Revealed Apologetics :: Dangers of the “Church of Christ” Cult

The Church of Christ as a Cult and a Distinct Denomination

The Church of Christ denomination, and I want to tell you in the audience, they don't like that word. One of the major tenets of Church of Christ is they claim to be the one true church, and most Church of Christ say, if you're not a member of us, then you're lost.

That is a red flag, right? A lot of these fundamentalist groups that do fall into the cult, if you're not a part of their party, their brand, their denomination, then you're out. And so that's something that the Church of Christ do, is they say you must be water baptized as a member of their church in order to be saved.

And so I believe they have made it known that they are, in fact, a cult, when we look at it both historically and biblically.

Welcome back to another episode of Revealed Apologetics. I'm your host Eli Ayala, and today I have with me another special guest. And we're going to be covering a very interesting, and I think a very important topic.

As the thumbnail says, we're going to be talking about the Church of Christ cult. We're not using the phrase Church of Christ in a generic sense. Obviously, we believe that the true church is the Church of Christ, but we want to make a distinction between the true body of Christ and those who distort the gospel message in ways that we will be going through today.

What I find very interesting about engaging the cults is that, if you see behind me here, I have a bunch of books. There's some philosophy and theology books, and there's this wide range of information that's out there.

But what I find when I interact with people who come from a Jehovah's Witness or a Mormon background or something like that, 99 .9 of the things that I typically talk about are simply basic Christian theology.

What is the gospel? How are we saved? These basic things. What is the Trinity, the deity of Christ? How can God be both man? How can Jesus be both man and God? These sorts of things come up often when I engage in cults, and it kind of makes all of these other books kind of superfluous that cover interesting side issues.

I think one of the keys to being a good apologist is being grounded in solid biblical theology and just being rooted in Scripture. My guest is going to help us do that tonight as we cover the specific topic that we're going to cover today.

Before I introduce my guest, I want to kind of cover some preliminary things. On July 12th, I'll be having Dr. Jason Lyle back on the show to talk about the theory of evolution. That episode will be entitled, Is Evolution Viable?

Of course, Dr. Lyle's expertise is in cosmology. However, he has interacted a lot with evolutionary positions and things like that, and because he comes from a uniquely presuppositional perspective, I wanted to come on to have an opportunity to show how a presuppositionalist will engage these very important scientific issues.

So I think that's going to be a very great episode, and you guys are not going to want to miss that. Now, I'm super excited, and I can't say the details now, but I have, on YouTube, reached 5 ,000 subscribers.

And to celebrate, I'm going to have... You guys remember a couple of weeks ago... I don't know. I lost track how long ago it was. But I have the Epic Presupp Roundtable. Okay? The Epic Presupp Roundtable.

And I'm going to have something similar with a different set of apologists from a wide variety of different theological and apologetical backgrounds. And we're going to have kind of a giant Q &A. So I can give you the names of the people who are most likely going to be joining me, and I'm super excited about it because we're bringing people together that you don't normally see.

So in this epic... I've been titled the Apologetic Smorgasbord, right? You're going to have this wide range of topics addressed. I'm going to have with me Matt Slick from CARM .org. I'm going to have on with me Nate Sala.

If you're not familiar with Nate Sala, he does those super awesome, and I highly recommend you go check them out. He does those Debate Teacher Reacts videos. Excellent. So you want to go to the YouTube channel, The Wise Disciple.

Nate is excellent at analyzing debates, and so he brings a very unique element to this whole apologetic enterprise. Hopefully... I'm just waiting for confirmation. I'll also be hopefully having Dr. Braxton Hunter from Trinity Radio.

I'm double-checking on that. Michael Jones of Inspiring Philosophy has graciously agreed to also join me, and hopefully we can get Vocab Malone as well. So that's going to be an interesting kind of episode.

It's just going to be a giant Q &A, and it'll be fun to see all of us coming from different perspectives engaging the audience questions, all right? So I'll keep people updated on the details of that.

If anything changes, of course, I'll keep you folks updated. So that's probably going to happen. If it happens at the end of July, maybe beginning of August, we'll have to work out the dates. But super excited, and that's an awesome way to celebrate 5 ,000 subscribers.

Very, very much appreciative of everyone who has subscribed and supports the channel. So thank you very much. Super excited. Also, if you guys noticed, my most recent video was a Part 1 of a study on Greg Bonson's book.

Where do I have it here? Let me see. Ah, here we go. Against All Opposition. So I covered the study questions of Chapter 1. The goal, the dream, is to do the entire book. The book, I think, consists of 11 chapters.

So that will include 11 videos within the teaching series, which I will put on a playlist on my channel. So folks can go back, and if you don't want to read the whole book, you can kind of walk through the study questions.

And I expand on important themes within the presuppositional methodology, all right? So hopefully, you guys can stay tuned for that. And I would really appreciate it if you go back and watch that Part 1.

The more people who watch it, the more I see that it's actually helping people, and people are finding it useful, and that's going to impact how much of the time I give to it. So it does take time to create slides and a teaching.

So I really much appreciate it if you guys check that video out. And I'll keep chugging away, hopefully covering more videos, more books. After that, I might cover The Impossibility of the Contrary, the study questions there.

And we'll see how those series go. So if you guys enjoy it and find it useful, I'll keep going, all right? I'm going to be 40 this year, so I'm old, but I'm not that old. So I got the energy, man, all right?

All right, well, let me stop blabbing. I want to take the opportunity to invite my guest on the screen with me, and he can tell us a little bit about himself. And then we'll jump right into the topic of the Church of Christ cult, and we'll go into the details of that.

Jeremiah, let me see if I could pronounce your last name correctly. It is Jeremiah. Okay, let me see.

Nortier? Technically, yes, because it's French. But in the South, we say Nortier.

Nortier, okay, all right. So Jeremiah is easy to remember. I have an older brother whose name is Jeremiah. So I'll just call you Jeremiah, but I won't call you Mr. Nortier, however the French like to say it.

It is an honor to have you on. Why don't you tell folks a little bit about yourself and what you do, and then we'll jump right into our topic for tonight.

Absolutely. I forgot I was on the show. I was listening to you open. I was just like, oh, this is another Revealed Apologetics episode. I was like, oh, yeah, I'm supposed to be talking with Eli. So Eli, it's an honor to be here.

I was telling you earlier, when I started pursuing more of apologetics and presuppositional apologetics a few years ago, I found your channel, and you were steps ahead of me, and you've really been paving the way, helping me out so much.

So you've been a huge influence in my life. But I serve as a pastor. I'm an elder at a Reformed Baptist church plant in Jonesboro, Arkansas. This is the north. Arkansas. Arkansas. Absolutely. So if anybody is in the area, I would love for you to come visit 12 Five Church.

We have a church website, 12FiveChurch .com. And 12 Five comes from Romans 12, verse 5, that talks about even though we are individually one another, we are one together in the body of Christ. So 12 Five Church is the church that I serve as an elder at.

I also get to do apologetics at church and equip the saints for every good work. And so I've been blessed with so much support to be able to pursue this apologetics ministry. Eli, you like the logo, the apologetic dog?

I do. The dog looks like a beast. You got that Reformed beard. And the logo itself is very it marks all the it checks all the boxes in terms of a memorable logo. So why don't you tell us a little bit about that logo?

Why a dog? Why the beard? And why the scripture reference that you chose?

Absolutely. So it's a guard dog mentality. I've had some people say, well, D-O-G, doctrines of grace. I'm like, yeah, but we're broader than that. So it definitely works. But the verse there is also where my heart's at too because I love 1 Peter 3 15.

I love all of God's word. But this says, O Timothy, guard the deposit entrusted to you. Avoid irreverent babble and contradictions of what is falsely called knowledge. And so this is a guard dog. We as Christians, we are guarding the truthfulness of the gospel.

We do that by avoiding worldly philosophy, pagan philosophy. And we expose contradictions of what is falsely called knowledge. So we care a lot about epistemology. We care about studying the truth. And you and I, Eli, know that revelational epistemology is king, right?

So those are some of the things that I have my hands in. I also like I'm bivocational. So I also serve as a chaplain. That's a lot of work that I do. And I work with bereavement. And so the Lord has given me a lot of wonderful responsibilities, and I just want to keep pressing forward for the kingdom.

Well, awesome. The first time I saw you was on the Gospel Truth over there at Marlon's channel. I don't remember the specific debate or thing that you were on for, but I remember seeing your name, and people have said really good things about you.

And so it is a pleasure to actually meet you and have you on the show. So I'm looking forward to this discussion and looking at some of the comments. I know folks are interested in this discussion as well.

So thank you so much. Absolutely. All right. Well, let's jump right into the issue here, the Church of Christ. At the beginning, I made a distinction between the Church of Christ. Generally speaking, we believe that all true believers constitute the body of Christ, is the true church, the true bride.

And then there is the Church of Christ, which is this cult that some people who might be listening who are part of the Church of Christ might be offended. But why don't you actually define for us what a cult is and why we as Christians would see the, quote-unquote, the Church of Christ group as a group that can be considered cultic.

Absolutely. A lot of people have different ideas of what a cult is. And so a cult's not going to always be you've got this crazy leader that wants you to drink the Kool-Aid. You know what I mean? A lot of people, that's the immediate way to think.

When we talk about cult, it's something much more broad. We're talking about a particular sect or group that deviate from the faith. And so a lot of cults, they will tamper with the deity of Christ. They'll change the nature of who God is, or they will add works to the gospel of grace.

And so when we do look at Jehovah's Witnesses, Mormons, the Church of Christ denomination, and I want to tell you in the audience, they don't like that word. One of the major tenets of Church of Christ is they claim to be the one true church.

And most Church of Christ say if you're not a member of us, then you're lost. That is a red flag. A lot of these fundamentalist groups that do fall into the cult, if you're not a part of their party, their brand, their denomination, then you're out.

And so that's something that the Church of Christ do, is they say you must be water baptized as a member of their church in order to be saved. And so I believe they have made it known that they are, in fact, a cult, when we look at it both historically and biblically.

Sure. Now that's very different than, like, you know, you're a Reformed Baptist. I don't go to a Reformed Baptist church, but I am Reformed Baptist in my theology, although I did have a very astute and educated Presbyterian try to convert me, and this particular Presbyterian actually formally debated James White on the very topic.

So we've had some interesting conversations a while back, but I would consider myself a Reformed Baptist, but I wouldn't look at Presbyterians and say they're not true Christians. So there's a distinction there, right?

You have the Church of Christ who says if you're not part of our church, you're not a Christian. But that's different than what we would say with respect to different denominations, right?

Right. So you and I have a good understanding of the universal church, the invisible church, the people of God of all time, and then we have the visible church that manifests in local congregations. The Church of Christ, they're split on a lot of things.

Most Church of Christ don't see that distinction, and as we talk a little bit more about the history about Alexander Campbell and Thomas Campbell's dad, they launched essentially for the first time in 1811, May 4th, the Church of Christ, and they basically anathematized everybody else.

And so this has a history worth looking into. And like I said, they disparage the idea of denominations. They say that's denominational teaching. You need to get back to the Bible. And something else that I think is really helpful, Eli, this is something that I discovered as I was preparing to debate Church of Christ and things like that, is you know how we would hold to sola scriptura, okay?

Now we've heard a term called solo scriptura. It's my Bible and me under a tree, no creed but Christ. I've always thought on a spectrum, who can I put over there in the solo scriptura? It's the Church of Christ.

They want really hard to divorce themselves from church history in any way, shape, and form. They would just say all we need is the Bible. Don't tell me about Alexander Campbell. Let's not look at those things.

In fact, they have a mantra or a creed that they would deny as a creed that comes from Alexander Campbell and some of the early preachers. They speak where the Bible speaks, and they're silent where the Bible's silent.

We would test that claim to see if they're going to break their own standard when they say things like that.

Okay, excellent, and I think it's very dangerous when we detach ourselves from church history, right? And this is the problem that a lot of Protestants have, right? Orthodox Protestants or evangelicals, right?

We tend to be very in the moment, completely disconnected to everything that's come before us, and that's why a lot of Protestants have great difficulty engaging Roman Catholics and Eastern Orthodox because those groups tend to be more connected with their history than a lot of modern evangelical Christianity.

So I think it's very important if we're familiar with church history, that will actually equip us to better apologetically engage in some of the cults, especially the Church of Christ cult. That's an excellent observation there.

All right, well, I'm not an expert in this area, so I don't know the background of the Church of Christ and how this church was established and some of the details of the history. Can you kind of go into that for us, for our viewers?

And just real quick, I want to read very briefly a quote from Dr. Walter Martin, who, again, if you don't know who Dr. Walter Martin is, I mean, I've actually been binge-watching old videos of Dr. Walter Martin.

If you're listening to this live stream and you don't know who Dr. Walter Martin is, you want to take your hand and you want to smack yourself across the face, and then you want to save the name and go and search it on YouTube.

Dr. Walter Martin was considered the father of cult apologetics, and he wrote the classic work, The Kingdom of the Cults, which is in the background here, and it is an excellent resource dealing with all sorts of cults.

But Dr. Walter Martin was an expert in the cults, and he defined a cult this way. Let me see here. All right, so this is Dr. Walter Martin. Quote,. By the term cult, I mean nothing derogatory to any group so classified.

A cult, as I define it, is any religious group which differs significantly in one or more respects as to belief or practice from those religious groups which are regarded as the normative expressions of religion in our total culture.

I think it's very important to emphasize that they differ from the norm, right, from what we would call the orthodox, right? So we would categorize the Church of Christ as a cult because they are diverging from essential core elements of the Christian faith.

These aren't side issues or, you know, debating the nature of the return of Christ or something like that. These are essential features of Christian theology. So to that end, why don't you kind of go into a little bit of the history, and then we'll go into some of their theology.

Restoration Movement History and the Rise of Solo Scriptura

Yeah, so just a brief flyover. 1811, May 4th, is basically when Alexander Campbell and his father, Thomas Campbell, they—and there's a big history that they've moved from Presbyterians to Baptists, and they weren't fitting in.

And so when they started the Church of Christ, they essentially condensed salvation into a five-step process. And it's hear the word, believe the word, repent of sins, confess sins publicly, and be baptized in immersion only.

Now what—to this five-step plan, what's behind it, and like I said, there's rich history here, is this Baconian philosophy, this rationalism that says, you can have a clean slate of mind, Eli, with no presuppositions.

And so from this, the Church of Christ all fundamentally share in those major aspects, which we wouldn't necessarily agree with, but when they talk about be baptized in immersion only, that's a part of the process in order to be made right with God.

And so Church of Christ deny original sin, okay? Now this is going to be key in the whole discussion when we talk— when we start defining other terms like regeneration. It's really hard for the Church of Christ to have a good systematic theology and understanding of regeneration because they deny original sin.

They don't believe your nature really needs to be changed. They see Jesus Christ coming as a reset button, right? And when you're baptized, you hit the reset button, and then you have to continue to live a holy life in order to not lose your salvation.

And so it's synergistic to the core. And something else that Church of Christ believe is the holy— you don't have the indwelling Holy Spirit. Rather, they would interpret all the passages about the Holy Spirit as the Word of God.

So not only are they so low scriptura, but they are the radical cessationists. I get accused of being too radical, leaning cessationists, and I love my continuationist brothers, but they're on a different category.

They believe the Holy Spirit is not in and at work in our lives today apart from just engaging with the Word of God. So there's a number of things there, Eli. I don't know if you wanted to chime in.

Yeah, I mean, what does that mean? You said that they interpret the portions of Scripture concerning the Holy Spirit as the Word of God. I'm not sure I understand that.

Right, so they're not viewing that as the indwelling Holy Spirit like we would understand the third person, the Trinity, a person. They would just say, as you are dwelling on the Word of Christ— I think it's Colossians chapter 3— they look at the Word as, this is the Holy Spirit in your life.

As you read the Word, and we agree that the Holy Spirit is at work drawing us to His Word, but we possess God in us, right? In the sense that the Holy Spirit indwells believers, regenerates us, and seals us unto the day of redemption.

So when Jesus says, when I leave, I will send a helper, that helper to them is the Bible.

Functionally, now, a lot of things that I'm saying, I'm cutting right to the chase. Some of these things they will argue over tooth and nail for, but yes, when you press them enough, that's what you're going to get at.

Okay, and so do they acknowledge the Trinity then? When we're taking a look at the Holy Spirit, do they believe that the Holy Spirit is a person within the Godhead?

Okay, so what I'm saying is not going to be monolithic for the Church of Christ. A lot of them tend to want to engage with the King James and New King James. Not all of them are radically only us there, but they really try to utilize the word Godhead.

Because another thing that Church of Christ are going to do, since they say denominations are man-made traditions and titles, they just want to be referred to as Christians. So when you start saying things like, are you Trinitarian?

I've had so many say, no, I'm a Christian. And it's like, okay, let's back up and slow down.

Are you a Trinitarian Christian? What you just said right there makes me think of Dr. Walter Martin. I mean, I'm sorry to bring it up, but if I can go real quick. I'm not going to read anything from it, but there is a portion in this book.

I think it is yeah, so it's Chapter 2 in the Kingdom of the Cults entitled Scaling the Language Barrier. And he goes on to discuss the importance that if you're going to speak to a cultist, it is important, it is vitally important that you scale the language barrier.

And it seems, what you're telling me, they quibble over words and phrases that we need to be very careful that we rightly and clearly define. So again, excellent resource. Of course, this video, Jeremiah is going to go into detail for us.

But if you don't have this book, I mean, you need to get this book. I don't know if he covers the Church of Christ in it specifically, but just generally it's an excellent resource for folks who are engaging in any sort of cult.

But go ahead.

Yeah, well, defining terms is ultimate in conversations with Church of Christ. I just want to throw a few out there. Defining the word faith is so important with Church of Christ because you're really never going to get off the ground until you define faith, define works, define justification, define sanctification.

The word baptism, many will argue it always necessarily means wet immersion. It's not true. And the word obey.

You say it means wet immersion?

A lot of Church of Christ will argue the word baptizo always means wet immersion. The definition doesn't mean that. And there's so many contexts to prove that that's not the case. And many Church of Christ are catching on that that's a poor argument.

Okay, so let me clarify. So when you say they understand the word baptizo to mean wet immersion, what you're saying is when the word baptizo appears, it always means water baptism. Not like baptized with fire or baptized in the Spirit.

Those phrases entail you getting wet in some way for them.

Yeah, and to be fair, I've talked with both sides. I've talked with Church of Christ. Every time you see the word baptism, it means water, wet immersion. And then it's easy to show how that's just not true.

The definition and the context like you're starting to bring out. And believe it or not, another key word in these conversations is the word obey or obedience. Because in their mind, that necessarily means works.

We understand obeying from the heart is faith. They don't really have a category because something that they will say is you've got to obey the gospel. You've got to obey the gospel. What they mean is you better be baptized the way that Mark 16, 16, they interpret it.

Acts 2, 38, and we'll get into a lot of the proof text. But we believe that you must obey the gospel by faith, right? And then that will result in something in your life.

Baptism, Works, and Justification by Faith

Okay, so what are the specific areas? So if you can give kind of a list of the areas of departure of the Church of Christ that make them cultish. I mean cultish. That's a good podcast. They should make a podcast called Cultish.

So the Church of Christ might have beliefs that sound very similar to an Orthodox Christian perspective. But can we kind of go down a list of like the main essential features that they deny and why? How do they defend their own position?

And then maybe we can kind of go into how we could apologetically engage them.

Yes, so they fundamentally deny salvation by grace through faith. They're going to redefine grace to always mean Jesus coming, dying on the cross. And faith always means an obedient faith, which we agree.

But they say a faith, you're not justified until works are present, right? Until you get into the water. So that to me is the biggest departure from orthodoxy is they redefine faith to necessarily include works.

Instead of understanding clear distinctions the way that Paul would in somewhere like Romans 4 or we look at Ephesians 2 and places.

But would they categorize baptism as a work? Because I hear often people say, well, wait a minute. Well, baptism isn't really work. I just had someone say something on one of the comments. I did a video on— Heart Spirit 321.

Well, what was the name of that? I forgot. Does baptism save or is it necessary for salvation? And someone says, well, baptism is not a work that we do. Baptism is a work that God does through someone.

And I was thinking, I'm like, well, that doesn't seem right.

That's a common response. And they would a lot of times go to Colossians 2 .12 because it is talking about circumcision made without hands. It is talking about baptism. And it's baptizmos in the plural, which is actually hearkening back to the Old Testament ceremonial rites.

And then it says the powerful working of God. And I love Dr. White's series on baptism because he covers all the proof texts. And he shows that in the epistles, baptism is primarily doctrinal, giving us theology about a spiritual truth.

And the application of the hearers would also be thinking about their baptism. But here's the question that I ask Church of Christ, and it puzzles them. And I say this in love, Eli, because something I pray about all the time is I want the Church of Christ to know that I love them.

I don't take any joy in pursuing this. I truly feel like it's my Nineveh. I have a really good friend that has appeared on the podcast, Cultish, coming out of the Church of Christ movement. And we've done a lot of work together.

The Church of Christ feel like our Nineveh. Since it's saturated in legalism, there's so much hostility, quibbling over words. That's not something you sign up for. And so it's something that is a calling by God.

And so I always want to let the Church of Christ know that, hey, I love you. And so when we talk about these things, it's totally out of love and grace. And so when I hear this all the time is, well, baptism is a work of God.

I ask, is it a work of God only? OK, because now now you're really getting much deeper because you and I believe that God is working all things together after the counsel of his will. We believe in Philippians 1, 6, that God begins that good work in you, brings it to completion.

And then here's here's the point that I'm getting at in Philippians 2, 12 and 13. We work out our salvation with fear and trembling. We understand this is sanctification. We understand baptism. Any works of sanctification, right, fit there.

That's what we're ordained to good works in Ephesians 2. And so verse 13 in Philippians 2 says that actually it's God who's at work both to will and work in you for his good pleasure. And so the question is, is it a work of God only?

And I've noticed that stops a lot of church of Christ in their tracks very quickly.

OK. All right. So so this issue of baptism becomes a major issue. So let's kind of go into engaging some of those. Let's talk about apologetic strategy and then let's talk about some of the specific texts then.

So if the core issue is, you know, they they move away from an orthodox perspective in terms of salvation justification by faith alone. Right. They don't affirm that. And they kind of emphasize the importance of being baptized.

I want to deal with some of those texts. But why don't we talk just about apologetic strategy, broadly speaking, and then kind of engage specifically. So what what's some advice you can give by way of strategy to someone who is engaging these folks and really is looking for a proper way to think about how to engage?

Yeah, well, something that I've heard you say on your channel here, along with other men that I look up to in the faith, like John MacArthur, knowing the word of God, that's primarily going to be the best apologetic is being so familiar with the truth, the real thing that you can detect the counterfeit.

That's even I'm sure Walter Martin would agree that that's that's kind of the bar that you judge everything. And so that's that's primary. And so that quickly moves into something you said earlier. And Walter Martin is defining terms.

That list, again, talking about defining faith, understanding from the heart, we firmly trust in the person and work of Jesus Christ. And so that's internal. OK, and so works are external. This is Ergon from the Greek.

And this is huge in our strategy contending with Church of Christ is I really want to quickly ask what's their definition of works? Because, Eli, what they do every single time is they want to give you different kinds of works, works of law, works of flesh, works of God.

And we acknowledge there are different kinds of works, but we're talking about the definition, the way that Paul uses it. And we'll look at some of this in like Romans four and Ephesians two. He's talking about Ergon.

It's the external actions of human accomplishments. It's everything that we do. And that's not the thing that makes us right before God. And so I think contending for those definitions, along with justification and sanctification, those relate.

But Church of Christ seems to be Roman Catholic light. Roman Catholicism, they do affirm original sin. So they have a full-orbed systematic theology, and they have baptismal regeneration. Church of Christ, it's not so developed.

It's only about 200 years old. And since they deny original sin, there's not baptismal regeneration. And what I've coined, Eli, is they would hold to what I understand to be baptismal justification. They don't like those terms because their mantra is we speak where the Bible speaks, and we're going to be silent where the Bible is silent.

But that eliminates any type of teaching, any type of application, and they quickly break that standard. So I'm just saying it doesn't work even from the start. But then getting into words like obedience, that doesn't always entail works that we do.

You can be obedient from the heart, and that would be by faith. And so you really have to war for these definitions. And then the other big thing is context, context, context. You got a bunch of proof texts.

I sent you a list of ones that we can kind of go through. All those have a context. And if you're familiar with these verses, it's easy to show how this is not going to result in a works righteousness system.

Acts 2:38 and the Meaning of Repentance and Baptism

All right. Well, to that end, we're going to put you on the spot. And I want to go through. As a matter of fact, I want to at this portion of our discussion, I probably will make a separate video, a snippet of where you're going to be answering this specific question.

Right. So what I want you to do is I want to read the texts and I want you to respond to each of them so that we can have. And again, I want to make this a separate video. So if someone doesn't want to watch this whole discussion, they can go back and they can watch the whole thing.

But they can go back and watch the specific responses to some biblical text. So, you know, I'll give you a few moments to warm up there to get yourself settled. And I just want to say thank you, Spencer Rice, for a $49 .99 super chat.

Wow, dude, that is amazing. Thank you so much for your graciousness. Spencer says, Eli, thanks for the great content. I love it when you have guests on, but this guy seems like a jabroni. Just saying.

I haven't heard a jabroni in a long, long time.

Eli, can I tell you something real quick? Go for it. So Spencer is a really good friend of mine. He's a missionary in Japan. Oh, wow. And he is a lifelong friend that has really shaped me in the ministry.

I love him a lot. And he has benefited from your channel as well.

That is awesome. That's so encouraging to hear because, you know, when you're in front of the computer, you're doing this, you don't really get a full grasp as to the reach of what you're doing and who's being impacted by it.

So that's very encouraging. Thank you so much. And, Spencer, thank you so much, man. That is amazing. I very much appreciate it. Just as Jeremiah is getting set up for his grilling session, I'm going to grill him on these passages here.