Andrew Answers Your Most Difficult Bible Questions

You know, I've never even met Andrew in person. The one thing I've picked up on is everybody picks on the man. And so here's my take as an outsider. Oh, that's not true. He picks on everybody else. No, no.

See, I think he's an innocent victim of just ruthless people who harshly judge him. And he just seems to me so innocent. I don't know. I need to meet him to find out. But yeah, that's just my impression.

He'll have to tell me whether I'm right or not. That's hilarious. Wow. I don't trust Chris's opinion on it.

Opening Banter and Teasing About Andrew

This is Apologetics Live. To answer your questions, your host, from Striving for Eternity Ministries, Andrew Rappaport.

Welcome to Apologetics Live. I am your lovable little fuzzball that just everybody loves. Even though, I guess, Israel Wayne says people pick on me. Drew, you don't pick on me, do you?

I don't... If I have, I don't recall.

Oh, hey, look. Right from the beginning. Look at this. And we got... Yep, this is Haps, LOL. Still hasn't learned how to go to ApologeticsLive .com so we could see who's speaking.

By the way, Andrew, speaking of picking on you and Haps, Haps has a great, great dispensational pre-millennial teaching on Jeffrey Rice's Facebook page. I really think you should check it out.

I'm afraid.

He explains perfectly the dispensational position.

Really? Okay.

So maybe we should get that up and play that. All right. Send me a link. All right. So here's what we're going to do, folks. This is the last episode of the year. I know some of you are crying. No, you're not.

But we're going to take the rest of the year off, spend some time with family. And with that, we were waiting anxiously for this guy that says that Calvinism is dangerous. Second week in a row, he hasn't responded.

You can hear the crickets in the background.

Yes, we can hear them. They're there. Actually, hold on. I could play them if you want to hear them, because I'm sure that we have them. Let's see. Where's the crickets? Here's the crickets. Here it is.

There they are. Knew we had crickets somewhere. But what we did have, we're looking for your hardest questions that you have. Facebook user who we think is Haps, who earlier said, we pick on you, also says this.

He says, Jeffrey Rice, Andrew wants to upload the video ideas on dispensationalism at your church.

So I think because he put it on Facebook, I think he tagged Jeffrey in there.

Yeah.

It's just not showing up on here.

Yeah.

All right. Well, here's what we got. What we're going to do is I'm going to share with you guys some of what I receive. As voicemails and emails, we had to do a little bit of editing with it, not to change what was said, but to remove some because we don't want to share foul language.

But we thought you might appreciate to hear what I receive when I listen to the voicemail. It's driving for eternity. Maybe you won't appreciate it, but we also have some fun emails, and I do have some questions that I was challenged with.

And so we'll start off with those looking for you guys to go to ApologeticsLive .com to join us and ask your hardest questions. As I say each week, I can answer your most difficult questions that you have about God and the Bible.

And if you doubt that, just come on in. I will admit that I don't know is a perfectly good answer. Now, we are being reminded by Melissa. If Kofi ends up jumping in here tonight, happy birthday, brother.

Happy birthday, Kofi.

Kofi's birthday. We were giving him a little bit of a hard time because, or at least I was, because he's got his eyes on a new commentary series there, it looks like. And he wants to get it in paperback instead of Logos.

And I was like, yeah, but in Logos, you could take it everywhere with you.

It doesn't take up shelf space.

It doesn't.

And since he was...

He rearranged his books in his library.

Because he's got his daughter coming. I said, see, you don't have to move books around when you have a newborn in the house. And the advantage of it. And then, you know, Dan Phillips said, yeah, and you got the search ability.

But Kofi's answer was, but I like a good deal. I don't know if he was putting that out on his birthday as ideas for folks. Like, hey, if you want to get me something.

You know, it was a lot of you who follow me on Facebook. You know that yesterday was my son Rhett's birthday. He turned two. And just in case you're wondering what to get him. He wears a size John MacArthur study commentary.

So I'll just save it for him for one day.

Yeah. Yeah. There you go.

That's what size he wears.

I got it.

Voicemails, Emails, and How to Respond to Criticism

So this was this is a legit email. Sorry, voicemail that I got. So I saw it. And when I looked it up, because you know how the you'll get the transcriptions. The transcription said, my name and number.

As one of you have a nice hot cup of a hot cup, but shut the dot, dot, dot. They didn't do a good job transcribing this one. But what did we hear? Well, this is an actual voicemail that I got. I think it was this week.

When I listen to the voicemails, it's striving for eternity. These are the kind of love messages I get.

My name and number is one. You have a nice hot cup of shut up.

So, yeah, people get angry, man.

Now, the irony, and I was telling this to Drew, is the guy calls up, does not block his number. So I got his phone number. And, well, because I kind of have a certain type of background, it didn't take me long to not only get his phone number, but his address, his email address, his social media.

And so I'm not sure. Do I toy with the idea of sending him a message? So this is a poll for those in the chat. I'm not going to go giving out his number, though. That was one thing I was thinking is give out his number, ask all of you guys to call him and say, Andrew asked us to call you from Striving for Eternity.

Stop picking on Andrew. He's a really nice guy. He's a really gentle person.

Yeah, don't pick on him.

So, yeah.

But there's some other fun things we could do. You know, I could, and this is, I'm curious what you guys think is the best way. Should we, should I email him and thank him for the message with a copy of it?

Obviously with the beep. You know, do I, you know, go on his Facebook and thank him there. You know, and what should the message, what should the response be?

I'll give my answer and then everyone else can give their answer.

And you'll just star the ones that we have so we can look at them.

Yeah, yeah. So my answer would be just let it ride. You know, people are, people are going to hate. They're going to say things like that. You know, especially when you have a platform talking about truth and exposing truth and things like that.

People are, you know, people are going to, they're going to act in the flesh, right? They're going to act sinfully and wickedly in those ways. And they're going to want to shut you up. And so I say, let them talk.

Act like it doesn't bother you. Like Melissa said here, pray, pray for him. And then, and then, you know, move on.

Yeah, I usually do that. But, you know, it, I don't know, we, we, maybe we have some fun. I mean, it's, it's nice to, you know, return kindness for things like this. You know, you know, like, look, so folks may not know this, but like Ray Comfort was being ridiculed incessantly by Richard Dawkins.

And you know what Ray Comfort's reaction was? He actually had his staff find out where Dawkins would be speaking at, get the hotels, and he'd send a fruit basket every time that Dawkins would go somewhere.

He made sure there was a banana in it because Dawkins would call him the banana man. He would go out of his way to send a fruit basket. And Richard Dawkins actually said in front of an audience that Ray Comfort is a very difficult man to hate.

And I kind of want to be that, that type of person, if I can. You know, I, I don't know if I am, but we'll see. So Melissa is saying, Drew, that she said, Drew, I will make sure to send your son some John MacArthur books on eschatology.

There you go. You're going to save those for him so that he has a more biblical.

I don't know about that. But I mean, I'd save it for him so he can compare it to the biblical position.

All right. So, so we got some, some thoughts coming in. So this unrelated to the thing, but Jim says, Andrew tried to reach you. I don't know how you tried to reach me. It's pretty easy to reach me, by the way.

Just info at striving for attorney dot com. I'll put that up in a moment. But he says, Andrew tried to reach you. Your podcast with Doreen Virtue at the six minute, 30 minute is she, she calls God a she.

Please go back and listen. I'll listen, but I'm going to assume and I'm going to put up the way you could contact us. There you go. If you want to contact us, it's just info at striving for eternity dot com.

I'm going to assume that she probably said he and it just came out sounding that way. That's that's going to be my assumption.

Plus, I mean, it's it's not unheard of, right? We we do it when we preach all the time. We just misspeak.

Right.

We mean to say something, but then our mind, for some reason, thinks about something else.

What do you think the worst thing someone could say during a sermon could be? Just just picture the scene. Drew, you just got done preaching a sermon to a pretty good sized church. You're feeling pretty good about that sermon.

You think it went well. You were well studied and prepared. And you go to the back and right away, the first person comes up to you is an eight year old boy. Who says. Pastor Andrew, why did you say that Judas died on the cross for our sins?

What?

Yes.

I went back and listened. I asked, can you just remove that? Yeah, I actually I mean, these things. And so, yeah, I actually made that blasphemous statement.

Things like that happen. And I mean, I've had it where it's it's written correctly in my notes and I look at it and then I just say the wrong thing. Yeah, it happens.

Well, Dee said that I guess she did say it or saying if she said it, it was a mistake. And that's I would I would agree. I I have had the problem where when I get it wrong, I'm consistent. That's the problem.

The first time I remember this happening, I don't remember the word, but I replaced one word with another. Several times, like three times in a sermon. And I got done preaching and one of the ladies in our in the church comes up and says, Pastor Andrew, why did you why did you replace this with that?

Now, my church knew that I would do my own translation. So sometimes back at that church, we use New King James. But there be times I would give my own translation. And I'd usually say, you know, if you're looking in your New King James, you know, I'm I'm providing my own translation because it was just what I didn't think.

New King James really was good with their translation of a text sometimes.

It's not. And that's according to Dan Wallace, too.

Yeah.

Yeah.

And so it's just a matter of I they knew I did that. Well, what ended up happening was this lady says, you know, I couldn't figure out why you translated this word that way. And so I was looking up my MacArthur study notes and I just couldn't understand.

And I said, I didn't do that. That wasn't in my notes. Second lady comes up to me, says the same thing. I looked up at my ESV study Bible and, you know, I couldn't figure out why you translated it that way.

I'm like, did I?

I don't I didn't mean to.

If I did. Third woman comes up and I'm just like, look, let me let me go back and re-listen to what I said. So the next week I got up and I said, now, some of you are wondering why your pastor translated this word that way.

And I saw a bunch of heads not up and down. And I went, because your pastor's an idiot. I mean, that's really it. I in a sermon and I went back and listened and even edited in the YouTube. So I, I seven times, seven times that I use the word that I meant to use the word.

Oh, now I'm trying to remember. It was a chaos. I said Ezekiel or Zachariah or something like that. Seven times I was getting like every time in the message, I was consistent. I was just consistently wrong.

Man.

That one name, you just couldn't get it right.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah.

So, so let's see what we got.

Questions, Misstatements, and Why Context Matters

So Mr.

Honholz here says, my snippy side says to go for it. My rational side says, let it go. Not worth it. I'm torn. I think I got the answer. I should go with Chris's Chris's snippy side and then mask the header so that it's coming from Chris Honholz from voice reason.

I love that idea, Chris.

Thank you.

That's my snippy side. It's always better when you do. If you're going to do something snippy or play a practical joke that someone else gets the blame for.

Right.

That would make Chris Honholz really snippy at you.

Melissa says, I would just let it go and pray for him. Well, I've already done that. It's, it's been like a week or two. Facebook user, AKA, we think haps, I'd say appreciate the feedback, brother.

That may be. Yeah.

You know, the, the funny thing is if I was to like, like he probably doesn't realize he, he left the phone number, but if I was to send a letter to the house, thanking him for the feedback.

Letter. Yeah.

Handwritten letter with a, or probably with a, with a card with of Andrew's picture going.

Well, and a gospel track, of course.

Right.

Yeah, of course.

Of course.

I mean, it would just, it freaks some people out when certain people do things like that, you know?

Okay.

Write a handwritten note, you know?

Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah.

I mean, so, um, John here and you tag this one just for the record, you tagged it. This was a question. Question for Drew. Why are you still post mill?

No, he says, are you still post mill? So yes.

I think he's really asking, why are you? I, I put.

Yeah.

Kind of.

Yeah.

I mean, I get it.

I get it.

That's consistent because he really wants to know why that's adding to what's said.

I get it. Yeah.

No, it's, it's what's really behind the question. John, John, you, you verify whether that was really your puzzlement. You're trying to figure out why he still is.

Because I'm still biblical. That is why.

Yes.

So.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Notice, notice, notice.

He says are not why.

I know, but why are, I think is what it should be. Why are, because we're, we're all curious.

Notice for the listeners. Notice what Andrew did there, right? I'm stepping in the shoes of Andrew right now.

Yeah.

Did there. Right.

He added. What, something to the text. And then he assumed that was the underlying meaning of the question.

I, it's, it's the, it's my question then. Humble. Clay says I should send him some sushi. Kind of like Matt's like did to me. John is saying, thank you, Drew. Very good. I sure hope that, you know, John is not being swayed by you and your post mill.

So every time I post something, whether it's eschatology based or not, he, he'll, he'll write a comment, you know, he appreciates what was said or something like that. And at the very end, he'll go and post mill still wrong.

Every time.

Literal Churches in Revelation, Not Church Ages

All right. So we got a question that came in here. It is from, and I'm not sure how I've never seen this spelling of a name.

Dot.

Dot.

Ron, or I'm going to, I'm going to assume that Aaron could be Aaron. Different spelling. So, all right. But the question is just curious, would you consider the churches in revelation as just literal churches or church ages also?

Well, I would say that they're literal churches. And nothing more. The church age theory doesn't actually fit. You have people trying to fit it in. They look through history and go, okay, this one is, but there's specific people mentioned specific groups of people, at least there's a specific timeframe, even 10 days mentioned for one of them.

So when you look at it and you see that the route that, you know, you look at this, the churches and they're kind of along the mail route that people would go that, that to travel, to be able to, you know, the, if you were, if you were selling Merck, like merchant selling products, that's the route that they would go.

So it seems that he's writing, you know, to those churches specifically and, you know, pass this along as you go. And so I think that, uh, again, I'm, I'm dispensational, which means I'm going to interpret the Bible more literally, and I'm not going to try to spiritualize or read something into it.

That's not there. And so when it mentions those churches, I assume they're the actual churches in those actual cities. I think that some of the reason that people give for trying to make it a church age is more to fit a theological system, uh, trying to say, oh, this is long periods of time.

Look, all this has been fulfilled already. Things like that. So, so yeah. Um, so let me go to, should I go to this email that we got?

Yeah.

It's gold.

Misread BLM Email and SEO Exploitation

And this is, yeah, this is gold. So you guys can appreciate what we get in the ministry. Uh, I, I'm toying with the idea. Just pay. I don't do like Matt slick and save all my hate mail. I should maybe so we could do that.

I have a couple, but, uh, this is just more in the more entertaining one. And, uh, this is an actual email that we got at the ministry today. All right. And so here it is. Um, and it's from Shelly Robinson.

Um, and she's with online safety masters .com. Now I'm going to say that I did look at the blog article she's going to reference and there's actually some, some pretty decent tips there. Um, it's just the way that they did it, but here it is.

Hello, Andrew. My name is Shelly. I'm an advocate for black lives matter.

Okay.

The subject is how striving fraternities users can safely support BLM online. And I saw the subject and went, huh? Not sure why you refer contact me, but now my advocacy for black lives matter. I had to step back for a second and go, did I miss something?

Drew, maybe, maybe I came in and did a show when I was so exhausted. So tired that I just didn't know what I was saying. Maybe I, you know, like, uh, the, the claim of Doreen virtue said she, instead of he now D here is saying what a scam.

No, actually it's, it's not, it's not a scam. Uh, I'll explain, but, uh, Chris Han holds is saying the hate, the hate at mail episodes are entertaining. And so maybe, maybe I should, I should try to read some of them.

Um, so this is an actual email that, uh, that I got and it's, it's actually, I think they have an actual thing they want from me, but. So they claim I, I I'm an advocate for black lives matter. My like, at that point I stopped and said, so why are you contacting me?

Well, here's why I came across your site through my numerous BLM searches. And we'd like to thank you for supporting and writing about this cause.

Hmm.

Is right.

I remember that. I remember that time you supported BLM through, uh, YouTube and through blog articles. Uh, but I think it was the supporting of, uh, doing away with them.

Yeah.

Well, I'm pulling up the article so that I can reference it. Um, and this, this one actually wasn't written by me at all, but, uh, so I'll, I'll show it in a moment, but so it goes on. Um, I would like to share with you an article on staying safe online.

I think not many have really thought about while supporting BLM. It is about protecting ourselves online as supporters of black rights. You can find the article here. There's the article. I really think it would be a great article to share with your readers.

I suggest you sharing it on this page, strivingforattorney .org slash. And then, then it's a biblical response to black lives matter. And that's the, so if you, if you want to find it, it's strivingforattorney .org and then we're slash and then there, where there should be spaces.

You just put a dash. So it's a biblical response to black lives matter. Thank you for your support, Shelly. I'm like, what? So, so yeah, the article that Shelly's referring to was written by Justin Pierce and I could bring that up.

Let's, let's see. So first off, I didn't even do that one, but I wonder, you know, let's, let's see if the, if it's a supportive article. Um, so here's a biblical response to black lives matter by written by Justin Pierce right there.

Not, not me. Hmm. Uh, let's see, we have much feedback from our podcasts, exposing black lives matters, Marxist political agenda and their anti-Christ satanic beliefs.

In the first opening sentence.

So, oh, I should make this bigger so that, uh, those can, can read it.

Right.

So that is the opening sentence and I'm going, okay, this is a classic case where what they did was they did a search for black lives matter. When you do a search for things, striving for trade pops up because we have some good SEO search engine optimization.

We've been around for a long time. We get a lot, a lot of visitors that helps. And therefore people do a search for black lives matter. This is going to show up, but clearly Shelley didn't read this because had she read just the first line, you would have realized that this article is not positive and supportive of black lives matter.

But Justin goes on, he links both of the shows that we had dealt with the topic. He says most comments were positive yet somewhere negative. We took a lot of time studying the history, philosophy and social Marxist beliefs of the organization's founders.

Dr.

Silvestro studied the atheistic and evolutionary background of the woke culture within BLM. And I'm literally getting email from that, that Shelley person again. Interesting. Maybe we'll pull that up.

Uh, so, so, so, uh, he says, he even compiled an impressive bit of notes and thought that, um, that he taught at a church. So, so,. Hmm. So she could have gone there, make no mistake. We strongly and collectively affirm that this movement is satanic.

And we have a lot of proofs from the leadership's own words and their writings, as well as warnings from other strong Christian voices who love the Lord, the body of Christ and the world at large. These godly leaders vehemently plead for biblical Christians to open their eyes to the dangers, nature and anti-Christian beliefs of the cultural Marxism in all its many forms.

Pastor Vodie. Backham for instance, has a has powerfully preached about racism and cultural Marxism and provides a link to a sermon. I mean, am I mistaken here? This doesn't seem to be supportive so far.

Yeah. Here's Han. Hold says, yeah, I don't think that article says what she thinks.

Yeah, no, I don't think so. So this is the sort of stuff where, you know, I, I just have to laugh when I see this stuff. Cause it's like, ah, I know you're trying to, and what, what, what this person wants is, and this is very common.

Okay. Striving fraternity has a, like I said, a very large internet presence. I used to actually have a tool where I could do comparisons to see, how it ranks with other websites. So you'd be able to go and check your, you know, the ranking of, of the website, you can, any website.

So just to give you an idea, and unfortunately, Amazon got rid of this tool, but, and I'm not saying this for bragging.

It's just a,.

It's just matter of fact of just the way that we write articles. And actually I'm going to try to pull up so I can speak, give you actual numbers. It's the way that we write articles, the number of people who visit the site, the way that the, the length of time that we've been around, all of those things play into searches and how, how to get found.

And so the last time that we, we were able to do this to look at it. And actually what I could do is I can actually show you, and that way I can read it and do, do, do, do, let's just share this page.

And so this was the last time. So this was two or three years ago. I think actually I could tell you what year it was. It was 2021 that we, we did this. And so let me share a window and here it is. This was our newsletter that we put out and let me make it a bit larger.

Well, that's not helpful. There's the, there's the ranking. So that's what it, what it is. So striving for eternity world ranking in us ranking. And so this was at the end of 2021 and our world rank at the time we were in the top 161 ,000 websites in the world.

Now there's about, I think at the time that I did this, I don't know if I put this in here. Let me see if I wrote the, the total, but I think it was like five or 8 billion websites. No, I didn't write it in there.

There were like five or 8 billion websites. Now granted a lot of those websites are just a page that's put up and you know, so there's a bunch of junk out there, but to get ranked in anything under, if you're in the top million, you're, if you're considering the tool that Alexa had for their rankings, wouldn't even chart it unless you were in the top million.

So in the U S we ranked 24 ,000. So in the, out of every website in the whole United States, the striving fraternity was in the top 20, 24 ,000. How does that compare to some other ministries? Well, at the time living waters, Ray comfort, great ministry.

I was really surprised actually by a lot of these, especially living waters internationally. I thought they'd have a much bigger presence than us. They were at the time ranked 605, no 604 ,000 in the world.

We were 161. I, that blew me away. And in the U S they didn't even rank. And that, that just really surprised me. Cause I know that they get a lot of people going to their site, but I wonder if more people are going to like their YouTube page or instead of, cause they're not writing blogs and things like that.

So maybe that's why probably, yeah, that would make sense.

That's what I'm kind of thinking. Karm. Well, now I'm going to give the preface that Karm used to at one at, you know, years ago was ranked much higher than us. But there they ended up having a data loss, basically a server crashed and it wasn't being backed up and their, their numbers tanked.

I think he, they've recovered that now, but at the time where we were 161 ,000 in the world, they were 261 in the world. And where we were ranked 24 ,000 in the U S they were 109 ,000 in the U S. Now those are the only two of the ministries that I looked at where the we did better than them, both U S and world.

But these other ones, though, they, they beat us in the U in the world rankings, which will make sense. When I tell you the ministries, what surprised me with the, with these is we did better than them in just in the U S.

So answers in Genesis was 34 ,000 in the world grace to you. This, this really shocked me. They were 48 ,000 in the world, but 72 ,000 in the U S.

That is pretty shocking.

Yeah. That, that tells me that grace to you has a much bigger international presence than American presence.

I'm just going to, I'm just going to throw this out there, right? John MacArthur is reaching people all over the world. According to that number, that's post mill view right there. Yeah. Reaching the world like that.

It's very post mill with his premillennial view.

You can, you can hold to the premillennial view, but Hey, the post mill is coming out.

Ligonier ministry in the U S was the closest to us. The Ligonier ministry was 27 ,000 in the U S compared to our 24. And then bible .org was 31 ,000 in the U S. Mr. Tracy saying, where did you get those numbers?

I actually, uh, let's see if I can highlight this. If it'll highlight, it was the Amazon used to have a tool called Alexa traffic rankings. Unfortunately, they don't have it anymore. Actually, it was January of 2022 that they, that they had gotten rid of this.

And so this was the last time that I was able to get numbers, uh, from that. Uh, but you know, we spent a lot of during COVID, uh, you know, and this was our newsletter and, you know, this is basically what this was, was, uh, you know, talking about, I, I had said, we, we cannot count on social media to promote Christian materials anymore.

Remember this is 2021. We were seeing Christians being shut down in 2020. And so I made the effort in 2020 to really make sure that our articles were well-written for SEO so that people would find them.

This is the advantage of being part of the Christian podcast community is people that are part of the Christian podcast community. When people search things because of the, the power of striving fraternities internet presence, it helps people to find the podcasts at the Christian podcast community.

Cause we've tied those two websites together. Actually our web developer didn't want us doing that. He said, no, we're doing that. Uh, and so, um, but I said here, I said with big tech companies, censoring Christians, we have focused on making sure that when people are searching for things on the internet, then, uh, they, I should say they find SFA spelling mistake, uh, by the end of, by the end of the year, Alexa rankings had SFE ranking higher in the United States than many well-known ministries.

Uh, we also rank higher in the world than some of the same ministries. So then I provided that chart. So, um, you know, all that, and that's not, I mean, I'm not posting that to, to like some sort of bragging rights.

It's, I mean, those numbers, the numbers are the numbers. Um, and so it's, it's just a matter that, um, you know, I was saying that to say that we have a lot of people. I get literally emails daily of people that want to blog for us and, or they want to have us tag an article because they know that one of the ways to build SEO to get found is if you have a very large site that links to you, that becomes, uh, something that ends up helping your SEO.