Review of anti Calvinism Video

You said statements are either true or false. I gave you a statement and you said it doesn't apply. It's not too bad.

So only too bad statements would be either true or false. So is it true that I'm talking to you?

Is it true that it's a true statement that I'm talking to you? Is that true? Yes. Okay. Is it true that babies exist?

Well, I mean, how far do you want to go down the skeptical path? Babies exist. Babies exist. Is that true or is it not the case that it's true?

I mean, if you want to go down the, you know, if you want to be very strict about it, I would be skeptical about it.

Okay. We're done talking. This is Apologetics Live. To answer your questions, your host, from Striving for Eternity Ministries, Andrew Rappaport.

We are live, Apologetics Live, here to answer your most challenging questions about God and the

Bible. We can answer any question that you have about God and the Bible. And if you doubt that, well, just head on over to ApologeticsLive .com

any Thursday night, 8 to 10 Eastern Time. There's a link to join us and give us your most challenging questions.

You can watch at that site as well. You can comment if you go over to, if you head over to YouTube, we have comments that we can receive from there.

We are on the Wisdom app as well. And so, well, we thought we were on the

Wisdom app. I think it just kicked us off. So we'll try that again. So we're on the

Wisdom app. Let's see. Tap to stop recording. Well, I guess we are, just we're not have any questions up, but that's all right.

So today we're going to be talking about, well, we're going to continually bring in Drew Vonita.

Where are you? Bring yourself in. There we go. I'll bring it. Trying to figure this out.

So, Drew, we're going to finish up. No, let me correct that. Try again.

We'll continue reviewing this video that we have on an anti -Calvinism.

And I see that KT is asking, is that an

Israeli scarf? Yes, it is. That is exactly what it is.

And we got Mike is always wanting to smash the buttons. I don't know what's up with that.

Smash the like button. I mean, we can just press it. We don't have to smash it. Yeah, you don't have to smash it.

Don't be so. And so so someone else is asking, is that thing, that thing, that thing, whatever that thing is, the thing from Jerusalem, the blue and white thing.

Yes. The thing called the scarf, Melissa, the blue and white scarf.

Here, I'll take it off a little bit so you can see it. There you go. For those who are watching, it says

Israel in both English and Hebrew. And actually, on the other side, it's just the difference of the white versus the blue.

So, yeah. So I agree. I like it. I figured I'd wear it.

But there's a lot of Hebrew Israelites here to get upset with me. So you mean you're saying things like you're not a real

Israelite? Yeah. Well, I guess we may not be on wisdom because I'm trying to get on wisdom.

But it's it's it's just not letting it. That's interesting. So maybe we won't do wisdom tonight.

All right. That's done. Technology. Yeah. The technology.

I tried. I tried. Don't blame me. It's wisdom's fault. Let me set that.

All right. So so we're going to we're going to try to continue going through this video that we started because we did it.

We had a listener or watcher who asked us to to review this video and to give a response.

This is a video that it's it's about Romans chapter nine. It's titled

Just don't think about it with Greg Boyd. And so we're going to I mean,

I think it's a pretty good title because I was thoroughly convinced Greg Boyd wasn't thinking about it.

Meaning Calvinism and Romans nine. Right. He really wasn't. And when you watch the video, it's you can tell he has no clue what he's talking about.

Yeah. OK, so here's my debate challenge. Right. I would like to debate anybody on the topic of Calvinism that actually knows what

Calvinism is. Yeah, we'll be waiting all day.

The reality is, if you guys go back, you can see some of the debates I've done on Calvinism. And the one most frustrating thing is that the people who debate against Calvinism, half the time they are

Calvinists. Yeah, I believe you proved that with Ari Fuentes. Yes, that was that was the funniest part of the debate was when

I just went through the definitions of Calvinism without actually giving the labels.

And he was a Calvinist and we congratulated him. He's still, by the way, over a year later, he is still bashing my name.

People over in the Philippines still will tell me, OK, you know, they'll send me video and they send me video.

And he's speaking in the local dialect. And I'm like, yeah, well, I can't figure out what he said. I just hear rap, rap, rapper,

I think is what he calls me, you know. So. So, yeah, so let's let's let me bring up a video and.

And we could we could maybe discuss a video and let's see.

Hey, let's pull this one up and see what what. Let's see what this one is.

Huh? You know, like if they don't want to leave, they have it all packed up things, if it's everything.

OK, tell her we just got an accident, a several car accident.

Yep, that was my Friday night. Right there. Big truck that you saw that I was stopped in traffic car in front of me, stopped in traffic car behind me.

I think they said they stopped in traffic. You know who didn't stop in traffic? The car behind you. A really, really big commercial truck.

Oh, that was what? Four cars. So a truck and a car behind you that hit you, that hit the hit.

Yeah. So the car in front of me had minimal damage. They drove off car behind me.

No car in front of me was from New Jersey, one hour away from going to where they were headed to to do a wine tasting car behind me.

Well, their airbags went off. Their back window was shattered. They were from Virginia, one hour away from their location where they were going to do a tandem bike ride for the weekend.

Yeah. They were now looking at getting towed all the way back to Virginia.

Yeah, that's going to be an expensive tow because they had triple A that only covers 25 miles.

If you have the premier, if you have the if you pay for the extra triple A, I think you can do one hundred and twenty five.

So, yeah, that was that was not so fun. Everyone was OK. Right.

We all walked away. I'm probably the people behind me were cut and bruised.

I think as if you heard in that video, you can hear I'm talking to my my bride. We're headed up to try to take care of packing my daughter up for moving.

And we're just discussing when we can get some stuff done. And then you hear me gasp because though you can't hear the crash,

I heard the crash. I looked in my rearview mirror and I tensed up. And that's,

I guess, the thing you should not do. I tensed up and went as I tensed up that, you know, my whole my back, my neck were just all out of whack.

So still not 100 percent there, but, you know, been doing doing some stuff, icing it and whatnot to try to recover.

So. So, yeah. So sitting in a chair for two hours tonight, I will.

This is painful. I'm just saying. But I do it for you guys. So I hope you appreciate it.

And just think last time Chris and I went over this video, got through the first eight minutes and it lasted two hours.

Yeah. So just what we have to look forward to. So so John is asking, but did you share the gospel with the vehicle behind you?

John, you should know better than to ask that question that way. I share the gospel with the people in front of me and behind me.

And the truck driver and the officer. So, yes, the officer had.

That's why I carry my police. Police lives matter tracks, because a police officer will always take that because they don't know what it is.

I just asked, have you gotten your police lives matter card? And they go, no. OK, here you go. And then

I thank them for their service. All right. So. Let's let us pick up where kind of where you guys left off, this video is is one where.

You guys had started. We're going to try to I do want to be able to play this kind of in its entirety, folks, because I don't want to be accused of misrepresenting or things like this.

I did, as you guys know, my pattern, I did contact the YouTube channel, told them that we would be doing this.

So if they want to come in, they're more than welcome. And so if you guys want to come in, ask any questions, go to Apologize Live dot com.

And from there, you'd be able to join us in the discussion. So that's how you join any week that word, unless we're doing a formal timed debate that that usually takes up the full two hours.

So. All right. Well, let us start again with pick up where we left off with this or roughly where we left off.

So here we go. Commitment to a belief by your willingness to act on it when acting counts.

So if you really believe something, you'll act on it when acting counts. So if I say to the folks in this house, you know, or if I'm in a theater and I say, hey, guys,

I think the building is going to blow up here in two minutes. Well, if I make a beeline for the doorway, that's one indication that I really believe that if I don't make a beeline for the doorway, that's one indication that I don't really believe that because I'm not going to act when acting counts.

So so here's the question is, how do you act on Calvinism? Yeah, exactly.

Every choice I make, I have to act as though it was up to me to make that choice. So I can only illustrate my belief that it's up to me to believe with every choice

I make. I'm acting on the assumption that it's up to me to believe this and to choose this.

So Calvinism is a belief. There's no way to act such that you illustrate your belief that it's not up to you to determine this.

There's no way to illustrate is up to God to determine this. And so. OK, so let's deal with that just a little bit there,

Drew. And I'm going to speed up the video. I hope it won't be too bad for folks. It shouldn't be.

If people if people say, hey, it's too fast, let me know. But this way we can maybe get through more of it.

So just just looking at that. The argument he's making here is you can't act on Calvinism.

So what? That makes it false. Well, part part of the problem is.

And we just Chris and I discussed this last time was his view of Calvinism is that because God has, we'll say predestined salvation.

Therefore, God has also predestined everything else that you do. Right. So the shirt that I wore was

God predestining me to wear this shirt. Correct. And he's he's he's not accounting for that.

When when we're speaking in terms of Calvinism, when we when we talk about God's predestination and election, that is unto salvation.

Right. So the shirt that I wear has no effect on my salvation. But my salvation is something

I cannot choose for myself in my natural state. God must change my heart and then he must draw me to himself.

And and then what happens is what Christ says in John six on John six, I will come to the father.

It's definitive. All whom the father gives me. So there's a giving. They will come to me and those who come to me,

I will never cast out. But now that I will never lose them either. Yeah.

And this is why I said I would love to debate someone that actually understands Calvinism. Now, Greg Boyd here, he claims he used to be a

Calvinist. And this is like late in flowers. Well, I used to be a Calvinist.

Therefore, I'm an expert on something. But everybody points out that you misrepresent the position. Doesn't that concern you?

I mean, it should. If not a single Calvinist is saying that you define

Calvinism correctly, that should concern you. Now, what they're always doing is a branch of Calvin and Greg Boyd's view of Calvinism is called determinism.

Some people would refer to it as hyper Calvinism. And there are some who believe that. I remember my my bride's

Sunday school teacher. He ended up, you know, like he got into Calvinism, but he got into a hyper

Calvinism. I asked him, I said his name was Andrew as well. Said, Andrew, if I just, you know, pull back and cold cock you, just punch you right across the jaw.

Did I do that or did God do that? And his answer was, God did that.

God made you do that. I said, so I have no responsibility in that. He said no. And I basically said,

OK, then I'm done. Like, I'm not going to have any conversation with you because that's just a ridiculous position to be holding.

Because the scripture is clear that we have responsibility. And this is what these guys have to do to make their argument is to build a straw man argument.

Because they can't they can't win the debate being honest with the topic.

Now, the reality is, if you are going to do debate, you should know the opposition's argument well enough that you can debate that side of the argument.

OK, and so that's something that we whenever you're ever going to get into a discussion with someone, a debate with someone, know the argument you're debating.

So what you want to do is hear someone out, know what they believe. Folks, we do that like every week on the show when we have someone come in.

What do I do? I sit there and start asking them what they believe. Right. Right.

And because I want to make sure I take, for example, last week, we had a guy that comes in. He says he wants to defend.

He'll defend Benny Hinn on everything. Everything Benny Hinn does is right. And then we start talking about the prosperity gospel.

I disagree with that. Well, wait a minute. Right. Then all of a sudden we had a problem because it suddenly becomes about what he's believing.

We can't really you know, he's he's now walking away from defending

Benny Hinn on everything. Well, when when he brought up every single text that he brought up, what happened?

All we did was go actually to those texts and say, well, this is what this text says and this is what it means in the context.

And then he goes, OK, I see that. Yeah. He goes, OK, let me read a little before.

Let me read a little after. Oh, yeah. It's not what I thought. OK. Yeah. We could have told you that, you know, and this is what ends up happening.

And I you know, you have people that that will attack a system, but they don't take the time to try to understand what it is they're going after.

Right. And that's the thing. And I should you mentioned, James, I should read. James sent me a message after we did the show last week.

So let me let me. He said, sorry, my phone died. Thanks for having me.

I will study more in context now.

And I command your your double vision to leave your eyes in Jesus's name.

So. So. So there you go. He's he's going to read it in context, but still missed the main part of what we discussed.

OK, so let's pick this up again. But just to be known, can you can we demonstrate and live out

Calvinism? Yes, we can. You know how we do it. We read the Bible. I mean, we seek holiness.

Yeah. Yeah. I mean, when we look at that, can you be holy on your own?

No, you can't. But God can work through you. So there you go.

So let's keep hearing what Greg has to say. At best, I think Calvinism is a pragmatically meaningless belief.

You can't act on it. It's all it's all theoretical. Exactly. Yeah. But there's no way it can make a difference in your behavior.

OK, I was going to make a difference in our behavior. Hmm. Well, I think it can.

You know, Drew, when when I share the gospel, by the way, folks, Drew Drew is in his kitchen locations, and that may explain why he's not drinking his fresca and drinking just water there.

You know, so I'm out of fresca. Oh, I had to grab Sprite. Oh, you know,

I don't know if you know, but I see sometimes in chat when you open a second can of fresca, people are watching that.

I know. It's like he got his second glass. How many how many frescas will he have tonight? It's like it's like a bet.

It's kind of like when I went to I used to go to this all you can eat restaurant for lunch every day. And they would never clear out my plates.

And I never understood why until I found out that the guys in the back placed bets on how many plates of food

I would eat in one hour. So every day I would go in and every day they replaced bets.

But, you know, to say we can't live by Calvinism, it has no it's no no practical way of it's like, well, wait, as we examine it.

When we when I go and I share the gospel with someone, if I was to say what he believes, if I'm going to say, well,

I have to I have to be, you know, completely living it out.

Well, living it out would look like this. If I believe what Greg believes, then I would sit there and keep trying to convince someone into the kingdom over and over and over and over again.

And as a Calvinist, I can sit and share the gospel and say, God, in your hands.

Yeah, and I can leave it to him. That's that's how you live it out. Greg, you live it out by trusting

God to do what God does. It's kind of actually easy to do.

Yeah. And when we understand that I didn't save myself, right, that in in my own flesh,

I would never desire to come to God. When we understand that it was

God who changed me and then we and he grants us repentance, he grants us faith.

When we understand all of those aspects are from God, when we come to him and we are now counted as his child, there is a way we are to live.

And we see it throughout the epistles, right? We see just look, I mean, in the book of Romans, hello, we see high

God theology. And then we see because of this theology. Now, this is how you are to live.

This is how you are to walk in this, how you walk, how you live will demonstrate that you have been born of God.

There you go. Now, we should get, you know, Jason Cave says,

Amen, seeking holiness and striving to become more like our Savior. That's how we live it out.

Now, by the way, was was lost, but now I'm found, says John MacArthur is upset.

You're not drinking Fresca. I'm upset. I'm not drinking. Yeah. I got to settle for Sprite.

If you want to if you guys want to bless Drew, I seriously get order like a case of Fresca and ship it to his house.

You know, actually, better yet, ship it to him via FedEx. So he has to deliver it to his own house, you know.

OK, John says this, which is which brings up a good thing. John says, I'm still trying to understand Calvinism.

That is one reason why I watch this show. Also, Drew Postmeal. He loves tacking that on.

He loves that. But it's a good thing. John has brings a good point. We should have started with. We're saying that that Greg is misrepresenting

Calvinism. Let's give a definition of Calvinism. Now, what I'm going to do is

I want to give kind of the view of the five points of Calvinism pre

John Owen. Because why pre John Owen? Because there's a lot of people that debate over limited atonement.

A lot of that is from John Owen's work, Death of Death. So I want to give a definition that all

Calvinists would be able to hold to. OK, so we look at the five points.

By the way, the five points of Calvinism are five responses to the five points of Arminianism.

And no one knows what the five points of Arminianism is. You know why? Because we're heretics. Yeah, because it wasn't good theology and it didn't stand the test of time.

Right. But every single one of those after the Synod of Dort was kicked out of the church because they were deemed to be heretics.

Interesting. I didn't know that. Neat. Well, because when you take it to its logical conclusion, you arrive at universalism and open theism.

Which Greg Boyd does. And here's the reason I think I'm not surprised by it, I guess, because when you get anybody that gets into a hobby horse theology topic, especially when,

I mean, no one wakes up and says, I think I want to be a heretic when I get older. No, they get into something that they think is either new or maybe nuanced.

They find a way of explaining it. Maybe it's helpful for them to understand other things. But they get on the hobby horse and then they start taking that and making it everywhere.

And when you start doing that and you start reading that into context, into the context of a passage, what ends up happening is people like that start to get into trouble.

They get into trouble because what's happening is that they're starting to see one doctrine above all others.

And they start seeing that doctrine where it isn't. And they start trying to argue for that doctrine where it shouldn't be argued.

And in that case, they start going too far down a rabbit hole. That happens very often.

Okay, so I see that you highlighted something there from Melissa. You must want to talk about that.

I thought you would enjoy this. Well, go ahead. Put it up. Oh, okay.

Melissa says, Fresca is John MacArthur's tears, Drew. It's the holy water of pre -meal truth.

Yes. All right. Good one, Melissa. Good one. And I see the other one you highlighted from Jody.

And we'll get to that because let's first define Calvinism and then answer hers.

So total depravity. Total depravity is not that you before salvation are as wicked as you possibly could be.

The idea of total in total depravity is not talking about the extent of your sinfulness, but the totality of the human being.

In other words, nobody debates whether your mind was affected by the fall.

It was. It's enslaved to sin. I think people realize that. Your emotions.

Same thing. It's the issue of your will. Is your will enslaved to sin from birth?

I mean, was that the effect of the curse in Genesis 3? Yes. Now, in an

Arminian view, in Greg Boyd's view, the answer would be no. So the issue there is that the

Calvinists would say that our total being is affected by the curse of sin.

We're in the Arminian position would say, no, our will is completely free.

So when we speak of a free will, I speak of a will, not a free will. We have a will that's enslaved to sin.

A free will means it has no no influence. And it does have an influence of sin.

And so we don't have a free will. We have a will. Big difference there.

They would argue it's a free will. In other words, we can, in and of ourselves, freely choose

God without him doing any work. That's the distinction when we talk about total depravity.

One of the greatest lines about autonomous free will is from James White's book, the opening of James White's book,

The Potter's Freedom, where he says, does autonomous free will exist? Yes.

God's free will. Yeah. And God has a free will. Because he doesn't have anything influencing him outside of himself.

Right. And so we do not. Adam and Eve did.

I would I could I think I can argue that I could. I think I can argue that we now as believers have one because we now have the

Holy Spirit indwelling us. So but it's still not completely free because, well, we still have you know, we're still influenced by sin and the

Holy Spirit works within us. So the issue of total depravity is the issue of was our will affected by the curse.

OK, now going on to the next one in the in the acronym of TULIP.

Irresistible grace. Wait, no unconditional election. Sorry. Got that wrong.

Unconditional election. So what this is, is dealing with the question of was our election caused by something we did or something that God knew?

Now, what this comes down to is the way that the Armenian would argue is that God elected us before the foundation of the world.

Ephesians one, because of the fact that God looked down the tunnels of time, saw what we would do, and he knew that we would choose him.

And for that reason, he elected us. Lots of problems with that. A lot of problems there, because the purpose of Ephesians one, that text is to say you had nothing to do with your salvation.

That's the very reason he says he elected us before the foundation of the world. The whole purpose of it is to say you had nothing to do with it.

So the danger of it is you're actually taking scripture and getting a complete reverse of what it actually says, all for the purpose of saving your theological system.

This is what I was saying earlier. When you go on to some hobby horse that you have, we have a free will and we're going to prove it's a free will.

And now you have a scripture that says the very opposite of that. What do you do? Well, you find a life saving way to preserve the system.

So you say, well, God did elect you before the foundation of the world because he knew what you would choose.

Now, when you say he looked down the tunnels of time, you now took God and made him a non -eternal being.

He's now bound by time. And when you say he had to look through time to know what decisions you would make, he's no longer omniscient.

Now you start seeing some problems here with this view because all of a sudden God's not omniscient.

He's not eternal. Guess what? He's not God. And he's not all powerful either, because if he knew you wouldn't choose him and you'd go to hell, that there was nothing he could do about it.

Yeah. Yeah. And so it's all for the to save the autonomy of human will.

And I think the reason is, is because, well, people like to praise themselves.

We see that all the time. And I think that it becomes something where it's like, look what I did. But you hear that all the time with that, right?

I chose God. Yeah. When people are talking about this. But experientially you did, right?

Sure. And that's the difference. There's a difference in what we theologically did versus what we, sorry, what we experientially did and what theologically happened.

Theologically, God chose me. Experientially, I chose God. There's a comment here by Dee. She says, we choose according to our nature.

And this is absolutely true. So in my fallen nature apart from Christ, I cannot choose

God. Because as Paul tells us, we don't want God. We don't seek

God. But once God has changed by nature, then

I can choose God because my nature now desires the things of God. So we do choose according to our nature, which is why we need a new nature.

Yeah. So the one that most people have the problem with, a limited atonement. Okay. So limited atonement is really simple.

Most Christians believe in limited atonement to some extent. Okay. The only ones that don't believe in a limited atonement are universalists that believe everyone's going to heaven.

If you believe that anybody is in hell today, you believe the atonement is limited.

Now the only question is how limited and what limits it.

Okay. That becomes the question. Now, we would argue that the atonement is limited, well, to those who believe.

Okay. We could agree with that. But going back to the previous ones, why do they believe?

Because God did a work in them. So where it becomes the biggest sticking point is if you read

John Owen's work, Death of Death, he talks about the limited atonement in the aspect that God died only for the elect.

And this is what you're going to commonly hear when it comes to Calvinism today. Most people will speak about that, that God died only for the elect.

Now, when Drew, you and Chris were on, you guys had this discussion. I think you even brought up 1

John 2 .2. I have a different take than you guys have on that. Right. So I'll address that in a moment.

But the thing is, is that who did Christ die for? Well, I would say that 1

John 2 .2. Let me just bring that up and read that for us.

So it says, And he himself is the propitiation for our sins, and not ours only, but also for the whole world.

Okay. So the issue here is when, well, people say world. Well, that must mean every individual.

Well, not necessarily, because you could use the term world as referring to different groups of people.

And it says whole world. Okay. But still, that could just mean all the nations.

That is a possible reading. So arguing that this is saying that Christ died for every believer by using the term whole world,

I don't think is a good argument because people can rightly point out that whole world can not refer to every individual, but all the nations.

Easy argument. The challenge for me is who's the not us?

Let me read this again. For he himself is the propitiation for our sins, and not ours only.

Well, now we got to figure out who's the ours. Because he's saying that he died for our sin and the not us.

So whoever's the us and the not us. So the question is, who's the us? Now, a lot of people will try to argue this is, he's speaking about Jewish people.

And so this is the Jewish Gentile distinction. Well, I think that's a hard sell to make out of 1

John because, well, 1 John, at the time of 1 John's writing, the Jewish Gentile distinction isn't an issue anymore.

Second, there's nowhere in this book where he's making the issue of the Jewish Gentile distinction.

He is making an issue of Gnosticism, people who were in the church saying they're

Christians, but living a lifestyle that rejects that. Okay, so could this be the

Gnostics? Well, if you just back up one verse, kind of like we said we do here, we just read the context.

My little children. Well, now all you got to do is figure out who he's speaking of as my little children.

He says, my little children, I'm writing these things to you so that you may not sin. And if anyone sins, we have an advocate with the

Father, Jesus Christ, the righteous. And now he gives this caveat to explain Jesus. And he himself is a propitiation for our sins and not our sins only, but also for those of the whole world.

So what I'm going to argue is the us is believers and the not us would be unbelievers.

Now, right off the bat, people are going to say, but wait, you're saying that Jesus died for someone that goes to hell.

I'm going to argue that Jesus's death was sufficient for, and this is how the Puritans would argue, many of them prior to John Owen, but John Owen wouldn't argue this way, maybe, but that what you have is that Christ's death was sufficient for all, efficient for few.

And this is how the atonement is limited. It is not applied to everybody. Christ's death was sufficient for every single human being, but it wasn't applied to everybody.

Yes, that's the same view David Platt holds. A broken clock can be right twice a day.

Okay, so just because David Platt holds to argument in one area and non -biblical ones in others.

But that's a good attempt of poisoning the well fallacy, so I appreciate that. No, but the thing is, we got to deal with what

I got to deal with what I think the text says. And then I got to look at how the system fits the text, not the text fit the system.

That's the thing. And so can I personally say Christ died for all people? Yeah. In the mind of human beings,

I can say that. In the mind of God, well, he knew exactly who he was going to die for.

So John is writing to believers and he's explaining something that from a human level we can understand.

We could say, I believe that Christ died for all people because we don't know who he died for. In the mind of God, he knew exactly who he's going to die for and who is applied to.

And this is the thing that we get stuck on where some people say, well, we're going to be in, it's either got to be one or the other.

That's not the case. It could be both. And so what you have is you have people who reject

Christ and they're going to spend eternity in a lake of fire because of their sin.

Not because of their rejection, by the way. False dichotomy saying that because it's because of their sin that they go to hell to be punished.

It's not because their rejection. So the atonement is limited if you believe anyone's in hell.

Andrew, I'm going to go into the back. I've got to go check on my wife's dad real quick.

Yep. So he just didn't have a good argument against what I was saying.

That's all. So he ditched out now and he probably won't go back and relisten. So, folks, when he gets back in, you'll have to remind him that, you know what

I just said. All right. So I think what you have is and KT is saying,

I think Chris gave Andrew a good response before. I wish he was on here. Well, KT, tag him and tell him to come in, because I don't remember what his response was.

Sorry. But when we look at limited atonement, the big question that people debate is whether Christ died for all, whether we could say

Christ died for you or not. Now, as a human being, I don't have the mind of God.

I believe I can say that. Do I say that? Not really. But I think what we end up seeing is that we can examine these things and look at them to see whether or not, you know, they're at least in the overall what all

Calvinists would hold can, you know, what is the definition that all would hold to?

Well, they would hold to the fact that the atonement is limited in its application.

It's not applied to all people. All right. Let's move on to irresistible grace. Now, this is one where, and I'm spending a lot more time doing this because of the fact that so many people misdefine what

Calvinism is. That's why I'm spending a little bit more time with this. So when we look at this one, what we have to examine is that irresistible grace is the idea that God does a work to bring us to faith.

Okay. Let me give us passage of scripture for this. And this is Philippians 1 .29.

And it says this. For to you, it has been granted for Christ's sake, not only to believe in him, but also to suffer for his sake.

So what this is saying is that God granted belief to you. That's irresistible grace.

How do we resolve this? Well, the way that I resolve this, and if you go to my rap report podcast, just go on podcast app, search for rap with two

Ps, R -A -P -P report, and search for superintending.

It's a bonus episode that I did, and I explain this whole understanding of superintending. What is superintending?

It is the idea we see in the inspiration of scripture that God works through the human authors such that though they chose their own words, everything that they chose is exactly as God intended it to be, such that God gets 100 % of the credit.

Now, no one debates that when it comes to inspiration. We also see that in sanctification, that God works through the human being such that even though they choose to do good works, the very works they do that are called good works are exactly what

God did through them so that God gets all the credit. We can't say we do good works even as a believer.

God does it through us, and so J316 Ministries is saying concurrence.

Yeah, this is a doctrine. This would be a view of the doctrine of concurrence. Sorry, and so what you have with the doctrine of concurrence is this.

The doctrine of concurrence would be that God can use even evil actions like the selling of Joseph by his brothers.

God could use that for good. That's the doctrine of concurrence. God can take evil actions, and he could use it for his own glory.

This is a doctrine. This is kind of the flip side of that. This is the doctrine of superintending. So where the one is dealing with sin, this is good things that happen.

So God can work through human beings to make good choices, and it's the same idea there.

And so I apply that same thinking to the doctrine of regeneration.

So God works through me, so the very choice of me believing in him is exactly as God intended it to be, such that God gets 100 % of the credit.

Can I believe in Jesus completely on my own? Well, not according to Philippians 129

I can't. According to Philippians 129, God had to grant me belief.

And so what you end up seeing is that that is what

God does, so God works through us. That's really what irresistible grace is, is the idea that you and I, when

God works through us, the natural reaction, Drew was talking about the fact that we are going to act within our nature.

But in a simultaneous act, God is changing our nature, such that our nature now is to believe in him.

And it's simultaneous. I know there's some people that want to say there's a millisecond between belief and regeneration and belief, and either way you have a problem.

The Puritans would argue this. One of the Puritans, I think it was Christopher Love, made the case that you can't have somebody who is a unregenerate believer, and you can't have somebody who is a regenerate unbeliever.

Now you think through both of those. If you have a unregenerate believer, they're unregenerate, but they believe.

That's Arminianism. That is that for a millisecond they believe, and for that one millisecond they're a believer, but they're not regenerate yet.

Well, I would argue the same thing can't be done, as so do some of the Puritans, that you can't have a regenerate unbeliever.

You can't have someone that believes and a millisecond later they're regenerate and a millisecond later they're believing.

I say they're simultaneous acts, and so that's the doctrine of superintending. That's what irresistible grace really comes down to, is the idea that God works through us, that the choices we make are exactly as God intended them to be.

All right, the fifth point, and this is the one that most people agree to, is preservation of the saints.

This is the idea that if you really understand what salvation is, it's a work that God does, then who are we to lose it?

Well, we can't. It's the idea, can you lose your salvation? Are we going to persevere no matter what happens?

Even if we sin, are we going to persevere? Okay, well, the question

I have with this, Colossians 2 .14, when did your sin debt get paid?

That's the question I ask people, why? Colossians 2 .14 says, Now, how much of this sin?

Well, we can see this actually in verse 13. I should have read that. All our transgressions.

All of our transgressions. How? Well, verse 14. Every sin we ever do is future to the cross.

So if all of our transgressions were nailed at the cross, when Christ died, if we believe in him and that sin debt was paid at the cross, then how could

God, what, he didn't see what sin you were going to do later? See, it's

Islam that would teach that when you pray the prayer to become a Muslim, that all your previous sins are forgiven, but your future ones, now we're going to see.

Now it's up to God's mercy. That becomes the difference that you start to see here is what you see is that there is a distinction between that and what the

Bible says. The Bible says all your sin was paid at the cross. If all your sin was paid at the cross, then there's no sin for you to still pay for.

This is the issue. So the idea of perseverance is not that we're going to keep ourselves saved.

It's the idea that when you understand the nature of salvation, God saved us, God will keep us saved because he already paid it.

Okay. And so as Melissa is saying here, our sins, I think she meant all our sins are paid for at the cross.

And that's the point. So, okay. So that was the definition. John says, thank you, Andrew, for explaining the five points of Calvinism on learning.

Well, that's, that's what we want to do here. So that explains the five points of Calvinism.

I said, we'd get back to Jody's question. Jody asked the question of open theism. What does open theism mean?

Okay. Open theism is the natural progression. And we're going to hear Greg Boyd talk about this.

Open theism is the natural progression of someone trying to defend God's nature and hold to a free will.

What that means is they end up trying to argue, how can you have

God who he says he paid for all the sins at the cross?

He knows who are his own. He says all of this. And yet somehow he doesn't quite know who's going to be saved.

He has to wait until you make a choice. So then they realize, well, the way they argue is that God is still learning.

So he really isn't omniscient. He doesn't know all things. God learns. You say, well, how, pray tell, does he give so much prophecy in scripture?

The argument they would make is he's a really good guesser. He knows how to guess really well because he knows human nature.

You know, there's an element of that being true. I mean, Satan knows people well. Demons and angels know human beings well.

They've been around for 6 ,000 years observing human beings. They're good at guessing.

Some people just have a natural ability to see people and kind of guess what their behavior is going to be.

And so they're good guessers. But that's the difference than omniscience.

God actually knows everything. So when people talk of open theism, what they're saying is that God is someone who doesn't quite know everything.

And it's all an attempt to save the nature of God because they don't want to have him seem unjust, that he condemns people to hell.

And that's what they're trying to do. They're trying to say that your choice is what saves you, but it's not

God's fault that you would go to hell. God just doesn't know.

He's really good, and he would want to save everybody if he could, but he just doesn't know what you're going to choose.

Well, that starts to get into messing with the nature of God. So that's what open theism is.

Really quick, John asked earlier, question is the five solas of Calvinism.

Well, they're not called five solas of Calvinism. The solas are from the

Reformation, so they're kind of category error there, John. Oh, but here we got

Josiah says, Andrew, you're misguided. Okay, how?

A little bit more information there, Josiah. You're welcome to come on in. He has several in the comments.

Oh, did I miss some? He says, okay, why repent if forgiven forever?

Josiah, I'm guessing you weren't listening to me. So why repent? Because you choose to repent, because God works through you so that the choice you have to repent is exactly as God intended it to be.

So why repent? Because you chose to. Well, we also repent because.

Well, because we recognize our sin before a holy God. That's right. We recognize our sin before a holy

God. So we repent because we have displeased our Lord. That's why we repent.

He asked earlier, I'm going backwards, which is probably bad, but did God create disgusting, wretched humans in our mother's rooms?

No, actually, that's because of Adam. Adam passes on the sin nature in the creation, or the procreation,

I should say. Through one man, sin entered the world, and through sin, death.

Romans 5, 12 and following. Josiah, if you want, you can go to apologeticslive .com.

Come on in, and we can have the discussion. It would be good to do. Let me see if, I don't know where his comments started, and I'm just going backwards, but he said here,

God is small because he cannot do his will unless he prearranges it before he started everything.

Okay, but otherwise, if God is not the sovereign and in control, then

God is very weak, and he can't accomplish his will because humans are more powerful than him and can thwart his will.

So I think Josiah is misguided here. Well, I think, Josiah, here's the thing to think about with this.

Look at your question, because you're talking about the nature of God.

You're saying that, well, we're saying God is small, but then you say he has to prearrange.

When you say prearrange, you put God as a creature that is bound by time. He's no longer eternal in that question.

I'm going to assume he wouldn't argue that way, but the thing is, Josiah, is

God is eternal and omniscient. So there is no prearranging with him.

He knows everything. It's not that he's small because he knows everything.

It's actually he's big because he knows everything. Earlier than that, he says, I don't think God worried about all the credit.

He's in the business of reconciling his creation to himself. Why would he reconcile creation to himself if he's not concerned about the credit?

And when you look through Scripture, you see that God does things for his own glory.

So I really wish he'd come in, because it is hard to respond to text comments like this.

But he says we can't choose because it's all predetermined. I'm at this point, we're almost an hour into the show, and I have to wonder,

Josiah, did you pay attention to the whole show? Because this is the whole thing that we've been saying. The whole reason

I gave the definition of Calvinism is to point out that people like yourself don't have a proper definition of Calvinism.

I gave a definition such that everybody can agree, everyone who would hold to Calvinism.

OK, I tried to give a broad enough view to capture all of it. Now, the issue is, is that we are clearly saying it's not predetermined the way you're using it, that you don't have a choice.

That is a straw man argument. Yes, there are some extremes, but if you want to argue from the extreme,

Josiah, if you want to say that the extreme is what makes the argument, then we would argue you agree with Greg Boyd, that you don't believe

God knows everything, that he just learns things, that you believe everyone's going to heaven.

I doubt you believe that. OK, he said Adam created us.

No, Adam procreated us. We have our nature from Adam.

How does procreation work? Well, God chose to do that in such a way that, you think about it, when an egg and a sperm join, part of that procreation process is not only the sin nature being passed on from father to child, but it's also the fact that you get a spirit.

Where did that come from? Where did that immaterial part of you come from? That's part of the procreation process, just like our sin nature is.

And so there's stuff that goes on that we can't know. Now, he's saying, is it knowledge or predestination?

I've said it a couple times, but I'll say it again. It's God knows all things. He speaks of predestination to speak about the fact that we had nothing to do with our salvation.

That's why he talks of that he elected us before the foundation of the world is to say you had nothing to do with your salvation.

That's what it says. That's the argument. So Josiah asks, how is the sin nature passed on,

Andrew? We already answered this. OK, he's asking this question, but it's already been answered.

We referenced Romans 5. Yeah, but how is it passed on?

The same way the immaterial part of you is passed on from mother and father to child.

How is that passed on? I don't know. But earlier, I missed where it is now, but Josiah said this makes no sense.

Good, then we have the right doctrine. If your theology makes complete sense to you, you should worry.

Because God's greater than our ability to understand him. At some point, we're going to get to things like the doctrine of the

Trinity or how we can have a sin nature passed on from father to child and go, I don't know how it works.

Josiah, if you want to come in. It would be wonderful. Come in and talk to us.

It would be wonderful. It would also be easier. That way you're not having to type after where...

Yeah, that's true. Just go to apologexlive .com. You scroll down to where you see the little duck icon for StreamYard.

It says participate with us or join us, something like that. And you click on that, allow your browser to use your camera.

Mike, I think if you use Chrome browser or Safari or Microsoft Edge, any of those will work.

I think this only works with Chrome, if I'm not mistaken. I think StreamYard only works with Chrome.

No, it'll work with... Well, it works with Chrome, but it also works with the

Mac one, which is Safari because I've done that. I think

I used to use Firefox. Yep, Travis is saying I'm on Firefox. He's backstage.

So, yeah. So, you know, I'm using Brave and it works there.

So, now we kind of gave an overview of what

Calvinism is so that we can deal with that properly now. I know it took a little bit longer, but let's get back to now

Greg Boyd and his view. And the irony is... I sped stuff up a little bit. Folks in the chat, let me know if it's too fast for you.

And if so, we'll slow it down. But we're at the point now where you guys stopped. So, this is going to be new.

So, here we go. Yeah, here we go. So, the way you experience the world, is that too fast, you think?

I think that was a little fast. Okay, I'll slow it down. I know what he said because I've seen the video.

Okay, slow it down. All right. So, you know, this thing, this is...

What's then... The argument Greg Boyd is making is that... Some people are saying too fast.

Okay, that was too slow for me. I listen to podcasts at triple speed.

I listen to text to... I have a thing called Speechify to take text.

And I listen to that at like four and a half times. But basically, he's saying there is that if we experience it, that's his authority.

If we can experience it. That's not the authority. All right.

Let's keep going. Well, hold on. Let me address what he said in that really fast part there.

He said, I don't care what you believe, you're going to live like an open theist. Okay, not true.

Because I believe in the sovereign God. I believe in a

God who is eternal from beginning to end. So, I don't have to live like an open theist.

Now, I may not know in my final being what the future holds.

But I know the God who does. Therefore, I can rest. I can have peace. And I can rely upon him.

Now, London 1689 is here. But it says Dice is not connected.

So, I'll read what he put in the chat. By the way, Drew, some people are saying you're breaking up.

I didn't hear it. But just, you know, time to go talk to your parents and kick them off the streaming.

Stop streaming those videos. All right. So, London 1689 says,

Brothers, I'm still learning this. But help me understand, how does election work if there's so much language in the

Bible like, choose this day who you will serve. All right. First off,

I'm very confused, Drew. Someone is going to go by the name

London 1689 and then ask a question like that.

I admit, I'm confused. Lone and the Confession of Faith says. I was too.

Okay. So, I try to explain this. I argue that you do choose.

Because God works through you in that choice. And so, the choice you made is exactly what

God intended you to make. And therefore, God did work.

God gets all the credit. So, I would say, especially as it pertains to this phrasing, choose this day who you will serve, right?

We've seen this before in Scripture talking about you can't serve two masters, right?

Money or God. And so, it's a saying about wisdom, right?

Okay. Now, you can only serve one master. So, you can't be all about Christ but all about accumulating wealth at the same time.

And you can't be all about accumulating wealth and focus on Christ at the same time.

One's going to take precedence over the other. So, you must choose, and you must choose wisely,

Christ or material possessions. Now, it's not saying material possessions are bad. It's saying one's going to end up consuming you.

Which one do you want to consume you? So, choose wisely. Either the money, which is the root of all evil, that Christ is, or Christ.

Okay, and I'm going to say this. I'm seeing both on Facebook and YouTube, people are saying we're both breaking up, both of us.

That's not good. Which is really strange, because you and I are hearing, we're not hearing it either.

Right. We're hearing each other fine. So, someone's saying that YouTube is troubling us.

Okay. So, Josiah's saying, mind -blowing irrationality.

Well, just come on in. Let's have the discussion. Because you're putting things that I don't even understand.

It needs an explanation. All right, let's do this. Before we get back to this video, at this point, let's take a break from our sponsors, and then since it's the top of the hour,

I see Travis is here, and he had a question. So, we are sponsored by MyPillow.

MyPillow, that is what you're going to need after listening to Greg Lloyd, and to put around your ears.

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Use the promo code SFE, that stands for Striving For Eternity, so that you can get yourself the discount that they offer, and it lets them know you heard about them here, so that, well, they keep supporting us, which we do appreciate.

All right. With that, let me bring Travis in. Travis, I know you had a question.

It's kind of going to be along the same lines as some of this discussion, because it kind of fits with it.

So, go for it. What's your question? Yeah, so it's kind of the same, but opposite,

I guess, in a sense. I've been talking with a friend who's in conversations with someone who follows or believes in the free grace movement.

And so, when we're talking about the idea of choose this day who you will serve, it's almost the exact opposite idea of that, in that they're saying that all that's necessary for salvation, specifically justification, is faith.

There is no need to follow up with obedience.

And I was just curious, how would we respond to that biblically?

I had a few ideas. It sounds like they're confusing justification and sanctification.

That's a big part of the conversation. As far as I understand it, they're viewing justification as what makes someone a believer.

That's a very specific terminology that they're using. And sanctification makes someone a disciple.

A disciple is almost like a second step, a second level of Christianity.

Drew, it's almost like you read from my notes. Because I knew the question, and I pulled up my notes on free grace.

And literally, I said this is a confusion between regeneration and sanctification. Which is a common thing you have with a lot of groups where they start arguing either for a works -based salvation or arguing free grace.

What they do is confuse regeneration and sanctification. This is common.

Because the word salvation is used for both. We're being more precise in our language now when we speak of regeneration, justification, sanctification, glorification.

These are more precise terms that the word salvation is a general term to refer to all of them.

And so we want to be a little bit more precise in how we speak and use that more precise language like regeneration, sanctification.

So, regeneration is a point in time where someone goes from being an enemy of God to a child of God.

In the mind of man. Mind of God, you are always a child of God. Right?

Because he knows all things. This is where we have to realize that this is continuing with the discussion we're having like we were having with Josiah.

The issue here is that we have language that is written for men's understanding because we can't understand the mind of God.

And then we have things where God tries to explain things to us that we can't comprehend. So, he has to use language that would try to communicate that.

So, this is where there's often confusion between these. Okay? Is this confusion between regeneration and sanctification.

Okay? So, I said in my notes, the issue with free grace is not over sanctification but regeneration.

To make the argument over sanctification is to confuse the issue.

What they're usually doing is making arguments of like anyone can just, your lifestyle doesn't matter.

You just say, you pray a prayer, you walk an aisle, whatever, and just having that I want to believe is enough.

You know, a great example of what that is is in free pilgrim's progress. In the book

Pilgrim's Progress, there's a man called Ignorance. And Ignorance is a great example of free grace.

Ignorance goes through life, says, Hey, look at me, I'm a believer. I didn't go through the slew of despond.

I didn't go through all these tasks that you had to go through,

Christian. And at the end, he goes, Hey, look, I got to the celestial kingdom and he didn't get there from following the

Bible, which is what it's illustrated. He gets there and when he gets to the pearly gates, he discovers that he's not allowed in and just his belief alone, his desire to go to heaven wasn't enough.

And he's cast into hell from the gates of heaven. And what that's picturing is the fact that there are people like those in the free grace that are described in Pilgrim's Progress by the man

Ignorance. They just have a desire to be in heaven, but the desire is not enough.

And so they start to say, Okay, you have people who are saved and they desire it, but then you become a disciple.

You start to grow. And so what are they saying? They're saying that there's people who are saved, but not growing, right?

Well, that would be abnormal. I mean, if you have a child that's not growing, you have a five -year -old.

This is a real case that I know. Someone, a friend of mine's adopted a child. He was five years old. He had still been in diapers, still drinking out of a bottle, still in a crib.

If you looked at that child, you thought he was a two -year -old. He was underdeveloped. He couldn't speak because he was neglected.

He was abused. That wasn't normal. And when he got adopted, they started to care for him, feed him properly.

Now he's fine. He outgrew those things because that's the natural progression. This is abnormal to say that you have someone that could be saved, but they're not doing the things that a

Christian would do. This is the whole book of James. The whole book of James. If you're a

Christian, this is the things you do. And so the argument, as far as I understood it, and I think this is just a matter,

I guess apologetically, this is my question, is they're arguing that James is dealing specifically with sanctification, which

I don't even really understand how you get there. But at what point, as you're walking someone through the text,

I mean, the first thing I thought of was faith without quirks is dead. At what point do you walk away from a conversation if someone's not willing to take something at such plain language, such clear interpretation?

First off, James is talking about sanctification. He's talking about if you profess to be a believer, this is the way you would live.

That's the whole thing of the verse you quoted in James 2. If you say you know

Christ, but you have no works, what's the expectation? That if you're regenerated, you have works that match it.

That's it. That's the evidence. The fruit will match the root. Yeah. Because the idea is that every believer will act this way.

Every believer will have some fruit in their life. If they have no fruit, his whole argument is you got a dead faith.

Which means you were never saved in the first place, right? Exactly. Exactly. Yeah. Now, when do you cut it off?

That is a really difficult thing. So I used to say when I was younger, I remember in an elders meeting when

I was a very young, I was like in my probably my 30s, my young 30s, like 32, 33.

I remember we had this debate, discussion, whatever you want to say in an elders meeting. When do you give up on someone with counseling?

Like when do you just say enough, I'm not, I'm cutting it off. And I had one of the older, he was like 12 years older than me, 13 years older than me.

And he was arguing that there's a point where you just cut people off. And I was going, no, never.

Like you just keep arguing. You keep, you know, you keep working with them. You keep working with them. And I still remember there was a guy who

I worked with for like two years. He'd call me every week. He'd talk about the problems in his marriage, but he never did anything.

And so I decided finally, I realized like, I don't know if this guy's actually looking for problems or just wants to vent.

Like he, if he wants to look for solutions, I should say. So I gave him a homework assignment, great homework assignment folks to do.

If you have someone that's arguing with their spouse, I said to him, I said, this is what I want you to do.

I want you to come up with 25 things that you at least loved about your wife. Maybe you don't love her now, but I want you to come up with a list of 25 things.

And I said, I'm not going to talk to you again about your wife until you finish that list. And if he did 25,

I was going to make him do 25 more until he started realizing there's some things he could love about his wife. He couldn't, he just said,

I can only do three. You know, I said, what are your three? Well, she used to be pretty, but now she's fat and ugly.

I'm like, you're not really helping here. But I realized there's some people that don't want help.

And, and I ended up having, there's a little note that I have that I keep in my desk here before I counsel people for anyone comes over for counseling.

I it's a son I do, but I read this note just so I remind myself.

And it says, don't let people who cannot manage their own time, manage yours.

And it's a reminder to me that there's some people that will just argue, argue, argue, argue, argue. When we're out on the streets,

I call them a TW a time waster. I mean, they'll take your entire day and they'll argue the next day.

The same thing, because they don't care what you're saying. They're not looking to hear what you're saying.

They're just wasting their time because they want to, they want to convince you they're right. And you have those types of people.

So when do you cut it off? That's a really tough one, Travis. Like, I don't, I don't know.

It depends on the person. Depends how close you are to the person. I mean, I'm just going to give you things to consider.

Right. And then you have to make the decision, but how close are you? Are they a family member?

Are they like a best friend? Are they someone you see every week? Is it someone from your church? What kind of relationship do you have?

How close is it? Another thing you want to examine is how receptive are they?

I mean, are you just, you're saying things you're going and do. I remember being asked to, someone had a different view of, of Matthew 18.

He argued that the two witnesses had to be eyewitnesses to the, to the sin.

And he gave me a paper. They said, this proves it. And I spent nine or 10 hours reading through this guy's paper, looking through the

Greek, looking up all the verses, examining everything. And I told the guy,

I'll do this. But when, when I'm done studying this, I want to sit down and talk with you and we'll review it.

Well, I spent all those hours and we got done and he's like, well, nothing you say is going to change my mind.

Well, now I feel like I've just wasted nine or 10 hours that I could have been spent doing something else. Right.

And that's the thing. Well, we saw that with, uh, Ben, Ben, right?

Yeah. He sent all these things that he wanted us to discuss. That's that, most of that's just going to be a waste of our time because what happened when we brought him on the show, he didn't want to hear any of it.

Yeah. And, and the fact is what shut it down. I just, I gave him one rabbi that had a different view of a well -known rabbi that basically said that, you know, yes,

Alma, the word for virgin in Isaiah refers to a virgin. He said no rabbi would do that.

Yeah. Well, there was one, a well -known one. Um, and, and that just shut him down.

And then he just, you know, that, that ended it. So you have to decide, you got to look at what, you know, examine,

Hey, are you married? Do you have a, you know, if you're single and you got the time, go for it. You know, if you're married with, you know, a bunch of children and they're young and they need your time and you're busy, you're working, you're active in the church, you're maybe, maybe you don't have the time to work with that.

This is to go back to what Greg Boyd said. This is how Calvinism works its way out because what

I could do in a situation like that, Hey, if I'm too busy, I can look at this and say,

God is sovereign and God can work in that person if he wants to through someone else, if that's what he wants to do, you know?

So that's, that becomes the thing that, you know, you, you have to weigh all these different things.

Look, it would be really good if God just said for everything in life, here, do this, don't do this, marry this person, don't marry that person.

I mean, wouldn't that be so easy? It'd be, it'd be so much better, but you know, legalism and liberality, both are easy legalism is here's a list of do's and don'ts.

Liberality is the free grace. It's you could do whatever you want, but what the Bible tells us is we have to actually do the harder thing of thinking through these things.

We have to take this everything into account and examine it. And that's the thing that we end up having to do.

It's not just a simple decision. It's a matter of digging into everything and examining it and saying, okay, what does the scripture want for us to do?

It's, people will sit there and say, well, what's your priority? Is it, is it God, family, church,

God, church, family, well, the priority is God. It's God.

And after that, everything else fits in. I mean, God may have your work being the most prior priority at one moment, and maybe it's your family.

Maybe it's the person you just met on the street. I mean, there's different things.

And you need to examine your life where you're at right now and what's happening and take all that into account.

I don't know if that's helpful or just confuses you more. No, I'm tracking pretty well with you.

If I was to jump back to the free grace specifically, you said

I, I'm kind of a third party to the conversation anyway. I'm more than a friend as they're walking through it.

So that's already on my step removed from everything. Well, have you, have you, your friend, have you invite your friend in here for next week?

I could try. But so James is obviously great and have to do some more digging there.

One of the places that I've looked at was Romans 8 .30. Those whom he predestined, he also called.

Those whom he called, he also justified. And those whom he justified, he also glorified. And so all those things have already happened.

They're tied together. They're not really, they're distinct, but also inseparable to a degree.

I thought of what else? There were all kinds of things zooming around my mind earlier as I was thinking through this.

First Corinthians six, where he says that nine, do not know that the unrighteous will not inherit the kingdom.

And then jumping down to 11, such were some of you have pre -listed those things of unrighteousness.

You were watched, you were sanctified, you were justified. But do you guys have any other passages or thoughts of areas where we might turn to just to show the distinction between justification and sanctification?

Well, I'm also sure they work together. You've got Philippians one verse 27, which speaks about how we conduct ourselves.

Paul says, only conduct yourself, yourselves in a manner worthy of the gospel of Christ.

Right? So, so that part, how we live, how we live is to show that we have been saved by the gospel of Christ.

So that whether I come and see you or remain absent,

I will hear of you, or I will hear of you that you are standing firm in one spirit with one mind striving together for the faith of the gospel, how we conduct ourselves both in our private life and in the, in the church corporate is an indication that the gospel has changed us.

It's more of that fruit will match the root, right? I, because the gospel has changed me and saved me.

I therefore live differently. I conduct myself differently. I think differently. I speak differently.

I treat others differently. So there's a, I mean, that's one place.

And I mean, I really, you can go through all the letters of Paul because all the letters of Paul I, I explained it earlier.

I'm not sure if you caught it, but Paul's letters are split in half. You have high

God theology in the first half. And then the second half is the practical application. This is therefore how you live because of God, because of what

Christ has done on your behalf, you live this way. And then if we,

I mean, you've already said it. If we don't live this way, that's an indication that we have not been saved.

There has to be fruit that demonstrates the root problem.

My nature has been changed. Yeah. I mean, there's a lot of books you can go to first,

John, James, those, the whole books mentioned Philippians.

You have a great passage you brought up in, in first Corinthians six, nine, because in 11, because it shows when you're converted, these things change.

Okay. Second, second Corinthians five would be another that where Drew referenced this earlier.

You are a new creation. You go to all of the things where it talks about the fruit of the spirit.

When you see the fruit of spirit, what's just before it, the fruits of the flesh, it's making that distinction.

And you have that in Ephesians. You have that in Colossians. I was just going to say Ephesians four talks about the new self.

Yeah. No, you mentioned first John and first John six is one of the, another verse that I was in earlier.

And apparently the interpretation of that verse is that a fellowship with God is separated from like, you can not have fellowship with God, but be saved in a permanent sense, if that makes sense.

So they're separating the idea of fellowship with God from salvation entirely. Yeah. Well, that's because they're at, at its core, the free grace movement has an issue with the definition of regeneration of salvation.

What, what that means to be saved. So that's at the core. And if you get that wrong, then everything else is a problem.

I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I've got to read this because it's so good out of Ephesians four.

Starting in verse 17. So this I say and affirm together with the

Lord that you walk no longer just as the Gentiles also walk in the futility of their mind being darkened in their understanding, excluded from the life of God because of their ignorance.

Andrew, hello. You mentioned Pilgrim's Progress and ignorance that is in them because of their hardness of their heart 19 and they having become callous, have given themselves over to sensualities for the practice of every kind of impurity and greediness.

But you did not learn Christ this way. If indeed you have heard him and have been taught in him, just as truth is in Jesus, that in reference to your former manner of life, right?

The old you lay aside the old self, which is being corrupted in accordance with the lust of deceit and that you be renewed in the spirit of your mind and you put on the new self, which is in the likeness of God has been created in righteousness and holiness in truth.

That is the Christian walk and how we are to live. Yeah. So I, I have to go here.

My wife's just getting home, but I can throw one more question at you guys. The understanding of the good news of the gospel itself seems to be accurate for at least this individual.

They understand that they're saved by faith alone. So at what point does this become an issue of salvation for the people that believe this, that are pursuing discipleship that are pursuing that, that growth, if they don't believe that others need to be pursuing that same obedience?

Yeah. I would, I would be concerned with what kind of discipleship you're going to get if you're in an environment like that.

Right. That's what I was thinking. You know, because if you're, you're not going to get good teaching and therefore you won't be discipled well in an environment like that.

So, but I would assume that, I mean, a person could be saved with that basic understanding.

A person could be saved in the Mormon church. A person could be saved in a Catholic church, not because of their beliefs, but apart from their beliefs.

In spite of their beliefs. Yeah. You know, Dee says this and she's right, is free grace equals no lordship salvation.

And what that means is that that's the whole debate. Is God Lord or are we

Lord? Like God, God does everything he can just hoping that we'll just come to him. And then it's like, he just really wants to have fellowship with us because we're so special.

And he just sits back and waiting. Right. And meanwhile, it's all about what we do.

And it makes man sovereign and God subservient. And again, it's kind of like a, from my understanding and I, I'd heard a little bit of this before.

I'd been introduced to the idea of lordship salvation that I'm not totally unfamiliar, but what

I is new to me is the idea of this being kind of a two tiered system. Whereas the, the new believer that's justified, but isn't pursuing any kind of, or isn't being sanctified is, doesn't have

Christ as Lord, but then you become a disciple when you choose to make Christ the

Lord. Christ is Lord, whether you make him Lord or not. The reality is the, the thing is, is that when, when people make the arguments like that, that we have to make him

Lord, it, it, it's saying like God can't do his, what he can't be sovereign.

He needs us, right? It, that's why I said it makes a sovereign human and a lower

God, right? This is the issue. So I hope that was helpful.

I appreciate your guys's time. All right. No problem. Thanks. And we'll, hopefully we'll see your friend in next week.

All right. So, uh, just to get to some of the, the questions, I know we, we got a total of, uh, what, 10, 20 seconds past where you guys went last week in the video.

So we'll torture people with it some more. All right. So let, let, um, there was this, that, uh,

Josiah said to someone really, oh, Toro, uh, you might want to read it again.

Maybe, maybe Andrew can read and explain the position. I don't, I missed whatever was being referred to.

So, um, I think, uh, D might have to correct me if I'm wrong, but I think it's, uh,

Jeremiah 18 and Paul's use of Jeremiah 18 and Romans nine, as far as the potter and the clay.

Okay. All right. We might look at that. Now, first off, uh, Josiah says you seem to love the

Gnostic God, Andrew. Wait, do you guys hear those crickets?

I have no idea what he's talking about. I, I think I even argued against Gnosticism.

Well, I didn't completely, but referring to first John. Now let's, let's, you know, people are asking is, you know,

Josiah backstage. Is he here? He was encouraged to come in. People are accusing Josiah of being a keyboard warrior.

Let me define keyboard warrior for folks. Keyboard warrior. Someone who talks really tough behind a keyboard, but doesn't show up.

I mean, Josiah type this. I would love to come on the show. Okay. I don't see him on the bottom.

I don't see him. I mean, yeah, we're, we're, as we're wrapping up and then he'll come in, like just when we're wrapping up to say, see, you guys ended the show.

Uh, when I came in, everyone, they were being mean to me. Um, yeah.

Josiah, if you want to come in, come in. We, we've, we've said this for like an hour now to you. So there's nothing stopping you from coming in, but you, so if you don't come in,

I'm going to assume you are nothing more than a keyboard warrior, but, uh, we, we can pick this up when we pick up the video again, probably next week.

And, and, um, but yeah, so, so let's get, there were some questions that were asked, uh, earlier.

So let's get to some of these that we had. No, they first deal with, um, John's cause it was kind of in, in sync with the topics.

John asked a question, many Christian leaders in the church, sadly later in life have rejected

God. They had to, they had to save knowledge. However, rejected their salvation.

So I think it means they had to say, no saving knowledge. Yeah. Yeah. I would argue they didn't have saving knowledge by the fact that they rejected.

So do we have a passage of scripture for that? Yes, we do. Uh, first John, uh, two 19.

Um, if I can type that, cause I want to read it for you. Second, uh, first John two 19 says they went out from us, but they were not really of us.

For they had for, if they had been of us, they would have remained with us.

They went out so that it would be shown that they are not of us.

This is a classic passage to use to sh to show that. I mean, we talked earlier about preservation of the saints.

This shows that if someone is saved, they remain with the church.

They don't walk out. They don't leave us. That's the evidence.

The fact that someone rejects Christ later in life is evidence that they are a false convert.

They are a hypocrite that stopped pretending. Now, much of the Bible talks about hypocrisy, much of the new

Testament specifically, much of the, even though they may have the knowledge of what it means to be saved, doesn't mean they possess it.

This is the whole argument James is making. If someone professes, they say they have saving faith, but they don't have the works that go along with saving faith, then their faith is dead because it doesn't have the works.

So first John two 19 is the passage to show that if they went out from among us, it's to expose.

They were never of us. Yeah. Christ talked more about hell than heaven.

Christ talked about money more than heaven and hell combined. But Christ talked about something more than heaven, hell, and money combined.

Hypocrisy. Almost every one of his parables is about hypocrisy, addressing the self -righteous religious leaders and their views.

Okay. And the hypocrisy that they taught because the way they lived and the way they taught were not the same.

And what the Bible says and what the way they lived, not the same. They had a self -righteousness, not a righteousness from God.

This is the thing that we see throughout. So first John two 19 is pointing out that those leaders, even though they may be leaders, they're not saved.

Yeah. I've got another passage here in John 10, beginning in verse 27. This is

Christ. He says, my sheep hear my voice and I know them and they follow me and I give eternal life to them and they will never perish and no one will snatch them out of my hand.

Verse 29, my father who has given them to me. So you're given by the father.

My father who has given them to me is greater than all. And no one is able to snatch them out of the father's hand.

There you go. Yeah. So, uh, another question that I had here for, from us from, this is from early on.

Actually, this is from 10 minutes into the show, but, uh, D had asked, uh, what would you say to a transgender supporter who uses

Matthew 19, 20 and the eunuchs as a proof text. So let's go to Matthew 12, 19, 12, 19, 12.

Sorry. I said 20 and I was wrong. Thank you. So Matthew 19, 12 says for, there are eunuchs who were born that way from their mother's room.

And there are eunuchs who were made eunuchs by men. And there are also eunuchs who made themselves eunuchs for the sake of the kingdom of heaven.

He is he who is able to accept it. Let him accept this.

Okay. So let's first look big picture of the verse. Big picture of the verse is talking about being willing to accept life's situation, no matter how it happens, whether you're born a certain way, whether you're, whether you're, uh, um, uh, made that way by people make yourself that way.

Uh, you accept the state of life. Now, what is the eunuch referring to?

Is this referring to transgenderism, sexuality, things like that?

Well, actually let's back up and read what it's referring to. Okay. What you have here, if you start, you know, at, at let's see, verse three, some

Pharisees came to Jesus, testing him and asking, is it lawful for a man to divorce his wife for any reason at all?

So what's the context about divorce? That's the context. So when we talk about the eunuch, the eunuch is, that's being referred to is, is dealing with the fact of people who are going to be, who are divorced.

And the whole issue is, do they stay that way or not? Okay. Cause he goes on to explain,

Jesus says, and he answered them. Have you not read that? He who created them from the beginning male and female.

So if a transgender is going to argue for this as a proof text, the context refutes the proof text, just saying he made them in the beginning, male and female.

He, there's nothing else. There's no 52 other genders that he has there, right?

Verse five. And he said, for this reason, a man shall leave his father and mother be joined to his wife and they shall become one flesh.

So they are no longer two, but one flesh. What therefore God has joined together.

Let no man separate. They said to him, why did

Moses command to give her a certificate of divorce and send her away?

And that's kind of interesting because Moses didn't command it. He allowed it.

Right? Um, so Jesus says in verse eight, he said to him, because of your hardness of heart,

Moses permitted you to divorce your wives. But from the beginning, this was not the way.

So if they're going to argue, the eunuchs is, we should as a proof text to say, you can live any way you can live as a transgender.

He's arguing that this was not God's plan. It's because of the hardness of their heart that he allowed this.

Right? And I say to you, verse nine, I say to you, whoever divorces his wife, except for immorality and marries another woman commits adultery.

The disciple said to him, if the relationship of the man with his wife is like this, it's better not to marry.

What are they saying? If you can't easily just change, then you better be careful who you marry.

Cause you make it, you're stuck in that, right? That's the, that's what the disciples are getting.

The point of that, right? Verse 11, but he said to them, not all men can accept this statement, but only those whom it has been given.

What's the statement. The fact that you gotta, you need to accept that marriage is for life.

Then he talks about eunuchs. Well, those eunuchs are an illustration of divorce and remarriage.

That's the context. So no, I don't think this would be a good proof text because the, the context proves the proof text is not a proof text.

It it's because for transgenderism, at least because he made them from the beginning, male and female, and they're to be married male and female.

So yeah, I wouldn't use that as a, in my mind, that wouldn't be a very good proof text to use.

Just saying. So, um, with that, uh,

I think we'll pick up this video again next time, Drew, because we've done a bang up job getting through this.

Lots of progress. We made 20 seconds and that was with me speeding it up. So, uh, we'll, we'll pick this up.

I mean, I do want to, you know, I think it's helpful to go through and, and do, you know, like this one is a good episode just for folks to have a really good handle on how to define

Calvinism, what Calvinism actually is. Because as we go through this, this is, I mean, you saw what

Josiah, you know, if you have to argue against a straw man, you're not doing an honest argument.

Right. Okay. Um, and we have some, we have someone that we haven't seen for a while, but we have chicken man here.

His, his, his, his name tonight is chickens. Unite exclamation point. He's holding up a copy of Potter's freedom from James white, uh, our atomic apologist friend,

John. Hello. Yeah.

You have any questions for tonight or you just wanted to show us your chickens? Um, you know, I wanted to show chickens, but they all went to bed.

So, um, sorry. People are asking, where's the chickens,

John? They were on screen. They were, they were on screen when he was backstage. I did see them. Yeah.

They, they were afraid because I was gonna, you know, call them out for dinner. Yep. Yep.

Are you preparing them for the great chicken wars? Have you seen those videos?

The war on chicken. Uh, you talking about what, like, uh, like, so, so there was this tick tock movement of, okay.

People who had, who raised chickens and they're starting these chicken wars. Okay. Yet another reason on tick tock.

Yeah. I think I know what you're talking about. You're already got the, the huge amount of people be,

I mean, um, one person being chased by like a dozen chicken and then somebody else tries to do, they try even more chickens.

Yeah. Yeah. Well, let's do this. Let's, you know, as far as the show, we talked a lot about what

Calvinism is, but what I think would be good for us to do is to also explain for people, you know, we talked about the nature of the gospel salvation, but how does someone get saved?

What is the gospel? It's very simple. The fact is every single one of us has broken

God's law. Every single one of us. How do I know that? Because God said so, and he knows everything. So I can trust him.

So what we see is that every one of us has broken God's law. Every one of us has sinned.

Every one of us would be found guilty in God's sight, but God made a way of escape. God himself became a man.

He died on a cross 2000 years ago, where all of our sin was nailed to the cross that we could be set free.

we have to repent, turn from trusting ourself as a good person or trusting our works, trust Jesus Christ, trust what he did alone as a payment of sin.

That's what the gospel message is, that Jesus Christ died, was buried and rose from the dead, as vindicating that he has the authority to forgive us of our sins because the debt has been paid.

That's the heart of the message. If you don't know Jesus, if you have not received him, then

I challenge you to consider doing that right where you are right now. Turn from trusting yourself as a good person, trust what he did on that cross as your payment of your sin.

That's the only thing you can trust in, because only God has the ability to forgive your sin. And if you don't do that, then it's going to be something that you are going to be punished for all of eternity.

Why? Because God is infinitely just and holy. To quote Matt Slick, eternity is a long time to be wrong.

That's Matt Slick quoting Andrew Rappaport, by the way. Oh, okay. I thought it was demons with a feather.

Well, that actually was Matt Slick that I stole from him. Oh, okay. I did do that. Folks that don't know the joke there,

Matt Slick and I were on an Apologetics cruise. We were the two keynotes for the conference.

I was the only one out of all the people there that we know of that had paid for internet.

And so Matt Slick, someone asked Matt Slick, why do all these false teachers, they're always together, they always work together.

And Matt just said, demons of a feather flock together. And I said, that's a great line.

And I quickly typed on Facebook. I said, why do all these false teachers work together?

Because demons of a feather flock together. And I quoted it. I said, watch,

Matt Slick will steal my line. And then I said to Matt, I showed him, and I said,

I said it first because I documented it first. So every time we use it,

I give credit where credit is due. But I think, now

Matt may have been saying it longer than we've known each other, but I've been saying that line actually for about 30 years.

Matt might even come up with it. Matt and I have had times where we both think the same things and we both think it's original with us.

So we have had that, but it's not always. So you said you're going to Idaho.

Are you going to go visit him? No, I'm going to go north of him. But that's a good segue into where I'll be because I'm going to be doing quite a bit of traveling, quite a bit of conferences.

So I will be up in Idaho this weekend. I'll be preaching this weekend at Redeemer Bible Church.

I'll actually, Saturday afternoon, four o 'clock, I'll be doing a, and this is in Deer Park, Washington.

It's Redeemer Bible Church. If you're in that area, contact them. I will be doing an evangelism training on Saturday starting at four o 'clock.

Sunday, I will be preaching there. Then I will be up at, and I actually still don't know the name of the camp.

I can't remember the name of it, but I will be doing a family camp up in Sandpoint, Idaho area and dealing with the topics of,

I'll be dealing with the reliability of scripture, the uniqueness of Christianity, and dealing with social justice.

So those will be topics for family camp, great family camp topics, I'm sure. And then

I'll be doing an evangelism outreach on Saturday the 26th all up in Idaho. So we're going to be up there for a bit.

Then September 14th to 17th, I will be flying out. We have a family conference.

This will be, we're going to cover the topics of the marriage relationship, the role of husband, wife, child rearing.

I'll be preaching that Sunday. This is in Mottoon, Illinois.

It's called Providence Church. So if you want to go to the website for that, it's Providence Mottoon, M -A -T -T -O -O -N.

So that's Mottoon. ProvidenceMottoon .com is their website. So if you want to attend that conference.

Then after that, right after that, actually, I'll come back from there and head out to upstate

New York to Adirondacks, the Overcoming Evil Men's Conference. That's at Camp of the

Woods. That is with John Harris from Conversations That Matter. He's going to be running that.

So if you go to its worldview, sorry,

I got that wrong. It's, yeah, it's, oh no, it is right.

WorldviewConversations .com or Conversation .com. And they have the conference there, the

Overcoming Evil Men's Conference. So that is one you want to check out.

That'll be September 30th. Sorry, September 21st to the 24th.

After that, November, the week before Thanksgiving, I'll be in Dallas, Texas. I'll be preaching a couple of different places.

I will be at Grace Life Church, Dallas on Sunday the 12th. I will also, this one's not open to the public,

I doubt, but I'll be preaching at Legacy Classical Christian Academy for their worldview week.

Be covering a bunch of topics for the students there. I think I'm going to maybe teaching at a church in the evenings there.

So if you're in the Dallas area, want to know where I'll be, just reach out to us at strivingforattorney .org.

Info at strivingforattorney .org is the way to email us, and we'll get you those more specifics.

If you're in any of those areas, you're in any of those areas, and you want to find out more, just let us know, and we'll make sure we get you those details.

So with that, I think that this was, I hope, helpful. Someone's saying yahoo to Dallas, Adam.

So Adam, make sure that your emails will get you where that's going to be. I know

Grace Life Church is in Allen, Texas. So that's where I'll be on the 12th.

So yeah, if you guys want, if you, if I'm at, if you come to any of these conferences, please come over to me, just say, hey,

I listen to Apologetics Live, I listen to Rap Report. It does, it means a lot to, you know, for Drew as well, you know, for someone to come up and say, hey,

I watch you on Apologetics Live. It just, it's very encouraging to us. You know, Drew has the unfortunate thing of looking at my ugly face every week to do this, and, you know, he'd like to, he'd like to know it's for some good purpose.

Yeah, well, sometimes I'm blessed, and, you know, I get to do this show by myself. And Andrew might steal your

Bible. Yeah, no, only yours, only yours. Oh, okay, okay.

Yeah. But now that I have ones that are nice, I have one that I'm waiting for when I get down in February.

I'll mention this. The Open Air Theology Conference is February 21 to 24.

That's in Tennessee. I forget the exact name of the town.

And the conference is on why Calvinism? Hmm, sounds like an interesting topic for us tonight.

Go to openairtheology .com to check that one out. But that's in Tennessee.

And that would be one where I'm looking forward to, because Jeffrey Rice will have for me there in February, my nice new

LSB leather, nice premium leather Bible he's making for me.

I'm excited for that. Now, folks, if you are interested in one of these,

I think we may actually make it with a Striving for Eternity stamp on the binding.

So it may be the only one, unless some of you guys want to get one, too. I'll probably promote that afterwards when

I get it. But I hope this was helpful, folks. I hope that you learned a lot. I hope

Josiah comes in the next time we do this. We'll try to pick up the video more next week while I'm out in Idaho.

It'll be nice, because then it's very dark, you see, behind outside the window there for Drew, and yet sunny there for John.

And I will be in the sun enjoying that. So, yeah. Are you going to be in Kootenai at all?

That's where I'll be. That's where I'll be staying, and then I'll be doing everything outside.

So all the travel and speaking, I'll be leaving from Kootenai. Gotcha. So, yeah, that's where I'll be doing.

We've got a bunch of ministry we'll be doing there. So it'll be good. So until next week, just remember to strive to make today an eternal day for the glory of God, and we will see you next time.