44 - Calvinism vs. Arminianism, Part 6 - Free Will and the Commands to Repent and Believe

Well, welcome to the

Striving for Eternity Academy's School of Systematic Theology. We're glad to have you all with us.

We have cheers now? Okay, we have cheers from the crowd. So, it was

Father's Day, so I am wearing my customary Father's Day tie that I got. Now, my children seem to think that I'm not color -coordinated.

I don't know why that would be. Blue goes with purple, doesn't it?

I mean, come on. So my kids get me a tie because, well, basically,

I can't dress myself. But they know better, and they're actually pretty fashionable.

At least my son is very fashionable. So he started dressing up, and now he gets into these cool -looking ties, and he's the only kid,

I think, in high school that goes to school dressed in a suit, or at least when he was in high school.

And so now he gets me these cool ties. It's a cool -looking tie, I think. It probably doesn't go with the purple shirt, though, huh?

No, yeah, I didn't think so. But that's all right. That's all right. I'll wear it for you guys so you can see the cool tie that I got.

Anyway, we are going through in our

Systematic Theology class. As we go through this class, we're in book number two of our class.

If you have a syllabus, you can pull that out. We've actually spent quite a bit of time in just one set of lessons.

Now, we've been following along. We've been in book number two, and that has been what we called

God's Gift to Man, which is dealing with the doctrine of salvation.

Now, in that, we've spent quite a bit of time just on this one lesson, lesson number eight.

It is God's sovereignty and human responsibility. Now, we've spent a lot of time with that, and we've spent that time because this is one that most people tend to get into discussing and debating the issue that's known as Calvinism and Arminianism.

Now, I said that we, from the beginning, that whenever we deal with this, we really need to start back at the beginning, not the beginning of the lesson one, because we're on part six of this lesson.

But, really, the very first lesson when we talked about the attributes of God, because when we have been looking through this issue, as we go through this,

I've actually been laying out an argument for this Calvinism or Arminianism debate from the very first lesson.

Now, some of you may have picked up on it, and many of you probably didn't, and that's okay.

That's why they're all on YouTube for you to watch again. Basically, what it comes down to is that I believe the answer to this debate is resolved within the fact of God's character,

God's attributes. So, if you go back to those early lessons, you'll see that we've actually been building up to why

I believe this debate is really debated frivolously.

Because people, if they start with an understanding of the attributes of God, the character of God, they understand that God is a faithful God, they understand how holy and righteous

He is, then as we look into other doctrines, like sin, and we understand what sin actually is, and we look at the doctrine of man and realize that man has been thoroughly influenced by sin, we end up realizing that we have a case of looking at basically that sin influenced every aspect of us.

It's one of the issues that comes into this debate. But looking at that, we end up realizing that sin is not some frivolous thing.

We all are born with a sin nature. We saw that. We saw that man is influenced by sin, controlled, in fact, enslaved by sin is how the

Scriptures define it. And then we come to this issue of salvation. Now, the area that people get into debate is really because of a couple of things.

One, well quite frankly, when you and I got saved, what did we experience? We experienced us choosing

God, right? That's what we think we did. Then we read to the Scriptures and we see that God chose us and we go, well, how do

I reconcile those two? They don't make sense. Sure they do. And by the end of either this lesson or the next, we hope to clarify that.

Actually, that's clarified in a different doctrine also that we're going to look into later time, which is the doctrine of inspiration.

And I think they interplay. Now when we get into this, I have to say that there's many people who argue over this because they are focusing on one side of an issue or the other and not comparing all the

Scriptures in their context. Now, we've been spending five lessons looking at what's called

Calvinism. Now, I say God's sovereignty is the Calvinist issue. This is

God's sovereignty and human responsibility. It's really a misnomer, I've said that. God's sovereignty is not the

Calvinism position, but it's called that and that's why I put it that way because that is the thing that people see is that they explain

Calvinism by focusing on God's sovereignty versus human responsibility. There were five points.

We looked at total depravity. It's known by an acronym TULIP. Total depravity is the idea that man is influenced even his will by sin.

We looked at unconditional election which is basically the fact that we are chosen by God not by something that we have done but completely by the work of God.

Then we got into limited atonement, one of the most hardest for many people to accept and that's the idea that God either, there's two ways of understanding this.

One is that God on the cross, Jesus Christ when he was on the cross, died only for those who were elect.

That's one way. Another way of viewing it that some view it and I hold to this would be that though God died for all and I'm going to explain that in this lesson what that means.

Though he died for all, the atonement is limited in its application. In other words, we can make an offer of salvation to all people because the offer goes out to all people but it is only applied to those who receive it which they receive it through an irresistible grace.

That doesn't mean that God forces us to be saved against our will. It is the idea that God works through us so that even the faith that we put in him is exactly as he intended it.

Of course, if you are familiar with theology, is the doctrine that I just gave you of inspiration which

I mentioned we'll get to in future lessons on the Bible. The P in the five points is the perseverance of the saints.

This one I have gotten into some heated discussions this week on.

When I discussed that lesson and asked the question can you lose your salvation, we got into a heated debate by some arguing that we must be able to lose our salvation because there is an age of accountability.

The discussion quickly de -evolved from there into babies must be saved.

I need to deal with these things which means I may not actually finish the lesson this week. Then again, there is no big clock over here telling me how much time we got left.

I can go as long as I want. I'm getting the eyes of no you're not.

I'm cutting you off after 50 minutes whether you like it or not. Program Nazis.

All right, so what we have is a case where I want to deal with this because this was something that really shows some of the way people argued.

The argument went like this. Man must be able to lose, and this was different than we usually hear.

People usually argue that you can lose your salvation that, no,

I'm being told, no it is not Yim who monitors the show.

So I haven't done anything with her. I would not, Mr. Ryan of Witness Radio.

Anyway, so the thing that we have is we have this debate that goes on.

Usually people argue you can lose your salvation and they argue it based on a fact of the concept that we will, if we sin enough, we lose our salvation.

This was a different tact and I thought it interesting. This individual argued that we have to be able to lose our salvation because we're born saved and when we reach an age of accountability, we lose that and we're now cannibal.

Now when you ask what verse is that, you get nothing, crickets, crickets.

Why? Well, because there aren't any. This individual actually admitted, well there isn't a

Bible verse, but that doesn't mean it's true, or it doesn't mean it's not true. It's a Jewish tradition.

Then they start arguing that, well, see babies must be able to be saved because David, he said he would see his child again, 1

Samuel 12, where his child, he says, after his child is praying for his child's life and his child dies and he says, my child can't come back to me,

I will go to him. Now that's not saying that David knew by God that he would see his child.

He may have been believing in the Jewish tradition that he would see his child. But it's not from God, it's just accurately recording what

David actually said. There is no verse in Scripture that talks about the state of children, and if all children go to heaven, then how could we ever argue against abortion?

In fact, abortion may be the best thing to do because if unsaved people are aborting their children, there might have been a greater chance that they would stay unsaved, therefore isn't it make more sense to abort them early and let those souls go to heaven?

You see, that would be a problem, wouldn't it? Now, I'm not saying that all children go to hell either, which is what this one person argued for three days now, and I don't know, like 400 comments, and she's still going, arguing that I am arguing that all children go to hell.

I never said that. I said, I don't know. In other words, they could go to hell, they could go to heaven.

Either way, I'm going to trust God. He's a little bit smarter than you and I, and knows just a way bit more, okay?

So I'm not going to trust myself and what I wish the Bible to say.

That's why we have 20 lessons on the school of biblical hermeneutics on how to interpret the Bible. Watch those, because this is the problem.

People start taking the Bible out of context, trying to make it say things it doesn't say because that's what they wish it would say.

The reality is the Bible doesn't answer. God never told us what happens to children when they die. The Bible doesn't say that there is any age of accountability.

And when you start taking things that are not in the Bible and then building a doctrine, you can lose your salvation, and this is the proof of it.

That's scary. And what I kept trying to explain to this person is I'm not going to give someone a false hope and a false assurance that their children go to heaven just because it makes me comfortable or makes them like me better or makes them comfortable.

I'm only going to say what God says and nothing more, nothing less. And if I'm wrong, it's only because I'm wrong in the study of the

Word of God and somewhere I made a mistake. But I'm not going to sit there and say, well,

I really wish the Bible would teach this, so I'm going to say it and I'm going to try to look for a verse to prove it. Because this is how you get into logic like this, well, babies must go to heaven because they're before an age of accountability and since their babies are born saved, therefore they must lose their salvation, therefore we must be able to lose our salvation.

That is some wackiness. And if you read through it, there's not like one Bible verse to support that.

Age of accountability, what verse is that? And they do that to try to prove proof texts really without the text, a doctrine.

That was craziness. But the perseverance of the saints basically says that God will work through us so that we will persevere through any adversity, so we will remain saved.

In other words, God is the one that does that work through us just like salvation. We're saved by God working through us so that the choice we make for Christ is exactly as God intended.

He sanctifies us by working through us so that the very things that we do to make ourselves more like Christ is exactly as God intended and God gets the credit in both cases, 100 % completely for the work.

Just like Scripture, God worked through the human authors so that they would write exactly as God intended and God takes 100 % of the credit.

There's a pattern there. Now, with that said, let us look at human responsibility in our syllabus now.

Now, as we look at this, this is something that we're going to bring up the issue of free will.

Let me just start with this. This really isn't in your notes and this is where the classwork kind of helps.

When we discuss free will, we've actually talked about this several times. We've talked about it in the doctrine of sin, we've talked about it in the doctrine of man, and now we talk about it again in the doctrine of salvation.

We have a will. It is not free until we come to Christ.

Our will, according to Paul in Romans 5 and 6, is enslaved to sin.

According to David, we are conceived with sin. According to Romans 5, we are born with a sin nature that is passed on from Adam on the way down.

Therefore, babies can't be born saved by the way. They have a sin nature just like you and I.

And one of the arguments I would make actually by that, since I brought it up earlier, is the reality is even the baby in the womb knows that God exists.

Now, you and I may not remember anything from the womb, I agree. We may not be able to comprehend what a child in the womb can comprehend, but God says all people know

He exists and all people with a sin nature rebel against Him. Even in the womb, it has been seen a child that is, you know, arching its neck as a sign of protest of things.

So, even in the womb, a child can act selfish. We do not know what a child can comprehend, just saying.

Alright, so, with that, when we get to free will, everybody agrees we have a will and that's the problem.

When people argue for a free will, they're arguing for a will, not the freedom of it.

Everyone agrees, well, not everyone, let me correct it. Most people agree we have a will. There are those, some hyper -Calvinists that would believe in absolute determinism.

In other words, they would believe that we don't have a will, we don't have a choice. We are just puppets.

I'm not arguing for that. But the issue is that we have a will.

I'm arguing whether it's free or not and that's the debate. Is our will free?

Now, those that would take an Arminian position would argue that a will is free and must be free because we have to have the freedom to choose

God apart from God doing anything in us. That's not what we've been learning, is it?

I mean, if you jump into the debate in the Calvinism -Arminianism debate, you know what you experienced.

You experienced you choosing God and you argue from the emotional side, just like that whole debate I was talking about on babies, you know, going to heaven.

It's all emotional. It was all based on, well, you know, actually this case was, it was all based on the fact that one woman who has an autistic son and she feels he can't comprehend salvation, therefore he must be able to go to heaven and it would be wrong to say you don't know.

Don't know how that would be wrong. But I was called evil, cruel, unsaved, mean, and I should never counsel anyone ever because I say

I don't know the mind of God. I fear the person that's going to counsel someone, they think they do know the complete mind of God, just saying.

So, we have to realize that as we look through the Scriptures and we look through our theology, starting at the beginning, what we end up with is the realization that we are born with a sin nature.

We can't argue, I mean, it's crazy to argue that, you know, to sit and say, well, we have a will, therefore we can choose

God, when everything in Scripture says no. Now, the argument they're going to make, let me give you their argument, their argument,

Romans 10, 9 and 10, which is really funny, by the way, if you ever look at the book of Romans, you have

Romans 10, 9 and 10, if I said chapter 9, but you have

Romans 9 which talks all on God's sovereignty, Romans 10 which talks all on human responsibility.

That's the thing. So, what you have is a case, you have a case where the Bible does teach that humans have a responsibility.

So, you end up then realizing that this is taught, but people take one side of an argument and make the whole thing just that issue, and they ignore the verses that we've already looked at on God's sovereignty.

So, what does the Bible say about our will and our responsibility?

Well, there are many, many commands in Scripture to repent and believe, and that's the argument that came out actually with Augustine and Pelagius, is

Augustine actually asked for the Lord to help him obey the laws that God has laid down.

And the reality is, is that in looking at that, we see that God gives us these laws, but we can't uphold all of them.

Now, I know there's the sinless perfectionist guys who argue, yes we can, because you have a law like God says, be holy as I am holy.

Now, can any of us be completely separated from sin like God is?

Not this side of heaven, sorry, and if you say you have no sin, you lie and make

God a liar. That's 1 John. So, I'm not going to call God a liar, sorry.

The reality is that we all continue to sin. We can't be holy as God is holy.

So, there are commands, and this is what Pelagius' argument was, hey, God wouldn't give us commands that we can't keep.

That was his argument. We must be able to keep these things if God commanded them.

And the reality is, is no, God gives us commands as a standard that we cannot keep, and that exposes how much we need

Christ. But let us look. This is the human responsibility side. I know in your syllabus

I said it's the Arminian position. Why did I say that? I said that because of this. I said that because the same reason for the

Calvinist argument is there are cases where people argue that Arminianism is only the human responsibility side.

It's just free will, free will, free will. That's how they argue. It's not.

Actually, if you talk to people that argue against Calvinism, they often believe in God's sovereignty.

In other words, what I find is most people, if they're not debating Calvinism or Arminianism, and you're just having a discussion and talking with them, and they're not using labels and not discussing it as a theological thing, they end up agreeing that God is both sovereign and humans have a responsibility.

So let's look at that, the human responsibility. We'll start with the commands to repent and believe.

Scripture is filled with commands for all, that's your first blank there, all people to repent and believe.

That's your next two blanks, repent and believe. Scripture is filled with commands for all people to repent and believe, not just the elect.

In other words, Scripture doesn't say, if you're elect, repent and believe. Well, how do you know who's the elect?

If they repented and believed. That's how you know. Repentance appears over 55 times in the

New Testament. That's what amazes me. It appears quite a number of times, and yet when you hear people sharing the gospel, they don't want to bring up the issue of repentance.

Why? Well, if you bring up the issue of repentance, you have to discuss what does it mean to repent. It means from turning from one thing to another.

What are you turning from? Well, you're turning from trusting yourself as a good person and your good works, and the punishment of that, which is the punishment of sin, say

I want to talk about sin, the punishment of sin, they don't want to talk about punishment, is the wrath of God. Oops, I don't want to talk about the wrath of God.

So they can't, if they're not going to talk about what you're turning from, they can't talk about repentance, because that means turning from these things to Christ.

So many people leave out the repentance when they discuss this, but man is commanded to repent and believe in order to be saved.

We're commanded. Repentance is a human responsibility. Now, can a man repent completely of his own free will?

Well, wait, he doesn't have a free will. Okay, can man repent completely of his will?

Oh, no, wait, his will is enslaved to sin. He can't choose the things of God, he can only choose the things of self.

Well, that should make it easy. No, he can't. It's a work of God. God does it.

God gets the credit. But let's look at some verses. Acts 3, 19. This is quite clear.

It's an imperative here, repent therefore and turn back, there you get the definition, turn back, that your sins may be blotted out.

So we must repent. We're commanded in that verse to repent.

Acts 17 and verse 30. The times of ignorance, the times of ignorance

God overlooked, but now He commands all people everywhere to repent.

Now let's look at this because in this verse we have some qualifiers and we need to look at these qualifiers so that we can know clearly what's being said.

So the times of ignorance God overlooked, but now, now in the present tense

He's commanding who? He's commanding all people and He's qualifying the all people but He's saying everywhere to repent.

Now, there are two views that people have on this.

God is commanding all and they say all is limited to the elect, so the everywhere means everywhere all around the world.

In other words, God is calling all of the elect out of the world, out of all the tribes and nations and peoples to come to repentance.

That is one view and that is going to be a view held by those who believe in a limited atonement as defined by God dying only for the elect because how do they do, how do they do, how do they answer a verse like this?

Well, they have to limit that because the all can't mean all people if they're limiting salvation or the offer, sorry, of salvation only to the elect and not to all.

So they have a dilemma. This is a thing, please, please, please don't do this.

We're all guilty of it, I know. I'm just as guilty as you, I'm sure many times, I know

I have been in the past, I'm sure I continue to be, but I try very hard not to be. Do not interpret the

Bible by your theology, but let your theology be interpreted by the

Bible. Now, everyone's going to say, oh, my theology is interpreted by the Bible. No, not if you come to a verse that's very clearly talking about all people, every single individual person everywhere in the world and you reinterpret it because of your theological system, okay?

Then in that case, your theological system is interpreting the Word of God. The way we come to it is we say this says all people, but I can't comprehend how that could be all people if not all people are saved.

Then what does that mean when Christ died for all? Doesn't that mean that all would have to be saved?

Are you going to teach universalism? No, but just like where do babies go when they die?

We get to a point where you have to say, I don't know. We're not going to know everything, but what we do know that we should teach.

So that's the reality. We can't go beyond what God says and there's going to be times we're going to go,

I really don't comprehend it. I don't get it. I don't know how to reconcile these. I think we can reconcile them.

We're hopefully going to get this lesson, although I'm getting the eyes like I'm not.

All right, so let us continue with that. Second Peter 3 .9,

the Lord is not slack concerning His promise as some count slackness, but is long -suffering toward us, not willing that any should perish, but that all should come to repentance.

Now this brings up an interesting dilemma. Let's keep this up for a moment. In this verse, what you have is a case where the focus is on God's long -suffering toward people.

In other words, they continue to sin and they continue to sin and God is waiting. God is not judging them right away.

God is not putting people immediately into hell the very first moment they sin. He's long -suffering.

Now the issue that people have is it says He's not willing that any should perish. Now this gets into a debate.

If He's not willing that any should perish, but that all should come to repentance, you get into the question of well, if all means all in this case and it's

God's willing, well, if God wills it, doesn't that mean that it has to happen? Now there are some who say, well, they talk about God's will in a couple of ways.

So they'll talk about God's sovereign will, meaning that, you know, where He is sovereign over all things, but He's not forcing all things, right?

So there is a will in a sense where God is willing something, but He doesn't force it.

And so here you have a case where He is, at least in some, there's two ways again of interpreting this and it's going to be based on, again, on how you're approaching it theologically.

What you have is a case of if God's will there is an absolute will where God is forcing everything, then all that He wants there must be only the elect, okay, because He's willing that they come to repentance, all right?

The other thing is that it could be that God is willing, God desires for all people to come to salvation, come to repentance, but He also knows they won't.

Jesus was willing for Jerusalem to accept Him as Messiah, but He knew they wouldn't.

And there's a case where we know this difference in will. So I think in this passage, it would be fair to interpret that God in His permissive will is allowing people to go against His desires.

He doesn't force them to be saved, okay? And He could still say that for all people, all right?

But I think in there what you see is He is wanting all people to come to repentance. Let's look at another one.

This one's kind of interesting because in this one you have a case where you have a cause and effect, all right?

Romans 10, 9, and 10. Because if you confess with your mouth, now who's doing that?

Well, you and I are. That Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart, now who's doing that?

You and I are. Human responsibility. That God raised Him from the dead, you will be saved.

For with the heart one believes and is justified and with the mouth one confesses and is saved.

So what you have there is a case of you must believe to be saved.

Do you see that? This is why I said earlier, Scripture is filled with commands for all people to repent and believe.

Those were your blanks up there and we're seeing this. If you look at these, these are for all people. We may not be able to comprehend this and satisfactorily work this into a system for some people.

I think I have it worked well enough for me to comprehend, but I rely on more than just looking at the narrow definition of salvation.

I look at broader things like sanctification and inspiration, all right? I've kind of gone over those, but we will go over them again and again and again so that we could finally put to rest this issue.

Maybe, hopefully, I doubt it. Mark 1 .15, Mark 1 .15, and saying, the time is fulfilled and the kingdom of God is at hand.

Look at this. This is actually the imperative in the Greek, repent and believe in the gospel.

That we are commanded, repent and believe in the gospel. Mark 6 .12.

So, they went out and proclaimed that people should repent. People should repent.

And who are the people? Well, I say the people are all people. Let's look at Matthew 3 and 11.

Oh, I don't have Matthew 3 .2. Okay. Oh, I do. Okay. I just didn't see that there.

Sorry. Repent. This is Matthew 3 .2. Repent for the kingdom of heaven is at hand.

That is a command again, an imperative that Jesus said over and over again,

John the Baptist said over and over again, repent for the kingdom of God is at hand. I baptize you with water for repentance, but he who is coming after me is mightier than I, whose sandal

I am not worthy to carry. He will baptize you with the Holy Spirit of fire.

So, you see, we must be baptized in the water of repentance.

We must believe, we must repent. That's what you end up seeing there over and over again.

He's focused on this, on this idea that this is a command for all people.

Now, I'm not, I guess I'm not even going to try to finish this lesson.

I guess that would be fair. I spent five weeks giving the, you know, explaining what Calvinism is.

And let me at least spend two weeks explaining the opposite view, and then I'm going to try to reconcile those.

But the idea that many people end up having, that many try to do, is they will argue here in a case of saying, well, look, this is something that is just, people need to understand.

People have a will, and they can choose God, and they can choose to disobey God, and they can lose their salvation because of it.

Because if you can choose God, you can un -choose God. That's really what's going on, okay?

And the thing here is not that you chose

God, but that God first chose you. That's the issue. God chose you and worked through you so that you chose

God. But it was still your choice to choose God. So, did I choose? Yes, I did. Do I get the credit for choosing?

No, I don't. Why not? Because God chose me. Well, did God choose me, and then after that choosing,

I chose Him? Nope. He chose me at the time, you know, as I chose

Him. But I didn't choose Him. He chose me. It's not making sense.

Good. We have a human responsibility, but it's not in and of part of ourselves.

It is part of God working through us. God does the work of salvation.

100 % and completely. God does not do most of the work and hope that we can do the rest.

When you argue that you can lose your salvation, as one person argued with me, which was really classic.

This was a public discussion. And what happened was someone said that you can lose your salvation.

And I said, if you could lose your salvation, you would lose your salvation. The thing that ended up happening is two different people arguing it, and I said, look, if you get into saying that you can lose your salvation, what you're essentially saying is we're saved by grace, but we maintain our salvation by works.

And one person argued, well, yes, I must continue to be obedient to Christ.

And the moment I fail to do that, I've lost my salvation. So you must maintain your salvation.

God saves you, but then you must maintain it. He said, well, yes. Later on in the discussion, someone else told me

I was wrong for saying that you must maintain your salvation. He said, no one believes that.

I said, look up. Up in the discussion, you'll see someone that did.

And what that ultimately comes down to is a works -righteous system. Now, I want to be careful to define this so that you understand why

I'm saying that. And don't take this out of context. The reason that the belief that you can lose your salvation is a works -righteous system is because you are maintaining your salvation by your works.

You must keep yourself saved. Now, there is one, shall we say, fair or legitimate argument that some will make, not most.

What some will say is that those that lose their salvation are very, very few.

And it is those who were saved at some point and then completely reject the gospel, reject

Christ, and profess to be agnostic or atheist. And so they've given up the faith.

I would say from 1 John that they never had the faith. They went out from among us because they were never of us,

John 2 .19. I would say that when they go out and profess to be atheists, which they're not, they know

God exists, but when they make that profession, it's because they're exposing what was always the case.

Jesus said that many will come to me in that day, and I love this argument. Someone made this, posted this, and I think it's a great argument.

Many will come to me in that day, in Matthew 7, 21 to 23, and say, I've done all these great works. And Jesus said,

I never knew you. Those that make a profession of faith doesn't mean that they are saved.

Christ never knew those people. Okay? So the argument's not that they made a profession and now they claim to be an atheist.

Those are people that Christ says he never knew. But those who argue, so I'm not using the people that argue on that case, because they're not arguing for a works -based system.

They're arguing that someone put a profession of faith, they were saved, and then they totally reject the gospel and deny

God. Now if that's the case, that's different than we must maintain our salvation.

So I'm trying to be clear here and explain the different views that there are, and try to answer each of them.

Okay? So if you're arguing that someone can lose their salvation by apostatizing, by totally rejecting the gospel altogether, that's not really a works -righteous system.

But the answer to that would be that they were never saved in the first place. They're false converts. Christ never knew them.

And they went out from among the church because they were never of the church. Okay? See that in the parables of the soils.

Two of the soils, see they sprout up and they show signs of faith, outward signs of fruit.

But once something comes in the way and they reject it, all they're doing is exposing that they're bad soil.

All right? But those that argue for maintaining salvation, those people, well let me tell you something about those people.

They're going to be people who are arguing for a works -righteous system, and they're going to fall into legalism.

Because some will say it's always got to be a big sin or a repetitive sin, but ultimately they're arguing that if you continue to sin in one way or another, if you continue to sin, then you have lost your salvation, then you must maintain it by your works.

That is a works -righteous system and it leads to legalism. All right? We're going to continue this and pick this up next class because we're just, we're not going to,

I don't want to cut it short. I do, I'm trying very hard to be fair with the different positions here, to not take them out of the context in which they're meant by those proponents of them, and to give a response to them so that we can understand them.

All right? So, I hope that's clear to you. I hope that's helpful.

Oh, that's helpful to those in the audience. Okay, I'm getting applause. If you do, if you want, you can always email us at academy at strivingforeternity .org.

You can always do that. You can pick up a syllabus if you want to get one in our store at store .strivingforeternity

.org. I want to remind you, Jersey Fire is less than a month away. We have some great messages.

We are going to be talking about, we're going to be talking about, let's see, we're going to have a talk on training your family to last for eternity.

We're going to talk about how to pass on to the next generation. We're going to talk about a lot and his wife as examples of husband -wife and parent -child relationships.

We're going to talk about same -sex marriage, how to biblically respond to that and what's wrong with the way many

Christians are doing. Then we're going to talk about some things that are destroying Christian marriages. We also added a new speaker, and you're going to hear it first.

He's a good friend of mine from the Bronx. There's actually believers in the Bronx. Brother Phil Sessa is going to be coming out.

He's a guy I go out on the streets with regularly up in New York. He is going to be talking about how to disciple your family.

This is going to be really good. You know, I got the question this week from a youth group, person leading the youth group that said, is this good for a youth group?

I mean, you're talking about things like family.

Is it good for a youth group? And I said, well, you tell me. Do you think, in this case, if you're a pastor, you understand this.

How much of you, as someone who does counseling, do you think that most of the marriage problems would be solved if people understood what marriage was and what to look for in a mate before they got married?

Yeah. Of course, this is good. And we're dealing with how children should respond to their parents as well.

So it's going to have every aspect of it. Please, please, please make sure you register. You can always get the

CDs, DVDs, MP3s. We're going to be doing both Ohio and Jersey as a combined set. So we want to encourage that.

Now, I do also want to say that I will be on an interview next week immediately after this class on G22 Radio.

This will be my second interview on there. Met Brother Ricky at the Ohio Fire. Was really encouraged by him.

He wanted to know if he could interview me again. And he wants to talk a little bit about my

Jewish faith. And, oh, what's that? Oh, look at that. This is, you know, listen to the

Bible thumping wingnut before it's too late. Yes, we should do that. All right. They just throw that in there.

Sure. What was that, like a house on fire? Oh, OK. Yeah. So in the background, you should listen to the

Bible thumping wingnut show before it's too late. Because your house could be set on fire. Is that the message we're sending?

We're sending a message of you should listen to the Bible thumping wingnut or your house will burn down.

All right. I will post this in the group. One of the things if you if you've been watching and I know

I haven't said who the C bro is or C sis, I know we're going to get to it.

Boy, that's good. So people in the chat room want to know. So they are they're anxious to. That's good. People like that.

We encourage others. We're going to encourage someone. Don't worry. In the Facebook group, which you can join the

Striving for Eternity Facebook group, you can join us there. We get into discussions there like, you know, can you lose your salvation?

I put up a post. If you haven't seen it, get there and look. You'll see a video.

It's a short, like 17 second video that I posted out there. I'm going to start doing this more posting things in there and asking you to transition to the gospel to train us to transition.

It's the spiritual transition game. We have a video on our YouTube channel called Spiritual Transition Game. You can look it up.

We're going to be putting another video out there. Actually, in Ohio, Carl Kirby Jr. got so excited with that. He is trying to put videos together of people playing that game.

He's been he said he's been doing it nonstop with his youth group. He's been loving it. But we'll put that picture up there maybe to transition to.

So who is the C bro, the brother or sister of encouragement? We want to encourage you to encourage others.

And this is a person who I I haven't met. I haven't really known that well on Facebook until this week.

And I've been encouraged by his posts. He is brother James Watkins. Witkins?

Watkins? I think Watkins? Watkins. Okay. So I put his Facebook page up there.

He's he is added to the Facebook group so you can get to know him. I'll tell you why I chose him this week.

It was really because he and I were both battling this this poor woman who has an autistic son. And my heart goes out to her.

Because I mean, I'm just I am in, you know, I understand that as a difficult situation.

But the emotion aside, we can't answer the Bible by emotion. And it was good to see a brother come along side me in trying to answer her and being fair.

And I think she didn't see it as him being kind. But because she was seeing everything as an attack.

And so she was attacking in kind. And, you know, we had a, you know,

James and I had a little bit of a private discussion just saying the frustration you can have when someone's just going at you like that.

And saying you're cruel because you won't say a child is going to heaven. We just won't answer.

That doesn't mean they're going to hell. It means we won't answer. And I appreciated this gentleman's demeanor.

I appreciated his holding to the authority of Scripture.

I appreciated the fact that he would say only what God says and go no further.

Now, he's been influenced by another gentleman who we may have as a brother of encouragement at some point because he's really, as I'm building a relationship with this pastor.

I don't know if he's actually James's pastor. But he's being influenced by a gentleman named

Frank who I'm getting to know and really being encouraged by. But James is someone who seems to be,

I don't know how long he's been with the Lord. But he's handling the Scriptures well from what I can see.

And in online debates it can be pretty hard. And I am always encouraged by men and women that don't take to the attacks with an attack.

I know I'm kind of guilty of that sometimes as well. I know. I'm learning too. But I wanted to encourage him this week as he's been an encouragement

I know to me and to others that they're reading those posts. You can go on my Facebook wall and see some of that.

Of course, you know, if you're watching this on YouTube months and months and months from now, you got to go back, figure out when this first aired.

But it will be up on YouTube tonight. So just go back to today's date. But I want to encourage you to encourage him.

So remember to strive to make today an eternal day for the glory of God.