Debate: Baptism Does Not Save Men (Baptist vs. Lutheran)

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

All right, we are live, Apologetics Live. Glad you are with us. We're going to have a little bit of a different show here tonight.

This will be a live debate we are going to be having. And this is between, well, we're going to have the topic.

I should start with that. The topic tonight will be, Baptism Does Not Save Men.

The person on the pro side of this debate will be Ken Cook. He is a Baptist. And on the negative side will be

Rob. He is a Lutheran. So there's differing views that we have there. This is part of Striving for Eternity.

You can hear this on podcast on the Christian Podcast Community. Go there to christianpodcastcommunity .org

to check out all of our podcasts that we have. So real quick, I'm going to bring both

Ken and Rob in, so that they could quickly introduce themselves. And then we're going to start the way we're going to do this, as these guys already know, because they gave me the times.

We're going to do 15 -minute openings for each of them. We're going to do a 10 -minute rebuttal for each.

Obviously, the opening, we're going to start with Ken. And then we'll do the rebuttal.

We'll start with Ken. Then we do the cross -examination, 10 minutes each. We're going to do a 5 -minute rebuttal for each, and then a 10 -minute cross -examination, and then 10 -minute closing arguments.

And so that's going to be the format for this debate. If Rob is doing too well in this debate,

I'll just cut his time in half. Being a Baptist, I have—oh, wait, that's not the way it's supposed to work,

Rob? Oh, I'm sorry. No, we'll be fair. We got to try to get everyone laughing before the debate starts, right?

So, Ken, why don't you introduce yourself first, and then

Rob after that. Perfect. My name is Ken Cook. I'm here in Portland, Oregon.

I am a Reformed Baptist, and I'm very excited about tonight's debate.

I want to thank especially my wife, who's at home with our five children. That enabled me to be here in a nice, quiet place tonight.

You're really going to wear that hat, huh? Oh, yeah. Rob, go ahead.

Introduce yourself. Hi, I'm Rob Barnhart. I'm a confessional Lutheran.

There is a distinction there, Andrew. Not all Lutherans, sadly, are confessional.

I'm a long -time listener of Strive for the Eternity Ministries and Conguard .org.

That's how I know about Andrew Redford, Matt Slick. Just recently met

Kendall Cook. I do want to kindly just ask those people that if you are interested in this debate and you have got some kind of enjoyment out of it, if you wouldn't mind at least donating $5 to Conguard .org,

I would really appreciate that. Matt Slick, I view him as one of my fathers of the faith.

He's taught me a lot. He's taught me how to think logically, how to try to examine scriptures, and I hope to share what

I read from scripture with all of you. I jokingly say, only half -jokingly, that Matt has trained more pastors than any seminary.

Because like every pastor I know, when they're in seminary, found CARM. And that's where like, oh, yeah,

I was going to CARM. So it's like I'm convinced Matt has actually trained more pastors than any seminary. Matt really came into my life at a crucial time.

I was really, really young in the faith. I was pretty much in an empty evangelical church that didn't teach any truth, just kind of basics.

And Matt came along and just opened my eyes and made me want to dig deeper.

Him and Jeff Durbin basically started me down that path. You know, Matt went to a

Lutheran seminary. You should follow Matt and come out of that. I mean, yeah, at least he's

Presbyterian going to a Calvary chapel, so he's still confused, but he's on his way to Baptist. I'm convinced of it.

All right, so we're going to get started. Anyone who watches regularly knows we like to have fun.

And folks, so I should, before we get started, just give a schedule for next couple weeks. This week is a live debate, so we're not going to have people joining.

If you want to ask questions, if there's time at the end, just make sure that, for those who are watching live, just put a capital

Q and a colon so that I spot that and know that's a question that you actually want asked if there's time for questions.

Next week, Eli's going to come on. He recently did a debate on the

Gospel Truth channel, and we're going to review that debate. The following week,

I will be in California for Truth Matters Conference, so we will not have a show. But when we return, I will basically play the debate

I had on Gospel Truth, and we're going to do a review of that. And so for the reviews, we're going to allow people to come on in and ask any questions, but we're going to probably gear toward those debates.

We do have some other guest apologists that will be coming in in the next few weeks, working on that, so I'm not going to reveal the names yet.

So with that— Andrew, real quick, how's

Matt doing? Matt is moving, so he's trying to—if you watch when he does his live show, you're seeing that the room he's in has less and less stuff every day.

That's how I could tell how his move is going. He should be moving.

I know the house was put up for sale, and I think that—I forget if it's—

I think it's like next week or two. Ken, do you know the— The house was already put up for sale, so as soon as it sells, they're bouncing.

Okay, so are they waiting until it sells before they bounce? It's up in the air, from what I've heard.

It keeps changing. But be praying for them. This is—for anyone who knows his wife's situation, it is not going to be easy to do this drive from Idaho down to Arizona, so just be praying for them through all this.

It's going to be a lot on Matt, so yeah, appreciate that. All right, so Ken—I'm going to put

Rob in the background there. Ken, it is for you to start.

Go. All right, well, thank you all for coming. Welcome to this very important debate tonight.

The thesis for tonight's debate is Baptism Does Not Save Men, and as a Baptist, I will be taking the affirmative to that perspective.

While there are several areas that are often in view within a baptism debate, we are tonight not debating the baptism of infants or sprinkling versus immersion, and to the best of my ability,

I will remain on the subject of the effects of baptism. I would like to start tonight out with a very popular

Luther quote. Unless I am convinced by Scripture and plain reason, my conscience is captive to the

Word of God. Tonight, I will cite both Scripture and reason, and I hope that we will not hear my opponent decry logic, because we know logic flows from Christ, as all good things do.

My brother tonight holds the Lutheran view of baptismal regeneration that is unique from the

Christian Church or Church of Christ view and should be defined properly by what we see within the

Book of Concord. Again, to the best of my ability, I will cite either known Lutheran scholars or the

Book of Concord itself. Luther's larger catechism says this, Faith clings to water, and it believes to be baptism, in which there is sheer salvation and life, not through the water, as we have sufficiently stated, but through its incorporation with God's Word and the ordinance and the joining of God's name to it.

The debate tonight is also not about justification by faith alone, because both myself and my brother confess this biblical truth.

We rather are discussing the act of water baptism and what it accomplishes. The Baptist view is that baptism is the immersion in water of a believer in Jesus Christ, performed once as the initiation of such a believer into a community of believers, namely the

Church. This baptism signifies the believer's confidence that Christ's work was complete for his forgiveness and justification and indicates his desire for unity within the

Church, Christ's community of the New Covenant, purchased at the price of his blood. No saving efficacy adheres to either the form or the matter itself.

The person baptized has no scriptural warrant to believe that in baptism, Christ's saving activity is initiated, augmented, or completed.

In examining this question, it's critical to define our terms. As such, I'm going to define salvation, or saves, as the following.

To be saved, as everyone well knows, is nothing else than to be delivered from sin, death, and the devil, to enter into Christ's kingdom, and to live with Christ forever.

That is according to Luther and the larger catechism. As a Reformed Baptist, I would point you to Romans 8 .28

-30, the golden chain of redemption, that says, and we know that all things work together for those who love

God and who are called according to his purpose, because those whom he foreknew he also predestined to be conformed to the image of his

Son, that his Son would be the firstborn among many brothers. And those he predestined he also called, those he called he also justified, and those he justified he also glorified.

Paul clearly connects this issue of justification to glorification, just as Martin Luther connects rightly being delivered from sin with living with Christ forever.

Salvation is, by definition, justification, sanctification, and the glorification of men.

We have no biblical warrant to separate our justification from our glorification in heaven.

As Jesus said in John 6, For I have come down from heaven, not to do my own will, but to do the will of the one who sent me.

And this is the will of the one who sent me, that I should lose not one person of everyone he has given to me, but raise them all up on the last day.

For this is the will of my Father, for everyone who looks on the Son and believes in him to have eternal life, and I will raise them up on the last day.

No one can come to me unless the Father who sent me draws him, and I will raise them up on the last day.

An important question for my Lutheran friend to answer tonight is, does baptism actually save or potentially save?

Robert Kolb, Professor Emeritus of Systematic Theology at Concordia Seminary St.

Louis, who's also been a contributor to major editions of the Book of Concord, says the following,

Scripture does not tell us how it is possible that some run away in defiance of God, who wants all to be saved.

God's word in baptismal form lays down the foundation of a relationship that he wants to last forever.

Even Luther says, not all who are baptized receive the benefit of salvation.

He says this in the larger catechism, For by suffering the water to be poured upon you, you have not yet received baptism in such a manner that it benefits you anything, but it becomes beneficial to you if you yourself have baptized with the thought that it is according to God's command and ordinance, and besides in God's name, in order that you may receive in the water the promised salvation.

Now, the fist cannot do it, nor the body, but the heart must believe it.

Luther clearly tells us, faith must be present for baptism to be efficacious.

So far as I can tell, there is a division between the Book of Concord definition of salvation, which is living forever with Christ, and the definition of salvation that baptism brings within Lutheran theology.

So tonight, Rob, if a person can be baptized and baptism is efficacious in justifying the soul, how is it that those people can fail to receive glorification?

If there are those who will not be glorified, how can you then say we are or were saved by baptism?

With the definition and scope of baptism established, we ought to then ask, what does baptism do?

In Acts 10, 47 and 48, we hear, Can anyone withhold the water for baptizing these people who have received the

Holy Spirit just as we have, and he commanded them to be baptized in the name of Jesus Christ? This text and the surrounding text shows a clear connection of baptism being added to the church.

In fact, there is no disagreement in our traditions that baptism is the final ordinance by which one is admitted to the church and thus the

Lord's table, that is, to be a member of the New Covenant community. Now, this New Covenant is very different from the old.

It is, in fact, the Better Covenant. Robert Kolb, again, says this covenant defines the baptized as God's children and as innocent.

The book of Hebrews says about the New Covenant, I will put my laws in their minds, and I will inscribe it upon their hearts, and I will be their

God, and they will be my people. And there will be no need for each one to teach his countrymen or each one to teach his brother, saying,

Know the Lord, since they will all know me from the leadest to the greatest. For I will be merciful towards their evil deeds, and I will remember their sins no more.

And so he, Christ, is the mediator of a new covenant, so that those who are called may receive the internal inheritance as he has promised, since he died to set them free from the violations committed under the first covenant.

The New Covenant is a perfect covenant, and all who are members thereof, be the circumcision of their hearts, will be saved.

Baptism, then, is an ordinance that gives a sign of this internal reality.

This is why the Church is only to baptize those who confess Christ as Lord. Romans 8 .8

says that those who are in the flesh cannot please God. In the

Lutheran confessional traditions, we see that there is a normalizing process of catechetical instruction for adults, and then once that instruction, that sometimes lasts as much as 24 weeks, is completed, the convert is baptized.

In fact, this process is even recorded by Augustine in his Catechism, which contains the instructions for baptism at the end of the catechetical process.

So, the obvious question here is, do those who hate God submit to catechism as a normal practice?

Does not catechism please God? Now, of course, we can say that there are selfish reasons for such things, for the human heart is a factory of wickedness, but I believe that truthfully, we can say that the spiritual nature of instruction in the catechism requires one to be spiritually enlightened.

Paul says in 1 Corinthians 2 .14 that the unbeliever does not receive the things of the

Spirit of God, for they are foolishness to him, and he cannot understand them because they are spiritually discerned.

The unconverted can no more understand the Trinity than a dog can sing the ABCs. So imagine with me, if you will, that we preach the law and the gospel to a man, and he in contrition begins attending a

Lutheran church. Maybe even a Wisconsin Synod Lutheran church. Are we to say that he is unconverted into his baptism?

Are we to say that he is still in his sin? Of course not. Paul says in Romans 10, starting in verse 13, for everyone who calls upon the name of the

Lord will be saved. And how can they call on the one whom they have not believed? And how can they believe in the one whom they have not heard?

And how are they to hear without someone preaching to them? And how are they to preach unless they are sent? As it is written, how timely is the arrival of those who proclaim the good news?

But not all have obeyed the good news, for Isaiah says, Lord, who has believed our report? And most importantly, here in verse 17, he says this,

Consequently, faith comes from what is heard, and what is heard through the preached word of Christ.

Preaching is the means of grace that God uses in salvation. My Lutheran friend will tell you that in baptism we have the water joined with the word that brings salvation.

The problem is that the scriptures nowhere teach this, saying the Trinitarian formula is not the same thing as preaching the gospel.

If, in fact, that is so, I would like to challenge you, Rob, to show me something tonight.

I challenge you to show me one instance in the entire book of Acts where conversion occurs without preaching.

Show me one baptism that wasn't preceded by teaching. You won't find it. Men are saved by the preaching of the gospel.

Paul clearly teaches throughout the book of Acts that we believe to be saved.

Confer with Acts 13 .39 and 48, Acts 14 .27,

Acts 15 .1 and 2, 16 .14 and 15, 16 .30 and 31.

In fact, if we were to ask Paul and Silas, Sirs, what must I do to be saved? They would reply, believe in the

Lord Jesus and you will be saved. Peter was clear in Acts 10. Who can deny them the waters of baptism as they already had the

Holy Spirit? We see in Acts 8 .12, when they believed

Philip as he was proclaiming the good news about the kingdom of God and the name of Jesus Christ, they began to be baptized.

Even the Apostle Paul himself multiple times recounted how it was Christ who appeared and preached to him.

Jesus in the same body in which he was crucified came to Paul and declared, I am

Jesus. Paul knew the claims of the way and saw the risen

Lord before him. Prior to Paul's baptism, Ananias in Acts 9 calls his brother,

Paul his brother. Finally, if tonight my brother repeatedly cites the context of a plain text reading of the

Scriptures, for example, he'll say, baptism saves in 1 Peter 3 .21.

I ask you to consider the text of James 2 .24, which says, you see that a person is justified by works and not by faith alone.

Because of the great problem that this hermeneutic brings, this is what Martin Luther said about the book of James.

I maintain that some Jew who wrote it probably heard about the Christian people, but never encountered any.

Since he heard that Christians place great weight on faith in Christ, he thought, wait a minute,

I'll oppose them and urge works alone. This he did.

Both the Lutheran and Reformed view of faith alone is opposed to this text's, quote, plain reading.

So tonight you will see that the Scriptures are clear. God saves through preaching. It is via preaching that men enter into faith and repentance.

Thank you very much. Let me reset the timer here for Rob.

All right, Rob, you have 15 minutes. Go ahead.

Thank you for having me here. Thank you to Kendall Cook for your opening salvo.

I'll get right into it. The question is, the thesis of the day, baptism does not save men.

My opponent is in the affirmative. He is trying to affirm a negative, which is a much higher bar.

But he chose that himself. So keep that in mind. So basically, I appreciate what his approach is here.

But I'm going to let the Word of God speak, not reason, not anything else.

I submit my reason to Scripture. Okay. 1

Peter 3, verse 18. For Christ also suffered once for sins, the righteous for the unrighteous, that he might bring us to God, being put to death in the flesh, being made alive in the spirit, which he went proclaiming to the spirits in prison, because they formerly did not obey.

When God's patience weighed in the days of Noah. Okay. First, in order to execute this text right away,

Peter calls to mind a time of water. And he brings up the fact that God made a promise to Noah.

If you build this ark, I will save you. In the meantime, I will be sending waters to wash away the sin of the world.

This is why he calls our minds to the days of Noah, because it's about to be factored into his argument.

While the ark was being prepared, which a few, that is eight persons, were brought safely through the water. Some translations actually say saved through the water.

Once he says this, he then goes in to say, baptism, which corresponds to this act of God, where he has brought eight persons safely through the water, washing away sin.

Baptism, which corresponds to this, now saves you. This directly contradicts my opponent's position.

This is why he must separate the spirit and the water.

This must be why he must assume his position outside of the scriptures, his tradition of that it's only an act of obedience.

He didn't demonstrate that. He didn't even try to demonstrate that. As a matter of fact, he spent most of his time either quoting small snippets of the large catechism or other such things.

I'm here to discuss the word and not as a removal of dirt. So Peter anticipates people's understanding that the watering of itself will save.

He said, no, it's not a bath. It's not anything of such, but it's an appeal to God for a good conscience through the resurrection of Christ.

So in Baptists, we're directly connected with the resurrection of Christ. We're given a good conscience.

How can you have a good conscience if it's your work? Only you can have a good conscience through the atonement of Christ.

Romans six. Do you not know that all of us who have been baptized into Christ were baptized into his death?

We, like those in the flood, died in baptism.

We were buried with him by baptism into this death. And why did he do this?

In order to raise us from the dead. So we may to walk in the newness of life.

This is regeneration. So regeneration is directly linked with baptism.

For if we've been united in the death like his, we shall certainly be united with him at a resurrection like his.

Here we see that we will be raised in the same way he was raised on the great resurrection.

We know that our old souls were that the body of sin might be brought to nothing. So that we would no longer be enslaved to sin.

For one who has died, and we did die in baptism, we have been set free from such sin.

The condemnation, the bondage of our will are all this clear proclamation of Scripture.

Set free is clearly a salvific way of speaking about baptism. Titus, but when the goodness and loving kindness of God our

Savior appeared, he saved us. He saved us. Not us saving ourselves.

He saved us. Not because of works done by us. But according to his own mercy.

By how? By washing of regeneration, renewal of the Holy Spirit. Whom he poured out on us richly through Christ Jesus.

So that being justified, we might, by his grace, we might become heirs. Directly linking us with our father

Abraham here in baptism. According to the hope of eternal life.

Boom. Okay? So clearly this is what Scripture says about baptism.

And it goes on and on and on and on. My opponent says that he wants to know, does baptism actually save or does it possibly save?

And he appealed to Romans 8 and his understanding of Romans 8 and what it says.

Which goes far beyond what the text says. The text simply says that we are justified.

Scripture also clearly says that we can fall from grace. How? Faith is the key.

You do not get into heaven simply because Christ died for you. This is why all Calvinists know that prior to their conversion to faith, they are not

Christians. Even though they would say rightly because they are the elect that Christ died for them.

So what changes? It's the faith. The faith enables them to receive the benefits.

Likewise, faith to Lutherans is the same thing. Faith is what gets you into heaven.

And baptism is one means that gives you faith. Acts 22.

Ananias, speaking to Paul, says, rise, be baptized, wash away your sins.

Baptism actually did something. And it was something that was done.

It was not just an empty thing. It was indicating something that had already happened.

It's actually doing something currently. And he does this through calling on Christ's name in the baptism.

Clearly this is speaking of Christ's authority in baptism, which Christ is the one that instituted baptism in Matthew 22.

Go, therefore, baptizing all of your disciples, teaching them as I taught you.

Christ commands something. It cannot be an empty thing. It must be something beyond that.

And Scripture clearly teaches that baptism is not just an act of obedience.

It is something so much more. It's something that God does to you, not something you do for God.

You have been filled in him who is the head of all rule and authority, Colossians 2, chapter 2, verses 10 through 14, with a circumcision made without hands.

There it is again. Without hands. By putting off the body of flesh, by the circumcision of Christ.

There it is. Directly linking Christ with the baptism. That is Christ does the work.

The pastor. Having been buried with him in the baptism. Again, this directly links us back to Romans 6 when he says, in Christ.

In which you were also raised with him. How? Through faith, right there.

Baptism, faith. And the powerful working of God who raised him from the dead. And you were dead.

This is, again, Scripture clear. So my opponent.

He says we're only saved by the preaching of the gospel. I say yes and amen.

However, the preaching of the gospel is also found in baptism. It is God's word combined with water.

We are not Roman Catholics. We do not believe that baptism is the only means of salvation. It is absolutely required of the

Christian in order to be saved. We do not believe this. We believe that baptism is one means in which

Christ uses to give those faith in his one and only son,

Christ Jesus, for the forgiveness of their sins. Ephesians 5.

Husbands, love your wives as Christ has loved the church. That would be all believers.

Gave himself up for her so he might sanctify her. Having cleansed her by the washing of water with the word.

There you see water, word. The first Corinthians chapter 6 verse 11.

And such were some of you, but you were washed. You were sanctified. You were justified in the name of the

Lord Jesus Christ. How? By the spirit of our God. Baptism with the spirit.

I do not say that the baptism of that the Holy Spirit cannot come to someone outside of the water and word, which is what we know as baptism.

But it is certainly if we're everybody were to properly understand

Lutheran position of baptism. What I would say is what scripture teaches about baptism, then that would be the normative means in which all would come to salvation.

So asking a question, does it actually save or does it possibly say assume certain elements of the tool?

Lutherans do not agree with our reformed brothers on the tool. It actually does save because scripture clearly says it does.

What you do with the faith you're given, what you do with your salvation that you're given is entirely up to you.

Christ will continue working on your faith in the time that you're alive. Christ will not fail to save you.

However, if you do fall away, it is directly a result of your choice.

It's because you have forgotten God's promises. You do not desire God's promises. They are not for you.

You do not want them. You think you know better. We see time and time again that God does give those who desire that which harms them what they want after a long time.

We see this in Pharaoh. He gave the Pharaoh many, many, many, many times to turn back and to flee to God.

Pharaoh did not. Eventually, God gave him what he wanted. This is not a failure of God.

This is squarely on that person who thinks that they know better than God.

They don't need faith. They don't need Christ. They don't need their baptism. My brother here doesn't understand baptism.

And Paul clearly in Romans 6 says, but this is what baptism is.

He's going to go to verses where he assumes that simply because someone has what he perceives as faith, then receives the baptism that this is the normative means.

But nowhere in the scriptures does it say that the person has faith. It's something that he is logically conducing to hold to a systematic theology.

It's going beyond what the text says. In fact, scripture clearly says that baptism saves you, which is directly in contact and in conflict with his position.

He is clearly contradicting scripture. And I sound rebuking for doing so. And I would tell him to abhor

God's promises, whether it be by word or word with water, doesn't matter.

It's a dangerous thing. And I would call all Baptists to deeply think about God's word and what it has to say about baptism, to read the text in context and to ask yourself who's doing what.

Because it's clearly communicated in baptism, the Lord does the work.

It is all way for salvation. In the one way of Christ Jesus.

Galatians 3, verse 25 through 27. But now faith has come. We are no longer a guardian for Christ Jesus.

We are all sons of God. How? Through faith. For as many as of you were baptized into Christ have put on Christ.

Faith and baptism linked again. With 50 seconds left, thank you for your time.

That will be all. All right. Let me reset this to the 10 -minute.

We'll have, okay, I'm bringing Ken in for the cross.

You will have 10 minutes. Go ahead. Thank you,

Rob, for your opening statement. It was very nice to hear the standard

Lutheran argument. Where I would like to start, though, in my rebuttal is this.

Rob said that the gospel is found in baptism. I would like you to show us,

Rob, where the gospel is found in baptism. Show us a text that says the gospel is found in baptism.

Explain to us how it is that in baptism you have the preached word of the gospel.

Because the gospel is a very specific and definite thing defined in 1 Corinthians 15. And that is distinct from the

Trinitarian formula that we see in Matthew 28. Saying I baptize you in the name of the

Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit is not the same as what we see in 1

Corinthians 15. We see the standard argument of 1

Peter 3 .21. I think I would like to mainly address this in the cross -examination.

But I would simply ask, Rob, what is the anti -type that baptism is referring to?

Is it the ark? Is it the water? What exactly is the anti -type?

I think one of the things that has been really made clear here is that there is no clear Lutheran answer to what

Paul says in Romans 10. In Romans 10, we clearly see that faith comes by hearing and hearing by the preached word.

That's what the text says. That's clear as day. And so we can look at all of these other texts, which are pastoral documents.

And so as we look at these pastoral documents, whether that's Romans 6,

Titus 3, Ephesians 5, or Galatians, one thing that we ought to consider is these are being written to a mixed church, to people who are having issues with their faith.

And so an encouragement is to say, look, if you've been baptized, you've put on Christ.

Now, the idea that that means that every single person who's been baptized has actually put on Christ is not something

I think is reasonable to believe, either by Luther's definition of baptism or by mine, the

Reformed position on baptism. Luther says you have to have faith in order for it to actually be baptism.

That's one of the serious issues here. I would, again, kind of point out this very important quote and definition from Martin Luther in the larger catechism that says, for by suffering the water to be poured upon you, you have not yet received baptism in such a manner that it will benefit you anything, but the heart must believe it.

So what we're hearing from the larger catechism, from Lutheran documents, is you have to have a believing heart for baptism to save.

Well, if you have a believing heart, you've already been regenerated. You don't see any instance, and I would ask you,

Rob, to clearly show us how someone can believe the promises of God and yet not be regenerated.

Over and over and over throughout scriptures, we see that unregenerate men cannot and are unable to receive the things of God.

Now, what I thought was most interesting was this, is Rob started the night by saying, baptism saves, baptism saves, baptism does all these things.

If Christ commands, this will happen. And then he says, and I quote, you can fall away.

He has conceded the debate with this statement. What he's saying is, ultimately, baptism doesn't save, but you save yourself by choosing to not fall away.

If you choose to continue in faith, you choose to save yourself. That is the central tenet of Lutheranism, and as such,

I believe that the debate on his side is conceded. What he is saying is, no, baptism doesn't save.

Your choice is to not fall away. Your choice to keep the faith is what saves you.

While I think that there may be some profit in looking at specific texts, I would like to spend a little bit of time on the citation from Acts 22.

Now, we see a parallel to this in Acts 9. In Acts chapter 9, what we see is something very, very interesting.

If you go with me to verse, let's say, 15, we see this.

But the Lord said to Ananias, Go, for he is a chosen instrument of mine to carry my name before the

Gentiles and kings and the children of Israel. For I will show him how much he must suffer for the sake of my name.

So Ananias departed and entered the house, and laying his hands upon him, he said,

Brother Saul, now, tell me, as a

Christian, who do we refer to as brother? Unbelievers? Do we call unbelievers brother?

By no means. We only have one family, and that is the adoptive family of God.

Our brothers are those who are the regenerate. Our brothers are those who have faith in Christ.

And so what we see here is Ananias first laying his hands on Paul.

Paul regained his sight, and then we see in verse 18 this, And immediately something like scales fell from his eyes, and he regained his sight.

Then he rose and was baptized. So while my brother tonight clearly says that baptism is the normative means of salvation, that is his words, not mine, what we see in the book of Acts is preaching is the normal means of salvation.

Rob, I challenge you once again. Show me one instance in the book of Acts, one instance in the

New Testament, where preaching or teaching did not precede baptism.

In every single instance, what we see is preaching. I cite again

Romans chapter 10, Faith comes by hearing, and hearing through the preached word.

This is clear as day. Now, what does baptism do? Baptism is not simply an ordinance, although it is an ordinance.

It is a covenant sign, and those who have received it can receive the covenant promises.

So we do see statements within the New Testament saying, Baptism confers this to you.

In light of your baptism, you have this present reality, because they have already been justified by faith alone.

They have already been converted through the circumcision of their heart.

And it is not through their baptism, because we see that baptism always follows preaching.

Now, what's interesting is we did not get to go into Acts 2 .38.

Rob, I hope you do bring up this text, and I will kind of set that aside for a couple of minutes, other than to say we even see here the very first instance of someone saying in the

New Covenant era, Be baptized for the remission of your sins, that this follows a sermon, that this follows an altar call, and this follows men's hearts being pricked by God.

And so I would ask you tonight, as you consider our thesis, Baptism Does Not Save Men, what we have is a very clear set of statements.

Preaching is the means of salvation. We do not see anywhere in the text of Scripture where baptism precedes preaching.

Thank you. All right, let me reset the clock.

I will bring Rob in. All right,

Rob, your time for a rebuttal. Go ahead. Okay.

I think you misheard me in saying that the gospel thing.

I don't think you actually correctly quoted me, but I'm not going to pick on that too much.

You said that there was no clear answer, that Lutherans don't have any clear answer on Romans 10. This is not true.

God's word is heard through preaching. This is correct.

You're assuming that baptism is not preaching of the word.

Clearly, that's what we mean by the word, that the pastor is preaching the word prior to the baptism, after the baptism, during the baptism.

This is rightly so. If you understood what baptism is within the

Lutheran church, it's surrounded by the word. So by hearing the word, the word of Christ, that is preaching.

Baptism is expressly preaching. We do not disagree on this.

Preaching is a means. The word is a means. It is not the only means.

It is word and baptism is also a means. Notice, though, word carries over with baptism because water in itself does nothing.

The water in itself does not confer. You must have faith.

How do you receive faith? It is not you going up to the mound.

It's not you going into the water. God, through the Holy Spirit, gives you faith.

We are monarchists. So God wishes to give someone faith in baptism.

That is precisely what he will do. And we will raise those people under the understanding of what

Scripture teaches. They will better and better understand what took place in their baptism and other such doctrines.

He said that we say that you save yourself, that I have somehow conceded the bait.

No, my friends, he is the one who conceded the bait. He is the one directly contradicting clear passages of Scripture.

As a matter of fact, he didn't even want to touch the Scriptures. He didn't provide his own exegesis of 1

Peter. He didn't provide any exegesis of pretty much any verses. Instead, he wants to use philosophy and reason to contradict the clear word of Scripture.

He says we want to save ourselves, but this is a straw man argument. This is a fallacy of the highest order.

Lutherans rightly say that the only way you are saved is by Christ and Christ alone. That those who will see glorification,

Christ brought to that point. Lutherans believe this.

You falling away is not lack of you saving yourself or any other form.

It is a possibility. Scripture clearly warns us about to stand short in your faith, to stand fast in your faith.

If you do not, it is possible for you to shipwreck your faith.

So we rightly understand these cautions. And God, through his loving mercy, will keep us in the promises of God.

This is not salvation through you. You have to keep in mind, also, he's assuming his interpretation of Romans, the goal to change and redemption.

Again, without even trying to argue for it, he thinks that if you are justified, you are sanctified, the glorification must logically follow.

Scripture connects the three, but for who? For the elect, for the ones who stay in the faith.

Salvation, in and of itself, is of the elect. But it does, Scripture clearly says that you can fall away.

You can give up that which God has given you. You can deny it, right?

It's not like you wake up one day and you've lost it like car keys. It is something you absolutely must do and go out of your way to do.

So I don't understand my opponent's position here.

With the straw man argument and saying that, you know, pretty much his whole argument.

I don't generally understand his argument at all, and he's provided no clear scriptures.

On the contrary, at the beginning of the video, he tried to argue for baptism from the

Baptist viewpoint. Didn't even bother to try to demonstrate that argument. I have given you plenty of Scripture that indicates we see what the gospel gives us.

Christ dying for you, seen by over 500 witnesses. What does this give us?

If you have faith, forgiveness of sins, eternal life, sonship to God, things of this nature.

Clearly, the baptism text I read to you inferred all of these things.

Plainly said it, connected them with baptism, connected faith with baptism, connected the

Holy Spirit with baptism. And these are all means of salvation. This is the very promise of God, which is what the gospel is.

The promise of God is that you believe I will save you.

And then God graciously gives us that faith to believe. I really honestly kind of flabbergasted at my opponent's arguments because I thought maybe at the beginning we were on track here a little bit, and that he maybe understood

Lutheranism better than I anticipated. But then he comes out of nowhere with just a weird assertion that somehow we save ourselves, and it's just not correct.

It's not correct. It's assuming things that Scripture just doesn't say. Scripture says how we are saved.

Scripture says who is responsible for our glorification. Scripture also clearly says that we can fall away.

But again, the thesis of tonight's debate is does baptism save?

To get into what exactly that means is, in my opinion, a red herring.

It's about what baptism does. It's about what its effects are.

I clearly read to you what the effects of baptism is. Running around Scripture, talking about this thing and that thing, not a problem for Lutherans because we hold that there are means of grace, different means of grace,

God's word, baptism, etc. So we have no problem with the exceptions that the

Baptist would look to or what they would understand as the primary way. For adults, right?

Yeah, that's no problem with Lutherans. That's why we spend so much time with the adults is to rightly teach them the doctrine of baptism so that they don't think that they're doing it as an act of obedience to save themselves.

So they clearly understand that the baptism that they are about to partake is directly correlated to the faith that they have and that this baptism will give you all of these and more when you do it.

Obviously, we do it the other way around. For instance, we baptize them and then we teach them from the time that they are little to the time that they are confirmed.

So with that, I forget what is next.

But that would be my time. All right. Well, with that,

I'll reset our time here. I will add in. We're going to have now the cross examination.

So you'll both be in here. It's 10 minutes. I'll leave the clock going here. So can you get your first cross examination?

So you start with your questions. Go. Perfect. Rob, if somebody, if falling away is a possibility for someone who has been baptized and they do actually fall away, does their baptism save them?

Yes, it does. Yes, they were. Otherwise, they would not have faith to fall away from.

So does salvation, is glorification a necessary part of salvation?

It normatively is. Normatively. So would you disagree with the larger catechism's definition of salvation, that it is to live forever with Christ?

Actually, I would dispute that. It clearly gives the definition of salvation is freedom from sin, which obviously baptism gives.

Freedom from the devil, baptism obviously gives. And freedom from the third thing.

Sin, death, and the devil. I'll read you the quote from the larger catechism again. To be saved, as everyone well knows, is nothing else than to be delivered from sin, death, and the devil, to enter into Christ's kingdom, and to live with Christ forever.

Would you dispute that definition given by the larger catechism? Yeah, we live within his kingdom now.

That would be Lucius. Right. And faith. Okay, so again, you would agree or disagree that to be saved means that you live with Christ forever?

Yes, I would agree with that, yes. Okay, so somebody who is baptized, who then falls away, do they live with Christ forever?

If they stay in that state? Yes, if they fall away, and they die in the state of being fallen away.

At that point, they no longer have the faith that baptism inferred.

They would not be saved at that point.

That does not mean that they were not saved to begin with. Okay, so what you're saying is someone can fall away from the faith, have a vow of baptism, and that baptism does not save them.

No, that's not what I'm saying. Clearly, scripture says baptism saves. Clearly, if you are to read the context of large catechism and smaller catechism, what

Luther is saying, clearly he says baptism saves. If you have an understanding of what Luther is saying other than that, then you do not understand

Luther. And you do not understand Lutheranism. Would you say that baptism confers grace when the sign is validly affected, not as a result of the activity on the part of the recipient, but by the power and the promise of God?

What are you quoting? I know you're quoting from something. I'm simply asking you a question.

Would you agree, yes or no, that... Can you read it again? Yes, I can. Would you agree that baptism confers grace when the sign is validly affected, not as the result of an activity on the part of the recipient, but by the power and promise of God?

Yes. Okay. What I'd like everyone to hear quickly is that that is the Catholic answer's definition of ex opero operando.

In other words, what my opponent tonight has just confessed is the Roman Catholic view of baptism.

Well, what I would say to that is... I've got additional questions.

When we see... When you say that in the

Lutheran baptismal service, preaching comes by the word...

The word is preached before, during, and after. That during section.

Are you saying that the preached word of, in the name of the Father, the

Son, and the Holy Spirit is equivalent to the gospel found in 1 Corinthians 15? No, that's not all as said.

If you would look up what is typically done in baptism, there's so much more given besides that.

That is part of it. That is part of the word that is given in baptism, but there is more entailed in that.

There's more in the rest of the service, but prior to the immediate act of providing baptism... Yeah, that would largely align in depending on what pastor is doing the thing.

Usually they will include some form of the gospel given by Paul prior to the

Trinitarian formula. The formula in itself is not just the word.

There's usually other word attached, but that is word as well. Thank you. So what you're saying fundamentally is in a

Lutheran baptismal service, what you would rightly call baptism, has first preaching, and then a Trinitarian formula, and then the application of water.

And that you are saying that all of those things together make baptism. No, I would say in matters of Adiaphora, the formula isn't necessarily always the same.

So they could be proclaiming the word and be pouring the water on at the same time. Things of this nature, so it might not always be that.

Is the statement of the gospel found in 1 Corinthians 15 always a part of the Lutheran baptismal service?

There's always a gospel promise delivered that Christ has died for the forgiveness of your sins.

Thank you. So, Rob, given that you just agreed with ex opero operando, why is it that you haven't hijacked the 747 water tanker, flown over,

I don't know, Los Angeles, or maybe better yet, Washington, D .C., and blared a loudspeaker with a baptismal formula in preaching, and sprayed water on all people baptizing them and thus converting them?

Because that's not what I believe baptism is. It would do nothing, because they would not be taught, they would not be, they would inevitably fall away if God so chose to act in baptism to give them faith.

Because they would not be going to church or whatever like that, and they would abhor that baptism. It would be profitable.

However, if the Holy Spirit fell on them, if they had faith, etc., that baptism actually would do what

Scripture says baptism would do. What you're saying fundamentally is…

What I understood that quote from the catechism to be talking about is that faith must be given, and that it does not in of itself confer faith in of itself.

So I did not really understand the quotation you're reading correctly, because that's what

Lutherans would say, that we do not hold to ex operative. I understand that you say that now, but when

I define it, you said yes, you would agree with it. I defined it twice. I think we were pretty clear. So what you're saying then is people can have a valid baptism and not receive faith.

Is that correct? No, when did I say that? Just about two seconds ago.

No, I did not. Okay, so when Luther says… One must have faith for it to be called a baptism.

If you do not receive faith for whatever reason, then it's not a valid baptism.

It didn't do anything. It's just water. It's just a bath. It doesn't do anything. Okay, so Luther says, for by suffering the water to be poured upon you, you have not yet received baptism in a manner that benefits you.

Right, he's saying exactly what I'm saying, yes. The water in of itself. I'm asking the questions here.

So you have water poured upon you, but it only benefits you if the heart believes it.

So faith must be present. You must have faith in order for baptism to profit you something.

And where does faith come from? The Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit is attached to baptism. When the Holy Spirit falls on you, you will be granted faith.

So what you're saying is… You will believe God's promises in baptism. Okay, so every person who receives baptism, every person who receives it will have faith granted to them?

We don't know. Scripture doesn't say. Scripture simply says that where baptism is, where the word is, where the

Holy Spirit is, the Holy Spirit can give faith. We won't know unless the person exhibits the confession that they believe

God's promises. What you're saying is when someone is baptized, you do not know if they are saved.

No, we would say that they are from our perspective.

We do not know if from God's perspective, because only he can know the hearts of men and whether or not he gave faith in that moment or not.

But we would say, okay, this person seems to have faith in God's promises, seems to be doing things that would exhibit

Christianity. If later at that point they contradicted that thing, then we would like, okay, then we misunderstood.

However, if they never contradicted that thing and they stood in the faith because God gave them the faith to stand in the faith, then we would say, yes, they were saved.

Perfect. Thank you for confessing. Okay, Rob, your turn for questions.

Go ahead. Give me two scriptures that would indicate that baptism is only an outward sign and only an act of obedience.

I don't think my position is that baptism is only an outward sign or only an act of obedience.

You did say that in your opening. I would say that it is that, but it is also a tangible means of grace for those who have already been converted.

Okay, well, I appreciate you changing your answer.

That would be the old form of Reformed Baptist position. So I appreciate that.

Okay, so you said preaching is the normative means of salvation.

No, I did not say normative means. I said it is the means of salvation. Is the means, okay. Is the means of salvation.

Okay, how do you know that? Romans 10, 17 says faith comes by hearing and hearing by the preached word of Christ.

And if God's word is given in baptism, does that have the means to save?

Water isn't preaching. Again, that's not my definition of baptism.

Baptism is water plus word. You cannot have baptism otherwise. So I ask you again, baptism, since it has the word, is it a means of salvation?

I would say that the word is the means of salvation.

The application of water is not. The application of water is only for the purpose to show as an outward sign of an already present reality.

So you separate the two. Scripture links the two together.

I disagree. That's the very thing that's at debate here, Rob, is you say that.

I demonstrated that. So if the word is not the means in baptism, how can you make that distinction?

I don't understand. You said the word is the means of salvation.

Word is given in baptism, yet you seem to not want to just simply say that then in that instance, baptism would save.

Here's what you're saying, Rob, in essence is if we have a baptismal service and I preach the word and then baptize someone, people will necessarily be saved.

That's sorcery. Where faith is present. And so in other words, you're baptizing someone not knowing if they have faith.

No, we would trust God's promises that in baptism he will give faith.

To do otherwise is to not trust God. Okay, so in every instance, you believe that when someone is baptized, they are given faith.

We trust God's promises that he will deliver faith till we're proven otherwise, that the person no longer has faith.

Again, I struggle to try to why I'm nailing you on this because I don't think you're consistent on this.

You on one hand want to say the word is the means, but yet you want to try to reject one way that the word can come to you with water.

I really don't understand how you could do that. And the only way you could do that is to separate the word with the water, which scripture does not allow you to do.

Again, I understand why you do it, but I'm generally not understanding how you could logically consistently say you believe in scripture, hear the clear connection between water and word, and yet reject it.

That's where I'm trying to figure out. When Paul went into Corinth, he said,

I'm thankful that I didn't baptize many of you. Now, Paul, we know, went and preached.

And then we see later in Corinthians that he is said to be the spiritual father of many.

That they have many teachers, but one spiritual father, that is Paul. And so we can see that it is the preached word, not baptism, that made

Paul their spiritual father. Again, separating the preached word from baptism.

That's what the text of Corinthians does. Otherwise, why would Paul say, well, that's not my place to ask you questions here.

Again, you once again separated the means. And that's why

I'm asking you these questions, because I think it demonstrates that because of your tradition, you must create distinctions in scripture that are not there, that are not necessary, that you're more loyal to a tradition than something else.

All right, so I appreciate your thing. Since we have four minutes, real quick, can

I please have at least an attempt at an exegesis of 1 Peter 3, verse 21?

Yeah, I would happily exegete 1 Peter. So what we see here is the likening of the story of Noah and the ark to baptism.

Now, what we see here in the story of Noah and the ark is water does not save anyone.

In fact, Noah's family was said to be saved through water, not by water. Now, the text actually says that baptism is an antitype to that.

Yes. The definition of an antitype is a sign of something.

It is not an actual reality of something. It is a sign, is the meaningful definition of antitype.

You can feel free to look that up. As such, we do not see that baptism actually saves.

We see that it is the preached word through Christ that saves, but rather that once one has baptism, they can, through this pledge of a good conscience, be said to be saved because of Christ's resurrection.

Well, I really appreciate you giving me your exegesis. And I would strongly pray that those who are hearing would hear just the laughable exegesis that you just gave.

I mean, it's a disaster. But thank you for giving that to me. It definitely demonstrates the

Baptist cannot write and handle this text at all. Thank you. That would be all for my time. Okay, we will go back to rebuttal.

It will be a five -minute rebuttal. So give me a sec to reset our timer here.

We start with Ken for a five -minute rebuttal.

Go ahead. Perfect. Well, I think that this cross -examination was radically enlightening.

What we see is that the Lutheran in this debate confessed openly to ex opero operando.

He openly confessed to the Roman Catholic position. He openly confessed that if baptism is simply properly administered, then, by definition,

God will save. He, in essence, has turned baptism into an incantation.

He has turned this into sorcery. In fact, then, in the section where he was cross -examining me, he, and I wrote this down, he said, in baptism,

God will give faith. God will give faith. As a

Baptist, I find this really interesting, because what ends up happening then is you've got this person going through up to 28 weeks, 24 weeks, of Lutheran confirmation and catechesis, but then nothing.

It's only after that that they're baptized. So if what

Rob is saying is correct, is true, what he's saying is that in their church, their process is to take people who are unconverted, teach them a bunch of Christian stuff that they do not understand and cannot understand because it's spiritually discerned, and then, and only then, do they baptize them, where they then get, as Rob said, that's where they normatively receive faith.

This is so foreign to the text of Scripture, where what we see in the book of Acts, in every single instance, is this.

Somebody preaches, and then people are baptized. Somebody preaches, and then people are baptized. There is clear repentance and faith.

I'd like to now go to Acts 2 .38, which I think is a radically important text for tonight.

And here's kind of what we see in Acts 2 .38, is Peter gets up, and he preaches the first sermon.

And then the people respond. And they respond out of conviction.

They respond as men who have been dealt with, we could say, by God.

In fact, it says this. Now when they heard this, they were distressed, or some translations would say they were cut to the heart.

Now, this should bring about an imagery to you of circumcision of their hearts.

And they then say, now, what should we do? Peter says, repent and be baptized for the forgiveness of your sins, and you will receive the

Holy Spirit. Now what's interesting here is he doesn't tell them to have faith.

Why? Because they already have it. Unregenerate men do not, in light of seeing their sinfulness before a holy

God, unregenerate men, in light of recognizing their murder of the

Son of God, do not say, well, what should we do?

They rather do nothing. What Rob has failed to address tonight is this issue of plain text reading.

He wants to simply read the text and say, well, this is what it means. Rob, I would ask you, clearly, if we're going to use a plain text, a plain text reading hermeneutic, does not

James 2 .24 force you to reject justification by faith alone?

Does not Peter, when he says, save yourself from this perverse generation, teach that people can save themselves?

No. I, as a Baptist, can recognize that there are different meanings and usages within specific texts.

As a Lutheran, it seems like what you're able to do is what Luther said, which is, let's get rid of a book that we can't understand, because we're forced into a particular view.

Finally, I'd go back. Rob has said, you can be baptized and die.

Sorry about that. All right, Rob, let me add you in. And it is time for your rebuttal.

Go ahead. I never addressed the issue of what

Peter is referring to in 3. And he is referring both to the ark and the water.

Both elements are present, just as in our baptism, Christ and the water is present, and that Christ brings us safely through the water, which

I did say a little bit, but that was a deeper explanation, so I did actually answer that.

You said I openly confessed except for Toronto. No, you provided a quote when

I asked you what the quote was because of the language. Didn't sound quite right to me. Did not sound like a

Lutheran resource, but I actually trusted that you would not try to pull a trick and to use vague theological language, which can be interpreted many different ways, as to say that I clearly confessed except Toronto is just a charge that if I was in person,

I probably would punch you in the face because it's just such an obvious lie. It's just it's just a trick of the highest order.

The devil deals in deceit and you have dealt in deceit here. Lutherans clearly condemn except Toronto.

You must have faith. God blows where he wishes. The Holy Spirit goes wherever he wishes in baptism and word.

God can do whatever he desires. Faith is necessary for baptism to save.

You are given can be given faith in baptism. If God wills you to give give you faith in baptism, that's what will happen.

We understand that faith is linked to baptism in Scripture. Clearly, faith can come from baptism.

God said you wanted to appeal to Peter's chapter two. I'm not sure why you think this text does anything to support your thing.

You want to understand that they heard the word and were converted and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.

And then they did a thing. Right. They did hear the word and they were like, hmm,

OK, if you're right. What what what shall we do?

I mean, I don't understand what you're asking us to do. And in light of the truth of the word,

Peter says he tells them, OK, repent. We should both confess that repentance is given by God.

Be baptized. Every one of you in the name of Jesus Christ. For what? For the forgiveness of sins.

And you will receive the gift of the Holy Spirit. Where?

In baptism. That's the flow of the text.

The promise is for you and your children and all who are far off. Everyone whom the

Lord our God calls to himself. So he even includes the children amongst the hearers.

Which you would directly contradict. No, we don't have a problem,

James 2. And no, Luther did not inevitably throw out James 2.

After coming out of Rome, being opposed by Roman Catholics, persecuted for his faith, he reexamined

Scripture in light of this persecution. And at one point in time considered James to be not

Scripture. He later recanted and changed his mind and rightly understood that throughout church history,

James has always been listed in the canon. Well, not, I shouldn't say always, but mostly listed in the canons given previous by church fathers.

Therefore, he, under the understanding of Romans and James, understood that they did not conflict each other, but they actually agreed with each other.

Therefore, he did not throw them out. To say that he did is to disparage a brother in Christ, which you did say.

W. Okay, let me reset this then.

I will add Ken in. We will have 10 minute rebuttals. Would it be possible if I can have like a quick few minutes to get up and walk around?

Because I'm here in a seated position and my legs are falling asleep. Yeah, I guess.

As long as you can still answer questions, sure. All right, we're going to start with Ken for your cross.

You have 10 minutes. Go. Thank you. Rob, you said that you can be given faith in baptism.

Are you always given faith in baptism? Scripture doesn't say.

So you don't know? No, it's not that I don't know. I don't have the required information to know.

Only God knows. Okay, thank you. So given that, you can't say that baptism definitely saves somebody.

You can only say that it might save someone if God chose to give them faith. No, I would say baptism saves if we understand what baptism is.

So somebody goes through a baptismal service, not receive faith, and not know that they didn't get baptism?

What do you mean? I'm sorry. They would understand that they believed that they took baptism.

But we understand by the definition of baptism given by Lutherans and from Scripture that baptism is a thing, water, word, faith.

If they don't have faith, then they were not baptized. They took a drink in the water. Great. So, Rob, you cited in Acts 2 .38

for the remission of your sins. For the forgiveness, yes.

Is it your understanding that what Scripture says that that actually means that at that moment their sins were forgiven?

At what moment? At the moment that they went into the water and had baptism applied to them.

Scripture doesn't say. It just simply says that in baptism they received the forgiveness of sins. That's all we know.

We don't know the timing. We don't know all that stuff. We don't get into that. We just simply confess what

Scripture says. Peter said, repent and receive the forgiveness of your sins by baptism.

Perfect. So in Mark 1 .4, John said repent and be baptized for the forgiveness of your sins.

Were people who received John's baptism also forgiven of their sins?

Well, that's what the baptism did. That's what it was for. Keep in mind that this is a different covenant.

This was the old covenant. I understand that. Did they receive the forgiveness of their sins when they were baptized?

We see John giving baptism. We see that the reason why he was giving the baptism, one, was forgiveness of sins.

And one, to be there so that when Christ would come, he could baptize him. Beyond that,

Scripture doesn't say. Scripture doesn't say. It doesn't say if the people he baptized necessarily received forgiveness of sins.

But that was why he was baptized. Okay. So perfect. So what you're saying is we can see

Scripture saying be baptized and this is going to happen. And we don't necessarily know if it definitely will happen.

We just have to hope that it does. Is that what you're saying? No. Faith. We must trust

God's promise that in baptism, when we receive God's promise, we will be given faith to have the faith to believe

God's promises. Okay. So when – and this is not a question about infant baptism, so please do not take it as such.

Yeah. I apologize for bringing it up, but I had to because it was in the context. I apologize. What would be the difference between baptizing an infant who has no awareness of what's going on and flying a plane over a city and baptizing someone who has no awareness of what's going on?

Would there be any functional difference in your mind? Well, I wouldn't agree that children have no understanding.

We actually see from science that children actually can recognize their mother's voice, can recognize certain music being played, can actually respond to this.

We see in Scripture that John responded to the presence of Christ in the womb. So we actually don't actually know beyond some evidence that children have some kind of awareness, but we're not quite sure exactly how much.

But, again, we don't understand that faith is necessarily something that we must do, that it is something given by God.

So even if the person was not, quote, unquote, capable of believing in and of themselves, which

I would rightly confess that by nature we cannot, God can make that a reality.

As a matter of fact, he does that with adults. Okay. So then why should we not simply fly planes over major cities and baptize people with a loudspeaker pulling a sermon?

If we could make sure that those people would try to be spoken to and be led through God's word and be told the gospel and the law over and over and over again in some way, shape, or form, we should absolutely do that.

As a matter of fact, if it was practically possible, if we had all the money in the world, and I was a billionaire,

I could see somebody doing that and just keep on the loop, just flying a plane every

Sunday after they, you know, or whatever, and reading God's word aloud and trying to catechize people whether they wanted to or not.

But, again, the problem with that is they're not – we have no way of knowing if they're abhorring that baptism or not because we're not interacting with them.

It could be that they simply get mad at being soaked against their will. Okay, so then what you're saying is that baptism does confer grace when the sign is validly affected.

Yeah, I don't understand that language, to be honest. That's why I didn't rightly understand it. I've read the

Catholic catechism like three times, but it's hard to remember the language because it gets really, really obtuse sometimes.

I would just simply say that if God so willed to bring about the means to make me a bazillionaire and for whatever reason

I thought it would be wise to baptize everybody, God could absolutely act through that act and give people the faith to recognize

God's promise in baptism and hear the word. That being said,

I don't think it would be advisable because we would probably be breaking numerous laws in doing that, especially against at least some of the peoples against their wills because they would not have faith.

They would simply just be wet and be mad. So would that be a positive? Do you not think a baby is just wet and mad?

No. If they have faith, they recognize that they are wet, but they definitely have faith, and they are glad to be in Christ's kingdom.

So what you're saying is when somebody who is – never mind.

We'll just pass that by. We'll pass that by. Okay. Okay. Wow. I guess kind of the last question is can you point me to a specific scripture that says baptism provides faith?

I wouldn't say it supplies, but it does link baptism and faith. I'm not going to have time to flip to it.

I'm sorry. I have it written down here. Okay.

Colossians 2 is where I would go for that. Having been buried with him in baptism, there's baptism, in which you were also raised with him through faith.

There's faith and baptism linked together. No, no. That says you were raised through faith, not that you were baptized, not that faith was provided in baptism.

I'm looking for something that says baptism provides faith. I would disagree with that because it says baptism.

It says through faith, which the faith was given in baptism. That's how you were raised. So it's linking baptism and faith there.

I think that's you reading your tradition into the text, but I guess we'll move on from there. Can you show me anywhere where somebody in scripture is baptized without preaching?

Well, since the word is always present, whether it be in the word or baptism, that's not a reality.

So you're saying there's no difference between baptism and preaching, that they are the same thing?

They are both means of grace. If God so chose to save somebody through just the preaching alone, then that is

God's sovereign choice to do so. If God sovereignly chooses to save someone through the preaching of the word connected with baptism, that is

God's choice to do so. So that's not the question that I asked.

I believe we see instances of both in scripture, that those who are given faith by the word and then are baptized quickly after.

And I think that we see examples of people who are baptized and then given faith. Is faith given by all means of grace?

Where faith is present to receive it, yes. So could you rightly go convert people by providing the

Lord's Supper? If God would sovereignly give that person faith, yes.

They would receive the forgiveness of sins in community. But that's a little bit off topic, don't you think? I mean, it has to do with grace, but it's a different sacrament.

I think it's radically germane to what we're talking about here. Thank you very much. All right, so that's time.

And Rob, you got your 10 minutes for questions. Go. OK, Ken, if you had all the money in the world, you could do whatever you want.

Would you fly a helicopter preaching God's word to everybody who could listen?

No. Why not? I would see that while preaching is a means of grace, that does not seem to me to be an effective means of disciple making.

But it could grant faith if you did that. Maybe. Well, you said the word is the means of salvation.

So if God sovereignly chose to use your ministry to give faith, then he would.

Shouldn't you then at least consider that? No. Because he's serving.

He could do it if we recorded an album of dogs singing Christmas carols, too.

But we're not going to do that either. Do you go to open air preaching? I do.

So you're proclaiming the word amongst the wheat and the tares, are you not? Yes.

Is that not the same thing as flying over the heads of people and proclaiming God's word? It might be.

It's the same thing. There are people who are hearing with faith, and there are people who are rejecting. So theoretically, if you think it's necessary to do one, you should at least consider it a good possibility to consider the other, because it's basically the same thing.

I don't necessarily disagree. You simply asked if I would do it, and I would say no. Yeah, so it's a personal choice.

It's not necessary. You view one as maybe a better avenue than the other.

I would say that preaching the gospel to somebody and calling them to repentance and faith in Christ is a personal process.

Well, wouldn't that directly contradict open air preaching? Because it's directly not personal.

I mean, you're talking amongst a bunch of people here. You're not having a private conversation. The only person who would say that is someone who has an open air preached.

Well, I have open air preached, and it's distinctly a public conversation. You're not having private conversations.

You can have one at one time, but by and large, you're speaking to mostly people who are passing by.

And so it's rare to have somebody stop and talk to you long enough to where you can give them more information.

But, okay, I'll just – I just wanted to see if you're consistent. I don't think you're logically consistent on that one.

At least I'm consistent. I would go and I'd preach the word to people who were either willing to hear or not willing to hear, and I'd be willing to preach the word through baptism regardless.

I think that's logically consistent. So do you – did you know that Luther later clarified his position on James 2 when you cited that he at one point in time had feelings that it might possibly not be scripture?

I did. So when you cited his previous position without clarifying that he did change his position, do you feel that that was dishonest in any way?

No. Okay. My point was not to demonstrate Luther's character or Luther's faith.

My point was rather to show the outcome of a plain text reading hermeneutic.

I would say that's more the outcome of dealing with persecution from the Roman Catholics, but okay.

Really, I have nothing to really ask you other than to ask you –

I really don't have any other questions. I think we've basically arrived at the thing that I need to say.

There's really nothing else I really can ask you. Okay. Do you want to go to close then? Would that be me closing first then?

It would be. Five minutes if you want more questions.

What I'll do is I'll just use that five minutes to kind of gather my thoughts for the close.

Let me know when you're ready. I'm going to go ahead and move on to the close.

Okay. I restarted the timer. I'll put Ken in timeout – I mean backstage. I want to say at some point during this debate.

All right. Go ahead with your close. All right. So, again, the thesis of the debate is baptism doesn't save men.

I said at the beginning that it's extremely hard to prove a negative. I think my opponents clearly demonstrated it's extremely hard when your affirmative against a negative is against what

Scripture says. He tried his best, and I would just point out that I'm the one who walked through Scripture.

I'm the one who provided exegesis. I'm the one who called you to my Scripture. What did my opponent do?

Spent a lot of time trying to think of philosophy and reasonable things to try to attack the clear word of Scripture.

What did my opponent do? When he did finally actually touch the Word of God, he delivered some of the poorest attempts at exegesis

I've heard regarding baptism. As a matter of fact, I would encourage you, Kendall, to more borrow from your mentor,

Matt Slick. His exegesis is at least a little bit more defensible than yours. So I would just simply say and remind everybody again that Scripture clearly says that baptism saves.

If you continue in that salvation or not, regardless, if you're saved, you are saved.

God's word pronounces, by faith, you are saved. You are saved. So, one

Lord. So, for Christ also suffered once for sins, the righteous for the unrighteous, that he might bring us to God.

How? By being put to death in the flesh, being made alive in the Spirit. Speaking of his resurrection, in which he proclaimed to the spirits of the prison, his resurrection, the gospel, he went and told them.

Because they formally did not obey. When? When God's patience waited the days of Noah, linking us back to a time of water.

Noah was told, build an ark. Water is coming. Salvation is here.

Build an ark. Christ is our ark. When we are in Christ and water washes over us, we are saved.

That's why Peter goes on to say, in which a few persons were brought safely through the water.

Likewise, we are brought safely through the water by our Christ. Baptism, which corresponds to this incident that I am calling to your mind, now saves you.

Directly demonstrating my opponent contradicts the clear word of Scripture and does so due to his tradition.

He must find a way to make this Scripture not say what he said. You heard him repeatedly saying, baptism doesn't save you, yet Scripture says it does.

And it says, not as a removal of dirt. So it's not just the mere water. It's not a bath.

Therefore, his straw man of flying over people's heads and dumping water and claiming that I'm doing a valid baptism is,

I hope you would see, not my position. And I would just simply end with this,

Kendall. Paul has strong words for you. Do you not know? Know what?

All of us who have been baptized into Christ Jesus, we're baptized into his death.

We die in the water. This is something that is actually happening in baptism.

We were buried with him by baptism into his death. In order that we would be raised by the glory of the

Father, that we may too walk in the newness of life. This would be regeneration. This would be the new nature, the new man, whatever you want to call it.

For we have been united in a resurrection like his.

There you see, we will be connected with his resurrection. We know that our old self was crucified with him in order that the body of sin might be brought to nothing so that we can no longer be enslaved to sin.

For one who has died has been set free from sin. We die in baptism. We are directly connected with his crucifixion in baptism and we are thereby freed from sin.

You understand that in light of other texts where clearly baptism for the forgiveness of sins.

This can be a means in which you receive salvation. This is clear, salvational language, the washing of regeneration and renewal of the

Holy Spirit. When he poured out on us richly through Christ Jesus over and over and over again, the scriptures are very clear that baptism is not something secondary to where it's just pointing back to what's already taken place.

And that's all it is. In fact, baptism only speaks of baptism.

It doesn't say water. It doesn't say spirit. It doesn't get into this thing. It just simply says this is what baptism is.

This is who does the work. It is God. This is what it confers. Forgiveness of sins, freedom from sin.

You are here according to the two Adam. I'm sorry,

Abraham. I faith and you are given the hope of eternal life.

My opponent hasn't done his exegetical requirement to overturn any of these passages.

All he has used is sophistry of the highest order to try to give to scripture.

He wants to fight against the clear reading, plain reading of scripture in favor of only a spiritual reading of these texts.

He has no warrant to do that. We see that unlike the

Roman Catholics, I say that it's possible to be saved with the word. Do we see clear instances of instances where people had faith prior to baptism?

We also see people who are baptized and receive faith. These two things are seen in scripture, but my opponent must ignore the instances that does not fit his theology and only highlight the verses that speak to his tradition where I could rightly say

God said both and rightly affirmed both. Because unlike him,

I have submitted my reason underneath his word. My opponent has not.

He feels that he knows what theological inferences of all these scriptures go.

He goes far beyond what scripture says in order to say things God has not in order to contradict the plain spoken word of my

Lord. This is rebellion of the highest order and you ought not do it.

I do not say that my brother here is faithfully a poser of Christ, but is inconsistent in his confession of faith towards my

Lord. He rightly affirms some of God's word says, but wrongly rejects others.

We glorify and praise God in his sovereignty that he has bestowed mercy enough for him to be a monarchist.

We rightly confirm that he affirms the Trinity rightly so because it's what

God's word teaches. Just on this particular matter, he is inconsistent. He rightly and unfortunately rejects

God's word. He would say the same about me. We are two different churches, one

Lutheran, one Baptist. And I would just hope that people would rightly go to the word themselves to have seen this and make this debate nothing more than a reason to go and read

God's word about baptism. And I just simply ask you to ask yourself who's doing what?

Because God is always the one active in baptism. It is nothing you do.

And I would just hope and pray that people would do that and and accept the plain teaching of Scripture and not fight against it with what they've previously been taught.

Traditions of men and to allow God's word to do its work as a means of grace to give you faith in the faith once given to the saints, which is what

I call Lutheranism. Thank you for your time.

Thank you for striving for eternity's ministries for having this debate. Thank you for Apologetics Live for hosting it.

Thank you to my opponent, Kendall Cook, for agreeing to the debate. It it has been sobering and interesting to do my first formal debate.

And it was I hope that God will use this to not only teach others, but also teach me how to better apply my confession of faith in reality.

Thank you, Rob. I'm going to reset the clock. You have your closing 10 minutes,

Ken. You can go. Thank you, first of all, Rob, for coming out tonight.

I think that this has been radically enlightening for all who have attended and all who will listen. Here's what we heard tonight.

Faith can be given in baptism. Falling away is a possibility. And and there is no certainty for the one who was baptized.

That they will receive glorification. And so when we look at the definition of salvation provided in the larger catechism of the

Lutheran church. We see that there is a definite and necessary connection.

To living with Christ forever. What we heard tonight from my opponent is that those who are baptized will not necessarily live with Christ forever.

And as such, I do not believe that he has supported his view.

And I believe it has been clearly demonstrated to all that baptism does not save men.

In the same way, we can look at the text in 1 Peter and other places like we look at the text in James chapter 2.

We recognize that while a clear reading of the text says we see that man is justified by works and not by faith alone.

And yet we confess we are saved by faith alone. Both Rob and I. We can also look at the text and recognize that while the text says baptism saves.

It is not talking about functional salvation. It's talking about something else.

It's giving an analogy. It's using a pastoral example to provide encouragement.

Here's what we see in the actual text of scripture that were cited by Rob. In Colossians 2 .14

we see that the certificate of debt is canceled. We see in Ephesians 5 that the church is holy and blameless.

And in Romans 6 we see that we will certainly be united with Christ in a resurrection like his.

Yet Rob denied all of these things. He showed us clearly that the

Lutheran position is the Roman Catholic position. That baptism makes you savable if you continue in faith.

That continuing in faith is up to you. Therefore you save yourself by not apostatizing.

By doing enough to keep your faith. And so while on one hand we have a clear statement from my brother.

We are saved by grace alone through faith alone. We see in this case that he openly confesses that it is what you do that shipwrecks your faith.

It is what you do that makes falling away a possibility. Moreover, he said in our second cross -examination, he doesn't even know if faith is given in baptism.

He said it can be given in baptism. We trust that it's given in baptism, but we do not know if it's given in baptism.

In saying these things, he has conceded the debate. What I know, and what the scriptures clearly teach, is that faith comes by hearing.

That doesn't mean everyone who hears will receive faith, but it does mean that only those who hear will receive faith.

I asked my brother, clearly, where do the scriptures say that the gospel is found in baptism?

Where does the scriptures say that baptism provides faith? He provided no answer to either of those questions, and in fact said the scriptures don't say.

In conclusion, I would ask you to look at the book of Acts. I would ask you to consider that in every single instance, what we see is preaching and or teaching, and then repentance and faith.

We never see in the book of Acts, we never once see baptism and then faith.

I understand the traditionalist perspective, I understand that Lutheranism came out of Roman Catholicism, but I don't believe in the issue of baptism, it came out far enough.

I believe that we can clearly see that we receive salvation when we repent and believe.

And then we are baptized. And that faith comes via hearing, and hearing from the preached word of Christ.

We also clearly saw a Lutheran semantic game that said, well somehow, preaching occurs in baptism, despite the fact that the scriptures don't say this.

And so I would ask you to consider why it is that the

Lutheran Church holds to this perspective. I would submit the words of many

Lutheran laymen and theologians that have said, look, if baptism does not save, how do we deal with those who die in childhood?

And if we can then say baptism does save, it gives us hope for them. This is a useful tool to quiet the heart pastorally, but it is not what the scriptures teach.

Thank you so much for attending tonight. I too would like to thank Andrew Rappaport and Striving for Eternity Ministries.

I would like to thank Rob for attending. And I hope that you, the listener, would go back and look through the text of scripture.

See that in every single case, faith comes by hearing.

And that we would put no trust in baptism, but rather that we would put our trust in Christ alone and his gospel that was preached to us.

Thank you so much. All right.

We don't need the time. There we go. All right. Well, thank you guys for coming in.

I want to thank both of you. And we appreciate the time you put in to preparing for this debate.

I hope, folks, that it was educational for you, helps you to understand this. We do try to do these debates here so that you guys can learn more.

I do want to thank both Ken and Rob for coming in. Before we go,

I do want to announce, though, to let you guys know, again, we're going to Israel in 2021.

Striving for Eternity will be joined by Justin Peters. If you want to join us, go to 2021israeltrip .com.

And we would love to have you with us. And for those who are regular attenders, those who come here regularly, we are here every week.

And so we are here to answer your questions.

Ken's asking, were there any Q &A? There was no, excuse me, no Q &A questions that I saw that came in.

So we're not going to go to any audience questions. But I will say for those who are regulars, we are now officially

Catholic traditional free. For Ken and Rob, who weren't paying attention in chat, he claimed made a false claim, said that I said something that was wrong.

And in an hour and a half, refused to support it. I told him that by the end of this debate, if he did not support his claim, he was gone.

We will not have him on the show anymore, ever again. Bye bye. That's what happens when you slander the host and don't want to support your claim after an hour and a half.

That's right. We gave him plenty of time, said Matt. He tried to argue Matt Slick agrees with him.

And then I just gave a link from Matt Slick's own website that no, Matt doesn't agree with what his claim.

But so that makes a lot of people happy because a lot of people hate when he comes in and just doesn't know how to argue.

Well, so I want to thank you guys. There is a request or a question from apology, atomic apologetics,

John. He's asking if there will be an after show. And, John, that is up to you. If you want to create one right now, give us the link.

We will post that if you want to have an after show discussion. So for folks, basically the way the after shows work, it's usually more of a free for all.

I'll give the link to both Rob and Ken so they can come in and discuss it if you want to have that.

That's usually done on atomic apologetics YouTube channel.

So that's where that usually is. Again, I do want to thank the guys coming in doing this debate.

It was, I think, informative. I think it was well done. I hope that you guys learned a lot from it.

This is different than our typical apologetics live. Typically on apologetics live, we do an open

Q &A. We leave a lot of times for questions. And we try to get as many of you to come in and ask questions.

So if you ever have apologetics questions, you have challenges, that would be what we're here for.

We're here to answer your questions. And we do try to set up some debates. And so that's a thing that we try to do.

So I'm just trying to look. Okay.

So some folks are saying they have questions. We have time for one question,

Jason, if you want to ask it in chat. And then I can ask it. He says he's got one question and answer for Rob.

So let me just bring both of you in really quick. We'll see if the question comes in.

I didn't see any question for you guys. There was a lot of discussion on Roman Catholicism, how wrong that is.

I think we'll agree with that. I did want to put a poll out to see which one is better looking,

Rob or Ken. I would go with Rob because that hat. I can feel the jealousy from here.

I'll tell you this. My wife thinks I'm pretty attractive, but that's about it. The real problem is if Ken's wife thinks you're pretty attractive, if she thinks you're better.

But here's the thing, though. That's not really a valid argument because somebody actually married Andrew. Yeah, this is true.

This is true. But she's getting a lot more rewards in heaven. That's because much patience is required.

Yes. So, Jason, I don't know if there's going to be after show. So you better ask it right now because we're all waiting.

We're all waiting on you, Jason. I don't mind doing an after show. It's up to you.

John, the question is a shout out to John if he's going to have an after show. Either drop a link in here for us.

By the way, while we are here, I do want to take the time out to thank Ken for moving this debate once for me.

I had a death of the family, and he did that no problems asked. So I do appreciate that.

He didn't have to do that. He didn't know that. It looks like Catholic traditionalist has a question for me,

Andrew. Yeah, but he has a question for Cowboy. And, oh, well, slanderers do not get voiced on this podcast.

Oh, sorry. When you claim that I'm wrong about a Jewish idiom and you refuse for over an hour and a half to support it,

I gave him time. He says I'm wrong. So. Yeah, but you're talking about a gentleman who posted and does this certain argument of society relations as some way that you can, you know, baptism necessary and all that stuff.

And yet I know you have, Matt Slick has, and I have personally on several different avenues told him that this argument is invalid because it ignores the earlier context of relations.

Yet what he does is he runs from such debate and actually goes to other sources and then cites this debate, hoping that he can actually lead people astray with his bad argument.

That there won't be people present to actually refute his bad hermeneutics on this particular point.

Yeah. So if you're saying that he's dishonest, it doesn't surprise me because it reflects his character.

Yeah, this is true. We've given him plenty of opportunities. Here's the question that comes in from Jason. Rob, please explain how the

Lord's Supper saves. You claimed giving someone the Lord's Supper has the ability to save someone and the biblical reference that can support it.

Oh, that would be the community text to give this for the forgiveness of sins.

We would read that as literal, that it actually does do that because in his blood is forgiveness, not just at the cross, but what connects us to the cross.

So that's what we would say. Of course, I understand that you would disagree, but that's how we read it.

We read the flow of the text, and we keep it in context, and we say since it says forgiveness of sins, therefore it gives the forgiveness of sins.

So forgiveness of sins would be something that you receive by faith. So if you receive the forgiveness of sins, you would have faith.

All right. Well, with that, I think Atomic Apologetics is working on trying to set up an after show.

You can go to Atomic Apologetics' YouTube channel. If I get the link, if he drops it in here in this chat, we'll have it, and then

I'll give it to you guys so that we can continue that.

So with that, we're going to close out this week. Again, next week, we will have Eli discussing.

We're going to do an after show or post debate, I should actually say, of his debate that he had on the

Gospel Truth channel. And then we'll take one week off. Then we'll discuss my debate, although I don't know if we can call it a debate.

Ken, I think you saw that. I actually argue that I didn't need to show up for that debate for him to lose because he gave up his debate.

So the topic was, is secular humanism superior to Christianity? And he actually gave up his whole argument in his opening, which was only about three minutes.

Rob's agreeing with me. It was really bad. Yeah, I think it was clear that he was distracted during the debate, wasn't really listening.

And several times he contradicted himself and things of this nature. Matter of fact,

I think probably the – it's going to be interesting to see if we can use this as a tool. But the part where he didn't know what a cross -examination was but agreed to a formal debate.

And then you getting annoyed but still trying to be patient was pretty funny because you just gently said this is what a cross -examination was.

But I could tell by the way you said it, you were just kind of stupefied that he didn't know that. Twice. Twice.

Even after the moderator gave him instructions. Yeah, and this was not his first debate.

That was even worse. That doesn't make any sense to me. I don't understand how he could have done a debate and done that.

That's why I have to conclude that he was not at least focusing all his attention on the debate. Ken and I talked about this.

You guys can watch it. We were convinced he was playing a video game.

He said he's a gamer. I think he was playing a video game during the debate. I'd have to go back and look.

I couldn't see a controller. I couldn't see like a blue screen or anything like that that would hint that he was doing something offscreen.

But he certainly wasn't focused. I'll tell you that. Yeah, and he didn't. It was over his head.

It was funny because we talked about material, immaterial things. He's like, oh, like just putting his hands over his head.

Like, I don't understand this. But he also said a second time, deeper into the debate, that he did concede his point again.

That he could not demonstrate that it was better. He just simply kept saying that it was. That was all he could really do.

Yeah. Yeah. So, Rob, you'll have to come in when we do that post -debate.

I'm looking forward to hearing from Eli because I think Eli is just awesome. I mean,

I wish I had just like 5 % of his intelligence because I would be better off.

I mean, he's just so smart. Well, I would, of course, disagree with him on that.

But other than that, presuppositionally, he's awesome. Logically, he's awesome. As much as we may disagree on communion, baptism, things of this nature,

I actually am a presuppositionalist in my apologetics. I took that over, and actually lots of Lutherans are actually adopting presuppositional apologetic method.

Now, you might say that we're inconsistent in doing so, but I do think it's better than the strictly evidential and other arguments because those just are problematic.

But, yeah, that is actually a movement within Lutheranism, and it's actually really awesome. And that's why even though I am a

Lutheran, I still enjoy your guys' show because I still pick up bits and pieces of presuppositional apologetics and logic and things of this nature that are required.

I would encourage people to at least consider there are some

Lutheran sources out there that you could learn some things like that, like cross defense is awesome. It's an apologetic kind of thing, and it's kind of like church history and stuff like that.

So you can be guarded when the Roman Catholic comes to you and says, hey, we were the original church, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.

You can learn enough history to know that they're just fallacious on that claim. Yeah, and so we do want to give a shout out.

Matt is here in chat, Matt Slick, so shout out to him. Matt, folks have been asking how you're doing, praying for you and asking about the move.

So looking forward to getting him back on here when he can get settled in.

So with that, we're going to close out. Remember to strive to make today an eternal day for the glory of God.