F4F | Pirate Gang Conversation About Bad Discernment

Fighting for the Faith

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Welcome to another installment of Fighting for the Faith. My name is Chris Roseborough, I'm your servant in Jesus Christ, and this is the channel that compares what people are saying in the name of God to the

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Word of God. Now we have a special program set up today. I've invited my friends, the

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Pirate Gang, Stephen Kozar and Amy Spreeman, and we're going to be talking about bad discernment.

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When we talk about the concept of discernment, it's important to note that Scripture requires us, in fact admonishes us, to be discerning, and there's a right way and a wrong way to do discernment, and unfortunately there are some people who are doing discernment, and they're doing it in such a way that they are behaving as smear merchants.

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We'll talk about that and, you know, kind of bad discernment here in a moment, but let me switch up how we're viewing things here and get my computer screen up and turn on the microphones for Amy and Steve.

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Hi Amy, hi Steve. Hey Chris. Hey Chris, good morning. Good morning.

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So Amy Spreeman, you know, real quick, you've kind of put your

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Berean blog on the back burner for a while. You've got a fine vocation now working out in the in the nonprofit world, and Stephen Kozar, aside from being a painter who brushes with a single hair brush, you know,

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I don't know how you do that, you run the

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Messed Up Church blog. Yeah, if you want to call it running the blog, it's more like scrambling for my life.

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I'm juggling so many things. I'm failing at all of them at one point or another, but yeah, the blog started as a tiny little blog you took me on, and so I kept growing it for about three, four years, and then

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I decided to make it its own website so it had more categories, and it was easy to access information, and then

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I'm doing some stuff on my YouTube channel, making these little videos, which I really love, but now that I figured out just the bare essentials of making videos,

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I'm really hooked. So yeah, I've been really busy. All right, well very good. I will note that on Wednesday we played one of your interviews, and I call it a messed up interview.

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I just saw that, yeah. I got joy in that. You know what's really funny?

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I know that my real official name is Steven. That's what it says on the screen, but you called me

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Steven in the intro to my interview with Rob Bowman. When we start our interview, by him asking me, should

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I call you Steve or Steven, and I said, oh nobody calls me Steven, just my mother -in -law, and we had a laugh. Well, I do.

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Yeah, so call me, just call me Kozar. I just call you Kozar. How about if I call you late for dinner?

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Well, but um, I got my drum right over there. I should have brought that near. I know you do.

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I've been in your basement. So now, Amy, real quick, you're not doing the

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Berean Examiner, but you are doing some discernment work online, and you've got a person that's doing the crime with you.

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Tell me a little about your latest endeavor. Well, Michelle Leslie and I, many of you know her.

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She's a fine discernment blogger. She leads Women's Bible Studies. She and I teamed up a couple months ago to launch a podcast just because we thought, you know, there are people who need to hear some things, and she's got a unique audience, and I do too.

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So we started this, not really a blog, it's a podcast, and it's called A Word Fitly Spoken, and we're having a lot of fun with it.

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Yeah, yeah, we, once a week, we're on all the different channels, so if you want to tune in and let us know what you think, but yeah, we're talking about how to, we actually had a show called

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How to Do Discernment, but one of many, yeah.

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Unfortunately, it's needed. Yeah, and it has always been, ever since I've entered into the discernment space.

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Now, I started off as a counter -cult apologist, and when I found that there were, like, megachurch pastors twisting the

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Bible as badly as the Mormons and the JWs, I was compelled to jump in, if you would, and start doing discernment work and saying, wait a second, as Christians, you know, pastors are supposed to rightly handle the

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Word of God, and it's really dangerous when they don't, and that's when I made the switch.

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Now, a little bit of a note here, and that is that I'm actually formally trained as a Christian apologist, you know, so this goes back to my undergraduate work and other studies that I've done.

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Formerly trained by Dr. Rod Rosenblatt, John Warwick Montgomery, I actually have a certificate from the

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International Apologetics Academy, and then I had a lot of training.

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Yeah, it's true, I have that, Steve, I actually wrote a paper. You went to the same thing I did? I got to do it here in the

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States, I haven't actually been to Strasburg, but yeah. How did I not know that? Yeah, I don't know,

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I don't talk about it that much. That's really interesting. Okay, sorry to interrupt. Yep, so, and then, of course, then, you know,

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I have a seminary degree and other things, but, and also,

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I was trained formally in, like, certain apologetic strategies and tactics from the late

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Bob and Gretchen Pazentino, who were, like, a lot of people don't know that Gretchen Pazentino was the ghostwriter for Walter Martin, and so, you know, so as somebody who's been doing apologetic and discernment work, you know, as, you know, really formally trained it and doing it for almost three decades now, man,

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I cannot believe the numbers are getting up that high, but I would note then that my mentors always made it very clear that when it comes to discernment, when it comes to doing apologetic work, that you have to rightly make a distinction between error and heresy, and there was a lot of emphasis in my apologetic training in not engaging in what are called logical fallacies, and what

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I find is that there are some, not all, but there are some people who are not formally trained, and they, and even though they're not formally trained, they don't seem to be making any effort to rightly engage in discernment at all.

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If you're not formally trained, if you apply yourself to this, the information is out there, but what ends up happening is that they kind of take on everybody, they make no distinction between error and heresy, and then all the good guys, you know, who are actually doing real discernment work get thrown under the bus, and it's all by guilt, by association, and bad logical fallacies, and so we're gonna put them into the category of dirty smear merchants.

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This is not discernment, and it doesn't serve the body of Christ. At the end of the day, discernment is a gift given by the

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Holy Spirit for the body for the purpose of identifying false teachers so that you can mark and avoid them, and this is a service done in love to neighbor and to the church.

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When you are engaging in smear merchant and, you know, kind of yellow journalism kind of stuff, oftentimes the emphasis is not going to be on the truth, or what the

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Bible says, or even loving neighbor. The emphasis is going to be on the person doing the discernment work and their rhetoric and things like that.

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Now Amy, before we get to the article, which we'll work our way through, because I have it up on the screen, we'll put a link down below in the description.

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It's Discernment Tips, Clear Thinking Discernment by Stephen Cozart. I think it's a fine article, worth passing along.

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But, you know, talking about guilt by association, you recently, you know, like within the past year, you were invited to speak at a conference put on by Answers in Genesis, and there was somebody who was also invited who you had no idea about.

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This was Jackie Hill Perry, who, you know, I would put her in the avoid like the plague category, and she's actually kind of proven that all on her own several times over now.

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But, you know, she was also invited. But what ended up happening is that when the roster came out,

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I would say that there was a whole group of people doing discernment who engaged in this guilt by association thing and threw you under the bus.

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You're a hypocrite. You have no discernment, Amy. How dare you speak at a conference where Jackie Hill Perry is speaking?

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And walk us through what happened, because I think this is just a great case in point of how not to do discernment.

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Right. Well, it took me by surprise. Actually, it was longer than a year ago. I would say it was almost two years ago now that Answers in Genesis invited me back.

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I had been there before for a conference in 2017 called the Discern Conference. Fabulous.

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It was really a great experience, and I talked about the NAR. And so they invited me back to talk about, you know, this one's called the

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Truth Conference, and they asked if I would talk about some of the other different kinds of traps that we can get into theologically.

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You know, so what are the top 10 false teachings? I kind of think so. So I'm gonna be doing that again. The conference isn't until this spring.

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So I put it aside. I knew what I was talking about. I sent my outline in, and I went on with my job and my family and my life.

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And lo and behold, the roster came out. Didn't even know. And one of the new invitees was

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Jackie Hill Perry. And of course, I knew that she was in the Avoid Like the Plague area, but I didn't realize that she was going to be at this thing until,

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I want to say, end of summer, early September. I was sent a screenshot of not only the roster, but a whole bunch of comments from people saying what a traitor that I was to Christ for going to a

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Jackie Hill Perry event, which I don't know how that became a Jackie Hill Perry event, but so I got actually some of the words that were used here.

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It's kind of funny now. Let's see here. Let's see. And I'm speaking with Phil Johnson, and Costigan was going to come, but he is having a, his wife is having a baby.

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I think it's their fourth. So anyway, at the time, it was it was Phil and I and a few other people, Aaron Benziger.

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And it's like Amy Freeman speaking at a conference with Jackie Hill Perry. I won't even say the name that this person called her, but it was just obscene.

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Shame on you guys. Discernment without holiness is treason. So now I'm treasonous.

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You all have no excuse and you know better. You're not leading the discernment community. You're betraying it.

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And so that was the start. That was one comment by one discerner. Were you contacted by this person?

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Did they ask you if you knew that Jackie Hill Perry was going to be speaking at the event?

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They made no effort to contact you at all. Of course not. No, they just, you know, kind of, they kind of blindsided me.

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So I get this news that Jackie Hill Perry speaking one, that's a problem. Okay. But then all of a sudden, all of these people are pinging me and flooding my inbox.

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And I'm hearing, you know, what's going on? Why in the world? Don't you have any discernment? I trusted you.

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One woman said, I've listened to you for years, and I'm just so disappointed in you. Did you betray

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Jesus with a kiss, Amy? That's what I want to know. There was no kissing involved in this one, unfortunately.

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Oh, go ahead, Steve. I was just gonna say, to kind of give clarity to the issue, Jackie Hill Perry was not seen as somebody to avoid like the plague just a couple of years ago.

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Right. Or even, you know, even earlier this year. So yes, she has, you know, not really been exposed a lot.

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And up to that point, a lot of people didn't really understand. So, so I, you know, called up the conference organizers, and they were wonderful.

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I voiced my concerns in a very polite way and said, Look, you know, here's the concern that that I have with her.

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Here's what she teaches. Here's, of course, what the Bible says. And they said, Thank you, you know, let us you know, this, it's not as easy as, you know, pushing a button and pulling a plug.

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We need some time to go through what this conference, you know, how to do this. And so it's like, great,

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I put it in their hands. They discussed it. And in the meantime, as they were discussing it, Jackie Hill Perry kind of imploded, she appeared with some other false teachers,

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Christine Kane and a few others. She has said some really wild even more. I mean, she really kind of showed her hand in during this time.

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And sure enough, I got an email saying, Yes, we've disinvited her.

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Thanks for voicing your concerns. We checked it out for ourselves. You're right. Like a Berean would do, right?

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So, but they said, you know, please, you know, we're getting our replacement here. Just give us a few days.

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And then, you know, we'll make please let us make the announcement. You know, we don't want it to be coming from anybody else but us.

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Understood, of course. And so I just laid low. And in the meantime, of course, I'm getting all these emails saying, you know, so yeah, 10, right, 1015 years of discernment work down the tubes because of because of this.

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So anyway, yeah, finally, as she was being disinvited, and the news got out, and people were sharing answers in Genesis news statement, of course, nobody came back to me and said,

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Wow, we're really sorry. No, of course. Okay, I don't need that, though. You know, yeah. I mean, it

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I was very satisfied with how they handled it. And I'm satisfied with the outcome.

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Right. So I mean, as soon as you found out, okay, wait a second, there's somebody who probably shouldn't be, you know, at this conference, you immediately contacted the conference coordinator and said,

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Listen, I got a problem with this person. Right, right. No, nobody at all, you know, contacted you ahead of time and said,

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Hey, Amy, I don't know if you know, but Jackie Hill Perry, she's kind of bad news. You know, nobody, nobody.

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So everybody just assumed, Oh, my goodness, Amy Spreeman is sold out. She's, she's, she's in it for herself.

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She cares nothing. She is just a discernment facade. And she's a total hypocrite.

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Because and, and all this kind of money, right? Like money and fame. Don't trust me, folks, when you want money, for instance, big coverage or plane fare or whatever it is to get there.

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And that's what you get a small honorarium. Yay. And that's, and that's a wonderful gift.

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That's a wonderful thing. But you don't do it for for that, you know, so and during this whole time,

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I didn't want this to play out in the tab light tabloids. And you know, that would have just been a mess.

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And so yeah, I just, you know, everything was handled behind the scenes perfectly. So yeah, but the people who who tarred and feathered you, they actually broke one of the real commandments, you shall not bear false witness against your neighbor, they slandered you.

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And then they took screenshots of my, you know, everything that I did, they took screenshots and threw it out there.

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And you know, not that I mean, yeah, this, this is not discernment. That that's just that's, that's just lazy guilt by association nonsense.

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Now, a little bit of a note here, I always make a distinction between alternate pulpit fellowship and true worship within a congregation as being a sign of real unity.

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And then my policy is is that if I'm invited to a conference, and you know, and there's going to be somebody there who is sketchy,

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I always kind of work work with the idea conference doesn't equal worship. And my appearance at a particular conference, or me inviting somebody to a particular conference is not an endorsement of anyone, anyone's theology, period.

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So for instance, a couple, in fact, not in 2019. But in 2018, at the pirate

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Christian radio conference, I invited Phil Johnson, you know, and and everybody knows Phil Johnson works for john

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MacArthur, and Phil Johnson is a reformed Baptist, I'm a confessional Lutheran.

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And so one of the things I always find like, kind of really ridiculous, is that the guilt by association thing breaks down, because you know, it's like,

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Alright, so are you saying that because Phil Johnson spoke at the pirate Christian radio conference that he's now a confessional

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Lutheran, or that I'm a reformed Baptist, you know, and then you know, and then I think about Todd Wilkin and Jeff Schwartz, I mean, every year they do the issues, etc, making the case conference.

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And there's certain speakers that they invite, who are not confessional Lutherans, but they're experts in their particular field, in which they work.

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And so you'll get you get one guy who's a media guy, and he's an Eastern Orthodox guy.

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Okay. And then you got guys who are who are really astute as far as what's going on with like, the political realm and the problems within the culture, and they're

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Roman Catholics. And so, you know, what ends up happening is, is that the smear merchants sit there and go,

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Oh, my goodness, issues, etc, can't be trusted. They're endorsing Rome now. No, they're not.

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Just because you've invited a guy who's Roman Catholic to speak on a political topic doesn't mean that you're endorsing

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Rome. This is, you know, I always want to ask the question, did your mama drop you on your head? I mean, this is just not even good logic.

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Okay. And so, so the idea here is, is that guilt by association is a logical fallacy.

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And, in fact, there's one particular smear merchant who, who a while ago called me out for being a hypocrite, because I didn't,

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I didn't criticize John MacArthur for endorsing Beth Moore. And it's like, what?

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What do you mean, John MacArthur endorsing Beth Moore? And the way he argued is as well,

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John MacArthur is good friends with John Piper. Right. And John Piper spoke in an event, you know, at the passion conference where Beth Moore was.

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And so because John Piper didn't rebuke Beth Moore, and then, sorry, because John Piper didn't rebuke

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Beth Moore, this is really convoluted. We need a flowchart. Yeah, you do. You do. I called this the poop stink theory of discernment.

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But anyway, because John Piper didn't, you know, censor Beth Moore, and then

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John MacArthur invited John Piper to speak at a conference after the fact, that meant that John MacArthur was tacitly endorsing

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Beth Moore and that I was a hypocrite for not calling him out for it. And you just sit there and go, what are you talking about?

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This is nuts. I mean, not only does this show this person has like no theological training, none, no apologetics training, his main shtick is just putting forward guilt by association arguments, and this is like sizzle without any bacon, and people are attracted to the sizzle, you know.

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But again, this isn't serving the body of Christ at all. And so I would note then, and kind of in this regard, that, you know, being trained by Dr.

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Rod Rosenblatt as, you know, one of my major mentors, Rod Rosenblatt for decades was one of the regular people who was part of the radio program

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The White Horse Inn. I don't know if you're familiar with The White Horse Inn, but I mean, it's kind of a fun program.

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So I mean, they've got a guy who's an Orthodox Presbyterian, you got a Reformed Baptist, you got a Confessional Lutheran, and they're not shooting at each other.

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And granted, there are serious differences theologically between those two, between all those camps, but rather than shoot at each other, they treat each other as Christian brothers, because they make a distinction between what is considered to be secondary and tertiary issues as opposed to primary issues.

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And so, you know, and so, I mean, Amy, I invited you to one of my conferences, and you did a whiz -bang job talking about the

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NAR, and from what I understand, you don't attend a Confessional Lutheran Church, so I must endorse wherever you go to church, right?

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I see how this works now. Yeah, yeah, this is just a pee -and -shell game. Again, this isn't discernment, and this doesn't serve the body of Christ.

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Now, when somebody flat -out teaches the same thing as a false teacher, or endorses a false teacher, now that's a horse of a different color.

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So Steve, we're gonna scroll down through your article here, and you've written about some bad discernment categories, okay?

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Yeah. And I always like how you go with the negative, it's always fun. And so one of the things that is kind of a problem, and I see this in the charismatic movement, is you describe this as, discernment is a mystical process where you feel what is true.

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And so when, I always find it fascinating when you have Jennifer LeClaire, you know, talk about the need for discernment, and it's like, my head goes, you know, it's just silly.

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So tell me, what is this mystical process that you're writing about here? Well, you know,

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I think it is centralized in the charismatic movement, for sure, but this mystical understanding of spirituality in general has really permeated all of evangelicalism.

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We think the Bible is important, we think that the Bible is God's Word, yes, but God really works in the most important way, in our hearts, in an internal way, which

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Martin Luther called enthusiasm, which is a confusing term for people today, but it basically means that outside of God's Word, we get

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God's Word. And it's an emotionally -based, feelings -based version of God's Word, and it's an individual message that we think we're getting from God that has to be somehow confirmed by God's Word, which raises the question, okay, if you have some internal, feeling - based idea that you think is

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God's Word, but it has to be confirmed by testing it with God's Word, why don't you just stick with the

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Bible? Cut out the middle process, would you? You'd save some time.

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But it turns into this really, honestly, it's like Christian fortune -telling, it really is.

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I feel like God is saying blah blah blah blah blah blah blah, and if you want to look at every major train wreck in recent

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Christian history, really in almost all of Christian history, it comes back to somebody saying,

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I feel like God is saying this, and I think, I feel like God is doing that, or even,

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I don't say this very often, but I heard the audible voice of God telling me to blah blah blah, and it's usually something that goes against God's Word.

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Right, exactly, and of course, I think Kosti Hind does a great job of pointing out that the person who hears directly from God, now they become the glow -in -the -dark, holy person that, you

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And of course, I always think back to when I was in the Charismatic Movement and Evangelicalism, and somebody would say they were hearing the voice of God, I'd sit there and go,

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I never hear the voice of God, how come God doesn't talk to me? And so discernment isn't based upon feelings, discernment, okay, people who do real biblical discernment, you're not a

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Jedi, okay? In fact, I would argue that even if God has given you a gift for discernment, that gift is honed through application, applying yourself to the written

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Word of God, and really studying it properly, you know, and so this will require you to love the

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Lord your God with all your heart, soul, watch this, mind and strength, or as Jesus said, those who worship me will worship me in spirit and in, get this, truth, you know, and God's Word is truth.

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So put the Jedi discernment stuff away, it's this, it don't work like that, you know, in fact, the people who are feeling discernment, yeah, you're doing it wrong, so, all right.

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Well, there's the understanding that the Holy Spirit speaks to us, again, outside of God's Word.

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The Holy Spirit does speak to us through God's Word, it's all one in the same, and it's really important.

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When I was in the charismatic movement, and I would bring up a year or so before I left,

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I would say, we got to get back to the Bible, we got to get back to the Bible, and the response usually was, yeah, but we need the

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Spirit too, we need the Word and the Spirit. There was always this false dichotomy that if you had too much

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Bible, you would somehow be leaving the, the Holy Spirit was always going, hey guys, what about me, quit reading your

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Bible, don't forget me. Yeah, you have to do it with the right voice. Hi, this is the

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Holy Spirit, and I'm really sad because you're like reading your

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Bible, and you've like totally left me in the dust. You've forgotten all about me. I'm sorry, but the way they describe the

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Holy Spirit in these groups, I mean, he sounds so utterly powerless. I mean, he wants to do stuff, can't accomplish it, you know, and the thing is is that Scripture is so clear on this, that all

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Scripture is theanoustos, it's God -breathed. The book of Hebrews says it's living and active. Peter writes about the fact that the

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Word of God, you know, no prophecy came as a result of a man's opinion, but as people were carried along by the

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Holy Spirit. And so the idea here is that, and this is an important bit, is that because we all have the same revelation, the same voice of God, we have an anchor point where we can all say definitively, that's

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God's voice. God is speaking to us presently, not passively, but presently.

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He is speaking actively to us through his Word, and we all have this Word together, but when somebody says,

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I'm receiving direct revelation from God, what they end up doing is creating a theological sect that, you know, and where you've got people sitting there going, well,

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I don't think that's really God's voice, and you have other people going, oh yeah, that's God's voice altogether. And this is what led to Mormonism, this is what led to a lot of the different sects that are out there.

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And no, God is speaking to all of us through his Word, and I always point back to what

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Jesus says in the Great Commission, that all authority has been given to him, and that we are to make disciples of all nations, disciples or learners, baptizing them in the name of the

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Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, and then listen to the curriculum, teaching all that I have commanded, all right?

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So Christ has given us a limited body of work that we are to work from in discipling the nations, and that's all that he has commanded.

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Now the question is, where can I go to find the things that Christ has commanded? Well, I can only know of, I only know of like one source, and that's the

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Bible in its totality, but you think about the fact that Jesus put a stamp of approval, yeah, thanks for the visual on that,

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Stephen. That Christ has given his approval to the Old Testament, has made it clear that God has spoken in the

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Old Testament, and he's the one who sends his disciples who become the Apostles, and he says to them, the one who hears you hears me, all right?

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So, you know, it's pretty straightforward. Anything written after the death of the Apostles, or spoken after the death of the

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Apostles, I'm not so sure that's the voice of God. In fact, I should be highly skeptical of it, and in fact

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I have yet to hear a compelling reason why I should believe anybody claiming to hear directly from God today, or even in the last 2 ,000 years since the death of the

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Apostles was truly hearing from God. Well Chris, I can speak on the female side.

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I hear a lot of women Bible study teachers, and I put those in bunny quotes and air quotes because they're not really teaching the

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Bible. They're teaching their own thoughts and feelings, and I've written a book, and it's all about my experiences, but one of the common themes that I hear from these women is, yes ladies,

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God does speak today. He does speak, and he never disagrees. His voice that you hear never disagrees with Scripture, and so you get these women going, oh yeah, that sounds like discernment.

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So if we know that it's not disagreeing with Scripture, that voice has to be God, right?

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And so I just, you know, and it happens all the time. I've heard it so many... they must all have the same playbook, because they say it exactly the same way.

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Yeah, so Amy, you're saying that God has never spoken to you audibly, telling you to brush somebody's hair in an airport.

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I unfortunately don't get those kind of downloads. There must be something wrong with me. You're just not holy.

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I do have the spirit of sarcasm, though, so anyway. Oh, me too. Yeah, in spades.

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It was on my gifts summary. You know what was on my gift test?

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I'm sorry, I keep... No, no, no, go ahead. Discernment.

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Which is hilarious, because the Bill Heibel -esque church that I took these spiritual gift tests actually disagreed with what my test said.

30:42

It's like, oh, you don't have that gift. It's like, what's this right here? Interesting. Alright, so Steven, moving along, discernment starts with abandoning all previous theological systems and avoiding all previous teachings from church history.

30:58

Well, I think that point one, that discernment is mystical, and it's just me and my

31:05

Bible, and I'm gonna figure it out for myself. That's a real common direction that people go, and it's good that they only want the

31:14

Bible to be influencing what they believe. That's great. We all agree with that, but when you say,

31:21

I can't learn anything from anybody who's ever lived, who's ever studied the Bible in all of church history, you know, because theology is bad, then you're saying,

31:31

I'm basically gonna hear from God myself and get my own version with my own theology.

31:36

And I wrote in this little article, it might sound exciting, and I think that's a big part of it.

31:42

Oh, I'm gonna figure this out for myself, and it's like a Da Vinci Code sort of thing. I'm gonna find out the real secret stuff, because everybody else has gotten it wrong up till now.

31:52

What's the real chalice of Christ? Yeah, yeah, but so I wrote, God has given us

31:57

His Word, and we've had almost 2 ,000 years of teachers to help us understand it, so why would you want to throw that all away and start from scratch?

32:05

That's the really big point I like to make to people. You don't know anything about the theologians who have come before you, because nobody teaches this stuff anymore, and you don't know what you don't know, so why don't you at least dip your toes into this idea that maybe there's something you can learn from the past.

32:24

Maybe there's something you can learn from church history about the true Protestant Reformation, for instance, which is where I'm always directing people to the

32:31

White Horse Inn, because even though I'm a confessional Lutheran, I want people to hear the White Horse Inn to hear these men who are from different denominational backgrounds who all agree about the core aspects of the gospel message, and they also agree about the core aspects of pop evangelicalism that have gone astray.

32:51

And it's from that starting point that I think you can then say, oh, I see a

32:56

Reformed Baptist sees things this way, whereas a Presbyterian sees things a little bit different over here.

33:02

Oh, and I get it now, a confessional Lutheran sees things in this way, and I see where they agree and disagree.

33:08

It's really useful to understand all those viewpoints before you just jump on to something from one guy or one church and think that you've kind of got it all now, and I don't need any more of that history,

33:22

I don't need any more of that theology. Right. Yeah, and in this regard, too,

33:28

I would kind of point out two things. And one, years ago there was a

33:33

Peanuts cartoon where Charlie Brown's sister was writing a essay on church history, and I forget what her name was.

33:44

Sally. Sally, Sally, Sally. She's writing, and it says, you know, church history essay at the top of the paper.

33:52

My pastor was born October 7th, 1932. You know, so church history, that's the thing about evangelicalism.

34:00

Church history does not go beyond, like, the present day, you know, at all. And so this is bad.

34:07

And what ends up happening, too, then, is that people think that today's modern manifestation and theology of the

34:15

Roman Catholic Church is somehow the thing that was taught in the ancient church, and it's not. And what ends up happening is that when somebody comes out of the

34:23

Roman Catholic Church, they rightly want to disregard and eschew all of the false teachings of Rome, but what ends up happening is that then they get into the bad case of, like,

34:37

Romaphobia. And so, like, everything that Rome teaches is false. And so Rome teaches the doctrine of the

34:43

Trinity, so the Trinity is bad. You know, Rome teaches that Jesus Christ is

34:49

God in human flesh, therefore Jesus can't be God in human flesh. And so, and though everything hinges on, well,

34:55

Rome teaches it, therefore it's wrong. It's like, this is not how church history is done. You know, this is just not how this works.

35:04

And I'm a confessional Lutheran, if you want to know what I believe regarding baptism, on the

35:09

Fighting for the Faith website, just type in Lutheran Doctrine of Baptism, I actually put together a PDF and put this account out there, that somebody said, you have a heretical view of baptism.

35:20

So I wrote him back, I said, listen, I believe exactly what the Bible says about baptism. And I sent him the verses.

35:28

And so he immediately wrote me back, and he goes, well, none of those verses have anything to do with baptism.

35:34

It's like, are you serious? So what I did is I actually spent some time, it actually took me a little bit of time to pull this together,

35:41

I put together all of the verses that I sent him, and then quotes from the ancient church fathers up to like the fourth century.

35:49

So it'd be like from first century all the way up to like Augustine or something, right? And how they understood these texts.

35:55

And I sent this off to this guy, and no joke, he said, every one of the people you quoted, they're heretics.

36:01

And it's like, are you nuts? How could they be heretics? Every single one of them, if you take a course in church history, they are the defenders of Christian Orthodoxy.

36:12

You were talking about Irenaeus, we're talking about Polycarp, we're talking about Augustine, we're talking about the

36:18

Council of Nicaea here. And so when

36:23

I said that, he actually wrote me back and says, well, your problem is you Lutherans take the

36:29

Bible too seriously and too literally. It's like, this isn't discernment.

36:40

So the idea here is that, listen, I completely agree Rome's apostate.

36:46

That being the case, the doctrine of the Trinity is a core fundamental doctrine of the Christian faith, and to deny it puts you outside of the

36:52

Christian faith, regardless of the fact that Rome believes it. And this is where you have to make a distinction between real heresy, which touches on core doctrines, and errors, which don't put you outside of the

37:08

Christian faith, but just mean that you're wrong in that regard. And the

37:14

Bible actually clearly explains all of that. Alright, moving along, discernment means latching on to the teacher who is the most extreme smear merchant.

37:22

And boy, there are some people who are really good at that. Yeah. What do you mean by that,

37:27

Steve? Well, I mean, I think if you start with point one and then point two, it's not uncommon to come to point three, because you think that I'm hearing from God personally,

37:38

I'm getting individual messages just for me, and I've rejected all the other teachers in church history.

37:46

What was that? I don't know. How was that?

37:53

That's fine. Yeah, your snowball was going downhill quickly, so. I need to get something else.

37:59

I've had this since our initial pirate gang days, so. Well, I mean, look at it, it's a gold snowball. Clearly you're part of the prosperity heresy.

38:08

It's silver, actually. It's the light, it's the light, it's silver. Okay, yeah, so there you go. Yeah, yeah, all right.

38:14

All right, so let's try this again, Steve. So discernment means attaching yourself to the most extreme smear merchants.

38:22

Carry on. If you take point one, you often lead to point two. I hear from God individually and personally, and I don't need any other teachers from the past, certainly not from church history.

38:34

And then you find somebody on YouTube who sounds confident, who sounds like they know what they're talking about, and they're kind of on the same page in the sense that everybody else is wrong, or almost everybody else is wrong.

38:47

And I've discovered that all of the church is corrupt. And you know, there are aspects of the church where there is great corruption.

38:56

And I think everybody agrees in one way or the other about corruption within the church, and it's a very serious issue.

39:02

But it's just, I think it's an American, maybe it's a Western, maybe it's just our sinful nature.

39:09

But we tend to, we like the easy answer, we like the broad brush, we like to take an entire category and just make gigantic assumptions about them.

39:20

And if it's done with kind of this, you know, you're hearing the secret message that no one else knows about, just you and me and my little group.

39:30

And aren't you important that you know now who, you know, and that's where, did you know that Amy Spreeman is gonna be at a conference with this other person who we all know is bad?

39:40

She's bad too. And that means she's a Mason and she's part of the CFR, man. Yeah.

39:45

No, and I think it's, it is very possible that in this sinful world there are secret associations, there are secret things going on behind the scenes.

39:54

But but that doesn't mean that everybody just automatically falls into that category of, you know, something secret and evil and all that stuff.

40:03

So what I wrote here was, yes, there are some really bad things going on in the Christian Church, but some people just enjoy driving by the scene of the accident too much.

40:11

Yeah. If everybody is a raving heretic, except you and your tiny little group, you probably need a more balanced perspective.

40:18

This will be hard, but do your homework anyway. Sweeping generalizations can only go so far. Yeah. And I would note in that, in one of the things

40:26

I've been saying forever is that, listen, don't take my word for it, I don't need you to listen to me with an open mind.

40:32

Open Bible. And if you haven't figured it out, the people, the segments that I choose,

40:38

I choose them because it gives me an excuse to teach the Bible. You know, it's like, and so the idea here is this, like, learning discernment requires you to be in the

40:51

Scriptures. And so at the end of the day, you know, when somebody is twisting

40:56

God's Word, there's so many different ways in which to twist it. The focus of my program, for the most part, although we do try to have some fun with the prophecy bingo stuff, but for the most part is on, okay, listen, they're saying this, and this is what they're doing with the biblical text, but when you look at the text, it's not saying that.

41:15

And so the idea here is that I can't review everybody. There's so many different false teachers out there.

41:22

What I'm looking for are archetypical ways in which people are twisting texts, which then gives me an excuse to get into the

41:31

Bible, so that people can hear how amazing the Bible is, you know. And that's the idea, is that once then you're hooked on the

41:39

Scriptures rightly taught, and you know how to look for whether or not it's being rightly taught or not, then what happens is that inoculates you against the false teacher, whoever it might be.

41:49

Now granted, there are some pretty bad cats out there. You know, I think of T .D.

41:54

Jakes and Stephen Furtick and others. Yeah, granted, they are that, but at the end of the day, they're doing the same thing that other false teachers are doing.

42:04

It's just that they're doing it really well, you know. There's some people who are super gifted in their presentation, and others who are not.

42:12

I mean, Stephen Furtick is like a force of nature, you know. He's so confident, and he's so great at manipulation, but at the end of the day, if you step back and actually do the comparative work, you sit there and go, he was saying nothing, but saying it really well, you know.

42:30

All right, so we talked about guilt by association.

42:35

Is there anything else that we should talk about in this category? Well, to be clear, because we did talk about, you know, not making assumptions about an appearance at a conference.

42:46

Now, I also wrote in here, if a pastor is invited to speak at the World Dominion Prophecy Awakening Apostolic Signs and Wonders Miracle event, yeah, we kind of get an idea where they stand.

42:58

Right, kind of like Toronto's Reignite the Fire Conference, you know. Yes, and an opposite example of that would be there's the

43:08

Religious Broadcasters Convention, which is not a theological convention at all. It's about all sorts of Christians who are involved in broadcasting, and so that's every year there's a big fuss, because you look at the roster of people, and you see somebody who's supposed to be good, and then there's somebody who's not so good, and you go, aha!

43:27

I found where they're joining forces with a false teacher, and they're just speaking at a broadcasters convention.

43:34

Yeah. So, yeah, I kind of go to that extreme to the other extreme. Yeah, I always find it fascinating that, okay, so you got like the

43:41

Religious Broadcasters Association, and granted, that is a mixed bag. I mean, it's everyone from like Brian Houston, Christine Cain, and even

43:51

Patricia King, all the way over to the other side of the spectrum. You know, somebody like John MacArthur, or Alistair Begg, or something like that.

43:59

But here's the thing. In the Guilt by Association category, always the poop from the bad teacher gets on the good teacher.

44:07

How come the good teacher bringing the real gospel and actually proclaiming the truth will have no positive impact on the heretics?

44:14

It always works the other way, and again, the

44:21

Religious Broadcasters Association meeting, this is not church.

44:27

This is something different altogether. And it's not like they all get together in the green room and pray together.

44:34

I mean, they may never meet. You're on one day, and the heretic is on another day, or whatever, and you go, you say your thing, you speak the truth about the gospel, and then you leave.

44:45

You're not there joining hands with these people. Yep, and I would also note this thing.

44:52

The fellow who chastised me on social media for not rebuking John MacArthur for endorsing

44:58

Beth Moore, when John MacArthur said his Beth Moore go -home shtick, that fellow immediately put out a video, and he said that John MacArthur's a hypocrite.

45:09

Rather than saying, whoops, I was wrong for calling out Roseboro for not rebuking John MacArthur for endorsing

45:15

Beth Moore, it was clear John MacArthur never endorsed Beth Moore. He instead doubled down and said, no, he's a hypocrite, and moved the goalposts and stuff.

45:25

That's another thing, is that people who are doing bad discernment, when they mess up, they always just move the goalposts.

45:35

Right, they can't be wrong. I'm not wrong. I'm sticking to my story.

45:41

That's it. And they'll never repent. They'll never make it right when they are wrong. Yep, all right.

45:47

Well, the end of that, I touch on the idea that sometimes we need to get more information directly from the person in question before making assumptions about their beliefs.

46:00

We live in a pretty dumbed -down culture that promotes easy and overly simplistic answers. Our Christian faith is way too important to take that approach, and our

46:07

Christian brothers and sisters are way too valuable to treat with such disregard. So, we're all known for calling out false teachers, and it needs to be an actual false teacher who, with their own words, and their own videos, and their own books, and their own sermons, are saying heretical things.

46:27

That's when you need to point out and mark and avoid them. But if somebody hasn't clearly said those things, we can't accuse them of saying things that they haven't said.

46:37

It's so simple. Right. Now, let's say that Jackie Hill Perry ended up speaking at this Answers in Genesis event.

46:44

Should I then surmise that, well, that Amy Spreeman, now you are actually endorsing women preachers and are, you know, a lot more lenient towards, you know, same -sex marriage and stuff?

46:57

Yeah, no, my stance would not have changed, and it would not. I mean, you know, women preachers, same -sex marriage, all relationships.

47:05

I have not changed. I'm sticking to Christ and the Bible, but yeah, my reputation obviously came under fire, and that would have been even worse.

47:16

Yeah, and came under fire from lazy journalism. Lazy discernment.

47:22

You know, I would note that if the New York Times did to you what some discernment people did to you, you would have been able to sue the

47:31

New York Times for slander. Yeah, probably. You know, or libel, actually, you know, because, you know, that's written, but you get the point.

47:41

It's a form of defamation of character, so the discernment requires you to actually do homework and to accurately put forward what somebody is believing and confessing.

47:55

This is why I do long -form discernment, so that you can actually hear what people are saying in context, because, you know, if I do the soundbite thing, people say, oh, that's taken out of context.

48:06

Now, look, you know, I'm either reviewing the whole sermon, I'm reviewing, you know, 10 -15 minutes of it.

48:11

There ain't no way somebody could, you just took them out of context. No, I didn't, okay? I actually did my research, and I know what

48:19

I'm talking about. Anybody that we review, we make sure before the review happens that we understand what the person's teaching and preaching and things like that, so that, you know, we don't misrepresent them, at least knowingly.

48:35

Yeah, and that whole idea of you've taken them out of context, I think that comes from somebody, they just love, let's say they just love

48:44

Todd White. They are absolutely convinced that Todd White is just this far away from Jesus Himself, and they're convinced that they've learned new things and they're bolder in their faith, and you know, they've taken their faith to the next level, whatever it is, they are part of the

48:59

Todd White Christian cult, I'll call it that. But I make a video where I take

49:07

Todd White's own video, I don't take anything out, I don't add anything to it, I just go through it, and I stop the video, and I comment about what he just said, and I show what

49:17

Scripture says. I do what you do, Chris. You're the example that I follow. You don't, you know, cut and paste and move things around to make it seem like they're saying something they're not saying.

49:28

Right. And so I've done this with him and with Bill Johnson and with Chris Vallotton, I've always taken their video, in the actual progression,

49:35

I didn't take anything out, because then somebody could say, oh you just cut and pasted and made it sound like they're saying something.

49:42

I think when people are saying that, they're being intellectually lazy, yeah, and they're protecting themselves from this gut feeling that they have, which is, uh -oh, the guy

49:53

I follow is teaching stuff that's wrong, and that can't be true, because I just love him so much,

49:59

I'm so attached to him. I feel so good, I feel so good when I hear him preach, you know. And so people are emotionally attached to certain teachers, and they're not thinking about it biblically, they're not thinking about it logically, they are just, and honestly, it's a form of mind control, it's a type of cult activity.

50:18

I know it sounds really harsh when I say that, but I've studied this stuff, and that's what's taking place. People are becoming part of a group, and they're surrounded by a whole series of half truths, but as long as they maintain all of those half truths, and catch phrases, and logical fallacies, they got to keep all that stuff together, and it protects those false beliefs from, you know, anybody coming in, and yeah.

50:42

I would even note that they know full well that if any of those half truths are allowed, permitted to fall, that it's like dominoes.

50:52

And so they have to come after you, and this is the other piece of it, is that this is why people play the

50:58

Pharisee card so much with me. So I point out, this teacher is teaching this, this is not what the

51:04

Bible says, here's what the Bible actually says, you're a Pharisee! See, they have to attack me, and so when they say that you've taken them out of context, they're accusing you of you creating the

51:14

Christian version of deep fake, you know, you've just deep faked Chris Vallott, and no, he's really solid, and you just hate him, and you're jealous of him.

51:23

I get that a lot, too. Yeah, yeah, Roseboro, the only reason why you're critiquing

51:28

TJ Jakes is because you're jealous of his success and how rich he is. No, I'm not! It's like, you know, that's an ad hominem attack, and it's like, really?

51:38

When did you learn how to read my mind? I mean, it's just, it's unbelievable. So, all right, let me let me kind of walk through this a little bit further.

51:47

Discernment means throwing the word heretic around like a wrecking ball. Heretic! Heretic! Heretic! You know, and I would note this, is that if you cannot make a distinction between heresy and error, you don't really know your

52:00

Bible well. Let me explain it in this way. The Apostle Paul in 2nd Corinthians 11 talks about kind of three things that would put somebody outside of the

52:08

Christian faith. Different Jesus, different spirit, different gospel. In Galatians 1,

52:13

Paul makes it clear that anybody preaching a different gospel than the one he preaches is anathema, all right?

52:18

So, those those are your kind of your core doctrines as it touches on the doctrine of God, the gospel itself.

52:25

Those are things that would put you outside of the Christian faith, as well as a different spirit. That's also in the list.

52:31

But when somebody's baptismal theology is all wet, you know, and you disagree with them, that doesn't put somebody outside the

52:38

Christian faith. And he'd say, well, how do you know, Rose, bro? It's real simple. Apollos, okay? When Apollos first shows up on the scene in the book of Acts, he was refuting the

52:49

Jews, proving from the scriptures that Jesus is the Christ. Nobody could resist his argumentation, and it turned out his baptismal theology was wrong.

52:58

So Aquila and Priscilla take him and privately correct him regarding his baptismal theology, but it never says of him, oh, and he was a heretic.

53:08

And then you have another account where there were these disciples who were already believers in Jesus, and they didn't even know there was a

53:15

Holy Spirit, because they weren't baptized properly. They were baptized by John the Baptist. That's the only baptism that they had received.

53:22

They didn't even know about Christian baptism. And so Paul says, so he baptizes them.

53:27

But the thing is, it says of them, even before they were baptized, that they were disciples.

53:34

They were true Christians at that time. And so the idea here is, this is where we get the idea of between primary and secondary or tertiary doctrines.

53:46

So, you know, Kosar, you and I, we're in complete agreement on pretty much everything, because we're both confessional

53:53

Lutherans. And then Amy, you know, you and I, we would have some disagreements, and that's completely fine in this sense, and that is that where we would have disagreements on what the

54:04

Scripture says, it doesn't touch on a primary category. These are secondary and tertiary issues.

54:10

But bad discernment will not make these distinctions. It refuses to make these distinctions, and then when you call them out on it, they turn around on you and do an ad hominem attack against you.

54:23

And then the other thing I would notice is that there's oftentimes scholarly and journalistic sloppiness in some of the things they report when they go along these lines.

54:35

I think about years and years ago, you know, there was a fellow in the emerging church movement, you know, who wrote a book, his name was

54:44

Dan Kimball, and granted, this guy's theology was messed up in a lot of different places, but as the emerging church movement morphed into the emergent church movement and took a hard left into, you know, into postmodern liberalism, this guy started to distance himself from Tony Jones and Doug Padgett and others, and there were some in the discernment world who were saying, this fellow's a heretic and he denies the doctrine of hell.

55:11

And what he ended up doing was contacting those discerners and saying, listen, I do not deny the doctrine of hell,

55:17

I firmly believe in the doctrine of hell, you need to correct the record. And those people refused to do it.

55:24

And so he reached out to me. He reached out to me and says, listen, you know, I don't believe the things that they say

55:31

I'm believing. Now granted, he's still not somebody I could recommend as a teacher, and he's disappeared off the planet, you know, past few years,

55:39

I have no idea what he's up to nowadays. So he was gonna be in Indiana, I had lived in Indiana at the time, and so he said, come spend the day with me, and we'll spend some time together, we'll go out to coffee, and you can ask me anything you want.

55:52

And he says, I'm not gonna hide anything. And so, you know, I spent the afternoon with him, and part of that we went and visited the grave of James Dean, it was kind of an interesting day.

56:01

But in my interview with him, you know, turns out there were a lot of things that he believed falsely, but these are on secondary and tertiary issues, but he did absolutely believe in hell.

56:15

He believed that it existed and all this kind of stuff, and he was misrepresented. And so I invited him on the program as a follow -up to our time together, and oh my word,

56:25

I got crucified on social media. You know, people saying, you have no discernment,

56:33

I thought I could trust you, and all this kind of stuff. What are you talking about? What I ended up doing, basically, was showing that they didn't do their homework, you know.

56:43

And it's like, you were falsely stating this guy doesn't believe in hell, and he does believe in hell.

56:50

Now, granted, there's a whole lot of other stuff that you want to avoid this guy. He's not somebody you're gonna want to go to to catechize your kids or anything like that, or your youth group.

56:59

But the point is that when you do your homework, you have to get accurate, you have to properly demonstrate what somebody truly believes or has said in context, and if you get it wrong and they contact you and say,

57:13

I don't believe that, you actually have to offer a retraction and say, no,

57:20

I got that wrong. But what ends up happening is that in bad discernment, they can never make a mistake.

57:29

They're super discerners, you know, they're not sinful discerners, they never make an error, and as a result of it, they don't do their homework properly, and then they don't make proper distinctions between primary, secondary, and tertiary issues, between heresy and error, and as a result of it, they are actually not helping the body of Christ, they're hurting the body of Christ, because real discipleship and real discernment requires accuracy and truth and a recognition that certain things are errors that put you outside of the faith, and others are dangerous, but don't necessarily result in you not being a

58:07

Christian, but everything just gets thrown into the heresy bucket, and that's just not discernment.

58:14

Can I just add too, that if you're a discerner and you've got a blog and you've made these statements that aren't true, if you just go back and silently edit out the part where you were wrong and don't say anything, that doesn't count.

58:26

You really do need to say something, because your readers have already been to your blog and they've already seen your accusations, they don't know if you don't tell them that you've gone back, you know, months later and kind of tweaked your original blog post, so you need to admit it.

58:42

Yeah, yeah. I mean, even the New York Times, when they get it wrong, they issue retractions. Granted, they may be on page 27, but they're there.

58:54

So, okay, all right. I was just gonna say, sometimes because the

59:00

Internet is so wide open, we have all different people, you know, from all different persuasions saying all different sorts of things, and anybody can start a blog, which is great, because that means anybody can start a blog, which is what

59:15

I did, that's how I got started, but it also means anybody can start a blog. Your blog's messed up though, dude.

59:21

Yeah, so sometimes somebody writes an opinion piece, but it isn't said to be an opinion piece, because it's just a blog piece, and so in the original world of journalism, a newspaper would traditionally have articles that were supposed to be news stories, and then the opinion section was separate, and everybody knew, now

59:44

I'm stepping away from my role as a reporter, and I'm telling you what I think about something, and based on my own personal opinion, and there isn't much of that distinction in many cases,

59:54

I think, with the world of blogging, and so I would caution everybody who's reading blogs to ask themselves, is this somebody who's actually teaching a theological position, or is this just somebody who's kind of spouting off, and you know, spouting off is fine, as long as you kind of make it clear, hey, this is my opinion piece, this is me, you know, kind of spouting off, and with the

01:00:18

Messed Up Church, the direction I've tried to take is, I'm writing articles that grab people's attention, get them to think about things, and when

01:00:27

I do state an opinion, I'm always trying to provide links,

01:00:33

I'm always trying to provide the research backing to prove that I'm not just spouting an opinion,

01:00:39

I don't want to be the guy whose opinion is so valuable that people care what I think, I would much rather direct people to a whole world of information that they can find for themselves, that's what

01:00:53

I'm trying to do, so I don't know if that's a helpful thing to point out, but...

01:00:58

Oh, it is very helpful, and you know, there's a lot of these so -called, you know, grab -a -blab, whatever, discernment ministries that will have links, but it's back to their own blog stories to back up what they've said, so you never go outside of their opinion or their blogs, if they have links at all, they go back and quote themselves, so again, you know, let's have some journalistic integrity, and let's make sure that if you're going to make accusations, that you have the person's own word, and you put

01:01:27

Scripture in there. Yep, yep, and that's exactly right, and at the end of the day, what

01:01:34

I've also seen is that some discerners, they get so wrapped up in what they're doing, that when they recognize that the days are dark, and the things ain't getting any better at the moment, they're actually continuing to get worse, that somehow they go into a funk, into a depression, because everything's all about the results.

01:01:56

I always point out, listen, Scripture's pretty clear, if we're in the Great Apostasy, we're gonna get slaughtered,

01:02:04

I mean, we're gonna lose like you wouldn't believe. My job is not to point people to my opinions, in my job as a pastor and as a

01:02:11

Christian theologian, it's to point them to the biblical text, and my opinions really have no bearing on what the text says.

01:02:19

If it does, then I'm twisting the Scripture to conform with my mind, rather than my mind being conformed to the

01:02:26

Word of God. And then I have no problem pointing people to great resources that have been helpful to me over the years, from people from across the spectrum of different denominations.

01:02:40

Presbyterians, and Reformed Baptists, and Lutherans, and people who predate even the Reformation itself.

01:02:46

I mean, I love the works of Irenaeus and Augustine and others, and so as a result of it, it's like,

01:02:52

I can read across a wide spectrum of different theological positions, and that actually helps me.

01:03:01

So many people, in their purity way of thinking, they think that they can't be exposed to a different perspective, but I have found that the more

01:03:11

I have been exposed to different perspectives and even false teaching, it's forced me into the position where I've had to drill down and say, okay, what does the

01:03:22

Bible really say here? And I've gotten to a point now in my life where there's very few theological positions that even remotely provide me with any kind of temptation.

01:03:37

It's like, maybe I need to rethink this. Early on, it was everything. I was kind of being tossed back and forth between a couple of different positions, but having done, especially fighting for the faith now for 11 and a half years, man, the years are getting up there, that doing the discernment work day in and day out,

01:04:00

I mean, this has been a great education for me, and people go, I don't know how you do what you do, how you listen to this stuff, and it's like, you know, it's like, funny enough, it can be depressing at times, but being exposed to these people and go, okay, that's wrong, that's really wrong, but why is it wrong, and how do

01:04:20

I then explain to people what the Bible really says and try to give language to what this person's doing?

01:04:28

Over the years, that's been a great trainer for me, and you'll note, I spend a lot of my time listening to people who are twisting the

01:04:36

Bible, you know, so this has helped me better understand the

01:04:45

Scriptures by forcing me into the Scriptures, you know? So Amy, you gotta fill people in a little bit,

01:04:54

I think, because you haven't been with us for a while. We just talked the other day about how you miss being able to do more discernment stuff.

01:05:03

Do you have any plans for the future in this regard? I do, I just, I know that I need to get back into writing, that's what

01:05:12

I do. I needed to take a season though and step back, and it was because of these discernment issues.

01:05:18

About a year ago, yeah, about a year ago, I started working in the nonprofit sector.

01:05:24

I went back to work, paid some bills, paid some medical bills, it's great, but I took a step back because things were happening, and it's brutal out there.

01:05:35

I mean, if you're on Twitter, it's just a bad place to be. And I saw that I was starting to become that tainted person, and I really didn't like that in myself.

01:05:45

I needed to repent of some things, and so I just very quietly put Berean Research and Berean Examiner just on a little hiatus.

01:05:52

Didn't say much, I had one article, I think, on Berean Research just saying, I'm stepping back, and it's been a really good break.

01:06:00

It's been like a sabbatical. I could rest in the Lord, and you know, I've stayed, you know, in touch and everything, but I really do need to be, you know, doing the work that I need to be doing, and that's writing articles that will help people discern between what is being taught out there, and Chris is right, it's getting worse, and the truth of Scripture.

01:06:21

And so I do little things here and there, but yeah, it's time to get back in. Yeah, if that helps.

01:06:30

Yeah, it does. Now, a little bit of a note here. Steve, the rest of your article, you have, you know, like these

01:06:36

Ten Commandments of Discernment that Robert Bowman put together, and we're not gonna go through those now, but, you know, because Amy has some things she needs to get to today, and I want to be somewhat kind towards her regarding her time, so again, there's gonna be a link to the article down in the description of this installment of Fighting for the

01:06:59

Faith, but I'm gonna remind people, then, of what Christ says, and that is that Christ, in describing what the last times would be like, he says that because of the increase of wickedness, the love of many would grow cold.

01:07:12

And at the end of the day, if the reason why you're doing discernment isn't about loving and serving your neighbor, then there's a real problem.

01:07:20

And if the increase of wickedness is causing you to become jaded to where there is no love in what you're doing, then you need to consider the words that Christ had written to the

01:07:31

Church of Ephesus in the book of Revelation. And here's what it says. To the angel of the church in Ephesus, write, the words of him who holds the seven stars in his right hand, who walks among the seven golden lampstands,

01:07:44

I know your works, your toil, your patience, how you cannot bear with those who are evil. You have tested those who call themselves

01:07:51

Apostles and are not, and you found them to be false. And so you know, Jesus, right out of the out of the chute, is commending the

01:07:57

Church at Ephesus for their discernment, for not tolerating evil, and even investigating those who are claiming to be

01:08:06

Apostles and are not, and finding out that they were right, that they're not really Apostles, and he says this, I know that you are enduring patiently and you're bearing up for my name's sake, and you've not grown weary, but I have this against you, that you've abandoned the love that you had at first.

01:08:20

So remember therefore from where you have fallen, repent and do the works that you did at first. If not, I will come and I will remove your lampstand from its place unless you repent.

01:08:31

And so you'll note then that Christ calls the Church of Ephesus a discerning church, by the way, you know, a model of discernment, to repent because they had lost the love that they had, that was motivating them initially, and that's the discerner's temptation.

01:08:49

That's the temptation that actually faces me on a week -in and week -out basis, and I had a little bit of a sabbatical myself, much needed, you know, as we kind of were thinking about what's the future of fighting for the faith in Pirate Christian Media, but you know, the battle can wear you out, and it can make you jaded, and if that's happening to you and you're not doing what you're doing in motivation to snatch people from the fire, to express the love and the joy that you have over the fact that you have been forgiven by Christ, and if you're not incensed about the fact that people are not hearing the gospel, but hearing this nonsense that is keeping them from the real message of Scripture, which is so comforting, and doing so out of love, then what ends up happening is that you are subjecting yourself to the very judgment that Christ was threatening to the

01:09:40

Church of Ephesus, and this is the reason why He had to call them to repent. So you know, at the end of the day, everything we do in the world of discernment has to be done for the sake of neighbor and in love for them.

01:09:54

That doesn't mean that you can't engage in humor. You know, humor is a good weapon in the apologist's arsenal, but at the end of the day, it's not about the humor.

01:10:03

At the end of the day, it's got to be about what the Bible really says, and it's got to be about Christ. You know, if it's not about Him and what

01:10:10

He's done for us, and the fact that false teaching takes us away from that, and no no, you need that,

01:10:16

I need that, then there's something really wrong, and Christ's words then ring across the pages of the book of Revelation to us, and that is we need to repent, and return to our love.

01:10:28

Without that, we're useless. Amen, Chris. That verse has just always been something that I hold to, and you're right, the temptation to get on there and become the news story is huge, and I would just tell people, you know, even if you're not a blogger, but you're just on social media, and you have something that you need to share, great, step up on the soapbox, share it, share

01:10:54

Scripture, and then get off. Don't sit there and argue your point, and come, you know, try to find your name on social media to see what they're saying about you so that you can jump in, and you know, you go months and months with your, you know, posting things, stop.

01:11:08

Just, you know, whose battle is it? It's the Lord's, and so let the Lord handle it. He knows what

01:11:14

He's doing better than we do. All you need to do is post what you post, and then that's it.

01:11:19

You don't need to argue, you don't need to become the news. Right, exactly. Good point.

01:11:26

Great points. All right, well, guys, I'm gonna wrap up here, but thank you guys for coming on.

01:11:33

It's been way too long since we've had a pirate gang conversation. My coffee's empty anyway, so this whole thing...

01:11:40

Me too. I'm empty too. I'm sorry, guys. Well, thanks for getting the band back together,

01:11:47

Chris. Really appreciate it. We need to do this more often. We're on a mission from God of getting the band back together.

01:11:53

This is nuts. So, all right, let me say goodbye to the audience here. I'll come back to you guys in just a minute.

01:12:00

Hang on. So if you found this helpful, all the information on how to share the video is gonna be down below in the description, and of course,

01:12:09

Fighting for the Faith Pirate Christian Media, we are supported by those whom we serve.

01:12:14

And so if you don't already support us financially, all the information on how you can support us financially is down below in the description, and let me thank you for your support.

01:12:22

We truly can't do what we are doing without it. So until next time, may God richly bless you in the grace and mercy won by Jesus Christ and His vicarious death on the cross for all of your sins.