Preparing for Persecution

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

We are live, Apologetics Live, coming to you every Thursday night to answer your questions.

Any challenges you have about God and the Bible, we can answer them. You doubt that?

Well, come on in and join us and see if we can. ApologeticsLive .com.

That's how you join in the discussion. You can watch on YouTube or Facebook. If you do follow on Facebook, there is a note on Apologetics Live of how we can get your name to show up so we can put comments up like this from KT.

And then we usually try to deal with those. Maybe we should just, hey, hold on one second.

Let's do this. Let's just add, since we're doing announcements, Anthony, why don't we just add

Brandon Scalf right into Apologetics Live so he could tell us what's happening at the

Cruciform Conference. Oh, that's great. How are you, Brandon? I did not know you were doing

Apologetics Live right now. This is what happens when you call on Thursday nights at eight o 'clock. You end up joining

Apologetics Live. Thank you very much. How did he not know? I don't know how he didn't know.

So we were going to give some updates on things. You want to give us an update on Cruciform Conference?

Yeah. Well, I guess the biggest update is that it is still happening in Indianapolis.

We were going to do it in Frankfurt last minute, but we decided not to do that. So the address will be posted here very shortly.

And then we have, of course, some cool things happening.

First and foremost, Andrew Rappaport will be there. So do you have any good speakers? Yeah. Justin Peters will be there.

Anthony, of course, and many others. You can go check that out at cruciformconference .com.

One of the cool things that we're doing this year, last year, if anybody is watching that was there, we did a showing of Media Gratia's newest documentary on the church.

And this year, we're doing a similar thing with a docu -series that is not out yet.

It's going to be called Teach the Nations. And I also think that a majority of the guys that will be there teaching will be doing some interviews with them, signing you all up to talk about how we are to fulfill that part of the

Great Commission. We've got shirts coming, all kinds of stuff.

I don't really know what to say because I didn't know I was going to be on the spot here. Well, that's what happens when you decide to call me at eight o 'clock, right?

Yeah, my bad. I was leaving the church early because we do Bible study. Hey, I got one question for you.

We recorded the other night on Theology Throwdown. Did you see the t -shirt that I wore just for you? I did hear that you wore the

Obey God, Defy Tyrants t -shirt. There you go. Just for you, I did that. And folks, you should go out to Cruciform to get your

Obey God, Deny Tyrants t -shirt. Can you ask Brandon if I want to buy one, but they haven't been in stock?

Do they have them in stock yet? So we're getting a question from Anthony Silvestro. He wants to buy one, but they're not ever in stock.

Can you figure out how to keep them in stock at least or at least get him one? Yeah, we have a whole another shipment that should have been here already, honestly.

But the person who was printing them just hit me up today and said they will be here likely on Wednesday or Thursday of next week.

And the reason that they're behind is because something happened with the ink and it messed all the shirts up. So they had to redo everything.

You can give those to Anthony at double the price. So those two shirts.

What's important is that it doesn't get talked about a lot. I got to do a big kind of,

I guess, assault on the internet of it.

But we also are having a pre -conference with you, Anthony, and another friend,

Joel Seticase on still defending on apologetics, presuppositional apologetics to be more specific.

And it's going to be awesome. Yes. And that's what I was calling you about last week to find out what my topic is going to be.

But I'm going to hang up on you. You can watch the rest of the show live or just join us. Well, I'm driving currently.

Yeah, I heard that. All right. I'll talk to you tomorrow. All right, brother. All right.

So Chris form conference is going to be good. It was a good conference last year. And as you heard, Anthony and I will be speaking and none other than the one, the only

Mr. Justin Peters will be there. Justin, how are you? Hey, brothers doing well.

How are y 'all? Hey, brother. Did check ever make it to you, Justin? Yes. We were good.

I didn't hear that. So it was mail. Yeah. Yeah. Sorry.

I should have let you know. Yes. That's okay. Okay. So before we get started on the issue of preparing for persecution, you know, we're doing some announcements, getting people to know some events that we're at.

And I think actually there's another event that all three of us are at. And so why don't we bring in Pastor Casey Butner?

How you doing, Pastor Casey? Hey, guys. What's up? Hey, Casey. How about you tell us about the

Flames in Florida? Man, I'm excited to have you guys come to the warm state of Florida.

And we are passing these cards out like you wouldn't believe. So we've gotten tons of these going out.

And man, I met with four pastors yesterday. They're reserving tables and bringing friends.

And we've got a banner up at the front of our chair. People are calling them reserving tables. So I've invited everybody.

And we're going to have a good time. We're going to feed everybody lunch as long as they reserve a spot.

So that's you guys, too. We're going to feed you guys as well. We're going to have a great time and listen to some teaching, some much needed teaching.

We're addressing the problems of the day, which has turned out to be pretty good. We're becoming known for this as not being ones to shrink back from the truth, but to preach exegetically from the scriptures as to what the

Bible has to say about the problems of our day. So, Pastor Casey, I think that you have a well -known celebrity, quote, unquote, preacher in your neighborhood.

Oh, man. And I know you got a lot of, there's a lot of stuff going on in the

Orlando, Florida area. You and I have had a lot of great conversation about the people there. But there's one in particular that's...

Tell us about your neighbor. You know, to back up about five years when me and my wife and our family were looking to buy a home, it nearly derailed where we wanted to land, being that Paula White was right around the corner.

Oh, man. I'm thankful that I don't have to go by that direction every morning to work any longer.

I'm heading in a different direction. But, you know, I did pray a lot more when I went by that church quite often.

But yes, Paula White, you know, I'm just like anybody else. I'm curious as well.

So I've gone to some of the faith healing services and watched the shenanigans in action.

I've watched the trickery. And I'm just amazed. I'm dumbfounded.

I'm saddened by how many are trapped and blinded by that teaching. And she's a right man.

I watched her with my own eyes, punch somebody in the guts, trying to remove a demon.

Really? I wonder if it hurt. Justin Peters on that one.

He's probably saying, I wish you took video. I felt like I wish I would have had video rolling too.

Man. Man. How long ago was this? No more than a year and a half ago. Oh, seriously.

Wow. I was like, she's taking cues off of Todd Bentley. You know, things have changed over there for sure.

Now that she's remarried, I guess. And out of the White House.

Right. Now she has time to be kooky again. I'm sorry?

Now she has time to be kooky again. You know, before she was being a spiritual advisor.

Lord willing, you know, we can reach some of the folks in the world again. I said she was too busy being

Trump's spiritual advisor, which is scary. Oh, man. I always had to hear that.

But she's just strike and strike and strike. So Casey, how can people sign up with the cat?

They're in the Orlando area. The church is in Winter Garden, Florida, in the Orlando area.

If people are anywhere within a plane flight to Orlando, they should be coming out.

How would they be able to get it to reserve a spot? Yep. All right.

So if you go on our website, Beulah Baptist Church, wg .org,

you'll be able to click on this flyer and all the information is on this flyer. So there's the website there,

Beulah Baptist Church, wg .org. Then once you get that flyer, you'll see hotel reservations that you can make.

You can see all that, all the dates and everything. So nevertheless, it's there on the website.

And we're wanting folks to call to reserve their seats so we can kind of talk to them for the reasons being, you know, if someone is kind of sensitive and wants to social distance, that's available because we have an outside venue as well.

Our church has really done well with providing an outside venue with a big screen

TV and it's piped out live underneath a breezeway. There's always a breeze. It's really cool.

It's been a hit lately. So even on Sundays, we have people worshipping inside. We have people worshipping outside in the breezeway that can seat about 90 people outside.

And then we also have people in their vehicles because we have a transmitter that pipes that service straight to their vehicle.

So however people want to come and worship, it's there for them and on the website.

Do you have a swimming pool we could sit in while we listen to church service? You know, I went down to Tom Ascol's church about three weeks ago.

And if you've been there before, he's got a swimming pool. I kid you not. That's called a baptismal.

Weren't you guys Baptists? He did great, yeah. Hey, at the church that I first was pastoring, the

Baptistry was as big as a swimming pool. I kid you not. My girls thought the church had a swimming pool. That's great.

Yeah. But anyway, Tom Ascol's church, you know, he's put this seminar on his social media and he's advertising it as well.

And I went down there and spoke with him and pulled up and I was blown away because there's tennis courts on the left and tennis courts on the right and a swimming pool.

And so when you come in, that's the first thing that you see that his church has purchased that, you know, facility.

And they have an agreement that the tennis courts are, you know, maintained by them, but the building is theirs.

And it's very, very, very nice facility. By the way, I'm wanting to go to the Founders Conference for the first time this coming year and praying for Votie Bauckham, that he has a full recovery and everything.

So praise God. All right. So, folks, do check that out.

You'll get to see, well, most of us that are on your screen, unless Pastor Justin decides he's going to show up.

Yeah, I just found out just now and I want to come. Then you haven't been listening now? Several weeks that we've been announcing.

You've been announcing it for like, I don't know, two months. And what have I been doing? I have not focused on anything. That's right.

I've been reading nothing but books. You're reading your John Hagee prophecy book. John Hagee prophecy book. I'm all up to date on the four blood moons.

Pastor Casey, you said you had one more thing. Yeah, yes, definitely. So one of the things

I'm looking forward to doing, you mentioned, you know, Paula White earlier. And the reason I brought her up is because, Justin, you can send in more to go over and share

Christ, you know, with those that are walking into church on Sunday morning there.

We just want to be a light to those who are trapped in a dark and false religion.

And I appreciate you willing to, you know, activate what you're preaching. That's one of the biggest things in the church.

If we not only know what we know, but we live it out and actually go and do it. I feel like that people are going to have a whole lot of respect for the fact that not only are we equipping people to be able to lead others out of darkness and into the light with the truth of God's word, but we're actually doing it ourselves.

So we are doing what we are saying to do. It's, you know, a bit of authenticity there. I think that people are going to have a whole lot of respect for our efforts in doing that.

So Sunday morning, whoever wants to pile into my Tahoe and with you in the front seat, we'll just go over there and do what we can for a little while and share

Christ in a way that God lays on your heart. And then we'll drive, since we're nearly neighbors, right over back over to Beulah Baptist Church and join our own worship service that are probably already in process.

So I'm looking forward to that on Sunday. But by the way, I've invited all kinds of pastors to come primarily on Friday night,

Saturday and Monday, not to try and take them away from their Saturday service, but I've made it available to them that they can join this seminar and be a part of it on those days and not feel bad at all about not being there on Sunday.

We totally understand that. So we've got a lot of great pastors. I can't wait for you guys to meet them here in central

Florida. And one of the things that I'm highly involved in with the Greater Orlando Baptist Association as the vice moderator is putting down the emphasis on expositional preaching.

And I believe, as you as well believe, that that is the centerpiece of it all.

That solves it all. If we get handling God's word correctly, then it addresses all of these other things.

Pragmatism that creeps into the church, the health and wealth gospel, prosperity, you know.

One of the things that I'm looking forward to you guys addressing is the movement out of California.

The Bethel church movement has crept into our neighborhood.

Matter of fact, over two years ago, when I was preaching through the book of Jude, I warned our people and I said, you know, what comes out of California always creeps, you know, throughout the entire

United States and it'll be in our neighborhood before you know it. And sure as the world, it's right down the road, less than six miles.

They've got a church plant there and it has grown like crazy. Matter of fact, they had to rent the

Orlando Convention Center, the Orange County Convention Center for Christmas Eve service.

And so that is where the majority of your 20s and 30s and 40s are flocking into, which are evacuating our good churches and they're cleaning our good churches for this experiential mysticism type services.

And nevertheless, you guys are the apologists and we preach the truth as well.

Obviously, if you left church, it's the reason why we're doing so well with bringing this together.

And we need to serve this up in Central Florida and keep Florida and Central Florida conservative,

Bible -believing state. We've got to fight to keep it red and conservative. So, yeah,

I know your internet's kind of breaking up a bit, but, and I know Justin Peters will appreciate this.

You may not, but can you, the first time you met Justin Peters, I know you were really looking forward to it.

You were excited to get to meet him. But how, what exactly happened as you walked in that restaurant?

Like, how did you know what table he was at? What, how exactly were you actually introduced to him?

You know, what, what happened that night? Andrew, I gotta be honest with you. You made me nervous, big time.

I'll never forget walking into the restaurant and hearing you say to the server, where's the guy in the wheelchair?

No, no, not that we, I was told to ask for the cripple guy. Oh, even worse.

See, I'd try and block this out. No, I thought Justin was going to strangle you for two reasons, you know, and then, you know, you would not let him pay for the meal.

And you were, I felt like it was insulting. I'm still getting used to all you guys. I want to strangle

Andrew every time I hear him call Justin a crippled guy. Trust me, every single time. And Justin, I mean, that night

I got the text. I think it was either from you or Jim. I said, where are you sitting? And what did it say? Ask for the?

Crippled guy. It was actually, it was really funny. The funniest part was.

Little white cripple boy. The look on Mr. Casey's face when the guy walking us to the table suddenly realized that all

I did was say, where's the cripple guy? And he starts leading us to a table and then he stopped. And he turned,

I feel so bad that I know exactly who you're talking about. And I introduced

Casey, the poor, the poor little white cripple boy. You know, the Jesus calling, you know, the

Jesus calling books and it did so well. Now there's all these spinoffs like Jesus calling teenagers,

Jesus calling moms, Jesus. I'm, I'm just waiting for Jesus calling little white cripple boys so I can get my copy.

Oh man. Hey, I was just thrilled to see that Justin had a homegrown

BP pastor right beside him that he could probably snap his fingers and, you know, and bend you in half.

You know, and there is something to be said for that. The, the sense of humor that KT was talking about, you know, we could, we can be upset and, and always look for something to be offended about, but I just love the fact that Justin is, is humble enough to know that God has put him in a situation and God is using him.

You know, that's, that's some praise. Yeah. So let me, let me do this. Justin, I want to ask you, you know, we're joking about this, but before we get into talking about preparing for, for persecution, right.

I think it is good for people to first understand and, and accept their, you know, their, you know, where they are in life.

Humble Clay is saying, little white cripple boy, ain't that a rap song? I don't know about that, but explain to people why you actually refer to yourself as, you know, little white cripple boy and why you, you, you actually encourage people to like not shy away from the term cripple.

Yeah, well, it kind of started back with one of my best friends is a guy named Justin Fisher. Justin, Justin grew up in Mississippi, different part of Mississippi from me.

But anyway, we went to the crippled children's center together. He has cerebral palsy, just like I do very similar case of it to me.

But he and I started, we went to the crippled children's center for two years. That was a place in Jackson, Mississippi, where you, we basically lived there for two years for intensive physical therapy, rehabilitation, all that kind of stuff.

It's where I first learned how to walk when I was four. But we were roommates and we were just toddlers.

We, we spent all of our time together. And so we became fast friends. And to this day, he's one of my, one of my best friends.

And, and anyway, I don't know, somewhere along the way, Justin and Justin referred to himself and us, well, the two of us together as little white cripple boys.

And so it just kind of stuck. And ever since then, I've been calling myself that and, and I do it just to kind of let, let people be at ease.

You know, sometimes people around me, they're unsure of what to say. You know, are you, are you disabled?

Are you physically challenged? And I was like, I don't go for all the politically correct stuff. I'm just, I'm just a little white cripple boy.

So even the King James refers to the palsy.

So Justin and I will say that we got the palsy. I just got a gun the other day, a new gun.

And I took a picture of it, showed it to Justin Fisher. He says, is it safe for someone with the palsy to have one of those?

Oh, man. Well, it was a nice looking gun. You sent me the picture too. And it's a nice looking,

I could pop this up here even. If you want, everyone is banned off Facebook. Yeah.

Where's your new toy? How do I, how can I show?

It's weird. I don't want to show all the text messages. I just want to show the toy.

I guess I can't do that. All right. Well, I'm not going to share it then. Don't want to share more information than I should.

People might reach over the, it's just slightly out of my reach and slightly off camera right now. So yeah, you know, you should always have one available anywhere.

Just any like right, ready to use, you know? But so, you know, it's kind of interesting.

I, you know, I started a Bible study, a bunch of people were talking and we started a

Bible study that's available. If you go to the Striving for Eternity YouTube channel, you'll be able to watch every

Wednesday night. We do it live, but it's always available on the YouTube. So we've been going through first Peter.

And when we were discussing it, it was, well, let's do first Peter because, you know, in first Peter, you're dealing with the issue of suffering, persecution, things like this, preparing people for suffering.

And then someone sent me a thing saying, hey, look at what's being taught over at Grace Community Church. They're starting their evening services, evening messages on first Peter.

I see in the private chat here, Pastor Josiah, who's in the chat, it says he's starting his sermon series on first Peter.

It seems like first Peter's in the air. A lot of people going through first Peter.

And I think that it is probably because this is a book that is most helpful in dealing with the idea of preparing for persecution.

You know, we decided, Anthony, Justin, Justin Pierce and I decided the topic for this show tonight being on preparing for persecution.

We did that before yesterday. And what do I mean by that?

Well, we're going to start off with talking about something that happened yesterday and continued today.

And just for people to realize the persecution, we've talked in the past about what's going on at Grace Community Church.

Some folks know that Grace Community Church has been in this scenario where they realized the word for church is ekklesia, and it means a gathering, a congregation.

It is when people are going to meet for the purpose of worship. You can get my book,

What Do We Believe?, which is right there is the picture of it. But get my book,

What Do We Believe? Look at the church, the chapter on the church, and you see a historical view of how the word ekklesia has developed over time, became more and more specific, and why the church must meet because it's part of the very definition of the word for church.

And so what you end up seeing there is we end up seeing that the church should meet.

And John MacArthur decided, nope, we're going to meet, we're done with this. If the Black Lives Matter can protest and be on the streets without masks and everything else, and without social distancing, then people can sing praises to God and worship the

Lord and Savior of the universe. And so they've been under some slight persecution in the sense that they're being fined $1 ,000 a week that they have to put into escrow while their court case continues on.

They had to cancel the Shepherds Conference, or at least postpone it, because of the threats with the law.

And then we see what's going on up in Canada. Now, some time ago, some of you may know, we did some episodes here about Pastor Coates and James Coates and what's been going on with his church.

He was arrested for 30 -some days, handcuffed, ankle cuffed, all because he's such a dangerous person.

They're letting rapists, child molesters, out of prison because of COVID, but they're arresting him and not letting him out of the cell for,

I think, like an hour a day. At least he had a Bible. What happened yesterday was that they decided to send in a team of people, the city of the state, and they set up two fences all the way around the church.

There is a fence completely around the building that they then put in a privacy screening, so you can't see what they're doing at the building.

Then they have a fence that they put around the perimeter of the parking lot so that no one can go in and park.

They have each of the entrances, the driveway entrances, blocked by police. They've hired,

I think, round -the -clock security to be around the perimeter of the outside fence, the inside fence, to make sure nobody goes to this church.

It's such a threat to the community. But I want to play a video. The reason

I want to play this video is because this, I think, will help give an idea of what is going on with this pastor and what we want to talk about tonight.

I think this will set the stage in, here's a man that is being persecuted, and I want you to focus in on what he focused in on.

Just listen to this. How are you doing?

Good, yourself? You picked a good day. It was a great day. Thank God. Amen. I'm here at Grace Life Church today.

This is a church on the outskirts of Edmonton. This is the church where Pastor James Coates was arrested. Just today, the government has decided that they want to barricade this church.

They want to close it so that no one can attend. And we are here. We just met with Pastor James Coates and his wife,

Erin Coates. We're meeting with some of the supporters of them that are here today. And this is a troubling time, but it's exciting to see the support that they have.

Of course, a church is more than just a building. It's a community, a fellowship of believers. But this is a troubling time for Canada.

And frankly, I hope that we see better days ahead. I'm here on the outskirts of Edmonton in front of Grace Life Church.

Grace Life Church has been in the news quite a bit lately. In fact, they've been in international news because their preaching pastor, one of their head pastors here,

James Coates, who's right beside me here, decided to carry on service, even though the government wanted to shut it down because of COVID.

And because of his continuing to run the services, he was actually taken to jail and he was there for 35 days.

And I don't know if you wanted to just give us a few comments about your overall experience and maybe just tell us what's going on today.

I see fences behind us. You can just tell us a little bit about what's going on today and what's happened to you over the last few months.

Well, today they have locked us out of our facility. And so until we indicate that we're willing to comply with AHS's health orders, we are not going to have access to our facility.

And so we're going to have to figure out and determine how we're going to gather going forward.

And then as far as my time in jail, it was challenging in certain respects and yet a blessing in many other respects.

I had ample opportunity to share the gospel. I was able to lead Bible studies with some of the men that were there and had many guys come into my door to speak with me and share their life with me.

And I was able to share the gospel with them and to kind of show you even some of the support and affection that I had while I was in jail.

When I left the pod that I was on, you could already begin to hear the inmates in their cells beginning to bang on their doors as they anticipated me leaving.

And I turned around and I waved to the whole pod and the place began to shake as they demonstrated their solidarity banging on their doors.

And it was really an amazing moment. And so even in the remand center here in Edmonton, there's support from the inmates for what we're doing here at Grace Life Church.

So even the criminals who were there justly believe that you were there unjustly. Amen. Yes, sir.

All right. So I just wanted to share that. And I think that's a good starting point for our discussion here.

Um, because I think that there you see the heart of a pastor who is unjustly thrown into jail, being persecuted by his own government.

And what does he do? He sees this as an opportunity to share the gospel, have prison ministry. Amen. I don't think a lot of us would be thinking about that when that's the first, oh, hey, we're starting prison ministry.

This will be a great opportunity. Many of us, the first response to persecution is going to be to moan and groan and, you know, say, woe is me.

That didn't seem to be his attitude. So I want to start with the situation with Pastor Coates and ask you guys, first, what do you think about that clip?

His reaction, what's been going on there? And you can see in that clip, they were out there early today, as early as 5 a .m.

to put up more fencing. And you saw that in the video. It looks like they're, I think they're trying to fence in the whole grass area outside.

So they're going to have three layers of fences to prevent people from getting in. And if you saw in the video, they have it, uh, you know, that the innermost layer is all privacy screened.

So Anthony, you look like you wanted to start. Yeah. So let me start off with this question. And I really wish Pastor Chuck O 'Neill was on tonight to talk about this.

I think he and I are very similar in this, but at what point do the

Christians stand up armed, not allowing the government to do what they're not allowed to do?

At what point do they stand up and do this? This to me is a huge issue, right?

I know in Justin, you know, out by you, it was only a few years ago. The government tried to come in,

I think, take some lands from some families, right? And they had, uh, they had militias that were set up and prevented the government from taking over this land.

And, uh, it didn't get a lot of news attention, right? Nobody wants to know that there's actually militias that are in full function in America, protecting

American's rights. But, uh, I just wonder at what point do we have not only the rights, but the responsibility to stand up for what we need to stand up for.

And so I'm just kind of throwing it out there in the midst of all this, because I got to be honest with you, if I'm in Canada and I've got five or six other guys that we can rally around and get some other guys joining, like that fence wouldn't have gone up.

Yeah. Well, the fence was up. It would have gone up. Putting it up. Well, it would have come down. No, I doubt it would too, because I used to be a police officer and I'm going to tell you, you lose, um, that's, that, that's the theology of law enforcement.

We have more people and more brothers in blue than you have, what you have to think about. And I understand the vitriol.

I understand the, the, you know, the, the rugged individualism that I've got my, my, my rights and I'm going to fight for them.

I understand that. But we got to remember that this world is not our home. We have to remember that our call is not to fight for the government or to call for, uh, protest marches and rallies and everything else.

One thing I want to point out is that in one of the videos that was posted, some of the members of Grace Life, they made it clear that the people that were there were, uh, some type of, uh, protesters that were not members of Grace Life Church.

They said, not one of these people that are out here protesting and whatnot is part of our church.

Pastor Coates was there and a few others to represent the church and to give a different perspective. Their perspective was the gospel.

They didn't need, they said they don't need that building to be the church. They don't need that building to be able to come together and to praise and worship and exalt

Jesus Christ. But we do need faithful, godly men and women who are willing to suffer whatever persecution is necessary, including going to jail and having prison ministries.

But I'll say this again, guys, I understand the, the, the desire to stand up, but I mean,

I've told my wife this, you know, we're here a few months back. We, you know, we're talking about, you know, they're going to be coming in and taking our guns.

Well, guess what? I think it's going to happen. You don't have enough bullets to fight off the government. You know, you have to decide, are you willing to kill somebody for your right to hold a gun or hold a piece of property?

Or are you willing to take whatever is necessary to uphold your rights as long as you can?

Because that, that constitution is just a piece of paper and it is only as good as those people who are willing to stand up and, and, and believe in it.

But when the majority of the nation or the country, when they turn their backs on, on their own constitution, we still have to say, we look to Christ and we look to his truth.

Yeah. So, but, okay. But you're making a false dichotomy, Justin, right? This isn't a, it's either guns or God.

It is. No, I'm not. Is the balance between the two, right? Cause there's a number of Christians who are, who are trying to say an issue with,

I don't, I don't have an issue with the gospel at all times. I think that's a great, I think it's a great thing to do.

Um, and, and I was, look, I was at protests last year from early, from early

April in Ohio, because, you know, I was one of those guys who was calling all this stuff out a year in advance, knowing that this was all garbage.

And, and sure enough, as, as time has gone on, as CDC is quietly releasing stuff, everything that some of us were saying a year ago has come to come to be true about coronavirus and, and, uh, and issues.

And we've suffered lockdowns. We've people have suffered hardships. People have suffered lost businesses.

Now I'm not saying that that trumps the gospel. All's I'm saying is that there is, there has to be a balance in there somewhere.

And I don't know where it is. I, I, that's why I'm throwing this out here, but I think,

I think it's silly to say, well, we're only about the gospel. Let them do whatever they want to us. Let them take whatever they want for us from us.

And who cares? Right. I mean, you can't have that complete position. So of course the one police officer calling it is going to have that, uh, have that thought.

But here's why, but here's why I want you to think about this. When you have a theology and I'm not saying you do, but when a person has a theology that is, we have to conquer the world, your dichotomy, your, your thinking, your ideas begin to change that we're conquering the world.

And I'm not saying you do, but that's what the, uh, some of the, the, the new push is towards.

Oh, we're taking, you know, the gospel wins. We're taking dominion. We, we, we have this allegorical idea, but yeah, you're talking about post mill people, but I mean, so I know, but hold on,

I'm, I'm putting this out here because it affects how everybody thinks. The more you hear that, the more you hear that it affects how everybody reasons and thinks.

But when you have a, a theology of persecution that you understand, like John MacArthur said, that we don't win here.

Christ does. His gospel will win. His kingdom will win. We aren't the victors.

We aren't the ones that are going around taking dominion and, and fighting with the sword to take control of everything.

We are fighting the spiritual warfare. As the scripture says, that is our domain.

Our domain is in Christ that we are fighting the spiritual war. This, this person here that we're fighting, it's, he's not my enemy.

Satan is. I want the gospel to go forward and I'll tell him he's wrong. I'll stand and defend as long as I can, but I'm not going to pick a gun up and go shoot the guy or, or go demand that he puts it down, or I'm going to pull a gun on him.

I want him to hear the gospel and I want him to hear the truth. And you know, that's me, that's my position.

And when I'm talking to my church, I want them to have a theology that says, we're going to suffer a hardship and loss and persecution as the

Lord promised. It's going to come. That's the way it, the, the, the scripture has defined that this is going to happen and Christ wins.

Yeah. So again, I don't, I don't have an issue with your position, as you said, right there, Justin.

I just, I just want to read what Chris says. Yeah, go ahead. I want to read what Chris says here.

He says, I still support what Justin said while disagreeing with what the RCMP did.

Now, let me make this clear. Chris and I are 100 % in alignment here. I disagree with what the government's doing.

I disagree with what our government's doing all the lockdown silliness.

I disagree with all of it. I think it's all wicked, but that doesn't mean I'm going to go to war against them.

I'm going to stand on the, on the side. I'm going to shout, this is wrong. This is wrong. This is wrong. And Christ is right.

Okay. That's where I can go. So, so I guess the question is, is, do you not believe that there is any type of middle ground on this where people have a right to stand up and defend themselves?

I mean, okay. Let, let's take, let's take a, here, here's a position. People come unjustly into your home to kill your wife, rape your wife.

How, how are you going to defend yourself? Okay. You just went from one, from, from the church, defending the church.

I agree. There's a reason why I'm doing this though. So you went to me defending my home, which is my

God given my, it's actually, hold on. It's what God commanded me to do. Good. Now, now let's take it a step further.

Do you have a responsibility to protect people within your church? If somebody comes barging into your church? If I can.

Yes. Okay. So at least, at least that part we, we agree on.

Now let's go a step further. Cause this is the, this is now the issue is what do you, I know it's, it's a fun discussion, but let me ask you this.

Yeah. The, the soldiers come in 5 ,000 strong and they kick your door in at your church or at your house.

Do you kill every one of them to, so you can stand up and defend your right to say, I have my home, my church.

No, you say, okay, there's a, there's a point where I'm defending against the, against somebody who's being violent and trying to harm my, my person or my family or my immediate church family.

They're trying to harm. And like Chris says, there's a difference between defending yourself and your family from somebody that's threatening to fight you or hurt you or kill you and law enforcement.

Like he said, they're trying to put up fences. I totally agree with that. They're putting up fences. It's wrong.

Go fight it in court. That's why we have a court system. I mean, we believe that we, that God gave us government.

And so we have a fair, well, kind of a fair court system, I think.

And we should be able to stand on that. Right. So, and, and, and I get that and, and, and don't get me wrong.

I am not comparing somebody coming into your home versus a fence going up in a church. I'm just trying to find out where your line is drawn so we can have a good discussion from there.

Right. That's the only reason I ask those questions. Cause I do. When I get there, I'll tell you, cause I haven't gotten to that point yet.

Praise God. Nobody has ever come into my church, trying to wield a gun. If somebody pulled a gun out, just so you know, if somebody pulled a gun out in order to defend my people,

I will take the first shot. If I have to take the first shot and I mean, I'll be glad to go to heaven.

Or if I have to, I'll, I'll take, be the one that has to shoot them. If I have to,

I don't want to have to do that. That's, that's my, that's the last option I would ever want. We've seen those cases where it's had to happen all throughout, you know, the, you know, um, uh, in, in YouTube land and, and the news and stuff like that, that has happened, you know, and not one of those guys wanted it to happen.

You know, but there, again, there's a difference between like, like Chris said, having that fight, you know, in that, in that split second instant where somebody is pulling a gun or trying to hurt you or coming into your house, trying to hurt and then somebody standing outside yelling at you or, you know, doing the, the, their, their illegal legal route, if you will.

So, okay. So Steven Lawrence has, has this, and it's kind of going more along the lines.

We need to ask ourselves what we need to ask ourselves is this, when it, when is it okay to shoot a cop?

Most people would say never. But what if the cop comes in your home, kicking your door down and starts shooting your innocent family?

This is a topic we should discuss. Now that's, that's a little bit to the side of what we're, we're discussing here.

But, but, but this is the point is that what, at what point do we defend ourselves?

You know, it's, we don't have to look very far into the, into the past to see what the government has done in the last year with, with mask man.

Well, first of all, with saying 15 days to flatten a curve, 15 days passes, they go another 15 days, and now we're a year into flattening a curve, right?

The government has continued to press and press and press, taking everything that they can from people that they, that they want to be able to take.

And then some, you know, so I think, I think the idea of a slippery slope that people have always wanted to avoid, well, it's you're, you keep talking slippery slope fallacy.

Well, it's not a slippery slope fallacy anymore. We've seen what's happened there. And I know

Chris, you're a police officer. I get the fact that you're going to be charged on one side of the equation. Well, but the thing is, the issue comes into play.

What, what is the line that we draw? And so Justin, that might be your line. You say, no matter what, they can come in, put fences around my church.

They can do whatever they want to do. And I'm just going to continue to preach until they shut me up. And that's fine. You can have that.

You can have that point. But I think there's a lot of other people that would, that would dispute that. And so what

I'm, what I'm curious about is see what other people, where they would draw the line. I'm not saying that I'm going to pick up arms today and go out to drive up to Canada and go start shooting.

I'm not saying that at all. I'm posing a question saying that maybe we shouldn't be 100 % passive.

Maybe there has to be something that people are supposed to do to stand up. I mean, after all, we live in a country where, where people did this.

Chris, I'm not insulting you. I don't understand why you keep telling me I'm insulting you. You're a police officer.

I get why you have your position. That's not insulting at all. I'm going to defend dentists in different ways when, when people say things about dentists.

I mean, it's what it is because I'm a dentist. So, so having, having said all that, we live in a country that we have the ability to freely speak about these things, to freely do all kinds of things we're doing right now, because we had people that fought in a revolution 200 plus years ago that we are all,

I think happy it happens. And it's easy to, to retrospectively look at that from 200 years ago and have revisionist history and try to, try to fit that into our correct, into our

Bible context of today versus what actually happened 200 plus years ago. Yeah. So, you know,

I don't know. I just, I want to see what other people are, are, are thinking in this topic.

Let's, let's see what, let's bring Justin Peters in for some balance here. Go ahead, bro.

Well, I'm not trying to straddle a fence, not trying to take the easy way out. I think I'm somewhere between the two of you.

I guess probably the best example would be what's been in the news really in the last few days. That Pastor Pulaski, is that my, am

I pronouncing his name right? Pulaski, another Canadian pastor. Now, full disclosure,

I don't know the denominational stripe. I don't know what kind of church he's got there. So I don't describe that video real quick for folks.

I was trying to look for it actually while Anthony and Justin were going and couldn't find it. But what Pastor Pulaski did was the police, they came in to shut down what he said was

Passover service, which was interesting. It was a, it was a good Friday and he just ushered them out of the church because they,

I guess he argued they didn't have a legal reason to be there. You know, now you could criticize, you know, he called them the gulag, the

Nazis, that was insulting to the officers. You know, I kind of wonder if that was out of line, but I do, you know,

I think he stood up for, hey, if this is the law, you don't have a right to be here without a warrant.

You don't have a right to be here. You can't just shut us down and pushed them out. So that's the video.

Yeah, I think, I think there's a stark contrast between what we saw from that Pulaski pastor,

Pastor Pulaski, and what we saw a few weeks ago from the elders at Grace Life Church, James Coates Church.

The Sunday that, the first Sunday that James was back in the pulpit after his release, the police came and they wanted entrance into the church.

They wanted to go into the church and look around and do whatever they were going to do. And the elders, rightly,

I believe, prevented them from doing that. And, but they did it in a very respectful way.

And they cited Canadian law. I can't remember the address of that Canadian law, but anyway, it forbids any government interruption of a worship service that is in progress.

And their worship service was in progress. And so the elders of the church, very politely, very respectfully told the police, the officers there, that they could not come in while the service was in progress.

And, and I thought they handled that well. I thought that was a good balance. I was appalled, quite frankly, at Pulaski and yelling at those police officers, calling them

Nazis, Gestapo. I mean, these are police officers. Now, I don't agree with what they were doing.

I don't, they were breaking, in my best understanding, they were breaking Canadian law, but they were doing their job.

I mean, they were doing what they were told to do. I think it was absolutely appalling that a pastor would yell those kind of insults and call these men and a couple of women,

I think, too, but call them Nazis. I mean, Nazis are people who murdered people, who put people in gas chambers and ovens for crying out loud.

I don't believe, you know, the police officers should not have been doing what they were doing, but I'm sure they were following orders.

The orders were wrong, but my goodness, calling them Nazis. How in the world does that engender them towards the gospel?

I mean, I would assume that probably most, if not all of those officers, were not believers. Law of averages probably weren't.

Man, you're talking about a bad witness. I was, and I saw a lot of people really cheering on this

Pastor Pulaski. I was quite frankly appalled at it, but he did it wrong.

I think the elders at Grace Life a few weeks ago did it right. So, yeah, and he did explain that, you know,

I think personally, I think Pastor Pulaski was triggered. I mean, if you, I saw some stuff, he was, you know,

Polish, had basically seen, you know, how some of this, you know, in his, you know, with his parents' lifetime,

I guess, he lived through some of how this goes. And so I can, part of it, I see, I can.

He wasn't old enough to live through that in the 1940s, he's not that old. Yeah, no, I said his parents. Oh, okay.

I mean, we're 70 years after World War II on a different continent. So I don't buy that excuse.

Well, I think he's from Poland. So let me throw this wrinkle in there to you, Justin and Andrew, because, you know, as a dentist,

I have a lot of patients. My dad, before he passed away, had a lot of coworkers who became my patients.

In his field, a lot of people came from Europe, Romania, Ukraine, others.

And these are people who were in countries that had full -blown communism. And when you ask these people what happened to them, you hear the stories of what happened to them.

They will, they tell me regularly that what they've seen happen in our country in the last 10 years, they said, you

Americans are so stupid. I hear this all the time, right? We have, we lived through this.

We saw this happening. No one did anything about it. And my parents had to leave and escape these countries.

Okay, so, but here's the thing, here's the thing, Anthony. And I'm saying, I understand why this guy could be triggered, right?

That's why a lot of people are triggered. I mean, you think about, remember, if you remember, you and I went to a Chinese restaurant at the one time.

We started to try to evangelize the one Chinese fellow there. And if you remember, this was just before the election.

And he was, he was telling us how he's, he is a, you know, an absolute liberal, but he's voting for Trump.

And that, that intrigued us. And he said, because I left communism, right?

So we, we understand that. But I think there's a difference in, you know,

I understand the guy was triggered, but the question becomes, is he being a good testimony for Christ at that point?

Versus standing up for his rights. Here's, here's the thing that I think needs to be, and we're going to end up getting into what is discussing, what is persecution, how to prepare for it.

But this leads us into this in this way. One of the things I think as Christians that some of us struggle, maybe more than others with, especially in America, in America, where we have this rugged individualism, we, we, it's standing up and, and protesting is almost, you know, part of being an

American now, especially nowadays. Right? The thing that I think we see is that when you're standing up in the name of Christ, like Anthony, you're at the

Ohio, you know, a year ago when they were all protesting, you know, because they, you know, with the, to what, not the, against the lockdowns and all that, that was not a

Christian protest. Now there were people there sharing the gospel. You were there sharing the gospel. There were others there sharing the gospel.

But one of the things that we have to realize is that when we're up there naming the name of Christ, now we're an ambassador for Christ.

And when we stand and say, we're representing Christ, I think that the representation of what we stand for carries more weight than our rights.

I think scripture, we could look to scripture that says, you know, if your brother defrauds you, fine. Like it's, it's, it's your testimony.

Yeah. I think that there's a difference there. Yeah. So, so I'll, I'll say two things.

I mean, one, and I'm not disagreeing with you guys in this stuff. I'm trying to, I'm trying to throw a lot of ideas out here for us to, to really think through and talk through, um, the

Polish pastor, I don't blame one bit. It's easy for us to be armchair quarterbacks and, and complain about what he did and how we did it.

And I agree, um, it doesn't look right, but as Andrew said, this triggered a guy for a reason, right?

He probably has horror stories from his family in regards to the way that they were raised and how they escaped, they escaped the country and Poland, especially, um, if anybody knows their history,

Poland has a really interesting history. You know, Israel was not the only country wiped off the face of the map, right?

They were too. Poland was wiped off the face of the map, um, before World War II, um, between World War I and World War II, where you had three different countries,

Germany being one of them coming in and just taking chunks away before they disappeared for quite some time.

So, I mean, these, these are people that, that, um, have a lot of angst in their history, um, with all that stuff.

I like what Bud said here, right? He's, I think he's bringing some levity to this and, and, and trying to find what this, um, balance is here.

So he says this, we may be as Americans fully justified in pushing our constitutional rights, but as Christians, we must be astute to recognize that a witness to the world should not be first and foremost, a defense of the constitution, but rather contending for the faith.

What behavior exalts Christ distinguishes us from the world and gives clarity to the gospel. So I completely agree with Bud on, on his, uh, on his viewpoint here is, and even as I have taught over the last year,

I've, it's been very popular for me to go to churches, to teach on, on, um, morality rights and proper role of governments, you know, proper understanding of Romans 13 and, uh, and what first Peter two.

And, uh, and so as, as we bring these things forward, yes, we have a constitution allows us right.

But we have to remember first and foremost, rights come from God, not from government. And so, and so ultimately

Christ is head of all the Bible is head of all. And so that is what our primary concern has to be.

Yeah. So I don't doubt that whatsoever. Also I'm asking for as in this discussion is what is the line to which we say no more?

One thing I'll say is I respect. One thing I'll say is, is just so everybody's watching this and we have quite a few people watching,

I appreciate what Anthony's, you know, getting at is trying to think about the biblical line.

Where do we stand at? Where do we, where do we fight? You know, I'm going to, you know, like he said, I'm going to defend my family.

Um, if it comes down to a half to, I would defend my brothers and sisters in my church.

Um, but then there comes a point where I stop, you know, I love what Bud said there, if it's necessary for us to treat, speak the truth, let me pull that up real quick.

If it's, he says, if it's, if we're to speak the truth in love, it's necessary that we must also defend the truth in love.

And I know Bud very well. He's an extremely close personal friend and I know his heart.

And this is a man that, uh, I don't know that he has an angry bone in his body and I know that he would stand and defend his fellow brothers and sisters in Christ, but he would also be willing to put down any defense for the sake of the gospel.

So I, and I understand what Anthony is trying to get at there. There's a, there's a hard balance that we have to as the church.

Uh, and I think all of you guys agree with this. We have to start understanding that we're not supposed to be the men and women that, that, you know, uh, the health, wealth and prosperity.

We know that's baloney. We know that persecution is coming. So we need to teach an understanding, a theological understanding of suffering and persecution.

We need our people to be ready for it. All right. So let me, let me bring in real quick. Let me bring in, uh,

Chris Huff from the Matter of Theology podcast. It looks like he's in his car there.

I am. Yes. No, in the car. Chris, I'm sensing you want to weigh in on, on, on this discussion.

Some, uh, yeah, you know, it's, um, and I just joined in, so I haven't heard any previous, uh, conversations and you guys have been going for almost an hour.

So, uh, forgive me if I, if, if I duplicate this or, or repeat anything that, uh, that anybody has said, but to, to what you guys were just talking about,

I think it's important that we remember, um, our priorities. Um, and, and, you know, and if you want to see a primary example of this right now, uh, look at what's happening to Grace Life Church of Edmonton and Edmonton, Alberta, Canada.

Um, look at, look at how obviously the government has overreached.

There's, there's tyranny. There's, uh, I mean, they have fenced off the church and then they put another fence today, farther out, keeping people off the grounds.

They've put a tarp up around the initial fence. So you can't see the bottom. We just lost your audio.

You've got, you know, you, you've got, you've got Psalm, uh, the book of Psalms that, you know, a zeal for your house has consumed me, the

Psalm it says. And so when we see this stuff, uh, our, our, our, our fire wells up in us, but we have to remember something.

We are not, we are not in flesh political revolutionaries.

We are called to be obedient and to preach the gospel. And so when you look at, yes, there's a fine line.

So what you guys were just saying, there's a fine line for standing for truth and saying, no, this is wrong.

This is tyranny. You are, you are, you are meddling in things you, you, you cannot even hope to understand.

But at the same time, we, we don't to quote the paraphrase, Dr. John MacArthur, we, we aren't those who go on the offensive.

You know, there's so many people that are encouraging pastor coats and the elders and, and the people of grace life to, um, to, to, to cut the fence down, go over there with bolt cutters, take back what they stole.

And I, every time they've been asked that question, every time, uh, that's been suggested their response is no, that's not what we're called to do.

We're going to get, we are the church. We're going to continue to gather. And then you look at what's happened now.

Um, and, and the evangelism, I think we lost him.

Yeah, I think, I think we, we might've lost him there. He is in his car. So, all right.

So let me, um, let me do this. We'll wait, see if he comes back. Um, but are you back there?

I think, I think so. Okay. Yeah. So, so you look at the evangelism that's taking place and if you, you can tune into the live streams of, of, of multiple people getting their phones out and live streaming there.

The gospel is being heralded. The name of Jesus is being lifted high.

Uh, James had an opportunity to speak to, um, a conservative politician yesterday on a live stream for 10 minutes.

And the majority of that was him presenting the whole gospel. And as of this afternoon, that had 50 ,000 views.

Amen. And, and, and more so, more so thrown. So it's, it's one of those things that we have to remember our priorities.

Last thing I'll say is this, and I'll be quiet for a second. You know, for, for those Christians who cross the line, who say, who, who, who go to, you before the

Bible, here's what I would say. You are no different than those who elevate their ethnicity over their citizenship in heaven.

You have got to remember that we are strangers and aliens here. Yes. We fight.

Yes. We stand for truth. Yes. We stand firm, but this is not our home.

Yeah. And we have a commission and a mandate to preach the gospel, not the constitution of the

United States. And I love the constitution. Okay. So let me, let me do this real quick for that, Chris, because we saw

Anthony ran away. Chris, Chris Huntholt scared him away and he didn't, he didn't. So I'm going to, I'm going to, I'm going to quote something from the podcast.

You also work with just thinking, you know, hammer B, you got to repeat that because well, one, because Anthony didn't hear it.

So say it again. Uh, you know,

I think, yeah, so nice. You got to say it twice.

Where's my handman. Yeah. Um, you know, so it's, it's to, to those two would elevate the, you know, and, and cross the line into, into thinking that, that we have to, we have to fight.

They cross the line where they elevate the constitution over the scriptures. They elevate the rights that are given to us or laid out for us.

Let me, let me specify that because those are inalienable rights that, that we find here and not in the constitution.

But for those who elevate that above their citizenship in heaven, they're no different than those who elevate their ethnicity over their citizenship in heaven.

We have to remember. We are strangers here. We are sojourners here. Our mandate is to preach, live, love, and proclaim, herald the truth of the gospel of Jesus Christ.

First and foremost, not the constitution of the United States. Now, I, again,

I love the constitution. I absolutely do. I thought what Joe Biden said today about the, there's no amendment.

That's absolutely ludicrous. However, that does not come above the mandates and the commands of scripture.

As far as what our job as Christians should be. All right. So I'm going to put

Chris back and bring in John. He wants to weigh in on this before we get into discussing specifically the issue of persecution.

John, what do you have for us? You know, the first thing that came to mind was at what point do like, like Anthony was saying, what point do we, we, we fight back?

Um, because I remember back when this whole COVID thing, you know, the flattening the curve first started.

And I remember watching Wretched TV with Todd Freel. And a lot of people were asking him questions about this and saying, you know, what are we supposed to do as Christians?

And so he would always refer back to Romans 13. I mean, he would just say, look, we have to submit to our governing authorities because those authorities have been set up by God.

And we have to respect that. And I understand that, but now that we've, and here we are, you know, over a year later and look where we're at, they're, they're slowly pressing that thumb of tyranny over us.

And it's getting to the point where a lot of people are just fed up. And so where do we go?

I mean, from this, I mean, this is if we continue to say, okay, Romans 13, you know, we'll submit to our government authorities.

Government is not going to let up. One thing I've learned about the government is that they never give you more freedom.

They always take away more. They always take away your freedom. And so, you know, those are my thoughts.

Go ahead. Okay. And we do have a question as well from the panel that, here it is.

And actually I should put this one up, put this up earlier. Drew says, when Chris Hough was on, he's like,

I can't believe you guys let this guy on your show. That's the co -host, the other co -host at Matter of Theology with Chris Hough.

So Chris probably didn't see that. But Humble Clay had asked for us to, as a panel, to discuss thoughts on Bonhoeffer.

Anyone want to start with that one? I thought that was amazing that time he took that bat and just started beating those

Nazis and communists over their head. Oh, that didn't happen. He was a gospel proclaimer through and through all the way to the end.

He did what Anthony says we shouldn't do. I love Anthony.

You know that. We're just picking. You know, one thing I want to point out. I didn't mute

Anthony. He muted himself. I did not say those things.

All I kept asking for was the line. And Justin and I were having a fun discussion on that.

It was great. I have no idea what triggered him. I can't figure that one out because I wasn't.

Was I insulting you, Justin? And just so everybody is clear. Look, everybody, listen,

Anthony and I, we are best friends. We love each other. When we have these banters back and forth, it's nothing against each other.

We love each other dearly. And so please don't ever think that we're fighting. We're not.

It's just a good discussion. Okay, let me ask this question,

Justin, of you especially. And then Andrew and Justin Peters, you guys can jump in. I think first and foremost that maybe all three of you might agree with this.

I don't know. But Justin Pierce, you certainly believe this. That if somebody wants to fence off your church and not allow you to go into your church, fine.

You can host it somewhere else. What happens if the government, churches are all shut down across the country.

And we have all home churches now. Now, what if you're meeting secretly in your house church, and the government wants to come in and prevent you from meeting there?

Do you fight back at that point? Okay, are you asking me specifically?

Yeah, I'm asking you specifically, right? Because we're trying to get to the nuts and bolts for people to really see the difference.

So now we're ramping it up, right? We're not talking about this building that's over there. We're talking about in my house where we meet like Andrew's doing right now for church on Sundays.

What happens if he comes home one day and his house is barricaded on a

Saturday night because the government finds out you've been having church, Andrew, at your house on Sundays.

You're done. What do we do there? Is it the same answer as what's happening in Grace Life Edmonton?

Well, I love how they are dealing with it. And instead of fighting, they are saying, look, the church is the body of believers, and we can do this anywhere, no matter where.

But here's where I'm going to go to. In Acts 25, Paul, in Acts 24 and 25, what's

Paul doing? He's proclaiming the gospel of Jesus Christ. He is making disciples. He's planting churches.

He's preaching and teaching along with his fellow workers. They're in the church.

They're planting. They're going around. They're house to house. They're witnessing. They're sharing the gospel everywhere they can.

And then the government comes in, in 25 and 26, and they really start ramping up the persecution.

And I love in chapter 26, he tells them that he is 26 too,

I believe it is. In regards to all these things that I'm accused of by the Jews, I consider myself fortunate,

King Agrippa, that I am about to make a defense before you today, especially because I know that you're an expert in all the customs and questions among the

Jews. Therefore, I beg you to listen to me. And what does he do? He begins to argue with them about his rights and his privileges and all that.

Nope, nope. He actually starts proclaiming the gospel of Jesus Christ because he recognizes that the situation that he's in is designed by God and allowed by God so that he can proclaim the gospel.

And he says, I know how to be abased and how to abound in any situation, whether it's had to be in good times, in good fellowship with the

Ephesians or in hard times with the

Galatians or wherever else. He says, I know how to deal with these things. And even with the

Romans and they're being persecuted, no matter what the situation I'm in, I trust

God. I don't have to say it's time for the battle.

Okay, but you're avoiding the question now. I agree with you on all that, Justin. What happens if they come and they fence off your house?

My world is, my home is in heaven. So seriously, though,

I mean, we want to ask the question. So let's ask the question seriously. Yeah. What can they not take from you?

They can't take away your salvation. They can't take away. And they can't even take away your life, right?

They can kill you here, but your soul lives forever. So, I mean, there's a verse on that in Matthew 10, right?

So I understand that completely. My only hope is that, I mean, I'm not trying to be like evasive, but I'm trying to say is as a believer, my only comfort and hope is not in all the things

I've acquired or built up. I mean, you think about it. If you can be a

Democrat, if whatever, and I don't know how you can, but if you're going to go that route, but if you take the socialist democratic view that is in the

White House right now, they are going to take every single opportunity for the next two years to take all of our property.

That's their goal. Okay. What if they succeed? Do we say, no, we're not going to, what are we going to do?

You know, we want them to lose. We want the conservative agenda to proceed. And, but in the end, all we have is

Christ and the gospel. So here's, I'm going to let Justin Peters weigh in on this. Go brother.

I'm going to wrap this up with something different. And then I want to get to what we really want to focus on is what is persecution and how do we prepare for it?

I thought we were having a good discussion on that already. Justin, what are your thoughts on, you know, on what we've, what we've been talking about?

Do you have any, anything you want to weigh in on? He says what he said. Yeah, it's hard.

It's hard to know exactly. It's like, bring me in, bring me in. He definitely wants to come in on this. It's hard to know exactly where to draw the line.

It's kind of a difficult thing. I mean, you, you see right before Jesus arrest, you know, the disciples saying, you know, we have two swords.

Jesus says it is enough. I mean, he didn't say immediately. He didn't say, put them away.

What do you think? What are you, what are you doing? What are you, what's in your head? He said, that's enough. And, but then they got to the garden of Gethsemane and the soldiers came to arrest

Jesus. And Peter pulled out a sword and cut off Malchus ear.

And Jesus had put it away. You know, there is Romans 13, but there's

Acts chapter five two, we must obey God rather than man. And so, you know, these are, these are not, it's, it's not real easy to know exactly where to draw the line.

I will say this. I will say this, that going back to what I was saying earlier, I think between Grace Life Church and this pastor

Pulaski, I think Grace Life handled it. Right. Pulaski did not.

We are, we are certainly to show respect, speak the truth in love, Ephesians 4, 15.

And I tell people all the time that in love part is just as inspired and just as authoritative as speaking the truth part.

And if you can't speak the truth in love, then do God a favor and don't speak it until you can figure out.

Now, let me also say this, that the government has no jurisdiction in the church.

Has no jurisdiction in the church. And since we've been wearing masks for a year or whatever now, have we?

Well, just some of us, theoretically, the government has, the government can no more tell us, for example, to wear a mask in a church, in a church setting.

What's to keep the government from saying, okay, before you go, because it's a health issue, right? Wearing a mask is a health issue.

Well, being able to do pushups is a health issue too. What if the government were to just say, hey, before you can go into church and worship, you've got to do 10 pushups before you enter the door.

Well, that'd leave me out and leave a lot of people out. I couldn't do it. It's a health issue. So the government has no jurisdiction in the church.

The government cannot tell the body what to do when it is gathered for worship.

It can't tell us to social distance, can't tell us to wear a mask, can't tell us not to sing.

It's overstepped its bounds. And I think James Coates did a really great job on that in a sermon on Romans chapter 13, literally the

Sunday before he was arrested. If our viewers haven't seen that, I've got it on my

YouTube channel. So go and watch his exposition of Romans 13 that he did just two days before he was arrested.

So, but anyway, I mean, these are some tough issues, but I will say the government has no jurisdiction in the church.

It has exceeded its domain when it starts to step into the body of Christ. That's right. So let me, so I know

Chris Hough is in the background and he's actually here. One of you two guys just put it up here.

So he's begging for us to read this and I'll read this and then go different route. Or better yet, we should just bring

Chris in. Chris, you read it. Go ahead, read it. Absolutely.

Matthew 5 verses 9 through 12. And I'm reading out of the legacy standard translation.

It said, blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be called sons of God. Blessed are those who have been persecuted for the sake of righteousness, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.

Blessed are you when people insult you and persecute you and falsely say all kinds of evil things against you because of me.

Rejoice and be glad to Pastor Justin's point. It's not going to go for your reward in heaven is great.

For in the same way, they persecuted the prophets who were before you. So to echo

Justin Peter's point, and I'll jump off this. Andrew, I know you want to move on, but you know, where's that line? It's hard to tell.

It really is. You can stand for truth and rest in the sovereignty of God at the same time.

It's not either or, it's both and. You can say you don't belong here. You can say you need to leave, all while speaking the truth in love.

So I would direct anybody who's ever struggled with that, who's experienced actual persecution, read

Psalm 56. Go ahead. Yeah. All right. So here's the thing

I would end up saying with this. I'm going to take a little bit of a different tack as to wrap this up.

And this is basically, if you watched what I taught in the

First Peter Bible Study, which is available at the Strident Fraternity YouTube channel, I talked about the fact that in the very beginning of Peter, Peter says,

Peter, an apostle of the Lord Jesus Christ, to those who reside as aliens scattered throughout

Pontius, Galatia, Cappadocia, Asia, and Bithynia, who were chosen according to the foreknowledge of God the

Father by the sanctifying work of the Spirit to obey Jesus Christ and be sprinkled with his blood, may grace and peace be yours in the fullest measure.

But here's what I wanted to focus on. Some people will think, well, as Christians, we have to stand up.

We have to stand up for the truth. We do. There's many who would end up saying that what these believers did when persecution came and they scattered, was that wrong?

They didn't stand up against the persecution. They fled. You know, that's not the only book that says this though.

James chapter one, James, a bondservant of God and of the

Lord Jesus Christ to the 12 tribes who are dispersed abroad, greetings.

You know what I don't see in either of those passages? In neither passage is Peter or James criticizing them for fleeing.

What ended up happening because of that? Because of the dispersion, because of the persecution that happened in Jerusalem, it caused the

Christians to spread all over the world in that area. And the gospel went forth.

The question we have to ask, and so Anthony is saying, where's the line? Well, the reason we can't say where the line is, is because we don't know what

God's plans are. We don't know the future like God does. And so we might think we know the line.

We got to defend our freedom. Really? What if God's will is that we don't have that freedom?

As Americans, as American Christians, would you be willing to submit yourself to God?

Oh, Andrew is breaking up. Huh? I think it's

God's will that he just silenced Andrew right there, right in the middle of his room. No, can you hear me?

No, I can hear you just fine. Anthony broke you up. Yeah, I think

Anthony did it. So I'll just finish then. The point being is, will we submit to God's will, okay, if it is

God's will that we lose our freedoms? If God's will is for socialism to take over America, do we want that?

No. But if that's God's will, would you submit, Christian? Yes. That's a tough question for a lot of folks.

And that is a good question. And, you know, we all believe in a sovereign God. And so it was obviously

God's will when the Revolutionary War happened and established this country, to which a lot of Christians today would say, well, that was wrong to do.

They shouldn't have done it. It was God's will that it happened. It happens.

Because the doctrine of concurrence, that God can use the acts of sinful man to bring about his glory.

I agree. However, you don't know if it's sinful or not. You don't know the mind of God in that.

All you know is what happens. They weren't Romans 13. They weren't submitting.

Yeah, I know. But people would disagree with you on that. Right. And so God sovereignly. They could disagree with me, but God disagrees with them.

That's all I'm saying. God sovereignly had the Revolutionary War happen for a reason. He allowed it.

Yeah, he didn't just allow it. He sovereignly willed it to happen. Well, because we know that only because it happened, but it doesn't mean that it happens.

So all I'm saying is that you can't just say God's will because you. What we're saying, what we're hearing from Anthony is that because God sovereignly allowed

Judas to betray Jesus, that it's a good thing to betray Jesus. I think that's what he's saying here.

Not what I said. I'm just saying you can't speak for God in those situations. Here's the bottom line. Here's the bottom line.

Go for it, brother. Beth Moore is a false teacher, right? Go ahead. Amen. But she's not

Southern Baptist anymore. And she's finally, you know what? I posted a video.

Someone was asking about Beth Moore, Justin. Back two years ago, you and I and Jim Osmond did a video about Beth Moore and egalitarianism.

Now that she has finally come out and is openly, like back then she was pretending to be a complementarian.

We did a whole podcast saying she's saying she's a complementarian, but she really isn't by her actions.

Now she's dropped that farce as well. Yeah, yeah. She's been freed from the shackles of the

SPC. And the next closet she's going to be coming out of is the homosexual closet that she herself is.

I'm not saying that, but she's a pro homosexual. She's very affirming of gay

Christians. But anyway, I didn't mean to go off on a rabbit hunt. But she's been affirming her daughter who is affirmed homosexuals for several years now, right?

That's been no question. So it's just hard for Beth Moore to be honest with the public.

Her daughter writes a lot of her studies, Bible studies, and her daughter all but waves the rainbow flag.

I mean, it's just, yeah, absolutely appalling. Justin, Lorraine from the

Philippines, if you remember from the radio station says, bottom line, just got paroled. Hey Lorraine.

So, I mean, we've been talking about the persecution. We're saying, okay, what happened to Pastor Coates in the church there is persecution.

Let me ask this question of you guys. How then do we define what persecution is?

And the reason I say this is because there's a lot of people that say, in America with their, at least years ago with the comfortable

Christianity, oh, I'm being persecuted because someone at work didn't want to go to lunch with me. I mean, there's people that call that persecution because they didn't want the

Christian around. They can't tell their dirty jokes when the Christian's there. And so,

I used to run with a bunch of guys at lunch and we would go running and they literally would say, one guy would turn to the one girl and he'd be like, oh,

I got a joke for you, but we'll wait for Andrew to take off and then I'll tell you. Because he knew I didn't want to hear it.

Was that persecution that he's waiting for me to leave? There's some people that would say that is.

I would say it's not. But what then is persecution?

I don't know. Should I jump in? I say this all the time in my teaching that 2

Timothy 3, all who live godly in Christ Jesus will be persecuted.

And there are no exception clauses for that unless you live in the United States of America. All who live godly in Christ Jesus will be persecuted.

And if you've never been persecuted on any level for your faith in Christ, then you're probably not living godly in Christ Jesus because it's going to happen.

Now, when we think of persecution, we usually think of imprisonment or something like what happened to James Coates.

We're in the United States. We don't live in Iran. We don't live in North Korea. We're not experiencing that kind of persecution.

But there's hard persecution like that and there's soft persecution. Alienation of affection from members of our family, friends, but especially family members who don't talk to us because of our stand for truth and things like that.

Can that be persecution? Yeah, I think that can be soft persecution. It's painful.

Emotionally, it's very painful, hurtful. It's not bamboo shoots under your fingernails or anything like that, but it's still painful.

So, we don't live in a country yet anyway that threatens hard persecution, not like Iran, kind of Syria, North Korea kind of stuff,

Soviet Union kind of stuff. We just don't have that here, at least not yet. But there is soft persecution.

I don't think you have to be thrown into prison and that kind of thing for it to qualify as persecution.

There can be soft persecution. Yeah, and I think one of the things that we think of, you go back to James, I'll pick up where I left off in the reading.

Consider it all joy, my brethren, when you encounter various trials, knowing that the testing of your faith produces endurance and let endurance have its perfect result so that you may be perfect and complete, lacking nothing.

So, he doesn't say consider it all joy, my brethren, if you encounter various trials.

He says, when you encounter various trials, it's the expectation. And someone already said in the comments, is

Philippians 1 .29, okay? Philippians 1 .29, it says this, but it has been granted for Christ's sake, for to you it has been granted for Christ's sake, not only to believe in him, but also to suffer for his sake, experiencing the same conflict which you saw in me and now here to be in me.

You know, Peter, sorry, Paul could have been complaining that he was suffering persecution.

I mean, he's jailed, he was being in prison there. He was innocent. He can make that case.

And yet, what do you see? He used it for the gospel. He just, he's gonna preach the gospel. And he can write to the

Philippians, it has been granted to you. It's very interesting, the word granted there in Philippians 1 .29,

it's to be pardoned, to be forgiven. So not only has God granted by pardoning us, forgiving us to believe, okay?

For those who watched Seth make a miserable attempt of trying to defend an argument against Calvinism a few weeks ago, when

I debated him with this, the reality is our belief has been granted to God.

What's it say there? Just like that belief was granted, so is the suffering.

And so there are different levels that we suffer. And is it all persecution? The question becomes, is that every time we suffer, is that persecution?

The answer is no. You know, Chris puts up here as a definition. Persecution is when lost folks ban us believers from legally worshiping

God, ban evangelism, ban us from calling sinful things sinful.

I don't know that I completely agree with that. I mean, the persecution usually has some physical element to it.

You know, one thing, if I could, is that here in 1 Peter, I've posted it on the screen there.

It says in 1 Peter 2 .12 -14, it says, Peter's expecting there's going to be persecution.

He's warning that it's going to happen. And he says, keep your behavior excellent among the

Gentiles. In other words, the unbelievers, the unbelieving world. Keep your behavior excellent so that in the things in which they slander you as an evildoer, they may because of your good deeds, as they observe them, glorify

God in the day of visitation. Now, he's not saying that they're going to do it right now. He's saying that as they are calling you wicked and an evildoer for doing what

God says is right, you have excellent behavior. And then for 13, it says, submit yourselves for the

Lord's sake to every human institution, whether it to be a king as an authority over you or as a governor, as sent by him for the punishment of evildoers and the praise of those who do right.

And the distortion here is that 13 and 14, everybody says, well, if they're not doing what they're supposed to be doing, we shouldn't submit.

But that's not what it's saying. It's saying that those, yes, they're supposed to be doing what's right.

And God did establish them. But you're still going to be persecuted by them. And you still do what's right.

You still do what's excellent among the Gentiles. So let me use that as a bouncing off point here and say this, how do we prepare for persecution?

Well, 1 Peter helps us. And if I read just a verse before that of what you started at,

I'm going to get there, but that helps us. But let me read Peter again.

1 Peter 1 .1, to those that reside as aliens, as aliens.

I like what the ESV says, elect exiles.

But it's this idea of being an alien, a foreigner. But he uses that physically in verse one of chapter one.

They're physically aliens. They're physically exiles of their land in a foreign land.

But then look at how he uses it just before the passage that Pastor Justin read. 1

Peter 2 .11, beloved, I urge you as aliens and strangers to abstain from the fleshly lusts, which wage war against the soul.

How do we act as, you know, how do we fight this war against the flesh?

How do we submit to the government? How do we do the things that Pastor Justin just read? It starts with recognizing this world is not our home.

Time out. Something more important just happened. Oh, your kids are coming across the screen. Now, just for the record,

Anthony and Justin repeatedly interrupt mid -sentence. I mean, like, in fact, let's just go back to the chickens.

Where are they? Anthony's so afraid of a good point that it contradicts him.

In other words, he's persecuting you, Andrew. Yeah. What are you going to do about it? You need to deal with it.

This is, you know, I told somebody today that, you know— The chickens sound better. My source of persecution is called

Anthony Silvestro. That's where my persecution comes from. So here's the thing.

I mean, what I'm trying to point out is the fact that in preparation, the way to prepare for persecution is to first recognize that this is not our home.

This is not where we belong, okay? This is what is behind the idea of striving for eternity.

Let me read, because this is really where we see this. In Colossians chapter 3.

Open your Bibles, please. See, you don't see Anthony doing that or Justin or Jess. Look at that.

I am too. Open your Bibles. The legacy standard

I'll have, you know. Yeah, I don't have a legacy standard. I don't have that money. I don't have the druggie

Bible. The LSD Bible. LSD is a drug we're supposed to avoid.

Look at Chris Hough there. Look at Chris Hough smelling his Bible there. I wasn't smelling it.

I was opening it. These guys that worship a book, you know, it's like they're going to be

LSD only, you know. But look at what it says in Colossians 3, starting in verse 1.

Therefore, if you have been raised up with Christ, keep seeking the things above, which is where Christ is, seated at the right hand of God.

Set your mind on the things above, not the things of earth. For you have died and your life is hidden with Christ in God.

This is the point. This is what it means to strive for eternity. Is to put your mind on the things above and not the things of this earth.

So the thing that I end up focusing on here and the thing that I think as we prepare, how do we prepare for persecution?

We have to have a mindset where we are fixated on the things of heaven and not the things of earth.

We need to have a mindset where we are looking forward to eternity with Christ and not try to preserve what we have here on earth.

What is more important? The things of earth or the things of heaven.

This earth is going to burn up and be nothing. But that which is eternal is everything.

And this is where I see the difference. This is where I see a difference, as Justin was saying, Justin Peters was saying, the difference between Pastor Coates and this other

Pastor Pulaski. Pastor Coates' concern is on eternal things, the gospel going forth.

And if the government oversteps their bounds, which they're doing, are we willing to leave that in God's hands?

This is going to be one of the things we have to first look at when we're going to say, how do we prepare for persecution?

Now, let me give you a second thing after this that I want you to consider for preparing for persecution, and then

I'll open it up to the rest of the panel. It is this. How do you prepare for persecution?

Well, we're not going to be able to, as I drop that, we're not going to be able to take this with us possibly in prison.

Pastor Coates had his Bible with him. You know what you have to do if you don't have this in prison?

Memorize it. Now is the time to memorize Scripture. And if you're not memorizing

Scripture now, Pastor Justin asked, what can they take away?

You know what? They could throw us in jail. They could take everything away. They could take our clothes away. They could take our Bibles away. They could take all the books we love away.

But you know what they can't take away? The Scripture you've stored in your mind, what's already planted up here and taken root up here.

And then when you're in prison, do you know what? That's just a time to keep reiterating that which you've memorized.

That's why I'm going through and memorizing the book. Yes, I said the book of 1 Peter. Do not memorize just little verses here and there.

Memorize books of the Bible. Why is that important? Because in memorizing a book, you're going to gain the context.

You're going to see the layout of the context. You're going to see what the author is trying to say as he works through point by point.

That's how you have to do it to memorize. You have to go verse by verse, understanding the outline, understanding the context.

You may forget some of the verses. You may not exactly have it word for word. But when you memorize full books of the

Bible, you are going to know. You're going to know what the

Scripture says when you don't have the Scripture. You know, even if you're like Chris Honholz, who says he has a mind like a steel trap, rusted shut.

No, that's not true. Even you, Captain America, can memorize

Scripture. And so real quick, before I go to the panel, I mean, I want to open this up.

But before I do, you know, I'm saying they could take our Bibles. They might. They might take our beloved

Lagos. I hope they don't. But before they get to the point that they take our

Lagos from us, may I encourage you, if you don't have Lagos or you haven't upgraded your

Lagos, you can get five free books from Striving for Eternity. If you go to bit .ly,

bit .ly, or bit .ly .com, either one, bit .ly slash S -F -E, Lagos, they are supporters of Striving for Eternity.

And in our partnership with them, not only do you get what I consider the greatest Bible software on earth, but you also support

Striving for Eternity in the same time. And another way you can support Striving for Eternity in this way, get the best sleep ever.

When Dr. Silvestro is speaking, because basically he doesn't stop speaking. So you need to bring a pillow.

So go to mypillow .com, click on the radio listener square and use the promo code

S -F -E. And or you can call 1 -800 -873 -0176.

That's 1 -800 -873 -0176. They also sponsor this show. So you can not only get your best night's sleep with their pillows, their blankets, their sheets.

They even have slippers. Maybe we should get Dr. Silvestro one of their robes and slippers. So he walks around with his,

I don't know if they have fuzzy bunny slippers for him. But when you go to mypillow .com

or you call them up, there's a bunch of promos that you can only get with the promo code to get their discounts.

You can use promo code S -F -E, which stands for Striving for Eternity. Not only do you get a good night's sleep, but you also help to support

Striving for Eternity. Now, with that said, how do you, how do the rest of you guys see as, as some, so Pauline is asking what, what you, what resources do you use to memorize scripture?

So I, what I use Pauline is an app on my phone called Versus. The nice thing about Versus, I got people in my

Bible study who are, are joined with me and we're memorizing the verses together of all the whole book of first Peter, and we could see how each other's doing.

They play little games so that help you with the memorization. But one of the things I used to do when, when I memorized the book of Titus or Romans or first John, oh, you're showing the little logo.

It's the little one with the circles right there. It's called Versus, at least on the iPhone. I don't know if it's on Google. But what

I used to do is just, I'd print out the scripture. I'd fold it up and stick it in my pocket. And all the time that we think is wasted time, you're walking to your car, you walk to an office, you walk to a restroom.

I used to pull my car, this little, you know, you could have note cards if you want. I just had a piece of paper that was folded up.

I'd unfold it and just keep reading, keep memorizing it. And one of the things Ryan is saying is reading it aloud.

That helps in memorization. It also helps as we know from Justin Peters, that if you want to hear

God speak, you should read the Bible. And if you want to hear him speak audibly, you read it out loud.

There we go. Yeah, that should be on a t -shirt, Justin. I should. That's a good idea. Oh, wait, it already is at justinpeters .org.

There you go. So, okay. What other ways do you guys see as ways we can prepare for the coming persecution?

Well, in Colossians, you were just there. Just for a second, just to tell you, we set our focus on Christ and we want to live godly in Christ Jesus, as Justin Peters just said.

We want our focus. We want our lives to be to live godly in Christ. So, we need to study the word of God.

Reading Colossians, it tells us that we are to put away all this wickedness.

Consider yourself, your members, verse 5, members of this earthly body is dead to immortality.

We want to be in purity and passion. We want to get rid of all of that.

The evil desires, greed, the wrath, the hate, all of those things. So, basically, what

I'm saying is we want to live as holy men and women so that we can stand before God and He can say, well done, thou good and faithful servant, even in the persecution, because I don't think we're going to get out of this world alive.

I think we're all going to die eventually. Am I right, Justin? I mean, you tell me. I think you're on to something, brother.

I think you're on to something. I think a large part in preparing for persecution is making sure we're training our wives and children, especially our kids, and training them in not only memorizing scripture, but just in the plain meaning of scripture so that the ways of the

Lord get ingrained in their hearts and not live. So, to me, that's a huge part.

And that's where most of my focus is, despite people thinking that I'm ready to have an armory and go store in the

Bastille again. Tell me, how many rounds of ammunition do you have currently at your house?

They were all sunk in a boating accident. Yours too? Yours too, tragically.

We were all out there together. It was fun. We was on the boat. Yeah, really sad. Didn't get any fish either.

We need some tighter standards for boats these days because the same thing happened to me.

And people all should recognize that all four of us allegedly own a number of firearms and a number of ammunition.

So, we all do believe in defense to a degree. No, it's just that the ammunition was getting too expensive.

So, I bought it while I could. Now, John. Private chat,

John. What should we be doing to prepare? What was your comment? Uh, get more chickens. Have chickens.

We need something to eat. Have more chickens. Okay. Can I say something a bit counterintuitive and maybe kind of coming at this from the opposite direction?

I agree 100 % with everything that's been said. Saturate your minds with the word of God. Expect it.

But be careful. Don't go looking for it. I've noticed it.

Amen. There's some people out there that seem to like, especially with social media now, they seem to like the attention that comes with...

You almost get the sense that they're trying to manufacture persecution. Don't do that.

Don't go looking for it. You don't have to. If you're living godly in Christ Jesus, it will come to you. Don't try to manufacture it.

Try to make yourself out to be a martyr. Now, James Coates not doing that at all.

I've been humbled by James Coates. But there are some people out there and I've noticed that every little thing they're calling persecution.

Don't go looking for it. Don't go trying to parade yourself on social media as this brave soul because someone gave you some snide comment or something like that.

Don't do that. Let's be fair too. There's people out there that are pushing, not physically pushing, but pushing police officers, pushing government officials.

There's a church in Moscow, Idaho, that's doing this kind of stuff. You're right.

They're inviting persecution for the purposes of getting it on camera and being able to reach the rest of the world.

I agree. That's problematic as well. It's narcissism. It's a form of narcissism to do stuff like that.

You don't have to go looking for it. It will come to you if you're living godly in Christ Jesus and it will come.

There was an evangelist over in the UK. He's an American.

He was over at the UK. There was an issue that came up of homosexuality.

They were told that if they came back to that same spot that they were going to get arrested if they came back there the next day.

The person that was running that trip told them not to go back to that.

They didn't want to have any issues with the police and things to have happen. One of the persons said, no, he's going to go back there.

He went back there. Yes, he got arrested. Then he went on all the radio shows going, oh, poor is me.

I'm persecuted. I'm persecuted. No, you were looking for it. You were warned what was going to happen and you went anyway.

That wasn't persecution because you knew what they already told you what was going to happen and you wanted that to happen.

Okay, so I don't consider that persecution. Being a jerk is not persecution either.

When people act like a jerk and people don't like them or resist what they're saying.

So let's ask this question then. What if we go out and preach the gospel, we're told not to do it, and we're in a perfectly legal public place.

We move on to the next space until they yell at us there too. So again, there's always a line to this stuff.

But here's the thing. If I'm told, as you know, on the

Jersey Shore, we have the one Jehovah Witness police officer that every year would try to tell me that I can't preach out there.

I can't preach in this area. Try to move me around. I dealt with them every year. But what do

I do? I would just sit there and say, well, I'm going to keep preaching. You and I both know that you can't arrest me for this.

But there'd be times where you just say, well, then I'm going to be arrested. But you know what

I don't do? I don't go on the radio and go, oh, I was being persecuted. If they say to me, if you come back here tomorrow, we will arrest you.

I mean, what did James Coates do? They said they wanted him to arrest him. You know what he did?

He went into the police station. He gave himself up. He didn't fight it and go, oh, look,

I'm being persecuted. I haven't heard him say that he's being persecuted yet. Anthony just loves whenever someone says he makes a great point.

He's got to put that up there. But you think about it, when you're talking about the persecution, every single one of us have been out here open air preaching and witnessing.

I'll never forget, I was at the Oktoberfest in 2009, I believe it was, a long time ago. We were back there.

We're open air preaching and these drunk people were coming along and they were grabbing us and punching us and they were hitting us, throwing stuff at us and everything else.

Now, you guys got to understand, one thing that Captain America is talking about here is

I come from a law enforcement background where you're not going to put your hands on me because I'm a police officer and I'm going to win this fight.

You know, but when God saved me and I transferred out of law enforcement and I'm not saying

Christians aren't in there. But when God saved me and pulled me out of that, I got into ministry and started working.

And I saw that as a person sharing the gospel and proclaiming the witness of Christ, I'm going to have to be willing to take some of these hits, especially if I have a group of people with me.

You know, I mean, at what point in time do I stand up and go fight the police or go fight against someone else because, you know, of these things are going on?

I'm there to share the gospel, right? And that's what I'm there to do. As a

Christian, there's times when I'm going to have to expect persecution. I think

Jesus said that they're going to hate you because they hated him first. You know, they're going to hate your message.

You know, Justin, you just said it a second ago, that they're going to hate you because you desire to live godly in Christ Jesus.

Yeah. So I just put up a question. Why did the apostles break out of jail and flee?

But they didn't. They didn't break out. They were God delivered. Yes, that's the difference.

God supernaturally did it in a couple of occasions where Peter, in his case,

I mean, he just thought he was seeing a vision. Now, I'll say this, if I'm ever put in jail.

There was an earthquake that happened in Philippi, and they didn't flee. In fact, they stayed in there and told the guard, don't harm yourself.

They remained in the prison. And what was the result? The Philippine guard, his whole family came to Christ.

Now, when Justin and I, if we ever have to start a prison ministry, and God splits open the wall and tells us to go out, we're going, brother.

I'll be on my scooter. I hope it's got a good charge. Yeah, I'll be behind you. What if I get arrested?

Will they allow scooters in prison? No, probably not. Depends on where you're at. I don't think they'd allow your crutches either, because they could be used as a weapon.

What am I going to do, flop around on the floor? Don't worry, we'll be in the same prison.

We'll just carry you around. Yeah, we'll all be together. Yeah, that'd be nice. Okay, so,

I mean, just to wrap it up. I mean, this was a more lively discussion. Basically, everyone convinced that Anthony's wrong, as usual.

Everyone. And first of all, you guys don't even know what my position is. All you do is ask questions the whole time.

But we do know what your position is. That's the funniest part of all this. I mean, we have people getting mad in the chat room.

We're having a lively discussion, and not a single person has heard me give my position on that.

That's not true, because we've heard your position when you're doing Facebook Alives at these protest rallies all last year.

I believe that we absolutely should be out there protesting the government peacefully. Yeah, let me ask you a question.

Now, I do have a serious question. We've also discussed this as well, so I do know your position. I do have a very serious question, since all four of us are going to be over in Israel.

If they demand that you take the shot, whatever it is, are you going to be with us?

Nope. Okay, so, Justin, you ready for that? We're going to be preaching extra for him. Yeah, I mean, if they require the vaccine for international travel,

I'll take it. That's the only way I'm going to take it. I mean, I'm not inclined to get it. If they require it for international travel, and I literally hope and pray that they don't, but if they do,

I'll take it just because that's what I do. That's right. So basically,

I will do the same. I'll take the vaccine so that I can continue to do the ministry God has for me, and I'm going to trust that God can take care of my body.

If he wants me to get sick, then that'll be the thing. Anthony just prefers his body over the gospel.

That's what we're seeing. Of course, I'll still be able to preach the gospel right here in America. I don't need to go to—

I don't need to spend money and fly overseas to spread the gospel. Drew says, so Anthony pulled an

Andrew. Not officially stating a position, but asking questions. Yeah, that's right. The disciple has learned, except I do know

Anthony's position because we've discussed it. You don't know my full position on it. I just know you're wrong.

We can preach the gospel here in America without receiving a shot, so why would I have to go to Israel and take a shot?

Well, and let me add this, is that it's up to your own personal belief and your opinion, whatever you want to do on that.

No condemnation either way. You guys know I had to get it before I had my surgery.

When I had my surgery, my doctor told me that I'd probably end up dead if I didn't take it.

I did take the shot. Before it was even out, I went ahead and signed up for the study.

I did all that, and I'm still here and had no side effects to speak of. To answer

Ryan's thing is, why would you knowingly inject yourself with aborted— And that's the straw man.

—fetal cell lines with vaccine? Everyone in the laboratory is made using aborted fetal cell lines, at least in the replication.

It may not be in the actual vaccine you get, but they're always using laboratories for the purpose of making them.

Well, let's go to a different subject. Yeah, there's tons of research on that, so you guys can— Let's go to a different subject.

It's actually 10 o 'clock anyway. It's 9 .57. We could discuss this for three—

What could we— Well, I didn't hear what we could do. Yeah. But let me—

So, Justin Peters, anything you want to share? Anything you've got going on before we close out with Justin Peters Ministries?

Any places that you're going anytime soon? Yeah, this next week,

I'm going to be in Holt, Michigan. And then after that,

I'm going to be— Where am I going to be? I have to— Oh, I lost track. But in the next few weeks, I'm going to be in Michigan.

I'm going to be in Colorado, Denver area, Florida. You'll be at—

Of course. So, yeah, I've got a number of trips coming up. Idaho, Boise, Idaho at the end of May.

Wait, wait, wait, wait, wait. April. Boise, Idaho? Boise. Wow. Wait, what is it that your former pastor,

Jim Osmond, would say about Boise? Oh, man,

I don't know. You'd have to ask him. Well, he just thinks, let's put it this way, that Northern Idaho is much more scenic than Southern Idaho.

I think he says that if there's a choice between, you know, what is it, living in Boise or living in hell, he would rent out

Boise and live in hell. I don't like that. Yeah, very tongue -in -cheek, but—

So you guys could go to justinpeters .org. Check out what he's got going on there, all the ministry that he's doing.

And I just want to end with just a request of you guys.

If you guys are getting value out of this show, would you mind supporting us? We already gave you ways you could support us by upgrading

Bible software, getting Logos Bible software, going to MyPillow. Encourage you to go to MyPillow and use our promo code

SFE so you can get not only the discounts there, but they support this show.

And that helps us to continue to pay bills and things like that. But just an appeal to you guys, the audience, those who are finding value out of this show.

One thing I'd say is if you could write us a review so we know what you think, whether you like it, don't like it, what you think we could do better, what topics you want us to hear, go to lovethepodcast .com

slash Apologetics Live. And the A and L in Apologetics Live is capitalized. So you can see it on the screen.

You can see it in the show notes. The other thing is, would you consider supporting us monthly? COVID has been a very difficult year for Striving for Eternity.

Most of the way that we gain support and donors is by going out to churches and speaking.

And that did not happen this year. I can't imagine why. What could have happened? Yes, it's a thing called

COVID. Because of COVID, we had to cancel basically everything that we had scheduled after March, almost everything.

We did a couple of events later on in the year, but that really hurt us. Our giving through donations decreased by 60 % last year.

That's huge. What our supporters allow us to do is to go into smaller churches and be able to do seminars that they cannot afford.

And what this means is it limits our ability to help out smaller churches, those churches everyone else ignores.

Maybe you are in attendance of a small church and you know, you don't get the seminars, you don't get the conferences, you don't get the speakers coming into you because the church can't afford it.

They go, you have to go out to the bigger churches for that. Well, what our monthly donors allow us to do is to be able to go into those churches and help them, to give them the training, to give them the discipleship materials.

But when we don't have the money, we have to be good stewards of what

God has given us. And so if we don't have that support, there's certain things we just can't do. And so we're asking as a plea, we need to make up, we're trying to recoup 60 % of our donations that we lost due to this year of COVID.

If you could help out with any amount, please go to strivingforeternity .org support.

You can support us through Patreon. There's going to be other ways there that you can support us. There's different gifts we give depending on what levels you support.

But strivingforeternity .org support. Would you please, yes,

I'm begging, would you please consider supporting us today? We are in need with the year that we had last year.

Now, let me explain something with that. There's a lot of ministries who are struggling, and I know that. There's a lot of churches that are struggling and people are struggling with where to donate.

One of the things with striving for eternity that you may not know, unlike other ministries, there's a lot of ministries that are struggling and as money gets tight, you know what ends up happening?

Because they have to make payroll, they struggle with decisions. And a lot of ministries make the mistake of kind of caving in on some of their convictions because they want to make sure they can make payroll.

We don't have that with striving for eternity. Most of our money goes toward ministry, except for last year, which was this anomaly year because we couldn't get out and do a lot of ministry.

But the year before that, I think it was 72%, 75%, something like that, all went toward ministry and not toward running of the ministry.

So we really try to focus on using the money toward ministry. Dr. Svestro and myself have other means of income to be able to make sure that we're not being paid a salary that we depend upon to be able to do this.

So we're not going to make decisions and compromise the gospel to pay salary. We're going to do things for the sake of ministry.

That's one thing that we do different. So if you want to support ministry, if you're finding value in what we do here in Apologetics Live, on my

Rap Report podcast, through Striving for Eternity or the Christian Podcast Community, any of the stuff that we do, please, would you consider, if you get value out of this, would you please consider whether you would support

Striving for Eternity? Go to strivingforeternity .org slash support today. Thank you for it very much.

Next week, Anthony and Justin, what did we say?

I forget now. What are we talking next week? I thought we're speaking on dispensationalism next week.

Something like that, maybe. I think what we're going to do is we're going to have someone come in, those that didn't listen, if you listen to Christian Podcast Community, listen to Pastor Jim Osmond on his morning worship services.

On his morning worship service, he talked about the resurrection of Christ. And he said something in there that I said,

Jim, we got to have you on to discuss. I asked this question on Facebook, why did Jesus Christ have to bodily raise from the dead?

The answer that Jim Osmond provides is very interesting and will upset many of our

Post Mill and Aum Mill friends. I'm just saying, you will not want to miss this, especially you

Post Mill guys. You may want to tune in because maybe you'll have to change your view, at least this side of heaven, because you're definitely going to change it the other side.

The question I can't wait to ask, and I had a chance to talk with Jim when he was in town in Cleveland last week.

We were able to go to dinner together one night, my wife and me and he and his wife, and we had a good time talking.

And he came and preached to our church on Wednesday night, the night after. But I'm really curious to find this out.

It seems to be the flavor of the month for people to switch to Post Mill. And I can't figure out what the draw is.

I mean, is it really because Jeff Durbin's tattoos and beer? Is it because of James White?

I don't understand what the draw is, honestly. There's people that I know that have been strong Aum Mill guys for years.

I mean, to the point of being verbally assaultive towards dispensation, especially, right?

We know a number of them. And people that some of which may not even be saved, but that these guys who are so hardcore

Aum Mill are like, oh, I'm thinking about just a post I saw two weeks ago. Oh, I'm almost convinced of Post Mill now.

I'm like, what? I just don't understand how this happens. So it'll be interesting next week.

Kara says, great podcast. And just to wrap up, we did have a comment from Stephen here.

And he says, can you do these topics more frequently? Don't encourage, Anthony, with this,

Stephen, really don't. You know, he loves doing things and going off the rails like this.

The only way we can do this stuff more is - Take off any rails. Oh, wait, hold on. We got a super chat before going out.

So we always must read the super chat. So Brandon just gave a $10 super chat and said, God bless.

And so, yes, we do appreciate that. Thank you. That's another way you can support us.

A Humble Clay says, really enjoyed tonight's sharpening. And I hope that's what it was.

Eric is saying, premillennialism is the only system that agrees with the literal interpretation of God's word, covenants, and end times prophecy.

Maybe our friend Drew should come to that proper position. No, we should not. He's thinking of Gary DeMaron to talk about Post Mill position.

You know, Drew, we'll just read the Bible and come to a proper premill.

I'll let Uncle Gary go on that other show. Yeah. We'll have Justin Peters on every time.

Yeah. See, this is the thing. Drew has to go to guys like Gary DeMur and others because the Bible doesn't teach

Post Mill. See, that's the thing. All right. Well, we're glad that you guys enjoyed the show.

Tune in next week. We'll be back here for more, hopefully more questions that we have from you all.

You guys make the show. What makes it the best is when you guys come in, ask questions, even give challenges.

That's what we like the most. So until next week, strive to make today an eternal day for the glory of God.