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

The Apologetic Dog

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The Church of Christ denomination, and I want to tell you in the audience, they don't like that word.

00:05

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.

00:13

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.

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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.

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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.

01:01

Welcome back to another episode of Revealed Apologetics. I'm your host, Eli Ayala, and today

01:07

I have with me another special guest. And we're going to be covering a very interesting, and I think a very important topic.

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As the thumbnail says, we're going to be talking about the Church of Christ cult.

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We're not using the phrase Church of Christ in a generic sense. Obviously, we believe that the true church is the

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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.

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What I find very interesting about engaging the cults is that, if you see behind me here,

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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.

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But what I find when I interact with people who come from a Jehovah's Witness or a

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Mormon background or something like that, 99 .9 % of the things that I typically talk about are simply basic Christian theology.

02:06

What is the gospel? How are we saved? These basic things. What is the Trinity, the deity of Christ?

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How can God be both man? How can Jesus be both man and God? These sorts of things come up often when

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I engage in cults, and it kind of makes all of these other books kind of superfluous that cover, you know, interesting side issues.

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I think one of the keys to being a good apologist is being grounded in solid biblical theology and just being rooted in Scripture.

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And so my guest is going to help us do that tonight as we cover the specific topic that we're going to cover today.

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Now, before I introduce my guest, I want to kind of cover some preliminary things. On July 12th,

02:46

I'll be having Dr. Jason Lyle back on the show to talk about the theory of evolution.

02:52

That episode will be entitled, Is Evolution Viable? And of course, Dr. Lyle's expertise is in cosmology.

03:01

However, he has interacted a lot with evolutionary positions and things like that, and because he comes from a uniquely presuppositional perspective,

03:11

I wanted to come on to have an opportunity to show how a presuppositionalist will engage these very important scientific issues.

03:20

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.

03:34

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.

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But I had the Epic Presupp Roundtable. Okay? The Epic Presupp Roundtable.

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And I'm going to have something similar with a different set of apologists from a wide variety of different theological and apologetical backgrounds.

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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.

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And I'm super excited about it because we're bringing people together that you don't normally see.

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So in this epic... I've been titled the Apologetic Smorgasbord, right?

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You're going to have this wide range of topics addressed. I'm going to have with me Matt Slick from CARM .org.

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I'm going to have on with me Nate Sala. If you're not familiar with Nate Sala, he does those super awesome...

04:33

and I highly recommend you go check them out. He does those Debate Teacher Reacts videos. Excellent.

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So you want to go to the YouTube channel, The Wise Disciple. Nate is excellent at analyzing debates.

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And so he brings a very unique element to this whole apologetic enterprise. Hopefully...

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I'm just waiting for confirmation. I'll also be hopefully having Dr. Braxton Hunter from Trinity Radio.

04:58

I'm double -checking on that. Michael Jones of Inspiring Philosophy has graciously agreed to also join me.

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And hopefully we can get Vocab Malone as well. So that's going to be an interesting kind of episode.

05:11

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.

05:18

All right? So I'll keep people updated on the details of that. If anything changes, of course, I'll keep you folks updated.

05:24

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.

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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.

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So thank you very much. Super excited. Also, if you guys noticed, my most recent video was a

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Part 1 of a study on Greg Bonson's book. Where do

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I have it here? Let me see. Ah, here we go. Against All Opposition.

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So I covered the study questions of Chapter 1. The goal, the dream, is to do the entire book.

06:05

The book, I think, consists of 11 chapters. So that will include 11 videos within the teaching series, which

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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.

06:19

And I expand on important themes within the presuppositional methodology. All right? So hopefully, you guys can stay tuned for that.

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And I would really appreciate it if you go back and watch that Part 1. The more people who watch it, the more

06:32

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

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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.

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And I'll keep chugging away, hopefully covering more videos, more books. After that, I might cover

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The Impossibility of the Contrary, the study questions there. And we'll see how those series go.

06:56

So if you guys enjoy it and find it useful, I'll keep going. All right? I'm going to be 40 this year.

07:02

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.

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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.

07:13

And then we'll jump right into the topic of the Church of Christ cult. And we'll go into the details of that.

07:21

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

07:27

It is Jeremiah. Okay, let me see. Nortier? Technically, yes, because it's

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French. But in the South, we say Nortier. Nortier. Okay. All right.

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So Jeremiah is easy to remember. I have an older brother whose name is Jeremiah. So I'll just call you

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Jeremiah, but I won't call you Mr. Nortier, however the French like to say it.

07:52

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.

08:00

Absolutely. I forgot I was on the show. I was listening to you open. I was just like, oh, this is another

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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.

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I was telling you earlier, when I started pursuing more of apologetics and presuppositional apologetics a few years ago,

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I found your channel. And you were steps ahead of me, and you've really been paving the way, helping me out so much.

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So you've been a huge influence in my life. But I serve as a pastor. I'm an elder at a

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Reformed Baptist church plant in Jonesboro, Arkansas. This is the north. Arkansas.

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Arkansas. Absolutely. So if anybody is in the area, I would love for you to come visit 12

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Five Church. We have a church website, 12fivechurch .com. And 12

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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.

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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.

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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?

09:17

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.

09:30

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?

09:36

Absolutely. So it's a guard dog mentality. I've had some people say, well, D -O -G, doctrines of grace.

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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

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Peter 3 15. I love all of God's word. But this says, O Timothy, guard the deposit entrusted to you.

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Avoid irreverent babble and contradictions of what is falsely called knowledge. And so this is a guard dog.

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We as Christians, we are guarding the truthfulness of the gospel. We do that by avoiding worldly philosophy, pagan philosophy.

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And we expose contradictions of what is falsely called knowledge. So we care a lot about epistemology.

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We care about studying the truth. And you and I, Eli, know that revelational epistemology is king, right?

10:30

So those are some of the things that I have my hands in. I also like – I'm bivocational.

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So I also serve as a chaplain. That's a lot of work that I do. And I work with bereavement.

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And so the Lord has given me a lot of wonderful responsibilities, and I just want to keep pressing forward for the kingdom.

10:48

Well, awesome. The first time I saw you was on The Gospel Truth over there at Marlon's channel.

10:53

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.

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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.

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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.

11:17

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.

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And then there is the Church of Christ, which is this cult that some people who might be listening who are part of the

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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

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Church of Christ group as a group that can be considered cultic. Absolutely.

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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

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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.

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We're talking about a particular sect or group that deviate from the faith.

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And so a lot of cults, they will tamper with the deity of Christ, right? They'll change the nature of who

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God is, or they will add works to the gospel of grace. And so when we do look at Jehovah's Witnesses, Mormons, the

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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

12:39

Church of Christ say if you're not a member of us, then you're lost. That is a red flag, right?

12:44

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.

12:52

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.

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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.

13:07

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

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Reformed Baptist in my theology, although I did have a very astute and educated

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Presbyterian try to convert me, and this particular Presbyterian actually formally debated

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James White on the very topic. So we've had some interesting conversations a while back, but I would consider myself a

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Reformed Baptist, but I wouldn't look at Presbyterians and say they're not true Christians. So there's a distinction there, right?

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You have the Church of Christ who says if you're not part of our church, you're not a Christian.

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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.

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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,

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May 4th, the Church of Christ, and they basically anathematized everybody else. And so this has a history worth looking into.

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And like I said, they disparage the idea of denominations. They say that's denominational teaching.

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You need to get back to the Bible. And something else that I think is really helpful,

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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?

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Now we've heard a term called solo scriptura. It's my Bible and me under a tree, no creed but Christ.

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I've always thought on a spectrum, who can I put over there in the solo scriptura? It's the

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Church of Christ. They want really hard to divorce themselves from church history in any way, shape, and form.

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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.

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They speak where the Bible speaks, and they're silent where the Bible is silent. We would test that claim to see if they're going to break their own standard when they say things like that.

15:26

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?

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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

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Roman Catholics and Eastern Orthodox because those groups tend to be more connected with their history than a lot of modern evangelical

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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

16:02

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

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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?

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And just real quick, I want to read very briefly a quote from Dr.

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Walter Martin, who, again, if you don't know who Dr. Walter Martin is, I mean,

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I've actually been binge -watching old videos of Dr.

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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.

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Dr. Walter Martin was considered the father of cult apologetics, and he wrote the classic work, The Kingdom of the

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Cults, which is in the background here, and it is an excellent resource dealing with all sorts of cults.

17:03

But Dr. Walter Martin was an expert in the cults, and he defined a cult this way. Let me see here.

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All right, so this is Dr. Walter Martin. Quote, By the term cult, I mean nothing derogatory to any group so classified.

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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.

17:31

I think it's very important to emphasize that they differ from the norm, right, from what we would call the orthodox, right?

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So we would categorize the Church of Christ as a cult because they are diverging from essential core elements of the

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Christian faith. These aren't side issues or, you know, debating the nature of the return of Christ or something like that.

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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.

18:03

Yeah, so just a brief flyover. 1811, May 4th, is basically when

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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.

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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.

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Now what—to this five -step plan, what's behind it, and like I said, there's rich history here, is this

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Baconian philosophy, this rationalism that says you can have a clean slate of mind,

18:50

Eli, with no presuppositions. And so from this, the

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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.

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And so Church of Christ deny original sin, okay?

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Now this is going to be key in the whole discussion when we start defining other terms like regeneration.

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It's really hard for the Church of Christ to have a good systematic theology and understanding of regeneration because they deny original sin.

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They don't believe your nature really needs to be changed. They see Jesus Christ coming as a reset button, right?

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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.

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And so it's synergistic to the core, and something else that Church of Christ believe is you don't have the indwelling

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Holy Spirit. Rather, they would interpret all the passages about the

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Holy Spirit as the Word of God. So not only are they so low scriptura, but they are the radical cessationists.

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I get accused of being too radical, leaning cessationists, and I love my continuationist brothers, but they're on a different category.

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They believe the Holy Spirit is not in and at work in our lives today apart from just engaging with the

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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?

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You said that they interpret the portions of Scripture concerning the Holy Spirit as the

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Word of God. I'm not sure I understand that. Right, so they're not viewing that as the indwelling

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Holy Spirit like we would understand the third person, the Trinity, a person. They would just say, as you are dwelling on the

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Word of Christ, I think it's Colossians chapter 3, they look at the Word as this is the

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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

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God in us, right, in the sense that the Holy Spirit indwells believers, regenerates us, and seals us unto the day of redemption.

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

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Bible. Functionally, now, a lot of things that I'm saying, I'm cutting right to the chase.

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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.

21:32

Okay, and so do they acknowledge the Trinity then when we're taking a look at the

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Holy Spirit? Do they believe that the Holy Spirit is a person within the Godhead? Okay, so what

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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

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King James and New King James. Not all of them are like radically only us there, but they really try to utilize the word

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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.

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So when you start saying things like, are you Trinitarian? I've had so many say, no, I'm a

22:13

Christian. And it's like, okay, let's back up and slow down. Are you a Trinitarian Christian?

22:20

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.

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I'm not going to read anything from it, but there is a portion in this book.

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I think it is, yeah, so it's chapter two in the Kingdom of the Cults entitled Scaling the

22:41

Language Barrier. And he goes on to discuss the importance that if you're going to speak to a cultist, it is important.

22:49

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.

23:04

So again, excellent resource. Okay, of course, this video,

23:09

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

23:16

Church of Christ in it specifically, but just generally, it's an excellent resource for folks who are engaging in any sort of cult.

23:22

But go ahead. Yeah, well, defining terms is ultimate in conversations with Church of Christ.

23:31

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.

23:47

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

23:55

You say it means wet immersion? A lot of Church of Christ will argue the word baptizo always means wet immersion.

24:04

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.

24:12

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.

24:26

Not like baptized with fire or baptized in the spirit.

24:32

Those phrases entail you getting wet in some way for them. Yeah, and to be fair,

24:38

I've talked with both sides. I've talked with Church of Christ. Every time you see the word baptism, it means water immersion.

24:45

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.

24:50

And believe it or not, another key word in these conversations is the word obey or obedience.

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Because in their mind, that necessarily means works. We understand obeying from the heart is faith.

25:02

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.

25:12

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.

25:20

And then that will result in something in your life. Yeah. Okay, so what are the specific areas?

25:26

So if you can give kind of a list of the areas of departure of the

25:32

Church of Christ that make them cultish. I mean cultish. That's a good podcast. They should make a podcast called

25:38

Cultish. So the Church of Christ might use—they might have beliefs that sound very similar to an

25:45

Orthodox Christian perspective. But can we kind of go down a list of like the main essential features that they deny and why?

25:53

How do they defend their own position? And then maybe we can kind of go into how we could apologetically engage them.

26:00

Yes. So they fundamentally deny salvation by grace through faith. They're going to redefine grace to always mean

26:09

Jesus coming, dying on the cross. And faith always means an obedient faith, which we agree.

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But they say a faith—you're not justified until works are present, right, until you get into the water.

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So that to me is the biggest departure from orthodoxy, is they redefine faith to necessarily include works.

26:30

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

26:37

But would they categorize baptism as a work? Because I hear often people say, well, wait a minute.

26:44

Well, baptism isn't really work. I just had someone say something on one of the comments. I did a video on—

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Our Spirit 321. Well, what was the name of that? I forgot. Does baptism save or is it necessary for salvation?

26:57

And someone says, well, baptism is not a work that we do. Baptism is a work that God does through someone.

27:06

And I was thinking, I'm like, well, that doesn't seem right. That's a common response.

27:11

And they would a lot of times go to Colossians 2 .12 because it is talking about circumcision made without hands.

27:17

It is talking about baptism. And it's baptizmos in the plural, which is actually hearkening back to the

27:23

Old Testament ceremonial rites. And then it says, the powerful working of God.

27:29

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.

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And the application of the hearers would also be thinking about their baptism. But here's the question that I ask

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Church of Christ, and it puzzles them. And I say this in love, Eli, because something

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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.

28:02

I truly feel like it's my Nineveh. I have a really good friend that has appeared on the podcast,

28:08

Cultish, coming out of the Church of Christ movement. And we've done a lot of work together.

28:14

The Church of Christ feel like our Nineveh. Since it's saturated in legalism, there's so much hostility, quibbling over words.

28:21

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

28:28

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

28:34

I hear this all the time is, well, baptism is a work of God. I ask, is it a work of God only?

28:42

Because 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.

28:50

We believe in Philippians 1 .6 that God begins that good work in you, brings it to completion.

28:57

And then here's the point that I'm getting at in Philippians 2 .12 and 13. We work out our salvation with fear and trembling.

29:05

We understand this is sanctification. We understand baptism. Any works of sanctification fit there.

29:11

That's what we're ordained to, good works in Ephesians 2. And so verse 13 in Philippians 2 says that actually it's

29:19

God who's at work both to will and work in you for his good pleasure.

29:25

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.

29:35

Okay. All right. So this issue of baptism becomes a major issue.

29:40

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.

29:52

So if the core issue is they move away from an

29:58

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.

30:05

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?

30:13

So 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?

30:24

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

30:35

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.

30:44

That's even – I'm sure Walter Martin would agree that that's kind of the bar that you judge everything.

30:52

And so that's primary. And so that quickly moves into something you said earlier, and Walter Martin is defining terms.

31:00

That list, again, talking about defining faith, understanding from the heart we firmly trust in the person and work of Jesus Christ.

31:10

So that's internal, okay? And so works are external. This is Ergon from the

31:16

Greek, and this is huge in our strategy contending with Church of Christ is

31:22

I really want to quickly ask what's their definition of works?

31:28

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.

31:38

And we acknowledge there are different kinds of works, but we're talking about the definition, the way that Paul uses it.

31:43

And we'll look at some of this in Romans 4 and Ephesians 2. He's talking about Ergon. It's the external actions of human accomplishments.

31:51

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.

32:01

But Church of Christ seems to be Roman Catholic -alike. Roman Catholicism, they do affirm original sin.

32:09

So they have a full -orbed systematic theology, and they have baptismal regeneration.

32:17

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.

32:27

And what I've coined, Eli, is they would hold to what I understand to be baptismal justification.

32:33

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

32:39

Bible is silent. But that eliminates any type of teaching, any type of application, and they quickly break that standard.

32:46

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.

32:54

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.

33:05

You've 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.

33:12

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.

33:20

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,

33:28

I probably will make a separate video, a snippet, of where you're going to be answering this specific question, right?

33:37

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—

33:54

But they can go back and watch the specific responses to some biblical text. So I'll give you a few moments to warm up there, to get yourself settled, and I just want to say thank you,

34:05

Spencer Rice, for a $49 .99 super chat. Wow, dude, that is amazing.

34:14

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.

34:25

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

34:31

I tell you something real quick? Go for it. So Spencer is a really good friend of mine. He's a missionary in Japan.

34:37

Oh, wow, okay. And he is a lifelong friend that has really shaped me in the ministry, and I love him a lot, and he has benefited from your channel as well.

34:46

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.

34:58

So that's very encouraging. Thank you so much. And, Spencer, thank you so much, man. That is amazing.

35:03

I very much appreciate it. Just as Jeremiah is getting set up for his grilling session,

35:11

I'm going to grill him on these passages here. If you have any questions, please, as we normally do on this show, at the tail end of the show,

35:21

I want to, you know, read through some questions if there are any. Sometimes we don't get some questions.

35:26

That's fine. But if there are any questions, send them in, and we'll try our best to get to some of them. We want to be helpful and useful to you.

35:33

So, all right. Well, I hope you are ready. I have before me

35:39

Acts chapter 2, verse 38. Okay.

35:45

So, Jeremiah, bro, okay, you're questioning the clear biblical fact that baptism is a necessity for salvation.

35:56

What's wrong with you, apologetic dog? Okay. So Acts chapter 2, verse 38 says the following.

36:03

And Peter said to them, all right, and this is in response to, well, actually, let me read verse 37. This is in response to a very clear question that seems to give a very clear and obvious answer.

36:14

So let's see how Jeremiah answers. So verse 37, now when they heard this, they were cut to the heart and said to Peter and the rest of the apostles, brothers, what shall we do?

36:25

And this is in light of Peter's teaching and the proclamation of the gospel. And Peter says, repent and be baptized, every one of you, in the name of Jesus Christ, for the forgiveness of your sins, and you will receive the gift of the

36:40

Holy Spirit, a .k .a. the Bible. Based upon what you told me there.

36:47

So there you have it, bro. Okay. Clearly, it's clear.

36:53

What must we do? Repent and be baptized for the forgiveness of sins.

36:59

What is your response? Let me start with a quick response. Okay. Context is everything.

37:06

And what I have to always do at the Church of Christ is say everybody has a burden of proof to explain what that means.

37:13

Okay. There's a difference between reading it and giving the meaning of Scripture. That's true. So I want to encourage

37:20

Christians, don't fall into a trap of saying, do you believe this, yes or no?

37:25

Because the answer is yes when you read it, no on how you interpret it. So when they say, you don't believe that?

37:32

Or just say yes or no. What must I do? And then they read it, yes or no, nothing else. Explain.

37:39

Anytime you read Scripture, I agree with it. But there's a difference in you reading it and then giving its meaning. And so I think very simply,

37:45

Eli, the context here is a Jewish audience. That is so key.

37:51

And so the Jews are being cut to the heart by the gospel. We see a fulfillment of Joel here.

37:58

And the Jews ask a broad question. They say, what must we do? What do

38:03

I mean broad? Well, we see a more specific question later in Acts chapter 16, sirs, what must

38:09

I do to be saved? Okay. So here's a broader question because the

38:14

Jews crucified the son of glory, the Mashiach. Right. And they are cut to the heart about this because this was actually

38:21

God come in the flesh. And so they are asking, our understanding of Judaism is wrong.

38:27

What are we to do now? And Peter is saying you need to repent. The backside of repentance is always faith.

38:34

Repentant faith always goes together. That's what would justify us before God. And so now he's saying this is how you would demonstrate that repentant faith in your unity with the authority of Jesus Christ.

38:49

And so very shortly, that's what he's getting at there. And we've only hit half the verse.

38:55

And so also when he says repent and be baptized, every one of you in the name of Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of your sins, and you'll receive the gift of the

39:04

Holy Spirit. So the very simplistic Baptist argument has been for can mean because of, and I've used it.

39:13

I think that that's true. Contextually and exegetically, you can make that move.

39:18

However, I love how he uses for the forgiveness of your sins because the the is the definite article.

39:26

It means the one and only, like Jesus is the way, the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.

39:32

And so this phrase is used in the Gospels. John the

39:38

Baptist said this almost exact phrase that I remember John the Baptist was paving the way for Messiah.

39:44

And he says for the forgiveness of sins. And so he was talking about redemption that was still yet to come at Calvary.

39:52

And so the night of Jesus's crucifixion, he was tearing the bread, passing it to the apostles, saying, take this bread, which basically is pointing to me, what he's about to accomplish the next day.

40:05

They would drink. This all pointed to what was about to happen. He says for the forgiveness of sins.

40:12

And so my point is Peter is pointing back to Calvary with this very explicit statement for the forgiveness of your sins.

40:20

You can have your sins forgiven in total in repentant faith by looking to the one and only

40:27

Savior, what he did on the cross at Calvary. Okay. All right. All right.

40:33

So what about then? Okay. All right. What about Mark 16, 16? Which clearly says, my friend, okay, you know,

40:42

Mr. Apologetic Dog, chew on this. All right. Mark 16, 16. All right.

40:48

Whoever believes and is baptized will be saved, but whoever does not believe will be condemned.

40:58

Okay. Again, it's a nice flowery explanation you gave, but it seems like you are adding to the text when the text clearly says, look, right?

41:09

Whoever believes and is baptized, but whoever does not believe will be condemned.

41:17

I mean, it seems like you are adding to the word of God, Mr. Dog. Okay.

41:23

Mr. Apologetic Dog. That's what I would get is that's not what it says. That's not what it says.

41:28

And we're saying time out. We're talking about its meaning. That's why I'm trying my best impression.

41:35

You're doing great. By the way, by the way, someone said anomaly with this awesome comment here.

41:42

Church of Christ Eli might be my favorite Eli. There are different versions of me when

41:47

I try to pretend to be someone that I'm not. I try to, you know, I ham it up a little bit so it can be engaging.

41:53

But Israel, thank you so much for your $5 super chat. The $5 donation machine is back in action.

42:00

But boy, thank you, man. I really, really appreciate that. Just a real quick reminder before Jeremiah answers

42:06

Mark 16, 16 again. If you should have any questions, please, please, please, please send them in and preface your question with questions.

42:14

So that we can address them. If you don't have any questions, that's cool. But if you do, please don't hesitate to send those in.

42:20

All right. All right, Jeremiah. So Mark 16, 16, whoever believes and is baptized. Dude, it's right there.

42:27

So I have two different answers depending on, I guess, your context.

42:33

I'll call it the Matt Slick answer, the slickest man alive, and the Dr. James White answer.

42:38

Okay, because they're going to be different here. Now, Matt Slick, he's the slickest man alive.

42:45

I hope to be able to do an episode with him one day. Lovecarm .org, encourage people to go check that out.

42:51

So what Matt would say is we got to make sure we read the whole verse, right? Because Church of Christ are really good at proof texting.

42:59

We got a list here. They will say all day long, whoever believes and coordinating conjunction is baptized will be saved.

43:07

But whoever does not believe will be condemned. There's the key, right?

43:12

It's the believing and the unbelieving or not believing is what saves and condemns when you let the whole verse speak.

43:19

Now, we still have a given account for and is baptized. Well, it doesn't equally say whoever does not believe and is not baptized will be condemned.

43:28

I had a chance to talk to—I call him a Greek scholar.

43:33

But anyway, he just said what we look at baptized is it's indicative. It's describing what believers do.

43:41

Stephen Boyce, I'm so sorry, Stephen. Your name like went out of my head. I called him to talk about the nuances here.

43:48

I would recommend people looking him up. I know he's—has he been on here before too? He has. We did the

43:54

King James Only episode, which was excellent. I mean, I still highly recommend people watch that video because it is kind of a 101 of sexual criticism.

44:09

It actually equips you to address a bunch of other issues as well, so I highly recommend that.

44:17

Yes, so point is, Matt Selick, others have pointed out, you could say whoever believes and goes to church will be saved.

44:25

That's what Christians do. Whoever believes and reads their Bible will be saved. That's—it's indicative.

44:31

It's showing what believers do, and we know that it's the not believing is what's going to ultimately end up in our being condemned.

44:39

Dr. White would take a different approach and says, bro, this is the longer ending of Mark. It shouldn't be there.

44:46

Ah, the textual variant. I was going to ask you about that. I was wondering if we should mention the textual variant issue because it opens up a whole can of worms that you may not want to sidetrack the discussion.

45:04

Absolutely, because if you start talking about textual criticism with the Church of Christ who wants nothing to do with church history and the manuscript tradition of how

45:13

God has preserved His Word, what you immediately get is, oh, you're just trying to take out Bible passages that you don't like.

45:20

I have heard on one occasion a Church of Christ preacher understand that and not want to camp out on Mark 16 and 16, but overall,

45:29

I would say, look, you have enough context clues to explain the verse, and something that Stephen Boyce has pointed out, and I told him

45:38

I loved him saying this, is I believe historically Jesus probably said those words. At the end of John's Gospel, He said and did so many things that aren't written in the

45:47

Bible. If they were recorded, the whole world couldn't even contain these things. So the fact that this is trying to make it into the manuscript tradition along with that passage in John 8, 1

45:57

John 5 -7, and a lot of these other ones, this specifically was probably said and comes out through an old tradition that comes back in the text, but when you're talking with Church of Christ, I would say treat this verse historically as though Jesus said it, because He probably did, and this verse gives us enough context to actually explain the meaning there.

46:20

Okay, all right. Okay, thank you for that. Well, let's move along. So 1

46:25

Peter 3, verse 21, this is a big one. Someone says, dude, there are people who even commented on the video.

46:36

I made a short video if folks are wondering the video I'm referring to. Is baptism necessary for salvation?

46:42

And someone, they probably didn't even watch the video. They said yes, and then they just quoted this particular passage, 1

46:50

Peter 3, verse 21. Okay, so Mr. Apologetic Dog, all right.

46:56

1 Peter 3, verse 21, which says the following, and it's clear as day, right?

47:02

I know you got your little ballerina shoes on tiptoeing around the issues, Jeremiah. Okay, making the

47:08

Bible say something that it doesn't, right? Okay, here's what it says. Baptism, which corresponds to this, now saves you.

47:17

Not as a removal of dirt from the body, but as an appeal to God for a good conscience to the resurrection of Jesus Christ, who has gone into heaven and is the right hand of God, with angels, authorities, and the powers having been subjected to him.

47:28

So there you go. Now, corresponding to this, baptism saves you. It literally says baptism saves you.

47:35

How can you be so blind to miss the obvious teaching of this text,

47:41

Jeremiah? Yeah, let me help them out in their case. If you read the

47:47

King James in verse 20, it says that the eight souls were saved by water.

47:55

So how do we get out of this? Yeah. Okay, so I listened to your video recently.

48:01

I thought you did a great job explaining this. I want to encourage people, if you were to go to the

48:06

Apologetic Dog YouTube channel, I called in a live talk show with the Church of Christ preacher, and we spent an hour talking about these two verses.

48:15

It was awesome. We even talked about the sovereignty of God and the depravity of man. It was great.

48:21

So if you want to see it live and in action, go check that out too. But I will say there's a few different approaches people could take contextually, and it still works.

48:32

We still conclude that, oh, man, this is talking about faith in Christ. This is ultimately the baptism, having a good conscience in the resurrection of Christ.

48:41

But very simply, I tell people you got to look at verse 20 and 21 together. That's so important for this.

48:48

And the only way to properly understand, and I'll use the King James to help them out, that they were saved through water.

48:57

You have to ask the question, what does that mean? The explanation is in the Old Testament. If you know the story of Noah and the ark and the flood, that's enough to help you understand, because I love what the

49:08

ESV does. ESV understood, the translators understood this. These eight persons were brought safely through water, okay?

49:18

So there's three elements in verse 20 you got to be aware of. You got to be aware of the ark.

49:24

You got to be aware of the eight persons, Noah. And then you got to be aware of the water.

49:30

The water was used as an instrument of judgment, okay? It was not salvific.

49:36

What was salvific for Noah and his family was the ark. The ark is salvific, okay?

49:43

Now this is going to be our context going into verse 21. Baptism, baptizo, there's a type of immersion going on there, right?

49:52

When we know definitions of terms. Baptism, which corresponds to this, now saves you.

49:59

And then he immediately says, not the removal of dirt from the body. So Peter is almost going back to Pentecost saying, all right, just so everyone understands and doesn't get it twisted that baptism is salvific in any way.

50:12

That is not what is in view here. Not the removal of dirt from the body. This is not a ceremonial bath that I'm talking about.

50:18

That's not the baptism here. And then he goes on to say, but as an appeal to God for a good conscience through the resurrection of Jesus Christ.

50:26

Jesus is our ark of salvation. That is the correspondence in any type that was going on here.

50:34

And Eli, one last thing is I think it's good to define what a good conscience means.

50:39

If you go back earlier in the context, we go to one of our favorite Bible passages, 1 Peter 3 .15.

50:45

But in your hearts, honor Christ the Lord is holy, always being prepared to make a defense for anyone who asks for a reason for the hope that is in you, yet do it with gentleness and respect.

50:56

Verse 16, having a good conscience. So the point is having a good conscience is sanctifying the

51:04

Lord in your hearts. We understand that this is looking to him in faith. Excellent.

51:11

Very good. You're doing an excellent job, by the way. We're going to continue to go down the list, but I just want to give a shout out to my friend

51:18

Ron. Thank you so much for your $20 Super Chat. He says, Francis Chan teaches the same thing about baptism being necessary for salvation.

51:26

So I think he's asking the question, so shouldn't churches stop using his teachings? Maybe we can kind of take a quick little sidestep, and maybe you could address that question from your perspective.

51:35

And Ron, thank you so much, man. I really do appreciate it. Yeah, I appreciate the question, too, because I grew up listening to Francis Chan.

51:43

I think he was a Master's Seminary graduate out in California where MacArthur's Seminary is.

51:49

Something that a long time ago he said in a sermon on Acts 2 was, why are we getting so bogged down about baptism?

51:56

And I remember immediately thinking, because this is a gospel issue, are you trusting in a gospel that says your accomplishments, your works, plus your faith in what

52:06

Jesus did? Or are we talking about something else? It's so important. And I think

52:12

Francis Chan—I don't know the details of this. I would tread so cautiously with where Francis Chan is going now because I listened to him recently on the

52:22

Remnant Radio. I love those guys, by the way. They interviewed Francis Chan on his view of the

52:28

Eucharist or communion. It's just concerning. So you always have to have your discernment up, and I would just say exercise that especially with Francis Chan.

52:40

All right. Well, thank you for that. And thanks again, Ron. Really appreciate it. So let's kind of get you back on track here.

52:46

So my next scripture that I'd like you to address is Acts 22, verse 16.

52:53

Bro, okay, here's what it says. And now, why do you wait? Rise and be baptized, and wash away your sins, calling on his name.

53:05

So it clearly seems to be the case that baptism and the washing away of your sins is very closely connected here.

53:13

And so it seems to support the idea that baptism is, in fact, necessary for the washing away of your sins, which is obviously connected to this whole idea of salvation.

53:24

I actually love this verse because I remember just a little bit about me and my hometown in Jonesboro, Arkansas.

53:32

Church of Christ are everywhere. And so that's why it's a mission field for me is because usually someone's family member or a friend of a friend or so many friends are

53:42

Church of Christ. And so there have been instances where I had a relationship or a friendship with somebody that attends a

53:50

Church of Christ. And so eventually that turned into them calling their elders and us sitting down and just hashing it out as much loving way as possible.

53:58

And I'm so grateful for that because I remember one of them, this probably nine years ago, brought up this verse.

54:05

And I just remember thinking, man, I just, I need to keep reading and studying the Bible. And I love this verse now because I do feel like I have a better grasp of the context.

54:14

And so something else, I know I'm giving you a lot here to take into consideration. But Church of Christ historically have a different method, a different hermeneutic, a different exegesis.

54:27

So I wanted to tell you what that is, and this kind of stems out of their Baconian philosophy where the rational mind is preeminent.

54:34

You can have a clean slate, no presuppositions, and something that they go by, the acronym is

54:41

CENI, C -E -N -I, and it's really just three points. And it's you got to understand direct command, approved example, and necessary inference.

54:52

I come back to say, okay, that doesn't really encapture the grammatical historical method of interpretation.

55:00

And so what I mean is we do look at the original language, we look at definition of terms, we do look at context, and they would say yes to that.

55:08

But I think a fatal flaw here, and this kind of pertains to this verse, is you got to understand prescription and description, right?

55:17

What is indicative and what's a command ultimately. And so how this plays out here is the book of Acts is a narrative book.

55:27

You got to treat it like that. When you look at the epistles, these are doctrinal letters given to the church.

55:32

And so you don't interpret the doctrinal letters in light of the book of Acts. You have it backwards.

55:38

You read the book of Acts, and you see what Paul is teaching, how Christians are supposed to understand this in light of the letters.

55:44

So I'm saying that's important, and you'll see this crossover here in a second. I love what you did. You read the whole verse, because typically this gets quoted as, why do you wait?

55:54

Rise and be baptized and wash away your sins. Okay? But calling on his name.

56:02

Eli, there's a lot of things going on here in the context. This is not the apostle Paul speaking. This is

56:07

Ananias. Ananias, earlier in the context, when you look back to Acts 9, I think it's 915, where the

56:14

Lord appears to him saying, hey, you go and prepare for Saul of Tarsus, because he is a chosen vessel of mine.

56:20

Okay? Because Ananias was like, I don't know if this is a good idea, because he's literally killing and persecuting Christians.

56:26

God's like, I got a sovereign plan for this. Okay? And so what you see here in this verse, just on broad scope as we get closer, is

56:34

Ananias is being faithful to the gospel proclamation in the Great Commission. I'm just saying that he's being faithful here.

56:42

Okay? And so we need to ask the questions, how did the apostle

56:47

Paul understand what he means? And so what I'm getting at is, rise and be baptized.

56:53

I do think that is talking about water baptism, especially with Matthew 28 and the Great Commission of mine.

56:59

Wash away your sins, calling on his name. So washing away your sins is qualified by calling on his name.

57:07

Now, the apostle Paul goes into great detail what it means to call upon the name of the

57:12

Lord or to confess Jesus as Lord in Romans 10. This is a correct move.

57:19

Paul's about to interpret for us what he would have understood Ananias to be saying. And so in Romans chapter 10, verse 9,

57:27

Paul says that if you confess with your mouth that Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved.

57:35

For with the heart one believes and is present tense justified, and with the mouth one confesses and is saved.

57:42

And then he goes on to quote from the Old Testament. He says, for everyone who calls on the name of the

57:47

Lord shall be saved. Okay? Now, I know we got other verses, but this is so good.

57:53

If we just actually just sit in this. Paul is telling us that if you confess Jesus as Lord.

58:00

Now, I've had church crosses. Well, it says with your mouth. And we would say yes, but definitions are so important.

58:06

If you look up the word confession, confessing, this is a transformed heart of worship that manifests itself not only what you say, but how you live the rest of your life.

58:18

So there's something more fundamental with confessing. It's a matter of the heart. And so the point is, is if you confess

58:24

Jesus as Lord, that he's the risen Lord, then you are present tense saved according to the apostle

58:31

Paul. Now, why is that important? Because if you go back to Acts 22, 16, Eli, I think this is a defeater not only for Church of Christ, but also

58:41

Roman Catholicism, Eastern Orthodox, any baptismal regeneration. I just,

58:46

I think this is a defeater, and obviously there would be much debate over this. But Paul confessed

58:52

Jesus as Lord before his baptism. That's huge because Church of Christ, most people say, well,

58:58

Paul confessed Jesus as Lord at his baptism. And then they'll say Acts 22, 16. And I'm like, okay, so if we can show that he actually confessed

59:05

Jesus before his baptism, then that doesn't work. He's simply demonstrating his faith when he does get baptized.

59:10

So look with me at verse 8. Paul answered, who are you, Lord? So let me pause.

59:16

So he's on the road to Damascus, right? He's persecuting Christians. He wasn't seeking after God, but we understand no one seeks after God.

59:24

None's good, none righteous. But it's God who seeks us, his own. And so the apostle

59:30

Paul is a wonderful picture of that. So Jesus is in the Shekinah glory of Kurios.

59:38

That's going to be a key phrase here in a second. The Shekinah glory of God is right there in front of Saul of Tarsus.

59:45

And he's a Pharisee of Pharisees. He knows he is looking at God. He is looking at the divine

59:52

Lord. And he says, who are you, Lord? And I think he's genuinely asking the question here.

59:58

Then he said to me, I am Jesus of Nazareth, whom you are persecuting.

01:00:03

Now, Jesus of Nazareth is key because he knows exactly who he's talking about. The apostle

01:00:09

Paul earlier in Acts had a helping hand in the crucifixion probably earlier on.

01:00:15

And he was there with the killing of Stephen. He understands exactly who Jesus of Nazareth is.

01:00:22

And then he says, now to those who were with me saw the light, but did not understand the voice of the one who was speaking to me.

01:00:28

So now the apostle Paul, or Saul of Tarsus here, he has a fully informed conscience.

01:00:33

Shekinah glory of God. He invokes the divine name Kurios. And now he knows it's the resurrected

01:00:40

Jesus of Nazareth talking to him. And he says, and I said to him, what shall

01:00:46

I do, Lord? And so you can continue to build on this because Galatians chapter 1, he talks about how he received the gospel not from man, but from actually

01:00:58

Jesus himself. The gospel is the power of God unto salvation. We're going to see later that he prayed, or if you go look at the context, he prayed.

01:01:07

He did all these things that someone who is born again does. And so my point is, Acts 22, 16, what qualifies the washing away your sins?

01:01:15

It's not the water baptism. It's calling upon his name. Paul already done that. Excellent.

01:01:21

Very good, man. This is excellent stuff. Adam, thank you so much for your $20 super chat. You guys are so generous, man.

01:01:27

I really appreciate it. My goodness. Thank you so much. Can I say something about Adam? Yeah, sure.

01:01:32

Go for it. I love Adam Carmichael so much. He's a member at 12 .5 Church here in Jonesboro.

01:01:39

And he, wonderful testimony. I'd love for you to get to talk to him someday. Sure. Wonderful testimony.

01:01:46

And he said he knew that he had to be all in to studying God's word. He said that had to be the central point in his life.

01:01:54

That's how you grow with your walk with the Lord. And so that eventually led to apologetics for him.

01:02:00

And he loved that. I guess we're men. We're fighters, right? We like that apologetic atmosphere.

01:02:06

And so it was neat because he found the gospel truth. He found a lot of debates. And this guy with the beards on there saying that he's from Jonesboro, Arkansas, talking about was

01:02:16

Mary a sinner. And I'm like, yes, she's a sinner saved by grace just like the rest of us. And so that's where I'd encourage people to go look up Marlon Wilson's channel,

01:02:24

The Gospel Truth, because that brother's doing some amazing work. And that was very instrumental.

01:02:30

God used that to bring Adam to 12 -5, and we're buds. Well, that's awesome because when

01:02:36

I watch Marlon's show, Marlon's like, man, we're trying to get the gospel out there. He's got that spunk, man.

01:02:43

He does. God is using it. That is so awesome. And so I know Marlon is on right now.

01:02:49

I don't know if he's on right now. He has a comment here, so I don't know if he's still on. But if he could hear us.

01:02:55

Marlon, keep up the good work. You're doing excellent work, and it's impacting people. So keep up the good work, man.

01:03:02

Appreciate it. And Adam, thank you so much for your super chat. That's awesome, and I greatly appreciate it.

01:03:08

All right, let's take kind of another sidestep and address some questions.

01:03:13

Usually I do the questions at the back end, but we have a lot of viewers but not a lot of questions, which is fun.

01:03:19

I wonder what kind of viewers, if they're for us or against us. Yeah, well, that's right. So I want to take a moment to kind of go through a question here, and then we'll continue to get back on track.

01:03:31

Again, I'm speaking with Jeremiah Nortier, or however one you could – the apologetic dog, on the topic of the

01:03:40

Church of Christ cult, and it is a cult in the negative sense that we've described at the beginning, and so it does require some apologetic engagement and proclamation of the gospel.

01:03:51

And Jeremiah is in the process of responding to key texts that are often brought up in these sorts of discussions.

01:03:58

If you are enjoying this video, this discussion, please like the video.

01:04:04

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01:04:10

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01:04:19

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01:04:25

But here's a question from Andrew Summers. Andrew asks, This may be off topic, but many congregations of the

01:04:31

Church of Christ reject instrumental music and worship. Can you explain where they get this and why they are wrong?

01:04:37

Yeah. I would like to take this moment to recommend some resources that people can look at to learn more of the history of the

01:04:48

Church of Christ. Number one, Eli, is there's a book written by Dr. Keith Schweiner.

01:04:54

I hope I'm pronouncing that last name right. He's updated this book called Various Doctrinal Positions of the

01:05:01

Campbellite Church of Christ and, this is interesting, Lutheran responses to those positions.

01:05:06

So it is in response by Lutherans. I've read this multiple times, and I don't agree always with the

01:05:12

Lutheran combat, but a wonderful look of history of why. So this stems all the way back to 1811.

01:05:20

Thomas Campbell and Alexander Campbell, like I said, they were departing from the true church.

01:05:26

And one of their, so the mantra is, we speak with the Bible speak and we're silent with the Bible silent. And so they concluded that if something is not directly said, then by implication, there's no other way of understanding a text.

01:05:41

Basically, what I'm getting at, it's vain worship. The Bible doesn't expressly say, and I think they're wrong with this actually, that you must use instruments in a worship service.

01:05:51

I would actually say Ephesians 5, 18, 19, 20, 21, along with Colossians 3, 16, and 17, talks about congregationally singing to one another in psalms, hymns, and spiritual songs, making a melody in your heart.

01:06:06

That's key because it's always a heart issue, whether you're using instruments or you're not using instruments. You could do vain worship in either way.

01:06:13

It always goes back to the heart. But the fact that Paul invokes the psalms, go read

01:06:18

Psalm 150. You see the psalmist praising God with everything that it has and uses multiple different instruments.

01:06:25

And so I'm saying Paul actually is directly using a worship context that would involve instruments.

01:06:32

And then when you do look into the book of Revelation, regardless of your eschatology, you get a peek into the throne room of heaven and you have people using instruments to glorify

01:06:41

God. And I love what Dr. John MacArthur has said before. If instruments were good enough in the Old Testament, the instruments were good enough in heaven one day, well then surely they're good enough now when we worship.

01:06:52

And it turns out that Paul gives us proof to say, hey, play the instruments, but it's from the heart that's important.

01:07:00

Excellent. Thank you for that. Breakfast Gun has a question. Are y 'all aware of modern Church of Christ?

01:07:06

There seems to be a movement within Church of Christ that rejects works, even baptism as required, and would affirm salvation by grace alone through faith alone in Christ alone.

01:07:14

Are you aware of that development within the Church of Christ? Yes, and I'm so thankful for that because I would say they're deviating from the cult.

01:07:23

They're more liberal in terms of what the Church of Christ spirit looks like, and I'm thankful for that.

01:07:30

I'm trying to think what else I was going to say. There's another sect that goes back into the church history because there was a departure of Stone and Campbell, and so you have another denomination that is almost exactly

01:07:44

Church of Christ. It's the Christian church. I'm trying to think of how they say it, and they're

01:07:51

Church of Christ with the only exception that they do use instruments. And so I'm glad to hear that, though, because I have talked with Church of Christ that says,

01:07:59

I'm not saying you have to be water baptized in order to be made right with God. They've departed from those fundamental tenets.

01:08:07

Think about it. Church of Christ, they're new and on the scene. Like earlier I said, they're Roman Catholic light. I really mean that.

01:08:13

They have less sacraments. They don't have a pope, but it's the same underlying principles through and through, but they deny original sin.

01:08:22

So anyway, I could go on on those things, but, yeah, I've heard of that, and I'm very thankful for those. Excellent.

01:08:28

Cameron, thank you so much for your $4 .99 Super Chat. You guys are really generous. I appreciate it.

01:08:36

Thank you so much. Cameron says, oftentimes the Church of Christ will say, quote, it says what it says.

01:08:41

It means what it means. It's so simple. Can you explain how this hermeneutic works against them?

01:08:47

Yes. I want to first say this is one of my best friends, Cameron Vogelsang, and I don't think he would mind me saying this.

01:08:54

He came out of one of those Christian churches. He has a wonderful testimony, comes out of that Church of Christ world, and what's neat,

01:09:02

Eli, is he was listening to Jeff Durbin's sermons, Paul Washer's sermon, really started liking

01:09:09

Reformed theology, and by the providence of God, we had a mutual friend. He came to my office one day, and we talked about all these things.

01:09:16

The rest is history. And so I love Cameron Vogelsang and his family so much. What he is getting at, this is something that we've experienced a lot, especially in light of my

01:09:26

Church of Christ debate and interactions more and more with Church of Christ. I say this, it's going to sound so bad, but what it appears to me is there is a glorifying of ignorance a lot of times.

01:09:39

It's so simple. How can you reject it? And to me, this is the white flag. You've reached a point in exegeting the context and the passage to where this is their last resort of saying it's so simple.

01:09:52

You're telling me I have to understand your commentary in order to understand just a simple verse.

01:09:57

It says what it says, and it means what it means. And this is why earlier, Eli, I said don't fall for the trap of it can't just be an explicit statement and you obey it.

01:10:08

It's so much more than that. You have to look at any given verse and its context. And one great example that I try to use with my students is we can make the

01:10:15

Bible say anything if we take out a context. We could say the Bible actually says there is no God.

01:10:21

But what is the context? It says the fool has said in his heart there is no God. So when you look into Acts 2, you look at the context.

01:10:28

You notice I'm making sure you're reading the whole verses in Mark 16, 16, Acts 22, 16. Read the whole verse.

01:10:34

Extend the context. What kind of book in the Bible is it? And so it works against them because we could come back and say

01:10:42

John 3, 16. I come from a Southern Baptist church, and I have so many Southern Baptist brothers and sisters in the

01:10:48

Lord, and I love it. But when we start talking about predestination, the sovereignty of God, you know what response

01:10:53

I got? John 3, 16. That's it. We don't want to talk about it. John 3, 16. And so what

01:10:59

Cameron's getting at is we could read something as simple and so clear as Ephesians 2, 8, and 9.

01:11:06

It says what it says. It means what it means. I don't need your explanation. It's a double standard. All right.

01:11:11

Well, excellent. And context is so important. Again, the words of Walter Martin are ringing in my ears.

01:11:18

He said that when someone says, I believe in Jesus, you look them straight in the eye and you say, which one?

01:11:26

Clearly he believes in Jesus. You hear this on the news, right? Well, the Mormons believe in Jesus, and I believe in Jesus, so I consider them brothers.

01:11:33

Well, no, no, no. Jesus has a context. These simple truths that we read off the page have a context.

01:11:39

And so it's very important to not relegate these sorts of discussions to, look, the text is clear.

01:11:46

Okay. Then clearly explain the context so that I can see the point you're trying to bring out. And, of course, context is the killer of heresy, right?

01:11:55

I mean, this is the thing that helps us see a verse in its proper light, and I think that's vitally important when engaging in these sorts of things.

01:12:02

Now, let me – well, there is another question here.

01:12:07

I want to get to the question. If they keep sending questions, I want to get to them. As you're pulling one up, I was going to say, too,

01:12:14

Paul's letter to the Corinthians warns of false Jesuses. What's that standard? What's that standard?

01:12:19

Jesus says unless you believe the ego in me, I am, then you will die in your sins in John 8.

01:12:25

He's the single creator of all things. Look at the prologue of John. That's the bar. That's the standard.

01:12:31

And so equally, and this is how we apply it to Church of Christ and any works rights in the system, is you must receive the correct

01:12:38

Jesus on his terms, and that is by faith, not faith plus works and the whole nine yards there.

01:12:45

Amen, amen. Saints Edified has a question. Why don't you see baptism as a necessary condition of new covenant membership like other commands you must obey, e .g.

01:12:56

confession, calling out the name of the Lord, repentance, faith, etc.? Dang.

01:13:02

I feel like Arturo's asking me a hard question here, so if I understand it correctly, there is a sense in Acts 2 –

01:13:11

I actually was having this conversation with somebody earlier today. What you do see is a type of membership happening with the visible church.

01:13:20

They're being added to the church. Now, they're added to the universal church by faith, which

01:13:27

God knows exhaustively, right, who are his. But there is a sense in where baptism is a demonstration of faith to the visible church, right, local churches.

01:13:37

And so we've got to be careful when we're talking about in order to be justified before God.

01:13:45

And so me and Arturo, we're great friends. I know he's had you on his channel, so we're in agreement. Even though he's

01:13:52

Presbyterian, we still love him. That's right. He's wrong, but he's loved by the

01:13:59

Lord. Something else too, as you hear this word synecdoche, and it's a great word to – if you look at a part of something, it represents the whole.

01:14:11

I'm fine with baptism being a synecdoche because that's in the sphere of your conversion, right?

01:14:17

Sure. But when people say, well, you say faith alone. What about repentance? We're saying, oh, no, we're talking about a repentant faith.

01:14:23

Well, what about love? You're saying faith alone. Oh, we're talking about a loving faith. And so we're talking about categories internally of the heart, not our external actions of accomplishment.

01:14:35

That's your ergon. That's where we get our English word energy. Your human energies and list of accomplishments, none of that is to be added to the already finished work, to telestai, of what

01:14:47

Jesus did on the cross. All right, very good. Here's one more question, and then we'll kind of get back on track with –

01:14:53

Let's try one more main scripture, the main passage that they go to, if we haven't covered it already.

01:15:01

And the only reason is I typically go around two hours, but I really want people to watch this. And I think the shorter it is, more likely people will spend the time to watch it because this is excellent.

01:15:10

I think you're doing an excellent job walking through. I'll never know if you'll have me on again. So I'm here as long as you'll have me. Well, I don't mind having you back on again.

01:15:17

We definitely – you're doing an excellent job, and I think you're a great resource for people. So we can definitely set that up.

01:15:23

Absolutely. So Paul Day says, Could Jeremiah comment on the stance that the

01:15:29

Church of Christ takes in regards to the imputed righteousness of Christ in justification? Yeah.

01:15:35

Paul Day – can you – yeah, I'll leave the question up there. Paul Day and I, we've talked a handful of times over social media.

01:15:43

He's a big voice in combating the Church of Christ also. So the

01:15:49

Church of Christ takes in regard to the imputed righteousness of Christ in justification. Here's the problem.

01:15:56

They do not have a robust understanding of justification and double imputation.

01:16:01

This is actually part of the problem. And so what is justification? I know Paul Day knows, but it's important to define terms.

01:16:09

It's being declared righteous, innocent from the penalty of your guilt, of your sin.

01:16:17

So it's forensic. And so this is very important in Romans 4 because we're justified by faith apart from works of law.

01:16:27

And then in chapter 4 – that was 328, I believe, in Romans – and then in 4, we're talking about this righteousness that we've received by faith and not of works apart from works.

01:16:37

And so I love what maybe you've said before. I've heard Matt Slick say it's like you have a table.

01:16:43

If you were to have two different fruit, an apple and an orange, and you take the orange off, then the apple is left alone. So we're saying on the table, you've got works and faith.

01:16:52

We're saying you've got to take works off the table, and it's faith alone. By looking to Jesus, trusting in Him.

01:17:00

So what is pistis? What is faith? Well, it's trusting in Christ, not looking to yourself.

01:17:06

It's like what the tax collector and the Pharisees said. You had the tax collector saying,

01:17:13

God, be merciful to me, a sinner. That's calling upon the name of the Lord. That's begging

01:17:19

Him for intercession, making atonement on your behalf. That's faith, right? And so by faith, all of your sin – past, present, and future – gets put on the cross of Calvary.

01:17:30

And in exchange, you get the perfect righteousness of God in Jesus Christ. The perfect obedience to the law, credited, imputed to your account.

01:17:40

Now, Elah, this actually brings up an interesting point. The church of Christ, they believe at your baptism, it only forgives your past sins.

01:17:48

And so wait a second. Where does the Bible say that? And you can say, well, you've only had your past sins.

01:17:55

It's like, wait, but if you continue to live, you're going to continue to sin. 1 John 2 lets us know that. And so the point is they have to break their own standard of speaking where the

01:18:04

Bible speaks and being silent where the Bible is silent. So I could continue to talk more about that, but what do you think? Yeah, excellent stuff, man.

01:18:12

Okay, so let's see here. This is a cool comment here.

01:18:20

Duffy Henderson says, hey, y 'all, thanks for doing this. Lots of Church of Christ churches out in our area.

01:18:27

I'm a master student at GPTS where James White is now on faculty. Super cool.

01:18:33

He says, thanks for your work, guys. We need more resources for apologetics and evangelism tools in this area. Yeah, if you guys watch my channel,

01:18:39

I do typically focus on like apologetic methodology, but I want to branch off and kind of deal a lot more with the cults and these specific areas.

01:18:49

So I definitely would like Jeremiah to come back on and definitely do more episodes dealing with Jehovah's Witnesses, Mormons, and things like that.

01:18:58

Because, listen, we can debate apologetic methodology until the cows come home, right? But where does the rubber hit the road?

01:19:05

How do we use those tools in actual evangelistic and apologetic context and conversations?

01:19:11

I think it's very important that we do cover a lot of these and kind of put resources at people's disposal.

01:19:17

So definitely, Jeremiah, I would like to have you on again, and we could maybe do a related topic or if there's another area of your expertise relating to the cults, we can do that as well.

01:19:28

So I would totally be down for doing that. But I want to identify a mistake you made.

01:19:35

You made a mistake, okay? You gave us your little flowery example of the tree and the apple, and you removed the apple, and look, faith alone,

01:19:46

I see what you did there, you sneaky, sneaky dog, you, okay?

01:19:52

Because everybody knows, while you're yapping and yapping and barking and barking, notice, bark, bark,

01:19:59

I did that on purpose, you're barking about faith alone. Everybody knows that in James chapter 2.

01:20:05

James 2, I knew it. James chapter 2, the place in scripture where faith alone is mentioned, it is preceded by the word not by faith alone, okay?

01:20:16

I want to read for the folks to demonstrate your folly, to demonstrate your ignorance and a misuse of the scriptures,

01:20:25

Mr. Apologetic Dog. James chapter 2, beginning at verse 17, okay?

01:20:34

So also faith by itself, if it does not have works, is dead. But someone will say, you have faith and I have works, show me your faith apart from your works and I will show you my faith by my works.

01:20:45

You believe that God is one, you do well, even the demons believe and shudder. Do you want to be shown, do you want to be shown, you foolish person, that faith apart from works is useless?

01:20:57

Was not Abraham our father justified by works when he offered up his son Isaac on the altar?

01:21:02

You see that faith was active along with his works and faith was completed by his works.

01:21:09

And the scriptures was fulfilled that says Abraham believed God and it was counted to him as righteousness and he was called a friend of God.

01:21:16

You see that a person is justified by works and not by faith alone.

01:21:23

I'm not the cult, you are. Respond. Add a little dramatic element there.

01:21:31

I love it. What we have to understand is James is not contradicting

01:21:38

Paul, okay? So literally if you isolate James in a vacuum, especially just a handful of those verses, like let's look at the one with Abraham.

01:21:53

So he says, you see that a person is justified by works and not by faith alone.

01:21:59

And there's a question earlier in verse 22. You see that faith was active along with his works.

01:22:06

Faith was completed by his works. So how can you dismiss works so fast? Well, context is everything.

01:22:13

And there's a number of debates. I would definitely recommend people go listen to Dr. White. I forget who.

01:22:19

I think he debated Roberts and Genes. He debated this topic, you know, sola fide, faith alone.

01:22:25

Go listen to that. Listen to the rub, the conflicting worldviews. Definitely recommend that.

01:22:30

I recommend another important book. Not that you need all these to understand. We're about to look at the context. But Dr.

01:22:37

White wrote a book called The God Who Justifies. Go read it. It's fantastic.

01:22:42

So I would argue James. Okay, you got it. Yeah, absolutely.

01:22:48

Love it. I actually studied that book in preparation for when I debated Eastern Orthodox on faith alone.

01:22:55

Now, they're not the same as Roman Catholics, obviously, but so much crossover happens there.

01:23:00

And if you can defend what justifies us before God and it's our faith, then you're going to be able to apply that understanding, whether it's

01:23:09

Church of Christ, Eastern Orthodox, Roman Catholics, any system of works righteousness, right?

01:23:16

What do Mormons teach in 2 Nephi? We're saved by grace after all that we can do.

01:23:21

Now, you need to go study that context and everything. But that's one of the giveaways of cults that have deviated from orthodoxy, right?

01:23:29

That is, they've ultimately made a system of works righteousness. James 2. I would say what's key to the context is verse 14.

01:23:38

Fourteen through the rest of the chapter, you've got to understand in context. And I want to give it away at the very beginning.

01:23:44

Romans 4, really Romans 1 through 5, is talking about justification before God, literally in his sight in Romans 3.

01:23:53

And then 4 .2, talking about Abraham. If he was justified by what he accomplished, it's implied men, but not before God, right?

01:24:02

Because before God, it's only by trusting in his promises. In James 2, we're talking about a said faith before men.

01:24:10

Is that kind of faith going to save you before God? So God is always in the context.

01:24:16

I've heard people say, well, if you look at Romans 1 .27, religion that is pure and undefiled before God the

01:24:22

Father. And we're saying everything's before God, right? But what does the fruit of justification look like?

01:24:31

Now, I think I read a Karm article a long time ago, broke this down so wonderfully.

01:24:38

But it's talking about a said faith. If you say you're a Christian, does that automatically make you a

01:24:44

Christian? Well, no. God sees the heart. God tests the heart, so many scriptures tell us. So if you have this understanding that it's talking about a said faith, what good is it, my brothers, if someone says he has faith, but does not have works?

01:24:58

Does that faith, that said faith, save him? If you keep looking, if a brother or sister is poorly clothed and lacking in daily food, and one of you says to them, go in peace, be warmed and filled without giving them the things that are needed for the body, what good is that faith?

01:25:12

What I want you to see, Eli, is this is a person -to -person interaction, right, with a said faith.

01:25:19

And like Dr. White has pointed out so many times, verse 18 is kind of the killer to really demonstrate this.

01:25:25

But someone will say, you have faith and I have works, show me.

01:25:31

Show me your faith apart from your works, and I will show you my faith by my works. So it's person -to -person interaction.

01:25:38

He's saying, show me, demonstrate to me if you have true living faith. Not a dead faith that says one thing and then lives in a completely opposite way.

01:25:47

So you would say that in James, the justification in view there is horizontal, how we are justified before man.

01:25:55

And the justification in the letters of Paul is vertical, how we are justified before God.

01:26:01

And we need to keep those distinct. We don't want people to, we don't want to allow people to equivocate with the two different kinds of justification there.

01:26:11

They're the same words, but the context, right? The context obviously gives us the proper way to understand how the concept of justification is being used in those passages.

01:26:21

Right. We're only going to see this more in James 2 as we look at it. Because the question I was looking at earlier in 21, was not

01:26:29

Abraham our father justified by works when he offered up his son Isaac on the altar?

01:26:35

Church of Christ do not want to define the term works. They want to talk about different kinds of works.

01:26:41

Oh, Romans 3 and 4 is talking about works of law. Galatians is talking about works of law, talking about circumcision.

01:26:48

It's not talking about the definition of works. And it is, that's the whole point. That's why

01:26:54

Romans 4 is so clear and Ephesians 2. There's nowhere in the context you're going to be able to get away with saying works of law.

01:26:59

He's talking about your Ergon, right? Your works are nowhere going to be in the sphere of your right standing before God.

01:27:06

But we are created for that, right? Remember, the just shall live by faith.

01:27:12

We are justified by faith, and then we now live to demonstrate that faith to the world. That's what we're seeing with Abraham.

01:27:19

And if you were to strip 21 out of its context, that contradicts Romans. Was not

01:27:25

Abraham our father justified by works when he offered up his son Isaac on the altar?

01:27:31

So, we already understand. I want to actually develop another thought here in a second. But this is demonstrating saving faith to the world.

01:27:38

The fulfillment of faith that justifies us before God. The fulfillment is when the world sees you being salt and light.

01:27:45

That's what Jesus was getting at. That let your light shine before men that they may see your good works to glorify your

01:27:52

Father who is in heaven. And so, verse 22, you see that faith was active alongside or with his works.

01:27:59

That his faith was completed by his works. It was fulfilled, verse 23 says, and then at 24. You see, carrying that human -to -human interaction, that a person is justified by works and not by faith alone.

01:28:11

We would interpret that to say, of course, before men, but not before God. And what did John Calvin said?

01:28:17

Justified faith is never alone. Our justification is by faith alone, but justified faith is never alone.

01:28:24

It produces good works. Excellent. Very good. I like this question because we do deal with presuppositional apologetics, but Marlon Wilson, who is over there at the

01:28:34

Gospel Truth, he has a question. How can we use presupp against the Church of Christ? And yes, it can be done, contrary to people who say presuppositional apologetics and transcendental reasoning works well when you're talking to the atheist.

01:28:47

But surely, you know, when you're dealing with the Mormon, when you're dealing with people with competing authority claims, it doesn't work.

01:28:54

I had J. Warner Wallace on, who is a noted evidentialist apologist. Great resource. I highly recommend his books.

01:29:00

But obviously, we have some methodological differences. He said something along the lines. He said that when the

01:29:06

Christian asserts his authority claim and the Mormon asserts their authority claim, that at that point, everyone's an evidentialist.

01:29:14

Because the way you break the tie is now you need to appeal to this like objective evidence.

01:29:19

And of course, I took issue with that and provided a respectful response there in the discussion.

01:29:24

But it's not true. You can use presuppositional apologetics. Indeed, you should use presuppositional apologetics consistently across the board, whether you're dealing with an atheist or a proponent of a religious position that has an authority at its center.

01:29:38

So how would you respond presuppositionally? Just broadly speaking, I know there's a lot of different ways you can apply it.

01:29:44

How would you respond presuppositionally to a member of the Church of Christ? Yeah, because so many thoughts you don't understand just race through my mind.

01:29:54

Love Marlon Wilson. Contrary to what some people have accused him as his ministry charges money for questions, it's not true.

01:30:01

That brother is working for the Lord, and we are so thankful to people that support the gospel truth.

01:30:07

He knows what I'm talking about. I got your back, Marlon. So we use precept in everything we do.

01:30:13

The Church of Christ, they have a fundamentally different view of God and a fundamentally different view of man.

01:30:18

And to give it all away, you need the sovereign triune

01:30:24

God to ground our human existence and reasoning. That's where you interviewing

01:30:29

Brant Bosterman. I love that book so much about the vindication of Christian paradox, talking about the

01:30:35

Trinity. It's awesome because it really ties everything. You need the triune God, and you need him to be sovereign because Church of Christ, I think they are more dangerous than Mormons.

01:30:48

Because Mormons, for a lot of people, they understand that. They add the Book of Mormon, and that just seems super sketchy for a lot of people, right?

01:30:57

Church of Christ, they want to only talk about the Bible and the Bible alone.

01:31:03

And ultimately, we should do that, right? And so what we've been talking about is presuppositionally, we stand on the word of God, and we talk about defining terms and context.

01:31:15

But I think that's how we ultimately war this battleground is we are the ones that do the heavy study, be prayerful, trust that God will equip us for every good work.

01:31:30

And so my point is we really do live in the Scripture. We visit many books, as Charles Spurgeon and Eli Yaller like to say, but we live in the

01:31:39

Scriptures, right? So does that make sense? With the Church of Christ, we need to know the proof text.

01:31:45

We need to know the context. We really need to—it's going to be a battle of definition of words.

01:31:51

These are all—this is revelational epistemology. And so with the Church of Christ, that's where you go to war, right?

01:31:58

They're not going to be like the Roman Catholics that want to talk about Church history, which is important. But since we see the value of looking at Church history that Christ has been building as Church for 2 ,000 years, we see the value of going to the saints of old, analyzing their arguments, and holding fast to that which is good when it comports to Scripture.

01:32:16

We have the advantage of doing that type of study as where the Church of Christ, they're going back through their proof text after proof text after proof text.

01:32:24

Right. Excellent. And I think it's important how you respond to a Church of Christ proponent presuppositionally may look very similar to how an evidentialist or a classicalist

01:32:38

Christian engages. Because here's the thing. One of the key elements of presuppositionalism is the—we have a great aversion to neutrality, right?

01:32:49

There is no neutral ground, as Cornelius Van Til has taught us. But he also says that while there is no neutral ground, there is in fact common ground.

01:32:59

Bonson brings this up as well. There's a difference between neutral ground and common ground. If you are in a discussion with someone who affirms the authority of the

01:33:07

Bible, then let's go there. Let's look at the proof text. And because the Bible is the authority, right, we can use the text of Scripture to argue our point.

01:33:16

And so that's going to require some heavy lifting on our part that we need to be able to press them where we need to press them but also defend our biblical position.

01:33:24

And you're going to have that—what's going to look like an evidentialist, I would imagine, would appeal to Scripture if someone was debating a

01:33:29

Scripture passage. So in that sense, you're going to have similarity there. But as a presuppositionalist, yeah, if they affirm the

01:33:35

Bible, let's go to the Bible and look at those texts. So especially with respect to some of their theology as well, if they have a very unbiblical view of God, I mean you could do an internal critique on their conception of God, challenge them on the particular proof text that they use for their conception of God or things like that.

01:33:55

So there are any number of ways you could apply presuppositionalism to a position like the

01:34:00

Church of Christ. Did you want to add something to that? Yes. Something that Church of Christ share with Roman Catholics, basically all false religion, is there's this underlying human autonomy.

01:34:11

And so Marlin hosted a debate that I was a part of recently against two Roman Catholics, me and my buddy Merrick Kaiser, and I made a transcendental argument for solo scriptura.

01:34:22

And my point is God must be triune and He must speak perspicuously in order for us to reason to begin with.

01:34:29

And so my point is you can really start to develop the conversation of how do they know with certainty.

01:34:36

They got this problem of induction in terms of interpretation. How do they know they have the right interpretation?

01:34:43

They can't. They could always be wrong, right? The white swan fallacy. I mean you got so many different presuppositional ways that you can engage, but what it's going to boil down to is everything that you've been talking about is defining terms and then context.

01:34:56

Yeah, excellent. All right. Well, unfortunately, we have run out of time. This has been excellent.

01:35:03

I definitely want you to be back on to either continue this discussion or to expand off on another topic.

01:35:11

Hopefully, we can definitely do many more things together in the future. I would really appreciate that if you'd be willing to come back on.

01:35:18

Absolutely. And folks, you guys have been so generous. I mean we've had a lot of people viewing.

01:35:26

Super chats. I mean, oh my goodness, you guys have been so generous. People are feeling really generous tonight. I appreciate it.

01:35:32

Thank you so much. We definitely need it. So thank you so much. But I hope this discussion is useful for people.

01:35:40

And if you leave comments in the comment section, let me know the types of things that you guys want to hear.

01:35:49

I want to be able to provide a – of course, we want to focus on presuppositional apologetics, but we believe that presuppositionalism applies to every aspect of the apologetic enterprise.

01:36:01

So if there is an area that you are struggling with in terms of how do I interact with this group, with this group, while maintaining the consistency with my biblical convictions, how do

01:36:12

I apply presuppositionalism to this area or that area, let me know. I want to make content and have guests on that will scratch that itch, as I think it's very, very needed.

01:36:23

So with that said, is there anything you'd like to say, any closing remarks or things that you want to point people to that might be useful to them with respect to the topic we've covered tonight?

01:36:34

Yes. Dr. White has been a wonderful example in the faith of debating these issues.

01:36:40

So I would say go listen to his debates. I'd say all of them, but especially the ones on Sola Fide, that we are justified, saved by faith alone in the

01:36:50

Savior alone, Christ alone I'm representing tonight. I want to have a coffee.

01:36:58

I have a coffee. It says God made coffee. I'm not as holy as you are. You got the cool theological shirt.

01:37:03

I got this stinking mug. Check it out. See the Solas there? I can't see it.

01:37:09

What does it say? Oh, you got the Solas. All right. Well, I mean, I don't know if people might find this offensive, but I have a tattoo here.

01:37:16

Oh, you got me. You beat me on that one. The arrows on the quiver. See, you're Reformed through the beard, but I'm like that, you know, like the new

01:37:23

Calvinist movement where people got tattoos. I got a couple of tattoos. Well, you know, I only have two. But this one,

01:37:29

Reformed theology, bro. It's on me for life, bro. Hey, you beat me, but you did not beat

01:37:34

Adam Carmichael. Does he have more tattoos? He's got all the Solas tatted. That's pretty awesome.

01:37:41

All right, but I interrupted you. Go ahead. Dr. White has been an incredible resource. I think also really just living in the

01:37:52

Scriptures, like we said earlier, knowing our Savior more and more. That's going to equip our heart and our mind not only to combat sin, but to also combat the lies of the enemy.

01:38:03

And when we talk about cults, we talk about false teachers. They are not the enemy, right? Our battle is not against flesh and blood, but it's against the principalities and powers, the dark force.

01:38:13

Satan is the enemy. So we love false teachers enough to talk to them about the truth, speaking the truth in love.

01:38:21

That's the goal. So I want to encourage people to sanctify the Lord in your hearts as you're giving a defense for these things.

01:38:29

So I will be one of the major emphasis, if I can get my point right, and the apologetic dog is the

01:38:36

Church of Christ. This is near and dear to my heart. This is my Nineveh. And so definitely consider me as a resource.

01:38:43

I have a wonderful partner in crime, Trey Fisher, in Louisiana, the parish of the

01:38:51

Redeemer Church. And then he has a YouTube channel, Parish Reformed. He, I think he was

01:38:57

Church of Christ for 18 years, came out of that. He was on the podcast, Cultish, talking about that.

01:39:04

He's been on Marlon's channel that did a debate with the Church of Christ. Me and him do a lot of stuff together.

01:39:09

So I definitely want to recommend people to go check that out. We're talking about cults. Trey and I are going to be doing some work with Cultish.

01:39:18

We're starting to get more and more involved with Apologia, Durbin and those guys, and the guys that run

01:39:24

Cultish. So we have a lot more content on the way. And I wanted to give a shout out to my wife, who is the babe of all babes,

01:39:32

Allie Nortier. That's awesome. Well, Jeremiah, thank you so much. It is much appreciated.

01:39:38

We will definitely have you back on in the future. As this topic, obviously, is scratching an itch.

01:39:44

And so I want to be able to have you back on to maybe expand on the stuff that we've spoken about tonight.

01:39:50

And maybe some other areas as well. Guys, thank you so much for listening in. This was a lot of fun.

01:39:56

And hopefully it is useful to you. If you enjoyed this conversation, check out

01:40:02

Jeremiah's content and the resources that he suggested. The Apologetic Dog.

01:40:08

That's pretty cool, man. I really do like the logo and the bearded dog. It's very creative. And if you are interested in supporting

01:40:15

Revealed Apologetics, you can do that by visiting revealedapologetics .com. I also have a blog there.

01:40:21

I have a five -week apologetic course that is offered there entitled Precept You. If you sign up for that, you get the five lectures, the

01:40:32

PowerPoint slides, the outlines as well. And you can work through the content at your own pace. And it's a great way to support the ministry as well.

01:40:39

There's also a section there for donating if you feel led to do that.

01:40:44

Other than that, if you are not supporting Revealed Apologetics financially in any way, I definitely would appreciate prayers, as I definitely believe that God hears your prayers, as he has blessed me and my family in amazing ways.

01:40:58

And so I definitely covet your prayers in that regard. So that is it for this episode.