General Q&A with Matt Slick 3/1/2017

All right, so we just did a thing on the shack, and if you guys want to ask questions on that, great. On any other topic, hopefully

I can answer it, we can talk about it. Who's got a question about whatever? I guess you're the first one to raise your hand.

Give an example of setting scripture against scripture. Yes, I can give you, well, here's an example of setting scripture against scripture.

They'll go to Hebrews 6, 4 -6, where it says that those who are enlightened can't be renewed to repentance.

For instance, they'll go to Hebrews 10 -26, where the implication is you can lose your salvation. They'll do that when

I'll say, well, Jesus said in John 10 -37 -40, that he always comes to do the will of the

Father, and the will of the Father is that he lose none of those whom have been given to him, so you can't lose your salvation. What people will do then is say, well, that's wrong.

You have to go with this scripture. I'll go, wait a minute, wait a minute, wait a minute. You have to use the scriptures in harmony with each other.

So actually, I've been on some anti -Calvinist Facebook pages lately, and one guy, he's behemently, rabidly anti -Calvinist, says that God wants everyone to be saved.

I know what he means. And I wrote, if he does that, and this is what I said, I wasn't setting scripture against scripture, because this is what

I did. I said, you go to Mark 4, 10 -12, and I said, he asked Jesus, why are you speaking in parables?

And he answers, he says, basically, so they will not be saved. That's what he says. Mark 4, 10 -12.

That's actually 11 and 12. But that's what it is. Now, I said to him, see, you're wrong, there's a scripture.

No, I said, you need to harmonize both of them, and in order to do that, you probably get to change your theological understanding.

That's what I urge people to do, and they'll often say, Matt, you're setting scripture against scripture. No, I'm not.

If it says this and it says that, harmonize them. Change your theology. There are two examples, eternal security,

God wants all to be saved, things like that. Colossians 2, 14,

Jesus canceled our sin debt at the cross. Is that canceling from going forward?

It's before, during, and after. But Colossians 2, 14 says, Jesus, having canceled the certificate of debt consisting of decrees which was hostile to us, he took it out of the way, having nailed it to the cross.

The word certificate of debt in Greek is the word kairagraphon. It's a hapex legomena. It only occurs once in the entire set of scriptures.

It means a handwritten IOU of legal indebtedness. There's two possible ways to interpret it.

One could mean the legal sin debt. The other one could be the law itself.

Either way, if you look at either position, it necessitates, sorry, I'm trying to convert you to Calvinism, he started it, but it necessitates limited atonement, let me explain.

The kairagraphon, the sin debt, because in verse 13, the immediately previous verse,

Paul the apostle says, having forgiven us all of our transgressions, to transgress the law is sin, 1

John 3, 4. Jesus says, and our Father of art and heaven, hallowed be thy name, he says in Matthew 6, 12, he says, forgive us our debts, in Luke 11, 4, forgive us our sins, but Jesus equates sin with legal debt.

It says, forgive us our transgressions in Colossians 2, 13, this is having canceled out the certificate of debt.

It seems to be that what's going on there is the issue of sin. The sin debt is canceled. If it's canceled at the cross, which is where it's canceled, not when we believe, but when it's canceled at the cross, then the implication is it can only be canceled for those who are given to him by the

Father, John 6, 37 through 40. Otherwise, if he canceled the sin debt for everyone who ever lived, then that would mean universalism.

But that's not the case, because people go to hell, Matthew 25, 46, for example. Hold on, let me finish this.

So, since that's the case, it cannot be that he canceled the sin debt for everybody.

If people say he canceled, but you have to receive it, that's not what it says. It says it's canceled at the cross, doesn't say when you believe.

Now, what does it mean to be justified? Having therefore been justified by faith, Romans 5, 1.

Romans 3, 28 says, we maintain that a man is justified by faith apart from the works of the law.

And Romans 4, 5, the one who does not work but believes, his faith is reckoned as righteousness.

We have a righteousness that's not our own. The righteousness comes from God, Philippians 3, 9. So what's happening is, when we believe, we are justified.

So Jesus has two aspects of his work. And I'm going to teach you really quickly here, so that you can understand.

We have what's called the active, and we have the passive obedience of Christ.

The active obedience is his keeping the law. He never sinned, 1 Peter 2, 22. His passive obedience is being led to the cross.

He let people do that to him. The Gospels record that. This is his righteousness, which we receive when we believe.

This is when the sin debt was canceled, canceled for the elect, because there's another doctrine called federal headship.

And that is the doctrine that the male represents the descendants, the male. You can go to Romans 5, 18 for that, and which is in the

NASB. That's the best translation for that verse. And also 1 Corinthians 15, 22, and I can go to other stuff.

Jesus represented his people on the cross, the ones given to him by the Father. So therefore, he canceled their sin debt on the cross.

And when we believe, his active obedience, righteousness is imputed to us. The sin debt is canceled at the cross, we believe, and that's when we're justified.

Justification is different than simply having a sin debt canceled. Now what if the chirographon of Colossians 2, 14 is the simple law?

According to Romans 4, 15, without the law, there is no transgression.

And Romans 5, 13, without the law, sin is not imputed when there is no law. In Romans 7, verses 1 through 4, it says that we who have died are freed from the law.

We've died with Christ, Colossians 1, excuse me, Colossians 3, 1 through 5, Romans 6, 6,

Romans 6, 8, we've been crucified with Christ, we died with Christ. And Adam all die, in Christ all shall be made alive.

The in Christ is an issue of federal headship of male representation. I know I'm going quickly. Here's the thing.

It's all on my website, CARM. You can read this. The thing is that if the certificate of debt means the law and Jesus canceled the law, the only way then anybody could go to hell is if the certificate of debt is not canceled, the chirographon, the law of transgressions, because you're judged by the law.

But Romans 4, 15 and Romans 5, 13, you can't go to hell if the law isn't there because without the law, there's no imputation of sin, there's no judgment.

So either way, if it's the sin debt or if it's the law, either way, it requires limited atonement.

Otherwise, God is unrighteous. All right? Says Matt to himself because no one's listening.

You don't care. You don't care what I'm saying. Yeah, that was really good stuff, but you guys are like, I don't know.

Okay. Got something else? Oh, people are upset now, aren't they?

Let's do one online and then. No? Every different topic I want. Let's talk about, because gardening,

I've got some gardening issues. No? My trip to Bethel Church, Chad Prigmore and I went down on Thursday, nine -hour drive, great scenery.

On the way back, great scenery. I put a nice picture I happened to take with my phone up on Facebook.

Nice picture. We couldn't get into the conference on Friday because it was sold out.

So we paid money to watch it online. And I sat there and analyzed Bishop Bismarck, talked about prophecy, did a good job of analyzing

Scripture. And then gave a moralistic sermon without the cross. I don't remember hearing anything about the cross and stuff.

And I thought it was a nice pep talk for that. We had a friend we met there who took us around to all the campuses of Bethel.

And I got pictures of those. And then on Saturday, Chad and I went into the church.

And they wanted us to, well, we walked in this one door.

We didn't know where we were going. And a lady, very nice, they're all nice. Very nice lady said, you're here for healing, huh?

I said, yeah, I want to be healed. I do. Good, fill out this form. It has email, phone number,

Social Security for birth, non -contract, sign it over. And it wasn't quite that extensive.

But it was just marketing information. And we decided not to do that. We went to the bookstore. And the bookstore wasn't much bigger than that kitchen.

And I got some books there. I got a Revival Bible. That's good.

And some other stuff. I bought some of that. And so I'm going to be going through that. And the people were nice.

They were. And I felt good there. I didn't feel threatened. I wasn't there to start any trouble. They're very organized.

We went into the main sanctuary. There was a worship service of some sort going on. It wasn't a preaching sermon thing.

The band was worshiping. It was awesome. And people are laying on the ground, you know, and just worshiping

God. No problem. There was no chaos. Things weren't out of order. People were sitting there with their hands raised.

Some in groups. Some just sitting there, just enjoying the music. I didn't see anything wrong with any of that and stuff.

So we got a good flavor of what the church was about. Chad made an interesting comment.

He said, Chad, he's a pastor. He actually pastors upstairs. Sundays at 4 o 'clock.

And he wants you to preach in two or three weeks. So we'll see. But, yeah.

What's the name of the church? Almostreallygoodchurch .com. The Way Ministries.

Chad's a good guy. You're welcome. Because someone goes there. That's right. We talked about you, too, on our trip.

It was good. And so, what? I've been praying for you.

He has, too. He's a good guy. Chad's a great guy. And I forgot my train of thought. Oh, so he said he noticed that there weren't any crosses that he could see in the church.

Now, I didn't notice that until afterwards. And so I didn't pay attention. Now, he said he didn't see any.

Let's go with what he said. Maybe he was looking. There was a big cross on the outside. Okay. And he went away.

So I've been studying very heavily the new apostolic reformation. Bethel Church, Bill Johnson.

And I want to go to IHOP. But just check. I'm not there to cause problems. I've been reading their material.

Now, I'm a Calvinist who believes in the continuation of the charismatic gifts. And so I don't have any problem with people having a word of knowledge.

I don't have a problem with someone speaking in a tongue. I have a problem with the misuse of these things. I have a problem with people being wacko and stuff.

And this gets into subjectivity. So, what I'm doing is reading their material very carefully and looking for whatever is good and bad.

And I'm keeping notes, good and bad. I'm not looking just for bad. And the reason is, is because if God is moving through that group,

I don't want to stand in the way. Because God can use whacked people to do good things.

Right? Can he use a group like that? Yes, he can. There are some issues.

There are some problems. Now, at the stage I'm at now, I'm going to say this because a lot of people right now are going, Matt, you've got to be kidding me.

No, hear me out. I'm purposely not looking at the videos yet. People want to send me, look at this video where so -and -so does something wacko.

I'm reading the material of the founders and the teachers of this. I want to know their doctrinal position.

Because they're the ones who represent it. Not some guy with a camera in a church and there's somebody writhing on the ground.

See what they do? It doesn't necessarily mean that's what they endorse. Now, Jill Johnson, I've seen the video, someone showed me that, where she was saying that the

Holy Spirit was silly and he was blue. Yeah. And it was really just blasphemous.

And then I'd heard that Bill Johnson and her dad corrected her on that. I haven't seen the video.

And if he did, good. Now, I've got some criticisms

I'm forming. And not because I'm looking for criticisms, but because of my study of Scripture, I'm seeing something that's potentially dangerous.

It doesn't mean it is dangerous. It's a potential of danger. And I'll be writing about that. And I'll be doing it very carefully.

But I'm also going to be writing, could God be using them anyway? Because there were people in the book of Acts who weren't with the disciples and they were casting out demons and doing stuff in Jesus' name, and the apostles said, don't forbid them from doing that.

So we've got to be very careful here. What happens in the apologetic circles is a lot of people just want to automatically say they're whacked.

Now, I will admit that I have heard a lot of very competent apologists who studied this for years say it's not of God.

I'm going to find out. And I'm not going to just jump on the bandwagon. I'm going to see what is it

I learn, because that's what I have to do. As a man of God, a man hopefully of integrity, who wants to assess this fairly.

And a lot of what they're saying is good, and a lot of what they're saying is what I've already taught. Change society, get involved in society, get involved in politics.

They want to do that. But let me just give you a little bit of a problem. When I did my analysis on prophets, did my analysis on apostles, what they're saying in the

NAR is that the office of apostle is superior to the office of prophet.

The prophet's job is to get revelation from God and give it to the apostles. And then the apostles decide what to do with it, but the apostles can also get revelation from God directly.

Of course, not in contradiction to the scriptures. I found nothing in the

Bible that talks about New Testament prophets that that's what happens. Nothing says they get something from God and give it to the apostles for them to discern.

This is what they say is the MO, the modus operandi, of how their system works, but that's not what the scriptures teach.

Now, are the prophets examined? Yes, because there's a verse in 1 Corinthians 14 that says the prophets speak, do it in order, and then let things be judged.

But that's in the context of the church. And I'm finding out that the apostles and elders in Acts 15 are the ones consulted on the issues of authority and doctrinal truth, not just the apostles.

But what they'll say is that the ultimate stopping point is the apostles themselves. There's a slight imbalance that I see going on.

And as I said earlier, a degree off for one foot isn't a big deal. But for months and years, as you're moving, you can end up in greater error.

So I have to find out more and more as I continue to read. Okay? Yes. Multiple point.

I'm repeating what you say for the camera and stuff. Okay, I'm handsome? Okay. I'm repeating what you're saying.

I'm handsome and highly intelligent and humble. Thank you.

You ladies leaving? So? Hey, glad you came.

All right, God bless. Hope you had a good time and enjoyed it, that you learned. All right, and who's going to escort the ladies out?

All right. Okay. If anybody can take care of you, that's the man right there.

That's right. Okay, go. Limited atonement, okay.

Only the elect can be saved because God gives only the elect to the son who are then redeemed, and then

God inerrantly brings them into the faith. That's what I believe. You don't have to agree. If you disagree, okay. Okay.

That's right, disagree. Yeah, you're good. That man's good. Romans 3, 10, 11, and 12. Okay, this man said, okay, thank you very much.

See, this is how it's supposed to be, disagreements like this. You laugh, you have fun. All right. We are elected to be what?

He chooses. Right, he selects. He does that, yes. Yeah, we are.

Individuals are elected. Oh, by him, got it.

Okay. That's why I try to say definitions are important.

How do you define that? Never mind. I'm kidding. I was kidding. Joke. He's panicking.

What? Okay, this elect are elected by God.

We're kind of on the same page, okay. See, he's setting me up. Try not to.

Set me up. I like it. It's okay. Let's see how slick I can be. Okay.

All right. John 3, 16, for God's love of the world, he gave his only begotten. Whoever.

Yeah. Okay. Okay, hold on.

Let me get to the verse, because I had to hit my computer, and it went flash and came off. They are.

They are supposed to, but this is a battery one. This is the old one. We've got the new one running the, come on.

Read. Okay. An actual Bible. Oh, I just got slammed.

Burned. Thank you very much. Hey, what's this?

This is different. It's an actual Bible. I actually found, look at all these idle pictures you've got in here.

Man, look at this. What is that? That's a bookmark.

Wait a minute. I'm going to see what this picture is. Oh, my goodness. What is this?

What is this stuff? We're talking afterwards. Oh, man. Okay.

Yeah, apparently. Well, look at all the Calvinist verses you have blacked out. Okay. Okay. He that believeth on him is not condemned, but he that believeth.

Believeth? That's the real version. Okay. I got it.

It's good. It came up. It worked. It worked, finally. What I want to do is look at the Greek. And because of potential something.

So, anyway, what was your question? Oh, okay. What's your question?

Okay. With Limit Atonement in mind. 318. Judge already.

Did you talk about the elect? Okay. And reconcile.

Limit Atonement with? Yeah. With? John. 318.

Let me look at it one at a time. 318. He who believes in him is not judged. That's talking about those who believe in Jesus pass out of judgment.

Calvinists believe that. Limit Atonement, no problem. He who does not believe has been judged already. Okay. So you're in a state of judgment if you don't believe.

Okay. Because he has not believed in the name of the Son of God. Yeah. So, no problem. We are by nature children of wrath,

Ephesians 2 .3. And we're under judgment until we're justified. Yeah.

Declared legally righteous. Right. There's no problem there. Okay. Yeah. He who believes his

Son is eternal life. But he does not obey the Son, does not see life. But the wrath of God abides on him. Yeah. Yes, it is with what he just said because he just said it.

And then it was with that afterwards. But, yeah, this is not a challenge to Limit Atonement.

What Limit Atonement says is that Jesus only bore the sins of the elect. And that he canceled their sin debt.

And that all who are elect will come into the faith. Irresistible grace means that at the time of regeneration they will then be changed.

And they will believe because of the work of God. He has to grant that we believe, Philippians 1 .29. And our believing is the work of God, John 6 .28

.29. And we're born again not of our own will, John 1 .13. We're caused to be born again, 1

Peter 1 .3. We're appointed to eternal life, Acts 13 .48. We're chosen for salvation, 2 Thessalonians 2 .13.

Oh, no, we don't say that. We don't say we don't have a decision on the matter. No. Ah, ah.

Go like this. No, no. What we hold to, generically speaking, in the

Reformed camp is that regeneration precedes faith. We don't say a temporal procession, but a logical one.

So if I were to take this book, heresy book, and do this, there's about a half of a second between the event of letting go and the event of a temporal procession.

There's a cause and an effect. All right. So if someone were to be saved by faith and then, say, five seconds later became regenerate, we would have a believer who's not regenerate for five seconds.

If it was reversed, we're talking about temporal order, and someone is regenerate for five seconds before they believe, then we have a regenerate person who's not a believer for a period of time.

It's problematic. What we do is we say logical procession. Logical precession.

We have a light bulb. When you turn on electricity in a light bulb, the light is instantaneously there when the electricity is there.

The electricity is the cause of the light, but it's not the case that the light is the cause of electricity. So the light is a result, immediate and automatic result, of the condition of electricity.

We would say faith is the immediate result of the regeneration. That they're simultaneous, concomitant, you could say, and that they happen there at the same time.

So it's a logical procession. That's what we would say. So that when God changes us, we freely believe.

We do. Calvinists don't say we don't have free will. No. We don't say we couldn't do anything.

What we say is according to the scriptures, which says that the natural man cannot receive the things of God, for they're foolishness to him.

1 Corinthians 2 .14. Romans 6 .14 -20. He's a slave of sin. Jeremiah 17 .9.

His heart is desperately wicked and deceitful. No man can trust it. He does no good, doesn't even seek for God. Romans 3 .10,

11, and 12. Ephesians 2 .15. He has enmity with God. He's dead in trespasses and sins. Ephesians 2 .1.

Ephesians 2 .3 says he's by nature a child of wrath. So how does someone who's full of evil, can't seek for God, cannot receive

God, doesn't understand the things of God, full of wickedness, how does he just pick God? He doesn't.

What? My buddy Dave, my old roommate? What? Ask David? What? You'd refer to King David.

How did he do that? You cannot come to me unless it's been granted to you from the Father, John 6 .65. Okay? So the reason anybody comes to him,

Jesus said, is because it's granted to them by the Father. That's what he said.

So what we would say in Reformed theology is that God elects, and he works the election out in real time, regenerates his people, and he calls them.

Now, we don't know how that works. We don't know how he calls. We don't know what conditions he uses.

And nobody does. And just to be fair, I don't put all my eggs in the five -point basket.

Because it's a systematic theological position. It makes a lot of sense. But it can't answer everything.

And though Molinism seeks to do that, it has problems. Where God essentially knows what counterfactuals will be, what

God, he will do, he'll make choices based on what he will see free will creatures will do under different circumstances.

That to me is kindergarten theology. Yeah, it is. It's ridiculous.

But maybe I misunderstand what Molinism is. The answer to the question? Have you repented yet of your heresy of not believing as Matt Slick does?

No? All right. Very good. Slickism. Hey. All right.

Then we'll go there. Okay. Two -part question.

Ephesians 4 .29. Without what?

How do I get the gospel to a child without compromising content? How old is the child? How old is the child?

Two? One? Four? Five? Six and a half? Elementary?

School? Which grade? Male? Female? Well, I'm serious.

Let me ask why I'm asking those kind of questions. Because seven years old.

In North America or South America? You like that one.

Different children have different abilities to understand different things in different ways. I have three daughters, and they're radically different.

Our oldest daughter read her first novel at four years old, was reading at two. Our second daughter, that's not the case.

Our third daughter, not the case either. They're different. And so what I could say to one child would be different than I would say to another.

We can't say at seven, this is how you do it. It doesn't exist like that. The idea is that for a parent, what they need to do, because a parent understands a child, the parent needs to express the gospel message to the child to the best of his or her ability, knowing what the child can understand and do.

And you're going to have to compromise. Because if I were to say to my seven -year -old, communicate with a motto.

Now what we're going to be discussing right now is the two natures of Christ and the attribution of both to the single personhood.

This is important for the propitiatory sacrifice to be legally valuable and for it to be efficacious.

Are you with me thus far? You with me? Okay, stop licking the bag. All right?

Because that's what would happen. So what I'm going to do is I'm going to be talking to the child on a level that they can understand.

Stop licking the bag. That's what it is. I remember seeing a video once of a young boy.

I just love this video. He's got a paper bag on his head. He's walking around the house with a paper bag.

He's bumping into stuff. I'm like, yeah, why would he do that?

Because it's a paper bag. Hey, let's see what happens. Yeah, love that.

Yes. I thought you were going to ask a question.

Sorry. All right. Okay. Yeah. People say

Jesus died for you. Yeah. Yeah. The only thing

I've changed when I became a reformer in evangelism, I say Jesus died for sinners. I don't say he died for you. I don't know.

I just say he died for sinners. That's it. The only difference. And I've been out witnessing a lot.

I go to prisons. I went out to not Times Square, but Union Square in New York.

Went out evangelizing there. It's not my job to know who's elect or not elect. And it's possible

I could get this wrong. Like I said, I don't put all my eggs in the five -point basket. I evangelize.

I witness. I believe I understand it. I've got a lot of good answers for a lot of tough questions. Maybe just someplace

God's going, that's nice. We'll correct you when you get to heaven. Okay. Armenians are probably going, well, let's do it right now and get corrected.

I got questions they can't answer. But, you know, the thing is we just obey God and we move forward.

And we just trust him. I go witness. And I'm always looking for an opportunity to witness.

In fact, when Chad and I were coming back from California, we took another detour. Went to Reno.

And we went to a hamburger place. And there was a van out there that said so -and -so

Baptist church. And we happened to be getting out into our car when a bunch of teenage -ish girls, this age, were getting in.

I'm like, okay, so tell me who Jesus is. Who's this guy? And I said, tell me who

Jesus is. You're at the Baptist church. You got to go in the van. I want to know. And I'm always looking for opportunities to witness.

And they said, ask the pastor. And he shows up.

And he said just this morning he was telling them what the gospel was and stuff and things.

But it was fun. I'm always looking for opportunities to witness, especially people in orange shirts who don't know.

Guess what? He loved it. He got a kick out of that one.

Oh, I like this guy. He's all right. Okay. No, that's good. He's a paratrooper?

Okay. Not today? I bet there's 20 feet between us. All right.

What's the question you can't answer? What's the square root of negative one?

You can't answer that. That's an imaginary number. So what? A question you can't answer?

Oh, there's lots. There's lots of questions. Generically. Here's a question.

Okay, so Bob and Frank, from an Arminian perspective. Okay, it's a series of questions. Bob and Frank, they're twins.

Same everything. At 30 years of age, Bob believes the gospel. Frank does not. Why? One believes, one does not.

Everything's the same. Why does one believe and one does not? Calvinists could answer. So what's an Arminian going to say?

Because Bob chose and Frank did not. I'm going to say, why did Bob choose and Frank did not? Because it's a free will.

Why does Bob's free will enable him to believe and Frank's did not? Because that's a free will. Let me ask another question.

Why does Bob's free will enable him to believe and Frank's does not? And then this is where the Arminians stub their toes. They don't know how to answer.

They usually become insulting to me. Not you, but, I mean, are you a stupid man? And stuff like that. So the

Reformed person would say they believe because God grants that they believe. Philippians 129. As many as had been appointed to eternal life believed.

Acts 13, 48. We've got answers. They don't have answers. What? Yeah, Matthew 7.

Whoever asks, seeks, and knocks. For he who asks, he who seeks, he who knocks. Yeah. If their hearts open?

The reason they're open to answers is because God's working on them. You cannot come to me unless the Father draws you.

John 6, 44. Yeah. Good. You're Reformed?

Oh. That's okay. You're just expressing total depravity.

At least he admits. Yeah, that's right. Okay. Yes. End times.

You know. The what? Oh, temple to be rebuilt in Jerusalem. Yes. Yes. In my eschatological position, the temple would have to be rebuilt before the day of the

Lord. Because what I affirm is that there will be a literal seven -year tribulation with the manifestation of the Antichrist.

Who halfway through the tribulation will exalt himself in the rebuilt temple. So that's my position. Whether I'm right or wrong,

I don't know. But that's what I hold to. And the first ones taken are the wicked. When Jesus comes back,

John. Or Matthew 13, 39. The first ones are the wicked. Wicked, wicked, wicked. You say it like that, people start believing it.

Hey, I like what he's saying. It's echoed. Must be true. Yes.

Okay. Superlapsarianism, infralapsarianism. Mark what?

Marklar. Oh, it's a name of somebody. Okay. Superlapsarianism has to do with the order of decrees in a logical procession.

Does God look, basically, does he look in, infra, into the future and elects based on conditions he sees inside?

Or does he not do that and elects people for salvation based upon anything foreseen, so to speak.

But just kind of as he knows all things instantaneously. I don't really hold to infra or supra.

I think all knowledge is simultaneously eternal with God. I don't know if those things are necessarily proper.

But on the other hand, a lot of people would hold to the logical necessity of one or the other.

And would say, Matt, you don't quite understand it yet. Which is probably the case. Infralapsarianism, superlapsarianism.

And then there's mostly lapsarianism. Then there's, I don't know,

I'm making it up. So we got another question? You guys enjoying this

Q &A thing? Yeah? You learning? Good. You're not learning.

You know all this stuff. That's right. You're learning. She's like. Okay. I learned, too.

I learned, too, this stuff. Yes, back there. Do I?

Do I think? What's allegorical? No, I think there's a little bit of allegory as well as representation as well as literalness in there.

I think Genesis 1, 2, and 3 are geniusly written. I don't know if it's a literal 24 -hour period in the creation days because the seventh day is without end.

And there's a first, second, third. These are ordinal numbers. First, second, third, fourth, fifth, sixth. Or 24 hours it would seem to be.

But the seventh day doesn't end. And for that reason alone, I don't think the text necessitates that it be 24 -hour periods.

That's just my opinion. What? Biblically, I think there's a good bit of evidence for 24 -hour periods.

But I have no problem with God creating in 24 -hour periods. None at all. But I also have some weird theories about day times and things like that.

I don't think it was necessarily 24 hours. I think it was very close to it. I have some odd theories about stuff.

But nevertheless, it doesn't matter. God can certainly create things with maturity as Jesus did. The six water pots, six days of creation.

In the beginning was the Word. The Word was with God. In the beginning, Genesis 1, God said, let there be light.

The Word, light, creation, maturity. Jesus did the same thing. Jesus is the one who created all things.

Colossians 1, 15 -17. Isaiah 44, 24. So it would make sense to me that since Jesus created wine, real booze, folks, in a mature, fermented sense, that he could also create the world in six days in a mature sense as well.

No problem at all. Okay? But I'll just tell you something here.

I don't get to say this very often. That one of the reasons I pick up the Bible again to start studying it, when

I was in high school, I took physics, chemistry, trig. I was number one in tennis.

I was a Spanish four. I mean, I took all the advanced stuff. I loved high school. I enjoyed it. And I was in the science classes.

Well, what I was doing was learning a lot of science. I wanted to be a marine biologist, and I decided that the

Bible didn't have what it took because the Bible said, for example, that in Genesis 1, it said that the sun is lights there, then plants, and then the sun.

Oh, come on. Give me a break. It's not going to happen in that order. So I put the

Bible down because of that. And then one day I read an article where a guy said, what would you see if you were on the planet

Earth and it was evolving? Well, obviously evolution is true, and so is planetary evolution.

So I said, yeah, what would you see? And he said you would see diffused light because the sun is there.

The way the atmosphere is formed, what he said, that it would be diffused light.

So there would be light, but you wouldn't see the sun. I went, okay, yeah, that makes sense. And then with the cosmic rays, and he gave some formula or something, the way it would work, on the atmosphere, along with plants that would evolve, the photosynthesis, what would happen is the atmosphere would clear up and you'd see the sun.

And I went, wait a minute, that's exactly what Genesis said in that order.

So I went back to Genesis and started reading it. Right or wrong, my conclusion was, how'd they know that in Genesis?

I knew, yeah, it's an ancient book, and maybe they got lucky, but it's like it was a little bit too accurate, and it caused me to get a little nervous.

So I started reconsidering the Bible at that point. Because of a scientific article about what you would see from the perspective of the earth, specifically since it is written from the perspective of being on earth.

And that's what caused me to go, what? Seriously. Secularists have helped me be motivated to study various things.

And one of them is aliens, UFOs. A secularist said something about the theology taught by aliens, the abductees, reincarnation, and Jesus is not

God. And that started me studying that 25 years ago. I've been reading that stuff for a long time.

I was abducted three times last month. And it's really rough because they mess your legs up, and you've got to learn to walk sideways and backwards all over again.

I don't think I am. I don't think I'm abducted anymore. Yes. Nathan says on Facebook, what?

Which form of worship is better, regulative or normative? The one that glorifies God. The regulative principle in the

Reformed faith is that you only do those things that are commanded in Scripture.

The Lutheran position is that you can do anything that's not prohibited in Scripture.

Let's just say that when I think about those two, that I just like the idea of just raising your hands and letting your heart just bear adoration to God.

And if you can do that with hymns and organ music, which I don't understand, but I've heard people can do that, then that's good.

And if you can do it with guitars and drums, that's good too.

And so I think God wants us to worship him. You can worship him by standing outside, raising your arms up to the sky and just praising

God, saying, Lord, I just praise you. And that's right there in the Psalms. And that's worship.

Sometimes try this, folks. In your prayer, do nothing but praise God. Say amen and walk away.

And try to say, and by the way, just praise him and see how that works. It's hard to do.

I'm so selfish. I want to talk about myself. My God, can you please help me too? And please fix this.

That's me. Yeah, anybody else? AJ. Do I think that Adam and Eve worshipped

God? I don't know if they worshipped God in the sense that we might say that they worshipped and that having singing services and praying to God that they aren't in personal contact with in the sense of being right before.

I don't know. I think they had a natural adoration for God, and if that could be considered a form of worship, then yes.

But they were in the presence of God all the time, more or less all the time in the garden. So I don't know.

They worshipped him. I think it would be a natural condition of them in relationship to God without sin that they would properly adore him as the true king.

So in that form of worship, I'd say probably, yeah. So then follow -up question.

Yeah. For someone who has a perspective that we ought to worship

God the way people did in the Bible. Why should we choose the early church's way versus how

Adam and Eve might have worshipped? We don't know how Adam and Eve worshipped if they did, so the comparison doesn't carry. But we can what?

Okay. That's all right. That's all right. That's okay. No problem. Another question from the web,

Facebook. Joseph? Jehoshaphat. He's having trouble with his spiritual gifts.

Can you pray for people in the name of Jesus? They're still sick. He's not having faith and asking

God to heal. Get the book, Answers to Prayer by George Mueller, and read through how this man developed faith by trusting

God in the situations that he was in. And what he did first was, which

I think is very biblical, he asked God to direct him and guide him. He wanted

God to direct him. And once he knew it was God, then whatever God decided to do in the situation was his will, and he didn't have to worry about things.

So he was the orphan king, and they would literally sit at the table and pray and wait for meals to be delivered for dinner.

Knock on the door 20 minutes later, and there would be a meal delivered. The children never went hungry.

Normally I'd point this to scriptures. You know, the scriptures just say trust God, and we should always trust

God. And the Bible, you know, Jesus talks about, you know, as it is done to you according to your faith, and faith is a mustard seed.

Well, we know those things. I know he knows those things. But sometimes it's helpful to see how a real man of God actually worked it out, and what he developed was, for him, was just a method of trusting

God a little bit more, a little bit more, a little bit more, a little bit more. And we had to pray according to the will of God.

And sometimes the will of God is that we not be healed, even though that's what people don't like.

And Stacia certainly knows that one because she's got chronic pain. And we're going to pray for you before you go tonight and just ask

God to heal. And I have the confidence that God can. Will he? That's not my decision. And so what we need to do is pray.

I think it's 1 John 4, 13. We pray according to his will.

We know that he hears us. Sometimes God has a way of not healing us, not doing what we want for a reason.

So, for example, my 80 -decibel dual ringing in ears, which I've had for 25 years, which

I would love to be gone, I hear 80 decibels, high -pitched ringing all the time.

It never goes away. I hear it right now. I've asked God 100 times, heal me.

He's chosen not to. His grace is sufficient for us. And we just have to accept that.

People will say, well, you don't have enough faith. Maybe I don't. Maybe that is the problem. But my faith is only as good as who

I put it in. I'm putting it in God. And so my faith is good at that point.

And trust God. 1 John 5, 14, 15. Thank you very much.

That was close. All right. Yes. When Moses saw the pre -incarnate

Jesus, did he, did the pre -incarnate Jesus, show himself in flesh appearances only?

Or could he manifest himself in fire? The incarnation occurred in John 1, verses 1 and 14, in the virgin birth and things like that.

But God could manifest himself in human form. You go to Genesis 17, 1 and 18, 1 and start reading.

Genesis 17 and 18. And you can see where God manifests. And Exodus 24, 9 through 11.

Moses, Aaron, Nadab, and Abihu, and 70 of the elders of Israel went up and they saw the God of Israel. And under his feet there appeared to be a bed of sapphires, clear as the sky.

So when we see God manifesting in the Old Testament, the logical thing to conclude is that it's the pre -incarnate

Christ manifesting in a physical form or in a vision. Moses wasn't just a vision or a dream.

Numbers 12, 6 through 8, he actually saw the Lord God. Now we know that angels can appear in physical form and they can be touched.

And we see and sense and we could experience that we probably all have met angels. But they were not incarnate because incarnate means to be permanently incarnated.

So the instances of God appearing in physical form in the Old Testament are pre -incarnate Christ. No one's ever seen the

Father. John 6, 46, the Holy Spirit appears in wind, fire, rain.

Not rain, but wind. And it just seems typological and consistent to say that all the manifestations in the

Old Testament of God being seen are in the pre -incarnate Christ. And apparently 8 in Genesis 17 and 18.

I hope that helps. Yes, Stacia? People say you don't have enough faith and you're not healed.

Doesn't that put the power within us? That's a good question.

Does it put the power in us if we're to be saved by the faith that we have? To be honest,

I don't know because it does say be done according to your faith.

George Mueller was a man who, he's my hero actually, and he was a man who trusted

God and lived for God. What he did was he just sought God and when the door opened up, he knew from then on it was

God's concern. And within that larger work of concern that he was trusting

God, things went well and things did not go well. At one point when the orphans needed a new heater installed in England, there was no way around the situation other than to have the cold winter wind stop blowing on the day that the furnace was to be shut down and repaired.

He prayed that that would happen and it did. And the men worked on the furnace for 18 hours and then continued to work through the night to fix it.

And as soon as it was turned back on, the cold north wind started again. The necessity of the miracle was because it was

God's work. And his faith was developed through extensive work of seeing how

God had worked successfully in various things, various ways. But he always trusted

God. And so I think there is a measure of truth in the idea that it be done to you according to your faith.

The more faith we have in him, the better off we're going to be. I call it faithing, a continued act of faith.

I can't go much more than that and say, well, you only have five grams of faith instead of seven and therefore that's why you weren't healed.

Or your oomph behind the faith wasn't enough. What does that mean? It is only as good as who you put it in.

And so my faith is in Christ. I know I have faith that he can hear the difficulty of God in my ears because of the stupid tinnitus and your pain, my wife's pain, her deformity that she's born with.

She has a very rare genetic condition. Very rare. And why does

God not heal? I've asked God a hundred times this past year respectfully,

Lord, why don't you heal more? Sometimes I wonder if it's because I don't have enough faith. Sometimes I wonder maybe

God's got something he wants us to learn in the process of being in where we're at. I don't have all the answers for that kind of stuff.

Give me doctrine ones, I can argue. Logic ones, I can argue. Stuff like this, I don't know.

I was in college at a Christian college and I looked up my dorm room after reading, my dorm window, after reading, if you have faith as a mustard seed, you can say to the mountain, be cast into the sea.

And there was a hill outside the window and I said, a sea. It didn't do anything.

And I tried. Really, God didn't want that in the sea. And later, we broke some rules and we got up at dark 30 and on Christmas, on Easter day, and we resurrected or put up a large cross that you could see for 10 miles in every direction.

And we did it before anybody knew about it. A few of us did this. That hill hadn't been there.

It took it down a couple days later. As my bad boy thought, what did you do when you were bad?

Well, I was a Christian, I was really bad, I put a cross up on public property. Oh, oh, oh, the atheists were like, oh, you pagan.

Yeah, oh, yeah, execute, yeah. Yes, ma 'am.

We suffered and we were healed. We find more God faithful. He's always there, despite your pain and suffering.

Yeah. Right, faithful in spite of us. Well, that reminds me of the time when we lost our son.

My wife and I, we asked for God to heal him. He had a birth defect called holoprosencephaly.

And it took his life. But we prayed that God would heal. But he did not in the way that we wanted.

He healed him by taking him home. God bless him. And took him home to be with him. I'll see him again one day.

But there was something about going through it that God was there.

And you can't feel him and experience him unless you go through it. So sometimes we say, you know, heal me.

He might be saying, I want you to go through something. I've got something for you in your suffering. Which my wife obviously is being taught something really huge.

Being married to me. Huge, long, big lesson.

Something big. Yeah. Of course it was good.

So yeah. Okay. With that in mind, someone was suffering.

And asked if it was a matter of faith or not. Point them to Paul.

Yeah. Yeah. Point them to Paul. With a thorn in the flesh. He had more faith.

But he wasn't healed. Amen. That's right. The question would be then on salvation.

I'm for it. Salvation. Salvation is being safe in the righteous judgment of God.

Next. Working out our salvation.

Philippians 2 .13. For it is God who is in you both to work and to will for his good pleasure. To work it out means to manifest it.

To develop it. We don't earn our salvation in any way, shape, or form. We don't keep it by our efforts or our works.

No way we could earn it. Right. Good for you. And we cannot lose our salvation either. Because if we could lose it.

I do. No, I'll show you why you can't. Okay. You want to go to John 6?

Sure. Go to John 6 .37. Let me ask you a question.

As I move these pagan idol things. John 6 .37. Now this is good.

John 6 .28 .29. God's works. The work of God that we believe. Okay. John 6 .37.

All that the Father gives me shall come to me. Right. It does not say all that come to me the

Father will give to me. He says all that the Father gives me will come to me.

Right. Okay. And he that comes I will in no way cast out. I will not cast him out.

Right. So Jesus won't cast anybody away who's come to him. Right. For I've come down from heaven not to do my own will but the will of him who sent me.

So Jesus didn't come to do his own will. And in John 8 .29 Jesus always does the will of the

Father. Okay. And this is, verse 39, this is the

Father's will that all that he has sent me, that all he's given me

I should lose none but raise it up on the last day. So the will of the Father is that Jesus lose none.

Can Jesus lose any? Yeah. The will of the

Father. Yeah, because Jesus always does the will of the Father, John 8 .29.

And so since he always has the will of the Father and the will of the Father is that Jesus lose none, can

Jesus lose any? That's good. It would seem not. So then can you lose your salvation?

Okay. Let's try this again. So Jesus always does the will of the Father. He always does the will of the

Father. He cannot lose any. Right. So can he lose any?

According to what Jesus said you can't lose any. So can you lose your salvation? This is not hard.

It's not hard. You've jumped out of planes, right? You've jumped out of planes. You've committed to jumping out of planes and pulling the thing like that, right?

But this is even more sure than your parachute. Demas? Yeah, San Dimas, Bill and Ted's Excellent Adventure.

Right for the rules, yeah. San Dimas High School football rules, yeah.

That was awesome. It was great, yeah. What a great movie.

What? Yeah, it was a Demas. Oh, Bible. Oh, yeah. I know what you're talking about.

Oh, yeah. Yeah, that's right. Yeah, he's working with Paul.

Yeah. So then, before then, he's working with Paul. He took off.

I was assuming. Okay, let's go over this. Jesus said he will lose none.

So can he lose any? So then, if he can't lose any,

Demas isn't lost. Oh, then he never was saved. 1

John 2 .19, they went out from us because they never were of us. If they had been of us, they would have remained.

What does that say? 1 John 5 .5? Oh, yeah.

Blessed are those who are saved on the day of judgment. Yep. Right.

God intervenes. Here's another thing, a follow -up question. I like to ask people who say they can lose their salvation, who say they can, and I'll say, you can lose it?

Oh, yes. What do you do to keep it? Well, you've got to be faithful. You've got to go to church. You can't watch movies, whatever.

You can't listen to Matt Slick preach, whatever it might be. They have a list of things you can't do and you've got to do. Now, I'm being a little ridiculous, but the point is, you know what, there are people who say you can lose your salvation, well, then you keep it by what you do.

If you can lose it by what you do, you keep it by what you do. It's all right.

No, it's okay. No, it's no big deal. What's the point of repentance, confession, baptism?

Repentance is something we should do because it's the right thing to do. Confession, because God commands it, for one thing, so that sin, we don't want sin to abound now, do we, as redeemed people.

We don't want, I got you. We can't lose our salvation. Therefore, we should not sin that grace may abound because we've been redeemed.

We're made new creatures, 2 Corinthians 5, 17. We're born again. The Lord God indwells us.

And because of that, we don't want to sin. We're honoring God because we're redeemed. Yeah.

But we don't want to try and keep our place with God by being good.

Then your salvation depends on your goodness. Okay. Logically to you, you know, does not make sense to then say, confess, repent, be baptized.

Well, don't think. Don't make the mistake of thinking because you're redeemed that that's all it is.

God doesn't save us to put us as a trophy, polished trophy on a shelf.

We don't do anything. He saves us so that he can use us for his glory. And he doesn't make us robots.

He frees us. And so he says, stop sinning. And we're redeemed.

But it doesn't mean we're perfect. It doesn't mean that we can't screw up. Hang around with me in 20 seconds, you'll find that's true.

The thing is that he wants us to repent. He commands everyone ever to repent, but he grants repentance.

Second Timothy 225. And the reason he requires it of people is because he's the standard. Be holy for I am holy.

First Peter 116. Whether or not we're able to do it is irrelevant to the obligation that it's the right thing to do.

Whether or not we're able to is irrelevant to whether or not it's the right thing to do. God is a standard of righteousness, so we should be righteous.

He doesn't want us to sin, so we ought to repent. We ought to believe. But he grants that we believe even though we ought to believe.

He grants us repentance even though we're supposed to repent. He does these things. So what we say is that we can't lose our salvation, but it doesn't mean it's okay to go out and sin.

Romans 6 1 and 2 talks about that. Shall we sin that grace may abound? May never be. For how shall we who have died to sin still live in it?

If Paul taught that you could lose your salvation, he wouldn't be saying that. Because you raise the same objection

Paul the Apostle is reaching. So we just go sin all we want then if we're saved? Why repent? Why this?

Why that? That you could lose your salvation?

So Paul can't contradict Jesus who says you can't lose it. He will not lose any.

What I would do is go through and read John 6 37 -40. Study it. John 6 37 -40.

Just read that pericope and just study it. We'll talk about it another time. I know

I'm awesome. And I'm humble. And good looking. And everything. That's right.

These guys are my dissenters. Don't say that to him. That's right. You've got to put up with me.

That's right. I hope my wife is hearing all this so she can go. Too late.

Dang it. It was on record. It's on record. You said that I was awesome.

That's what he said. He said it. I've got to be nice. As long as it's not heretical.

That's right. Anybody else? People are leaving. No? A little bit more.

No? It's getting late for you guys too. I know you've got to get up and go to work and everything. But 930 here. Every man warrior book?

No. I haven't heard of it. Or know enough about it or whatever. I may have heard about it but I don't remember. What? I am not a dispensationalist because God works covenantally.

Old covenant, new covenant. Old testament, new testament. God works covenantally because covenant is based upon his word.

A dispensation, in my opinion, is a man -developed way of dividing history and saying that God works in different modes and different styles and different ways and different times.

I don't believe so. We're always justified by faith alone and Christ alone. Before the cross and after the cross. Covenantally.

Covenantally. That's a super short version of stuff. Yeah? Next? We'll do one more and then we'll bail. Cody Robbins.

Poor guy. Church of Christ family members. Have him call the radio show and we can talk about what he can do because there will be baptismal regeneration issues.

And here, try this. Two verses that he needs to know about this issue of baptismal regeneration.

Acts 2 .38. That's something that they're going to be going to him, throwing at him all the time. Repent, believe, and be baptized in the name of Jesus Christ, and you shall receive the gift of the

Holy Spirit. Ask them, is that a formula? See you, ladies. Is that a formula for salvation?

If he says yes, point out that faith is not mentioned there. Therefore, it's not an issue of salvation.

It's not a formula for salvation. Furthermore, he then needs to go to Acts 10 .44

-48. In Acts 10 .44 -48, people are speaking in tongues, which is a gift, according to 1

Corinthians 2 .14, a gift to the Christian church, operated by the Holy Spirit, who indwells believers. They're exalting

God. That means they're glorifying God, which an unbeliever cannot do, 1 Corinthians 2 .14. Then they get baptized, as Peter says, and Peter says, they've already received the

Holy Spirit, just as they have. So what's interesting is they've already received the

Holy Spirit, just as Peter says, and then they get baptized. But in Acts 2 .38, you get baptism and then receive the

Holy Spirit. So ask your friend, ask your

Church of Christ people, to harmonize those two sections of Scripture. Why is the order reversed?

Yes? You're Church of Christ? Good. Yeah. Yeah.

For what? We'll talk afterwards. Baptism is not necessary for salvation.

I know what 1 Peter 3 .21 says. We can get into all that. And Acts 22 .16 and some other stuff. Yes. I'll tell you about that.

We'll talk about that. Just hold on. Let me close down so people can go, and I'll just say goodbye, everybody. This was

March 1, Q &A session. I hope you enjoyed it. And on Facebook there, it bailed.

I just got it back going so that we lost the documentation, what the date was and stuff like that here.

But whatever. God bless. We'll see you. See you later. All right.