Join the Built to Conquer Conference: Evangelism Strategies Unleashed!
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- Welcome to another edition of The Wrap Report. I'm your host, Andrew Rapoport, the Executive Director of Striving for Eternity and the
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- Christian podcast community, of which this podcast is a proud member. Please go out to strivingforeturning .org,
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- check out all the good work we are doing there. If you want to have us out at your church, please invite us.
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- Just go to strivingforeturning .org. You can find our different speakers, different topics, and we will be happy to come to you.
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- I was on the Caleb Gordon podcast on radio, and we were talking about, well, a conference he's doing on the topics that I'm gonna be doing as we go to his conference, talking on biblical evangelism.
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- We're gonna talk about the conference, talk a little bit about evangelism. I hope that this will be encouraging to you, but I do hope that if you're in anywhere near 10 hours from Oklahoma, even further, that you check out the conference.
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- You can get the details at calebgordon .org for that conference. So I hope this encourages you to get out and share your faith, and maybe even attend the conference.
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- I hope to see you there. And now, for the show. Welcome to The Wrap Report with your host,
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- Andrew Rapoport, where we provide biblical interpretation and application. This is a ministry of Striving for Eternity and the
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- Christian Podcast Community. For more content, or to request a speaker for your church, go to strivingforeternity .org.
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- Welcome to the podcast, Mr. Andrew Rapoport. How in the world are you doing, my friend? Better than I deserve.
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- How you doing? Oh, yeah. Fantastic. Let's just get right into it here.
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- Do you know any other way than just getting right into it? I mean, let's be honest here. I mean, just jump in both feet.
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- All right. Announcement. Andrew Rapoport is joining the
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- Built to Conquer Conference. Wait, what? Dude, I'm definitely going now. Yeah, I'm definitely going to go to the show.
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- And we might even do a podcast. You never know. We could do that. I think that's a great idea.
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- OK, so you're coming to the Built to Conquer Conference on February 22nd, 2025,
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- Bartlesville, Oklahoma, Hope Presbyterian Church. Super excited. We've been talking about this for a couple of days now, and we're announcing it tonight here on the podcast.
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- So excited for this. What's been going on?
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- Now we're jumping from conference to let's talk about cold plunges. That's a cold subject, man.
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- So what's been going on here? Did you guys have a good Christmas? I did. I did. We went to New York where it was not cold plunge, but cold.
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- We decided to walk around and the day we walked around, it was 14 degrees in New York.
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- So that was a cold. That's what's going to be tomorrow. It's going to be 14 degrees here in Oklahoma. But see, the difference is in Oklahoma, you could probably find a cup of coffee or something to keep you warm for less than $8.
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- And we got an 8 -ounce cup of hot cocoa that was $8, and that was the cheapest we could find.
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- So yeah, that's New York for you. That's ridiculous. Insane. So I wanted to have you on the podcast and talk about evangelism.
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- That is sort of kind of your niche, between that and apologetics. You're striving for eternity by advancing the kingdom, by sharing the gospel.
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- Talk about evangelism. We don't, I think the church sometimes has a problematic issue with actually evangelizing properly.
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- Talk about that for just a little bit. Yeah, and actually striving for eternity, the name of the ministry I work for is actually dealing with sanctification, and so we're a discipling ministry.
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- However, what a lot of people don't realize is the first part of discipleship is evangelism. You teach people, you know,
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- Christ taught us everything that we are to teach those that everything He's taught us. Well, if they don't know
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- Christ, the first thing is teach them about Christ, right? They need to come to repentance is the first thing.
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- I'll tell you, so many people have a fear of evangelizing.
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- You know, Caleb... Why do you think that is? Why do you think that people are so terrified to evangelize? I'm curious as to why you think that.
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- There's many reasons, or many excuses people will give. I'm afraid
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- I'm not going to know what to say. Well, you know, I'm just, I don't want to get rejected.
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- I don't want to look like a kook. I don't want to be challenged and not have an answer for something.
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- Really, whatever the excuses are, they're just that. If people understood the reality of hell,
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- I think this is the reason people don't understand the reality of what hell actually is, and I think if we understood that from like a tangible grasping position, there would not be those concerns.
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- I think that if we were like, okay, hell is a real place, and these people that we're talking to potentially are going there, and I don't want anybody to go to hell.
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- And so, I am driven to try to share the gospel with people.
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- So, that's my driving factor. But I don't know, man. I guess I used to be afraid, but I don't know.
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- Well, I think that really what it is is people want to fit in with the world, and the thing
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- I think we have to recognize first and foremost is we won't just get over that.
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- But here's the thing that amazes me. Caleb, if I came on here and told you that I just got a letter from the
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- President of the United States to come to dinner, and I got invited,
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- I'd be happy to tell you about it. I'd be impressed to tell you about it. I'd be bragging to tell you about it.
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- Now, notice I didn't mention which president, so you guys can fit in whichever president you think is best. But I have a friend of mine who has a golden invitation to Saudi Arabia from the
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- King of Saudi Arabia, right? And I guess they gold plate their invitations.
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- He's got it hanging on his wall. He's happy to share that with folks.
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- Why? Because it's something to brag about, something they're excited about, something that other people don't have.
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- The reality, we have far better than a golden invitation to come to a country.
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- We have the invitation of eternal life, something that most don't have, that we didn't deserve, and not only have we been given this reconciliation, as Paul says in 2
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- Corinthians 5, but God has given us a ministry of reconciliation. So not only does He reconcile us to Himself, but He gives us a ministry to tell others that they could be reconciled as well.
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- Why are we so unwilling to share that the King, not the King really, but the
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- King of Kings has given us an invitation into His household, into His abode, and we, not only is it for us, but we can share it with others that they can enter in as well.
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- Yeah, I've often used the illustration as if you got a phone call, which is very similar to your illustration, but if you got a phone call that said, hey, you're going to go hang out with your favorite celebrity or sports star, your favorite athlete, if they called you and said, hey, we're going to go hang out, and we're going to come and hang out for the weekend, we're going to go eat dinner, we're going to take you to a game, we're going to take you to this thing, we're going to do all the things with your favorite celebrity, you would take so many pictures, so many videos, so many things that you would brag insanely and incessantly on social media that you were hanging out with this person.
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- Like, I just saw a friend of mine posted a picture which Russell Brand was at her church this morning.
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- She's posting pictures of Russell Brand at her church this morning, and so I'm like, you know, she took a picture with him, she's bragging about that.
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- The King of Kings has invited us in. I think of Luke chapter 14, where he's invited us into this banquet, and so many people,
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- I'd come, but I'd come, but I'd come, and it's just, it's mind -boggling to me how many people are not interested in sharing this good news of eternal life with the people that are on their way to eternal destruction.
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- How much do you hate somebody to not tell them about everlasting life?
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- I just, I don't know. Well, that's the very words that come from the mouth of a professing atheist from Penn and Teller, because his exact words is, someone gave him a
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- Bible, and he said, if this guy really believes that when
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- I die I'm going to hell, how much would have to hate me not to share it? Yeah. And that's the reality is, we have the words of eternal life.
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- We would have to hate someone not to share it. We would have to be more concerned about our own pride, because we don't want to be embarrassed or be rejected by people than for them to hear the good news.
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- What we're doing is we're waiting, Caleb, we're waiting for someone to just ask, can you tell me about Jesus?
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- I mean, literally, that's what people pray, Lord, just give me an opportunity. I've watched people that pray for opportunities, and someone will walk up and just say, you know, man, well, no, they'll be like, man, life is so hard.
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- Why is there suffering in the world? There's your opportunity, but the opportunity they're waiting for is someone to just say, can you tell me about Jesus?
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- And they don't know they're looking for Jesus. They don't know they have a need for Jesus. And so you look at this, and it's like, well, okay, you're waiting for an opportunity, but you don't need one.
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- In fact, I'll tell you what you could do. If folks want to have some fun, if you go out to the
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- Striving for Eternity YouTube channel, we have a playlist called The Transition, spiritual transition game, and you can watch a series of me being challenged to take anything and transition to the gospel.
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- I tell people, you don't need to pray for an opportunity, wait for an opportunity, you can make an opportunity.
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- The hardest thing for people to do is to transition from this natural world to spiritual, so I made a game out of it, and you could take anything.
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- Okay, so we're talking over microphones. Can I go from a microphone to the gospel?
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- Sure, because the purpose of this microphone is to capture basically the radio waves that are coming from my voice.
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- It's capturing that, digitizing that, transferring that to a computer, and bringing that over to you who are hearing it through a speaker system, and that's an amazing bit of technology, and yet when we look at this, we think about, can you actually see the voice, the radio waves of my voice and the vibration it's having going through the air, and able to take that and then convert that to digital?
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- We can't see that, but we know that that's what's happening. We know that we can hear this when we're one -on -one, and we can now hear it digitally, and it sounds the same.
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- Even the voice sounds the same, and yet we have this transformation that can occur, and so we can look at this and say, wow, that's an amazing bit of technology, and now
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- I tell you that just happened by chance. There was nothing that happened to form this microphone, and you'd think
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- I'm nuts, and yet you could look at the microphone and realize, okay, someone had to make that, design that, because just as simple as it is to take a radio wave and take that and be able to convert it to digital, well, that can't happen by chance.
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- Well, then how in the world can every cell in our body that has the complexity, a language called
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- DNA, which by the way, we've recently in the past decade discovered that we thought there was one layer of information in the
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- DNA, and now there's a sub -DNA layer, so we thought we completely figured out the genome, and now there's a second genome.
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- We could go as deep as we want. We can go to the vastness of the universe and see all this and say this happened by chance, but the microphone couldn't have.
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- How could that be? So if we look at all of this, the complexity of the universe, the complexity of a single cell, you have something within your cell called a little motor that can go from like zero to 60 in a millisecond, and it basically will take information between the cells, and you have things like this within the smallest part of your body, and we go, that's got to be a design.
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- The good news is striving for eternity would love to come to your church to spend two days with your folks teaching them biblical hermeneutics.
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- That's right, the art and science of interpreting scripture. The bad news is somebody attending might be really upset to discover
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- Jeremiah 29 11 should not be their life verse. To learn more, go to striving for eternity .org
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- to host a Bible interpretation made easy seminar in your area.
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- It has to be somewhat, well, who would put that much time and effort into creating something as vast as the universe and as small as the cell?
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- If there is someone that did that, what would his message be to us? Well, the message would really be simple. The message is that,
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- I mean, if you just look at life, watch the news, and you can figure out we're not good people. You and I, both of us, well, we're not good.
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- We like to think we are, but we're not good. In fact, we break God's law, and in breaking God's law, there's a consequence to that.
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- Just as if a criminal breaks the law in a human sense, they get prison or whatever the consequence would be, a fine.
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- Well, when we break God's law, it says that all liars, and that includes, well, every single one of us, all liars will have their place in a lake of fires, burns, or brimstone, which is the second death.
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- God says it's appointed unto man once to die and then the judgment. So as we look at that, we have to recognize the fact that you and I both are accountable to an infinitely holy, infinitely just God who will infinitely punish us for our crimes against him.
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- Oh, but wait, God made a way of escape. This infinitely holy God came to earth.
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- Being God, he can pay an eternal fine, not only for me and you and everyone else, because he's eternal.
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- So he could do that once in time, and it could count for eternity because his nature is eternal, but he became a man having never broken the law.
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- Therefore, he could be a proper substitute for you and I. That is the man we know of Jesus who went to the cross and paid the punishment for the sins you and I owe so that we could be set free.
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- This is the only way you can have a God that is both just and merciful. Justice and mercy are mutually exclusive.
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- But see, being an infinitely holy God, he can pay it and pay the full consequence of sin, which takes forever to pay because it's eternal, and he's outside of time, so he could do that, and therefore he can now be a substitute for us.
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- Now that the full justice was paid, he can offer us mercy. And so I just went from speaking about a microphone to the gospel.
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- Now, I didn't know how I was going to do it. Five minutes. Yeah, I didn't know how I was going to do it. It took me a bit, right?
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- Sure. But you can do that, because once we start talking about the spiritual realm, we feel more comfortable.
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- Especially because we've been born again. If we've been born again, having those kinds of conversations should be a natural flow for us.
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- They really should. Jesus makes it very simple. The gospel is not complex to the point where you can't understand it.
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- In fact, the scripture tells us if we can't come to him like a small child, I mean, it's an elementary base -level idea.
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- And we tend to, especially in the Reformed world, we get super complex with all of our deep and theological words that we use, and we make it feel like it's, as R .C.
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- Sproul used to say, the Ivy League or golf club or the country club, and we feel this elitism.
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- That's not—the gospel is super, super simple. And you're wicked, you deserve
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- God's wrath, but God loves you, and He's willing to forgive you. You just got to repent of your sins and trust in the death, burial, and resurrection of Christ on your behalf.
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- It's that simple. Yeah. I mean, it's not—look, if there's someone listening and they go,
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- I'm just—I don't have all the answers. I'm going to tell you right now, Caleb, for that person who's listening,
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- I can answer any question anyone has about God in the Bible, and I'm going to tell you how you can too.
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- So people would immediately say, well, that sounds arrogant. And I think that it might until they hear my answer, because here's the answer.
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- I don't know. I mean, that's a perfectly good answer.
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- So if someone tries to trick you and, I don't know. We figure it out.
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- Yeah. Here's the thing. I've done this with countless numbers of people now, is they'll say, they'll ask me something and I go,
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- I don't know, but I'll tell you what, I'll research it. Give me your email and I'll get back to you. Oh, that's okay. Oh, so you really didn't want an answer.
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- Yeah, you don't want an answer, you just want to debate. Yeah. And that's the thing. And then you know what happens? That discussion's over.
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- Because they now know that everything they say, if I don't have the answer, what am I going to want? A way to contact them.
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- I'm going to research it. I'm going to study it. And because that becomes one new thing that I now know after I finished the study, right?
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- And I package that away in my toolbox and say, okay, next time someone asks me, I now have the answer to that.
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- You got the answer. But I often don't have to worry about them asking me another challenge like that, because they know
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- I'm not going to care if I don't have an answer, and they know they don't want me to contact them.
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- But here's the thing. My first pastor, we used to go on Saturdays, we would go out door to door and knock on doors and share the gospel, and we had this one guy who is, because we'd start, we'd have a men's
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- Bible study, and then we'd go out, and one of the guys came to the Bible study, and he didn't want to go out to go door to door.
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- And the pastor asked him why, and he said, well, I'm really, I don't want to be rejected. And my pastor said something, and it just, you ever have,
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- Caleb, one of those things when someone is saying something, it's not even to you, and you just feel like someone just stabbed you with a knife?
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- Yes. He turns this guy and says, so let me get this straight. You're afraid that people you don't know and will probably never meet again might reject you.
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- And it was like, ow, like, yeah, I am afraid of that, and it makes no sense when you say it that way.
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- Yeah, and I think if we begin to actually think through those processes and we start to think, there's a potential,
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- I'm never gonna see this person ever again. I'm never gonna talk to this person ever again. That should embolden us to the reality of, oh, shoot, this may be the only chance
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- I get to share the hope of who Jesus is. That's the reason I love doing it at Walmart. You've got a captive audience at the grocery store or at Walmart, wherever, the cashier, you go through their line, they can't leave.
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- And so I love to stay right there, and they've got their name badge on there, so you already know their name.
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- And so you're just like, hey, Kevin, I got a question. Do you know how to get to heaven? And they just look at you, and then you begin the process of walking through the gospel.
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- Simple as that. Simple as, hey, Kevin, or hey, Sue, do you know how to get to heaven?
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- And most of the time, they'll just go, no, no, or they'll say, just be a good person.
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- Okay, well, let's talk about that. And they can't really, they can't leave because they're checking you out.
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- And you can do all that within a five minute window. You really can. It just takes practice.
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- I mean, just like with anything else, working and working the muscle out and practicing it, you eventually can get to where you need to be.
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- Well, I'm still trying to figure out what this cashier thing is. I just go to this machine, scan things, and then they want to check me at the door because they want to make sure
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- I didn't steal anything. Hey, if you want to save money and not paying people to actually ring things up, then
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- I feel I shouldn't have to get attacked at the door to make sure I did my job right, because guess what?
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- It wasn't my job in the first place. No, but the thing is that we have opportunities we don't think of.
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- Yeah, come on. Okay, so you get that call, that call you want to avoid.
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- It's just like, hello, we got something to sell you. Really? Okay, first, I have a question for you.
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- Yeah, but before we get to what you have to talk about, since you called me, it's my time.
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- I have something really important I'd like to talk to you about. Do you know how to get to heaven? Come on.
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- Now, after I share that, and I usually take a lot of time to share that to see if they're just, you know, because I don't really care about their windows they have for sale, but I'll at least listen to their sales pitch after.
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- But, you know, you have an opportunity to take, if you're nervous about talking to people, buy gospel tracks, and you do not realize how many opportunities you have to share gospel tracks without ever leaving your house, because I'm sure that many of you get, like I do, a bunch of junk mail with pre -paid postage to return things.
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- I never thought about that. That's great. This is what I do. When I get those things, I mean, the Trump campaign and the campaign,
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- I mean, people may have gotten saved over there because I have sent them during this election cycle as I've been getting tons of email or mail.
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- I mean, I just take every one of those envelopes, I stick a gospel track, and I put it in the mailbox.
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- And that is not junk or spam mail. That is a track dispenser for you to return.
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- They're asking for a gospel track for you to put it in there and send it back because someone's going to open that, and they're going to be expecting some check or something, and they might be going through a bad day and just happen to get this, and, hey,
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- I'm going to read that. So that's a simple thing. If you're really afraid of sharing the gospel, and I don't want to actually engage with people, hey, that's a great way to start.
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- Just put gospel tracks everywhere. Love that. I love that. All right, let's transition and talk about the conference for a minute, because that's the initial reason we were going to put this podcast together.
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- I thought you said we were going to talk about coal plunging. Man, oh, man. It's too cold there, huh? All right. I'm riddled with ADD.
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- We're jumping back and forth. All right. So at this conference, should I bring my coal plunge? Will you get in it if I was to bring a coal plunge?
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- I mean, do you have a portable coal plunge? Actually, I do. My tank is inflatable, so I can.
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- Are you tired of pillows that go flat, or every couple of years they smell bad, and what are you going to do with them?
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- You can't wash them, because that ruins the pillow. They don't stay in that same shape. Well, MyPillow is the answer.
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- Get a MyPillow. These are premium pillows that never go flat. You can wash them as many times as you want.
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- That's 1 -800 -873 -0176, and use promo code
- 25:33
- SFE. It's just the chiller part.
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- I don't know. In February, it's potentially cold here. I don't know. It could be. We get,
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- I guarantee we could probably find a cold plunge. I'm sure I have some friends that have cold plunges. If we could find somebody that watches this, do you want to do a cold plunge with Andrew Rappaport and Caleb Gordon?
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- We'll make it happen. I mean, it'll be a thing. So, February 22nd, you're coming. We've got just,
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- I mean, you're a stellar lineup, and that you're coming just adds that much more value. And I just,
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- I'm so excited that you're coming. We've got you, you're speaking. We've got
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- Brandon Scalf is preaching. Okay. Let me just stop there before you go on.
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- If anyone has not heard Brandon preach before. Bro, come on. He's like that diamond in the rough.
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- One of the great preachers that nobody knows about. He is just,
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- I've had the opportunity to preach with him before. I love his preaching. I've sat under it many times.
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- It is some solid, solid preaching that is just filled with biblical truth.
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- Yeah. And this is what I want to try to help people understand, is this is not fly by night, this conference is not the fly by night, just, oh, we just brought the speaker in because it's got a podcast.
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- No. These are guys that study the text, love the text, love King Jesus, have a desire to see people saved, and they're local pastors who've shepherded local people, and they're taking care of souls right now, right here.
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- And I just, I think that the culture of celebrity, we follow the celebrity.
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- If you brought John MacArthur in, everybody's like, oh my gosh, John MacArthur. I'm like, bro,
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- Brandon Scalf is on the level, and I'm not saying this haphazardly. He is on the level of John MacArthur.
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- He's got the ability to exegete the text that well, and so does Brett, and Michael Staton is going to be here.
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- He's on staff at Grace Community, or at Grace Master Seminary. Golly, I went completely south.
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- He's the pastor at First Baptist Mustang, but he's on staff at Master Seminary. He handles their doctoral.
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- These are high -level guys, and they're coming as well. It's just fantastic, and then you've got the hillbilly over here in the corner, and so I'm excited just to be able to be amongst you guys.
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- Yeah, Brett Baggett, I have preached with him before, another great preacher, so this is the thing, folks.
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- If you're listening and you're thinking, I'd like to go to conferences where I get great teaching, a lot of people think they have to go to these big conferences where all these big -name people are, and you do not need to.
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- In fact, you also don't need to spend, you're like, oh, let me go to a Shepherds Conference or G3.
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- Well, okay, and that's going to cost you about a grand or two between ticket sales and hotel and flights, and so this is somewhere.
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- It's not in some big city where they have a big venue where it's going to cost hundreds of dollars for the tickets, and you can get the same kind of preaching.
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- It's not about the person who's preaching as much as it is the content that is being preached, and with the guys that you have here, there's great content that is going to be delivered.
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- I mean, some of the guys I don't know and I haven't preached alongside, but Michael Stanton I've preached with,
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- Brandon Scalf, Brett Baggett, you also have Gabe who
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- I've never heard preach, but I've gotten to know him recently. So, you know, you've got some great, great preaching here that you don't want to miss out.
- 29:36
- Yeah, it is going to be a full day of just consuming fantastic content that's going to be able to give you strategies for advancing the kingdom, sharing the gospel in the places where we walk every single day, and so that's my hope is that, and it's 50 bucks, like that covers the cost for us to handle this conference.
- 29:59
- We're not charging, like I just saw G3 put a post out for their conference. They've got great speakers as well, but you've got to pay like 268 bucks, and I'm just like, come on, that's wild.
- 30:12
- Well, yeah, then you end up, they have travel and hotel, and because they're in a big city, hotels are not cheap, and so how, if folks are now excited, they want to go,
- 30:22
- Caleb, how do they find out more about the conference? Where do they go to get details? Tell us.
- 30:28
- Just go to my website, calebgordon .org, and there's a big banner.
- 30:34
- There'll be a big banner. Your face is going to be added to the banner tonight, and so there's a big banner.
- 30:39
- Well, that just ruined the banner. Click on the banner, and you go right to the place where you can click and buy the ticket, and it's done, and you're done, and so there's going to be some great sponsors that are going to be there who have great gospel -centered content that are going to be there as well.
- 30:58
- It's going to be a great day, and we're hosting it. It's being hosted at Hope Presbyterian Church here in Bartlesville, Oklahoma.
- 31:06
- This is the home of Phillips 66, so we're a small town with a big town feel.
- 31:13
- We've got some skyscrapers and all the fun stuff, but it's small enough that you can enjoy.
- 31:18
- Come for the weekend. If you come in early, get in touch with us, and we'll make time to spend time with you.
- 31:26
- It's going to be a great time. I can't wait. I'm looking forward to it. It's going to be good.
- 31:32
- If somebody's interested in finding out more about how they can get in touch with your ministry and figure out more about what you're doing, maybe they want to have you come speak at their conference.
- 31:40
- Maybe they're somewhere in Idaho, or they're in Wisconsin. How do they get in touch with you?
- 31:46
- Just go to your local post office, look for the Wanted Dead or Alive poster. Oh, wait, no. If they go to strivingforeternity .org,
- 31:56
- they can find out all the information about me, the podcasts I do, the content we do, books, things like that, but here's the thing.
- 32:03
- A lot of people don't realize, and most speakers that travel around and speak, there needs to be a certain number of people or a certain amount of money for them to come and speak.
- 32:19
- That is a problem because the majority of churches... It's something to think about,
- 32:24
- Caleb. The average church in America is 75 people. So now when you think of the
- 32:31
- MacArthur's churches with 10 ,000 or when they include that, they're including churches that are not...
- 32:37
- We wouldn't really consider churches, but you think about the Smiling Pastors Church of several...
- 32:45
- What does he got? The 40 ,000 there? 40 ,000. Yeah, it's crazy. He smiles for everyone.
- 32:52
- Hold that Bible up real high. Put it underneath your chair there, not a pew. Put it under a chair. Yeah. But when you think about that, 75 means that there's tons and tons of churches that gotta be like 20, 25 people, and the reality is, yeah, there's a ton of churches that are under 50 people, and those churches can't afford to have speakers come out, can't afford to have a conference like this in their church, things like that, and so what we do at Striving Fraternities, that's our target audience.
- 33:25
- We want churches that are 20, 30, 50, maybe 75 people that would like to have that conference feeling for their church, and we come in and do weekend seminars, and look, we'll travel anywhere, and you say, well, how much will it cost?
- 33:43
- Nothing. Do a love offering, that's fine. And this is the other reason
- 33:48
- I love you, because I've had so many different times where I've had conversations with, and listen,
- 33:54
- I understand people gotta pay their bills, I get it, but the thing that I so love about your ministry and what you have a heart for is you say, man, there's five people, those five people need to hear about Jesus, I'm coming.
- 34:06
- Yeah. That's wild. I love that. And Caleb is saying that because that is the smallest audience that I preached to,
- 34:13
- I was invited to a conference in Wyoming, and the other two speakers pulled out because -
- 34:18
- Homestate, by the way. Well, they had like five ticket sales, and he's like, we may not have any people here, pastor and his family will be here, and I'll be here, but we don't know how many people are gonna show up.
- 34:30
- Well, there was one time where it was the pastor, his wife, the guy who was organizing it,
- 34:35
- I think it was the pastor's parents, and that was it. I think it was the pastor's father and then one other person, right?
- 34:44
- So I've spoken to five people, and the guy that organized it, he turned to me afterwards, and he's like, you know,
- 34:50
- I have seen you preach to hundreds, and I just saw you preach to five no differently.
- 34:56
- Come on, bring it. Yes. And that's the thing is that we need to help encourage the smaller churches so that they get fired up just as much, so that they're excited to go out, like we were talking about, to go out and share the gospel, to defend the faith, to disciple others, to understand how to interpret the
- 35:17
- Bible, understand their theology. Even we have seminars on social justice to understand how to defend the biblical worldview in a world that's gone mad.
- 35:25
- I love it. It's so great. And so that's what we do. So if that sounds interesting to you, we have four different speakers, and so you could just go to our website, strivingforeternity .org,
- 35:36
- you could see which speaker may be something, hey, I'd like to have this talk.
- 35:41
- You want something on more family -related? We got a guy that's his focus on family and counseling. We got a guy that is focused on creation science.
- 35:50
- So we got a lot of different expertises and a lot of different areas, and we'll find something to be able to help your church to be encouraged.
- 36:00
- Fantastic. I love that. Well, thank you so much for coming on the show today and sharing your heart, and we're looking forward to seeing you in February.
- 36:07
- I mean, it's going to be fun. Can't wait to get in the cold plunge with you. Just folks, we got to do this. You got to come, you got to buy a ticket, and we got to find a way to make sure to get
- 36:16
- Caleb Gordon in at least 45 degree water, maybe even colder, and he's got to stay in there with five minutes.
- 36:25
- Is it a five minute limit? Five minutes. Five minutes. Okay. I promise if we can figure this out when you get here, I will do it.
- 36:32
- I'm already like, but we'll do it. We'll make it happen, bro. Thank you so much for being on the show today, brother.
- 36:38
- Thanks for having me. This podcast is part of the Striving for Eternity ministry. For more content or to request a speaker or seminar to your church, go to strivingforeternity .org.