Church of Christ (Revisited) #baptism #justification #apologetics

Presuppositional Apologetics and the Value of Christian Debate

Welcome back, ladies and gentlemen. I'm your host, Eli Ayala, and I am here with the apologist with perhaps the coolest apologetics ministry name, the Apologetic Dog. Just makes me picture me walking my dog and an atheist comes up, and before I open my mouth, my dog starts spitting arguments at him, and that's pretty intense, bro, the Apologetic Dog.

That is awesome. Well, I am happy to have my good friend, Jeremiah, and now I say my good friend, I better pronounce his last name right, Nortier. Got it. Nortier. You like the French version.

Is it Nort-hil, Nort-hil? I can't. Nortier. In the South, Eli always say Nortier. Nortier.

With a little twang. I've had Jeremy on a number of times, and the particular episode that I think people found really useful was when we were talking about the Church of Christ, and we had a lot of negative comments about that episode, but we also had some very positive ones, and I've actually had people personally reach out to me to express how helpful that episode was.

So we know this going into these sorts of discussions that not everyone's gonna agree, but we do our best. Jeremy does his best to just share things from his perspective as he understands things and tries to explain and give the truth from the Word of God as best as he can, and we just pray that God, through his grace, allows those seeds to take root and grow.

And so here we are to continue to do that. But before we do that, I wanna talk about his recent debate on baptism. This man is a debating dog. He's a beast. He's a beast. I think he does such a great job, and he does it with such kindness, but with biblical precision.

I really do appreciate listening to him teach and speak. So we're gonna jump right into that in just a few moments, but I wanna read something that someone sent me. That was an encouragement. Now, I hear this all the time.

You guys know that on this channel, we do some precept, man. I'm a presuppositionalist, right? People come to this channel. They know they're gonna get presuppositional apologetic methodology, and you have kind of the mixed reaction of the people who take the various camps of apologetic methods.

There's always those people.

You know, apologetics, precept sounds interesting, but the problem with it is it doesn't work. Right, okay.

Now, I have a problem when people say something doesn't work, okay? Apologetics is not simply a pragmatic thing, right? We don't do precept because it works or doesn't work. We primarily do it because we think that it's biblical.

We think it's a biblical approach to apologetics. That's the first and foremost reason why we do it, and if it's biblical, then it will work insofar as it accomplishes what the scriptures say apologetics is supposed to accomplish, and we leave room for the work of the spirit and things like that.

However, to satisfy those people who say that it doesn't work, okay, I'd like to read something. I was sent, I can't mention any names. I don't want to mention any names and drag anyone into this and details, but someone had reached out to me and texted me this.

So he says, so I just talked to a Christian who got saved because of presuppositional apologetics. So here's an encouragement. Keep doing what you're doing. He also said that nowadays, he listens to your stuff almost daily.

Thank you very much, and then he said, yes, he was a hard atheist and tag, the transcendental argument for God's existence, just stuck with him. Today, he is three years saved and active in church, okay?

There you go, right? Does it work? Yes. Is that the reason why we do it? Not necessarily, but God does use it, and so when someone says, well, where are the results? Well, I mean, this is a wonderful example of the results of using such a method in form of argumentation, and I can attest, and I'm sure Jeremiah could attest, your personal interactions, I have seen God use presuppositional apologetics quite powerfully.

That said, to not rattle any cages unnecessarily, I've also seen God use classical apologetics, right? As we famously say, God can strike a blow with a broken stick, and in reality, while I think I have the right apologetic method, we are all broken sticks, and so God uses us nonetheless.

So there you go, right? I'm not gonna throw any red meat to the tribe, right? You know, the camp, but I don't know who told me this, but they said that I like how I do apologetics better than how you don't do apologetics.

So I'm a presupper, I hope more people use presupp because I think it's biblical, but if you're using classical or evidential, hey, that's not my cup of tea, I've got my issues, but I think God can still use it, and so keep talking about Christ, keep thinking rationally and biblically, and in the end, when we go to be with Christ in glory, we'll all be presuppers then.

So anyway, I just wanted to get that little bit out. Let's jump right in, we're five minutes in, got some people listening in, thank you so much, and I'm looking forward to talking about this. So Jeremiah, you have been making your rounds, I'm not gonna lie, I'm a little jelly, a little jealous, doing all these cool debates.

Let me make sure I get on, let me see this gentleman's name. You just recently debated a gentleman by the name of Gavin James, am I correct? Is that the? Yes, you're right. Yes, Gavin James, on the topic of baptism, it was the baptism debate proposition, is water baptism necessary for our justification before God, okay?

Baptism, super important topic. We obviously will not hold to the position that baptism is necessary for justification, but that is not to undermine the great importance of baptism. So how did that debate come about?

What gets you, I mean, do you walk up to someone on the street and be like, yo, we debating right now on justification of baptism. What is the context for this interaction you had with Gavin?

Good question. A few months ago, I was on the Cultish podcast with our friends, Andrew and the other Jeremiah. And you have a brother named Jeremiah, right? I do, yes. All right, we're the Jeremiah crew.

That's right. So me and my friend, the fishbone, Trey Fisher, this was his second time on Cultish on examining the church of Christ. And we see them outside of the fold, unfortunately. And we say this with love and care.

We do not think they believe in the right gospel that they veered away from orthodoxy. They've added works into the gospel of grace and added it with faith. And so that's what he talks about on Cultish.

And Eli, we've had a ton of feedback, both good and bad. And so Gavin messaged me on Facebook and he told me that he really likes the Cultish podcast. And then to his dismay, he found that there was two episodes on the church of Christ being a cult.

And so he was telling me or asking me to reconsider basically. And I just invited him. I said, hey, I'm sure you're very passionate about your position. I'm passionate about holding to faith alone, looking in the perfect savior alone.

And that's how we're made right before God. I was like, how about we have just a public discussion, debate on this? And one thing led to another. And so we were able to make that happen. And so real quick, before we continue on with that, I just wanna encourage people, go to the Cultish podcast.

Go check out those episodes. I love the work that Jeremiah Roberts and Andrew are doing out there at Apologia, which you're no stranger to Apologia yourself.

Yes, I had the opportunity to go up there and record six, I don't wanna call them lectures, but I guess they're lectures, six teachings, I suppose, on presuppositional apologetics. And it's gonna be available on their Apologia Studios Academy in the near future.

So I had an opportunity to meet Jeff and have Dr. James White buy me dinner. I mean, that was cool, man. I'm a little jelly now. I was like, I was driving with him in his car and I'm like, look, I'm like, I'm in the James White truck.

Like, this is weird and awesome at the same time.

On the back of his truck, did it say Christ or chaos? Kind of like I don't know.

Let me tell you something. I don't remember the color, but when you see James White in a debate, he's all dressed up in his suit and he's being James White. When I see him in his natural habitat, he comes in and picks me up in this bright, I think it was this bright orange jacket with these like ultimate warrior shades.

And I was like, wow, this guy is cool. He has such a unique style about him. It was awesome. And we had such a good time too. He's such a different, very different person from the debate stage. And then when you're kind of just hanging with him casually, it was really cool to kind of hang with him in that context.

But yeah, that was recently. And I'm looking forward to maybe doing something again in the future. So we're actually having the cultish podcast host on this show where we are going to do an episode called the pre-supping the cults, pre-supping the cults.

So we'll be talking about various cults and maybe issues of the occult and kind of dig into how we could approach those topics from a presuppositional approach. So I'm looking forward to that. That's in early April, I think April 8th.

I have to double check, but I think that's it. That's just around the corner. Just around the corner, yeah. So looking forward to that. Those are great guys there and they're doing some great work, but let's get back to what you're doing, man.

That's awesome that people should definitely check out your interviews there. And I highly recommend if you haven't already, the Apologetic Dog YouTube channel, I highly recommend, and I'm not just saying this because Jeremiah is a great guy and he's doing awesome things.

He's got some really good content. I mean, if you kind of put this on pause and kind of just like subscribe to his channel and like just do him a solid, he's almost at, let me see, you are currently at

900, 900 subs. I'm actually on a race with a few other YouTube channels to 1K, help me people.

Yeah, come on, I'm dead serious. We do need to support people who are doing good ministry, right? And support sometimes just means subscribing, right? That means something. So if you guys can, if you haven't already, go to the Apologetics Dog YouTube channel and support your local apologist.

Sounds like an infomercial, right? That's right. If you go right now to the Apologetic Dog's channel and subscribe, you will receive a small vial of oil from the Holy, I'm just kidding. Who knows, you'll get some Pentecostals going over there real quick.

So this debate, I'm a little saucy today, so I do apologize, but I'm ready to go. I've got my Bonson coffee mug, I'm drinking good coffee. I'm ready to talk about this important topic. So the context of the debate is, as you explained it, why was the proposition framed in the way that it was?

It says here, is water baptism necessary for our justification before God? Why not the generic, is baptism necessary for salvation? What's the reason for that wording?

So me being in apologetics and in the debate realm, these are the types of categories I'm constantly contending for. Like when we say, is it necessary for salvation? Well, which part of our salvation?

Are we talking about justification? Are we talking about sanctification? Are we talking about what Jesus accomplished, Calvary? Are we talking about glorification? And I'm not gonna lie, Eli, as he was knocking on my door saying, hey, reconsider these things.

I was like, hey, let's debate. And it was pretty soon where he said, okay, I'm interested in this. He goes, I don't have a YouTube account. I said, all you need is a camera. He said, okay. And as we were talking.

Yeah, all you need is a phone. And he asked me if I had any suggestions and I suggested this topic, thinking maybe he'd wanna word it a little bit differently. But he said, no, I like it. And I just thought, well, water baptism.

That way, when we go to certain texts that I think is more a baptism of the spirit, I don't wanna get lost on that, even though that's relevant and he would have been totally within the confines of the debate to ask me about what baptism of the spirit looks like.

We talked about the word necessary, but more so in the sense of when we have forgiveness of sins. Now the church of Christ, they think at baptism, your past sins are washed away. And the way that we view justification getting into this next term, we believe it's the whole enchilada as Greg Bonson would have said, right?

The whole enchilada. All of our sins are forgiven and put on Calvary. In exchange, we receive that righteousness of Christ. And so that's why I wanted to say necessary for our justification, because when we just say salvation in a broad sense, we have to do some more heavy lifting to get at that term.

Sure. To say that's what we're contending for here, not sanctification in the broad sense. And so I wanna just go ahead and put that out there. Now we understand justification as being forensic or judicial, and that's so necessary.

This is what really sets us apart from Roman Catholics and Eastern Orthodox. But what I tell people is if justification is judicial, then it's necessarily before God as judge. And so this is the language that Romans uses.

And so what's on the backside of that is what is James 2 talking about? What kind of justification is that before? Because you and I have talked about this before. This is in a context before men, a vindication before man.

Horizontal justification versus vertical justification. And this is an important point in terms of just biblical interpretation. When you see the term justification, it doesn't always mean what you think it means, the context determines.

And so you have Paul utilizing justification in a very different way than James is using justification. That's a very important point, because as you know, James 2 is always brought up. Look, it's clear, bro, the only place in scripture, right, you've heard this before, right?

The only place in scripture where it says faith alone is preceded by not by faith alone, as though you've never read that before. But you see, that is always brought up. So it's important to know the context there, but go ahead.

And I'm so quick to say, read the whole verse. It says, you see, carrying this person-to-person interaction and what kind of faith is he talking about? Oh, a said faith. He's not talking about pistis, firm trust in the perfect savior.

So yeah, we just developed that context.

Faith Alone, Justification, and the Meaning of Baptism

Well, that's excellent. I like that wording and it really highlights really the center of the gospel and this idea that what makes us right before God? Is it this declaration that God makes upon us by faith, which itself is a gift of God, or is it something we do?

I think that's so important. Now, can you kind of, I think people from the other perspective might perceive a person like yourself and people like myself, people in general who hold to this kind of justification by faith alone, that we don't really take seriously the issue of baptism.

What is the proper understanding that a justification by faith alone believer, what's the proper context that we should understand the importance of baptism? If it's not for salvation, then is it really all that important?

How should we frame that in our own thinking as Christians?

Yeah, something that I contended heavy for in the debate, if some of our viewers go over there, is you'll see me begin to articulate how our baptism is something we participate in in a work. And it's a wonderful, God-glorifying, sanctifying work that we do and participate in.

And so we just gotta have the proper categories. Scripture, I would say from Genesis to Revelation makes the case that it's based on our faith in the perfect Savior. That's how we're justified. That's how we're saved.

But now we're on this wonderful journey of walking in the light, walking with Christ in sanctification. And so all of our works, Ephesians 2 .10 talks about how we're His workmanship created for good works.

All the commands given to us that we should delight to obey belongs in our sanctification. That's what we're created unto after we've been declared right before God. So works are not bad. As long as we understand the proper category, our works belong in our sanctification.

And so when we obey Christ's command to be baptized, we are showing the watching world what true disciples of Christ look like. We are set apart by the things that we do and how we identify with Christ.

So that's huge. In this debate, I really made the distinction between justification and sanctification in faith and works. And I say, and guess what? Our baptism, which is a ceremonial right by definition, belongs in our sanctification and it's a work that we do.

All right, that's awesome. Now I'm kind of gonna break my normal way of doing things. I usually take questions at the end, but if some questions start coming in, I will kind of just shoot them up right away so that people don't have to wait too long.

This is a good question here too by Shane. So if you have any questions, you're listening in. Shane Fisher. Shane Fisher, that's right. If you have any questions, shoot them in the comments and we'll try to shoot them up and kind of get to them.

So Shane, thank you so much for your question. Shane asks, how is it justification before men when Abraham and Isaac were the only ones on the Mount? And according to Genesis 22, how were they justified before men?

How would you interact with that?

Excellent question. I've been asked this time. And before I answer, I have a question for Shane. Are you related to Trey Fisher? I wanna know that. I think y 'all are distant cousins. So Genesis 22 is super important because we see that James 2 tells us that Abraham is being obedient to God.

Was not Abraham justified by his works when he offered up his son, Isaac? And so how do we say that this is a vindication before men? I would say, Shane, you need to go read all of Genesis 22. Because when you do that, you do see more people with Abraham.

There was two travelers with him and his son. And he says something remarkable to the two travelers because Abraham knows God told him to go sacrifice his son. And he says to the two travelers, basically, y 'all stay here and we will come back to you, okay?

Now, Hebrews 11 says that he had faith in God even to resurrect Isaac from the dead, essentially. And so he's putting his faith on display to them regardless of what they know is gonna happen. All they see is Abraham's faith saying he knows with certainty, full assurance that him and Isaac are going to come back.

So those are two witnesses, I would say. And then the third witness is Isaac himself. This is an experience Isaac would never forget, right? And so it keeps going, Eli.

And Hey, Isaac, remember that time we went fishing? Yeah, dad. Remember that time you like almost sacrificed me? Oh yeah, I remember that. Hey, actually, I'm reminded as the way you answered. I know that, I think it was Paul.

I don't remember where, but he is making reference to the Exodus and the wanderings in the wilderness and the disobedience of the people of Israel. And he says to his current audience, these things were written for you so that in a very broad sense, we are witnesses to the genuineness of Abraham's faith.

Yes. You jumped ahead of me. I was Oh, I'm so sorry.

I was building these layers. Oh, I stole your thunder. No, no, no, you're good. I still got some more spice to add in there. Oh, you gotta have this. You got the salt with salt, babe. The justification, babe.

Yes. I'm so sorry. No, no, no, you're good. So what we're seeing set up with the three witnesses is a picture of how truth is established by three or more witnesses that would come later in the law. So we have that, but we're not done because we also have a theophany where the angel of the Lord speaks from on high, but to man's level and says this amazing statement.

Now I know that you fear God. So when in this conversation, I also entertain the church of Christ asking me this question a lot of times is, do you think God was learning Abraham's faith in this moment that he truly feared man?

Or was he speaking on the human level, which is what we're talking about? That's what James 2 is talking about, right? And so John Calvin brings us out in his commentaries how God is speaking on man's level.

God is witness that true living faith will manifest itself out to the world. Remember what we see old and new Testament is the just shall live by faith, right? But we keep going, baby, because this was in the Pentateuch, right?

So millions of Jews would be seeing Abraham's living faith put on display in the story. And that is the application James 2 is also making to Christians. What do you think about that, Eli?

I think that that's good stuff, but Shane continues. I'm not sure if your answer did it for Shane, but It won't.

I don't know if he's a professor, if he teaches at Church of Christ College, but I've invited him to debate me on Marlon's channel or Donnie's channel. I taught him anything he wants.

Let's do it. He told me he'll Or we can do it on this channel. I don't think I've ever had a baptism debate before on this channel. Yeah, I don't mind. Okay, so here Shane asks again. So he has, first of all, he says, no, he's not related to the Shane that you referred to.

So thank you for that clarification, Shane. So Shane continues, in your debate, Jeremiah, you admitted that there are different categories of works. Could you please elaborate more on that? Shane, you got ahead of us, man,.

Because I definitely wanted to bring this up, but now is the best time as ever, okay? Because Eli, I figured out a few things with the lingo, scaling the language barrier with the Church of Christ. So I think it's interesting that they think it's profound that we do have categories for works.

So I just want to tell people clearly what I'm talking about. For one, we have the works of God, which it's no surprise. I'm a monergist, and I would go to Ephesians 1 .11 to say, look, monergistically, God is working out all things together after the counsel of his will.

I just preach a sermon on this, by the way. I would encourage people, if they want to hear that develop. I get a little rowdy in the pulpit too, so some people like that. So that's number one. You've got the works of God, the things that God is doing, okay?

That's gonna be important because they will use the term, the work of God, differently than what we mean. I mean, it's literally what God is doing. God is working by sustaining the creation by the word of his power, okay?

And so then we have another category of human works, human effort, accomplishments that we participate in and do. So that's a category. So I wanna continue to look under the category of human effort, human achievement, human works.

We are not saved by anything that we do, anything that we can accomplish by our hands, get up and walk and do using our feet. And then after we're saved, after we're declared right before God by faith, which is firm trust from the heart in the perfect savior, then we're created unto good works.

We're not gonna just do anything under the sun that would be sinful because that's still under the domain of works. We're called to good works, commandments that Christ has given us to do and participate in as we're walking with him in sanctification.

And so, yeah, in the debate, Gavin, I think he was wanting me to say, no, works is the same every time without qualification. And I just said, yeah, there's a huge difference between Ephesians 2, 9 and 10.

And it's the difference of being saved. We've been called out of darkness and now we can do things that are pleasing to God like the commandments that he's given us. Excellent, very good.

Yeah, works is an interesting thing. I was talking about this with my students just recently, whereas we're not saved by our works, but our works are rewarded, aren't they? Bible speaks about being rewarded for our work.

So they do play a function. We're not minimizing works. We just wanna understand them in the proper context. So, all right, Shane has one more question. And then we'll continue back to the specifics of the debate.

But Can I ask Shane another question too?

Can we do a debate maybe in the near future?

Okay, well, he can, she could. I don't mind. Jeremiah's trying to debate everybody. Look at this. You see, you're like a James. You're not James White, but you're James Brown. He's got a brown beard. James, I'm right, James Brown.

I just caught myself there. First, before I get into this one, Shane, not Shane, sorry. This is a words of truth from scripture. Jeremiah and Jordan talks. Quick question, how hard was it not to laugh when unarmed Gavin looked like a deer in headlights?

So apparently I did not catch this part, but apparently there was a moment where you made a point that had awkward silence. Maybe it was kind of a, not a cheap shot moment, but you had like a gotcha moment, I presume.

Well, there are multiple.

Okay. But I wanna tell this individual, I have enjoyed our talks. He's somebody that's reached out to me in light of some of my works. I will say me and this person have vast disagreements, but we can actually laugh and be cordial with one another.

And so I appreciate that so much. I thought, Jeremiah, you were gonna challenge this person to a debate.

So there's gonna be three people versus I would, I would, but he has told me clearly he's done podcasts, this individual, and he thinks debates are sinful. And so we had a not debate on if debates were sinful or not in our phone conversations, but it was good.

Like, I really appreciate it. And I'm talking, for two hours, we had a dialogue and I wanna tell him something real fast. So as the pauses were coming up, as I was asking challenging questions, my heart is to evangelize.

So not to belittle or make fun of somebody. And that's one of the biggest feedback, Eli, I've gotten from people is they could feel my love towards Gavin. And so that was the goal.

And sometimes being caught in, like a deer in headlights is necessary to expose a false position, right? As long as we don't use that as opportunities to act sinfully towards people, right? So very good.

Excellent. All right, well, here We gotta go back to Shane's question about

Shane had a question here. How was Rahab hiding the spy's justification before men?

So kind of similar principles earlier. For one, the spies themselves are seeing Rahab's faith put on display, but we see the better application come out in James 2, chapter two's point of what true living faith looks like.

So we are the beneficiaries of seeing Rahab's faith. Because if you go back in the Old Testament to Joshua 2, I may be totally wrong on that. I think it's in Joshua 2. But if you look at the whole narrative, she was a sinner acting like a sinner.

And God showed her grace in spite of her sinfulness. So I won't preach a sermon, but it's awesome. But there's a sermon there.

So yeah, excellent. All right, so let's talk about the, I mean, people can go and watch the opening statements and the rebuttals and things like that. But I wanna talk a little bit about where most people think the juice is, and that's the cross-examination.

So if you got familiar with the Wise Disciple YouTube channel, Nate Sala, he's been on my show before, I've been on his. He's got an excellent series on his channel called The Debate Teacher Reacts, and he talks about how debate's supposed to happen.

And so I agree with him. He says where all the action happens is in the cross-examination, because in the cross-examination is where what debaters call clash comes out, where you see really the distinct and unique differences of both the sides on full display, pressing up against each other, where you can see the strength or lack thereof of a person's position.

So what was the nature of your, in other words, when you were in cross-examination, what kind of questions did you wanna ask or did you ask so as to bring out clash, so as to show the strength of your position and the weakness of his.

With respect to the debate proposition? So in answering this, I wanna tell you the two big things that I've learned from Nate Sala. Love his channel. Watch everything that pumps out there. And I always want to frame the conversation.

Well, whether I'm doing an opening, whether I'm engaging in a rebuttal, I wanna remind the audience what we just heard and how it's either wrong and how I'm approaching it. So framing the conversation, he had a wonderful interview with William Lane Craig, and they spent a lot of time talking about framing the debate.

And so that's been invaluable, Eli.

I'll tell you, Dr. Craig is excellent at that.

Oh, he's the best. Now I will remind you the three arguments I said at the beginning. Argument one, whatever begins there. And he repeats, sounds like a robot,.

But that constant reminder, you're right, kind of sets that framework and allows the audience to follow along. And of course he does it in his own, you know. Framing the discussion. Yes.

That's what glows in my mind. Each debate I'm thinking, okay, remember to bring the audience along where I'm going and explain it, right? Excellent. The other thing that Nate has talked about is in CrossX is setting a garden path, right?

We're agreeing, we're just walking, looking at the garden together, and then bam, you pin them up against the wall. And so this is my debate tactic is I wanna know my opponent's position well enough where I could argue for it beforehand.

So this goes back to even what William Lane Craig has talked about is you can't overprepare for a debate, right? You're always just pumping in that time. And you and I have talked about this, how important that is to just put the necessary preparation into the debate, right?

And so what I wanna do is know their position well enough to be like, okay, what are the things that we can agree with along the way, but then I'm going to try to expose a massive inconsistency. So my thinking is very presuppositional.

I want to ask them questions how they account for certain things that I think is either impossible or very, very difficult, if that makes sense.

Sure, excellent. So the nature of your questions is to really bring out what must be true in order for.

What you're saying over here to be true. 100%, yeah, let's set the garden path together. Let's agree, and then I'm about to ask you a question of consistency. So this goes back to apologetics in general.

We're gonna scale the language barriers. We're gonna define terms. We're gonna look at proof text in context. And if people go back to the debate, not only every question he asked did I just develop the context every time and remind him of certain definitions of words, but then I press for consistency, right?

And honestly, there's nothing magical. Like those three steps, defining words, looking at context and being consistent, that's my goal everywhere. And that should be everybody's goal, right?

And laying the garden path to pin your opponent is not a disingenuous thing within the context of a debate. I mean, that's the whole purpose of a cross-examination. The opponent is welcome to do the same as well, right?

We want him to lay his garden path so that when he thinks he's got us, we have an opportunity to explain it, right? So that's a good technique. Maybe people can, hopefully they'll keep that in mind. That's important.

Okay, we have one more, well, not one more. I have another question here. Thomas Kank, I apologize if I mispronounced that. How do you guys make sense of someone leaving the faith like Tyler Vela, who seemed to be a strong precept guy?

Thanks. I'll be perfectly honest. I would make sense out of it in the same way Tyler would say we should make sense out of it in light of Calvinism. Tyler is convinced the Bible teaches Calvinism, even if he is no longer a quote unquote believer.

And so he would have to grant our explanation that there were those who are with us, but they left us because they were never of us, right? Notice what the question is asking, who seemed to be a strong precept guy.

There is a difference with what seems to be the case and what is actually the case. Someone can seem very confident, very strong, but in their personal life, they can have various issues, spiritual issues, moral issues, or whatever the case may be.

And of course, a tree is known by its fruit. And eventually a fruit can look nice. And eventually you bite into it only to find that it wasn't as healthy as it seemed. So I would describe Tyler's quote unquote deconversion, in the same way Tyler would allow me as a Calvinist to explain it theologically, right?

So if Calvinism is true and this idea that those who claim to be saved walk away, they're not really saved, that would be the account that I would give regardless of how strong he seemed to be. So that's my take on it.

So the way that I processed it, I was shocked, not happy, but it was good on this side for my sanctification. Cause I remember being in prayer, still pray for Tyler. Cause I see content popping up on YouTube.

He's being interviewed by atheists and things like that. But it's a good reminder that I don't need to put my trust in any human apologist, you know what I mean? It's a reminder that I need to keep my gaze on Christ and Him.