Right now, there's some history there, right? Because Arminius used it. You used two terms, right?

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You used Arminianism and semi -Pelagianism. And I, in my message, talked about the fact that there's

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Calvinists and kind of anti -Calvinists. They're not really Arminian. They're not completely semi -Pelagian.

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And for folks that don't know, I mean, you had to go and listen to the message when it comes out that I did, because I go through what

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Pelagianism is. But Pelagian was a heretic who denied original sin, things like that.

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Augustine had confronted him. So destroyed Pelagian's arguments that people that didn't want to hold to what

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Augustine believed created what would be called semi -Pelagians, kind of half and half. They were in the middle of both.

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And so what we end up seeing is that most people don't want to say they're semi -Pelagian even today, because when we look at what

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Augustine, Luther, Calvin, John Owens did, they're really, we see the effectiveness of their work and the fact that people don't want to hold to the terms

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Pelagian, Arminian, semi -Pelagian. They don't want to. So this is why

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I think guys like Leighton and others are trying to come up with a new term. And we talked about that at dinner one night where he said, well, being

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Southern Baptists, they used to be called the traditionalists, but that didn't really make sense so much for explaining it, so he started using the term pervenient grace.

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Yeah, I think that Pelagianism has been demonstrated to be an heresy wrong for a long time, right?

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And so I have heard, and I hope I don't misquote Leighton by any means, so if I do, I repent on the front side.

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If you do, you're going to get a whole hour episode. That's fine. So I've heard that he denies original sin in the common definitions of what original sin is.

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Leighton does? Yeah, because he wouldn't say that man has died in such a way with Adam that it keeps him from being able to choose

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God, that we're still in this neutral state to be able to be prone to go to God or not to God.

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Yeah, and that's really addressing total depravity, right? Right. And this is what total depravity, how you know if someone has a proper definition, that it's not just our intellect and emotions that were affected by the curse, but it's also the volition, the will, and he would deny that the will is affected by the curse.

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Right, which most Calvinists would take that doctrine of original sin and say, you see, tulip is the natural outcome of, or total depravity in that sense is the natural outcome of what original sin is, that we've all died in Adam and you can only be made alive in Christ, meaning that unless you were born again like what

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Jesus says to Nicodemus, you cannot come to Christ. You're still dead with Adam there. So that wouldn't just be intellect, but that would also be with the will as well.

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Yeah. But I, yeah, I, there's, I do think, and I do appreciate what one of our sisters on here was saying earlier.

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I do think, I do think often Leighton does misrepresent the Calvinist. I think,

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I think several times. Isn't that something you need to do on both sides though?

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You can, absolutely. Yeah. I mean, it's like if we, if we understood a person's position to the same degree and conviction that they did, we would hold to the same conviction that they do.

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I'm not, you know, I, like for example, I think all of us could explain evolutionist theory, but we're not going to do it nearly as well as somebody who actually believes in evolution.

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So I just throw that out there. I don't know that Leighton is deliberately trying to misrepresent.

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It's possible. But I do think it's just, it is just a necessary thing. I mean, I think

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Brayden, you did a great job trying to sum up the provisionists and kind of the definition that you did.

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I think you did a good job. No doubt though, Leighton or some other provisionists may have found issue with it and could have potentially claimed that we were misrepresenting it by saying it that way.

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For example, you did make the statement that, that the

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Arminianist thinks that God kind of looks down the, the annals of time and sees who will choose him.

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And then God chooses them as well. Leighton made an interesting observation to me, as I was having a conversation with him, he said that generally

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Arminianists don't actually say that it's, it's what Calvinists say.

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They say that this is what, this is what he's saying. And I don't know. I mean, I told him, I knew a guy who was

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Arminianist and he, he gave me that illustration and to which Leighton replied a lot of times

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I do that though, because they've heard it from Calvinists. So I really don't know who's right on this particular one.

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But I'm, I'm willing to hear what he has to say. And again, I'm not throwing you under the bus. I'm just, I'm just putting it out there that I think we all need to recognize it as super hard to argue a position that we disagree with.

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A thousand percent. And the reason I, the reason I, I, so that, that definition of looking down the corridors of times that that's the one that a

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Molinist would use. And so most, what I have seen in these provisionist camps is anyone that's typically talking about provisionism holds to some form of Molinism that God saw possibilities and he chose this possibility based off of seeing all possibilities.

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And so that, that, that's the, I know exactly what you're saying. I know exactly what you're saying because we don't want to misrepresent.

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And I'm sure like I, when I was listening to Leighton on his, his live video, he said that that he noticed that as we were talking about our different eschological positions or different ecclesiology, anything along those lines, he said that we ended up putting

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Calvinism into it, which I, I would argue that Calvinism is more of the, the branch doctrine for me that like my, my core doctrine is here and then

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Calvinism is a result of core doctrine where he was thinking my core doctrine is Calvinism.

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And then my eschological positions and so on are, are the branches that are flowing from that. And I, I would disagree heavily with that.

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I would say you could go, go look at our discussion on the Celtic cup where much of it was really on dispensationalism and Calvinism didn't come up.

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You know, even though we were having lots of disagreement, really what was coming up was our ways of interpreting scripture, right?

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That's what was discovered. So you mentioned Molinism for folks that don't know that term.

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Molinism is a philosophical argument really against Calvinism. I've done a debate on this show many years ago with the guy that actually works for Leighton, but he was a

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Molinist. And the, the view basically is that God in his middle knowledge and his ability to, to know all things can know all of the actions we would take in ones we don't take.

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And in his mind he could see all of these different worlds that could have been based on our free will.

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That's their whole thing is they gotta, they're trying to preserve our free will and argue against what they would say is a view of determinism.

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And I said this in my talk, that this is the big problem is everyone characterizes Calvinism as determinism.

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There's a big difference there. The majority of Calvinists do not deny that we have a volition.

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It's just that the volition was decreed by God. So, you know, they, they, they hear that and they go cause no.

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So that's back to what Aaron said about the misrepresentation. And so the thing that I find interesting in Molinism though Braden is what, when the debate that I had with it,

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I asked, can we in, in the, in the world that God has now that he realized, okay, so he's always worlds that could have been, can we do anything outside of the, our free will choice?

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I mean, once he, God chooses, can we do anything else? And the answer was, no, I said, so God determined it, right.

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They don't even realize they back into the very thing they're trying to defend again. Yeah. There's, there's several and there's several logical outcomes, theological as well, that, that are issue with it.

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Romans eight, 29, those whom I, I foreknew or beforehand loved.

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I predestined those that I predestined. I called those. I called, I justified those. I justified, I glorified. Okay. If, if God before creation saw all possibilities where he saw all people coming to know him in one, one of some of the different types of possibilities, well, then are all predestined are all called are all justified are all glory.

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No, we, we have very clear examples in the text where that doesn't happen. And so by trying to hold on to man's free will in such a way, we have compromised some several texts in the

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Bible and we are lessening the decree of God. And they haven't answered the question of the, the question of the odyssey, which is

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I, I'm thankful being on this program because usually I'm just throwing out terms that people know exactly what they are. But the odyssey is the issue with sin or evil in the presence of a

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Holy God in, in the world, how those things play out. But like, so like, and even on like, that's where, like,

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I really appreciate, like I'm a 1689 guy. Of course I got my 1689 shirt on right now. And so I would say I'm a determinist.

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I wouldn't say I'm a fatalist. I'm a determinist in light of what God's decree is described in that 1689 and, and of God's providence, which teaches that man is, has free will.

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There's a chapter in it that says that we have free will. And so even in the end of the paragraph of chapter three, it says that this is a doctrine as a high mystery.

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That's supposed to be handled with special prudence and care, um, to give glory to God and to not misrepresent him.

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And so the Calvinist would never say that we have the ability to say to God, why did you make me like this?

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Uh, we can never hold God culpable for the sin we commit because we're, we're accountable for it.

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I was the one that did it. I was the one that chose it. I was the one that, that rolled around in it. I'm the one that's culpable for it.

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Uh, but ultimately the Molaness is not getting away from this issue either. God still predestined these things to come to pass.

30:46

And you see what I'm saying? They just don't have that answer to it. they don't. And, and, and I just want to specify, and then

30:52

Aaron, I know you want to say son. So just, just to appeal, understand when you say you, you may as distinction between a fatalist and a determinist.

31:00

And, and you even said that, look, the, the 1689 does speak about free will.

31:06

This is the issue is that what non -Calvinists here is when, when a

31:13

Calvinist speaks of decree, they hear human has no will.

31:19

That's what they're hearing. And so, so when you're having discussions with people of other views, you got to understand what they mean by their words, right?

31:27

So, so for, for example, um, in, in that discussion we had at breakfast, Leighton asked a question of everyone, right?

31:34

He asked whether, whether, uh, regeneration proceeds faith. Now I've had the discussions with him.

31:42

I know what he means by that. What he means is chronologically. Did you get regenerated in time?

31:50

And then sometime after have faith. And, and that's not what we would hold to.

31:56

So everyone said yes. And I said, no, no. The difference was I already from, you know, knowingly, and I already knew what he meant by it.

32:06

Everyone else had a view with being Calvinists, a view of what a Calvinist would mean by it.

32:12

That logically not chronologically. Now there are some Calvinists that do believe chronologically, but I knew what

32:18

Leighton meant by it. And so it was interesting because everyone, everyone but me said yes. And I'm like, well, you know, he knew that I would say that they're simultaneous acts, which then is what, what

32:29

Keith ended up, you know, qualifying. Right. Yeah. And, and I, I would hold to somewhat of a chronological view too, just, but it would be, it wouldn't be like 10, like a millisecond.

32:39

Yeah. It's like a light bulb going on. Right. Electricity. Boom. It's there. Lights coming out. Like there's, there's no, there's like no denying that there's no stopping that there's no cutting and splitting it up.

32:51

It just happens. Yeah. I was going to look up. There's a great quote by CH Spurgeon.

32:57

I can't find it. It's a great quote where he talks about the difference between determinism and fatalism. You look it up and let's try to find it.

33:05

Yes. Yeah. Well, I was going to come in here and not stir the pot, but I know that my comments are probably going to make a, you know, a lot of trouble.

33:14

So, well, so I, people ask me and I basically would tell, generally tell people my, my pat answer is that I am

33:21

Calvinistic in doctrine. Okay. But that I do hold what appear to the

33:29

Calvinists to be to the, to, I would say to the five point Calvinist would appear to them to be disagreements or more, more theology on the other side.

33:41

But from my perspective, it doesn't fall into that category at all. In fact, it's, it's agreement.

33:47

And I, I bring this up because we were having this discussion the last night of the, the, the conference, all the speakers.

33:55

And I was lucky enough to be with the speakers. Yeah. Thanks Habs. I appreciate that. No such thing as a four point.

34:01

He says, you're looking at one buddy anyway. No, I, we were, we were there at the house and I had the privilege of being there with the guys.

34:09

And I think Brayden, you were part of this conversation for a while. And it was, it went until like we, I didn't go to bed until around three, but I think the conversation was going strong until after 2.

34:17

I am. And yes, that's right. Good to hear. Brain's not a fatalist.

34:23

It doesn't sound good to be a fatalist. But so the conversation I was having with the guys was interesting in that.

34:29

I don't, I don't think in any way, shape or form, my position was unique and along the way,

34:35

Keith and other guys were trying to name it. We're trying to identify it according to other beliefs.

34:42

But the position that I bring forward is one of, of the fact that we know that even

34:50

Calvinist agrees that man is culpable. Brayden just said that we are responsible. And I think the

34:56

Armenian and the provisionist, they struggle. In fact, I heard Layton say this a lot. Layton, I think the

35:01

Armenian struggles too much with the emotional side of things, right? They don't like how it feels that God might work, interact with us in a certain way.

35:12

And I struggle with, I struggle with that. Not, not with how it feels, but anyone who is going to approach theology and the scriptures by how it makes them feel, it's like, you're already coming at it from a very dangerous perspective.

35:23

But I will still say though, that in the scriptures, when you're arguing,

35:28

I don't like to say logically, right? Because, you know, sometimes things can be argued logically that are not biblically accurate, but when you're arguing

35:34

Theo logically, okay. Biblical logic. I see that we have, we have descriptions of man's will, his requirement to choose and, and the consequences of his choosing and so on and so forth.

35:48

But we also see the election for knowledge predestination of God. I see the election predestination for knowledge of God identically to the way that the, the, the

35:57

Calvinist would. But I also see that God, our God is so amazing, so miraculous that the, his election and free will can perfectly coexist with man's choice.

36:11

And this is, and I know where the, I know where the questions go here. And I know how people so frequently misunderstand what I'm saying.

36:16

And I don't necessarily want to open up a debate, but I am throwing this out there and I'm throwing this out there for, for a particular reason. One, so that everyone knows the position from which

36:23

I'm coming from in this conversation. But two, because I hold the position that I do.

36:29

And I think we all in certain way, shape or form hold the positions we do, because we look at the scriptures and we see how awesome

36:37

God is. And then we want to tell people how awesome he is. That's basic evangelism. That's discipleship.

36:42

But it's also these discussions about these passion, passionate doctrines that we have. And when

36:49

I look at the scriptures and I see how, I mean, I use the word paradoxical. God is Greg Moore, who was in the chat earlier.

36:55

Who's not feeling too good tonight. Said he wished he could be with us, but Greg pushed back a little bit, said that God is not paradoxical.

37:02

What I mean by that is that from a human perspective, within the context of creation,

37:07

God is a paradox. There is nothing in creation that, that can be what God is. So from a paradoxical perspective,

37:16

God does things and is things that we can't be in can't do. So all of that to say, I think he is absolutely amazing and fantastic that his, that predestination and man's choice are, are a work 100 % together in such a way that is not, that from my perspective, actually, you know, and I'm not,

37:37

I'm not trying to make everybody happy. I don't care if you've got a bad doctor, if you've got a bad doctor and, you know, go, go cry yourself to sleep.

37:42

I'm not trying to make you happy, but I think on this particular point, what it does is that it, it takes the realities that we see in scripture on both extremes, and it marries them into a way that we're not fighting about that anymore.

37:57

Yes. Man has free will. And yes, God sovereignly predestinates. If you go, well, that doesn't make logical sense.

38:04

We're not talking about the same God at that point. My personal thoughts. Don't at me. There you go. Well, I think

38:10

I'll, I'll come up with one part of it. There's Tom again saying that synergism. It's not synergism.

38:15

It's different. Synergism is different. And so, so, and we can actually address that as well too, but, but, you know, one of the, and this is what

38:26

I really loved about this conference. I started leading up to it. Right. And you know, this, the, these kinds of theological discussions that were going on every night after the conference over dinner, you know, at the house where we're like at the conference itself, where it's a, it really is a free environment to disagree.

38:49

That's the thing that I really appreciate about the open air theology conference. Greg Moore, you know, he's, he's a

38:58

Baptist wannabe. I mean, I'm sorry. He's Presbyterian.

39:04

He'll be back. Presbyterian there. You know, he held his ground pretty well. Well, no, no, there was the, the, the, oh, the doctor who, who did the pre -conference.

39:13

I forget his name now. Sam Frost, Sam Frost. He was great. We're a lot more.

39:19

We just didn't know it. I mean, we had, I was the token dispensationalist last year.

39:26

Kevin Hay was just hiding out, you know, ninja dispensationalist. Yeah. And then you came and it was like,

39:31

Oh, now there's three. So I was joking with Kevin Hay today. I said, we're, we're growing at least as the conference group.

39:38

Yes. What did the number of dispensationalist proportionally grow? You know, so three out of 150 people, but you know,

39:49

I said in my message, something Aaron, that really what you're hitting on is there is a sense of people experiencing that they chose

39:59

God. And then they read the Bible and theologically God chose them. And some people struggle with that.

40:08

Because this is what I experienced and they stick to that. I think that's where the struggle is.

40:15

Yeah. I think, I think there's there and I'll give it there. I don't think a provisionist or anybody that's a brother or sister in Christ.

40:23

I don't think anybody's sitting there saying, man, I'm going to, I'm going to lessen God today. Like that's not their, their goal.

40:29

I do think that they are trying to attempt to defend something that doesn't need to be defended.

40:35

I think, I think it, it does not make God a monster to say that he decreed all things or that he he's predestined all things that doesn't make

40:43

God a monster. And you don't need to take your feelings and try to defend God. The word is spoken.

40:48

I, in fact, right now I'm preaching at our church through the book of Job. And one thing I really am loving about the book of Job is here.

40:56

You have a suffering Saint Job, who's at the beginning of the book said that he is fairly, or that he fears

41:01

Yahweh. He's blameless, upright. No one can charge against him. Right. And then here he's suffering here.

41:08

He has three, three friends, just hurling abuses at him saying you sowed wickedness. That's why your sons and daughters died.

41:14

God wouldn't do this to you. If, if it, if it wasn't this karma type of God we have.

41:20

And the whole point that Job is doing the entire time throughout his message and he fails, he messes up here and there, but he, he is, he's always quick to say,

41:28

God has the right to do with me. Well, however he pleases. He, he who am

41:33

I to say what he should or should not do. And that's where like, uh, in the beginning of the book, he says, Yahweh gives,

41:38

Yahweh takes, the Lord gives, the Lord takes, blessed be the name of Yahweh, blessed be the name of the Lord.

41:44

And it says that he never sinned when he said that. And so that's the theme. That's the, that's the barriers that you got to read the whole book of Job with.

41:51

And I've, I've been greatly blessed, uh, studying it. And I think it's one of those things when it comes to, uh, this difficult high mystery doctrine that, that brings a lot of emotions.

42:02

And I'm a firefighter. I can bring in those emotions and talk about X, Y, or Z things that I've seen, how good

42:08

God, no, you need to set these emotions to the side and then come into the room, see the cards where they're laying and say, man, this is

42:17

God. And I mean that a provisionist could say the same thing towards me. And I hope that they would, because that means that they're passionate and convicted about what they're believing.

42:25

Uh, but I don't think they're giving, I don't think they're giving a reasonable answer to theodicy. Like they think they do.

42:31

I think they're just adding more words to the conversation that are trying to protect something that doesn't need to be protected.

42:37

Yeah. And, and I think the thing that they're trying to protect is God's character now. Right. I know,

42:43

I know you got to get going. So we, I, because you got your own show to get over and make sure it's set up.

42:49

Um, so, uh, first of all, I want to thank you for coming in. Uh, I got, I do see a comment here that I'll have to, before you go, uh, you know, it'll be a good way for you to re go into your, your show.

43:02

But, uh, so, but before we do, I do have a little bit of an announcement.

43:10

We have a new sponsor. So this is the first time that we're announcing this sponsor.

43:18

Uh, and, and I would say that, uh, it was actually in the works prior to going to the conference, but each of you guys got to enjoy some of this.

43:27

At the conference. And I got a bag of this right here, but it is squirrely

43:33

Joe's coffee. Now. I don't know if you guys see the, this here, is it backwards? I don't know.

43:39

Aaron said he thought it's backwards. So we'll let the folks watching live. Squirrely Joe coffee though. Oh my goodness.

43:45

They had that at the conference. It was delicious. This is my bag of, and this is what, what

43:50

I'm expecting from you. Braid in some respect. I loved, I love the name of each of the bags.

43:56

I got a bag of respect. So the respect is a milk, chocolate, almond, dried fruit and red apple.

44:04

So, uh, I'm looking forward to that one. This is a Brazilian one. And so what they've worked out for squirrely

44:10

Joe's coffee is you just go to striving for eternity .org slash coffee. That will bring you over there.

44:18

And there's also. A way to get 20 % off on your first time purchase.

44:26

You use the promo code SFE. It stands for striving for eternity and you can get it there.

44:32

Now I'm going to just tell you, I, you may want to get the value packet, one of each to figure out which one you like.

44:39

Cause they all have, they all have different names. And I was, I was joking with Joe, the owner of squirrely

44:44

Joe's coffee, because I, the names are funny. Cause I, at the conference, I picked up the bag of respect.

44:52

Um, and, and someone else, or actually, no, sorry. I picked up the bag of integrity and someone else gave me respect.

45:02

So, so integrity was the cashews, uh, honey molasses and milk chocolate.

45:08

So each one. So here's the names of their coffee. This is, this is a surprise. You have compassion, wisdom, honor, integrity, kindness, respect, responsibility, and honesty.

45:20

So, so you got to figure out what you're in the mood for that day. I'm in the mood for a little bit respect today, or I need some integrity today.

45:28

I'm going to give squirrely Joe's the highest praise that Aaron Brewster can give to squirrely

45:33

Joe's. I don't drink coffee, but if I did, I'm sure I'd love it.

45:40

Well, and this is different. So for folks to realize, this is not, this is not squirrel chatter.

45:46

For those that are familiar with this, with the Christian podcast community, we have gene client who calls himself squirrel on squirrel chatter.

45:54

So, so this is, this is going to make him feel better. Hey, Jean squirrely, Joe's coffee.

46:00

They actually are a sponsor. Now he loves their coffee. He's always, he's always promoting it, but he's going,

46:08

I'm not, they don't sponsor here. Now they do though. Hey, I'm going to let you guys go.

46:14

They do here. So, so, so with that, we got one comment we got to put up here. Okay.

46:19

Because, because you're going to go to your other show with haps. And I think you need to bring this up with haps because, you know,

46:26

I was struggling with your, you know, I always struggle with pronouncing your name and he has a name for you. He says, we should call you small paws.

46:33

Get the laughs out now guys, because I'm about to, I love you, man. It's not the last time you're going to see these small paws.

46:41

Okay. I'm sure it's not. Hey, it's a real place. I dearly love you guys.

46:46

And I'm, I'm thankful for the conversations that we had. I, I, it's a great blessing to call you guys, my brothers in Christ.

46:53

And I, I sincerely mean that. Yeah. Well, thank you for coming on, but thanks for the conference.

46:58

When you go over to the open air theology for folks that want to watch that, that stream or watch that later on YouTube, open air theology is what to look for in YouTube.

47:08

And we're going to make some announcements about next year's conference. You'll hear that there first. I won't say it here, but yeah, putting the conference on because it is a wonderful conference.

47:19

It was so good. People need to come there next year. If you missed it this year, I will try my best to forgive you, but you need to come next year.

47:27

So yeah, go check out open air theology. My YouTube channels reformed ex Mormon to be a blessing to have people to go check that out too.

47:34

But yeah, it's, it's such a blessing to be doing ministry along with you guys and to just glorify God. So wait, you're an ex

47:40

Mormon. I'm an ex. You know that. Let the man go, let him bring it back to talk about later. I'll come back and talk about it again.

47:47

See, not the last time that you saw these small paws. Hey, God bless you guys.

47:53

Thanks man. So, we're, it was, but yeah, you want to say something?

47:59

I was going to say it was great. Yeah, no, it is a great conference. And I, and I just want to, now that he's gone, um,

48:05

Oh, now you're going to say he's gone. Wow. Okay. Yeah, well I know I am. I am. I am because, and some of the guys are still in the chat, so they'll see this and obviously he'll hear about it.

48:14

But, uh, one of the things I wanted to say about this conference was, uh, cause I actually wasn't able to see a lot of the, the sermons.

48:22

Uh, this was very last minute for me. I was very thankful to be able to be able to go, but I still had to do all my work while I was there.

48:28

So it was, it was kind of unfortunate. However, uh, spending time with these guys after the sessions, uh, through the night, so on and so forth was so fantastic.

48:36

And God gave me an amazing gift. my current friend group is such that it really is a good reflection of the body of Christ.

48:45

So many of the people that I hang out with, I love dearly that I would die for that, that practically live in my home.

48:50

Sometimes these people are very unlike me, um, in our interests and desires and ages and experiences and so on and so forth.

48:57

And I think that's beautiful. And I think it again is a kind of a cross section of the, of the, uh, of the body of Christ.

49:04

But I met so many guys at this conference that just,

49:09

I resonated with on such a, a way that I have not in a long time, like guys who, um, not from a secular perspective, but more of just from a basic, uh, we get each other.

49:22

We have shared life experiences. We like the same things like that. I just really love these guys. Um, I, I spent a few days with them less than a week with them.

49:30

Um, and I really, really felt loved, uh, by these guys. Uh, I, I think

49:35

I, we started some friendships that'll last for a long time. Brayden was one of those guys. I actually met, um, my, my twin separated from birth.

49:42

Um, he and I are the same age and we have so many of the same passions and loves and desires. And Andrew called it.

49:49

Andrew knew that when he and I met, we would just be fast friends and we were Keith Foskey. Uh, and I, man,

49:54

I, I do. I love that guy. And I was just, it was such a sweet fellowship. So I'll just say really from a, yeah, go to the conference for sure.

50:02

Um, no doubt. Um, it'll be uplifting and encouraging to your soul. And that's why you go. But on a very interesting perspective for me, the relationships that I was able to build with these guys, uh, was just so wonderful.

50:15

I mean, it almost to the point of bringing me to tears because those types of relationships

50:20

I haven't had in a long time, uh, in my life. And it's like, like a whole bunch of them were right there in one spot and it was overwhelming.

50:26

It was so great. Yeah, it was, I've told people that that conference is designed for the fellowship.

50:33

I love the way he organizes it. so let me get through some of the comments that I see back.

50:41

And then we got someone that wants to come in and ask a question. So, uh, D says that Keith Foskey had an interview with Layton.

50:47

Keith could barely get a word in. Actually. No, there's two, two things with that. Yes. Layton loves to talk a lot, but he was being interviewed.

50:56

Okay. So first off, when you're doing an interview, a good interview is not doing all the talking.

51:03

He's letting the guest, because that's what the guest is there for. But another thing with Keith and I'll encourage you, you could go check out that video that, um, dead man walking dropped.

51:12

Greg had put on from the Celtic cup because you'll see Keith. I mean, okay.

51:18

Granted, Keith is sitting on his phone, like, you know, tweeting or, or whatever, whatever you call X thing, you know, but that doesn't sound right.

51:25

You know, but, uh, but he, you know, but he, he is a genuinely nice guy who will always let everyone else speak before him.

51:38

And so I don't think it was so much that Layton wouldn't let Keith get a word. And I think

51:43

Keith was going to give the time to Layton and, and give preference to Layton. And that's within Keith nature.

51:51

So D says, um, most people think that John Calvin made up the five points of Calvinism.

51:58

D you're going to really want to go and listen to my message. Cause that was the whole purpose of the message, um, was the fact that, you know, the five points of Calvinism.

52:09

We're not the, the five points of Calvinism are a response to the five points of the remonstrance.

52:15

They were actually core monstrance and counter remonstrance. And the remonstrance were the followers of Jacob Arminius, but those weren't developed until like nine years after he was dead.

52:28

So, so neither Calvin nor Arminius would have held to the five points of either system because it didn't exist yet.

52:37

So little historical note, uh, Greg, who I think you mentioned this comment earlier, but Greg Moore, who is from dead man walking.

52:46

If you don't know, Greg, you know, he, he's a guy you gotta get to know. He's just, he's like the life of the party.

52:53

Um, a great MC. He was great to MC it. He's got a great podcast. I always love when the interviews with him,

53:00

I think he dropped the interview he had with, uh, James White, myself. And, I think, I think it was

53:05

Jeremiah was on with us. And so, uh, go check that out. Um, but, uh, he says,

53:12

Hey fellas, wish I could be with you, uh, feeling a bit under the weather. And so I had told some of the guys, if they wanted to, they could, they could come on tonight and talk about the, the conference.

53:20

So, um, this is, Melissa says, I don't understand how Layton could misrepresent

53:27

Calvinism while claiming he used to be one. That's really the whole thing is that we, we just, it's easy to do it.

53:35

Yeah. So it's, it's very hard for people. So when I do debates, um,

53:40

I want to understand my opponent's position so well that I can make their arguments for them.

53:47

When I wrote the book, what do they believe? I took the chapters to authorities in each of the religions to see if I'm accurate to what they actually believe.

53:57

But the majority of people don't do things like that. And that's the thing is easy to misrepresent.

54:05

And I think another part of it is you see a lot of people that say, Oh, I grew up Calvinistic. I grew up dispensational.

54:13

I grew up Presbyterian. And as if that means they know everything about it. Huh? Well, fundamentalists.

54:19

I heard that a lot this last week too. I grew up fundamentalist. Yeah. And, and so one of the things

54:24

I said is I grew up Jewish, but that didn't make me an expert on Judaism. What made me an expert on Judaism is, is studying the

54:33

Talmud. I did that after I was saved. So people think that just because they grow up something that they had a full understanding of it.

54:43

That's not the case. and my, my thing, and I've said this to Leighton is so many people tell him he's misrepresenting the position and building a straw man argument.

54:54

Why doesn't he change the position? He believes this is a legitimate argument for the way we, we believe, but so many people say no.

55:01

And so if someone tells me that I'm misrepresenting their position, I want to take a step back and go, wait, okay, what is it?

55:08

Make sure I want to make sure I'm clear. And that's something we should do as, as good, you know, apologists, just as good debaters, good people.

55:17

Same thing happens. And please understand everyone. Listen to what I'm saying. I am not comparing Leighton flowers to a deconstructionist.

55:25

Okay. I'm not saying that he's not born again or anything like that, but I am going to use the example of a deconstructionist because they all say the exact same things.

55:31

They all say, I once was a Christian, but now I'm not. Right. That's their argument, which they even remotely understood anything that the

55:39

Bible has to say about Christianity and salvation. They would recognize that you can't claim that you'd have to say,

55:46

I never will. I thought I was a Christian, but I never was. I don't say that. I used to be a Christian and now I'm not. So they grew up in a church.

55:52

They heard about it. They made a profession of faith. They knew whatever it is they knew. And now they're misrepresenting it. Why? Because they never truly understood it.

56:00

And one could argue that Leighton as well, you know, he was once a

56:05

Calvinist, but he turned from it. Why did he turn from it? Because he didn't believe it anymore. And was that because he didn't truly understand it or was it due to something else?

56:17

It's going to be hard to say, but I see that happen all of the time when people generally turn away from something that they say they had a hard, fast belief in for most of their lives.

56:27

Oftentimes it's due to the fact that they really didn't fully get it and buy into it.

56:33

And that's what precipitated the change. Yeah. So Dee is saying that she said,

56:41

I understand it was an interview, but Keith tried to clarify something and it was difficult. I know. And that's why I said, you have to know

56:46

Keith's nature. you know, he's good. I did an interview with Keith too.

56:53

Dineen, watch it and see if he has just as much hard time with me because he probably probably did. Yeah.

57:00

So, let's see. I'm just trying to get these now in order. Mr. Tracy says, God doesn't have to look through the tunnels of time.

57:08

All is in his present. And that's one of the points that I made in my message there as well.

57:17

I talked about that. Kevin and Brayden and I got off on a tangent and we were talking about the theology of time and how it works and so on and so forth.

57:26

And it was a great conversation. Very interesting. Not a lot of agreement on it, but yeah, it was fantastic.

57:31

I had to miss that because one of us had to get up at like, oh, dark 30 to drive to the airport.

57:38

And yeah, you missed that one. It was great. Yes. You guys were up to like three in the morning. I think, I think you were coming in the room to go to sleep and I was just getting ready to wake up, which by the way,

57:48

I never heard you leave the room. So, I was obviously exhausted, but well done.

57:55

You ninja it pretty well. Yeah. That's, that's too bad because I was trying to make as much, much noise as I could.

58:01

Dee said, man is free to choose according to his nature. Okay. So, so let me address this because I think it was

58:08

John. Let me see if this is the one John says, no, there's a later one coming. John said, yes, fatalists determine, determinants, distinction is very important.

58:19

So making the distinction between a fatalist and a determinist, good thing.

58:24

I have no idea what that is. So I don't have to make it. Keeps you from having to make the distinction when you don't know what it is.

58:33

It's good. Yeah, there you go. But, this one was about the Molinists.

58:39

Molinists seem to have a low view of God being bound by human construction of time.

58:46

We try to explain things according to time that God above being the

58:51

Alpha and Omega. Jason, I'd say this. And by the way, Jason is, is a support of ours. That's why he has that cool little logo there.

58:59

Next to it on the right of his name. He supports us on, on YouTube. But, uh, what really, what it is is they have a very, they do have a low view of God because they have a high view of man's free will.

59:13

So they, they actually, it's not so much that they, I think, although in a sense, I get what you're saying.

59:18

They're binding God to man's construction at the time to human construction of time.

59:24

But really, I think they bind them to humans free will because their whole thing is man's free choice.

59:31

That's the sovereign thing. And, and God just looks at all the different choices we're going to make. And then he chose a world that would give him the greatest glory based on our choices.

59:42

So he didn't want to touch our choices. He wants to, it's a way of trying to explain this, this dilemma or as some say, paradox, we're going to get into questions about that.

59:54

About who chose who, did we choose God? Did he choose us? There's that, that's the dilemma.

59:59

And there's a lot of people that have different ways to try to explain that. I'm going to later on, as we get through more of these questions, try to explain a view that I hold to that I think explains it.

01:00:09

But yeah, well, we'll see how mine works.

01:00:14

John says it's paradoxical. It's objective. And that describes a paradox, something with two meanings that don't make sense together.

01:00:25

And I would say, don't make sense from a human perspective either. I use the example of the

01:00:31

Trinity. There is no human being who can fully conceptualize of the Trinity. In fact, all of our attempts to do so anytime we land on some physical picture that we're like,

01:00:41

Oh, this like the egg water, whatever, all of those actually inject some sort of heresy into it because none of the physical concepts that we can point to have any way of truly doing justice to the

01:00:54

Trinity. So within a, a human construct within, within creation, the Trinity is a paradox.

01:01:01

It doesn't make sense. I'll use that word. If some people would argue, it's not logical that the

01:01:07

Holy spirit can be fully God. And Jesus Christ is fully God. And God, the father is fully God, but they're, they're separate yet.

01:01:14

One, I mean, all of that makes really doesn't make sense. And I think anybody, any creed, any

01:01:20

Christian who argues, Oh, Trinity makes perfect sense. It does simply because God says it does, but we can't comprehend of it.

01:01:27

And that's really, I'd like to use the word paradox from a creation perspective, obviously to God, the

01:01:33

Trinity is reality. It is his existence. So it's not at all paradoxical for him.

01:01:38

And by God's grace, maybe one day in the future, some point in eternity, it'll start to be something that we can grasp better.

01:01:45

Yeah. So let me get to some of these. So, you know, the whole idea of synergism, um, yeah, brother

01:01:53

John is saying, I think he means synergism here, synergism, interaction, or cooperation of two or more organizations, substances, or other agents to produce a combined effect greater than the sum of them.

01:02:08

So, so for folks that didn't know what the synergism is, it's, there's two views, monergism synergism.

01:02:14

Monergism is that God does all the saving synergism is that. Man has done something to work with God, Roman Catholicism, clearly synergistic.

01:02:24

It's faith plus works. Every man made religion is synergistic because it's always God does something, but we do, we have to do the rest.

01:02:32

Yeah. And I would just say to that, because, you know, I, I, I had said my piece and then somebody in the comments had thrown out the word synergism.

01:02:39

Um, and I said, it's not synergism. Um, the idea, and this is where I try really hard to view salvation and this particular topic, the same way

01:02:48

I view the Trinity, I don't need to fully understand it. And synergism gets in trouble because it sees

01:02:54

God and man working together. Like God does his part. We do our part.

01:02:59

Okay. I'm going to suggest something. It's going to sound completely insane, but then when I compare it to the Trinity, it'll all make perfect sense.

01:03:06

If God 100 % is responsible for man's salvation, all the

01:03:13

Calvinists go. Yes. If I say man is 100 % responsible to choose, to follow after God, all the

01:03:21

Arminians in particular, really like that one. Is it possible that both of those realities can exist?

01:03:27

Well, not in our human framework, not in our ability to understand. However, you take those words out free will and predestination and you, and you put them in with the

01:03:36

Holy spirit and the son and the father, a hundred percent, God, a hundred percent, God, a hundred percent, God, all of that.

01:03:42

We're like, we've, we've accepted this. We're okay with this. So I am not in any way, shape, or form saying in a synergistic view that, that God does his 50 % and we do our 50%.

01:03:52

That's synergism. Okay. I am suggesting that both realities exist in totality as unfolded in scripture without any type of contradiction, but also without any ability for us as humans to rationalize it and reconcile it.

01:04:08

That's my argument. So no, I can't really be compared with synergism, two very different things. Yeah.

01:04:13

And I'm going to get into, by the way, uh, Tom, who we spent quite a bit of time with Tom Shepard says, my bro,

01:04:20

Aaron is a deep thinker. We had great conversations. So there you go. And, and I should have put this, this came,

01:04:27

Mr. Tracy put this in as Aaron, as a Braden was leaving instead of tiny

01:04:32

Paul's, he was calling them hammer fists. So, you know, maybe, maybe that's what Braden should refer to himself as hammer fist.

01:04:38

So, um, we got one, we got one more question, uh, dealing with, uh, the topic of Calvinism.

01:04:48

And then we got someone backstage and I'm going to get to more of the questions that we have. So, so a Facebook user says, question is this accurate representation of Calvinism?

01:04:59

You are born unable to respond or want God or his son or the

01:05:08

Holy Spirit scripture. Yeah. It should be an, or unless God wants you to, then he will cause you to repent and believe.

01:05:19

So let me give a little bit of a thing with this, uh, to whoever the

01:05:24

Facebook user is. Let me, let me put it this way. Did, did

01:05:30

Paul have an ability in and of himself to write the book of Romans that we call inspired by God.

01:05:40

And when you think about that and think about the question, because when we think of this, you know,

01:05:49

I believe whoever you are, cause we don't have a name, but, and you can go to apologeticslive .com.

01:05:56

That's not only how you can join the discussion, but it's also how you can show your name. But with that, the thing

01:06:02

I want you to see is that Paul has a very different style than Peter, than Moses, than John.

01:06:09

You can see that. And so, um, the thing that we see is that God had to work through the human authors to write scripture, but we don't call it

01:06:23

Paul's words or Peter's words. We call it God's word. So this is a doctrine.

01:06:29

A lot of people don't understand. It's a doctrine known as super intending. We use it when it comes to the inspiration of scripture, how we got the word of God.

01:06:41

And it's that God works through the human authors, such that the choices in words that they, they chose to do are exactly as God intended them to be.

01:06:51

You see their personalities coming out in the question, in their writings. And yet those are things that, um, we end up realizing, uh, this is how

01:07:03

God intended it to be. Okay. Same thing with sanctification.

01:07:10

I mean, when it comes to sanctification, do we do good works? Yeah, but no, right.

01:07:16

I mean, we choose to do good works, but the scriptures say that God did that. And so when we look at it, we have to realize that that's something where we can't take credit for the good works we do because we, we would never do good works apart from God working in and through us.

01:07:33

Now, because we're such creatures bound by time, we think as if like, there has to be this, you know, event in time that causes something else.

01:07:42

And yet that's not what we see with the scriptures. God worked through the human authors so that what they wrote was

01:07:50

God's word. Same with our good works. I would say same with regeneration.

01:07:56

So I think that's why I say experientially, I chose God, but theologically God chose me, but there's no way

01:08:02

I could choose God apart from him doing something. So I guess what

01:08:08

I'm trying to say is the question, it's not precise enough.

01:08:15

And that's the thing. And it's hard for us to fully understand this. We want it to be one or the other.

01:08:21

We want it to be either I chose or God chose, because we can't comprehend how God could work through us.

01:08:28

But yeah, we don't have that problem when it comes to the doctrine of inspiration or the doctrine of sanctification.

01:08:33

It's only in the doctrine of justification. Right? Well, I would say too that that illustration that you just used is one that I do like to point to when

01:08:42

I'm talking about that, again, that cooperation because the person who says that God inspired his word through the apostle

01:08:55

Paul would never go so far as to say that God dictated his word. In fact, I mean, a right view of inspiration absolutely throws that out.

01:09:03

So Paul, as you said earlier, Paul, James, Peter, all these guys had different voices, their personalities, their experiences, whatever else were being used by God to communicate his perfect inspired word.

01:09:16

And that's, I think is a little bit of a picture of how, at least from my estimation, I know this isn't what you were saying, but from my estimation to how those two concepts work together.

01:09:26

No, Paul could not have written the book of Romans had God not inspired him. And yet Paul had a very specific, unique task that if Paul had not written the book of Romans, God would have used somebody else to write it.

01:09:38

But that because Paul wrote it, because he, you know, he submitted to God's will, whether he knew

01:09:43

God was going to inspire it or not is beside the point. He wrote that letter to Romans and God used it, inspired it the way it did.

01:09:50

Yeah. So, so that's all the questions that we had on Calvinism. So let me, let me bring

01:09:57

Melissa in here. Cause she had a question here out of Psalms. So Melissa, welcome.

01:10:03

Hi, thanks. I'm a bondservant for Jesus in case people don't know. And yeah, real name, Melissa Cantrella.

01:10:09

And I was going through, hi, I was going through the Psalms and I came across 18, two, where it says the

01:10:22

Lord is my horn. And I have wondered in the past, like, what does this mean?

01:10:27

Like, why does it use the word horn? Well, he's in the ESV translation. And I was curious about that.

01:10:34

What does the horn represent? Okay. So Psalm 18, first off,

01:10:41

David, it's described as a Psalm of David, the servant of the Lord who spoke to the

01:10:46

Lord, the words of this song in the day that the Lord delivered him from the hands of all his enemies and in from the hand of Saul.

01:10:57

And he said, and this is what the verse one says. And to say, I love you. Oh Lord, my strength, the

01:11:03

Lord is my rock and my fortress and my deliver, my

01:11:09

God, my rock in whom I take reference, my shield and the horn of my salvation, my stronghold.

01:11:17

I call upon the Lord who is worthy to be praised and I am saved from my enemies.

01:11:23

So the word horn here. So it's combined with the word shield first off, but the idea of the horn, a horn was something that was the sign in battle of, of strength, of might, of power, dignity.

01:11:39

Uh, and so the idea of this is it's not just a horn that's blown.

01:11:45

But it has the imagery in, in battle to be the person who's going to blow the horn to, and that's the person who's going to give the calls because remember that they didn't have amplification back then.

01:11:57

So how are they going to, how are they going to let everyone know to retreat or move forward or different things? They would have certain sounds from the horn that the person blowing the horn would, would do.

01:12:08

And that's so that everyone could hear and know what to do. That's a way of communicating. Back then during, on a battlefield and so that tying it to the shield and, and the horn, what you end up with is the idea that a shield is, is a defense and the horn is, is something of power is the idea of power.

01:12:31

So he's saying that God is not only the protector of our salvation, but he's also the strength of it.

01:12:39

Yeah. The horn. If you look up that word in the Hebrew and you look at the other uses in the scriptures, sometimes it just literally refers to the horns that happen to be on an animal's head.

01:12:51

When when Abraham went out to sacrifice Isaac and they found the Ram, he was stuck in the thicket by his horns.

01:12:57

That same word shows up. It's definitely a very poetic, it's figurative language here.

01:13:03

And if you look, if you study older cultures, ancient cultures, not just in the middle

01:13:09

East, but other cultures as well, oftentimes the leaders, the ones who were in a position of authority, the ones who, and the authority was synonymous with strength, the power.

01:13:21

They actually had horns from animals as part of their, their outfits as part of their adornment.

01:13:28

In fact, this actually came over a little bit into English history, in European history, closer to where we are now in the way that crowns and various types of hats and other headwear was constructed to be wide.

01:13:45

And the, you know, the bigger the hat was the more communicated of you. So that's really a lot of what's going on here. The same word is also used in lamentations two verse three and supports everything that Andrew just said.

01:13:56

Lamentations two, three says in hot anger, he referring to God has cut in pieces, all the strength of Israel.

01:14:04

When you read that in the Hebrew, what you read is has cut in pieces, all the horn of Israel, but thankfully our

01:14:09

English translator understood what was being communicated in this passage. So who is the, the power of our salvation?

01:14:16

Who is the authority of our salvation? God himself. Yeah. So Melissa, I know you, you also like to always plug your show.

01:14:24

So I'll, I'll give you a chance to do that. I didn't want to just come on just to plug it, but yeah, it's a truth be told radio .com.

01:14:32

Oh, well, that's the website, but the show is called truth be told radio. It's on Sundays, two to 4 PM, but it also gets archived afterwards.

01:14:40

So you can just listen to it whenever you want. Yeah, this is actually a very good lesson. Thank you for explaining all that.

01:14:45

You gave good answer to me. Thank you. Thank you for asking. Thanks for coming on. There's a question here,

01:14:53

Aaron. I want to get to, I know there were some others that came before, but with your expertise, I want to bring this one up.

01:15:01

From one eternal perspective. And by the way, you see that one eternal perspective is another supporter of ours.

01:15:08

That's why they have that little logo on the right of their name. So they support us through the

01:15:14

YouTube channel. So that's a way, another way of support if you want to do that. But the question is this, wondering if anyone has any suggestions in helping a woman believer at my church with paranoid delusions that seem to be getting worse.

01:15:30

She has been under psychiatric care, but unclear if on meds. And the reason I'm saying your expertise for, for people that don't know you, you are a speaker at striving fraternity, but you have your own ministry.

01:15:42

And a big part of your ministry is biblical counseling. You're an ACBC counselor. And so I figured this one may take more.

01:15:51

And you know, if the person who is, is asked that question, if you want to come in and, and you know, that may end up helping for Aaron to be able to give you a better.

01:16:02

Counsel just to talk it through, but based just on, on that little bit that we know what would be your thoughts?

01:16:09

What would be, how can you help this person help this lady? What kind of things should they look for?

01:16:17

Ask. Yeah. Well, you, we throw it back up there on the screen just so I can,

01:16:22

I can see it again as I'm talking. You can't find it. Oh man. It's a good thing. I memorized it word for word.

01:16:29

I thought you did. Oh, there it is. Cool. So I will say that in all fairness, if I'm going to give you a right

01:16:37

Christ honoring answer in this particular situation, it's not going to give me the answer you want only because I don't know this woman.

01:16:45

I don't know her profession. I don't know what she, her doctor or you mean by paranoid delusion and whether or not she's on medication.

01:16:59

I don't know her physical health and wellness, the way she eats, her relationship with the

01:17:05

Lord, the church, she attends all these things. I don't know. And it would be foolish for me to be too, too hardcore, too precise with all of those lack of knowledge.

01:17:14

I tell my kids all the time, the only way we can make the best decisions is to get as much information as possible.

01:17:21

And the best application is to get as much information as possible. Application is always going to be the most specific. So just with that thrown out there

01:17:27

I'm just going to speak to some couple things that I think we super beneficial. Number one,

01:17:33

I would get her connected with a biblical counselor. Now, when I say biblical counselor, it's not somebody who, you know, has a master's degree in biblical counseling or certified through ACBC or something like that.

01:17:43

That's fantastic, but truly a biblically speaking discipleship, one, anothering pastoring, parenting, biblical counseling, really all the things that we are commanded to do,

01:17:55

Ephesians four 15, speaking the truth and love, helping each other be built up into Christ. That is biblical counseling. When we're using

01:18:01

God's word and his word alone. And we're not letting man's ideas and philosophies and opinions and methodologies that contradict

01:18:07

God's word to come into our council. So, yes, she definitively needs that. She doesn't need, again, she doesn't need our opinion.

01:18:16

So like sometimes some people like, you know, secular psychology isn't helpful. Right. But when they're counseling their friends, they just say things like,

01:18:23

I don't think secular psychology is helping you. Well, great, but let's see what God's word says.

01:18:28

So get into the scriptures. So that's definitely definitively what she needs. I never encourage a person to get off medication, not being a doctor.

01:18:38

I don't want to get a lawsuit. And I also don't want to do something that could potentially hurt them. Lots of medication is such that they need to, if they're going to come off it, they have to come off of it the right way.

01:18:46

But I will say that knowing if they're on medication or not, it's going to have a really huge impact on how

01:18:52

I'm going to counsel them. Sometimes even what they're capable of understanding, depending on the meds that they're on.

01:19:01

But in every situation, your sin issues, my sin issues. I'm not saying that this woman in particular is obviously she's a sinner, but I'm not saying that what she's experiencing is a result of her sin.

01:19:12

I'm just saying that all of us, all of the time, what we need is a clear picture of two things.

01:19:17

Number one, we need to see God for who he is. And number two, we need to see ourselves for who we are.

01:19:24

When we have that, when we have this infinite picture of who God is, and we see a realistic view of who we are, that negative space, which of course is an infinite height, but that negative space really is the direction we need for our lives.

01:19:37

As a Christian, I'm being conformed to the image of Christ from one degree of glory to another. The distance between God's perfection and my sinfulness are the areas in which

01:19:46

I need to grow. And so regardless of the struggle, regardless of whether I'm dealing with an addict or somebody who believes they have a mental disorder, or somebody who's trying to reconcile a relationship with a loved one or parenting issues, regardless of what it is, we are going to find our answers in understanding who

01:20:04

God is and who we are. If she truly, I mean, we're talking about paranoid. Paranoid has to do with being very suspicious, has a lot to do with anxiety, fear.

01:20:14

A lot of times I don't want to say it's fear, but it really is. It's fear that something might be going on that I don't know.

01:20:21

There's oftentimes a nice thread of control freakiness. That's a really, it's a really technical term.

01:20:28

I should probably have to define it for you. You know, when we're very controlling, right?

01:20:33

It's very easy to become paranoid when things seem outside of our control and there are things going on that we don't know. All of these things.

01:20:40

And again, I'm not saying that anybody who experiences something called paranoid delusions, it's a direct result of sin.

01:20:49

I just know that a lot of people who do sin threads its way through it, just like it threads its way through every other area of our life.

01:20:56

So starting there is desperately important. But of course, I always want to say that regardless of who

01:21:03

I'm working with, I always do want to give good care and consideration to the person's physical health.

01:21:10

I'm just going to throw this out there for all of us. Okay. This is the example that I use. You take a healthy little five year old and you put them on a playground.

01:21:17

They could play for hours and have all the fun in the world. You take that same five year old, but now they're sick or they haven't gotten their nap or you put a 20 pound backpack on their backs.

01:21:30

And you know what? Their experience in the playground is going to be very different. And that happens to all of us.

01:21:35

The physical stressors of life, not getting enough sleep, not staying hydrated, not eating correctly.

01:21:41

Okay. The ways that we abuse our bodies and we're not following first Corinthians 10 31, whether we're eating or drinking or whatsoever we're doing, doing all the glory of God.

01:21:50

Those are pressures and stressors in our lives. And so my counselees, I know they come to me with physical broken bodies, and I desperately want to see how they're feeling, how they're doing.

01:22:01

Are they healthy? Are they, do they have good diets? Are they sleeping well? Are they just like, they can really slip and sleep and staying awake on coffee all the time.

01:22:08

All of that's going to help me to get a really holistic picture of who they are as a person and what they're struggling with, what their stressors are, because sometimes for that little kid with the back, with the backpack, you take that backpack off.

01:22:20

They'll have a lot more fun on the playground. That kid who's sick shouldn't be on the playground. We need to put him in bed and help him get better so that he can go out into the playground.

01:22:28

And oftentimes that's part of the counseling too. So what does your friend need? Your friend needs God's word, encouragement from the scriptures.

01:22:36

They need, they need prayer. And then I would really, I would get them connected with somebody like me, preferably somebody who knows your friend who, who lives and does community with them, preferably from their church, a mature believer who can help walk arm in arm.

01:22:51

Maybe you're the person to do this for your friend. And if you wanted to reach out to me specifically to give me more, even more information, just one -on -one to get more information for how you can potentially help your friend, definitely reach out.

01:23:03

You can go to evermindministries .com. You can go to faithtreebiblicalcounseling .com.

01:23:09

Lots of great ways to reach out to me if you have any more questions. Okay. So thank you for that.

01:23:15

I'll throw some things that could also be other than, because everyone jumps to medication. There's actually a lot of interesting research being done in heat therapy and cold therapy when it comes to anxiety and things like that.

01:23:31

I don't know what Aaron's thoughts are, but I was just smiling because I had a feeling you're going to break something like this up. Yeah. Yeah.

01:23:37

Cause it is, I have found a lot of research, especially with sauna therapy, which is something that I do the heat therapy.

01:23:44

I prefer that over the cold plunges though. I do those as well. Much more prefer the heat, but I can tell you that it, there is a lot to show that the, you're being in the right heat and you got to do it with, whether you're doing the extreme of the heat or the cold, you've got to be, you know, talk to a doctor.

01:24:05

You got to make sure you do it right. You don't just jump right into 175 degree sauna and sit there for 20 minutes.

01:24:13

You got to build up to that. You know you could, you could start with 120 degrees and stay in there for 20 minutes and build up to where you could stay longer and raise the heat, things like that.

01:24:24

But I mean, sauna therapy will reduce the, the some anxiety that they say if, if done properly up to like 60%.

01:24:32

So there, there are other things that could be done as well. So it depends on the, really the reason for it.

01:24:39

I, an example I use a lot is I once experienced what it would be considered a, an anxiety attack, but that was specifically related to a fungal infection that I had.

01:24:49

So, but not everybody's anxiety attacks are tied to their fungal infections. And that's one thing I will say about the medical community.

01:24:55

We really need to watch out for. If you're a doctor, don't be offended. But the medical community, there aren't a lot of specialists and even the specialists themselves still see things kind of black and white.

01:25:07

You have this, we have this medicine, boom, here you go. But a person can experience what we might call an anxiety attack for so many reasons.

01:25:15

Some people have anxiety attacks. Listen carefully to what I'm about to say simply because they're sinning.

01:25:21

They're not trusting the Lord. They're like Paul staring at the wave coming after, and they've taken their eyes off of Christ and they're freaking out.

01:25:28

Well, yeah, that happens. Some people have anxiety attacks though, because of nothing more than a fungal infection.

01:25:33

There is no sin involved. So doctors are just too, you go to a doctor and you say, you're feeling depressed.

01:25:38

I mean, most of them will just slap medication at you. They're not going to ask you about your diet. They're not going to ask you about your prayer life.

01:25:44

They're not going to ask you about any of that. And we need to be super careful because we are complex human beings and we can experience a whole different pathology of, of symptoms for lots of different reasons.

01:25:57

Yeah. So Melissa says here, uh, a w, I think she meant am, uh, am, am

01:26:05

Brewster. Yeah. It's upside down. I've said down. I mean, uh, she says great council, brother.

01:26:11

Thank you. so, and, and one paternal perspective says, thank you.

01:26:18

The elder's wife has been helping her for three, four years. She's extremely needy and I'm new on the scene, but I've tried to support her for over a year.

01:26:26

So, uh, we're glad. I don't know what she means by needy. Um, whether actually in a, in a physical, like, like, like she doesn't have a lot of money sense, uh, or needy.

01:26:36

Like sometimes we, yeah, it's hard to know for sure. Um, but I will say that, uh, that's not surprising to hear.

01:26:45

I, either of those are true. Um, oftentimes people who don't have a lot of physical means, um, looking for help in any way that they can will oftentimes turn to sometimes the worst help, uh, because it's all they can get, you know, like it's, people ask me all the time, you know, as my biblical counseling, do

01:27:02

I accept insurance? Well, insurance wouldn't cover me because I've not been licensed to the state.

01:27:07

And so sometimes it's cheaper to go through the secular route because you don't have to pay for it. Um, and then also to people who might be, you know, described as emotionally needy and so on and so forth.

01:27:17

Sometimes that's actually part of the larger problem. Um, they're having all these struggles over here for the same reasons that they, they struggle with this, this, however, we're defining neediness.

01:27:27

So yeah, um, uh, be lover, but go to the scriptures, go to the scriptures, uh, see what she thinks about God.

01:27:34

Um, see what she understands about herself, find out those areas in her life where she's paranoid, uh, find out in those areas in her life where she's, she's having some sort of delusion, um, and try to help her to focus on that, which is true.

01:27:47

Speaking the truth in love, um, teaching her how to think as Philippians chapter four tells us, think things that are true.

01:27:53

Um, and then see if that can be an encouragement to her. Okay. Now this is the part of the program where we're going to try to hit a lot of questions, a little bit rapid fire.

01:28:04

We got 30 minutes left and we still have a bunch of questions. Um, yeah, here we go.

01:28:10

Yes, yes, no, no, yes. So by the way,

01:28:15

I'm just looking because one internal perspective, we gave a little bit more and just said, I thought of biblical counseling, but I don't know any in the area.

01:28:23

She has no, no one in family who, who seems to care. She's extremely low income, no transportation, et cetera.

01:28:30

So you could go to, uh, you could find ACBC counselors. So, yeah, biblical counseling.

01:28:36

Um, Oh, wow. I always forget if it's .com or .org. Um, they have a, if you go to biblical counseling,

01:28:42

I'm putting it in as I talk. Um, they have a great, uh, world map where you can see where all of their, um, their counselors are, uh, the nice thing about the it's not .com.

01:28:54

Um, Oh, I also would have helped if I had spelled it correctly. Sorry about that. I'm trying to do it so quickly. Um, the nice thing is to, oh, it is biblical counseling .com.

01:29:03

There we go. Um, is that with the technology that we have, most of the counseling that I do is actually virtual.

01:29:09

So, um, connecting with, an ACBC certified counselor, uh, virtually is generally a pretty easy thing to.

01:29:16

So that's biblical counseling .com. So you can find someone in your, so let's, some of these will be really quick, but, uh,

01:29:23

KT is saying, is Andrew going to Shepcon? No, I'm not going this year. Uh, I was talking to brother

01:29:30

Kevin Hay about it. He asked if I was going. And I said that, you know, after the last two years of shepherds conference, my, my bride thought maybe

01:29:38

I shouldn't go, uh, two years ago, walking into shepherds conference. I found out that my mother passed away.

01:29:44

And then last year I ended up in the ER with blood pressure issues. And so at the time that the, that the conference was open for, uh, for tickets, uh,

01:29:53

I still hadn't really gotten the health issues that I'm been struggling with under control.

01:29:59

So we decided to pass this year and not make a trip across the country, um, for that.

01:30:07

uh, D said this earlier when we were talking about definitions, she says, it's important to clarify and ask for definition.

01:30:15

Quote, what did you mean by blank? Unquote. And this is what regular viewers here see me do every time, right?

01:30:24

We get someone comes in black Hebrew, Israelite and Orthodox rabbi, whoever, what am

01:30:29

I always doing? I'm saying, what did you mean by that? What does that mean? How do you understand it? Frustrated the one guy that came in wanting to argue for gay

01:30:37

Christianity because he had eight pages of notes that he said he never was able to get to. Why didn't he get to it?

01:30:43

Because Aaron and I both kept just asking for clarification and that clarification destroyed his argument.

01:30:51

And they didn't like that because he wanted to have a, he wanted to use words multiple ways to, because it was essential for the argument.

01:31:01

And sometimes all you need to do is to ask questions. Maybe that's why

01:31:07

Jason cave says Judaism produces excellent debaters. Well, they do because in Judaism, debating is kind of a family activity.

01:31:18

There's no motion to it. It's something we do around the table. It's just, it's good fun.

01:31:24

It's, it sharpens your thinking. It's, it's not the way people think of it today, but we are taught to think opposite to what we hold to and know how to argue that.

01:31:37

Okay. Yeah. Voltaire is not somebody that we normally Christians want to quote, but he's the guy who basically said, if you wish to converse with me, define your terms.

01:31:47

And if he understood that we Christians really need to understand that because our vocabularies, especially in America are being absolutely hijacked and they don't mean what

01:31:56

God means when he talks about these things. So ask those questions. Yes. Yeah.

01:32:01

I did not grow up in a Jewish household, but my family did the same. We love debating. Well, maybe I think this next one we will give for you instead of me, but it says, okay,

01:32:11

I want to hear quote, hero, Israel Yahweh is our

01:32:16

God. Yahweh is one unquote in Hebrew. Can Andrew do it? Can you?

01:32:21

I'm sorry. Can Aaron do it? No, no. It says, Andrew says, and I see it right there.

01:32:27

You put it on the screen. The question is, do you want me to say it as if I'm reading the scriptures or say it the way we would do it in a worship service?

01:32:37

Well, we'll do both. Oh, there is a difference because if you just read the scriptures, it would be

01:32:42

Shema Yisrael. But that's not how we would do it in a worship service because you would sing it.

01:32:50

So the singing of it would be Shema Yisrael. So yes,

01:33:02

I can do that still. Oh, wow. Fantastic. I know that you actually didn't say the word that we translate

01:33:12

Yahweh though. Correct. Because Jewish and Elohim, right? Yeah. So, so let's, so Baruch Atah Adonai would be, blessed be.

01:33:25

Adonai, not Elohim. So, and this is a common prayer, Baruch Atah Adonai.

01:33:31

The word for Adonai would be, we say Yahweh, Jehovah, how, you know, we don't have the, we don't have the vowels for it because a

01:33:39

Jewish person would never say that word that we call Jehovah or Yahweh. And so we don't know what the vowels were because the vowels were never written.

01:33:50

And a Jewish person doesn't want to break the commandment to not use the Lord's name in vain. So Shema Yisrael is hero

01:33:58

Israel. So Adonai is the word for Yahweh.

01:34:06

And it's, it's supplemented. Substitute. Substituted. So Christ brings a sword, asks the question, what does it mean?

01:34:16

Quote, at the last Trump, unquote. Well, that's, that's the last Trump. Yeah. We both did it.

01:34:25

So terrible. Oh, that's so gross. You make me feel dirty just to say that. Yeah.

01:34:31

There's some differing views with what this is going to be. But the last Trump depends on, on your views of end times.

01:34:40

If you're an amillennialist, the last Trump is going to be just that, that last, but the

01:34:45

Christ second coming the end of the age. In a dispensational view,

01:34:52

I think that there's a view of the, the Trump. Some might refer to the rapture,

01:34:57

I think is referred to as a Trump. And so the last Trump again would be it's when, you know,

01:35:04

I don't, I don't, then this is where I just don't study and times enough to have all the, the kind of nitpicky things.

01:35:12

But I think in dispensationalism, the last Trump, and maybe, you know, Aaron would be either the, the, the coming of Christ for the thousand year kingdom, or whether it's at the end of that for final judgment.

01:35:24

I'm not sure within dispensationalism, which one they would hold it to. I'd have to see the passage where it's used, honestly, to be able to, but I'm, it was funny in our conversations during this, this conference, a lot of the covenant guys were talking about how their view of dispensationalists are the guys who are always like, oh, we're in the end times and here's the signs and here's the signs.

01:35:46

And this thing means this. And that thing means that. And what's funny is that most of the dispensationalists that I associate with don't do that.

01:35:53

So, you know, we love our eschatology for sure. But we definitely, at least my flavor of dispensationalism does not, not spend nearly as much time trying to figure it all out in human terms, the way that other people do.

01:36:07

You know, that's actually the interesting thing is dispensationalists are known for their premillennialism.

01:36:13

And as if that's the only thing we talk about. And yet I very rarely talk in times unless I'm at a conference like open theology, where we wanted to beat that all the time.

01:36:24

That comes up like all the time. So, yeah. So Melissa asked this, isn't it more accurate to say, yeah, we don't know how to pronounce it.

01:36:34

Well, when you talk about accuracy and yet we don't know how to pronounce it.

01:36:40

Right. So if we think through that, how could it be more accurate if we don't know how to, because the argument for accuracy there is about pronunciation, whether to say

01:36:50

Jehovah or to say Yahweh, the reality is we don't know what's right.

01:36:57

There are two consonants in my name. There's an R and an N given just an R and an

01:37:02

N. How do you pronounce this? He'd be like, I have no clue. I mean, any vowels could be put in there.

01:37:07

The reason that the big switch away from Jehovah though, came about just because the accurate observation was made that as far as we know, that particular, that particular letter in Hebrew and Andrew can speak to this better than I can.

01:37:22

It's not going to be pronounced with a, with an American hard J. So the Jehovah was kind of dismissed for that purpose.

01:37:30

And so what you have there is the consonants for what we say Yahweh with the vowels that we have for Adonai and Elohim.

01:37:43

So, which is, so those are the three names for God. Okay. Elohim, Adonai and Yahweh.

01:37:50

So you have Elohim, which is by the way, a plural it's

01:37:56

L would be the singular and Elohim is plural. And so that is a term that means

01:38:03

God. Adonai means Lord. So, and then you have

01:38:11

Jehovah, which is that covenant keeping God. So I hope that that is helpful.

01:38:18

One last one that I think Aaron would be the expert on or maybe not.

01:38:25

Maybe not. Brother John says, question, do angel have feathers? Bill Johnson at Bethel church is claiming feathers are falling from the church in his home.

01:38:36

And in restaurants, in restaurants, Justin Peters just did a video on this and I did see the video.

01:38:44

So let, let me just be really clear. This is the same group who claims that there's gold dust coming from the, the sky during their worship services.

01:38:55

And, and Justin Peters actually met the woman who came out of the, the, that whole

01:39:02

NAR organization and her and her husband's job was to put the gold dust in the air ducts and then turn on the fans at the right time.

01:39:14

And yet the, she actually, so her husband's still in that movement. She came out, got saved.

01:39:21

And now as a believer recognizes how silly it was that they actually believed it was real gold dust when they're putting it in the air ducts and turning the fan on themselves.

01:39:31

You think of all the people that would know it's a farce, they would be the ones, but her husband,

01:39:37

I guess still is, if he's still involved, is still doing that. So, so, yeah.

01:39:45

And so, okay. So he, he says, I grew up going to synagogue with my

01:39:50

Jewish best friend. Andrew is no canter. Now D most, I'm glad you saw that.

01:39:56

But in the, in the, in a synagogue service, you have the, the rabbi who is going to expound the scriptures.

01:40:03

You have the canter who's going to do all the singing and leading of the, the, the service through song and, and whatnot.

01:40:13

So that's the, what the canter is. And I never said that I could sing. I did.

01:40:19

I'm just telling you how it would sound. Others can make it sound better. So with that, so, yeah, so I don't think there's gold feathers.

01:40:29

I don't think there's, you know, there's the argument that angels have feathers.

01:40:36

Okay. But they're not falling down in bill Johnson service and his, you know, where in his house and his restaurant, because quite frankly, bill

01:40:46

Johnson is not saved and is a heretic because of the fact that he teaches doctrines that are, you know, anti -biblical.

01:40:56

He teaches things that, that, you know, where man is sovereign and God is almost submissive to him that, that the little

01:41:05

God doctrines. Things like this. He believes that, that men should be basically healthy, wealthy, and wise so that you understand bill

01:41:18

Johnson had a young lady that was working for him. She got cancer. It was a, it was a creatable cancer.

01:41:26

She could have been a hundred percent cancer free young child, newly married bill.

01:41:33

Johnson told her that she lacked faith. She stopped going to the doctors.

01:41:39

She came to Pennsylvania to die. She moving with her parents so that they could take care of her while she died.

01:41:46

What did bill Johnson do when his wife was, was near death, took her to hospice care.

01:41:53

So this is a guy that doesn't practice what he believes. So, okay.

01:41:59

So Melissa is saying, do my, does my pillow in Lagos still sponsor? Yes, they do. I just will choose not to do like lots of, you know,

01:42:11

I, I listened to a secular podcast called the verdict. It's with Todd, Ted Cruz loved it when they first came out.

01:42:17

Now it's like so much commercials that it's quite annoying. So I don't want this show to be that. So we're going to pick and choose different.

01:42:24

We're sponsored, but they're not sponsoring every show. And we have a new sponsor.

01:42:29

So they, they were on this one. So let's see a question that just came in.

01:42:37

I kept hearing this from KT. I kept hearing people in Israel who wanted the hostage hostages rec rescued.

01:42:48

Well, I, she's asking, there's a Hebrew word and it says, I wonder if Andrew could read that. They used another word.

01:42:56

I can't figure out. I don't know. My Hebrew is not so good that I can read it anymore.

01:43:02

But I don't know what that word would be.

01:43:08

So I'm sorry, KT. So this is, this is the question. So John is asking, do, do, do

01:43:17

I guess, do you believe angels have feathers? They have wings that we know some angels have wings.

01:43:27

Do they have feathers? I can't think of a passage. Well, here's interesting things. I've been searching it.

01:43:33

Okay. The word feather doesn't show up in the scriptures. The word feathers does.

01:43:40

As far as I can tell, I've only found it in one passage. And if my Bible searches like failing me, let me know

01:43:46

Daniel four 33 referring to Nebuchadnezzar, how his hair grew as long as eagles feathers.

01:43:51

But the reality is, is that the word feathers actually isn't there in the Hebrew. It's that the, it's just, it's been added.

01:43:59

The word Eagle is there. His hair grew long as Eagle basically is, is a quasi accurate rendering.

01:44:07

And so, yeah, the it's, I never would have thought I was searching. I like really the word feathers nowhere in the

01:44:13

Bible. Are you kidding me? But yeah, Andrew's right. We're told that the, that they had wings. Okay.

01:44:20

We're not told if they had bat wings, if they had bird wings, we're not, if they, if they have something that approximates his wings, but it doesn't look anything like an animal that we know that has wings.

01:44:30

We just don't know. It could be like penguin wings. So, so you got me curious.

01:44:35

So I did some digging. So you brought up the Daniel four 33 dealing with Nebuchadnezzar, but it also appears in at least the new

01:44:44

American standard. The word is in Leviticus one 16. He shall, he shall also take away its crop with its feathers and cast besides the altar.

01:44:56

Wait, what's the passage? This is Leviticus one 16. And so here there is, this is a, the priest bringing, bringing an, a, an offering to the altar.

01:45:12

That's good. Drain out the blood. So this is obviously a bird that's being offered.

01:45:17

And he said, that's in the King James, right? No, this is new American standard. Oh, new American standard. So I looked up the word cause

01:45:25

I was curious and I said, okay, what is, what is the Hebrew for them?

01:45:30

So in those two different passages, we get two different Hebrew words. So the, the one for now that we see in with Nebuchadnezzar that is, is there is the only usage of that where we see that one.

01:45:47

Okay. Yeah. And the issue there is if you look in a new

01:45:53

American standard, King James, some of these others, that word is added. In other words, it's not there in the

01:46:00

Hebrew. It just says, you know, with the dew from heaven until the hair has grown like eagles and the nails like birds.

01:46:11

Well, eagles, what in birds, what? And so when you see the words in italics there in a literal translation, it means birds.

01:46:18

Feathers was added. The birds claws were added. The word clause was added.

01:46:24

So what we end up seeing though, is that there in Leviticus, there is the word feathers.

01:46:31

It is used three times. Three. I thought, I thought I saw four. Well, I'm seeing three.

01:46:38

This is the Hebrew word. It's Leviticus one, 16 job, 39, 13

01:46:46

Ezekiel, 17, three and Ezekiel, 17, seven. So I got, yeah, the two Ezekiel's in Leviticus.

01:46:51

So Ezekiel, 17, seven, 17, three, 17, seven. And then

01:46:57

Leviticus one, 16. I don't have the job one. So what is, let's see, job is job.

01:47:05

39, 13 in the LSB is the ostriches. The ostrich wings flap joyously, but they, but are they the pinion and the plumage of a stork?

01:47:14

And that's how I'm seeing it in the LSB. All those instead of feathers, it's always interpreted plumage.

01:47:21

Yes. And so the let's see if this word, this one is because the, so this, this word is the word plumage.

01:47:30

Here is a different Hebrew word. It looks like it, and it's the word for plumage or, or falcon where the other is translated as plumage, such as feathers.

01:47:43

And so, but none of them are referring to angels. So just doing as exhaustive of a search as we can.

01:47:51

It doesn't seem like there's anything here that would support that angels have feathers.

01:47:57

We know that angels have wings and it's assumed they have feathers, but that's also descriptive.

01:48:05

It doesn't mean that this is the way they all are. Yeah. Somebody did a number of art pieces where they basically took descriptions of angels from the scriptures and tried to basically illustrate them as literally as possible, you know, with the eyes and the wings and the heads and everything.

01:48:25

And they were, they were just, they defied understanding. Right. And we have to, we have to recognize the fact that likely these angelic creatures do not look human.

01:48:37

Yes. They, they looked human when they came as messengers to speak with lot and so on and so forth.

01:48:43

But for the most part, when they're in their angelic glory, they oftentimes, they hardly ever described as looking very human every now and then that one might have a face of a man or something like that.

01:48:53

But yeah, they likely, we have no conception of them. Correct. So, uh, that is, you know, this is, that's, uh, we have for today, answering the questions you guys provided.

01:49:05

Thanks for those who came in. Um, just to give you guys a heads up where you can find Aaron and I will be.

01:49:11

If you are in upper state New York by Watertown area, uh, we will be way up north.

01:49:18

Uh, Aaron and I will be speaking at the river of life church on April 12th to the 14th.

01:49:25

So that is, um, that is up in cold, cold

01:49:30

New York. I, I, I've been to Watertown, New York, Fort drum, and it was cold.

01:49:38

Never been there. Looking forward to it. Yeah. So, uh, we'll, we'll be there.

01:49:43

So April 12th to the 14th and then April 22nd to May 9th,

01:49:49

I will be in, uh, the Philippines speaking. So this, this is a real funny story,

01:49:55

Aaron. I happened to call Amazon because we shipped our books out to the Philippines that they're there.

01:50:01

And almost all of them went, we shipped 600 books and all but three got there.

01:50:07

And so I called up and the, the, the person that I'm talking to the lady, Jenny is her name.

01:50:13

You could pray for her. Uh, I said that, uh, well, these, she said, well, I see you had an order of 25.

01:50:19

Is that, you know, the same order? I said, no, that the order of 600, they went to the

01:50:24

Philippines. She goes, they came here to the Philippines. I said, are you in the Philippines? She said, yes. I said, well, you know,

01:50:30

I'm going to be speaking. So she asked what I was speaking about. She asked what my book was about. Uh, I then told her it was a

01:50:36

Christian conference. He claimed she's a Christian. And so I, I explained to her that we will be speaking and I should get this down for any of the, my

01:50:44

Filipino friends listening. We will be in, uh, the, the Manila conference on April 27th is sold out.

01:50:52

Uh, I think the, the, the event that they have is 900 people capacity.

01:51:00

I, and I think they're trying to get a little bit more in. There's a wait list for that. The pre -conference is still open.

01:51:07

The pre -conference we're going to deal with issues of social justice. Um, all the woke stuff, the car.

01:51:14

So that's, that's going to be April 26th, the Friday, uh, from eight 30 to three 30. And you could go to just on Facebook.

01:51:21

If you're on Facebook, go to, um, facebook .com slash need

01:51:26

God Philippines. You could go to need God dot pH to get the details, uh, from, uh, need

01:51:34

God Philippines and they can get you all the details and where it is. So the, the conference, which is sold out in Manila is

01:51:44

April 27th. That's a Saturday, uh, both, uh, Justin Peters, pastor

01:51:50

Jim Osmond, and myself will be speaking at different churches on April 28th.

01:51:55

I'm not sure of those churches. So contact the folks that are in the Philippines. Then we fly to Palawan.

01:52:01

We'll be at Palawan from April 29th to, uh, May 2nd.

01:52:06

Then we fly back to Manila where we will be doing a church camp on May 3rd to the fifth.

01:52:14

And then we will fly from Manila to Baha 'u'llah.

01:52:20

And we'll do the same strange fire conference that we're doing in Manila, dealing with the charismatic movement and things like this on May 7th in Baha 'u'llah.

01:52:29

So we're going to be on three different islands, uh, doing, uh, a lot of different ministry.

01:52:35

And so I saw a comment, someone asked how they could pray for us specifically.

01:52:41

KT asked, uh, how can we pray specifically? Well, I'll tell you how you could pray specifically. it really would be the thing that I do.

01:52:49

We do need prayer is support. Um, this trip to the Philippines. I've said this before on here.

01:52:55

Uh, there is taking up all of a lot of the funds that we have for these ministry trips.

01:53:02

As many of you know, we, we go places regardless whether they pay us or not, we're going to go.

01:53:09

Um, and so this is a big trip. Uh, we, we're going to, we had to lay out about 24, $2 ,500 in expenses for the

01:53:18

Philippines trip. And that's not our only expensive trip this year. Uh, so we could really use support for the

01:53:25

Philippines so we could get there and do all that ministry that we just talked about. Um, but we also have another trip coming up and past and both

01:53:34

Aaron and I will be at, uh, yeah, you're, you're, they'll, they'll

01:53:40

Valley Baptist church, August 8th to 11th. And there's three of us flying out for that.

01:53:46

So that's another expensive one for a church that already told us they probably won't have any funds to pay us.

01:53:52

And we're organizing, helping them organize a conference there. So it's Vale Valley, Arizona.

01:53:57

And that's, I want to say something about this real quick before you wrap up, Andrew, because so I I'm associated with striving for attorney as Andrew has been very gracious to invite me to come and be one of the speakers for the ministry.

01:54:10

I'm honored to do so. I want to do the ministry proud, but most importantly to, uh, be a good servant of God.

01:54:16

Um, but my ministry, um, I travel and speak. I have an opportunity to speak at the association of certified biblical counselors in Fort Worth, Texas this year.

01:54:24

Um, but I am limited. My, my ministry is very, very small and, I can't go places where they're not going to help with transportation and stuff like that because the money's just not there.

01:54:35

Uh, what I love about Andrew and his heart and striving for eternity is that they are going to go if they're invited and, uh, and, and striving for fraternity is going to the foot, the bill.

01:54:44

And, um, so what I'm just saying as a guy who's involved, but also on the outside, I'm thanking the

01:54:50

Lord for what Andrew's doing and, encouraging you guys to participate. If you can, if God has blessed you and you can give to striving for eternity so that, uh, he,

01:54:59

I, and other guys, uh, can go to these churches that can't afford to bring people in and minister to them.

01:55:05

Please do. Um, man, oh man, you can't believe what a blessing it is for some of these churches to have somebody, uh, the caliber of Andrew and, uh, to, to come in and to, to preach, um, whether it's one service or multiple.

01:55:18

Thank you for that. So with that, uh, next week, let me tell you what we got on the docket for next week.

01:55:26

We are going to be talking with Dan Biddle of, uh, Genesis apologetics with a new film coming out, the

01:55:35

Noah film. It was filmed over at the Ark encounter. This is going to be, I saw some of it, uh, very interesting.

01:55:43

Um, we're going to get into lots of discussion. I talked with Dan and I think it's going to be a very lively, very interesting talk.

01:55:51

So if you have friends who are believing in evolution, even if they claim to be

01:55:56

Christian, uh, next week will be one. You want to have them make sure they tune into. Um, and so, uh,

01:56:04

Melissa says, uh, Andrew is such a blessing. Thank you. I don't know if I deserve that, but I do appreciate it.

01:56:11

Um, I'll agree with the list on that one. Yeah. And this is from Jason, who is a supporter, uh, you know, through YouTube.

01:56:19

He says, God bless your faith, your faithful brothers, uh, continue to fight the good fight of faith.

01:56:24

We will try. Um, but it is God who sustains us for that. So, uh, so next week, bring your, your evolutionist friends, have them join us.

01:56:34

It would be great. And I, until then, just remember to strive to make today an eternal day for the glory of God.