Grace in the Shadows

Andrew Rappaport's Rapp Report

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Welcome to The Rap Report. I'm your host, Andrew Rapoport. And on today's episode, I was recently on Grace of the

00:37

Shadows podcast and they interviewed me and that is what we're going to play today. Now, I ran into, well, he wasn't

00:46

Dr. J at the time, but Jonathan Buehler. We ran into each other when we were both happened to be on vacation.

00:55

We're Facebook friends, did not know we were staying in the same hotel. That's right.

01:01

He was walking off the elevator as I was walking on and he just pointed his finger, looked at me and was like,

01:06

Andrew Rapoport. And so he recognized me and we got to have our family spend a little bit of time together.

01:13

Really enjoyable. Years later, I was able to help him work on his doctorate in some of the research he was doing.

01:20

And now he started a podcast and they asked if I would come on for an interview. So I hope that you enjoy this episode of The Rap Report.

01:33

Welcome to The Rap Report with your host, Andrew Rapoport, where we provide biblical interpretation and application.

01:39

This is a ministry of striving for eternity and the Christian podcast community. For more content or to request a speaker for your church, go to strivingforeternity .org.

02:24

Welcome to Grace in the Shadows with Dr. Marla Beeler and Dr. J. Dr.

02:30

Jonathan Beeler. And we also have a special guest today, and I'm going to let you take over and introduce him.

02:36

Andrew Rapoport is the executive president of Striving for Eternity, and we welcome him, a good friend and also a fellow podcaster.

02:46

Andrew, tell us a little bit more about your background and what you do and a little bit about who you are.

02:54

Sure. My name is Andrew Rapoport. As you said,

02:59

I'm with Striving for Eternity Ministries. And you and I met while on vacation, right?

03:08

We did. We did. We happened to be in the same hotel and I posted that I'm in a hotel and you were looking for me and found me.

03:19

It is weird. We were at Timeshare, right? Yes. Williamsburg?

03:25

Williamsburg, Virginia. Williamsburg, Virginia. Yeah. And I was actually doing some studies through your teaching on world religions and cults.

03:36

And you happened to be there and it was like, Andrew, and you said, that's me. And we had a good time there and talked a lot of theology and apologetics,

03:45

I think. It was a couple of hours one night. Yes. Yeah. We, one night when our families went to sleep, we hung out in their little kitchen area.

03:53

Yeah. We did some sightseeing together. You got to meet our kids. Yeah. We had a lot of fun with that.

04:01

So Andrew, your background, you were Jewish, brought up in a Jewish home, a

04:07

Jewish background. And how did you, how did the Lord save you? How did you come to know the Lord? Well, yeah,

04:12

I grew up in a Jewish home, Bar Mitzvahed. My father had gone, if you understand

04:19

Judaism, has gone from Orthodox Judaism to conservative

04:25

Judaism. Conservative Judaism is actually liberal, to reform Judaism. Reformed in Christianity isn't necessarily bad in many places that people think it's good, but in Judaism, it's really bad.

04:35

That's the most liberal. And now he's a practicing atheist. So we basically were

04:43

Bar Mitzvahed and all. I was 16 years old and my mother died when

04:50

I was young. And so what happened was, is I basically was a terror. I mean, I just was a problem for my dad.

04:58

What a lot of Jewish people do is they send their kids away for summer camp for the summer so their parents can have their time.

05:06

And I think I basically got kicked out of every summer camp that my dad sent me to after my mother died.

05:13

You were a terror. Yeah. You were a stinker. I was a problem child. So what ended up happening was

05:21

I went on this, what's called a teen tour. It's where, I put it this way, it's where Jewish parents try to get rid of their kids that can't go to camp.

05:27

No, we basically toured around the U .S. on a bus. The bus driver was a Christian, his name was Chuck.

05:33

And he was just, he saw this with all these Jewish kids just to evangelize. And that was his mission.

05:38

And he was just evangelizing all of us. I remember we went to a

05:43

Chinatown in, I think it was San Francisco. And what ended up happening was he started sharing the gospel of a fortune cookie.

05:54

And I'm like, yeah, okay, Chuck, whatever. And we're talking, he ended up saying he knew my mother died.

06:04

And I said to him, I said, Chuck, I don't need any of this. I said, I'm God's chosen people. I'm in like Flynn.

06:11

I thought that my, I mean, I was raised to believe that my Judaism was getting me into heaven. Right. Right.

06:17

Tradition. Yes. And so I didn't think anything of, my problem wasn't that I needed to hear how to get saved.

06:25

My problem was I didn't know I was lost. And that's what I tell people. It's easy to get people saved.

06:32

It's hard to get them lost. Yeah. I mean, cause when you're, when you're lost, when you're dead in sin, you don't realize you're dead in sin.

06:39

I mean, that's the, that's why you're dead and just, that's why you're dead and you don't know it. It's like trying to tell a fish they're wet.

06:46

Precisely. Yeah. Yeah. So, so he's going through and explaining things and, and I walked away and he just turns and says, and this is something that I teach in my evangelism training.

06:59

When I come into churches and we do our seminar is people are afraid I might say the wrong thing.

07:05

Well, Chuck said a stupid thing. What did he say? What did he say? You have to understand that they were warned that at that stage of my life, if you made a mother joke or you said something about my mother,

07:18

I could turn violent and I mean, I turned so violent. I don't even remember any of it.

07:24

I would black out and they, people would tell me what I've done. I remember one summer camp,

07:31

I picked up the strongest kid in the, in the bunk, threw him in a garbage can and rolled him down a Hill. And I'm like,

07:36

I could never do that. I'm like this little pipsqueak, how do you, but five eyewitnesses to it.

07:43

People didn't know what to do. So with me at that end, he turns, as I'm walking away, he goes, what if your mother died?

07:49

So you'd be right here right now to listening to this message and you walk away, your mother would have died in vain.

07:55

Now, first off, think that through and be like, that's stupid. Like it's not theologically accurate.

08:03

But beyond that, like, you know, someone is really touchy on the issue of their mother's death and you're going to, you're going to say something like that.

08:11

But it got me to turn around and I said, you give me one logical reason to believe and I'll believe. I said,

08:16

I had a lot of anger, emotional stuff. And so he, I, you never finished the sixth grade. And this is where I kind of joke that God has a sense of humor at that time in my life.

08:29

I was very proud of my intellect. Okay. I have 168 IQ, which is eight points above genius.

08:36

So I'm probably a genius, but technically I am smarter than I am. So I was proud of that.

08:44

Here's a guy that hasn't even finished the sixth grade. I had, I, at that point in my life had no respect for him because of that.

08:52

And here he is taking his Bible out and going old Testament prophecy, new Testament fulfillment back and forth, back and forth.

08:59

And I'm doing calculations in my head. I'm like, okay, anything that's coincidence, I'm going to look at anything

09:05

I think is self -fulfilling. If I, if I was to say, I'm going to walk out a building from a certain door,

09:11

I can make that happen for the most part. That's self -fulfilling, but things that are coincidence, like you're born of the line of David, Jesus has no control over that.

09:21

That's just coincidence. Well, how many people at that time could be born to the line of David? And then you go through being born, not just from line of David, but in, you know,

09:32

Bethlehem and so you, and at that time period. So as he's doing it,

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I'm calculating in my head. And there was a point where I just stopped him. I said, look, Chuck, just stop.

09:43

You're beyond statistical impossibility, which is 10 to the 48th power. It is statistically impossible for this to happen by chance.

09:54

So I believed in the new Testament, knowing nothing of what it really taught. I said, so the new Testament has to be written by God.

10:00

What does it say? He goes through and starts talking about Jesus's death and burial and resurrection.

10:06

I'm like, Chuck, stop. Dead people don't rise. Dead people rot. Yeah. And he says, well, explain it away then.

10:15

Here's the situation. So I came up with, maybe they got the wrong tomb and he's like, well, they knew whose tomb it was.

10:22

It was a tomb never used before. So it was open. The guards are not going to go to the wrong tomb when their lives are on the line.

10:29

If something goes wrong, okay. Maybe he wasn't really dead.

10:35

He just fainted. He faked his death. Yeah. He just fainted and they put him in there and the cool air revived him.

10:42

And then he went to the disciples and said, here I am, I've resurrected. And they believed it. And so he looked at me and says, well, let me get this straight.

10:49

A guy who's been hanging on a cross for hours by nails that are in his hands and feet, wrapped in 75 pounds of linen cloth, going to wake up, take all the cloth off that he's wrapped tightly in, get it all off, put it back neatly, lift up a 2000 pound stone uphill, walk past the guards without them noticing.

11:15

Professional killers, basically. Maybe the disciples stole the body.

11:21

Well, they could. Yeah. Okay. Okay. Well, they got to get past the guards. Why did the guards go to the

11:27

Jewish leaders and say, this happened, the body disappeared and the Jewish leaders had to say, he stole the body.

11:35

It takes more faith to believe all of that than the truth, doesn't it? And these are things that you can see. If you get

11:40

Josh McDowell's book, More Than a Carpenter, he has all those. There's one that I believe is still original with me.

11:46

My last argument was Chuck, maybe they stole the body. And what they did was they dug a hole underneath the cave where the guards couldn't see it.

11:54

And they came underneath and stole the body out from the middle. And he just looked at me and goes, in three days, they don't have any equipment back then.

12:02

I wish him well. Yeah. That's crazy. I'm the steps of a dairy queen. I put my head in my hands and I just shook my head.

12:08

He goes, what's wrong? I said, if Jesus Christ rose from the dead, then he is

12:15

God. And if he is God, I'm accountable to him. That's exactly right. I said, what do

12:20

I do to need to get right with him? So in three and a half hours, I turned from believing that Jesus Christ is

12:26

Hitler's God to Jesus Christ is God. Amen. That is, that is amazing.

12:32

That's a miracle for sure. Well, every salvation is a miracle. I didn't get saved any different than anybody else.

12:38

Amen. Amen. God's sovereignty, drawing you to himself, showing you that you needed him.

12:45

And that's huge. That's huge. Yeah. I think the greatest affirmations to show that the gospel is true is the resurrection.

12:56

And I think the next one is Israel being a nation again. I think both of those, there's many, many prophecies, what 300 that have come true of his first coming.

13:07

And I think those two really stand out as the most convincing even. Yeah. I mean, there's the neat thing about prophecy is prophecies that were fulfilled, not in scripture.

13:21

Right. Like Sodom. You're nuts. Now I just dropped blank. You're fine, bro.

13:31

Sidon. I think it is. Anyway, there's a prophecy in Jeremiah where there's a city,

13:37

Tyre, that would be demolished in war. Tyre would go off to a sea island, but not have walls because they have the water around them and they had a military, a naval base.

13:50

So they didn't need a wall. And it says that they won't have a wall and that the old city would be thrown into the sea and the city of Tyre would be destroyed.

14:02

Right. Alexander the Great is the one that did that. And that's exactly what happened. All that.

14:07

Yeah. What happened was he needed money and he sent out word. He sent a boat out to Tyre and said, hey, we need some money.

14:15

And they said, you can't get to us. And as arrogant as Alexander the

14:21

Great was, he said, we can't. He said, take all everything you can, throw it into the sea. And they built a causeway.

14:27

And since there was no wall, once the causeway was built, the whole army just marched onto it and just destroyed the city.

14:33

I mean, and then you also have the statue in Daniel. I mean, the fulfillment of all the major the empire surrounding

14:40

Israel and predicting those empires, Babylon, Persia, the

14:47

Medo -Persians, the Greco, the Romans, and then also the revived Roman Empire. Right.

14:52

And we know what comes after that, which is going to destroy the statue. And it's going to be

14:58

Jesus's empire, Jesus's kingdom. I think that's powerful, powerful prophecy.

15:03

No other book can do that. No other book has predicted things as specific to the dot and tittle as the

15:12

Bible. And I think that just often authenticates that for sure. So you were how old,

15:19

Andrew? I was 16 years old and I did not tell anybody for two years.

15:27

Wow. I was going to say, how did your family react to you becoming a

15:32

Christian? But if you didn't tell anybody for two years. Yeah. When I went to college,

15:38

I met other Christians. I started to get

15:44

Christian literature and things like that. What ended up happening was the first year of college and there did any other year, we got a letter that said we had to take all our stuff home.

15:55

So I brought everything home and I had gospel tracts and books and things like that.

16:02

Well, I was only like an hour from my house to my college. So during Christmas break,

16:08

I went down to college and stayed at a friend's house for several days. While I was there, my parents went through my room and decided to, my mother's kind of nosy in that way or was, and she found all the gospel stuff.

16:24

And was like, you have to understand something in Judaism. I know this is hard for people to hear, but in Judaism, we see

16:32

Jesus Christ as Hitler's God. I mentioned that already. Jesus Christ represents the

16:37

Holocaust because the Catholic church supported Hitler. So when we look at Jesus Christ, we see him.

16:44

The crusades were done under the name of the cross where the

16:50

Jews were killed. The inquisitions where Jews were forced to convert or die, the

16:57

Holocaust, this is Jesus. So to say you're a Christian is to be a traitor.

17:04

I mean, it's the worst possible thing you could do in Judaism is to become a Christian. It's like for many

17:10

Christian families, they realize this is the reason years ago, if someone was raised in a

17:15

Christian home and they want to rebel, they become a hardcore atheist. Now they become a homosexual to show that they're rebellion against their upbringing, which

17:23

I've never quite understood, actually, because it's like you so hate your upbringing that you're going to redefine your entire life by it.

17:32

That's really sad because I don't consider the Roman Catholic church Christian. And I'm sure

17:38

I know you don't either as far as the doctrines. Yeah, but for a Jewish person, we don't we don't know those differences, but you don't differentiate the two.

17:45

Yeah, that's sad. I didn't know Catholicism versus Baptists.

17:50

Like, yeah, whatever. Right. It's all Catholic. Right. I mean, just like many people do, they think of Judaism as just Jewish or just Orthodox and not know that there's all these different divisions there.

18:02

Right. Right. So your family, how did that how did that go?

18:10

I was 18 years old and I came home from my friend's house and my parents confronted me.

18:16

I did think it was strange that I came home and everybody was out of the house. So they had been warned.

18:22

Oh, my fireworks will be going. And so, yeah, it was the people asked me because I do a lot of open air evangelism, as you know.

18:29

And yes, the thing is, is people will ask me a lot of times, have you ever been beaten up or hit?

18:36

And I say only by my mom when I was 18. You know, she when

18:42

I said when she asked me, did you get baptized? And I said, yes, because that's that in Jewish thinking, that's the conversion is baptism.

18:51

And so she got mad and just slapped me. Oh, and, you know, but so they took me to the rabbi.

19:00

And this is a funny pre story to my dad actually caught me reading the Bible like three times in high school.

19:06

OK, picture the scene, you got 16, 17, 18 year old boy. Right. Walk in his room in the morning before going to school.

19:16

And my dad would just open the door and walk in and I'm shoving a Bible underneath my blanket.

19:22

I mean, so many teenagers would be shoving something else. He looks at that and just goes, what's that?

19:29

I'm like, it's a book. What book? I'm like,

19:35

Bible. Now, what father would say, yeah, my son is hiding a

19:41

Bible. He's like, show it to me. He's convinced there's something else I'm hiding under that. And I pull that about.

19:47

I just I will admit I've I've just always praise God. I was always in the Old Testament when he came in.

19:54

He did it three times and he would just say, well, maybe you should talk to the rabbi. So after they found out that I became a

19:59

Christian, he sent me to the rabbi. And at this point, they were reformed a very liberal. The rabbi just was like, oh, you know,

20:06

I study with the Southern Baptists just to learn more. It's good. But stay to your own religion. All religions get you to heaven. Yes.

20:12

Yeah, right, right. And it was sad because I like I'm sitting there thinking like I realized

20:18

I may know the Bible better than him because I said, well, let me just ask you one question. Daniel's prophecy gives an exact date timeline of when

20:28

Messiah would come after the decree to return. We know the decree.

20:34

So. You're off by 2000 years, where's Messiah? And that's when he just said, oh, stick to your religion, all religions are good.

20:42

Go go home to your parents. So my parents took me to a psychiatrist after that because they thought something's wrong with me.

20:50

And I before I when I was trying to figure out a major, I was going between computer science and psychology.

20:59

And so I really enjoyed studying psychology. And so I was actually playing with the guy.

21:04

It wasn't so good, maybe because I get bored. And so he's sitting there and comes to this conclusion.

21:11

He sits my parents down, sits me down and says, well, I think what the problem is, is Andrew just is suffering because of the loss of his mother.

21:20

He found a group at the college that that makes him feel acceptable, you know.

21:27

And I started laughing, which is not a good thing to do when someone's giving you the conclusion of what they think you're right.

21:34

And he looks at me and says, son, is there something you find funny? I said, yeah. I see.

21:39

You're saying that I'm the reason I'm doing this is because of relationship issues, correct?

21:46

Well, yes. I said, that's great. Thank you for confirming that I have a relationship with Jesus Christ.

21:54

Oh, I didn't know any other Christian for two years. And they asked me to he asked me to step out of the room and I listened to the door.

22:02

And he told my parents, this is a phase. Kids go through this. Just ignore it and it'll go away.

22:08

Well, it didn't go away. My father found out I was looking to go to seminary, send me to the same psychiatrist.

22:14

Oh, my, which was really funny, because at that time I had lost my job. This is back in the early 90s.

22:19

They're there's not good economic times. It's hard to find another job. And so I meet with him and he's like asking me about the job, what

22:27

I'm doing to look for a job. And he's just asking a whole lot of questions. And I told you

22:33

I get bored, right? My dad's paying for this. So for a while, I'm playing along and answering. Now I'm getting bored.

22:40

And so he goes, how about your your social life? What's your social life like? And I'm like, well, I said, now there's a real problem.

22:46

It's the first thing he wrote on his clipboard was social life. OK, he says,

22:52

OK, tell me what's tell me about your social life. I'm like, yeah, my friends are always complaining. I don't have enough time to hang out with them.

22:58

And he just like scratches off social life. And he says, can I give you my assessment?

23:04

I'm like, sure. He's like, I have never met a 23 year old man who can lose his job, not be phased, loses his what you've gone through with losing your mother, losing a job like this.

23:16

And you're not phased. You are the most well -balanced 23 year old man

23:22

I have ever met. Wow. And I said, OK, well, he said, can

23:27

I share this with your dad? I said, he's paying the bill. I mean, I'm only here for you to tell him that I'm not insane. So go for it.

23:33

So my dad calls me up, says, hey, what do you tell you? I told him he said, yeah, he said that and something more. I said something more.

23:38

Really? He said, yeah, he wants to pay your way to Texas A &M to go into practice with him because he sees that you would be an excellent counselor.

23:48

And I said, well, that's why dad, because that's most of what I would be doing as a pastor is doing the two things

23:54

I love, counseling people and studying the word of God that. So you were a rebel with a cause, with a good cause, you know, the rebel from a young age.

24:05

Well, you know, you know, God tends to use those those type of people. He takes the weak.

24:11

He takes the rebellion, the least likely. And I think he does that. I don't know for sure, but to really shame and profound the wise, the strong of the world.

24:20

And it shows that that is his grace and his purpose for his glory. And man, this is a powerful testimony.

24:27

I mean, that's not an easy. Well, you know, I know it's the same for anyone who's lost. It's a miracle.

24:33

But this is truly the testimony of God's goodness and God's grace. Yeah. I mean, he gets all he gets one hundred percent of the credit.

24:40

I can't take any man. You know, I mean, it's just I'm blown away that he'd have anything to do with me.

24:48

So then you got into strike. Now, what do you do? Your job is striving for eternity.

24:54

You're in apologetics. You're pastored. Well, tell me a little bit about what you. Yeah, it was not really a plan.

25:03

Oh, OK. I was pastoring a church and I was bivocational and I it just was too much with a young family.

25:12

And I realized that I had to give something and a church pay me ten thousand a year wasn't going to put food on the table.

25:21

So I just, you know, I'll step away and wait till the timing is right. Obviously, the Lord hasn't opened a door for the timing to be right.

25:28

So I'll wait. What ended up happening was because all these churches that wanted me to speak,

25:35

I turned them down because I'm speaking at my church on Sunday. I'm not going to speak at someone else's church on Sunday. And so I said, no.

25:42

Well, now I had no reason to say no. And we had created Striving for Eternity originally just as a means of I had a website called

25:49

Striving for Eternity dot org where I just put some articles up. And it was not really a plan, but we organized it and 5 -1 -C -3 just so we could do evangelism events on the

26:01

Jersey Shore. And that was it. No plan beyond that. Well, now that I left the church,

26:08

I was being asked to speak every week. And I spoke those first two or three years. I was out 48 to 50 times a year speaking at churches.

26:18

And so, OK, it became a speaking ministry. But really, what is it? We got to have some purpose to it more than just a speaking ministry.

26:25

And we ended up as a pastor. I knew what it's like when people come and say, hey,

26:32

I love Way of the Master. We got everyone's got to be evangelizing. And because one person's into that, they think everyone should do that.

26:39

Someone else gets into Answers in Genesis. The whole church, we should be teaching this Sunday school every week.

26:45

And they want everyone in on it. Someone else wants to do prison ministry. They think everyone should be doing that.

26:50

And you get that as a pastor where everybody wants to do everything. They want everyone else to do what their pet parachurch ministry is.

26:57

And I realize there's a problem with parachurches ministries. They're coming alongside the church and actually hurting the church in some ways.

27:05

They're doing what the church can't do as far as doing the research in these specific areas. But they're also hurting the church because people in the church think everything should be about one thing.

27:17

And it's their own thing. What gets them going and not seeing that we have to do all of it.

27:23

And so I really had a heart for small churches. Give you some numbers.

27:30

The average size church in America is 25 people. OK. And people say,

27:36

OK, well, there's yeah, there's lots of small churches. That's true. But now throw in all those megachurches, those thousand plus churches.

27:44

And there's a number of them. Well, if there's a number of them, then guess what? You've got a whole lot of churches that only have five or 10 people.

27:51

That's true. That's a good point to make up for those thousands to get to 25. So what you end up realizing is there are churches where you have a bivocational pastor that doesn't have time to put together studies and seminars for people so he can really train his church to go out and do what the church doesn't because he's just he's got to get his day job.

28:13

Then he's got to do the preaching and he's got his kids. So he's worn out.

28:20

He's usually just doing the basics, just getting the sermon prep, preaching on Sunday, and that's that is the training.

28:27

And so I started to realize these churches are struggling and they're the ones that need to help the most. But guess what?

28:32

These big ministries, they're not going to go into a church of 20 people. There's not enough money for them to do that.

28:39

Just a good point. It's true. And so we do discipling. That's what we do. But so we're not people have a hard time figuring this out because like, wait, do you do evangelism ministry?

28:48

Yes. But wait, you also do apologetics. Yeah. Boy, you do like marriage stuff, too. Yeah. But you do like critical race theory.

28:56

Yeah. You know, because we do discipling. We're bringing all of this together for the purpose of building up the local church.

29:05

So our goal is to go. Our real goal is to get into local churches and do weekend seminars, train their people, give them tools that we leave and they continue that work in that area.

29:16

So they'll start evangelizing. They'll start learning how to interpret the Bible. They're going to know how to stand up and defend the faith.

29:24

And so we go in to give them those kind of tools. So that's awesome. Yeah, well, that is awesome.

29:32

I think that's a great ministry for sure. And you travel all around the country. You've been like,

29:37

I've seen some of your things on Facebook. You're like in California one day and then you're back in Kentucky the next and then you're in Philadelphia and you travel a lot.

29:50

My ministry partner and I have a running joke because before, I don't know if you ever heard of this thing called

29:55

COVID. It could be something. What's that? The thing was, is we used to travel and there would be months where we had one five, it was a five

30:10

Saturdays in one month. He and I met each other. We were together every weekend in a different state for five straight weeks.

30:20

So the entire month, we were together every weekend, but we were always in a different state. I'm sure that is, it's definitely very, very exciting, but it's also probably pretty tiring as well.

30:36

I would assume it can be. It can be. Let me tell you the difference between pastoring and inner preaching or doing seminars.

30:49

And this is why people think I'm crazy, that my heart is to return to be a small church pastor, because when you're a pastor, especially a small church pastor, anything goes wrong, everybody complains.

31:03

If you do anything wrong, you're not going to hear any praises. If you preach a good sermon, you're never going to hear it from people.

31:11

No, you preach a bad sermon. You will. Oh yeah. You have like 40 bosses out there in the, in the, uh, uh, in, in the worship center, right?

31:20

Yeah. However many people are members, they're your boss. And so, yeah, when I come in as a guest speaker, guess what?

31:27

I only hear praises. If I said something wrong, you know, who hears it? The pastor.

31:32

That's who they come to. That's pretty true. So as an inner preacher who travels around guys who do this,

31:40

I mean, they just get the pats on the back. And that's why you see a lot of guys that are in that ministry. I know people personally who

31:47

I don't associate with anymore because all they do is travel and speak. They don't have a local church.

31:54

They're traveling and speaking and they're getting the pats on the back and it's gone to their heads and they think there's something.

32:01

And so I've avoided that. And what we ended up doing early on, like I said, we, I was traveling 48 to 50 weeks a year.

32:09

And I said to my board, I said, this isn't healthy for me. It's not healthy for my family. I need to be in a local church where I can serve, where there's accountability for at least half the year.

32:22

So we need to cut back my speaking and say no to some things so that I'm serving in a local church with people who know me.

32:30

And correct me if I'm wrong, where there's some, there's that accountability. And so we, we made that change.

32:37

But you, if, you know, like people think I'm nuts that I would want to be a local church pastor, a small local church pastor again, because it's like, uh, why?

32:45

You get to travel the world. Well, not anymore. COVID ended that, but you know, you get,

32:51

I get to travel all these places and, and speak to all these large groups and it's like, okay, but you know what

32:58

I don't get to see what's that I don't get to see people that you minister to week in and week out month after month, year after year.

33:07

And you sit there and 10, 15 years later, you're watching them grow. You know, what gives me excitement is seeing a guy who is in a youth group in my church and I disciple him and he's grown and he's maturing.

33:20

He goes to college, graduates college is now in seminary. Isn't that awesome?

33:27

Yeah. That's, that's the exciting thing. Cause why? Because he got a love for the word of God and he was like,

33:32

I can't get enough of this. And God used you to plant seeds there. And you can see some of that investment.

33:40

Yeah. That, that is great. I mean, you know, we're investing in lives, touching lives for the glory of God.

33:48

And I think you're the name for your, uh, ministry striving for eternity is just that you are not only, it's just not a name you just threw up there.

33:57

That is what you're doing and what we should be doing too. Yeah. It's, it's, we're trying to equip people for eternity.

34:02

It comes out of the idea of Colossians chapter three, because some people make the mistake they think because they know

34:08

I do evangelism and they think that it's an evangelist that, Oh, you're trying to work for eternity, but no, it's sanctification right now is where it is.

34:16

And you know, Paul says is this, therefore, if you have been raised up with Christ, keep seeking the things above where Christ is seated at the right hand of God, set your mind on the things above and not on the things of earth.

34:34

And, and the biggest problem that people have in our day and age is they're so temporal minded.

34:40

Yeah. They're not thinking. They're not thinking of eternity. You know, the

34:45

Chinese church, an interesting thing that voice of the martyrs did, they did a study with the Chinese church, you know, the church in China, and they realized that the church is growing under great persecution.

34:57

And they wanted to understand why the number one thing they had five characteristics of the church. And the number one thing they discovered was that they have an eternal mindset.

35:07

They, they don't have hope in anything in this world because they know the government will take it away. So the only hope they have is like second

35:16

Corinthians five in the future. And when we get to be with Christ. You, we can't take money with us and we can't take stuff with us, things with us.

35:26

We can only take really Jesus with us and we can invest in the people around us that we love and that we're coming in contact to.

35:34

And I think that you're doing just that. And I think that's a powerful ministry that many, many people, uh, how can you be a part of this ministry?

35:42

What, what, how can you, what can people do to help you, uh, courage you or, or maybe do things, uh, get involved in things you're doing from where they're at.

35:53

Well, there's, there's many ways that may different levels to get involved because we, we do offer a lot of different things.

35:58

We offer an online academy for free, no less. That's how we make our money.

36:04

Oh, wait, wait, that doesn't work out if we give it away for free. Yeah. But that's, that's how we are. We, we have books that syllabuses that people can go along with it, but we have all the videos up.

36:15

We have a course on how to interpret the Bible, systematic theology, which is 80 classes. Wow. Have a introduction to world religions.

36:23

We have an introduction to discipleship. We plan to develop more over time, but we have those courses that are being used, which

36:31

I never expected in homeschools, homeschoolers did a lot. I keep asking homeschoolers, why do you use it?

36:38

And what I've consistently get told is that my quirky humor seems to keep their attention.

36:44

But I explain all the terminology so the kids can actually understand what I'm saying.

36:50

I love it. I love it. Okay. So we've talked about trying to turn that into something more geared toward homeschooling, uh, for that reason, but we have that academy.

37:01

You can go and you can get some courses. You can invite us out to your church and have us do a seminar.

37:07

We got a list. If you go onto our website and schedule a speaker, you'll see a list of seminars that Anthony and I can do.

37:12

And we come out to churches and do that. We have, so we have all that.

37:18

We will, we have a podcasting as you mentioned, right? We run the Christian podcast community. Now, the way we do it is that it gives us an opportunity to disciple podcasters so that they can improve their podcast.

37:31

Well, that's awesome. We have 56 podcasts right now that are part of the community.

37:37

Uh, so we have a number of good podcasts. People go there, just, they can just listen. It's you're getting a lot of different things and there's something for everybody there.

37:46

You want, you want something dealing with women? We got a bunch of women's podcasts. You want something dealing with family?

37:53

We got you covered. You want theology? Done. You want apologetics? Got it. You want evangelism? It's there.

37:59

Whatever you want. We got something for you and multiples of it. So you find which podcast kind of resonates with you.

38:07

Uh, of course, of course people can always donate because that, you know, we're going into churches that can't afford us.

38:14

We don't have a speaking fee. We, we ask that churches at least try to cover the cost of travel in lodging and things like that.

38:22

And we, we do things as best we can on the cheap, you know, we'll stay in people's homes and instead of a hotel, if we can, and that we would have to get a rental car, we, we just do stuff like that, but we're trying to keep it where we can get into those churches and that's our monthly supporters allow that.

38:39

You know, because of our monthly supporters, we can go into a church. I flew to, to Oregon, to a church that, you know, couldn't afford it.

38:47

They didn't give us anything. They just said, well, you can sell some of your books. No, we sold a half dozen books. Cause there, you know, there weren't that many people there.

38:54

20, 25 people. Okay. We sold a half dozen books, nowhere near covered the costs.

39:00

Wow. Spoken to church in New York, spoke for two weeks. They didn't give us a dime.

39:06

Well, actually they did eventually, like I ran into the pastor at a conference center and this is like 10 years later.

39:13

Right. And I just, we're both at the same conference center. And he said, Hey, I got a question for you. Cause we got together for lunch.

39:18

He goes, I got a question. Did we ever pay you? And I said, no, no, you didn't.

39:25

He was like, oh, I feel bad. Like, you know, we, we, we were having problems back then with the, like the treasurer forgot to pay me, you know, one week.

39:33

And so he's like, I'll get you a check. And I, I don't, I think he actually, they did send us something, but we didn't care.

39:39

It's for the glory of God. Exactly. And that's, and our monthly supporters make that possible. So unlike most ministries, 70 to 80 % of the money that's raised for striving fraternity goes toward ministry, not towards salaries.

39:53

When you look at a lot of the ministries, 50 to 70 % are salaries. You know, we don't do that.

40:01

And that, that makes it hard because it means we have to have other ways. All of our speakers have to have other ways of, of raising income.

40:09

Well, Andrew, this has been a very enlightening, uh, very blessed to have been able to hear your testimony and just, uh, see how

40:18

God's using you in a powerful way and you know, the, um, it's amazing and, uh, you know, my hope is that people that do listen to this would, you know, that your testimony would touch them, uh, either to salvation or to stronger, deeper discipleship and learning more about the word.

40:38

And, and my prayer for you is just to persevere, uh, and, uh, keep going with the ministry.

40:44

It's powerful ministry. What's your website name? And you also have one on Facebook, right? For striving for eternity.

40:50

Well, we have strivingforeternity .org is the website and we are on Facebook.

40:56

We have a group called striving for eternity. Um, there's a page there too, but the pages are usually one directional.

41:03

There's a lot of people in the group so that we have more dialogue with people there and that's another way of reaching out.

41:08

We have a, if people are interested in podcasting, we have a group for Christian podcast community. Um, and that's how people can communicate with, if they want to learn how to improve their, their podcast, they can go there.

41:20

That is awesome. Well, we just really appreciate you coming and talking to us today.

41:25

Uh, thank you to our listeners. We don't forget we have, do you have a Facebook page? Grace in the shadows.

41:31

And if you'd like to reach out to us, drJonathanatgraceintheshadowsor .org.

41:38

We would love to chat with you more and I hope everybody has a great day.

41:43

Thanks again, Andrew. And thank you very much for having me. All right. Thank you.

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