Roman Catholics and Muslims running scared | Apologetics Live 0030
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Andrew and Eli start off discussing some cultural issues and then Patrick comes is arguing that water baptism ended with Jesus and that the disciples were in error to baptize people. In the end, our Catholic friend comes in but does not want to follow the rules.
Apologetics Live 0030
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- 02:16
- Oh, there we go. I think no one was hearing me this whole time. All right, let's try this again.
- 02:25
- Wow, I'm muted in the wrong spot. I've been sitting here and Eli's just not even telling me that I'm muted.
- 02:32
- I literally just signed on. Yeah, I'm blaming you anyway. Let's try that again. What I was sharing that you guys couldn't hear about as you just watch my mouth move.
- 02:45
- So I hope that all can hear me now. It helps when you unmute. So technology, it's so easy to figure out, right,
- 02:55
- Eli? All right, so what we started off with is
- 03:01
- I mentioned that if you look at the title of the show, the show is titled Catholics Running Scared. We will get to why it is the
- 03:08
- Catholics seem to be running scared of little old me. I don't think I'm that intimidating, but I guess they are scared of me for some reason.
- 03:16
- We'll see if they are or are not. If they show up here, all these people that want to challenge me, then maybe they won't be scared.
- 03:24
- But since they all said that they won't show up, they're scared. So, and we'll probably see them all in the chat,
- 03:33
- Eli, is what we're going to see. So this is Apologetics Live, Ministry of Striving for Eternity.
- 03:41
- We're glad to have you with us. And Matt Slick will not be here as he's getting carpet put into the house.
- 03:49
- So that he's trying to get ready to move. So he's not going to be here tonight again.
- 03:54
- And I'll get my chance because I'll be leaving for the Philippines and he's going to have a couple weeks without me.
- 04:00
- He'll have to handle that. We'll have either Eli, we'll have Anthony Silvestro, some folks come in.
- 04:07
- Now, what I started off with discussing before I want to get to the Catholics running scared is the fact that there was another shooting.
- 04:14
- We had a shooting in Sri Lanka, Resurrection Sunday on a holy day within Christianity.
- 04:22
- We had a, now the last day of Passover, a shooting in a synagogue.
- 04:28
- Now, if you listen to my rap report, the Andrew Rapwort's rap report podcast, you know that I dealt with this in detail on this whole thing in Sri Lanka.
- 04:38
- And the pattern that I lay out in there, we see continues.
- 04:44
- If you listen to that, we went through how in Sri Lanka, we saw it interesting that an attack can be on Christians and they don't want to mention anything about Christians being the victims.
- 04:56
- Instead, they just called them Easter worshipers. Very interesting. We now see that in Sri Lanka, they didn't want to announce who it was that did the attacking because that didn't work with the narrative that they liked to go with them.
- 05:13
- I'm hearing an echo. That's good. We'll shut that off. Technology is working really well for me tonight,
- 05:20
- Eli. I can't even say it's because Matt's not here because he's worse with the technology.
- 05:29
- So, but if you did, you know, here's the thing I thought so interesting in Sri Lanka. And what we saw in Sri Lanka is that they were very quick to, or I should say not in Sri Lanka, but in other cases where they can try to say that a
- 05:42
- Christian's involved. When we had in Christchurch, New Zealand, they were very quick to say it was a
- 05:48
- Christian when the gentleman who did this in his own manifesto is not
- 05:53
- Christian. We now see a shooting in a synagogue and they're very quick to put out there that he's a churchgoer.
- 06:04
- He's an OPC member or attender, I should say, not member. His father is a leader in that church.
- 06:13
- And so he was at 19, I guess. So he was attending that church.
- 06:20
- That doesn't mean he's a member and it doesn't mean he believes the things. It was kind of interesting that he supposedly likes to challenge evangelical pastors is what
- 06:30
- I saw in one article. So he's out there and just because he attends church, that must mean this is all
- 06:37
- Christians are guilty of this. Now, this is the thing I find so disturbing and Eli, maybe you'll have an opinion on this.
- 06:45
- But what I find so disturbing is the fact that you see the Muslims that attacked in Sri Lanka gave the argument that they did this because this is retaliation on what the
- 06:57
- Christians did in Christchurch. That is disturbing because the guy who did that in Christchurch is not a
- 07:06
- Christian. It's the media that put it out there that he's a Christian. And so it's really disturbing because here they have a false narrative and now people are coming after Christians even more.
- 07:17
- And by the way, I understand. I dealt with this on my podcast. I understand that they went after Catholics. Catholics are not
- 07:23
- Christian. They they can't say they're Christian like us because, well, they would say that we're condemned to hell.
- 07:29
- And according to their Vatican documents, if you believe in grace alone, that's anathema.
- 07:35
- So they wouldn't say it. So I don't see any problem with saying they're not Christian when they say we're not
- 07:40
- Catholic. It's the same thing. So we understand that. But Muslims would not.
- 07:47
- And so they attack those the Catholics because they thought they were Christian. And it's really disturbing because they're doing this based off a false narrative.
- 07:58
- So first off, those that were involved in this attack, our hearts go out. We do pray that the
- 08:05
- Lord would use this in the lives of the people involved, that they may come to know Christ through this.
- 08:12
- God can use evil to bring about his good. And so we're praying for those families.
- 08:20
- Eli, I don't know if you have anything you want to add to that before I switch to another couple of topics. Just real quick,
- 08:26
- I think it's important to make a distinction between what people do and what is the foundation of what they believe.
- 08:32
- A lot of people will who don't have a critical eye on these things and really speak from a place of emotion.
- 08:38
- They'll say, look, see Christians, you know, Christianity and religion produces violence. And while it's true, religion has produced violence.
- 08:46
- The real issue is, does that have any bearing as to the actual teachings of that particular religion? Does a
- 08:51
- Christian acting violently, is he or she acting consistent with what the Bible actually teaches? And I think that's a fundamental distinction that we need to make.
- 09:00
- Lest we clump all type of religious, radical behavior, we clump it all into, well, all religions are like that.
- 09:08
- And that's what all religions teach. And that's not the case. And do you know the fallacy that that would be called? I'm sorry?
- 09:14
- Do you know which logical fallacy that would be called? Oh, well, it depends how it's formulated, but it can be related to the genetic fallacy.
- 09:22
- You fall into something as to how someone comes to believe it, or you're guilty by association. You know, your religion has produced certain people who act certain ways.
- 09:32
- And they kind of make that disconnect as to that somehow has a connection with what the religion actually teaches.
- 09:38
- And that's not the case. And that's exactly how we're seeing this being used as a genetic fallacy.
- 09:45
- So all Christians are not—I mean, unless this is a Christian teaching, if this is something we could support from Scripture that we should be going in and murdering people, that would be one thing, but you can't make that case from Scripture.
- 09:59
- Right. And a lot of people try to make that connection by pointing to the conquest of the land of Canaan.
- 10:05
- Again, usually people will use that connection to say, You see, God commands people to do stuff all the time.
- 10:12
- All the time he commands it. In one piece. So again, people don't—and for me, just from an apologetic standpoint,
- 10:21
- I think one of the most difficult conversations you could have are questions relating to Old Testament ethics, not because we don't have an answer, but because the answer requires some background knowledge that the person who brings the objection really has no interest in listening to.
- 10:33
- So, you know, you can throw these bombs and kind of like, well, I want to respond, but, you know, do you really want to know the answer?
- 10:41
- Because then we need to have a conversation about context and things like that. Yeah. Now, you know,
- 10:46
- I think I started saying earlier before I unmuted myself. If anyone wants to join in on the discussion about what we're discussing now or any other topic, we will have open
- 10:57
- Q &A as well. So you can go to apologeticslive .com. The links are there.
- 11:02
- You would be able to get the links to join from there. You can watch from there, either one.
- 11:08
- Actually, I'll drop the link into the chat as well. So another thing
- 11:13
- I want to—that I was asked to bring up, and I said I'd bring it up tonight, and Eli, I don't know if you followed any of this, but the court ruled there was an
- 11:23
- Olympic runner, and the court ruled—and this person is a two -time
- 11:31
- Olympic champion. And the court ruled that this person is not allowed to compete anymore as a woman unless he, she takes hormone -suppressing drugs to compete.
- 11:47
- In other words, you have someone that is a biological male that is in—or at least identifies as a female competing against females, and they're basically saying she, he is winning lots of, you know,
- 12:04
- Olympic records, right, getting one two -time Olympic champion. And so what do you end up seeing?
- 12:12
- You end up seeing that there—you know, this is, I think, going to be where this logically ends up going.
- 12:17
- It's the sports that are going to be a demise. I mean, when you had, like, Title IX in colleges to say that there has to be— even if you have male sports, you have to offer female sports so the girls can get the scholarships, the sports scholarships.
- 12:34
- And now, looking at this, I mean, this is going to really, I think, destroy sports, because you're—at least female sports.
- 12:42
- Because you have so many—there was a—I had seen another one. Let me see if I can pull that up real quick. There was a, what was it, bench press.
- 12:52
- For women's bench press, it's, again, a male, a biological male that is competing without taking steroids.
- 13:00
- Now, I also think at the other level, we see there was a girl wrestler, high school wrestler.
- 13:05
- She was one, I think, nationals, and she was taking steroids because she was in transition to a male.
- 13:14
- And the problem I saw there is if she's taking the steroids, she wouldn't be able to take the steroids at any other time.
- 13:22
- It's a performance -enhancing drug, and therefore, that gave her an advantage over the other girls.
- 13:29
- And so, if she was wrestling boys with that, that might be one thing, but I think this is where I see such an issue, is the fact that we see the crossover here where people can take advantage of the system.
- 13:49
- I mean, I don't follow team sports much, Eli. I don't know if you do. Yeah, I have no time.
- 13:56
- I have multiple, I have one, two, three, I have like three or four jobs. Come on, man, get up to speed.
- 14:04
- I know, I know. I used to, back in the 90s, I was a huge Bulls fan, so I used to watch basketball obsessively, and I played basketball, played high school and everything, and then once I went out to the real world and got a job,
- 14:17
- I have no time to follow it. I wish I could. But how often do you see in sports the issue of taking drugs or taking things to give enhancements?
- 14:28
- I mean, it's a real issue. You see these in almost every sport
- 14:35
- I can think of. You end up having people that are trying to gain the system because there's a lot of advantage to winning.
- 14:42
- Right. And that's exactly what we end up seeing in these sports now, where you have people able to use the fact that they are in transition to be able to justify either taking performance -enhancing drugs or having men compete against women.
- 15:01
- And, you know, it gives them an unfair advantage. You know, I think it's interesting that the court ruled this way.
- 15:08
- I think it's probably the right ruling to say if you're going to compete as a woman, you know, it would have to be, you know, without having the enhancements.
- 15:22
- And Andrew here is in a chat saying, imagine if Lance Armstrong had done that. And the reality is, you know,
- 15:28
- I was thinking of Lance Armstrong when I was thinking of the different sports, Andrew, because, you know, here's a guy that was really heralded because he came back from cancer.
- 15:38
- And, you know, people looked at him as someone that really was doing phenomenal, only to discover that he was phenomenal at hiding the drug tests and the drugs that he was taking.
- 15:52
- And that really gave him the advantage. And he got stripped of that. And, you know, here's people that were competing against him that maybe were not taking the drugs, and they should have gotten the awards.
- 16:08
- I think of this high school, you know, this person in high school, this girl who's competing, she can get scholarships to go to college.
- 16:19
- But there's other people that are losing out on that. You look at this Olympian who's winning, but then you have others who are losing out.
- 16:29
- And is that fair? That's, I think, a legitimate question to be asked. So any thoughts on that one,
- 16:37
- Eli? Oh, it sounds like it's the world of sports is in quite a mess.
- 16:44
- I think it's funny how our society is so quickly thrown out logic and people don't see why this is an issue.
- 16:52
- I mean, in the name of equality, you know, people kind of just bypass, really. I mean, it seems so silly for someone that is biologically a man to compete against women just for the sake of diversity and things like that.
- 17:06
- I think it's silly. It shows a lack of critical thinking and logic.
- 17:11
- And it just shows that our society runs on the fumes. It runs on the fumes of inclusivity and diversity without any care for what's true and what's right.
- 17:24
- Well, and that's, I think, what you end up seeing is people are gaining powerful positions because of arguments. And when you gain power because of an argument, you have to keep that argument going.
- 17:34
- You have to keep it going to keep your power base. Therefore, you'll throw out critical thinking.
- 17:40
- You'll throw out logic. I mean, I think I've done either here or on my podcast.
- 17:46
- I can't remember. I think it might have been on my podcast, The Rap Report. I dealt with this issue of really how when you look at this issue with transgenderism and all that, those that used to argue for science and that science over faith have now thrown out the science.
- 18:04
- Because it's, you know, here's the thing to really think about. When we look at biology,
- 18:10
- I mean, they're male, they're female. They argue in the atheistic worldview, the argument is that it's just chemical reactions.
- 18:20
- Everything's just a chemical reaction. Well, if you're just a chemical reaction, a result of chemicals, then if you're a biological male, you will be male and you will identify as male.
- 18:30
- And you will be everything that a man is. Because that's the chemistry.
- 18:36
- So every time they appeal to an identity that I feel something different, I identify as the opposite gender, they can't appeal to science.
- 18:46
- They're appealing to something immaterial, something outside of themselves. They can't appeal to an
- 18:53
- X or Y chromosome. So here's the people that say there is no God, there is no immaterial part of us.
- 18:59
- Everything's just the material world. We're just chemical reactions. And then they say they identify outside of the chemical reaction.
- 19:09
- They've actually given up their whole argument. And I don't think they even realize it. They don't notice what they've done.
- 19:15
- That in arguing for this, I think they've undermined their whole worldview of atheism for those that claim to be atheist.
- 19:27
- So it's really a house of cards that collapses. So what
- 19:33
- I want to do first, some folks come in here, and I know Andrew's in here, you're in here first, so you'll be the first one when we get to some questions.
- 19:43
- But there were a number of Roman Catholics who were very upset with last week. Last week we had
- 19:49
- James come in, and Eli, I wish, I really wish, I'm too honest of a person.
- 19:55
- I wish that I kept recording after we went off air so that everyone could have heard the discussion with James that Anthony and I had afterwards.
- 20:04
- But we didn't record that. And if I did record it, it would be unfair to probably play that since that wasn't supposed to be live.
- 20:12
- But we had an interesting conversation after. But the thing is, is that one of the things
- 20:17
- I appealed that I made to him is he wants to argue that Roman Catholicism is true.
- 20:24
- And yet in the process of discussion last week, he used five logical fallacies to make his argument.
- 20:32
- And I said, if you have to appeal to a logical fallacy to make your argument, your argument's invalid, therefore it's wrong.
- 20:46
- It's really hard for me to say I'm going to believe in something that you can't argue logically and consistently.
- 20:54
- That you have to appeal to fallacies to make the case. He argued that the Scriptures teach that you need to be baptized to be saved.
- 21:02
- He based this out of Acts 2, 37 to 38.
- 21:08
- He said that that's what Scripture says. I said that was his interpretation. And I read that passage.
- 21:16
- And he said it clearly shows, and I said, whoa, whoa, whoa, stop. It doesn't say what you said it says.
- 21:22
- In fact, if you look at that passage, it doesn't mention water baptism at all. It mentions the
- 21:27
- Holy Spirit and the giving of gifts. This is the baptism of the
- 21:32
- Holy Spirit. So what we see is that there's a problem that he had in that I was just reading
- 21:42
- Scripture. He's interpreting Scripture. And that's kind of bad because I think his church says that you're not allowed to have private interpretation.
- 21:49
- Now, how do I know that all of the guys that follow in Catholicism that were watching that show know that he did a really bad job?
- 22:00
- Because all week on Twitter, on Facebook, in private messages,
- 22:05
- I've been dealing with Catholics all week long trying to argue his, well, they actually aren't trying to argue his argument from the way he argued it.
- 22:15
- They're trying to say he's right by arguing something else. They want to bring up other verses, or they want to say that I was, one person claimed
- 22:24
- I was rude and not letting him speak. Andrew, rude? Impossible.
- 22:31
- Listen, if you listen to that show last week, you see that I let him explain his views. But then when it got time for me to counter, one of the things that I would do is ask a simple yes, no question.
- 22:43
- What he'll do is he'll either not answer and go on to another topic, or he'll answer real quick and then jump to another thing.
- 22:49
- So he wants to spit out a bunch of verses to avoid the fact that I just proved what he said was wrong.
- 22:56
- And it's a tactic. He's not new to this show. We've seen him here before. And so because of that,
- 23:03
- I was used to seeing the tactics that he does. And so what
- 23:08
- I was doing was saying we stick to one topic. This is what you do with a steamroller. Apologetics Live is to help you guys learn how to do apologetics.
- 23:16
- We want to teach you. You get to see live examples. What you saw there is a classic steamroller.
- 23:23
- And so what you do with a steamroller is you get, and if you want a good book that helps you with this, get
- 23:28
- Greg Kokel's book, Tactics. The steamroller is a tactic that he created or states.
- 23:36
- And so what you see with a steamroller is they just want to keep going. They want to roll right over you. They want to give you so many passages of scripture that you have no time to respond to all of them.
- 23:47
- Or say so many different things that you can't respond to everything. And Eli, I think you and I are going to talk about someone that uses that same tactic maybe a little in a bit.
- 23:59
- But with a steamroller, you have to establish the rules. And the rules were we were going to stick to, you know, let's stick to the verse that he said teaches this.
- 24:08
- And then he wants to jump all over the place everywhere else. Well, that's not sticking to the rules.
- 24:13
- And if he doesn't stick to rules, what you do is you shame the person to show that they are not following the guidelines, the rules.
- 24:21
- That's not being rude. The rudeness was in the fact that I'm asking a yes or no question and he's deciding to answer other things.
- 24:29
- Or going off the topic of this verse and what Acts 2 says and try to answer something else.
- 24:37
- That's the rudeness. Now, I had a number of Catholics. None of them are here, though,
- 24:43
- Eli. You don't see any Catholics in here. John's here. He may be Catholic. He's saying no.
- 24:49
- And Andrew just dropped out. Maybe he was. And we know Andrew's not Catholic. So the thing that you end up seeing is over and over again, you'll see these keyboard warriors.
- 25:01
- One guy, and Eli, you're going to love this. One guy on Facebook said he hammered me in a debate on baptism.
- 25:10
- Hammered me. You know what the problem was? He and I never debated. There you go.
- 25:17
- Hammered by an imaginary opponent. He hammered me in his mind. Do you see him here?
- 25:25
- No. No, he's not here to defend himself. He's not here to show the world how he hammered me.
- 25:34
- But, you know, he hammered me. I find that so interesting, these keyboard warriors.
- 25:41
- And this is why I say they're running scared. They all have to. A way that you can see this,
- 25:46
- I don't know if you've seen this, Eli, with folks online, is when they see a show like this, they see two people debate an issue, and their side loses.
- 25:57
- They're quick to go and say how their side actually won, and try to make the case that their side won and their side did the better job, and they nailed the issue.
- 26:10
- And yet they do that without even having the basics of saying, well, let me answer.
- 26:21
- It's just claims. And it's they want to defend their guy, and yet when they're defending their guy, they're not even looking to see what the argument is.
- 26:35
- They're not willing to come in and actually have the discussion. I mean, I'm supposedly this big nasty guy.
- 26:41
- I don't have that view of myself that I'm the big debating kind of guy that just rolls over people.
- 26:52
- But for a guy who claimed he hammered me in a debate, don't you think he should be here?
- 26:59
- Yeah, I look forward to listening. Yeah. And then we had someone that said it was a waste of his time to come on here.
- 27:09
- And I kind of find that funny because he wasted at least several hours. I mean, just today, several hours.
- 27:16
- And I kept saying, well, if it's a waste of your time, what are you still doing here? I mean, it's kind of a funny thing because he's got plenty of time to be online behind a keyboard and make claims, but not come in here.
- 27:34
- And I find that so interesting is when you get guys that make arguments like that, that it's a waste of their time as they continue.
- 27:42
- Now, here's the thing that's so funny is the guy sent me a message on Facebook demanding why haven't
- 27:48
- I answered his argument from like several hours before. I'm like, because I actually have a life and a job.
- 27:55
- Like I work. Maybe you don't. These people that think like and his argument,
- 28:01
- I guess, is because I didn't answer in enough time. That must be where he where he hammered me.
- 28:08
- OK. You know, in an actual debate, you'd both be discussing something.
- 28:16
- It's almost like the black. He was like a couple weeks ago that told me that if I didn't give him if I didn't give a detailed, long response, then he won the argument.
- 28:26
- And there, I said, the only response worthy was that he was a joke. And we showed that it didn't take long to dismantle his argument.
- 28:34
- Yeah. Andrew there. Andrew Graham just asked the question, where does argument actually get you?
- 28:39
- And I think I think that's a good question. Let me bring him into show so he can ask that question. Oh, OK.
- 28:47
- OK, so, Andrew, go ahead. OK, well,
- 28:52
- I'm unmuted. Sorry. I also had a connection issue before. So stupid little thing.
- 28:58
- OK, so where does argument actually get you? Well, here's what we would see in the scriptures.
- 29:06
- You can look at Titus, for example, and where argumentation or where apologetics should get you is to shut the mouth of the ignorant so that you can share the gospel.
- 29:18
- OK, I think I think, Andrew Graham, maybe, maybe
- 29:23
- I'm going to interrupt you. I think you're absolutely correct in assuming this. But are you asking the question from the point of via experience?
- 29:28
- Every time people argue, they never come to a conclusion anyway and they've already had their minds made up. So what's the point? Is that the thought in the question?
- 29:37
- That's that's the thought behind the question. Also, sort of Dale Carnegie said it way back in the 1930s.
- 29:45
- Argument gets you nowhere except maybe you lose a few friends.
- 29:51
- Well, I'd love to hear the argument for that. Here's the thing that I think we need to think about is what is an argument?
- 29:59
- Because in our culture, I think nowadays people have a very negative view of an argument. OK, when you deal in the realm of logic, arguments, not a bad thing.
- 30:10
- When we talk argument nowadays, I think a lot of people have the mindset that an argument is like a fight where people are yelling each other and name calling.
- 30:18
- That isn't an argument is a, you know, when we deal with it in logic is where you have a statement that is going to have a conclusion with support.
- 30:33
- And that'd be a simpler way for me to explain it. And that's not necessarily a bad thing.
- 30:39
- We do that all the time. Everyone makes an argument. Yeah, we do.
- 30:44
- Absolutely. I think I think it was the atheist I was trying to have a conversation with about six months ago.
- 30:51
- She said it's always a debate with her conclusion. But is that a basically it?
- 30:59
- It depends. I mean, if if it's where you're doing name calling and stuff like that.
- 31:05
- Yeah, I could see where that could that could be bad. Yeah, but any conversation that you have with a person about the subject is a debate.
- 31:17
- Yeah, that's what she was trying to get at. And she was losing very sorely, basically, to my own head.
- 31:25
- Anyway, I don't know how to put it any other way. But yeah, the question is, well, argument actually doesn't help you at all.
- 31:32
- It doesn't get you anyway. That's the rhetorical question. Well, for the
- 31:38
- Christian and why we would do apologetics, because this is something that a lot of people bring up is why should we bother?
- 31:43
- Well, we do this to shut the mouth of the ignorance so that we could share the gospel or the goal.
- 31:50
- If someone is doing apologetics to win a debate. I would say that's the wrong reason.
- 31:57
- If you're doing definitely. And I would totally agree with you. Now, if you're doing apologetics, I can't argue very well.
- 32:02
- But the goal of apologetics for the Christian apologists is the gospel, is to get to the gospel.
- 32:09
- That's the goal. And so we want to be able to, basically, when you have someone that believes something, you want to shut that down so that you can get to giving the gospel.
- 32:20
- But if their mouth is running on falsehood, you need to correct that at times, not always.
- 32:28
- We don't always have to go into apologetics, but there are times to shut the mouth of the ignorant.
- 32:37
- Paul explains that. Certainly. So, Andrew, do you have any other questions since you're here?
- 32:45
- No, that's it. Okay. That's it. John, I don't know if you had any questions tonight yet.
- 32:53
- Actually, now that Elias was here, I was going to talk to him or ask him about his thoughts about light and flowers debate with him or discussion.
- 33:04
- I know, I know, I know. I figured you were going to make it as a topic. We might.
- 33:09
- We might. Let me just, we have someone that's in here to the show.
- 33:15
- Let me turn him up. Baptized by Jesus. But let me turn his volume up.
- 33:22
- Okay. Can you hear me? Yes, we can. How are you doing? Real good. I wanted to go back to about James and the baptism for the
- 33:32
- Catholic Church to be part of salvation. Would it be true that the baptism of the
- 33:37
- Holy Spirit would answer that question? Yeah, well, and that's what the verse that this gentleman that we saw last week,
- 33:45
- James, when he gave us the verse out of Acts 2, when you look at it, that was referring to the
- 33:51
- Holy Spirit. Right. Now, what he did was he equivocated on the word baptism.
- 33:59
- And so he says that baptism, water baptism, and this baptism of the
- 34:05
- Holy Spirit are the same thing. Now, that was stated.
- 34:11
- It was a claim, but not proven. But John the Baptist, when he preached, for I baptize with water, but the one coming after me will baptize in the
- 34:20
- Holy Spirit. Wasn't he preaching that baptism of the Holy Spirit is what we should look forward after Jesus was crucified?
- 34:28
- Yeah, well, and I would agree with that because that's what we saw.
- 34:33
- And I mentioned this last week is we see this in Jeremiah 31, 31 and following,
- 34:39
- Ezekiel 36, about 24, 25 and following. When you look at what the
- 34:45
- Jews look forward to for the sign in the new covenant, it was that we no longer need a priest to teach us
- 34:52
- God's word. But the Holy Spirit would indwell us, that God would indwell us himself and teach us his word.
- 34:59
- Now, the thing is, is that we have three different types of what we call baptism.
- 35:06
- Right. The word baptism means to dip or to plunge. It was transliterated by the
- 35:14
- Anglican Church because, well, you can't translate the word dip or plunge when they would practice something like sprinkling or pouring.
- 35:23
- So and that's dealing with the water. But you have John's baptism, which you brought up. And by the way, what's your first name?
- 35:30
- Patrick. Patrick. OK, so Patrick, you have John's baptism, like you brought up.
- 35:36
- You have the baptism of the Holy Spirit, which you brought up, which is when the Holy Spirit indwells a believer, indwells a person.
- 35:44
- And then you have what we'll call water baptism after Jesus. So it's different than John's baptism.
- 35:51
- Right. John plunged people in water different than after Christ in that one.
- 35:58
- What if I told you in John 1, 31 to 34, water baptism for John was to look for the dove to identify the
- 36:06
- Son of God. This is in which? In John? In John 1, 31 to 34.
- 36:14
- OK, and that says, I myself did not know him, but for this purpose,
- 36:22
- I came baptizing with water that he might be revealed to Israel. And John bore witness.
- 36:29
- I saw the Spirit descend from heaven like a dove and it remained on him.
- 36:35
- I myself did not know him, but he who sent me baptized with water said to me, on him who you see the
- 36:43
- Spirit descend and remain. This is he who baptizes with the
- 36:49
- Holy Spirit. Would that be fair to say that God had gave
- 36:54
- John the Baptist a sign of a dove to identify the Son of God? Because there was no way he could identify the
- 37:03
- Son of God without having God giving him a sign. Well, OK, one thing is that just to make sure we properly interpret, the
- 37:14
- Spirit, it wasn't a dove. It was the Spirit that descended like a dove. So that would be one thing,
- 37:20
- Patrick. In Luke, it says that it was in bodily form, a dove. What verse is that?
- 37:28
- I can't think of... I'll have to look at that.
- 37:35
- I think that's going to be like Luke 2 or 3.
- 37:42
- No, Luke 3 .22 says the Holy Spirit descended on him bodily, in bodily form, like a dove.
- 37:52
- Right. So wouldn't that be an actual dove? No, that would be the Holy Spirit descending on him, but it would have looked like a dove.
- 38:03
- Right. Enough to where John could identify it, to know that that was the Son of God, or Jesus was the
- 38:09
- Son of God. Yeah, I mean, he definitely looks at this, and it's an identifier for him to recognize
- 38:15
- Christ. What if John the Baptist, after baptizing
- 38:21
- Jesus, water baptism ended, and the only thing from that point on is the baptism of the
- 38:27
- Holy Spirit? Yeah, well, so, OK, a couple things with that.
- 38:33
- And what's your background? Would you be Roman Catholic, would you be Protestant, Baptist, what?
- 38:38
- I'm just a born -again Christian for 40 years. OK. So what type of church do you attend?
- 38:44
- Just so I have an understanding. I actually don't attend a church, but what I'm doing tonight with you guys,
- 38:50
- I consider church. OK. I wouldn't, because none of us here would be acting as elders and deacons.
- 38:58
- We can have that discussion as well sometime. But let me answer the question you had brought up.
- 39:05
- And the issue with this, I would see, is that we have a, what some might so -call ceremony, what some would call a symbolic act, what some might call a sacrament, a thing that we're going to refer to as water baptism.
- 39:24
- And we know that John the Baptist continued baptizing after he baptized Christ. We also know that...
- 39:32
- Well, we know that it wasn't in John 4, 1, it wasn't
- 39:39
- Jesus who was baptizing. It was his disciples. And I believe that was a mistake. What was a mistake?
- 39:48
- For Jesus' disciples to baptize? Yeah, in John 4, where the Pharisees heard that Jesus was baptizing more disciples than John.
- 39:57
- But then it says in Scripture that it was only his disciples that were baptizing, not
- 40:02
- Jesus. I think you're referring to John 3. No, it's 4, 1, 4, 1 to 5.
- 40:14
- OK. Yeah, I'm looking at it right now. It's actually saying, yeah. And now when Jesus learned that the Pharisees had heard that Jesus was making and baptizing more disciples than John, Jesus himself did not baptize.
- 40:27
- And Jesus had to go back to Galilee because it says that he had to go back to Galilee.
- 40:34
- I believe he was going back to tell the disciples to quit water baptizing because John had fulfilled his testimony.
- 40:41
- Where does it say that? That's in... What it says here is he gives the reason.
- 40:48
- He says he left Judea and departed, right? Because the Pharisees had heard. Right. So it's the fact that the
- 40:56
- Pharisees heard that he was doing this. But that was not true, what the
- 41:02
- Pharisees had heard. But I think what Andrew Rappaport is saying,
- 41:09
- I kind of want to say Andrew Graham, is that the explanation that you just gave is not itself in the text.
- 41:17
- At that moment, you are interpreting and bringing up conjecture that's not based in the text itself.
- 41:24
- So you may believe that's what happened. I think what Andrew is pointing out that you don't get that from the text itself.
- 41:30
- Well, there's more evidence if you go to John 3 .25. Well, hold on before we leave this verse though.
- 41:37
- Because as I look at this verse, it gives the reason. Yeah, but all it says is that he had to go back to Galilee.
- 41:44
- No, but it says because the Pharisees had heard this. It's not saying that he went there to correct them.
- 41:50
- Yeah, but I believe you have to put the whole puzzle together. But if you go to John 3 .25,
- 41:58
- there was an argument over ceremonial washing with John's disciples and a certain
- 42:04
- Jew. That Jew could have been Jesus telling John's disciples to quit water baptizing.
- 42:11
- Could have been, but you don't get it from the text. It could have been. What we have to do is we have to look at what the text actually says.
- 42:24
- Because we don't read into the text something that's not there. And we twist the meaning of the passage or give it a different meaning.
- 42:33
- We no longer have God's word. We have man's word. Well, yeah, but you have to use you have to put the scriptures, make the story come together.
- 42:41
- Well, but you can't take it out of context to do that. Well, OK, we'll just forget about him going back to Galilee.
- 42:48
- But the fact is, Jesus didn't baptize anybody. Why would that be? Well, if I was to give conjecture,
- 42:57
- I would guess and it'd be purely just a guess. But I would think that if someone, you know, if people were baptized by Christ, there could have been bragging rights.
- 43:07
- I mean, we saw that in we saw that within the Corinthian church that Paul had to correct.
- 43:13
- Some are of a polis. Some are, you know, of Paul. You know, Priscilla and Nicole is another part that proves that water baptism ended.
- 43:23
- Well, if you use the word prove, you've got to be very careful. What that passage in Acts 19 shows is that there was a difference between John's baptism and the baptism after Christ.
- 43:36
- Eli, you were going to say something. Well, I'm just saying when you say a verse proves something, a verse doesn't prove anything in and of itself unless you actually construct an argument from the text in a way that's consistent with other texts.
- 43:49
- You know, for example, if I were to say if I were to quote James chapter two and say, you know, a faith without works is dead.
- 43:57
- See, that verse proves that you need works in order to be saved. Well, well, no, it doesn't prove anything.
- 44:03
- You need to interpret it and then you interpret Scripture in light of Scripture. I think what you're doing, you're bringing up interesting questions.
- 44:09
- But I think much of what you're saying is based on what you think it might mean and where you're drawing, you know, where you're drawing that from doesn't seem to be the text itself.
- 44:21
- You know, for example, when you said that Jesus went for this purpose to tell them to stop baptizing.
- 44:26
- That's a that's a good theory, but you're not getting it from the text. I think that's what what he's trying to point out.
- 44:31
- Well, about Galatians 2 where Paul opposes
- 44:38
- Peter. Okay. I believe that was about water baptism too, also. Based on what?
- 44:45
- Based on what happened at Cornelius's house in Acts 10. So do you ignore that the reason they had a disagreement was clearly explained in the text?
- 44:57
- It says in chapter 2, but when Cephas came to Antioch, I opposed him to his face because he stood condemned for before certain men came from James, he was eating with Gentiles.
- 45:12
- But when they came, he drew back and separated himself. So it gives the reason. Yeah, he drew back and he ended up making the
- 45:20
- Gentiles get a water baptism when they already received the Holy Spirit. Water baptism there. It mentions the reason it's about him eating.
- 45:28
- No, no, it's about because if you get in Acts 10 where...
- 45:36
- No, Patrick, you cannot explain the purpose of Galatians 2 verses 11 to 13 by jumping to some other passage and ignoring what this says.
- 45:51
- Verse 12 tells you exactly why he stood up to him. It says, for before certain men came from James, he was eating with Gentiles.
- 46:02
- But when they came, he drew back and separated himself, fearing the circumcision party.
- 46:10
- He gives you the reason. That's not about him. It's about drawing from the
- 46:15
- Gentiles when the circumcision party came. Well, let me ask you this. The vision
- 46:20
- Peter had before he baptized the Gentiles when the sheep came down. Yeah, we're not going to do that.
- 46:27
- We're not going to pull a passage out of Scripture, out of context, and then slam it together with another verse that you take out of context and put them together.
- 46:37
- That's called proof. Let me go back to Galatians 2 then. It says in Galatians 2 verse 14,
- 46:45
- I think, where he forced Gentiles to follow Jewish customs. You think that was about eating?
- 46:52
- That's what the text says. You think Paul opposed Peter because he ate with Jews?
- 47:02
- Well, your interpretation is that it's not. But what the text says, the text says, for before certain men came from James, he was eating with Gentiles.
- 47:13
- But when they came, he drew back and separated himself, fearing the circumcision party.
- 47:20
- Right. But like I said, we have to go back to the vision that God had given
- 47:26
- Peter. Tell him never eat or never say anything's unclean that I've made clean.
- 47:32
- And then a little bit later, God had baptized the Gentiles in the
- 47:38
- Holy Spirit. Peter was making them clean by ceremonial washing, which was wrong against the vision.
- 47:46
- So you're making a claim out of Galatians 2. What you're doing is ignoring the very clear.
- 47:53
- And when we look at hermeneutics, one of the principles of interpretation is you interpret the hard to understand by the easy.
- 48:01
- It's very clear with Galatians 2 why Peter and Paul had a disagreement, why
- 48:07
- Paul confronts Peter. It has nothing to do with baptism there.
- 48:13
- Well, it does. But you're missing it. You're not seeing it. Well, you know why I'm not seeing it? Because it's not there.
- 48:22
- Well, OK. Well, not seeing it. I'll read it. I'll read it again for you. We can read it. There's nothing about baptism here.
- 48:27
- And the argument you give is from Acts 2, which also mentioned nothing about baptism in that vision.
- 48:35
- But OK, it's your inverse in starting at Galatians 2, 11. But when Cephas came to Antioch, I opposed him to his face because he stood condemned for.
- 48:46
- Now, the for is a purpose statement. OK, this is telling me the purpose. Before certain men came from James, he was eating with Gentiles.
- 48:57
- But when they came, he drew back and separated himself, fearing the circumcision party.
- 49:03
- So you have your purpose. Keep reading. Keep reading. Read the next couple of verses.
- 49:09
- Acted hypocritically along with him so that even Barnabas was led astray in their hypocrisy.
- 49:16
- Right. I saw their conduct was not in step with the truth of the gospel.
- 49:22
- I said to Cephas before all men, if if you, though a
- 49:27
- Jew, live like a Gentile and not like a Jew, how can you force Gentiles to live like Jews?
- 49:33
- There's no show here that mentioned baptism. Show me scripture where he forced
- 49:38
- Gentiles to eat. I'll show you. OK, that's not even part of it.
- 49:45
- It's not. Yeah, it's not part of this discussion. You're you're you're injecting something into the text that's not there.
- 49:51
- And I know you say we don't see it. And I'm telling you why we don't see it, because it's not there. It's not in the text. He gives a purpose statement in verse 12 on why he confronted him.
- 50:02
- So even if you're even if he's right, say, say the point he's making is correct.
- 50:09
- If it's right, it's not right because it's in the text. You see what
- 50:14
- I'm saying? So even if I were to grant, hey, that's a great point. I never thought about that. You're not getting it from the text.
- 50:19
- And I think that's what Andrew is trying to say. It's not we don't see it because it doesn't doesn't give the reason you're giving in the text itself.
- 50:28
- Well, how about don't don't move on to another topic. We're not going to try to I'm going to try to show you the whole picture instead of just pinpointing one.
- 50:39
- That's not how we interpret. We don't interpret by pulling one verse out of context, another verse out of context and slamming them together.
- 50:46
- OK, that that's called proof texting. Well, that's studying. No, because once you take it out of context, you don't have
- 50:54
- God's word anymore. You're you injected something into Galatians two. That's not there. The Galatians two tells you the reason that Peter and Paul had a disagreement.
- 51:04
- It has to do with Peter's behavior when with the Gentiles. Once the circumcised circumcision party came, that's what the.
- 51:17
- Well, if you go on to Galatians three, where he said that you foolish Galatians, which you.
- 51:24
- But what you're doing, listen, Patrick, what you're doing is not the right to interpret
- 51:30
- Scripture. OK, I'm not interpreting it. It's a study that I've it's not it's a mystery.
- 51:38
- It's a mystery. OK, so you're appealing to a mystery instead of an ignoring the clear reading of what the text says.
- 51:45
- Well, I believe that it doesn't matter what you believe. What Scripture says and Scripture is clear on this, that you're wrong.
- 51:54
- And so moving on to try to find a different way for you to explain it. This is damaging.
- 52:01
- I mean, I could I'm going to guess that I think maybe this has something to do with why you don't attend church.
- 52:09
- Maybe maybe you don't want to be corrected because that's what happens. Well, I have stories about attending church and they wouldn't baptize me.
- 52:16
- And I was with the Church of Christ at one time and they refused to baptize me because I was
- 52:22
- I already knew Scripture at that point. And they couldn't understand. Well, OK, based on what you're showing here, you don't know
- 52:30
- Scripture. You have interpretations that you read into Scripture. OK, Church of Christ is also a cult.
- 52:36
- I know that. I know that. Some are, but not because there's actually some branches.
- 52:42
- There's some I mean, there are some that we have baptized to be saved, but not all hold to that. Let me just say one more thing.
- 52:51
- The Catholic Church is correct when they say you have to be baptized to be saved. If you're referring to the baptism of the
- 52:57
- Holy Spirit. Yes. That's what that's what James was trying to tell you is the baptism of the
- 53:03
- Holy Spirit saves. But James himself doesn't understand the truth about John's water baptism ending after he baptized
- 53:12
- Jesus. Well, the problem the problem is, is that he was he equivocates on the word baptism to refer to two different things that he he agreed were different and then uses them in the same way.
- 53:24
- That's called a fallacy of equivocation. When you use a term two different ways because it has the same either the same word or similar.
- 53:33
- And that's why baptism. That's why Scripture says there's only one baptism.
- 53:40
- And there is no such thing as water baptism after Jesus was baptized. And that's the problem in churches today.
- 53:48
- Let me make sure I understand what you're saying. Are you saying that that after Christ, there was no more need for a water baptism period?
- 53:55
- That's right. Exactly. And so you would you'd be saying that all the disciples that continued it and Christ command they were there.
- 54:05
- Well, you got to understand the Great Commission in Matthew 28 was
- 54:10
- Jesus telling the disciples what he was supposed to do in baptizing the
- 54:15
- Holy in the Holy Spirit. So we command. Well, let's let's look at we always want to look at the text.
- 54:20
- Okay. So Matthew 28, this is Jesus speaking. He says to the disciples, let's start in verse 19.
- 54:29
- And Jesus came to them, came and said and said to them, all authority in heaven and on earth has been given me.
- 54:38
- Go, therefore, or going make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the
- 54:47
- Father and the Son of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all things that I have done that I have commanded you.
- 54:53
- So you're saying that Jesus was commanding because this is this in the
- 55:00
- Greek is an imperative. So your argument is that Jesus is commanding them to sin.
- 55:06
- Is that. No, Jesus was being commanded by God, and he was telling the disciples what
- 55:13
- God had commanded him. That's why all authority in heaven and earth is for Jesus. Otherwise, he's passing on his authority to us when we baptize.
- 55:21
- So you're saying that Jesus is speaking to himself here. No, he's speaking to the crowd, but he's telling them what
- 55:27
- God had sent him to do. Okay. Which goes with John the Baptist for the one who comes after me.
- 55:34
- Now, let's let's practice hermeneutics. Okay. So you can learn how to interpret.
- 55:39
- He's telling them he's commanding them to make disciples. That's a command in the
- 55:45
- Greek. That's the imperative. Yeah. And Jesus makes disciples of baptism of the Holy Spirit. And he commands them to baptize.
- 55:53
- This is an imperative on them. So why would he command them to do something that he's supposed to do?
- 56:04
- No, you're reading it as he's telling the people what they're supposed to do, but he's telling them what
- 56:10
- God had told him to do. Where do you see? That's why all authority in heaven and earth been given to me.
- 56:17
- Patrick, you don't see that in the text. This is just like the last passage where you're reading something into the text.
- 56:22
- It's not there. All I'm doing over and over again with you is reading the text. That's all I'm doing. Well, you're failing to listen to the truth.
- 56:29
- No, no. This is a new doctrine that's got to come out. I understand. It's a false doctrine from the devil.
- 56:36
- No, it ain't. It's a new doctrine. It's a new doctrine. Yeah. Well, the Catholics are right.
- 56:42
- You have to be baptized to be saved. You know why this doctrine that you're telling me is the doctrine of men?
- 56:50
- Because it's not coming from the word of God. See, all I'm doing is having to read the word of God, and it contradicts what you say.
- 56:57
- This is Jesus Christ commanding people. He said to them, not to himself.
- 57:04
- Jesus came and said to them, all authority in heaven and on earth has been given me.
- 57:09
- Go make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the
- 57:15
- Father, Son, Holy Spirit. So this is Jesus commanding people, his disciples here.
- 57:21
- And it tells you exactly who's here in verse 16. Now the 11 disciples went to Galilee.
- 57:27
- He's not saying it to the crowds. He said this to the 11 disciples, and he gave them a command. So he's commanding them to baptize.
- 57:34
- So when you say that baptism ended with Jesus, with his baptism, then
- 57:41
- Jesus would have to be in sin to command them to go and baptize. Okay, from what you just said, the command is for us to baptize.
- 57:50
- How many of you guys baptize disciples on a regular basis? Because that's the command.
- 57:58
- That's called a fallacious argument because it has absolutely nothing to do with the point.
- 58:04
- It has a lot to do with it. That doesn't explain the text of Scripture, Patrick.
- 58:12
- Well, if you don't baptize, you're going against the Scripture. Okay. And there's some churches that won't allow you to baptize.
- 58:23
- That's fine, Patrick. That has nothing to do with the text and the argument you're making. What you're doing now, it's called a red herring.
- 58:29
- And for folks who don't know what a red herring is, it's when you're changing topics to avoid something you said that the
- 58:36
- Scripture is proving you're wrong. Instead of submitting to Scripture, instead of submitting to God's Word, you're sticking to your belief system, a man -made system.
- 58:47
- You know, this may be, I don't know you personally, but maybe this has to do with some of why you're not attending a church is because these sort of teachings you have are false.
- 58:58
- And they're easily proven in Scripture. I mean, you brought up two passages. All I had to do is read the
- 59:05
- Scripture. That was it. Well, let me ask you a question, Andrew. Last week, you said
- 59:11
- John the Baptist baptized Gentiles so they become Jewish. What did you mean by that?
- 59:17
- Well, what John the Baptist was doing was called a mitzvah. You know what that is? Well, yeah,
- 59:24
- I know a little bit about that, yeah. It's a ceremonial washing, I guess. Yeah, when a
- 59:30
- Gentile becomes a Jew, they would have this washing. And that was the only time we see a washing like that.
- 59:40
- So here you have John the Baptist doing this in public.
- 59:46
- And he's saying it's for repentance, which is what would be for the Gentile who becomes a
- 59:51
- Jew. It's for repentance. Well, then all those Gentiles that were baptized in John the
- 59:58
- Baptist days, according to you, in Acts 19, all had to be re -baptized? Well, actually, the text, the thing that threw the
- 01:00:09
- Pharisees off was that he wasn't doing this to Gentiles. He was doing it to Jews. For what?
- 01:00:15
- For ceremonial washing? Well, that was the thing they couldn't understand. But the funny thing is today, if you ask a
- 01:00:23
- Christian where water baptism starts, they'll go to John the Baptist. And it had nothing to do with Christian's believer baptism.
- 01:00:32
- Yeah, I don't know anyone that goes there. Oh, John the Baptist is, most
- 01:00:37
- Christians think that John the Baptist started believer's baptism.
- 01:00:43
- And we already said, if you look at Acts 19, that there would be a difference there. Because here you see that Apollos comes to Paul and talks about John's baptism, that he only knew of John's baptism in verse 4.
- 01:00:57
- That's right. He was wrong. Of John's baptism. And what does he do? He baptizes him.
- 01:01:02
- Why? Because there's a difference in that baptism. Paul didn't baptize Apollos. So, it says here, he asks in, well, let's just read in verse 2.
- 01:01:15
- And he said to them, did you receive the Holy Spirit when you believed? And he said, no, we've not even heard.
- 01:01:21
- There is a Holy Spirit. And he said, into what were you baptized? And they said, with John's baptism.
- 01:01:27
- And Paul said, John baptized with the baptism of repentance, telling people to believe the one who was to come.
- 01:01:38
- That is Jesus. And upon hearing this, they were baptized. In the
- 01:01:44
- Holy Spirit, I believe. But listen, you just made a point there.
- 01:01:49
- You've got to stop adding to the text. Listen, Paul, when he met up with those
- 01:01:54
- Gentiles. Those disciples. You have to recognize this is the third time you've done this.
- 01:02:00
- We read the scripture and you go, well, I believe. It doesn't matter if you believe. It matters what scripture says.
- 01:02:08
- And now this is the third time scripture. Okay, I'm sorry. What you believe. Well, let's go back over what you just read.
- 01:02:16
- So, Paul says, hold on. What baptism did you receive? He specified Holy Spirit baptism.
- 01:02:22
- Patrick, do you submit to scripture? Do I what? Do you submit yourself to scripture?
- 01:02:30
- Oh, yeah. I mean, I'm a born again Christian. Scripture is, you know, agrees with your belief system.
- 01:02:36
- Do you give up your false belief system? Well, I believe that what
- 01:02:42
- I'm doing is going to be a common doctrine in the future. But it's false.
- 01:02:48
- We've just shown this. Well, according to you. No, according to according to you.
- 01:02:53
- Listen, you interpreted and read something into scripture. All I did was read the scripture.
- 01:03:00
- That's all I did. Well, if we go back to where I started with John 1 to 34.
- 01:03:09
- John the Baptist, the only reason he used water to baptize was to search for a dove. That's not what the text says either.
- 01:03:17
- Yes, it is. No, no, no. It says that the one who sent him to baptize with water told him that he would be able to identify the
- 01:03:27
- Messiah. But nowhere in the text does it say that's the reason why he baptized. Yeah, it does.
- 01:03:33
- In NIV it says. He's also fulfilling the Old Testament where he is the voice crying out in the wilderness.
- 01:03:39
- He's bringing people back to repentance so they can prepare themselves for the coming Messiah. Well, that's another part of my, that's chapter 2 of my theory.
- 01:03:47
- I could, I could. So you admit it's a theory, it's not, it's not actually. It's a theory, it's a theory, but all theories sometimes become truth.
- 01:03:56
- No, they never become truth when they disagree with God. Okay. And that's what yours does. So if you gave.
- 01:04:02
- Patrick, Patrick, just listen, because I'm concerned for your soul here. Okay. That's what
- 01:04:07
- I don't. You guys talk like that. That's not good. It's true because what you're saying is not only you're saying things, we're showing you what
- 01:04:16
- Scripture says and you're ignoring God's word. And, you know, in, in James chapter 4 or 5,
- 01:04:25
- I'd have to look. It says when you do this, you're putting yourself as a judge over God. When you, when you judge his word.
- 01:04:31
- I'm preaching the gospel. You are not because Scripture disagrees with you. You're not submitting to Scripture.
- 01:04:37
- The Scripture doesn't align with what you're saying. It says, and when we point this out, you want to jump somewhere else and ignore that.
- 01:04:44
- You just ripped something out of its context. Well, what about Mark 16, 16?
- 01:04:51
- Do you believe that is water baptism or Holy Spirit baptism? Well, I don't believe Mark 16, 16 is, was in the canon.
- 01:04:59
- Well, now that's, that's heresy. What you just said. Really? You're telling me that Mark 16, 16 is not in the canon.
- 01:05:06
- Well, it wasn't in any of the early manuscripts. But you're telling me you're, you just ripped pages out of the
- 01:05:12
- Bible. No, no, no, no. No, you added words. You added things to the Bible. Can you, can you show me in any of the early manuscripts of Mark?
- 01:05:20
- Can you show me where the last couple of passages of Mark, anything after chapter verse 9 appears?
- 01:05:29
- I think it's in all the Bibles that I look at. You've looked at the Greek or the early manuscripts of the
- 01:05:34
- Greek. Well, now you're, you're telling us that all the Bibles out there today are not really good.
- 01:05:39
- Well, actually, if you look at the Bibles that you have today, they'll have a footnote that says that the earliest manuscripts don't include verses 9 to 20.
- 01:05:49
- And if you actually looked at the manuscript, you'd see that there were actually four different endings for that passage.
- 01:05:56
- Yeah, but that's the heresy, I think, in that those. Yes, it is the heresy that you're teaching.
- 01:06:01
- I agree. It is heresy because when you're presented with God's word and you ignore it, you did it three times tonight.
- 01:06:10
- I didn't even have to, I didn't provide any interpretation. I just read it. And your interpretation disagrees with what scripture says.
- 01:06:20
- And you're not repenting of that. Well, let me ask you a question. Mark 16, 16 is a false statement, according to you.
- 01:06:28
- I didn't say that. Well, you said it's not supposed to be understood in the Bible because it's not in the other
- 01:06:33
- Bible. Not in the early manuscripts. God didn't inspire. So you won't agree with that scripture. I'm not going to base a doctrine based off of something that was added to scripture, no.
- 01:06:45
- That's begging the question. How's that begging the question? Can you answer the question?
- 01:06:51
- Can you explain what the question is? Okay. Is Mark 16, 16, a true or false statement?
- 01:06:58
- You said I was begging the question. I want to know if you actually understand the term that you used. Because you won't answer the question because you come up with some...
- 01:07:06
- Begging the question fallacy is when you start with the conclusion and you are, your argument assumes the conclusion that you're taking.
- 01:07:16
- Now, I'm not doing that. So I'm not begging the question. So you're not believing in the scriptures.
- 01:07:22
- Sure I am. I'm the one... Not Mark 16, 16. Because it wasn't in the earliest manuscripts that was added to scripture.
- 01:07:31
- Okay. Well, that's begging the question. Is Patrick familiar with textual variants and things like that?
- 01:07:37
- He clearly isn't. And it's not, it's not, it's not begging the question because I'm not drawing a conclusion that I'm using that to try to prove.
- 01:07:49
- Here's the argument I'm making. It's not in the earliest manuscripts. And in the later manuscripts where we do see the ending of Mark, we see four different endings.
- 01:07:58
- We only see this in the Byzantine manuscripts. Okay. The later ones.
- 01:08:04
- So, so when you, when you make the argument, at least understand what's being said and understand when you say someone's begging the question, understand what you're even saying because you don't even know what that means.
- 01:08:16
- Okay. So you do understand Mark 16 is parallel with Matthew 28.
- 01:08:22
- It is seen to be that way. And so is Luke. The fact is...
- 01:08:28
- Luke 24 is the same. So let's talk about a red herring. You're jumping around trying to change topics again.
- 01:08:36
- Patrick, you made some statements. We looked at scripture. The scripture, just reading the scripture proves that what you said is not true.
- 01:08:45
- Why don't you submit to scripture? Well, Luther and Calvin did the same thing back 500 years ago.
- 01:08:54
- That's a red herring. It has nothing to do with scripture. So if your argument, if your argument has to rely on logical fallacies, then your argument is invalid and false.
- 01:09:09
- Okay. So we'll try this again. It has nothing to do with what Calvin or Luther or anyone else says.
- 01:09:16
- You made a statement, Galatians 2, the scripture contradicts what you said.
- 01:09:24
- No, I don't... Like there's a bigger picture. You got to put them all together and... No, no, you don't.
- 01:09:31
- You don't rip it out of the context and give it a new meaning. That's heresy. Can I ask a question?
- 01:09:37
- Yeah. Patrick. Yes. I would be interested in what you think of Acts 10, verse 47, which is post -resurrection and ascension.
- 01:09:49
- Can anyone withhold water for baptizing these people who have received the Holy Spirit just as we have?
- 01:09:55
- And he commanded them to be baptized in the name of Jesus Christ, and they asked him to remain for some days. It seems like who can withhold water for baptizing?
- 01:10:03
- Well, the answer to that is no one. Look, the Holy Spirit has walked upon them. Let's engage in water baptism.
- 01:10:09
- It seems to suggest that's what's happening in the text. That's where Peter made his mistake going against the vision, calling them unclean.
- 01:10:17
- He was calling them unclean by ceremonial washing. That's not what the scripture says. I'm not sure where you're getting that from.
- 01:10:24
- You have to get... Patrick, just... The vision was warning him. Okay, Patrick, when scripture disagrees with you, and you continue to double down on this, and you say this is a teaching that you hope would be taught further.
- 01:10:38
- I think so, yeah. This is how heresy begins. You're teaching something that is not from scripture.
- 01:10:47
- Okay? Well, all I have to say... It doesn't matter if you call it a mystery. I mean, hear me out.
- 01:10:53
- It doesn't matter that you call it a mystery. I know that this is something that you have studied, and you've come to a conclusion, but you need to question whether your conclusion could be wrong.
- 01:11:03
- The reason is because both Eli and I have taken you through several passages of scripture and shown you that the scripture does not say what you say it says.
- 01:11:15
- And instead of you saying, oh, well, that's what scripture says I'm going to submit to God's word, you're twisting
- 01:11:22
- God's word and adding something into scripture that it doesn't say, and then saying this is a new teaching that the church should hold on to.
- 01:11:30
- No, it shouldn't. The church should never teach the doctrines of men. And if you can't support your argument from scripture in context, but you have to rip it out of its context and slam it together with other verses, that's not
- 01:11:45
- God's word. And that's not good for you. Was it a true statement when
- 01:11:52
- Jesus called Peter Satan? Okay, that's a red herring.
- 01:11:57
- It has nothing to do with the topic. No, it does. Because Peter had a history of betraying or denying
- 01:12:06
- Jesus. He had a history of twisting scripture just like Satan does. So should we call you
- 01:12:11
- Satan? I mean, you're doing the same thing that Satan is doing. The text itself, though, tells us clearly when
- 01:12:21
- Jesus calls Peter Satan, clearly it's obvious that what Peter is saying is wrong. The text you're quoting, or when
- 01:12:28
- I quoted that verse in Acts, it doesn't say anything about any mistaken notion when it says, can we prevent water for baptism?
- 01:12:37
- There's no mention there that he's acting inappropriately. What you're doing is going to another text, drawing out a conclusion, and then reading that back into the text that I just quoted.
- 01:12:47
- Yeah, but in Galatians 2 where Paul opposes
- 01:12:52
- Peter, the reference in my Bible brings you back to Acts 10. Well, it doesn't matter what a reference that some man puts in there.
- 01:13:02
- Right. When you have a conclusion that disagrees with what scripture— References aren't inspired.
- 01:13:09
- Yeah. Thank you. That's what I was going to say. Patrick, I don't know how—we're trying.
- 01:13:16
- We're really trying to help you, but I think that it's almost where your knowledge has puffed you up and you're not listening to what wise men are trying to say.
- 01:13:29
- Hold on, James. Let me add you in because you're— Yeah, let James come in. Let me add—yeah,
- 01:13:34
- I just have to add you into— because otherwise folks weren't hearing you,
- 01:13:40
- James, so that's why I had to—go ahead. Yeah, Andrew, last week in our discussion, you told me that Matthew 28, 19 through 20 is not speaking of water baptism, and that's what
- 01:13:52
- Patrick had asked you just now, if Matthew 28, 19 through 20, if he was commanding his apostles and disciples to actually go out and water baptize different people of different nations.
- 01:14:03
- Yeah, we didn't— You and I didn't address Matthew 28, though, last week. We certainly did. I brought it up.
- 01:14:09
- Anybody could go back and listen to it, and you'll see that I brought it up. Yeah, we were—but you brought it up.
- 01:14:14
- You brought up a lot of different things, and we stayed to one passage, like I'm trying to do with Patrick here. Okay, your passage was
- 01:14:21
- Acts 2, 37 to 38. Until we got done with that, we weren't going to move on. Just like with James, I'm not going to move on until we get
- 01:14:27
- Galatians 2. Yeah, but I had brought up Matthew 28, 19 through 20, and you told me that's not water baptism.
- 01:14:34
- That's Holy Spirit baptism. In Acts 2. Anybody can go back and hear you.
- 01:14:40
- Yeah, in Acts 2, and it's very clear. In Acts 2, Matthew 28, 19 through 20, you said—
- 01:14:46
- That wasn't what we discussed. —that's not water baptism. See, this is—you were trying to be the steamroller and just throwing up a bunch of verses.
- 01:14:55
- I wasn't addressing that. I was addressing Acts 2. But you did address Matthew 28, 19 through 20 because I specifically cited
- 01:15:02
- Matthew 28, 19 through 20, and you said that— And I specifically answered Acts 2.
- 01:15:08
- I specifically mentioned that you were doing the red herring just like Patrick is doing, and you were trying to switch the topics.
- 01:15:16
- See, the fact is you said Acts 2 was the water baptism, and it doesn't change that.
- 01:15:22
- I asked you specifically about Matthew 28, 19 through 20, and you told me specifically that it's not referring to water baptism.
- 01:15:30
- Okay, well, you'll have to get the exact minute mark on the video and let me know where that is. So now you disagree.
- 01:15:37
- You do believe that it is referring to water baptism. I'm disagreeing with your account of reality, yes.
- 01:15:43
- Well, I'm asking you, do you agree that it's referring to water baptism, yes or no? That wasn't our discussion.
- 01:15:50
- It's a yes or no. I'm asking you right now, does Matthew 28, 19 through 20 refer to water baptism?
- 01:15:56
- Matthew 28, yes. It's water baptism. Okay, so—and Matt Slick agrees with that because in our debate—
- 01:16:02
- Big deal. So Matt Slick agrees. So in our debate with—my debate with Matt Slick, he agreed that Matthew 28, 19 through 20 refers to water baptism, and he also agreed that Acts 238 is speaking— when it says baptism, it's speaking water baptism.
- 01:16:18
- Yeah, and the text doesn't agree with you. All I did was read the text. I could read it to you again.
- 01:16:23
- And you said that I'm committing a logical fallacy, which means Matt Slick is committing a logical fallacy by agreeing with me that—
- 01:16:31
- No, this is the thing you do with Matt. What you do with Matt is you make a claim, and then you tell him he believes something, and anyone could go back and see
- 01:16:42
- Matt several times in your debate corrected you and said he does not believe what you claimed he would believe.
- 01:16:49
- Well, anyone can go back and listen to our water baptism debate, and they'll see that Matt actually agreed with me that—
- 01:16:56
- No, he corrected you. You said he agreed with you because you said it, but he kept correcting you.
- 01:17:02
- So, James, tell me this. I'm curious. Why would Matt have to correct you when you say he believes something?
- 01:17:10
- Why would he have to correct you and say he doesn't if he actually believed it? Well, he never corrected me on Acts 238.
- 01:17:16
- He agreed with me that that baptism in Acts 238 is water baptism. He didn't correct me and say, no, it's not water baptism, which is what you are claiming.
- 01:17:25
- You're claiming it's not water baptism. Okay, so for folks who see, this is the equivocation now.
- 01:17:31
- He wants to go to the one thing of the water baptism in Acts and then say that Matt's agreeing on that.
- 01:17:39
- Therefore, he's agreeing on something else. All Matt disagreed with me on was that it was a formula for salvation.
- 01:17:48
- He never rejected the fact that the baptism in Acts 238 is referring to water baptism.
- 01:17:54
- You're the one that rejects the fact that it's speaking of water baptism. I reject your claim that water baptism is necessary for salvation.
- 01:18:06
- I can explain how we know that it's speaking of water baptism. Okay, so here's the thing. Let's read the text.
- 01:18:14
- I know you have your interpretation, but just like with Patrick, all I need to do is read. I can explain why it's speaking of water baptism if you allow me to speak.
- 01:18:24
- Yeah, but I'm not going to allow you to speak when I'm speaking. And I'm reading the passage. Okay? Are you that afraid of Scripture?
- 01:18:32
- You're afraid of Scripture? You can't allow Scripture to be read? We went over the Scripture last week.
- 01:18:38
- It says, repent and be baptized. Okay, and you're afraid of Scripture. And you shall receive the
- 01:18:43
- Holy Spirit. This is beautiful. So, folks, this is what you have with Roman Catholics because it's their church that they worship.
- 01:18:49
- They can't handle Scripture. Their interpretation, their private interpretation is more important than Scripture.
- 01:18:56
- I have a question. You want the Scripture to be read. Why? Because the Scripture disagrees with what has been written.
- 01:19:03
- I just read it. I just read it for your listening audience. So it says, now when they heard this, they were cut to the heart and said to Peter and the rest of the apostles, brothers, what shall we do?
- 01:19:23
- And Peter said to them, repent and be baptized, every one of you, in the name of Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of sins, that you may receive the gift of the
- 01:19:32
- Holy Spirit, for the promise is for you and to your children and for all who are far off, everyone whom the
- 01:19:43
- Lord God calls to himself. Now, your argument that you made is that water baptism was necessary for salvation and the cutting of the heart was their salvation.
- 01:19:56
- But the baptism occurred when? Afterwards. Now, we mentioned... You're putting words in my mouth and you did that last week.
- 01:20:03
- I didn't do that last week and you did that. You're saying, you said, and I didn't say what you just said.
- 01:20:11
- So this is how we do this. We just turn his volume down while we finish a sentence. Okay, for folks who need to see,
- 01:20:18
- James comes in here often. This is what he does. He comes in and tries to talk over the host.
- 01:20:23
- Okay. You're welcome to get your own show and you want to have me come in.
- 01:20:29
- I'll come in. But the reality is, is that when I'm making a point and you can't let me finish a point, just like you do with Matt, it's only because your argument is failed and you know it.
- 01:20:41
- So you came in last week and you said this verse proves that there was three things necessary for salvation.
- 01:20:51
- Baptism, repentance, and belief. That's what you said. You said you're reading the scripture.
- 01:20:58
- I read the scripture and it didn't say that. That is... We can go back and look at that.
- 01:21:04
- Now, if you want to show me where I supposedly was saying, okay, that this is not that,
- 01:21:13
- I'm going to say that I read the scripture to you, which is what I want to do again. And you wanted to talk over it.
- 01:21:19
- So let's go. Let's try this again. I'm going to bring your volume up and we're going to see if you can have a civil discourse.
- 01:21:25
- If you're going to try to talk over and try to not allow civil discourse.
- 01:21:30
- And if you're going to try to do a rapid fire steamroller type maneuver, that's fine.
- 01:21:38
- The reality is your steamroller isn't going to work here because I can mute you. And then we'll finish a sentence.
- 01:21:46
- And that's what we're going to do every time you do that now. And I'm telling you that up front. So if you continue the behavior, you're being muted and I'll finish a sentence.
- 01:21:53
- So when I start speaking, like I let you finish a sentence, you'll let me finish a sentence.
- 01:22:01
- But if you're going to ramble on on something that's not what we're discussing or you're going to go off on a different tangent or want to jump to another verse instead of the one we're dealing with, you get muted.
- 01:22:11
- Okay. Fair enough. Well, I'd like to ask
- 01:22:16
- Elias a question. Fair enough. I'll say to you, Elias, I'm not sure how to pronounce your name.
- 01:22:23
- Okay. We're going to try this again. I'm going to ask a question and you're going to answer the question. All right.
- 01:22:28
- So these are the rules we're going to go by. You're going to follow the rules or you're going to be muted.
- 01:22:36
- Now, the question is, is it fair enough for you to follow the rules?
- 01:22:41
- I'm going to bring you back up. Is that fair enough for you? Can you obey rules? Well, it's your platform.
- 01:22:48
- I mean, you have control and I'm sure you're going to go ahead and silence me and censor me because I bring the truth and you don't have the truth.
- 01:22:54
- So you're going to do what you're going to do. Okay. So you're not going to follow rules. That's what you're saying.
- 01:22:59
- No, I said it's your platform. I'll do as you're going to follow the rules. We always go through with you.
- 01:23:07
- It's a simple yes or no. Will you follow the rules? It's not answering the question. Well, I don't even know what the rules are.
- 01:23:13
- You just said it. You're not even paying attention to what he said.
- 01:23:18
- Okay. He said it like what, three times? Okay, I'll follow the rules. Fine. To continue the conversation,
- 01:23:24
- I'll follow the rules. Go ahead. You're going to silence me anyway because you're a bad rule and you're a liar, but go ahead. Well, now
- 01:23:30
- I might just boot you for being rude again. So all
- 01:23:35
- I'm asking is that you be respectful to people and you're not doing that. Okay? So am
- 01:23:42
- I speaking of Scripture is disrespectful, bringing up Scripture that's disrespectful? No, you're insulting of me.
- 01:23:49
- You're speaking over people. You're telling people what I believe. Let's not insult you.
- 01:23:56
- You don't insult me. I don't insult you. Let's just focus on Scripture. Let's focus on Acts 2, 37 and 38.
- 01:24:02
- Okay, so I just told you not to speak over me, and what did you do? You did it immediately.
- 01:24:07
- So are you going to follow the rules, yes or no? Yes. You're not going to speak over people?
- 01:24:14
- No. You're going to answer direct questions directly? Are you going to speak over me when
- 01:24:19
- I'm speaking? Are you going to answer direct questions directly? I will.
- 01:24:24
- Are you going to speak over me when I'm speaking? I will cut you off if you start asking a question that's not direct.
- 01:24:32
- Okay, well, we tried, folks. We're just going to have to say goodbye to him. Andrew, can
- 01:24:39
- I ask a question, Andrew? Yeah, sure. Hold on one second, Patrick, because I need to explain why I did that for folks, because he's going to go off and claim he won a victory because I couldn't answer his question.
- 01:24:48
- No. I asked him, and, folks, you heard this several times. I know Patrick even was kind of chuckling and laughing there, but several times,
- 01:24:55
- I just asked him not to interrupt, not to speak over, okay? This is a pattern he does.
- 01:25:01
- It's a tactic. For folks who don't debate, okay, this is a tactic that people do when they have a failed argument.
- 01:25:09
- What they do is they speak over someone. They don't answer direct questions.
- 01:25:15
- A yes or no question just takes a yes or no. When you start going off and you avoid answering over and over and over again like he does, that's what you end up seeing.
- 01:25:25
- And I just wanted him to commit to saying he would follow the rules. He wouldn't commit to that.
- 01:25:30
- He finally said he would and then immediately breaks the rules. So, Patrick, go ahead. And then
- 01:25:36
- I want to make sure we give time for Luke. In Acts 2 .37, 38, is that a true statement?
- 01:25:45
- Is Acts 2 .37 and 38 a true statement? I'm not sure
- 01:25:51
- I fully understand what you mean by a true statement. Does baptism have something to do with salvation?
- 01:25:59
- This doesn't say that you have to be baptized to be saved. Well, isn't that what the disciples asked
- 01:26:09
- Peter, what must we do to be saved? And he says repent, right?
- 01:26:15
- But they don't say what we must do to be saved, does it? It says repent and be baptized.
- 01:26:21
- Yeah, but here's the thing. They were already saved when they heard and were cut to the heart, right?
- 01:26:28
- And it doesn't say what must we do to be saved, does it? You added a word there to Scripture.
- 01:26:34
- What does it say? Well, what's the baptism got to do with it after they received the
- 01:26:40
- Holy Spirit? Well, I would say that what the baptism has to do, as we see in Romans 6, is an outward symbol of an inward change.
- 01:26:52
- Now, I'm going to take this from a different perspective of people who would hold to covenant theology. They would see that as a covenant sign, so they're going to have a different view of it because they're going to see the baptism as a sign of the covenant.
- 01:27:07
- But again, that's still going to be a symbolic act, not a saving act, but a symbolic act of something that had affected them.
- 01:27:18
- But in Romans 8, I think that's all about the baptism of the
- 01:27:26
- Holy Spirit. Why are we going to Romans 8 now? Why are we changing the verse again?
- 01:27:33
- Well, because it talks about... Yeah, but the verse that you brought up doesn't say what you said it says.
- 01:27:41
- So are you willing to avoid and repent of saying that baptism is necessary for salvation because you said it says, what shall we do to be saved?
- 01:27:54
- And it doesn't say that, it says, what shall we do? What I said is the baptism of the
- 01:27:59
- Holy Spirit saved. You can't deny that. I'd never denied that. But the point is, you said here that it says, what must we do to be saved?
- 01:28:09
- And Peter said to them, repent and be baptized. Okay, what does it say in your
- 01:28:15
- Bible? It says, what shall we do? Well, they're asking him a question, and he says, repent and be baptized.
- 01:28:25
- Yeah. But I think it's referring to the baptism of the Holy Spirit. That's nice.
- 01:28:31
- You could think that all you want. You know, Matt Slick, he comes up with a theory that there wasn't enough time or people to baptize 2 ,000 people in one day.
- 01:28:45
- Yes, Matt and I have discussed that. He's wrong. And we've debated that. His numbers are off because he only goes with 12 people, not 120 people.
- 01:28:57
- We have a disagreement on that. Big deal. The fact is, you just went to a red herring instead of looking at what the text says.
- 01:29:04
- I mean, I don't understand. This is like the fifth passage of Scripture with you.
- 01:29:11
- Yeah, well, you're not giving me a chance to explain myself, but that's all right. But look, when you take a passage of Scripture, okay?
- 01:29:21
- Isn't that what a Bible study is, is when you go and study the Bible with Scripture? That's right.
- 01:29:26
- In my opinion, the Bible isn't a book. It's a map. And you have to put it together.
- 01:29:34
- Well, in that case, we have to put a picture up there. And there you go. That's your way. It's a map.
- 01:29:41
- That's what you have. The Bible study of the Bible. And when listen,
- 01:29:48
- Patrick, when we have the Scripture, okay, when we have Scripture and you have a passage of Scripture and you say it says one thing.
- 01:29:56
- But the simple reading of the Scripture disagrees with you and says something. You say it's the opposite of what you're saying.
- 01:30:03
- And then you say, no, no, no. But we have to take that and then jump over here and take this out of its context. And then jump over here and take this out of its context.
- 01:30:10
- That's not how you follow Scripture. That's not study. That is twisting of Scripture. That should cause you to have serious concern.
- 01:30:19
- Because the fact is, is that this is the behavior we see from Satan twisting
- 01:30:24
- Scripture. You don't want to behave like him, do you? Well, Scripture says there's one baptism.
- 01:30:31
- You're ignoring the question. Do you want to behave like Satan? That's not the question.
- 01:30:38
- The question is, do you know the truth? I mean, you may be wrong.
- 01:30:46
- You might be wrong. I've always admitted that I could be wrong. Right. Okay. I'm not like you.
- 01:30:51
- I'm not saying that I'm right. And I'm disagreeing with Scripture and saying that I'm right anyway. But you're not letting people continue with their conversation.
- 01:31:02
- But we're stopped every time you come to a passage of Scripture that you take out of context. All right. And we show that that's not what
- 01:31:09
- Scripture says. You're trying to build an argument. Okay. And I understand that.
- 01:31:14
- But a logical argument, when you have a premise and then you support the premise, okay, to draw a conclusion, if your argument is invalid, if you're taking, in this case, you're taking something out of context and you're giving it a new meaning, then you cannot continue on with the argument.
- 01:31:38
- If you want to put every verse that you argued so far, if you want to put every one of them that you took out of context aside and try to make your argument, that would be one thing.
- 01:31:46
- But so far, in your argument, we've looked at several passages of Scripture, and each one of them doesn't say what you say it says.
- 01:31:57
- I mean, it's each one of them. Well, the truth is, if there was only one baptism, the baptism of the
- 01:32:05
- Holy Spirit, life for a Christian would be a lot easier not having to argue about infant baptism, pouring, sprinkling.
- 01:32:15
- So what? You know what I mean? If you understood the difference between what a non -essential doctrine is and a central doctrine, you would not have these type of arguments.
- 01:32:27
- But the gospel in a nutshell. None of that matters.
- 01:32:33
- The thing that matters is when we've shown you, Eli's shown you, I've shown you, that you're taking passages out of context and giving them wrong meanings.
- 01:32:44
- How do you say no? I think God had led me to Scripture.
- 01:32:51
- You're saying it's a mystery. You're saying we got to jump over here and here and here and here and here. And each time you jump somewhere, the text doesn't say what you say it says.
- 01:33:00
- You read into the text something it doesn't say. I mean, I'm seriously concerned for you.
- 01:33:09
- I'm not. I know I'm saved. I'm born again. And I think God had sent me to preach the truth.
- 01:33:15
- Just like, you know, Paul was chosen to go to the Gentiles because of Peter's mistake at Acts 10.
- 01:33:21
- OK, let me ask you. That's conjecture on your part. Let me ask you a question. You say that God called you to preach the truth.
- 01:33:27
- Is that correct? Sure. That's what a Christian does. OK, then how come you're twisting the
- 01:33:34
- Scripture and not taking the meaning from the Scripture but adding to Scripture?
- 01:33:39
- Why are you doing that? If you're going to teach the truth, the truth is going to be one that is in line with God's word.
- 01:33:46
- Well, like I said, Paul was chosen to go to the Gentiles. Why did God pick
- 01:33:52
- Paul after Peter already was at the Gentiles in Acts 10? There's no
- 01:34:00
- Scripture. There's a reason. Paul was chosen to correct Peter's mistake in Acts 10. What verse is that?
- 01:34:08
- Well, God said. What verse? Now, hold on, hold on. I'm going to be really clear in my question to you so that there's no ambiguity here.
- 01:34:16
- What verse teaches that Paul went to the Gentiles because he was correcting
- 01:34:23
- Peter? Well, not, but the fact is he did go to the Gentiles.
- 01:34:28
- No, you just said you're teaching the truth and that this is what the Scripture says. I'm asking you what verse teaches exactly what you said.
- 01:34:37
- Don't say no and then go to something different. You said this is the truth. You said
- 01:34:43
- Galatians 2 where Paul opposes Peter. About the food eating with Gentiles.
- 01:34:51
- Now, that don't make sense. They wouldn't put that in there because Peter was eating with Gentiles. That wouldn't make sense.
- 01:34:56
- That's what the text says. Don't say it doesn't make sense. You don't understand it. It's what the text says.
- 01:35:03
- You have to look at the vision. The vision Peter had is very important. All right.
- 01:35:09
- All right. I'm going to go. We tried. I mean, you're giving a passage of Scripture a new meaning that it doesn't have.
- 01:35:18
- And then you want to justify it by jumping somewhere else. Patrick, please. If you have time, look at it as if after John the
- 01:35:27
- Baptist baptized Jesus, water baptism ended. That would make more sense for a lot of Scripture.
- 01:35:33
- Oh, yeah. Insert that narrative into that whole. The rest of the New Testament. In order for us to make sense about your doctrine.
- 01:35:43
- What makes more sense is that you, as a man, have a doctrine that's wrong.
- 01:35:48
- That you're reading into Scripture. That makes way more sense. I'll tell you why. Because the Scripture, God's word,
- 01:35:54
- God who cannot lie, doesn't say in his word what you say it says. Okay.
- 01:35:59
- When he gives a clear purpose statement of why Paul confronts Peter, you deny it and want to jump somewhere else to a passage that doesn't have to do with the event that's going on there.
- 01:36:12
- And you give it a meaning. Okay. Just before I leave, read
- 01:36:17
- John 3 .25. All right. We'll humor you.
- 01:36:23
- John 3 .25 says, now a discussion arose between some of John's disciples and a
- 01:36:32
- Jew over purification. Right. What do you think the contents of that was?
- 01:36:39
- John the Baptist's disciples were having a discussion with a
- 01:36:46
- Jew over a mitzvah. I know why.
- 01:36:52
- In some Bibles it says argument. So what? What would they be arguing about if that's what you just said
- 01:37:00
- John the Baptist was sent to do? Because the
- 01:37:07
- Jew is disagreeing or not understanding why, and I said this already earlier, that they were puzzled on why the fact
- 01:37:15
- John would be doing a baptism to Jews or a mitzvah to Jews like this because you wouldn't do that to a
- 01:37:22
- Jew. They're confused. They're having a discussion over it. What if that Jew might have been
- 01:37:28
- Jesus? I don't want to hear any more of your what ifs when Scripture doesn't say what you say it says. Okay.
- 01:37:36
- I don't care. I mean, I don't know how to say this and not sound mad. I don't care what you think
- 01:37:41
- Scripture says. I care what Scripture says. Except for Mark 16 .16.
- 01:37:47
- Oh, wow. Okay. All right. I'm going to end.
- 01:37:53
- I appreciate you. I've got to leave. Okay. Hey, I appreciate your time, guys.
- 01:38:00
- All right, Patrick. Let me encourage you. Go to strivingfraternity .org. Just go to strivingfraternity .org.
- 01:38:07
- Go to our academy. We have 20 lessons on how to interpret the Bible. It's free of charge.
- 01:38:13
- You can watch it on YouTube and learn how to interpret the Bible. You need those lessons. Okay. They're free.
- 01:38:20
- And I'll tell you what, Patrick, for you, I'm going to tell you something. If you're willing to do that, you can contact us.
- 01:38:27
- There's a contact form on that website on strivingfraternity .org. Contact us. Say, I'm Patrick.
- 01:38:33
- I had the baptism debate with Andrew. I would like a free syllabus. Give me your address, and if you're willing to take our class for free,
- 01:38:42
- I will ship you the $25 syllabus free of charge. Okay? Oh, wow. I appreciate that.
- 01:38:48
- Yes. I'll do that. You're going to take the whole class. Okay? Okay. All right.
- 01:38:54
- Okay. Bye -bye. All right. See you, Patrick. Wow, Eli.
- 01:39:01
- I've added Luke in here. He was kind of waiting, and he came in and out and in and out. So sorry about that.
- 01:39:09
- That's heresy, Patrick. Yeah. Luke, how are you?
- 01:39:16
- Welcome. I'm doing great. I'm doing great. Can you guys hear me okay? Yeah, we can. I see a little bobbing head there, though.
- 01:39:22
- A little muffled, but, yeah. Yeah. Oh, look. See, no one cares about you.
- 01:39:27
- You put a cute little kid in camera. I mean, I'm sorry, Luke. We don't care about you.
- 01:39:33
- Look at that kid. It's Elmo. Yeah, someone made this dress for her. It's a dress.
- 01:39:40
- Okay. Did you have a question?
- 01:39:50
- I got a cold. Okay. Sorry, let me mute him.
- 01:39:57
- All right. Sorry, we couldn't hear you over Patrick. Luke, did you have a question for us tonight?
- 01:40:05
- I do have a question for you guys. So, the last couple of weeks, and even this week,
- 01:40:15
- I really want to ask about the principle of the analogy of faith. When does the analogy of faith go from being a helpful principle to going into proof texting, which is not how we're supposed to interpret the
- 01:40:30
- Bible? Okay. So, I understand your meaning. Can you define what you mean by analogy of faith?
- 01:40:37
- Okay. So, the analogy of faith essentially says that because Scripture does not contradict itself, we can use clear passages to interpret less clear passages.
- 01:40:49
- So, for tough verses, sometimes it's easier to go to other passages that we can understand, okay, this is not what it's saying because it can't contradict a particular passage.
- 01:41:00
- And generally, this is used, like with the James 2 discussion, when
- 01:41:06
- James says, you know, works by faith and all that kind of stuff, we know that he's, we can say, well, he's not meaning, you know, works save you because we know
- 01:41:17
- Paul in a different place says that we are saved from faith apart from works. And so, there can't be the contradiction.
- 01:41:24
- Therefore, there has to be a particular meaning to that. So, my question is, and the reason why I ask this is because I think, thinking about how to defend the faith, how to build biblical doctrines, how to help us try to articulate what that means.
- 01:41:41
- Essentially, I feel like we should really kind of understand the difference between when does this principle, which
- 01:41:47
- I think is a good one, go from being helpful to becoming proof -texting. Because, you go back with vocab, a couple weeks ago, the
- 01:41:56
- Hebrew Israelites, or whatever they call themselves, they believe proof -texting is the way you interpret
- 01:42:01
- Scripture. So, that isn't right. However, though, I would think that if we have particular biblical doctrines, like, let's say, our doctrine of baptism, we don't get that from a single, solitary verse.
- 01:42:17
- There's multiple verses that talk about baptism, and talk about what it is, what it means, how it relates to the
- 01:42:25
- Christians. So, my question is just, what would be a good, helpful principle to try to differentiate between when we're actually building good biblical doctrines, using the analogy of faith, depending on what verse we're using, or when we spiral off into proof -texting, which
- 01:42:43
- I think ends up happening a lot of times because we're not, instead of trying to just jump around to different places.
- 01:42:51
- Yeah. That's the idea. Well, okay, so proof -texting is typically where you take one verse, typically what you see is people, like we saw tonight, someone will take it out of its context, take another verse out of its context, give it a new meaning, and put it together.
- 01:43:08
- Okay? Now, for the example, you used the James 2 .15
- 01:43:14
- and following passage. See, I don't argue, well,
- 01:43:20
- Paul makes it clear in other passages, so we know this can't mean that. We can make that argument there.
- 01:43:26
- But I could argue that right from James, which is what I do. I start in verse 14, where he explains he's giving an answer to a hypothetical question, that there's a guy that claims he already has faith.
- 01:43:41
- But once you get there, that whole argument that people make, that works are necessary to gain faith, can't be possible.
- 01:43:49
- Why? Because in verse 14, he's talking about someone that already says he has the faith. So if he has the faith, then the works are after faith, not before.
- 01:44:01
- And that's what he's answering there. So I don't need to do that, but what you do see is that we do go to the clearer passages to interpret the more difficult passages.
- 01:44:14
- So where I would give a better example would be maybe Hebrews 6.
- 01:44:20
- Some people think Hebrews 6 teaches that people can lose their salvation. We can look at Romans 8, makes it very clear that there's no way you can lose your salvation, and it's speaking of regeneration.
- 01:44:35
- Well, Hebrews 6 doesn't say that it's specifically speaking of regeneration. It says that people who've tasted the light.
- 01:44:44
- Well, what does that mean? You see, now you have to figure out what the meaning of that is.
- 01:44:50
- What fits better in that context as we examine it, we don't have time tonight, but what we look at is the fact that as we look at it, you see that there could be people who they receive some truth by sitting in church, but not being believers.
- 01:45:08
- That doesn't agree with any passage of Scripture. So as a general principle, the thing we first want to do is interpret within the immediate context.
- 01:45:20
- I mean, that's what Patrick was having trouble doing. And you want to stay to the immediate context and interpret there before you jump anywhere else.
- 01:45:33
- Now, if from the immediate context, it's hard to understand or there's something in the context that's not making sense, then maybe going out to the broader context of the book or the broader context of that author or then the broader context of maybe the
- 01:45:51
- New Testament or the entire Bible may come into place. But notice the onion peel that I give you there.
- 01:45:57
- You start with immediate context. Then you're going to go to the context around it, that immediate context.
- 01:46:05
- Then you're going to go to that book. Then you're going to go to the author. Then the
- 01:46:10
- New Testament. Then the whole Bible. If you're in the
- 01:46:15
- Old Testament, it's going to be reversed. But you see there's different layers that we do because there are going to be some words that certain authors like to use, and they like to use it a certain way that may be different than other authors' use of the word.
- 01:46:29
- Yeah, and that's just kind of something that I was thinking about because I think it's helpful to understand, especially for us as we engage with other people, to kind of have as you put in the onion or the concentric circles around, okay, we start in the immediate context, context of the book, chapter, and move out from there.
- 01:46:49
- Whereas what you don't want to do is have a verse and then just cherry pick something else from somewhere else.
- 01:46:55
- That's kind of what I am kind of wanting to talk about, is talking about those differences like when can, because sometimes there are texts that are very clear in their own right, but then there are other texts that aren't very clear.
- 01:47:12
- Yeah, and so if you have a passage, if you have a choice between two passages, you always use the clear to interpret the less clear, because the clear can be understood, right?
- 01:47:26
- Absolutely. I mean, for example, with Tonight with Patrick, the clear in Galatians 2 is that Peter was withdrawing from eating with the
- 01:47:37
- Gentiles when the party of the circumcision came. That's the clear. What's not clear is that the real division was over baptism.
- 01:47:48
- That's not clear. I think that was inserted there.
- 01:47:54
- Yeah, just a little, just a little. So, all right, I want to give a couple of minutes for Eli here, if I can,
- 01:48:03
- Eli. You had, okay, so I'm going to get myself in trouble, John, you can't laugh too hard.
- 01:48:10
- I'm going to call this our flower power moment. In honor of Leighton Flowers, and for folks who don't know,
- 01:48:21
- Leighton is someone, I consider him a friend, but we do disagree theologically a lot, but he is a nice guy, but I'm giving a little bit of a jab because, you know, his view of our salvation is man has free will, and so I guess man would have the power, and since his last name is
- 01:48:43
- Flowers, we're going to call this the flower power. I'm sure he's going to do an hour -long show on me for that.
- 01:48:51
- Okay, so Eli, you this week had a, you were on his program, and you got to discuss with him, and I thought we'd actually have a lot more time to discuss this.
- 01:49:02
- You can go longer if you want. Yeah, well, we can always bring it on in the after show if we need, but we can go a little bit. So give us your take of the show, how you felt it went, and I know you didn't go on his show to debate him as much as you went on there to better understand his position, so for folks that watch that, they should be aware of that, but how did you feel that the discussion went?
- 01:49:27
- Well, first, the reason why I went on was he had done a video response to my interaction with an atheist,
- 01:49:36
- Doug from Pine Creek. I don't know if you're familiar with Pine Creek at all, and he entitled his, he entitled the podcast,
- 01:49:45
- The Practical Failure of Calvinistic Evangelism, and I kind of thought that was a misrepresentation because the context of that conversation
- 01:49:54
- I had with the fellow atheist wasn't primarily an evangelistic context.
- 01:50:00
- He actually invited me onto his show to explain why I believe what
- 01:50:05
- I believe, and he invited me on the show as a response to a video that I had made that went kind of semi -viral, critiquing a guy who said that every person in the
- 01:50:15
- Bible was mythological. So it's not like, the things that I said to the atheist are not things that I jump into evangelism with.
- 01:50:24
- I don't start talking about deep theology and God's degrees and things like that with the average person.
- 01:50:29
- So I thought that it would have been nicer if Dr. Flowers, because we are friends on Facebook, that he would have just heads up, hey,
- 01:50:37
- I want to make sure I got my facts right. I'm going to do a little response to this, and that would have given me an opportunity to respond.
- 01:50:43
- I actually learned from a private message from another friend on Facebook just telling me that Dr.
- 01:50:49
- Flowers did that, and I kind of thought that wasn't, I don't think that he went about it the best way.
- 01:50:55
- And so I reached out to Dr. Flowers, and he invited me onto his show to kind of explain my position, and being familiar with Dr.
- 01:51:03
- Flowers, what he does and focuses his energies on, I didn't want to get into a debate.
- 01:51:10
- I really wanted to be honest, even after hearing a lot of what he says, I'm not really sure the ins and outs of his own perspective.
- 01:51:17
- So I honestly and genuinely wanted to know what he believed. And so he invited me on.
- 01:51:23
- We had a very respectful conversation. He didn't treat me with disrespect, and we had a good conversation,
- 01:51:30
- I think. And of course, there were points where we disagreed, and we kind of did, kind of, I would say, an informal kind of debate -ish kind of thing.
- 01:51:39
- Well, there was a little cross -examination, not like a formal debate, but there was cross -examination there. There was some kind of, yeah, going back and forth, and I tried to press him on certain things, which
- 01:51:48
- I thought his position was a little weak. And I thought that he was trying to impose on the
- 01:51:56
- Calvinist perspective something that I thought, even his perspective, doesn't escape, namely that there are reprobates in both our systems.
- 01:52:03
- And so we went a little back and forth on that. What I did learn, and I don't think he did it maliciously, but I do understand when listening to him talk,
- 01:52:15
- I understand some of the strategies he uses. He tends to be very long -winded, and instead of, you know, when
- 01:52:24
- I bring up a particular point, he will say, well, that's, now you're getting into philosophy now. But then
- 01:52:30
- I noticed that when you get to the text, then he gets into analogies and some philosophical reflection, and that's okay.
- 01:52:36
- So it seems that he's a little inconsistent in his method there, and he claims mystery in regards to how
- 01:52:43
- God can know the future, yet we still be free. But I didn't think that that was mysterious.
- 01:52:50
- I think that if God knows the future and he actively decrees, then that, in a sense, sets in stone what's going to happen.
- 01:52:59
- And so he said that that was mysterious, and I didn't think that that was mysterious at all. I grant mystery in all theological systems, but I think he puts mystery where the
- 01:53:09
- Bible seems to give enough information that we can logically deduce what, say, the doctrine of God's omniscience entails.
- 01:53:18
- So I understood he was kind of trying to move away from that, and then he talked for two to three minutes, and then brought up a text without me first addressing the whole issue of why
- 01:53:30
- I thought his position suffers the same thing that he's claiming that my position suffers from.
- 01:53:36
- And another thing that he does is he defines terms because he understands what
- 01:53:42
- Calvinism believes, and then he imposes them on you. There's actually a time in our discussion where he defines decree, and then he just goes off with it, and then says, therefore, this is what is entailed by your position.
- 01:53:54
- And I respectfully started laughing, and I was like, I was hoping after you defined decree that you would then ask me what
- 01:54:00
- I think a decree is, so that I had the opportunity to explain what I... And, of course, he allowed me to do that.
- 01:54:06
- It was a really good short exchange there. So overall, I think it went well, and definitely our conversation with Eric that one time was definitely helpful in allowing me to understand the difference between will and can and things like that.
- 01:54:22
- So I thought it went well. Yeah, you know, you're never going to get him,
- 01:54:29
- I don't think, acting rudely or... But yeah,
- 01:54:34
- I mean, you brought up some of the things that, you know, I joke with him all the time about the fact that if I mention him and give a three -minute critique,
- 01:54:47
- I'm going to get an hour -long video response. And a lot of times,
- 01:54:55
- I don't know, like you're saying, I don't know that it's always directly addressing the issues.
- 01:55:03
- And, you know, I think it's sort of some of the tactics we saw here tonight.
- 01:55:09
- And so in this sense, it might be helpful for folks. You know, you're seeing folks who it's like, okay, all we have to do is read the
- 01:55:17
- Scripture. When reading the Scripture isn't enough, like we have to leave
- 01:55:23
- Scripture or leave this Scripture to jump somewhere else. Or I think one of the things that I personally,
- 01:55:30
- I guess, find frustrating with Leighton when we talk theology is argument by analogy.
- 01:55:39
- I agree with him that analogies are helpful. I just don't agree with when we're trying to get to very specific things, he will use...
- 01:55:48
- I mean, he didn't do that so much with me, but I noticed he goes into analogy when it really, I think, would be more beneficial to be more specific.
- 01:55:55
- To define terms and yeah. And that's the thing, you know, I think that it... I think for him, it,
- 01:56:01
- I think, and I'm speaking for him. So, you know, if he disagrees with me, he'll do a 20 minute response explaining it.
- 01:56:11
- But, you know, I think what he, for him, I think it's helpful.
- 01:56:17
- He thinks in analogies. I think that instead of the precision that someone like you would want to get in a discussion like that,
- 01:56:26
- I think he falls back to analogies because it's what he, like, what he understands better,
- 01:56:31
- I think. And I'm speaking for him, so I could be wrong. But I do think that there's times where,
- 01:56:40
- I mean, I disagree with some of the ways he interprets different parables. Because I think, you know, one of the things, the rule or principle of interpreting parables is that you're, you want to look at what the main purpose of a parable is.
- 01:56:55
- What is it trying to teach? A lot of people will use parables to teach things that are not the clear purpose of it.
- 01:57:03
- And then they, kind of like we saw with Patrick earlier, you know, you're starting to take something and give it a new meaning.
- 01:57:09
- And I think sometimes that people do that with some of the parables. I think the reason why
- 01:57:15
- I don't like his use of parables, I don't mind the use of parables. They help me sometimes, because if a concept in scripture is unclear to me, sometimes painting a picture helps me understand.
- 01:57:24
- That's just the way my thinking goes. But there's so many assumptions that Dr. Flowers makes in regards to Calvinism and how he flattens things out.
- 01:57:35
- People have accused him of flattening out the decrees and things. And I didn't really pay attention to that, but I kind of see why people say that, is that when he uses an analogy, the analogy does have a one -to -one correspondence with what he thinks
- 01:57:49
- Calvinism is and what it entails. And so when he uses the analogy, he's trying to use the analogy to clarify the text.
- 01:57:59
- But the analogy, since it gets away from the text, he creates this analogy that reflects how he thinks of Calvinism.
- 01:58:06
- And then he'll compare, look, see, the analogy is analogous how you interpret as a Calvinist this text.
- 01:58:11
- And that's why I think at that point we want to stay away from analogies and just deal with the text. Now, our conversation, we didn't get to a lot of text.
- 01:58:22
- We got to talk a little bit about, I think, Romans 8 or something like that. So I don't want to say he did that in our discussion.
- 01:58:30
- He really did. To be honest, I know a lot of people give him slack. He was very respectful, and I really did like our conversation.
- 01:58:37
- It was helpful to me in the sense that it helped me be strengthened in a little bit in my own understanding, even though I still need to flesh some stuff out.
- 01:58:45
- I did find it very helpful, but I do see how he squishes things together and compares apples and oranges.
- 01:58:51
- That God's decree of reprobating someone is kind of like someone being born with blue eyes.
- 01:58:59
- It's out of your control. And I bring it up. There's a difference between genetics and your moral behavior.
- 01:59:07
- But did you listen to the discussion? Yeah, I did. And I think, and you and I talked about this a bit, and I forget the exact way but the difference between someone that's a diabetic needing insulin.
- 01:59:21
- They don't prefer it. There's like a need there versus I prefer vanilla versus chocolate.
- 01:59:29
- There's differences there. And I think there was a little bit of a, but I think when he was saying, well, if your eyes are blue, as if you have no control over it.
- 01:59:41
- Now, I think this plays into the fact of his view of Calvinism is what we would maybe say is hyper -Calvinism or determinism.
- 01:59:52
- That there is no choice. And I know a lot of people have corrected him on that.
- 01:59:58
- And he sticks to that definition. But I think that the definition, his starting point is problematic.
- 02:00:07
- And I think that's why he views everything the way he does. And so when he gets into these discussions, he's viewing it from that.
- 02:00:12
- So in his mindset, I think, I would say you got blue eyes or brown eyes.
- 02:00:19
- You have no control. I think it's important, lest we're guilty of wrongfully accusing.
- 02:00:26
- When people say that he's been corrected on this and he continues to say what he says, I don't think because he's doing that because he's just ignoring the correction.
- 02:00:36
- I think he genuinely thinks that the correction isn't valid because he thinks that our kind of Calvinism, if you work it out consistently, it's hard to determine this.
- 02:00:48
- And so he squishes them together even though we make those distinctions. He doesn't think those are distinctions without a difference, he would say.
- 02:00:56
- And so, you know, to his credit, if that's his position, but I think he should clarify perhaps he has been corrected doesn't mean he has to accept the correction if he thinks that we're incorrect in our correction.
- 02:01:08
- And that's a valid point. But see the flip side of that, I'll take the flip side and say people have argued and say he should be an open theist if he's going to be consistent.
- 02:01:20
- They're going to argue that he actually holds to it even if he doesn't admit to it. That would be a similar thing.
- 02:01:27
- And I agree with that. And I still don't know, even with our discussion with Eric, I don't know how you can hold to libertarianism and not be an open theist.
- 02:01:38
- I understand that he doesn't believe that. And I don't mean that in like a, of course you would say that, Calvinists say that all the time.
- 02:01:47
- God's decree, his act to create, and his foreknowledge. I can't see how you could avoid it if you're explaining the freedom of the will the way that you are.
- 02:01:55
- I'm having difficulty wrapping my head around how you avoid that. And I think,
- 02:02:00
- I mean, look, you only had an hour. These things, especially when you try to understand someone's position in these areas that are, it takes some precision because we can use terminology like with Luke, I don't want to ask him what his definition of something is.
- 02:02:21
- I don't want to just guess. It's important to do that because if we, and this is what you have happened quite often is people respond to what they assume someone's position is rather than hearing them out and actually responding to what their position actually is.
- 02:02:39
- That's what I find. Leighton Flowers often lets people explain, but there are other instances where he just assumes and he'll, you know,
- 02:02:50
- I don't know if you noticed that he cut in a lot when I, and he did talk a lot. I tried my best not to.
- 02:02:56
- I felt like I needed to interrupt because, and he gave me permission. He says I'm long -winded if you need to cut it, it was fine.
- 02:03:03
- He at least knows that about himself. Yeah, but in his long -winded response, sometimes it gets off the main topic.
- 02:03:14
- He went two minutes and then went to a text and I said, I apologize, but we need to go back here because we haven't settled this here and the text you're asking about here,
- 02:03:23
- I can't adopt how you've defined my own position so to deal with that. And that's important to do.
- 02:03:30
- That's important to do. We saw, you know, I did that, had to do that tonight, right? Because people were doing a similar thing.
- 02:03:36
- And sometimes what it is is because if someone's trying to move on from there, but if we don't agree here at point
- 02:03:47
- A, we can't get to point B and C and D. Or if we agree on A but disagree on B, you can't then move on to C.
- 02:03:57
- In the discussion, you have to come to agreement on the terminology, on the meaning, and you have to understand how the other person is understanding it.
- 02:04:07
- Right. And that's why I have this discussion with people when people say, well, if God decrees, then this means this and that.
- 02:04:16
- And we tend to respond, well, no, that's not what it means. I find myself now asking the person
- 02:04:22
- I'm discussing, what do you think I mean when I say decree? Because when
- 02:04:28
- I say decree and then you go off into this other thing, I don't think you understand what I mean by it.
- 02:04:33
- And so sometimes people just assume because these debates, we use this language, decree, predestination, we just assume that everyone's understanding the definitions the way they think it's being understood.
- 02:04:46
- And that is where a lot of times we see, I don't want to say problems, but maybe that's not the best word.
- 02:04:52
- We see issues arise and you see people talk past each other because they're using different definitions for the same thing.
- 02:05:05
- And it becomes something where it's not very productive. I guess we started earlier today with the question of, if an argument is good,
- 02:05:13
- Andrew had brought that up, right? If it's just an argument and you're not trying to learn someone's position,
- 02:05:20
- I mean, one of the things that I, folks who know, striving fraternity, know the ministry, know me.
- 02:05:29
- One of the things I really try not to do is to misrepresent people. When I wrote my book, What Do They Believe?
- 02:05:35
- I went to rabbis with the chapter on Judaism. I went to imams, a chapter on Islam. I went to Mormons and Jehovah Witnesses and Catholics.
- 02:05:43
- And I said, am I misrepresenting the position? And why would I do that? Because I don't want to be guilty of misrepresenting someone else's position because if you misrepresent their position and then you make an argument, it's not a valid argument anymore because that's not the position.
- 02:06:02
- Yeah. There were a couple of things that I noticed that he did as well. He mentioned
- 02:06:08
- Genesis and he uses the London Baptist Confession, the 1689, and tries to point out that when it speaks about the liberty of the will to choose between the good and the bad, he would say, look, even the
- 02:06:24
- Reformed Confessions seem to teach libertarian freedom. Now, I'm not an expert on the
- 02:06:30
- Confessions, but I never looked at those particular portions of the Confessions as equivalent to saying that man is free from God's decree.
- 02:06:42
- You could have a decree and still say that Adam was able to choose between the good and the bad because then you have that whole can and will issue that you need to work out.
- 02:06:51
- So I never, the way he suggests, like, well, you know, the Reformed Confessions seem to teach libertarian freedom. I don't see that.
- 02:06:58
- I don't see that at all necessitated from what the Confessions say. Also, in Genesis, where he says that when
- 02:07:04
- Adam and Eve fell, there's nothing in the text that suggests that they lost the ability to respond to God.
- 02:07:11
- And he says, wouldn't you think, I don't know if he said it in our discussion, but I've heard him say it in other discussions, wouldn't you think that if something like that happened, it would be mentioned in Genesis?
- 02:07:20
- And I thought to myself, I'm like, no, it doesn't have to be mentioned in Genesis. Went straight to Romans where it speaks about man not able to submit themselves to the law of God, to which he says that's different than saying that the natural man, that doesn't mean that the natural man can't admit his need, you know, or humble himself, to which
- 02:07:41
- I, as I understood it, well, that seems to be submitting yourself to the law, because the law includes acknowledging your sinfulness and being humble and submitting.
- 02:07:52
- So what he says the Bible doesn't explain, he says that Calvinists just read it into the text.
- 02:07:57
- I don't think we're reading it into the text. I think there are explicit statements which say, you know, it says man cannot
- 02:08:04
- A, B, and C. Now, you might disagree with our interpretation, but you can't say we're reading it into the text because if I didn't interpret, interpret a text, it seems like that's what it's saying, that he's unable to, you know,
- 02:08:17
- Romans 8, 7, because the mindset and the flesh is hostile toward God, for it is not subject, it does not subject itself to the law of God, for it is not even able to do so.
- 02:08:25
- But that, we could fight over interpretations, but just on the face of it, you can't fault me for thinking what I think as a
- 02:08:31
- Calvinist, because it seems to be straightforward, you know, from that text. And I know we have a story about that. We read the text and accept what it says.
- 02:08:38
- You can't fault me for that. We did that tonight too. Well, we don't want to, I try to avoid framing it in that way because I know
- 02:08:46
- Well, see, some of the arguments that we'd have, I mean, the issue we have with Layton on some of these issues, and we end up having to wrap up in a bit,
- 02:08:55
- I don't know if John wants to do an after show, but the thing that we have to recognize is there are passages that Layton is going to focus on to make his argument.
- 02:09:08
- There's passages you're going to turn to to make your argument. The issue is sometimes people don't realize that, you know, either one or both sides are misunderstanding what the passage says, or they both can actually be reasoned together and not be in conflict, where sometimes for us, we don't fully understand it, and we think there's a conflict where God doesn't say there is.
- 02:09:36
- So, it's one of the things we have to think about in that. Let me give a quick shout -out to Jason Manning for, he gave a $5
- 02:09:43
- Super Chat. Folks that do that get a shout -out. He didn't put anything in there, so we just gave a shout -out to his name.
- 02:09:50
- By the way, I'll mention for folks is that all of the Super Chat donations, those go to karm .org.
- 02:09:58
- So, we use their platform on YouTube because they can monetize, and that way, you know, folks who want to monetize, who want to give
- 02:10:08
- Super Chats, that goes to Karm. This is not a competition, anyway. Karm and Striving Fraternity work together on this project.
- 02:10:16
- You know, it's, this is owned by Striving Fraternity, but we have a contract with Karm, so we use their platform.
- 02:10:23
- We purposely put the website on theirs so that they get some traffic.
- 02:10:30
- You know, and so, but if you want this to continue, if you'd like to help
- 02:10:35
- Striving Fraternity put this on, you can go to strivingfraternity .org slash donate. You could donate monthly using either
- 02:10:42
- Patreon or PayPal. You, if you want to give a one -time donation, you could do it through PayPal there. You could do, either way, we would be glad to receive that.
- 02:10:51
- I will let you know that I'll be leaving for the Philippines in a few weeks and one of the things is is that we've only raised about a third of the funds for me to go to the
- 02:11:02
- Philippines. Now, I'm still going. We paid for the flight. We're just hoping that we could get some donations to cover that so that we could do more things like this.
- 02:11:11
- The NAR is running rampant over there. There's a lot of bad teaching. Actually, one of the things that's a problem out there right now is that between the
- 02:11:20
- NAR and the Roman Catholics, there's a bunch of churches that are starting to work with the Roman Catholic churches on endeavors and trying to argue that they have the same gospel message and so that would be something that we're, both
- 02:11:36
- Justin Peters and I are going to address while we're out there. Some of the issues that are there and they don't have access to having people come in with the solid doctrine to come out there as easily and so that's the reason that Justin and I committed to going whether it's funded or not.
- 02:11:55
- So, if folks don't give, we're still going. It just means there's less ministry we could do throughout the year.
- 02:12:02
- So, we're, we are asking if you can support after you donate to your local church, don't ever, you know, sacrifice giving to your local church.
- 02:12:11
- You're supposed to do that but if you have means above and beyond and you can go to strivingfortraining .org and donate there, that would be a great help.
- 02:12:19
- If you want specifically to go to that Philippines trip, you can donate and mention that for the
- 02:12:26
- Philippines trip. If you want to donate on a monthly basis, you go to Patreon, you can see the different gifts that you get at the different levels so that you know what you can have.
- 02:12:38
- So, I will let folks know if you like shorter podcasts, my Monday through Friday, Andrew Rapaport's Rap Report Daily is
- 02:12:47
- Monday through Friday, two minutes long. We started a new series this week going through the attributes of God.
- 02:12:54
- And so, let's see, tomorrow, we'll start the first attribute of incomprehensibility. And so, those are going to be,
- 02:13:02
- I hope, helpful for you as if you've been listening throughout the week, I mentioned that it is important to understand the attributes of God because when we understand rightly
- 02:13:11
- God's attributes in nature or perfections in nature, we end up having a right theology.
- 02:13:18
- Theology will not be contrary to God's attributes. So, it's important to study these things.
- 02:13:26
- So, I hope that this show has been helpful. It's been a little bit less of what I had planned.
- 02:13:34
- Eli and I talked about some things we wanted to talk about, but when you do an open Q &A show, you never know what you're going to deal with.
- 02:13:43
- And, you know, I will say this is that, you know, we're all human here.
- 02:13:48
- Eli and I, John, we're human. You know, you hear some of the frustration we can have in our voice.
- 02:13:55
- I know that I had some tonight where we're going through a verse over and over and over again, and all we're doing is reading the verse and someone's not understanding it.
- 02:14:06
- My heart is grieved for a man like Patrick, for a man like James, who they can see the scriptures and they ignore it.
- 02:14:16
- They don't, they read into the scriptures something that's not there. That's heartbreaking because this, you know, people are going to be judged for what they do with God's word.
- 02:14:28
- And so, that's a concern. I pray for Patrick. I hope that you guys listening will be praying for Patrick tonight that he might submit to scripture, that he'd find a good church to submit himself to and be under their teaching and be guided and discipled so that he would not be teaching things that are not taught in scripture and that he would be teaching, really teaching the truth, not these things he was explaining here tonight.
- 02:14:57
- So, be praying for him and Eli, I'll give you the last word if you have anything you want to share.
- 02:15:04
- Um, nothing specifically. Um, I really enjoy, I enjoy these kinds of conversations, even just listening in and for example, the discussion with the
- 02:15:15
- Roman Catholic, I don't have a deep background in Roman Catholicism, so, um, it's interesting to hear, you know, how some people think and make arguments and I like to kind of learn as I listen to the dialogue.
- 02:15:26
- So, um... And he's not a typical Roman Catholic because, you know, he would hold to a position where anything like after Vatican II is...
- 02:15:35
- Okay. So, he's got a little bit of a different view with that as well. You know, so don't assume...
- 02:15:42
- Okay, I was going to say don't assume he's a typical Roman Catholic, but I think in his position he would say he's a typical
- 02:15:47
- Roman Catholic and the others are not. Yeah. I would like to give a quick shout out to a couple of things that I do on Facebook if anyone's interested in following.
- 02:15:55
- I work for the Historical Bible Society where they, um, they have me put on videos uh, answering
- 02:16:02
- Bible questions and things like that. So, if anyone has um, a question that they want me to make into a video, a brief video, um, they can email me at revealedapologetics um, at gmail .com
- 02:16:14
- and, um, uh, I have a Facebook page Revealed Apologetics which
- 02:16:20
- I intend to focus on just presuppositional apologetic stuff. So, if anyone's interested in that kind of stuff,
- 02:16:26
- I'm going to be making a, um, a series going through how to use that methodology, why is it different than other methods.
- 02:16:32
- Um, you guys can follow me on Facebook at Revealed Apologetics. All right. So, check those things out.
- 02:16:38
- Check out CARM .org. Check out strivingfraternity .org. And until next week, remember to strive to make today an eternal day for the glory of God.