Talkin' Apologetics with Jeremiah Nortier (The Apologetic Dog)

Hey everybody it's Keith and I'm still here at the Y -Calvinism conference in Tullahoma Tennessee and I am joined right now by Jeremiah Nortier.

He is with the dog apologetics. The apologetic dog. Oh I said it wrong.

That's okay. My bad and I apologize. Well Jeremiah I have to tell the audience that you're doing this a second time because I am the foolish man who forgot to hit record on the audio.

But thank you for sitting down with me again. With the Harbor Freight Doug Wilson. Yeah today

I did just for everybody. I'm wearing the sweater vest. I'm wearing the Harbor Freight Doug. It's day three.

I'm tired. I don't want to wear a tie. So sweater vest will get away with it.

So tell everybody a little bit about your ministry, who you are. I know you're at 12 -5 church. Yeah yes so I'll start out with 12 -5 church.

That is a church plant in Jonesboro Arkansas and 12 -5 comes from Romans 12 verse 5.

This is a verse about the church that we're one together in the body of Christ and I serve with Pastor Nathan Hargrave.

I believe you listen to Roy Hargrave. Roy Hargrave is

Nathan's father and he was very very helpful in helping me understand Calvinism. I met him for the first time at a founders conference in 2005 or 2006.

I met him and Tom Askell and Steve Kreloff and all three of those men became very influential in my life. In fact do you know who

Steve Kreloff is? That name sounds familiar. He is a pastor in Tampa. Wonderful pastor.

Wonderful man. So those three men became very influential in my life. Small world because I've absolutely loved doing ministry with Pastor Nathan Hargrave and the church has been a big support for me doing apologetics.

So when we were doing when they're just like yes do apologetics I was sitting in the living room with my wife and we're trying to think of a name and so we were wanting to be unique and we were almost thinking doctrines of grace for dog but I didn't want it to be so niche on soteriology and the more

I was praying about it I still like the dog and then if people find the apologetic dog you'll see that pitbull with a big beard but you'll see 1st

Timothy 6 verse 20 where Paul tells Timothy oh Timothy guard the deposit entrusted to you and so it's kind of like a guard dog mentality of guarding the gospel of grace and Paul goes on to say avoid pagan philosophy or a reverent

Babel and contradictions of what is falsely called knowledge so a big part of my ministry is epistemology of understanding how we know what we know and contending for truth and we only do that by God revealing to us truth in his word awesome awesome and and you mentioned epistemology and I think about I've taught and we have an

Academy at our church okay your ministry training program where we provide it's not accredited or anything but we provide classes in church history and and surveys of the

Old Testament New Testament things like that and and we we have apologetics and the first time we did it we did through dr.

frames book and we found it was a little little heady for a few folks it was a little tough but I remember trying to teach on tag you know the transcendental argument for God and and so I'm sure you're familiar with that epistemology and everything and I remember just as I was explaining it

I was like this is really kind of this is this is hard for people to kind of wrap their head around so the second time we went through apologetics we did a little bit lighter yeah not that not that people aren't smart enough but it was just it was people wanted something that they could use on the street and you can use the transcendental argument it's just a matter of understanding how to apply it yeah a couple things

John frame love a lot of his books something he said that was very impressionable on me was he said presuppositional apologetics is solo scriptura applied so he parked up my ears with that and I teach the youth a lot at 12 -5 church and so trying to articulate something bite size for them

I said the only way we can know truth is if the God of truth tells us who he is and who we are and what we're supposed to do yeah and they're like yeah and I just if you remove that foundation you can't know anything yeah and so even the youth at 12 -5

I'm trying to get them to think in terms of hey you can stand firm on the Word of God yeah yeah you may have heard this and probably have been an apologist but the the 1 % 99 % argument yeah yeah if you if you you know if the if 1 % of what you know is it possible to 99 % you don't know could could could make it invalid that's the difference between presuppositional apologetics and evidential or classic because you're allowing probability into the equation yeah and you're leaving the skeptic always a way out essentially yeah well it could possibly be this yeah maybe there's a alternate universe that we don't know about that's actually we can't account for true

I mean you're leaving yourself open to yeah maybe we're the product of aliens or something like Richard Dawkins says or you know and well that's neat and and so so you have taught young people you've taught and and so what's an average show of yours like what is the

I'm the fresh kid on the block so I've only been doing the apologetics now for about a year and a half okay and so my channel is growing it's been so fun

Keith and I want to tell people going back to my church family that's where the support my wife they they're the ones that really say

Jeremiah you're called to do this and so I'm still growing I'm still trying to put more content out there something else that I have a an emphasis in I kind of have to I've really learned a lot from dr.

white over the years because he started out really engaging with Mormons you know he didn't just do everything that he does now overnight it kind of happened over time and so where I'm from Jonesboro Arkansas there's a lot of Church of Christ mm -hmm and so early on I would say at least 10 years ago

I was starting to share that my my faith with people in the gospel and realizing the Church of Christ preach a different gospel all together you have to be baptized to be saved to have your past sins washed away in the water and the more

I started studying what they believe I'm like okay that's not right this is a part of a restorationist movement that goes back to the early 1800s and while starting to study online there's not really apologetics out there for interacting with Church of Christ so that's kind of been my main emphasis for the past year and a half and then also in recent time people have been contacting me about full preterism and so if you look up the apologetic dog right now

I have a lot of content in both of those areas yeah and I noticed you you got to speak with dr.

Frost the other night and you're you're you're an amillennialist and I'm not the king no well it can only be one now you heard me the yesterday though I I dipped the crown or passed the crown and dip my head to dr.

Waldron he's here with us this weekend so I can I can I can not rightly call myself royalty around someone of such austere education but the the reason why you know

I want to ask you about because I remembered you mentioning the Church of Christ and our church came out of the

Disciples of Christ you know what the Disciples of Christ yeah they're they're kind of a splintered group from because you had the

Christian Church and the Disciples of Christ they're kind of all intertwined there with the church

I always said the Disciples of Christ or the PC USA oh my goodness because they were the ones that went very liberal yeah in fact if you ever heard of Dan McClellan mmm

Dan McClellan is a he's on Twitter and I'm sorry he's on tick -tock ain't no Twitter and he's a he's he's always do he's a he's a professor of Bible and religion at a university and he is always arguing for a more liberal view of Scripture and and and higher criticism things like that and I listen to what he says sometimes and I don't interact with him that's not my show but I I want to hear what the arguments are so that I'm prepared for them and and I heard a

Disciples of Christ minister defending him and it just reminds me hey that's where they are that's who they are so that you know the the the

Disciples of Christ are to the the the Church of Christ as the PC USA is to the

PCA right so it's that so I have a history of caring about that movement because that's what our church came out of yeah and we're not that anymore at all but that's the history we had a way to pastor in the 80s who didn't believe in the virgin birth yeah that's what we came out of yeah and yet at the same time and you know and certainly

I'm not wanting to debate or argue on this subject but I have a curiosity of your thought because I've struggled with this

Church of Christ I do understand they believe in and they won't call it baptismal regeneration they call baptismal remission at least the ones

I've read they like the term remission because they believe in you're in the water your sins are remitted how would we distinguish or how would you distinguish in your mind them and say okay they're preaching a false gospel versus the

Lutherans for instance and you knew where I was going I guess I'm glad well I hope you have a great answer because I'm curious what your answer would be because I I have an answer but I want to kind of see where you're coming from because you know

Lutherans would believe in baptismal regeneration so how do you see the difference and why would you and would you say

Lutheran is preaching a true gospel where the Church of Christ is not yeah it's a great question I've debated both

Lutherans and Church Christ on the topic of baptism and here

I'll give you the the key thing first and I'll kind of explain from there Lutherans do not deny sola fide

Lutheran Lutherans do not have this categorical rejection that we are justified by faith alone as where Mormons the cults

Roman Catholics Greek Orthodox Church Christ fundamentally denied justification by faith alone and it's a perverted understanding of James chapter 2 and the reason why

I start there is because you can't deny the Trinity and be saved you can have a misunderstanding about it

I grew up Southern Baptist have a lot of Southern Baptist friends but you you heard of the water to ice and the steam everybody did mine was the you can be a man who's a father a brother or son yeah and so I'm affirming the

Trinity but I have a bad understanding of it because I do not think you can hold to baptismal regeneration and justification by faith alone

I think there are odds with one another but the Lutherans are like oh you can and I'm like merciful inconsistency all right so because there's a re there's a different understanding of what works are in those conversations but they are affirming just and and strongly so like we like listening to your sermon the other day is saying like we have so much of a shared anthropology and a high view of God's sovereignty and so I think that's kind of what helps them and certain

Anglicans of having a high view of God so with the Church of Christ they deny the term baptismal regeneration even though they when you ask enough questions they will say you're regenerated in the water what

I see in the Church of Christ is a baptismal justification so you let that sink in I would agree

I think they would see remission of sins as justification absolutely and so at that point it's a Galatian one heresy we've added to the sufficient gospel of grace and you've added something you've added some type of human effort in that because I do in my debates

I push back to the word Ergon and our gods my if you look at that word it's everything you do any human activity of any kind put on display that you do externally and so works is very broad and all -consuming which is to be contrasted with faith which is internal and of the heart and as a gift from God so that makes sense of how

I would kind of look at Lutherans as being within the fold and I think they are very reminiscent of a lot of what the early church had to say when trying to look at you know passages of faith but also looking at passages of baptism yeah and I think

I would answer that similarly it's interesting I remember a conversation I had boy this has been so many years ago but it was

R .C. Sproul jr. not not dr. R .C. well they're both dr. R .C. Sproul but not the one that you normally think of but his son and I you know

I live not too far from where their church where well well where dr. R .C.

Sproul's seniors church was and or is I call it Cinderella's castle it's this beautiful place

I'll visit there one day but it's so close to us so like when we go to down to Orlando whatever we try to try to go and worship with them

Nathan tells me it's awesome but anyhow I remember dr.

R .C. Sproul jr. addressing the Church of Christ as being outside of the fold and I I had always sort of in my mind thought you know there there are some issues sure but that was a that was a hard line just knowing you know because when we talk about denominations versus cults right right denominations and we had this

I don't know if you were part of this conversation of the day but we were talking Aaron Brewster and I were talking with a few other people and and the question was well what's the line and I said well there's a historic there's a historic answer that yeah historic answer that is whether you were a denomination or a cult mmm because the denomination was saying you're in the bounds but we disagree on baptism or we disagree on this or that but what put you outside was you rejected the

Trinity or you add a justification by works or something like that that put you outside the fold and that's where we see the

Jehovah Witnesses that's where we see the Mormons and you're willing to say that's where we see the Church of Christ or am

I right now the Church of Christ they don't want to be called a denomination usually which is satisfactory then like you're you're letting you're distinguishing yourself from Orthodox because usually in their terminology they'll just say oh that's denominational teaching because they believe mostly that they're the one true church yeah and don't don't and you get that the mark of a almost every cult yeah yeah so they check all the boxes when you read

Walter Martin's Kingdom the cults I mean you can trace it back to Alexander Campbell in 1811 I mean so it has all the marks but when people ask

Jemma how do you know what's the clear line I give it I try to give a short answer you gotta believe in the right Jesus and you have to receive the right

Jesus the way that he said and that right Jesus is the second person the triune God who took on flesh built among us right so you got to have that as the right

Jesus Paul in my sermon I preached on the second Corinthians 11 passage that talks about there are false

Jesus's there's a standard Jesus says unless you believe the ego I me then you will die in your sin so you gotta believe is

Jesus as the Creator the God the God man who took on flesh and then he clearly has told us to receive him by faith apart from works right with the rest of the

New Testament and so the Galatian one heresy says it's we're justified by faith and then whatever it because in the

Church of Christ they're gonna say yeah not by works of law I'm like whatever you want to yeah I'm like you don't get to substitute that with something else because we already have the positive affirmation of what declares us right before God it's the instrumentation of faith in the finished work of King Jesus yeah well brother that's a very interesting ministry because I've spoken to so many apologists and and and you know

I love apologetics I it comes out a lot of my preaching because I think by nature

I have sort of a desire to to clarify and defend what the Word of God says I believe that's part of what preaching is but in general when

I talk to apologists it's I'm an apologist to Mormons or I'm an apologist to this reply I think people would find this interesting so I hope people do and I hope people want to hear more of what you had to say how would people find you and and learn more about you the best way is on my youtube channel the apologetic dog but you can go to our website at twelve five church calm a lot of people have found me through I was on cultish examining the

Church of Christ oh nice and so I do a lot of work with Trey Fisher the fish bone he does a lot of work he comes out of the

Church of Christ and he's a Reformed Baptist preacher in Louisiana and so he's really good friends with Jeff Durbin and Luke Pearson and all them so we do a lot of collaboration but people can find me at on Facebook too and I'm hoping to branch out to all the other social social media platforms as well

I have a website that's really bad but people have to look at because it's getting revamped so they got to see that before and after so that's the apologetic dog calm nice well