Matt Slick Live: July 19, 2024

Another program powered by the Truth Network. It's Matt Slick Live!

Matt is the founder and president of the Christian Apologetics Research Ministry found online at karm .org.

When you have questions about Bible doctrines, turn to Matt Slick Live for answers. Taking your calls and responding to your questions at 877 -207 -2276.

Here's Matt Slick. All right, everyone. Welcome to the show. It's me, Matt Slick. You're listening to Matt Slick Live.

And if you want to give me a call, you can do that very easily. Just dial 877 -207 -2276.

Easy to do. And you can email me if you want at info at karm .org.

Info at karm .org. All right. And they put a subject line.

Radio comments or radio questions. And that should be fine right there. And like I said, if you want to give me a call, we have one person waiting.

And I'd like to hear from you. 877 -207 -2276.

Hey, let's just jump on the phone. Let's get to Alan from Virginia. Alan, welcome. You're on the air. Hey, how are you doing,

Matt? I'm doing all right. Walked three miles today. Had a verbal fisticuff with some antichrists online.

And here I am. It's a good day for me, you know? Yeah. There you go.

Yeah. I would like your advice on an evaluation for sermons that I could hand to the pastor and use for my own reference.

Sure. Sure. Would it be all right if I mentioned a rough draft of some items

I want to include? Sure. Go ahead. Let's hear. I guess first I'll establish what the goal of this is, or the main one, is to provide an evaluation of if a person only visited a single sermon of a pastor randomly, how good would it be?

Okay. So they would include, percentage -wise, how much of the service actually included the lesson or lessons, and how much was teaching the essentials, such as salvation, justification, sanctification, trinity, etc.

Does it say in a single sermon? Yeah, like some sermons have announcements, music.

Well, that's not a sermon. That's a church service. A sermon is, you're preaching, the

Bible's open, you're preaching out of the Word of God, you're delivering the Word of God. That's a sermon. So a sermon isn't the music and announcements.

Okay. Got it. All right. Yeah, that's the liturgy, this church service. Yeah. And the sermon is in that.

Okay? Okay. Good deal. Could it have been taught—this is one

I got from you—could it have been taught with no modifications in a non -Christian church, like with Roman Catholicism, Mormonism, etc.?

Would it be accepted in those? Yeah. Okay. Were there any apologetics?

For example, would anyone in the Mass be able to defend the teaching you just taught, if challenged, such as taking

Scripture you spoke of literally with no context? Wait a minute, did you say in the Mass? Yeah, like isn't the audience the

Mass? Oh, I thought you meant the Catholic Mass. You mean the congregation, right?

Okay, that would be the—all right. Yeah, so what about the congregation? It was, were there any apologetics?

For example, would anyone in the congregation be able to defend the teaching the pastor just taught, if challenged, such as taking

Scripture they spoke of literally with no context? Okay.

I'm writing a bunch of notes. Go ahead. What else? And the question directly for the pastor, do you sharpen your own iron with others, or provide services where there's no need for it to take place for you or others outside of sermons for the congregation?

So those are things. Okay, you missed something that's critical and vital, a couple things. Okay. So is the sermon true to the text?

All right. So we ask if it's true to the text. Some pastors have done this, they'll take a sermon.

They might take a sermon like John 3, 16, you know, God love the world, and then talk about politics. Nothing wrong with talking about politics in the pulpit, but that's not the verse for that.

Okay, it would be different verses. So sometimes they'll use the Scriptures for a pet peeve, and that you've got to watch out for.

So is it true to the text? Is it exegetical? And that means, is it true to the text?

Is it a sermon that looks at the text and derives out of the text? Okay. Is it

Christocentric? John 5, 39, Jesus says the

Scriptures bear witness of him. So ultimately, the sermon must be about Christ, whether it's the

Old Testament or New Testament, Christ must be found in it. And that's the issue of whether or not it can be accepted in a cult church like Mormons, Jehovah's Witnesses, Christadelphians, false churches like Roman Catholicism, and things like that.

So Christocentricity, all right, and cross centered, because we don't want to have what's called moralism, be good, because the

Ten Commandments says be good, don't lie. Okay, so we don't lie. That's what we think. Oh, a Mormon could accept that.

That's true. But what if the sermon was something like the reason we don't lie is because Jesus, who's God in flesh, second person of the

Trinity, he became flesh and paid the price for our redemptive work so that we're justified by grace alone and indwelt by him alone by the

Lord Jesus Christ. And of this, this is why we follow him and serve him, et cetera, et cetera.

So what I just said could not be retained in a Mormon church, a Jehovah's Witness church, or a

Roman Catholic church, or it's an Orthodox church by that little statement. But most pastors aren't skilled enough not to just knock them to be able to say statements like that, because they're too busy being pastors, not apologists, you know.

So that's just an issue. My own personal belief,

I think a pastor should work with an apologist. Dude, not maybe not at the pulpit, but I would shake your hand right now if I was in the room with you.

I'm not kidding. I'm absolutely not kidding. No, I'm not joking at all.

One of the things I've suggested is that there have in a circuit of churches, a geographical area denomination, they have one or two or three people, male or female too, because women can be good apologists as well.

But where they have access to somebody who goes around teaching at different churches on different theological issues, and he's the apologist or she but he's the apologist.

And I think it's necessary, particularly in this world climate that we are in the hostility with the gospel, because there's a lot of questions the average pastor just can't answer.

And I'm not knocking pastors for that. Okay, they don't get to do what I do full time and answer questions a lot and debated all the time.

They're doing weddings and funerals and counseling and, and working with the church people they got to work with and doing a sermon and coordinating, you know, the worships, liturgy and, and things that happen.

And so I'm not knocking them. Okay. But the Bible says that there are different offices within the church.

And so I totally agree that pastors should be having access to an apologist of some sort and say,

Hey, I got a question about this or that. And I've had pastors do that. A few who've called me up and said,

Hey, I got a question. And I'm saying, look, I'm the great guy. I know all this stuff, but I have had a few every now and then call me up and say, what do you think about this?

And, you know, I give my opinion and not that I, that, you know, I'm the guy, but I think it's a very good idea that there should be an apologist or trained theologian, highly trained theologian that they have access to and can work with.

And I think it's good. That's a good idea. Part of this too is like,

I guess part of the influence of why I'm thinking of stuff like this is that I'm at a point where I don't find much value out of sermons anymore.

I feel that I get way more efficiency out of potentially learning from a course or something like that than actually listening to some change of mindset and then a call of action within a sermon that takes place over 20 minutes out of an hour.

Mm hmm. Yeah. Um, I wrote some other notes here.

Uh, I, I personally have strong, I struggle with sermons and it makes sense from, you know, me,

I could teach these things and, and I'm always looking for something new in a sermon. I'm not going to hear too much.

So what I've done is, is just humbled myself and just said, Lord, teach me through this person.

Teach me. What is there? I don't know. I don't know everything. Teach me. And, and that's the attitude to have, but I understand what you're saying now.

There's something else though that, uh, needs to be addressed in a lot of sermons today. And this is simply the thing of illustrations.

When a pastor uses an illustration to prepare you for the text, that could be good or bad.

I remember one church I went to, uh, earlier this year when

I was checking out churches and he, uh, this one guest pastor gave a three, four minute intro illustration.

I didn't even know what text he's going to go to the sermons going. And there was a, a, a, a quote from a book of a woman and it went on and on and then got to the text.

What does a lot in the text that he could have gotten to? And he went back to the book about talking about this. And I just walked out of the church.

I literally got up in the sermon and walked out. I'm done. I haven't been back since. And so I went to a different church and, uh,

I've met with the pastor there and he's reformed and he, his sermons are quality, but when an illustration is used in order to prepare us, it can be good or bad.

If the illustration becomes the sermon, that's bad. If the illustration serves the sermon, that's okay.

Does that make sense? I got it. You should use the illustration as a supporting tool, not as the main tooth of it.

Right. Right. And another thing is don't turn the sermon into seven steps to a better, whatever.

Another thing is it God's sovereignty uh, or versus man's sovereignty.

These are underlying principles. Now here's the thing. So what

I'm looking at right now, let me see how many notes we've got from what you've said and what I've said. Uh, let me just get to this or I can get to how many it'll do a number thing.

That's 13 things so far. Do it apologetics. You can't do all that in one sermon. So, you know, if, if a guest preacher comes in, you're interviewing him for a pastorate position, he comes in and preaches one sermon.

The kind of things you'd look for generically would be, is it exegetical? Is it faithful to the text?

Can he deliver it? Well, is he delivering it in a monotone ladies and gentlemen, please turn to John three 16.

Okay, now let's talk. Okay. And so here we go. You know, that'll put people to sleep.

So there's delivery also. And does he use an illustration? Well, it depends.

You know, it's okay. Is this, or is the illustration serving a lot of times that I've noticed with sermons that people want the sermons, the pastors want to prep the people for the word of God and they don't want to let the power of the word of God out.

They want to restrain it or make it palatable to people instead of just saying, this is what it says.

I remember once I preached a sermon on why not to lose it or use the Lord's name in vain, because I noticed that people in this church,

I was a guest preacher over a couple of years. And every now and then they asked me back and preach. And I noticed that they were using the

Lord's name in vain. And I, I, um, before the sermon, I conducted a little experiment and I had everybody stand up, right?

As I'm beginning my sermons, everybody stand up. I want everybody to look at the exit signs and they all did. I said, now you know where they are.

Okay. Please sit down. Thank you very much. Love everybody here. I know guys are great. I'm going to preach a sermon.

Feel free to leave any time during the sermon because I'm going to offend some people.

And I spoke about, Oh, I did. I absolutely did. And I said, some of you are using the

Lord's name in vain. I know who you are. I'm not going to mention any names. I'm not going to give you weird looks, but you need to stop.

And let me go through this. Let's go to Exodus 20, talk about the majesty of God and how it's manifested in the cross and what you're bought for.

And they thanked me afterwards. So that's an illustration that serves the purpose. You see, uh, but hold on, we got to break now.

This is a good topic, important topic. Okay. Hey folks, we'll be right back after these messages, please stay tuned.

It's Matt Slick live taking your calls at 877 -207 -2276.

Here's Matt Slick. All right, everybody. Welcome back to the show. We had a meeting today at the staff, uh, intergalactic headquarters online.

And, uh, they made a mention that I had to do something. They, let's see if they've done it in the private. They're supposed to remind me to do something on the air.

And, uh, Oh, Laura did it. I'm supposed to plug the website, carm .org, you know, do the, do the radio here, but I believe we're doing the radio now about 21 years, but we're doing the website for almost 29 and, uh, carm .org,

C -A -R -M dot O -R -G. So, uh, you can check it out.

It's got a lot of stuff in there. It's a Christian apologetics research ministry. I've written about 6 ,000 articles.

That's what the estimate is that we've gone through. So, uh, there you go. Okay. There we go.

Let's go. Okay. Now let's get back on with Alan. All right, Alan, welcome back on the air. Well, thank you,

Matt. Okay. Where were we before the break? I forgot.

Uh, apologists working with pastors. Yeah. And also, um, the, the pastor should have a familiarity with the, the attacks on the

Christian faith that are occurring. When I, I used to do a lot of pulpit supply in Southern California.

And, uh, so two or three years worth, I would just drive here and there sometimes preaching in three different churches in one day.

And I loved it. It was great. And, uh, so my style is a little bit different. I, I, you know,

I like to have a lapel mic or a head mic and I walk around and I move and I get excited.

I get, I don't just sit in a monotone. I'm very animated when I preach. And, um, and so I, and I also will teach and I teach doctrine.

I almost always will teach a doctrinal point during a sermon because people need to hear that kind of stuff and people are always receptive to that.

So does the pastor know his doctrine very well? And that's a question because in a, in a sermon, the pastor hopefully knows the difference between the economic and ontological

Trinity, the hypostatic union and the communicatio idiomato justification and sanctification, eutychianism and monophysitism.

He should know these things. And because he's supposed to know how to refute error and teach sound doctrine.

So if I were on the committee to examine a, a, um, a pastor, I'd say, I'm going to ask you some questions.

I don't expect you to get them all right. Okay. And I'm going to ask you some tough ones and see what he says.

And, uh, you know, the whole thing needs to be examined. A man of God does in a sermon in particular.

Okay. Yeah. What, what would you recommend?

I know I haven't gone through your entire, all three of your courses online, but what was there any particular college or course online that isn't yours that you recommend?

You know, there are, but I just don't know of them. I'm not saying

I've got them all down. Right. But I know that R .C. Sproul's ministry has a lot of good stuff. I believe it does.

It's a good coursework. So I, you know, I'd recommend them. And I think maybe Charlie will, he knows a lot of stuff.

You might put it into your private chat. He knows other courses, uh, other websites with other course.

That's a really good idea actually, is to research other ones and recommend that group with this course in that course.

Um, maybe sharpen your own iron, you know, what's that? What's that? Maybe to sharpen your own iron too, you know?

Oh, Oh, I'm always learning from people, you know, I really am. And, and I enjoy, um, being corrected and learning and having people who don't know much say something profound that I just go,

Whoa, that was good. And I love that. And it happens, you know, and praise

God. So, uh, I would, you know, I'd take other courses. I need to write a course on, uh, on hermeneutics, biblical interpretation.

And I'd like to do a video on how to write a sermon. Not that I'm a great, a great sermon preacher, but I learned some good stuff from some good people in seminary.

And I've applied them to sermons that I've seen and heard and say, Nope, they're blowing it here.

They're blowing it here, blowing it there. And, um, but let me, let me tell you a story once, but just for fun,

I went to a black church in San Diego, a friend of mine in seminary, black guy. And he goes, dude, like in my church,

Oh yeah, let's go. And so, Oh, it was wonderful. I love that energy. I love that.

I want a church like that. That's reformed. Oh, I would go. But at any rate, so it was great, you know, and just full of love and great people.

And the pastor walked out. And when the pastor walked out, the, the congregation stood up and applauded.

And I didn't like that. And I'm not applauding for some guy. And I said to my friend, what's going on here? Why are they applauding for this guy?

You know, I mean, you know, and he goes, Oh Matt, you don't understand. They're not applauding for the man.

They're applauding for the man who's bringing the word of God. It's coming. The word of God's coming. And I started clapping, you know, like,

Hey, that's fine with me. And you see, there's so many different contexts and different ways that sermons are delivered.

We've got to be gracious. And one sermon doesn't make a man, you know, make or break.

Well, hopefully he denies it for the deity of Christ in a sermon. Okay. That would break them. But yeah, you know, you know, once I actually said at a sermon and a church had been at many times preaching the elders, you know, after the sermon, they come down, they're smiling, they're rocking on their heels, you know?

And I said, what is it? You know what you said? We have it on recording. I said, what did

I say during the sermon? They go, what'd I say? He goes, you said, quote, Jesus is not God. I said, no,

I didn't. But they were laughing, you know, because it was just, you know, you misspeak.

And, and I said, no, I did. He goes, yes, you did. But we knew, we knew what you meant. You know, when you said it, you have mixed messed up.

So, you know, things happen. And, uh, and here's another thing to watch for. Here's another thing that this is a serious thing.

What does the minister do when he messes up? Okay. When he messes up in a sermon, how does he handle it?

That's a, that's a very infrequently asked question, uh, which I've done before.

You know, you mess up, you say something, it didn't come out right. And you go, you know, I did not come out right. Let me try it again.

And then, you know, okay. Sometimes what the one who has buried their mistake and hide it, no, no, no, no, no.

You know, you know, it just go, you say, yeah, I said that wrong. I got the wrong verse or whatever. And you just move on.

And that's a small point, but I think it's a good point. Yeah.

I'm looking for, I'm looking for a church. I'm sorry.

I got another thing to say, but go ahead. So I'm sorry. It's all good. Yeah. Right now

I'm looking for a church, but like, as you know, my concerns, I feel it's like going to be an uphill battle to find something that I find acceptable.

Basically. Yeah. I'm with you. Oh, I'm with you. Oh, I couldn't complain about sermons.

That's a whole nother thing. If a woman pastor, you know, forget it. You get a value. There's so many issues.

Yep. And does a person hold up to or support a positive confession?

You know, God wants you healthy and wealthy and you deserve better. And you deserve this because you're a child of God and you know, all this idiocy.

So yep. Yeah. One of the big ones is I ideally don't want to go to a church that where the pastor is teaching

Armenian concepts. Yeah. Okay. If that's your, well, you know,

I used to attend Calvary chapel for years and they were Armenian and I learned and the pastor and I are still friends and I can do that, but Hey, you know, it just depends on how it's done, how it's delivered.

So yeah. Okay. Yeah. Well, there's the music.

Perfect timing. All right, buddy. We're going to get going. Okay. I'm glad you called about that. Thank you, Matt. All right.

God bless. And next we're going to get to Jermaine from California about Trump and be interesting conversation.

And if you want, give me a call. 877 -207 -2276.

We'll be right back. It's Matt Slick live taking your calls at 877 -207 -2276.

Here's Matt Slick. Hey everybody. Welcome back to the show on this lovely Friday. If you want to give me a call, the number is 877 -207 -2276.

Let's get to Jermaine from California. Welcome. You're on the air. Oh, hi,

Matt. Enjoying the show so far? Well, thank you. Thank you.

Appreciate it. So what do you got, man? Yes. Well, I had a question about the, uh, attempted assassination of, uh, former president

Trump. So I was taking a look at how things kind of went down and I used to work in, in the security field, not at that level, but I have friends who have worked for Mr.

Musk out here in the San Francisco area and other prominent people. And you can, in my opinion, there's some things that, you know, we need to kind of question how something like that could happen.

But the fact that it did happen, the way the events transpired, it would almost have to be like a perfect storm scenario for someone not to get injured in that.

And I just was curious about your thoughts of this possibly being like even divine intervention.

And when I say that, I want to preface it with a lot of people. I know there's a big polarization around Mr.

Trump, and I do believe a lot of it is media driven. Um, you know, they've done everything to demonize this man beyond a human.

And I've heard some very, very concerning thoughts from people who were supposed to be Christian. And, you know,

I myself, I'm, I am African -American, not that it should matter, but I've never actually seen so many

African -Americans rooting for someone, but they don't get seen on camera.

It's not popular because the media doesn't seem to want to push that narrative. Now, when

I was talking to someone about how this whole thing happened, I could see why they would think it was staged, but they forget that anyone who's watched this guy for a while saying he's actually a brilliant ad -libber, and he's able to kind of turn on a dime and make something out of nothing for moments that are priceless on television.

I can understand that, but the way things happen, it's like, there's no way in the world someone would stage something that close to their head.

I just don't believe that. You'd have to have the best marksman in all of history, and then ask that marksman to sacrifice himself and die.

It just makes no sense, but I was thinking it would divine, divinely inspired, like, hey, this person has a purpose here, and he's not leaving until God says so.

So I just wanted to hear your thoughts on that. I know people are all over the map right now. Yes.

So on the third Thursday of each month, we meet at my house, people come over, and we just talk.

We have discussions, open discussion, anything you want to talk about. And one of the topics that came up was exactly that, was it divine intervention?

And the answer is, who knows? We don't know if it was. We don't know if it wasn't.

We can't say it was. We can't say it wasn't. It could have just been coincidence.

But even coincidences work within the sovereign will of God, and it's certainly possible that God has raised up Trump for something, just as he raised up Cyrus Neal Testament, who was bad.

I'm not saying Trump is bad. I'm not saying he's good or bad. I'm just saying God raises up people for doing what he wants to do in the ultimate plan.

And we certainly know that our government needs to be cleaned out, and Trump would be the one to do it if he's going to do it.

Personally, I think there's going to be another attempt on his life, and they won't miss next time. That's good. I don't trust the left.

Okay. So I have a friend who did security in Iraq.

He was trained by the CIA, and we went over a half hour period where he just talked about the mistakes, the omissions, the downright, how to say politely, the incorrect procedures that were routinely overlooked.

It should never have happened. So just like you said, you can't tell for sure, don't know, but is it from God?

Is it not? How does it work? You can start to wonder, don't you? Man, it's a tough one. Yeah, no,

I think that's fair. That's a good answer. I do agree with you.

I think that there absolutely would be some other attempt. It just seems like they're definitely afraid of this person getting into office.

Me personally, I just pray for them. I pray for their salvation as well. Just as I'm a striker,

I pray for the current administration as well. I just 180 degrees disagree with everything they've done because my life was much better under the former president.

I'm not on any particular party's side. It's just I've never seen people.

My issues go way beyond just one or two things. Those are another show, but the whole vaccine mandates, the businesses shutting down, the crime running rampant,

I got to witness that firsthand. I'm near the city of Oakland, California, very, very violent. Oh yes, absolutely.

Actually, it was one of the reasons. I'll just say I was supposed to be in law enforcement. I actually graduated in the academy and that's why

I look at things a little differently as far as how things are set up, but I'm very grateful that I had to go through that test because I personally did not.

I have no problem with anyone making a personal decision, but I did not feel it was right for me to take something that I felt was experimental and not necessary since I had already recovered from COVID.

When I saw mandates come down, I'm glad I went through that because since we're in the first world, we don't have to go through a lot of tests.

That was a real test for me and I'm glad God showed me He can absolutely sustain me through anything, but it did cost me a couple of career opportunities at the time.

Again, it's hard for me to really look at the current president and not have to pray about how

I feel just based on some of the things I saw, but I do. That is the president. God allowed that person to be there.

I pray for them and pray for their salvation like anybody else. I know we're not electing ministers and evangelists, apologists, but they are our leaders, so I'll just do what

I'm supposed to do. I've never seen this kind of vitriol and organized aid for one person in my life, but not in this country.

Well, we have nobody waiting. I'd like you to stay on it because this is interesting stuff.

Absolutely. But I had a question for you. You said you're African -American.

Have you noticed a change in polarity in the African -American community about who they support and stuff?

Have you noticed that? Actually, yes. I laugh because my mother, who's deceased now, unfortunately, she passed a couple of years ago.

I have questions about that, but that's another show. She died suddenly in her sleep thing, and we used to go at it then.

Love my mom to death, but she was a staunchly hardcore Democrat to the end. She would fight you with her cane if she could.

I used to wonder, what is going on with these people? I felt like I had taken a different view of things since I was a kid, but I see there are traditionally a lot of African -Americans, minorities, and poor

Caucasians are shifted to automatically be in the Democratic Party.

I did see a shift. I actually saw it starting a couple of years ago. And the prices of foods are going up.

There's no other way to say this. I've lived near San Francisco all my life. I grew up around the city, but I never saw what looked like the push for perversion until this current administration, where it seems like they were promoting it and speaking very blasphemously, like,

God bless you for your trans lifestyle. When I saw that, that's when

I started to see the conversation change, because a lot of African -Americans traditionally, and Latino families as well, they're actually more conservative socially.

And when I saw some of these things being pushed in schools where people I knew who had to go to school to fight for their children not to participate in forced pride events or forced pride projects, that's when the questions had to actually be asked, like, hey, what's going on?

And I noticed people saying, hey, you know what? I couldn't stand the former president, but I didn't have to go through this, and I'm no longer afraid of the man, as one person told me.

So I did see a change more towards people at least willing to speak about Trump in a positive light.

And the issue I ran into is if you make any defense at all, for me,

I'm like you, I look at like, or at least I would assume, I just look at things logically and fairly. And if someone asked me, was your life better under the former president?

I would say, yes. But when you do that automatically, they're like, oh, you're a Trumper. I said, that's not what

I said. You asked me if life was better, regardless of who's in power. If it happened to be someone you don't like, well, then so be it.

The answer to my question is yes. We got a break, man. We got a break. So hold on. But if they say, oh, you're a Trumper, then you're saying, oh, so Trump is one to give us a better life?

But hey, hold on. We'll be right back. Okay. Hey, folks, we got our last break. If you want to give me a call, 877 -207 -2276.

I'm kind of enjoying the conversation, so we'll see how it continues. Let's be right back. It's Matt Slick live, taking your calls at 877 -207 -2276.

Here's Matt Slick. Everybody, welcome back to the show. If you want to give me a call, 877 -207 -2276.

I just want to remind you to check out our website, CARM .org, C -A -R -M .O -R -G.

It's had 163 million visitors. That's right.

And we've got thousands of articles there on a multitude of topics. All right. Let's get back to Jermaine.

Are you still there, buddy? Oh, yes, I am. Okay. I forgot where we were before the break.

You're asking me if African -Americans had changed their tune versus Trump? Yeah.

Sorry, but I went on a little tangent. It's kind of an emotional thing for me, family -wise.

But I would say yes. I would say a lot of the ones I know, yes, absolutely. Good. Yeah.

So I've been seeing in polls and stuff like that and with Hispanics as well, they're moving away from the

Democratic Party. Here's the thing I'm concerned about is that somehow whoever runs for the

Democratic position somehow wins. Because the polls are all showing, all the stuff

I've seen, everything, that Trump should just win hands down if the election were today.

And so what if, there's another concern, what if somehow Biden's still in and he somehow wins?

And you'd know for a fact it was corruption. And then what I'm concerned about is the sparking of a civil war because of that.

I'm concerned, you know? Yeah. Yeah. To be honest with you,

I think, unfortunately, I believe we would see some kind of conflict.

I don't know what that would look like. I don't think it would look like the movies, but I think you see precursors of it in our streets where you're seeing these just bands of young people and criminals who are just flash -mobbing stores and robbing people, breaking car windows.

And I've worked with young people, I'll just say this, when they think you're cool, they tell you things.

And they may not be as vocal as we would like them to be, but they are paying attention.

And we have politicians who when they didn't like one party, didn't like someone, and they said, hey, confront them in the streets and make their life uncomfortable.

Well, they're just paying attention. They're doing what you say and not what you do. And so I think you'll see a lot more of that because right now, especially in parts of California, it's virtually anything goes because they know there's not enough officers.

There's the laws are very lenient. I literally saw two young men thank the

San Francisco DA and thank the mayor for being so lenient because they don't have to do it any real time.

And they were literally laughing. And I have family who works in both of those departments and literally laughing at the fact that they knew that unless it was over a certain amount of money, they can get away with virtually anything.

And they're cataloging it and putting it online and going viral for it and getting some accolade on the streets.

But it's what they say they want it. So I would just be very careful that you're thinking of anything corrupt, like just what kind of world are you really trying to live in?

Yeah, it's a concern that I have. And that very thing of just gangs coming in and destroying people's livelihood, stealing, my opinion is they need to be dealt with quickly and harshly.

And it needs to be stopped. You can't have a society function that way. But this is what

I grew up in California mostly. And I wouldn't go back there if you paid me. You know, it's called the

People's Republic of California. And they're still there. You know, I get it. Yeah.

Yeah. Just for the time being. Yeah. But I will say the influx of illegal immigration has always has been a problem, but never to this extent.

That also is something I forgot to mention earlier that that has radically transformed people's opinions of the current administration, at least.

And I know I've heard people mention like, hey, this is starting to affect me now, because first it was over a sanctuary city.

And again, not every single person is a criminal, but a whole lot. The reality is the comfortable thing is a whole lot of them are.

And if I was in a country where I was going to face harsh prosecution, and I heard all

I have to do is make it to a border because they're very lenient over here, I'm going to come over there too.

And that has really radically affected people in an unexpected way, because they're seeing the effects of when you have people, there's no identification of who they are and what they've done.

And now they're in your community amongst your family, your people. And, you know, I'm a godly person.

I can love everybody, but I need to know who you are. And if you have some kind of record that makes you dangerous, and that the influx of crime that's come with that, not only has it changed the position politically,

I'm also starting to see things that I didn't think I was seeing. I'm seeing people rationalize going back to the organized crime members here in California and other places where, this is my prediction, you're going to see the return of things like the mafia and local gangs, people going to those entities because they feel like they have to, in order to combat these other groups who are forming their own gangs and forming their own enterprises of opportunity where they can take over homes and squads and take advantage of the laws.

So, you know, it's really creating this scenario where it will be some kind of conflict. I don't know what to call it, but if things go wrong and this isn't something that has a stop put to it quickly, then, you know, we're going to see a whole different world in the next few years.

Yeah. Yeah. And California, unfortunately, is like an experimental battle ground.

And it's been that way for a long time. And they push things. My wife and I left there because we couldn't afford a home and we didn't want to raise our kids in the liberal idiocy that was going on.

We moved to Idaho and now the Californians are moving here to Idaho and bringing their, uh, their socialist, uh, stupidity with them.

And, uh, it's bad, but yeah. You know, well,

I'm hoping that, uh, Trump doesn't get assassinated. I think there's gonna be another attempt and, uh, they'll be more careful next time.

But I think what happened here in this one, my opinion is the incompetency of the, the, the people around him was so obvious when you're watching what they do, like that woman who, who couldn't alter her gun.

Now I can see you miss it once, but you know, how many times before you gave up? Yeah.

It's ridiculous. Uh, I just, I've seen that happen. Yes. Yeah.

And you don't listen to the person that you were protecting once they're down in the ground and the threat is, is eminent right there.

You get them off the ground, you got to pick them up. And so, you know, on, on the inner circle, why do you have women?

Uh, because they have to be strong enough to pick up a man and run with them. And you want men to do that. So why would, you know, this is my friend who knows a lot about this was bringing these things up.

And yeah, yeah. Um, I, I think that might be, and I, you know, I, I know a lot of very capable women.

Um, one lady who's, you know, got a very good rank over in the Bay area and she's, but she's only like five feet high.

She's got courage, but she would never put herself in that situation. She would order someone under her who was bigger to handle something like that.

I just, I don't, I can't say what, what the mentality was, but if you can't holster your, your weapon, um, you're a danger to everybody around you.

And that, that, that's just really embarrassing. If they had any respect, they would just take themselves out of that position.

But yeah, I couldn't explain that without trying to sound too harsh.

It made no sense to me. It's really, it's embarrassing. Yeah, it was now our heads going to roll.

And that's the question, but I don't think so. Yeah. But, um, we'll see what happens.

We'll see what happens. This is an important topic. We need to be as Christians to be praying for, for whoever

God wants to be in that position. And, uh, I pray that Trump, I mean, uh, that, uh, the

Biden crime family will become Christian and, uh, they'll get saved. That's, you know, that's, that's what we need, but we're getting what we deserve in this country.

And I believe a lot of it at the Christian's feet, but that's another topic. Yeah. Yeah, man.

I wish you and I were neighbors, man. We'd be, uh, we'd be talking. That's okay. Well, you know, we were, we're going to be virtual neighbors on the show.

So yeah, I'll definitely be calling back with some more credit. You're one of the few people that still willing to put yourself out there to answer.

So God bless you for that. Well, I try. I got a lot to learn and, um, you know, praise

God and thanks for your service, what you've done and the levels that you have tried to and appreciate that.

Okay. All right. Thank you. All right. All right, man. Well, God bless.

Call back anytime. Okay. All right. God bless. I enjoyed that call.

That was a good call. Let's get to Rachel from Utah. Rachel, welcome. You're on the air. Rachel, are you there?

Might take a little bit for the cycle to come through. So looking to Rachel and, uh, let's see if she comes to the phone because there's a question she's got about the

Schofield reference Bible apparently. And I'd like to know what that is, that question. We can talk about it a little bit.

Let's see if she comes on. I'm stalling, as you can tell, trying to give her time to get to the phone.

Um, and so it's not happening yet. So I think what

I'll do is I'll just leave. Let me try something. I'm going to leave her on without putting on hold and I'll just talk about stuff and then she can just, you know, jump in if she wants.

So ladies and gentlemen, I just want to remind you that I don't do this very often, but I wanted to remind you that we stay on the air by your support.

If you like what you hear, please consider giving, uh, you know, a little bit of donation to us.

That would be helpful. And if not, that's okay. No, that's not why we're here, but you could go to CARM .org

forward slash donate and information. You need to be right there. We've got a new system that we're using and we're going to be making it very easy.

So whoever signs up from now on, eventually we'll have a login ability on the CARM site and they can check anything they've done.

And it's all supposed to be a really lickety split, cool and all that and stuff. So we're working on that.

And, uh, there you go. Also the CARM site, C -A -R -M dot O -R -G.

It's a huge site. Been working on it since October of 1995.

The sites had 163 million visitors and that's not bad. There's a lot of sites out there that have more, of course, but not bad for an apologetics site.

And apologetics is a narrow kind of a field. And so you're not really going to find too much traffic to them.

But, uh, at least here we do have a lot of traffic to the CARM site because, well, it's so old and it's been around for a long time.

And we've, well, I'll tell you a story. We've been attacked. We've had server attacks and DDoS attacks, denial of service attacks, very various countries.

We've had to block countries from accessing the sites before.

But, you know, we've got newer security stuff in and working on stuff and et cetera, et cetera.

All right, there's that. I don't know if Rachel's still on, but she was going to ask about the Schofield Reference Bible.

Well, we don't have enough time and we're going to be done here in about 30 seconds. I hope you've enjoyed the show.

I hope that you pray for our leadership, both for the people you approve of and the people you don't approve of and that the, that the will of God would be accomplished.

And Christians need to pray that God would raise up someone to help do what needs to be done.

And the Christians need to do what they need to do as well. They need to pray and ask

God in trust as we need to do. All right. Having said all of that, I hope the Lord will bless you this weekend and by His grace, we'll be back on the air on Monday.