The Book of ACTS | O Theophilus

The Apologetic Dog

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10:01

Well, hello and welcome to The Apologetic Dog, where it's our heart's desire to contend for the gospel of grace.

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And so if you're new to The Apologetic Dog, if you look at the logo, you'll see 1 Timothy 6 .20,

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where Paul tells Timothy, oh, Timothy, guard the deposit that's been entrusted to you. And so this apologetics ministry is really meant to be an example for all

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Christians how we are to guard the gospel of grace, and we do so by avoiding irreverent babble.

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We do so by avoiding contradictions of what is falsely called knowledge.

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And also, if you're in the Northeast Arkansas area, I'm also a pastor and elder at 12 .5

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Church. We're the only Reformed Baptist Church in Jonesboro, Arkansas. We have a lot of Presbyterian brothers, so we do have

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Reformed brethren out there, and we have wonderful partnerships. And so yeah, so if you're anywhere in the area, we'd love for you to come visit 12 .5

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Church. We are a church plant. Oh goodness, a little bit over three years old now, and it's just been incredible to just be a part of it from the very get -go till now.

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And I see we have some people in the side chat. One of the members of 12 .5 Church is also here.

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It says, happy birthday, dog. Now that is because your boy is 32 years old, and I'm feeling it.

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Oh, I'm feeling it. So once again, thank you so much for joining me this evening.

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Weeks that I don't have guests, I still wanna be able to do live streams and interact with y 'all to just show y 'all love, support, and I've been trying to think of ways that we can still interact with the

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Scripture. And so I would like to do a study through the book of Acts together.

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It's often a neglected book. It's something that we can glean so many principles from the

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Word of God that can equip us. We can look back to see what the early church looked like, and I want us to get into some hermeneutics.

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I want us to be able to distinguish what is prescriptive, what is telling us about the early church that was unique for that time period, and also figure out what is prescriptive for us to do today.

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So what's descriptive and what's prescriptive. So thank y 'all so much for joining me this evening.

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Oh yeah, we got some people in the chat. I wanna just once again thank all of y 'all for joining me this evening.

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Check this, oh, Christ Rescued Me is here. Thank you so much for tuning in.

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And Sparky, she's one of our mods here at the Apologetic Dog. And so let me give some shout outs.

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Okay, we got Christ Rescued Me with a little woof woof. Let me make sure I get this where y 'all can see it a little bit better.

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So I have a program called Ecamm Live, and it's nice, but I'm still learning some of the specs on it.

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So y 'all have to forgive me a little bit, especially as we go live. You would think I'd have all this down pat.

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Okay, let's see, not, let's see here. Bam, there we go.

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Christ Rescued Me, thank you so much for tuning in to the Apologetic Dog. Who else is out there in the chat? Wesley, once again, thanks so much.

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Oh, check this out. We have a whole farm of us out there in the chat.

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Thank you for joining me, sir. I wanna say your name, but I'm gonna get it wrong. The Apoplectic, I think

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I missed a L in there, bear. We're gonna have to meet up one of these days. Thanks so much, Brandon.

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Happy birthday, dog. Brandon, we need to talk on the phone, man.

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It's been a while. Hope everything is going well. Let's see, ah, Wesley, tell

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Sarah I said thank you. She says, happy birthday. 32, don't know how

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I feel about it yet. I'll be honest, I don't really feel 30. I feel about 24, but I know

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I cannot move like I was at 24. What y 'all don't know about the Apologetic Dog is

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I used to run and jump a lot, and I did high jump, I played basketballs, point guard, that whole thing, but I can't do it anymore.

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But if you were to look me up on Facebook, you'll find an archive, and you'll be like, that's not him. I just want to tell you, there was a day when

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I didn't have a beard. So, yep, it actually happened. I want to give a little bit more time for people to log in.

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Oh, Adam Carmichael, what's up, man? Oh, my goodness.

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Let's see here. Adam Carmichael, he's also a mod. Thank you for tuning in. I'm sure

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Adam serves as a deacon at 12 .5 Church here in Jonesboro, Arkansas, and if I spout any heresy, if there's any errors,

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Adam Carmichael will definitely hold me accountable in that, so I appreciate that, sir.

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Okay, Mr. Bear, thank you so much for your support to the

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Apologetic Dog ministry. We're gonna have to meet up. Last I looked, bears are a lot bigger than dogs, so you might have a few things to teach me.

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You said, can you share your theory as to why Matthias shouldn't have been an apostle?

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You sure persuaded me. Mr. Bear, I want you to go to chatGBT,

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I think that's what it's called, and I want you to ask the AI bot which one replaced

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Judas Iscariot, if it was Matthias or if it was the Apostle Paul. We will get to that, though.

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We have to walk through the Book of Acts, but since you gave a super chat, I will honor that.

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But you know what, you have to stay till the end of the live stream before I answer that question and we get into it.

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But hey, thank you so much for that support. Means a lot. One of these days, I'd love to be able to do more live streams, more apologetics, even full -time.

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I think that would be incredible. But in the meantime, what did the Apostle Paul do? He built tents, so okay.

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Let's see who else made it in the chat. Let's see, ah, Leanne.

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She's letting me know that her oldest son just turned 33. So yeah, that's what

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I'm talking about. Let me see if I could change this up a little bit.

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Tell me, let's see. Want to change the background on that to maybe black, but I'm not exactly sure.

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Let's see. Let's see.

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This may look weird, so I may have to go back and change it. Yeah, that's not gonna work. Okay, that looks better.

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But I'd like to have that black so y 'all can, every time I pull up the chats in the side,

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I just want y 'all to be able to see it better. Okay, as we continue to wait and have more people join in,

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I have some announcements for y 'all with the Apologetic Dog. A lot of things on the horizon, very excited.

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Let's see here. Thank you again, Wesley. Let's see here. First up,

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I believe it's August 23rd. The Fishbone and the

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Apologetic Dog, we're gonna be doing a two -on -two, on the same team, showdown, debate at the

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Gospel Truth hosted by Marlon Wilson. And the subject, it's in the wheelhouse.

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It's asking the question, is water baptism necessary? Now, when you look up this video, you'll see the full proposition.

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And I'm not gonna tell you all my thoughts about it now, but it's essentially saying water baptism is necessary for all of a person's sins, past, present, and future.

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And the Fishbone and I gladly said, yeah, we'll negate that one. So that'll be interesting.

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Like I said, I don't wanna talk a whole lot about it now, but if you follow the Apologetic Dog ministry for any time, then you know something ain't right with that.

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But anyway, flow over to Marlon's channel. He hosts so many good, wonderful debates. I have done no telling how many debates at this point at Marlon's platform.

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But I have done 11 debates in total. Three of those have been in person. And I just wanna tell you, in -person debates, totally different beast than the online debates.

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But yeah, look forward to that. Tell me what you think. Let's see, we're going to, all right,

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Adam Carmichael, going to get some pizza. I would say, save me a slice.

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But I already ate, so. Man, y 'all, y 'all take care. Okay, let's see.

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Oh! Yeah, y 'all remind me, this is a great question.

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Stephen Reeves, let me make sure I'm posting this where y 'all can read it. So Stephen Reeves is asking,

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Jeremiah, did you get an answer from Aaron Gallagher yet? Because I issued a debate challenge to him.

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I'm gonna come back to that. I'm gonna come back to that. But thank you for getting us ready. All right.

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Georgia, just dipping in for a little bit. We'll see you soon. Thank you for stopping by just for a few minutes.

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If y 'all haven't already, please, if you have appreciated the Apologetic Dog Ministry to any degree,

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I just wanna invite you to please like and subscribe. When you subscribe, you'll get notified. You can even hit the notification bell, especially when

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I do surprise live streams and people are like, oh, I didn't have time. I'm about to go eat dinner. And something else

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I wanna blame myself a little bit more is I did tell everybody on Facebook I was gonna go live at 8 p .m.,

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but I was sitting around and I thought, man, I'm just twiddling my thumbs. I'm watching Jay Dyer, who is a

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Greek Orthodox, and I'm always trying to figure out how to defeat his argumentation. Don't tell him

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I said that, though. But I'm studying up, again, because you gotta think, Jay Dyer and the

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Apologetic Dog have to square off at some point. Like I said, I enjoy kind of seeing how he engages people.

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But anyway, I was just hanging out. I thought, well, we'll go ahead and go live, even though it's an hour earlier than what I told everybody.

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But, yes. All right, thank y 'all for stopping by. And like I said, if you appreciate the Apologetics Ministry, please like the video.

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Please like it and share it with other people that it helps the ministry circulate about. So, August 23rd, the

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Fishbone and the Apologetic Dog, we will be having a two -on -two debate. I cannot wait.

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It is gonna be a blast. So, with my second announcement, we're gonna have a conference in Tennessee.

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I believe it's Tullahoma, Tennessee, unless the venue's changed. And if it does, that's

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Jeffrey Rice's call. Last year, we had a conference, say last year, just this last

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February, and it was called Why Calvinism? Such a wonderful time, able to come speak on the sovereignty of God in suffering, times of suffering, tribulation, trials, and we look to God, who is sovereign in all things, that has ordaining purposes in all things.

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And that was just a blessing. I was also able, at this last conference, to be able to speak against the dangers of hyper -preterism.

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So, me and Dr. Frost, Dr. Sam, Dr. Frost, we were able to give presentations, and he went first and kinda shared his heart of how he once got roped in to this heretical group, but God, by his amazing grace, brought him out of it.

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So he went first, I was able to go second, and then we had an awesome time of Q &A. And so, next

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February, this will be on war, the spirit versus the flesh, and so the whole theme is kind of gonna be about sanctification in the life of a believer.

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And I don't know if you can see the graphic. Let me make it a little bigger. So, you may see the apologetic dog here, but I'm not going to be preaching or giving a lecture.

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I will be actually participating in a debate. And so this gets back into Stephen's question earlier.

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Everyone's like, Jeremiah, who are you debating? What are you debating about? Well, when Jeffrey Rice called me and said, hey, we're not sure about James White's schedule for next year, if he's gonna be around to be able to debate, he said, would the apologetic dog like to do that?

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And I was like, of course. That's what we do here at the apologetic dog. We debate, we examine scripture, we study theology, we sharpen one another, and some people are like, hey, did you win the last debate, blah, blah, blah.

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It's like, debating, in my mind, is never about claiming victory. It is about sharing the word of God, trusting that God's word never returns void.

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It always goes out to accomplishing that which it's intended for. And there are things, every time

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I debate, I pray that I would learn something new, that it would just be a drop in the bucket to trying to better understand

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God's word. So anyway, I get excited with debates because I just don't want to look at it as a quote -unquote competition, even though your boy back in the day, when

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I was a younger man, did play a lot of basketball, tons of sports, so maybe there's a little competitive edge in there.

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But I told Jeffrey Rice, would love to be a part of the next conference, especially doing the last event of the conference, which would be debate.

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But Jeff said, all right, Jeremiah, now your next task is to come up with a debate proposition, something around sanctification.

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And the more we talked about it, we want it to be probably if a believer can lose, not just lose, but lose their sanctification.

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So this will be a debate probably around eternal security. I like thinking about a positive proposition that I could affirm, that God will complete sanctification in the life of believers, something like that.

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So Jeff just said, Jeremiah, be thinking on that. And oh, by the way, it's up to you to find your interlocutor, your opponent.

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I was like, thanks. And he said, I prefer that it would be someone who is a Church of Christ, or they like to say a member of the

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Church of Christ. And I was like, oh man, there's a long line of those people. And so, let's see, it's been, what is it, a week and a half or so?

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I think it was last week on Tuesday, I sent out a debate challenge for Aaron Gallagher.

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And let's see, Stephen Reeves, are you still here? Let's see, oh yeah,

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Stephen Reeves is saying that my last debate was hopefully very profitable.

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You picked the perfect text, so appreciate the support, man.

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So last week, I sent a debate challenge out to Aaron Gallagher. I call him an apologist for the

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Church of Christ. And he hasn't answered me yet, as far as I can tell. I've sent him, obviously, this video.

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If you look back in the live tab, you can find me in the fishbone. It's so funny, Trey, he's just like, he won't do it.

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He won't do it, Jeremy. I'm like, come on, he'll do it. And I really, at the time, thought he was wanting to do it.

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This is a perfect opportunity. We're gonna be at a conference. We're gonna have a huge live audience. We're gonna be able to talk about what salvation looks like if it can be lost or loosed or not.

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And so I sent Gallagher a message on Facebook. Didn't respond to me. Told him

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I would love to talk to him on the phone. I drive a lot with my job, and no response. And then, maybe a couple days later, he sent me what he told me.

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Last I heard from him, he says that he would let me know at the end of this week. And so it's Thursday, and we'll see at the end of this week.

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I guess technically he has till Tuesday of next week before we just gotta move on. But what was interesting,

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Stephen, if you keep up with him at all, someone is recommending

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A .K. Richardson. The problem with A .K. Richardson in this kind of debate is it needs to be somebody that wants to represent the

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Church of Christ. I don't think A .K. is interested in that. I like A .K.

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Richardson's on many fronts, though. We actually talk from time to time, and we talk about doctrine.

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We talk about all the stuff. But the thing I like about A .K. the most is he's very respectful, very articulate.

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And I do consider A .K. as a deep thinker. So if you talk to A .K.

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and he is interested, tell him we can definitely talk about that. But like I said, it's gotta be somebody that's willing to represent the

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Church of Christ. And he has told me in the past that he's not really interested in doing that. And that's okay. Wonder if I can change something on the fly again.

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Edit background. Come on, why can't I figure out how to change that color style?

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Let's see here. Do, do, do, do. Nope. Edit background.

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Uh -oh, we might be onto something. Color. Damn. Eh, not really what

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I was looking for, but that's okay. Okay, so something else I was gonna say about Gallagher is a couple days ago, maybe it was yesterday, he reviewed some of my past content along with Trey Fisher's for four and a half hours.

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And I was like, I hope he doesn't have the answer to my debate challenge somewhere hidden and all that.

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So here's my thought. Unfortunately, I think Trey might be right. If Gallagher was going to accept this, even though he's got some time left,

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I feel like he would have done it by now. This is next February. Plenty of time to think about it.

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I've told him no big deal either way, but there's not very clear communication going on with the

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Gallagher. So I will keep you updated with that. Let's see here.

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An unapologetic cat chimes in and says, I think Gallagher did a review of you guys, review of his eight hour review, so he is still watching your stuff.

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Yeah, is that the one that was about four and a half hours that he released yesterday?

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So yeah, y 'all let me know if he says out there one way or another, because we really do have to schedule this thing.

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And if Gallagher doesn't, y 'all let me know in the side chat if Gallagher is not available, who would you like to see the apologetic dog debate on a topic relating to eternal security?

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I would love, I should totally make a poll in the side chat.

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Okay, so Leanne, you might can explain more about this comment. You said,

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Aaron just put up a video making excuses as to why he doesn't want to debate. Okay, is that maybe his way of saying that he is turning down my offer?

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Man, that really makes me sad. I really thought me and the Gallagher could square off, but that's okay.

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We will find somebody else. All right, I would like for y 'all to tell me, so someone said

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AK Richardson again, y 'all let me know who else y 'all would have in mind for me to maybe debate in the future.

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Okay, let me double check all of my stats here. Let's see here.

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Okay, someone says David Palman is someone who affirms conditional security. That would be an interesting one for me.

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That would be interesting. I have a lot of respect for David Palman.

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I say a lot of respect. He actually unfriended me on Facebook and I couldn't believe it because I would comment on all of his things, especially relating to the philosophy.

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I think he's an analytic philosopher. He appeals to direct acquaintance, even though I believe that begs the question.

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Yeah, I know, you're right, he absolutely has done, he has debated against eternal security because I believe he identifies as a classic

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Armenian. Thank you, Sharpening Iron Podcast for saying that. Oh, this is interesting.

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Yes, Sparky, they would have to go to Tullahoma, but last I checked, I'm pretty sure they will get compensated for their travels and perhaps paid for coming and debating.

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Okay, this is what I'm talking about. I need to know if this is a good idea or not. How about Johnny Robertson boys?

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I don't know their name, but they are hardcore Church Christ. Just type in Johnny Robertson.

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So I've heard of this name before. I don't really know much about them, but they seem lively, they seem energetic, and let me just say,

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I am curious about the Robertson people but let me know if that is not a good idea or if you would love to see that.

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Yeah, there might be some local pastors in the area of Tullahoma. I've heard that there's a lot of Church Christ there, so that's actually a possibility.

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Let's see, let's see here. Okay, The Cat has a good idea.

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Okay, yeah, yeah, yeah. You should ask Mike or Jake if they have any recommendations. That is a good point.

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I think that they might have some good insight. See, this is what

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I'm talking about, Steven Reeves. I kind of want to find someone who is a hardline

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COC. I want people to see, and you know, to Mike Hysall's credit, he would not identify as a hardline

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COC, and I think our debate was very informative, educational, respectful.

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We were able to dialogue about the Greek. We were able to even reflect some on church history and things like that, but I want to debate all kinds, especially within the

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COC. And so, yeah, I don't really know much about the Robertson clan, but I've had a number of people recommend that.

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Let's see. Oh, I love looking at y 'all's comments.

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See, we have to get warmed up before we get into the Book of Acts. Let's see here.

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All right, I always love reading Ms. Leanne's comments. She says,

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Aaron would rather evade the challenge and focus on taking Trey out of context instead, for he knows

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Jeremiah's completely equipped to destroy his false gospel to the hilt. Well, appreciate that,

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Leanne. Hey, let me do a shameless book plug for Leanne real quick. So Leanne wrote this book,

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Christ Rescued Me from the Church of Christ, and if you're curious, definitely check out this book, and Leanne was so kind to come on to the apologetic dog, and we talked about kind of just a highlight.

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Her book is broken up into about five parts or so, and so we were able to hit the highlights, and one of the chapters that she wrote that I really appreciate the way she articulated was the water gospel.

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And you know, I try to be charitable, Leanne, towards Lutherans as I read some of the early church fathers.

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I think there's so many good things in the early church, but there's a lot of things that I'm like, no, because we're called to ultimately hold the early church,

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Lutherans, whoever, to our ultimate standard, which is the word of God, and context is always king.

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And so there are positions out there that affirm salvation, or justification is by faith alone, but then they'll have some baptismal regeneration view, and we all know those are contradictory views, but as long as someone's trying to maintain and champion that we are justified by faith apart from our works, then for me,

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I'm willing to allow good conversation within them, merciful inconsistencies perhaps, but this is where the

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Church of Christ altogether say we fundamentally deny justification by faith alone.

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They will appeal to James chapter two, no different than the Roman Catholics and the Greek Orthodox and the

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Jehovah's Witnesses, Seventh -day Adventists, and just say, if you have faith alone, that's a dead faith.

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And obviously, that's taking verses like James 224 out of context and so forth, but yeah,

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Galatians one, you have to believe in the right gospel, and if you don't, if you add anything to it, if you add your ceremony, your working participation to the already finished work of Christ, then you're cursed, you're anathema, and so to Leanne's point,

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I think with the COC, what you have to be able to put your finger on is how they are defining terms and definitions, and we always look at proof text in light of the context.

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So yes, thank you. Oh, someone's asking, where can we get that book? Well, thank you for asking that question.

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I recommend you going in or on my YouTube page, The Apologetic Dog, find my interview with Leanne, and you will see a link in the show notes where you can check it out and buy it.

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Okay. Anybody else got anything to say? Oh, yes, well, appreciate it.

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Thank you, Carl, for all your wonderful recommendations in the chat. Carl Henry is a truck driver.

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That is a church of Christ that likes to share his opinions about me on TikTok. So you're welcome in the chat, man.

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All right, well, with that, let me take off that announcement.

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Man, that's fun. So y 'all be on the lookout for this conference coming up, and I will keep you updated about who

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I'll debate and exactly what that debate proposition looks like. Okay, so with that being said,

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I want to now transition to the Book of Acts. Let me make sure

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I get all my ducks in a row on my side. Book of Acts, the reason why

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I chose the Book of Acts, wanting to cover it a little bit, this comes a little bit from my heart in apologetics, especially contending with the church of Christ.

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You know, you got verses like Acts 2 .38, Acts 22 .16. Those are two that just come to mind right off the bat.

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But I believe these verses are taken out of context. But the Book of Acts is a narratival book.

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It's primarily descriptive. And anything that we are going to say is prescriptive, we need to be able to examine that with the

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Pauline epistles, the epistles to the church, in the entirety of Scripture. And so I think for some, and maybe perhaps for all people at some time or another,

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Acts is just kind of rough. Like, what's the whole deal at Pentecost? Why is that important? Why did Jesus ascend on high?

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These are great questions that I want us to be able to work through together. And I thought, what better chance when we have a week where I don't have a guest on, we can just kind of walk through the

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Book of Acts together. And I just want you to know that I'm a fan of Anthony Rogers.

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And I like his pace, meaning he does not go fast. But one good thing about kind of going slow to unpack a passage of Scripture, going through a book, is it gives y 'all a chance to interact in the side.

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And so somebody, let's see, Adam Carmichael's back. Okay, anybody else show up in the chat?

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Let me know. Tell me, hey. And as we're going through, as we're going through the

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Book of Acts, I think today we're just gonna maybe cover the opening prologue of Acts.

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But if you noticed, I titled the video O Theophilus. So I wanna talk a little bit about that name in relation to the author of the

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Book of Acts. And if you have questions, please put them in the side chat. But I'm not a pro at this yet.

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So you may have to post in there a few times. So just spam them. People are saying, what's up,

40:27

Dalton? I don't see, Dalton, if you're out there, man, send a comment so I can let people know that you exist.

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Not sure which Dalton we're talking about. Let's see.

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Thank y 'all for joining. We got a pretty good crowd so far. Okay, so I do want us to dive into the

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Book of Acts. And so kind of historically, Acts has been called

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Acts. And kind of the extension of the title is Acts of the Apostles. I think that's a decent name for the book.

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But I want us to understand that there's a heavy emphasis on the Holy Spirit in this book.

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And so in some ways, I want us to understand the Book of Acts, the Acts of the

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Apostles that are indwelt by the Holy Spirit. And the

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Holy Spirit, and this will get into baptism, this will get into so many other important doctrines.

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But the Holy Spirit is not contained and manipulated by man. So when we're saying

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Acts of the Apostles indwelt by the Holy Spirit, it's not that the Holy Spirit is being controlled by the apostles, it's the other way around.

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It's the sovereignty of God on display. And the apostles themselves, they are being fueled and guided by the

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Holy Spirit. And so that's kind of, in my mind, when we're looking at the Book of Acts, like we're seeing the sovereignty of God put on display.

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We're seeing God's manifold wisdom, his plan of redemption unfolding before our very eyes.

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And when we're talking about the birth of the early church, the New Testament church, that has a beginning point.

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I believe in many ways in Matthew 16, where Jesus says, I will build my church and the gates of hell will not stand against it or prevail.

42:20

I do think he has in mind the new covenant revealed church where the mystery of Christ is put on display.

42:28

There's no longer that division between Jew and Gentile. And so yes, that does start in Acts chapter two.

42:36

But the universal church, believers of all time, have existed since the very dawn of time.

42:43

I'd push this all the way back to Adam and Eve. And we see those stepping in faith the same way that we are in many ways, beginning with Abel.

42:53

When we look at Hebrews chapter 11, I want to challenge you, when you go back, verse three talks about, by faith we understand that the universe was created ultimately by the word of God.

43:06

And it's interesting because that's a verse relating to faith in the very beginning, but it's not really mentioning

43:13

Adam and Eve. And so verse four talks about how Abel, by faith Abel did the things that were pleasing to God.

43:20

And so I just want to, as we're going through the book of Acts, I want to emphasize the fact that there, we need to understand there's an aspect of the universal, invisible church that are the true believers of all time.

43:33

And then there's what's called the visible church. And so in Acts chapter two, I believe we definitely, we definitely get a peek into the universal church being put on display through the visible church.

43:49

And so yeah, that begins essentially in Acts two. Dalton Chalice exists, man, ontologically so.

43:58

Dalton Chalice, I just want to brag on this young man. We are buds and he's a member at 12

44:03

Five Church and hope to have him on the Apologetic Dog. Would love for him to share his testimony with y 'all, get to know him.

44:11

Y 'all will love it. And I want to say that Dalton has read a little bit of Leanne Ferguson's book,

44:20

Christ Rescue Me. Have you read it all yet, Dalton? Let me know if you haven't. Come on now. I think

44:26

I gave you a copy. Leanne donated, oh goodness, maybe 15 copies to 12

44:31

Five Church. So thank you again, Leanne. You're a blessing to the church. Who else is out there? Someone said, hey,

44:38

RJ. Oh man, RJ Platz.

44:49

So RJ Platz is a pastor friend of mine a few towns over and he's about to teach us the deepness to the

44:59

Greek. So we have a class set up, looking forward to that. Thank you for joining us,

45:06

RJ. RJ, you missed it, man. We've had some really lively characters in the side chat and somebody even supported the ministry.

45:16

So RJ, thanks for joining us, man. Okay, so like I said, if y 'all have any questions as we get into it, y 'all let me know.

45:24

So let's look at essentially the prologue of Acts and then I want us to talk about Theophilus, who that is potentially, what that name means, especially in relation to the author of Acts.

45:36

So in the first book, O Theophilus, I have dealt with all that Jesus began to do and teach until the day when he was taken up after he had given commands through the

45:47

Holy Spirit to the apostles whom he had chosen. He presented himself alive to them after suffering by many proofs appearing to them during 40 days and speaking about the kingdom of God.

46:00

And while staying with them, he ordered them not to depart from Jerusalem, but to wait for the promise of the

46:06

Father, which he said, you heard from me, for John baptized with water, but you will be baptized with the

46:12

Holy Spirit not many days from now. So this is kind of the passage

46:19

I want to tackle with y 'all this evening. This is a prologue, meaning some of these things have been built upon prior in the

46:27

Gospels, but will be further explained in this book. So let's kind of start with verse one.

46:35

In the first book, O Theophilus, I, so the author is identifying himself, have dealt with all that Jesus began to do and teach.

46:45

This is not new for many of you, but Acts is volume two or book two to the book of Luke, the

46:53

Gospel of Luke. And I want to say that the church historically has always just said, oh yeah, we know that this is

47:03

Luke. Like this is just kind of common knowledge towards the end of the first century and onward. But I want to talk a little bit more about that.

47:11

I want to talk a little bit about the internal consistency of the Gospel of Luke with the book of Acts.

47:17

And a big part of that is how Theophilus is addressed, both in the early verses of Luke's Gospel and also here in the book of Acts.

47:28

So Theophilus, let me see, highlight this. Theophilus, if I recall, means friend of God.

47:34

And so there's a little bit of discussion about is the writer Luke, is he talking to a particular person or is this just the friend of God generically?

47:45

And so I believe in Luke's account, I want to take you, I want to show you real quick the consistency here.

47:52

We read Theophilus is addressed in a very particular way.

47:57

So this is the opening verses of Luke's Gospel. In as much as I have undertaken to compile a narrative of the things that have been accomplished among us, just as those who are from the beginning were eyewitnesses and ministers of the word have delivered them to us, it seemed good to me also having followed all things closely for some time past to write an orderly account for you, most excellent

48:24

Theophilus. And then he ends this thought with verse four that you may have certainty concerning the things you have been taught.

48:33

And so here Theophilus is addressed again as most excellent Theophilus.

48:39

And so many commentaries kind of point out people of high position. Later on in the book of Acts, I believe you have the phrase most excellent, excellent

48:50

King Agrippa. And so a lot of times most excellent is a endearing term of authority, reverence, giving honor and respect.

48:59

And so what is very likely is Luke, we're gonna talk about the good internal evidence for why

49:04

Luke wrote the Gospel of Luke and wrote Acts. But perhaps

49:12

Theophilus is a Roman convert. Someone in high authority in Rome and was converted by the

49:19

Gospel of Grace. And so really neat, I just want you to see kind of as we begin to dive in the book of Acts, there's a lot of shared things that we can glean from Luke's Gospel.

49:32

So this passage is very important. We're actually gonna be alluding back to it because I want us to see that Luke gave an orderly account for you.

49:44

Now the you is Theophilus, but as we're gonna see, all scripture is profitable.

49:50

All scripture being God breathed, equips us for sound doctrine, for reproof, everything that we need in the

49:57

Christian life. So there are many of those principles already embedded here in Luke chapter one.

50:04

But let me pause, what do y 'all think so far? What do y 'all think of the new aesthetic?

50:10

Oh, okay, good. I believe in the side chat, if you were curious more about purchasing this book,

50:17

Christ Rescued Me, there's a link in the side chat. We already know that. Okay, so if there's any questions, we'll continue to move right along.

50:33

Yeah, so as we go back to Acts. Okay, so notice that in the first book and here in the second book of Acts, the author is not addressed.

50:49

And that's okay. This is where I do want to take time to talk about a fundamental doctrine that is held by virtually all

51:00

Protestants or should be held by all Protestants, and it's sola scriptura. Sola scriptura is

51:05

Latin for scripture alone. And in fact, let me just kind of pull up a passage for y 'all.

51:13

But when we're talking about scripture alone, this is saying that the word of God is our ultimate authority.

51:21

One second here. There's a few passages of scripture that I think are perhaps the best way to articulate this doctrine, because you gotta think

51:30

Roman Catholics, Greek Orthodox do not like us appealing to scripture alone.

51:38

They want you to also have in mind their authorities. Let me see here. I want to talk about maybe two brief passages.

51:48

And what I'm getting at is, even if we don't have absolute certainty who an author of a book is, like the writer of Hebrews, I personally think it's the

52:01

Apostle Paul. I think it's at least his theology, and then was transcribed by somebody like Luke, as we're gonna get into.

52:08

It's okay that we don't know that, because sola scriptura does not negate the fact that we are allowed to look at history.

52:16

Every Roman Catholic goes, oh, you lost the debate, between essentially sola scriptura versus sola ecclesia.

52:24

But we want to understand tradition in its proper place. And so the history of the church, the bride of Christ, the bride receives the living voice of God.

52:37

The bride doesn't say infallibly, this is the word of God because we say so.

52:44

And so there's what we might call an ontology. There is a reality to the word of God that he gets to determine.

52:51

And the saints, the bride of Christ, we passively receive them. And so I just want to articulate fundamental truths that we take with us transcendentally, in terms of,

53:03

I think it's necessarily the case that God's word has to be able to illuminate the heart and the mind.

53:10

It already says it does that. And so my point is, there's something unique about the scripture by itself.

53:16

This claims that it's not just like every other book, it's the word of God, it contains truth.

53:23

One of my favorite verses is John 17, 17. Make sure y 'all can see my screen okay. Sanctify them in the truth that Jesus says to the father, your word is truth.

53:34

And so this is important because when you get back and forth into canonicity and what books belong in the

53:42

Bible, there is wonderful discussions about what books made it into the canon.

53:48

In fact, I don't know if y 'all can see it in the background. One second, let me grab a book. Here's a book

53:56

I just wanna recommend. You've heard me recommend this before, but this is the Canon of Scripture, a

54:02

Presuppositional Study by Philip Kaiser. And so it gets into a lot of those issues of how do we know scripture to be true.

54:13

And you can't escape this being a discussion of worldview.

54:20

And so as a Protestant, we would say that revelational epistemology is king. And what

54:26

I'm getting at is God must be able to speak clearly to the Imago Dei.

54:31

So this does relate back to the writer of Luke. I just wanna, Luke writing the book of Acts, I just wanna say that it's okay if we don't have

54:42

Luke identifying himself. However, I believe that there are many internal clues that we can know that Luke, in fact, is the author.

54:54

So in Acts chapter 16, we get a very interesting phrase.

55:01

And so if you're just tuning in to the Apologetic Dog, we're discussing the book of Acts, and I want us to get a little bit more familiar with the writer.

55:08

As we saw back in Acts chapter one, Luke is not identified, you know what

55:16

I mean? Uh, something happened on my end.

55:22

Let me try that again. There we go. And so what we're talking about is, what's the first book?

55:29

What's the connection between the book of Acts and the first book? And the first link is

55:35

O Theophilus. And so we see the gospel of Luke is addressed to O excellent Theophilus, and then the second book here as well.

55:43

And so in Acts chapter 16, we have the first of what is called the we statements in the book of Acts.

55:52

And so this is interesting because the writer of Acts identifies himself as I, he's talking about these things, and in Acts 16,

56:01

I read this statement. And when Paul had seen the vision, immediately we sought to go into Macedonia, concluding that God had called us to preach the gospel to them.

56:14

And so this is an important statement because the writer of Acts, he traveled along with the apostle

56:21

Paul, especially I believe this was his second missionary journey. He was there traveling with the apostle

56:27

Paul. And so there are many people listed in the book of Acts, like Timothy, like Silas, Barnabas, and we would know they're all traveling companions with the apostle, but check this out, the writer never identifies himself, but lets you know that he's traveling with Paul, with Silas, with Timothy, with the early apostles.

56:55

And so everybody that we read in the book of Acts by name, we know that they are not the writer of the book of Acts, because he identifies himself in this way, as we or had called us to preach the gospel.

57:11

Okay, so what I'm wanting to show is there's a process of elimination that we can have as when we're asking the question, who's the author?

57:21

Yes, church history, which is wonderful, which is a kind of authority, it's just not the ultimate authority like the word of God.

57:30

We can begin to rule out some potential people. Oh, Shane Fisher in the side chat.

57:37

Thank you for joining us, sir. Sparky, better known as Prima or Prima Scriptura.

57:48

You know, I'm gonna post this, I don't know, tell me if I'm getting this right, but Prima Scriptura, when you,

58:00

Prima Scriptura, I think Roman Catholics hold to this view, not just Roman Catholics, but it's this idea, so Rome has a tri -part structure, you have scripture, you have the magisterium, aka the pope speaking from the chair, and then you have tradition.

58:15

And so they have a tri -part structure of authority, and they would say something like, well, Prima Scriptura, the scripture is the first amongst equals.

58:25

Well, I mean, says who? Well, it says our magisterium in our church. Oh, so it's really sola ecclesia.

58:31

I mean, your church says you can't know what the scripture is unless you listen to us and fallibly declare it to be so.

58:38

The reason why I just think that fundamentally doesn't work is because what do you do before the

58:44

Roman Catholic Church dogmatized what books were in the canon? I mean, the church still existed before then and functioned very well.

58:53

There was a body, people were able to grow in holiness and understand doctrine and understand that justification was by faith apart from works.

59:02

Oh, Wesley, Wesley asked a question. Thank you, thank you, sir.

59:08

Let's see here. What you got, Wesley? Man, see, I gotta work on my graphics a little bit because y 'all like to jam a whole lot into one, but you can do that.

59:21

All right, Wesley says, Jeremiah, I have a question. Was the canonization of scripture inspired by the spirit for the purpose of the true word of God being pieced together, or is it more of God's decretive will or both?

59:39

Okay, I gotta take a sip of coffee on that question. Okay, as I'm pondering your question,

59:50

I'm also looking in the side chat. Tell Elliot I said hi.

59:57

That's so funny. Oh, Shane, repost, if you don't mind, repost your question.

01:00:05

I'll try to tackle you next. Okay, so Wesley, when you say, was the canonization of scripture inspired by the

01:00:11

Holy Spirit for the purpose of the true word of God being pieced together? Okay, so we're jumping a little bit ahead of ourself, but when we talk about the inspiration of scripture, we're talking about the mechanism in which

01:00:28

God used to bring about his word. So, for example, 2

01:00:36

Peter 1, I have, starting here in verse 20, I may have to expand it back, but knowing this first of all, that no prophecy of scripture comes from one's own interpretation.

01:00:48

Now, I've actually gotten into disputes with the Church of Christ. They're saying, see, quit giving me your interpretation.

01:00:53

Just speak where the Bible speaks. That's not what this is getting at. I'm coming back to you,

01:01:00

Wesley. But this is getting at that scripture, which is prophetic, by the way.

01:01:05

We're gonna get more into that. It's not the product of someone's inner machinations.

01:01:11

It's not the product of someone's just coming up with thoughts, new ideas. It doesn't originate with man.

01:01:19

That's all this is getting at. It's not talking about someone misinterpreting the scripture. The origin of scripture does not ultimately go back to man.

01:01:30

For no prophecy was ever produced by the will of man, but men spoke.

01:01:36

This gets into inspiration to what you said. But men spoke from God.

01:01:44

They were inspired. And we'll go to 2 Timothy chapter three. As they were carried along by the

01:01:50

Holy Spirit, okay? So going back to your question, scripture was inspired the moment that a prophet, an apostle, the one holding that prophetic office, penned the words of God, okay?

01:02:08

I just want us to kind of think on this. And once again, Philip Kaiser really talks about who can write scripture.

01:02:17

The one that holds the prophetic office, which we see are mainly prophets in the Old Testament. And we see apostles and those closely associated to the apostles, those are the ones that prophetically

01:02:28

God is using to inspire, give us his word. And so my point is, you don't need a counsel to tell us infallibly what the word of God is.

01:02:40

No, God gets to give us his word, tell us what his word is, and he uses the means of men by his choosing.

01:02:50

Let's see, how does he say it? But men spoke from God as they were carried along by the Holy Spirit.

01:02:56

And so in this conversation, I think it's important to, when we get the word inspired,

01:03:02

I'm not gonna change translations, I think it's the King James or New King James. But right here, all scripture is breathed out by God.

01:03:12

I believe some translations there talk about how all scripture is inspired by God, essentially.

01:03:20

But once again, this makes the case that God, scripture is breathed out literally from God.

01:03:27

Now, does he use means like apostles and prophets?

01:03:33

Absolutely, but scripture isn't just written out and sits there and years go by until a counsel says, oh yeah, that's scripture.

01:03:44

No, it was scripture the moment that God breathed it and inspired men to give us that word.

01:03:52

So Wesley, when you say, was the canonization of scripture inspired by the Spirit for the purpose of the true word of God being pieced together?

01:04:02

In a sense, we hold to what's called progressive revelation. So God has been giving us his word progressively over time.

01:04:12

I don't know the exact timeframe, but from Genesis to Revelation is maybe a time period of 1 ,500 years.

01:04:19

Somebody can check me on that math, I might be way off. But yeah, if you're talking about piecing together the word, he's been revealing his word over time through holy men, through men that have been carried along by the

01:04:35

Holy Spirit. And then when you ask about the decreed of will of God, yeah, this is kind of a both and because this is all according to the decreed of will of God, his sovereign will, and I actually make this strong case that in order for someone to hold to sola scriptura, you also have to have an absolute, you have to have the view of the absolute sovereignty of God in order to perfectly preserve that word.

01:05:03

So yeah, good question. Good question, Wesley. Okay, let's see.

01:05:10

Wesley, let me know what you think. I took the long route there of answering that. Okay, I think

01:05:16

I got a question from Shane. Shane Fisher, I'm gonna have to make this a tad smaller.

01:05:26

Theanoustas, God breathe, and I'm aware that I'm mispronouncing Theanoustas, but you know what? I blame

01:05:31

Dr. What? Because he doesn't say Theanoustas or however. All right,

01:05:37

Shane Fisher says, what do you think about the proposal that he was the Jewish high, oh, you're talking about Theophilus, right?

01:05:45

What do you think about the proposal that he was the Jewish high priest in 3741 and Joanna was his granddaughter who could be the

01:05:57

Joanna of Luke? Yeah, so I just wanna say

01:06:03

I'm open to, I think there was about four theories. Actually, Mike can pull this up for y 'all that I thought were, to me, all these were plausible candidates for trying to figure out, okay, who was, if we grant that Theophilus wasn't just an ideal of a person, a friend of God and was a historic person.

01:06:25

Let me, let's see here, let's see here, Theophilus.

01:06:36

I was gonna read y 'all maybe one or two more theories, and I'll just be honest.

01:06:42

The one that, Shane, if you haven't already,

01:06:48

I know your favorite website got questions, says who wrote Theophilus at the beginning of Luke and Acts?

01:06:55

I think mentions that exact theory that you were referencing. Let's see here.

01:07:08

Yeah, here's another good theory. Theophilus, he may have been a Roman lawyer who defended Paul during his trial in Rome.

01:07:16

Those who hold this theory believe that Luke's purpose in writing Luke and Acts was to write a defense of Christianity, somewhat akin to a legal brief.

01:07:27

That sounds good. We don't know, and so I like how GotQuestions kind of closes this article. While each of these theories hold very possible, these are all possibilities, it seems likely that Theophilus was a high -ranking or influential

01:07:41

Gentile for whom Luke wanted to provide a detailed historical account of Christ and the spread of the gospel throughout the

01:07:49

Roman Empire. Whether this Theophilus was a wealthy relative of Caesar, an influential government official, a wealthy benefactor who supported

01:07:58

Paul or Paul's Roman lawyer does not really matter. We know for sure who, we cannot know for sure who

01:08:04

Theophilus was, but we can know that Luke's intentions for writing, we can know, as he was stated, that you may have certainty concerning the things which have been taught.

01:08:14

So, a lot of good theories there. Make sure I'm not missing any. Okay. Hello, Facebook world.

01:08:24

Sorry, just now getting around to showing y 'all some love. I have another computer to my right over here.

01:08:35

I've not figured out how to put Facebook comments on Ecamm Live, so y 'all forgive me,

01:08:41

I'll get that worked out one of these days. Let me skim.

01:08:47

See, this is where I don't know how Anthony Rogers does it, how he keeps up with all the chats.

01:08:55

Shout out to my father -in -law, Spencer Hoffman. Said, my favorite son -in -law.

01:09:01

I'm your only son -in -law. I'll take it, though. Tom Shepherd, much -loved man, what's up, dog?

01:09:07

Thank you, Christopher, for joining in. Now, this was 55 minutes ago, so I don't know if they're still with us.

01:09:15

A man named John said, hey, brother, I was in the COC for a year. The Lord graciously opened my eyes.

01:09:21

I thank God for the work that he is doing through you all. Much -loved, thank you so much,

01:09:27

John. Okay.

01:09:34

Oh, Randy Akins, what's up, bro? Not a whole lot, thanks for tuning in. If you're still tuning in, that was 17 minutes ago.

01:09:42

Jeremy says, do you have any book or audio recommendations? Oh, I got tons. Shane, I hope

01:09:51

I answered your question. I don't know, I don't know. What I love, though, is we can see so much continuity between the book of Luke and the book of Acts, and I think there's an internal case to be made that it was

01:10:06

Luke, and we can appeal to some of the Pauline letters to conclude that, and so that's kind of what we're setting out to do.

01:10:14

All right, Carl, let's see. If you ask a good question and behave yourself, I will post more of your questions, so.

01:10:23

Much love, Carl. Okay, what are you asking? If you believe early church fathers were taught from Apostle John, like Polycarp, Clement, Rome, Ignatius, then would they not be a part of the canonization of the word?

01:10:41

If we're talking about the means in which the church has compiled the scriptures, sure, sure, that can be a process.

01:10:53

I know Dr. White many times has talked about many of the early saints did not have all of the

01:10:59

New Testament letters, and so yeah, over time, we have the 66 books bound up nicely for us, praise

01:11:10

God, because not all the early church, much of the church had that, and so I want us to be careful how we're using the word canonization.

01:11:19

If we're just meaning it that the church passively received the word, discerned it, recognized its life -transforming power, then absolutely, absolutely, that took time to happen, but if we're talking about infallible councils infallibly declaring it, that's not how it works.

01:11:38

God and him alone gets to infallibly declare his own word. Yeah, Shane said he's looking forward to some future verses.

01:11:50

Good question, Carl. Let me know if I didn't answer it well, or if you would like for me to try it again.

01:11:57

Wesley, a little bit of a follow -up here. In light of all scripture being

01:12:03

God -breathed, how was the canon determined, and how do you determine if a scripture is

01:12:09

God -breathed? These are my favorite kind of questions, once again. Shameless book plug, because this book gets into that very question.

01:12:21

So Wesley, hit me up at churchman. We'll have to talk more about that, and we'll continue to tackle questions like that, but these are fundamentally the questions that Roman Catholic want to hurl at Protestants, and so we do need to give a robust account of that, and the only way to do that is right off the bat saying, look, tradition is important.

01:12:48

It's just not ultimate. Does that make sense? And so in light of all scripture being

01:12:54

God -breathed, how was the canon determined? Check this out, Wesley. It was ultimately determined by God.

01:13:03

So when you listen to a lot of Dr. Watts debates with Roman Catholics, canon one, canon two will get brought up, and all my understanding, y 'all correct me if I'm remembering this wrong, but you have to make an ontological case, so we're getting into philosophy.

01:13:20

We have to talk about the nature of reality, ontology, and God is ultimate.

01:13:25

God is the ground of all being, necessarily. He's revealed himself to us in his word.

01:13:31

If you don't start from that necessary foundation, you can't make sense of anything in this world, and so, check this out,

01:13:37

Wesley. God ultimately determines the canon, okay? But then, how do you determine, so this is canon two, right, we're going from ontology, which

01:13:48

God necessarily determines his own word, to how do you, as an individual, determine if a scripture is

01:13:57

God -breathed? This gets into epistemology, right? So remember, I said canon one, canon two.

01:14:03

So I just want you to understand, those are two different kinds of questions, and you might be like, of course, Jeremiah, that's why I asked it the way I did.

01:14:09

You're a smart man. And so, yeah, this is kind of the question of how do the saints determine, or passively receive, that which is scripture?

01:14:25

The only way to understand this is an entire worldview paradigm. Now, we're deviating, we'll get back to Acts.

01:14:33

We're at hour 15, guess what? I got coffee, and I don't know if you can tell, but there's even a little cord that keeps it warm.

01:14:40

Thanks, babe, ball babe, she got me the hookup with that. So, we got time. We'll get back into why there's good internal consistency for Luke, writing

01:14:50

Acts. So, I would pause it, and the only meaningful way to know what scripture is from God is you have to have a

01:15:03

God who exhaustively knows and has purpose in all things.

01:15:10

And so, what I'm getting at is God must be eternal, he must be eternally personal, to ground love.

01:15:18

I'm really articulating the triune God, but he has exhaustive predetermining purpose for everything that comes about in his world.

01:15:28

This is not only going to be true at the foundation of a worldview, but he also has to reveal that in his word to the

01:15:35

Imago Dei, which he does. And so, how we determine scripture, Wesley, on a very subjective, passive level, is we do look at history.

01:15:46

We do trust that when the word of God says, my sheep hear my voice, we have to be able to trust that God will illuminate hearts when they interact with his life -breathed word.

01:16:01

Now, that may seem very subjective, and I would say it's not when we understand that God has actually spoken in time and place.

01:16:14

And so, it's okay to look at history, to look at tradition, just not as ultimate.

01:16:22

So, there's no dispute with the 27 books of the New Testament, all the, we'll just say, main pillars of Christianity.

01:16:32

I don't want to say pillar. Maybe the main groups of Christianity. I'm mainly saying Protestantism, Roman Catholicism, and Eastern Orthodox.

01:16:41

27 books are really not under dispute. And it's incredible because they fulfill the

01:16:48

Old Testament paradigm that was talked about. The real dispute comes into the 400 intertestamental period where you have the

01:16:57

Apocrypha, Deutocanonical books. And I don't have it all prepared this time, but once again, this book lays out how

01:17:07

God told us that he would not be speaking. I believe there's a strong case in Amos and Hosea, but prophesies that God would not be speaking to the world.

01:17:21

There would be a famine, Amos says, one of the last chapters of Amos, but it's not a famine that lacks food.

01:17:26

It's gonna be a famine of the word of God from coast to coast, as far as the North is, from the

01:17:32

South, worldwide. And historically, because we're allowed to appeal to tradition and history, but not as an ultimate authority, this falls during that 400 years, that checks out, of silence.

01:17:45

And this is where Jesus quotes, so I'm building a case how we would know, like on an individual level, that what is to be

01:17:56

Scripture. God has to be able to do what he necessarily has said he'd set out to accomplish, which

01:18:04

Jesus said, my sheep hear my voice. And so there is something inherent about the word of God, opening hearts, opening minds, and that's an entire worldview that I'm presenting.

01:18:14

But when we look back in history, when we look at the words of Jesus in the New Testament, the

01:18:20

Apostle Paul said in Romans chapter three, that the Jews, to the Jews belong the oracles of God.

01:18:25

And so the Jews of old contained the Hebrew canon of Scripture. What I'm saying is, that Hebrew canon did not include the

01:18:34

Apocrypha, books like 1st and 2nd Maccabees, and the rest that the

01:18:41

Roman Catholics would accept. Those books come out of the intertestinal period, the 400 years of silence.

01:18:50

And what's incredible, I actually have this queued up. Hebrews chapter one, let me see if I can.

01:19:03

Long ago at many times in many ways, God spoke to our fathers, this is the important phrase, by the prophets.

01:19:10

And I believe it's Zechariah 7, 12, I could get that verse reference. But once again,

01:19:16

God is giving a revelatory prophetic word by the former prophets. And so it's the prophets that God used as the mechanism of giving us his word, inspiring his word and giving it to us.

01:19:29

And so Wesley, what I'm saying is, the core of the debate of how we know we have the right canon. Number one, it's self -attesting.

01:19:37

So that includes entire worldview. And I'm saying what's baked in there is God must be absolutely sovereign, aka predetermines all things.

01:19:44

And so a lot of people don't like me saying that. But that's necessary if we're gonna be able to actually know what God's word is true.

01:19:50

If you don't, then you get into an infinite regression of never being able to know anything, right?

01:19:58

If your human autonomous choice is the ultimate say -so in this life.

01:20:03

And so I'm just saying that's not a workable philosophy. But as we are examining tradition as the handmaiden, not the ultimate arbiter, but as a good authority, then we're able to understand that Jesus quotes the full span of the

01:20:20

Hebrew scriptures. He says, Moses, the prophets in the writings, which is the full span of the

01:20:26

Hebrew scriptures, the Tanakh, they all testify and point to me. From the blood of Abel, Matthew 23 tells us, all the way to the blood of Baraka, I believe is the way he said, which technically is the last book of the

01:20:42

Hebrew canon in 2 Chronicles. So my point is that is actually excluding the apocryphal text, who many of those books tell us these were not written by a prophet.

01:20:53

And so I guess that's a long way of answering your question, Wesley, of saying how do you determine?

01:21:01

Well, we have to be logically consistent, okay? And the

01:21:06

New Testament fulfills the Old Testament and that has to be true.

01:21:13

And if that is true, and since it's true, then we can exclude the apocrypha. So what'd you think about that,

01:21:22

Wesley? That has been hotly debated for many years.

01:21:30

Any other questions out there as we continue? George is back. Thanks so much.

01:21:39

Glad you could make it with us. Wanna also take this time, if you haven't already liked this video, please do that.

01:21:48

I really appreciate it. Many of y 'all have already liked this video. We have, hey, we have a crew.

01:21:54

Thank y 'all for tuning in. And then please let me know in the side chat what y 'all think.

01:22:04

Yes, great question, Wesley. Okay, let's get back to it. So we are talking about the

01:22:11

Book of Acts, the Acts of the Apostles and developed by the Holy Spirit in which God is sovereignly at work and we see his plan unfolding in the

01:22:19

Book of Acts. And so we've talked a little bit about Theophilus already. We don't have to know who this is to gain principles.

01:22:29

We don't even have to know exactly who the human author is in order to know that this is inspired by God.

01:22:36

But we have good internal evidence to identify that we have good reason to believe that this first and second book were written by Luke.

01:22:47

And so if you remember, the second point that I made was the author identifies himself as the we and the us are called us to preach the gospel to them.

01:23:00

And so when we start speculating about who this author was as the we and the us here, we know it's not gonna be

01:23:07

Timothy. We know it's not going to be Barnabas or Silas, right? Because they're named explicitly earlier in the

01:23:14

Book of Acts. And so we know that this writer is a traveling companion of sorts to the

01:23:23

Apostle Paul himself. And so that lets us say, okay, well, what other people did he mention that were traveling with him in his epistles?

01:23:33

And so I want us to consider Colossians chapter 4, 14. This is interesting because there's two people, perhaps, that are contenders for who wrote the

01:23:44

Book of Acts. And I hope you understand, if we can figure out who wrote the Book of Acts, then we just answered who wrote the gospel, which we know is according to Luke because they're both addressed to the same person.

01:23:56

It's the same kind of content and acts as a continuation of that gospel.

01:24:02

And so here in Colossians chapter 4, Luke, the beloved physician, greets you as does

01:24:08

Demas. Okay, so this seems to suggest that there is someone traveling with the

01:24:15

Apostle Paul. Paul was known to have many ailments. Perhaps he couldn't see very well.

01:24:21

There's been other speculations of some medical things that he's had. And so check this out.

01:24:27

He references Luke not only as a physician, but a beloved physician.

01:24:32

And so this person, Luke, is double blessing to the Apostle. I have some sad news.

01:24:40

I think I'm almost out of coffee. You know, y 'all wouldn't be mad at me if in a little bit we had a brief intermission for me to make a second pot, but we'll see.

01:24:50

We'll see. Sorry, someone sent me a message asking about full preterism.

01:24:56

Not the time. Checking Facebook world out there.

01:25:02

Okay, so Luke seems to be a contender, a beloved. So a man of God that Paul loves dearly, that Luke has no doubt benefited the

01:25:12

Apostle since Paul refers to him as beloved. And if he's a physician, no doubt that he has helped the

01:25:21

Apostle Paul many times. And then he mentions, as does Demas. So let me pause.

01:25:28

Does anybody out in the chat know anything about Demas in the scripture? Oh! Sorry about that.

01:25:37

What is going on? Y 'all see me okay?

01:25:44

Yeah, so y 'all see Demas, right? Let's make sure I get this squared back up.

01:25:50

There we go. Adam Carmichael, what are you saying up there?

01:26:00

Glad you're back with us. Okay, so I wanna talk a little bit about Luke and Demas.

01:26:06

And so in 2 Timothy chapter four, Paul refers to both of these men again.

01:26:16

And so I'm just saying that there's a lot of people mentioned in the book of Acts by name.

01:26:23

And we know if they're mentioned by name, then they are not the human writers to the book of Acts.

01:26:30

And so perhaps we could list a few more, like not only looking at Demas and Luke.

01:26:37

I don't remember if Titus is mentioned in the book of Acts at all. But we're gonna kind of see that there's only one person left that makes sense.

01:26:47

And it will be Luke that wrote the book of Acts because he has traveled with the Apostle Paul, no doubt being a personal physician of him.

01:26:55

And then we're gonna see that Demas is not so great. What did he say earlier in Colossians?

01:27:02

As is Demas, right? Maybe referring to him as just someone that has been at his side in ministry for a while.

01:27:11

And remember, 2 Timothy, Paul mentions that this is the end of his life.

01:27:19

This is his last letter. And he is about to depart. He has contended for the faith well.

01:27:25

He's fought the good fight. And so kind of towards the end of this letter, he says, for Demas, in love with this present world has deserted me and gone to Thessalonica.

01:27:39

Okay? Now, this is not good. In love with this present world. Is it 1

01:27:46

John 2 that says, do not love the things of this world and the things in them, because basically all that's in the world that's perishing is the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes and the pride of life.

01:27:59

And so Demas seems to be that soil that receives the word, but realizes that this, we realize that this soil is the thorny ground, right?

01:28:12

That endures for a while, right? Externally looks like maybe part of the faith, but the things of this world, y 'all check me if I'm referencing the right soil, but the thorny ground, the things of this world choke out the word.

01:28:30

Now, I know we have some church Christ in the side chat. I would say that soil is no convert at all.

01:28:39

They just merely externally look like it. And maybe let's actually just look at that. Let's see.

01:28:47

Should we go to Mark chapter four? Believe it's

01:28:55

Mark four. Oh, let's see. I got a rocky ground.

01:29:03

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. We're so close. We're so close. All right, verse seven.

01:29:11

Other seed fell among thorns and the thorns grew up and choked the seed and it yielded no grain.

01:29:19

Other seed fell in the good soil and produced much grain, growing up, increasing, yet yielding 30 -fold, 60 -fold, and 100 -fold.

01:29:27

So let's get into the explanation. Okay, verse 18.

01:29:41

And others are the ones sown among thorns. They are those that hear the word.

01:29:47

Yeah, this is, and the cares of this world. Remember Demas? He was in love with the things of this present world.

01:29:55

But the cares of the world and the deceitfulness of riches and the desires of other things, right?

01:30:01

This might be giving us a little bit insight to Demas. Entered in and choked the word and it proved unfruitful.

01:30:09

Okay, so we're speculating a little bit. We have some good ground for speculation.

01:30:17

Let's see. For Demas, in love with the present world, has deserted me and gone to Thessalonica.

01:30:28

Cretans have gone to Galatia, Titus to Dalmatia. Now here's the key.

01:30:36

Luke alone is with me, okay? So whoever the we statements are in the book of Acts seems like only

01:30:47

Luke was in it for the long haul. A traveling companion to the apostle.

01:30:56

So I just, I think that's really important to understand. Luke alone is with me.

01:31:04

So yeah, I just wanted to kind of share that with y 'all. Let's see here. And so we're looking at the early part of Acts.

01:31:16

And like I said, if this is good internal evidence for Luke being the traveling companion for Acts, well then we know that this would make sense for the gospel, has always been identified as Luke.

01:31:30

So what do y 'all think so far? I want us to continue this thought. Okay, we got a question in the side chat or two.

01:31:42

Before we do that, I want us to kind of read through, I want us to read through this again.

01:31:49

In the first book, O Theophilus, I have dealt with all that Jesus began to do and teach.

01:31:58

And so I did want us, as we are somewhat winding down, we'll see how long we take. I wanted us to make a strong case that this is the second book to the first book where we talk about Theophilus, a friend of God.

01:32:10

So this is probably a real person, but if you love Christ in faith apart from your works, then all these principles are just as applicable to you.

01:32:20

You are a friend of God. Abraham was a friend of God by faith, not by his works, not by his circumcision, not by the things he did, but trusting alone in the promise of God who saves to the uttermost.

01:32:33

This is Luke, a beloved traveling physician to the Apostle Paul, as we're about to look in Luke chapter one.

01:32:41

He is spending precious time, not only consulting the Apostle Paul, but all the apostles, all those that were eyewitnesses to the account of Christ.

01:32:50

He says, I have dealt with all that Jesus began to do and teach.

01:32:55

So, as we begin to shift gears, I want us to kind of look at key principles here in Luke's opening prologue.

01:33:05

But before I do, what are y 'all saying in the side chat? All right,

01:33:11

Carl Henry, let's see, let's see what you got for me. All right, question, is there any credible sources that truly question

01:33:25

Luke as the writer? It's been confirmed. No, yeah, I mean, I agree with you. No, Luke has never really been questioned.

01:33:32

And so, I wanna tell people, church history is great. Church tradition is great, as long as you don't see it as ultimate.

01:33:41

Not that you were saying this, Carl. But I think it's awesome to see that church history has never questioned the gospel of Luke.

01:33:49

But there is good internal reasons why they clearly saw Luke as being one of the four gospels,

01:33:57

Luke as the writer of that in particular gospel, and by extension, Acts.

01:34:04

And so, no, not that I know of, no one truly questioned the gospel of Luke.

01:34:16

All right, any other questions out there as we begin to kind of look at these four verses in Luke chapter one?

01:34:27

If people are wondering about resources for good study in the book of Acts, what

01:34:34

I've been looking at is, I don't have a graphic to show y 'all. Let's see here. It is the, let me make sure

01:34:45

I'm reading this properly, the Baker Exegetical Commentary.

01:34:53

And so, I've been reading a lot by Darrell L. Bach. Excellent resource so far.

01:35:00

But if you're new to the Apologetic Dog, you always gotta consult the old Johnny Mac. Now, I don't agree with Johnny Mac on everything.

01:35:09

In fact, if y 'all continue through weeks to come, something that I'm going to probably just spend a long time in the book of Acts on is this right here.

01:35:23

Jesus present himself alive to them, the apostles, many eyewitnesses after his sufferings, by many proofs appearing to them during 40 days, speaking about the kingdom of God.

01:35:36

Now, you may at first think, oh, what's the big deal about that? This is huge.

01:35:41

The book of Acts continues the theme that was established in Luke's gospel all about the kingdom of God.

01:35:49

I cannot wait to get into the weeds, if you will, of what the kingdom of God entails.

01:35:56

This has so many necessary connections to eschatology, so many necessary connections to our protology, the study of first things, and it involves salvation.

01:36:09

And so the gospel of Luke talks about, that's the main theme running throughout the gospel of Luke is the kingdom of God.

01:36:16

And then we see this thread continued throughout the book of Acts. My point is, I love

01:36:23

John MacArthur, but we definitely part ways with, because he's very dispensational in his understanding, especially with the kingdom of God and so forth.

01:36:32

And if you hold to covenant theology, as I do, that's going to necessarily impact how you understand the kingdom of God.

01:36:42

Okay. Brian said, thanks for your debate on the sovereignty of God in salvation.

01:36:55

Well, thank you, sir. Which debate are you talking about? I have a handful of debates out there, and I'm not really sure which one you're referring to.

01:37:04

It could be a couple of different ones, but I appreciate the kind words there. Oh, Wesley is gonna have to head off here, but thank you for stopping by.

01:37:19

You have an early morning. Dude, get some rest, and we will talk later. You'll have to let me know if you're like, ah, you didn't really tell me how we can know what scripture belongs in the word of God.

01:37:29

You have to examine an entire worldview paradigm, my guy. See ya,

01:37:36

Wesley. Okay. Yep, Carl said, write it down, everyone.

01:37:44

Jeremiah said, I agree with you, Carl. I agree, no one disputed Luke being the legitimate writer of that particular gospel.

01:37:54

Okay, so as we continue to shift gears back into Luke's gospel, we can confidently say

01:38:01

Luke wrote it by kind of all those context clues with the Book of Acts. And if we look at those we statements, and Luke, this beloved physician of Paul, we know everyone else left him.

01:38:13

It was only Luke that was present with him to the end of his life, his missionary journeys.

01:38:19

Then Luke's gospel, we know that he's the writer of both. He says, inasmuch as many have undertaken to compile a narrative of the things that have been accomplished among us, just as those whom from the beginning were, this is important, eyewitnesses and ministers of the word have delivered them to us.

01:38:44

I just wanna pause. Because this is Luke telling us that he's not an apostle.

01:38:51

Okay? I won't spend terribly long getting into this, because later on in Acts, let me see if I can show y 'all a heading.

01:39:01

Tell me if y 'all can see this okay. I believe y 'all can. We're gonna get in later on the criteria of an apostle.

01:39:10

When Matthias, Matthias, however y 'all pronounce it out there, was chosen to replace Judas, there was a very strict process of who qualified for that.

01:39:19

And by extension, we talk about who can write scripture and so forth. But Luke here is distinguishing himself apart from the eyewitness apostles and those that walked with Jesus from the time of his baptism, his baptism out there by John the

01:39:40

Baptist, and his death, burial, resurrection, and ascension is now sitting on high.

01:39:46

But as we're gonna get into Acts chapter one, the ascension is important too. So Luke is not an apostle, okay?

01:39:53

And so this kind of gets back into canonicity and who can write scripture. And so I'm gonna touch again on some of those principles here in a moment.

01:40:01

But recapping, Luke says, just as those who from the beginning were eyewitnesses and ministers of the word have delivered them to us, it seemed good to me,

01:40:14

Luke says, is also having followed all things closely for some time past to write an orderly account for you, most excellent

01:40:26

Theophilus, that you may have certainty concerning the things you have been taught.

01:40:34

Now, years ago, studying this and still refining my understanding, you know,

01:40:41

Luke is not an apostle. If he's not an apostle, then why can he give us scripture?

01:40:48

Have you ever thought about that? I'll let you think on it for a moment. Yeah, so Shane's obviously

01:41:02

Church of Christ, and so for him, baptism is everything. But I'm thankful for the kingdom under Christ was established in Acts two.

01:41:11

So I will get into how there isn't a kingdom that in some ways is being established way before Acts chapter two.

01:41:21

It's actually a part of a covenant between the Father and the Son. And so even though I don't ever wanna disparage

01:41:28

Acts chapter two, Acts 2 .38, I wanna let people know that when we're talking about the kingdom of God, it's so much more than a baptism.

01:41:36

This is the work of redemption that Father, Son are accomplishing in real time.

01:41:42

And so Shane, I'm not trying to pick on you. I would actually consider you a friend from afar. But yeah,

01:41:49

I would hope to challenge you, even though we may not agree on baptism. I want to challenge you on your understanding of the kingdom and God's covenant within himself, which is called the covenant of redemption, and how

01:42:03

God cuts covenants in real time from the Old Testament into the new covenant, the kingdom of God that's now and, or already and not yet, that's here and now, but we are awaiting its full consummation.

01:42:18

So maybe we would agree with some of those principles, but I think you will find a lot of it very interesting.

01:42:27

Yeah, well, you're emphasizing under Christ, but you're saying established in Acts two.

01:42:33

I'm saying the establishment, in many ways, precedes Acts chapter two.

01:42:38

I mean, in many ways, it's being set out from before the foundation of the world.

01:42:45

So that's what I'm talking about. Okay, okay. He says the kingdom has always been present since creation.

01:42:53

Well, I'm glad to hear you say that because that's the whole point, is I want you to think prior to Acts chapter two.

01:42:58

And for some Church of Christ, that's really hard to do, but maybe you're not the average old Church of Christ, which

01:43:04

I appreciate. Yeah, okay,

01:43:10

John B. says, Luke was a trusted historian close enough to the apostles to be given inspiration by the

01:43:19

Holy Spirit to write the historical account. Yes, yes, I actually want to piggyback off that.

01:43:26

That's actually very insightful because I don't have the scripture pulled up.

01:43:33

But in Romans chapter 16, I'm gonna do some things on the fly, people.

01:43:41

That's how Anthony Rogers does it. When I started reading details like this,

01:43:48

I thought, hmm, this is pretty interesting. Do y 'all remember, do y 'all know the name Terseus?

01:43:57

I'm probably misspelling it. There we go, found it. I spelled it right. If y 'all watched my last stream,

01:44:04

I misspelled loose and I put can a believer loose their salvation or something, but people are like,

01:44:12

Jeremiah's not the sharpest speller in the world. I blame Siri, honestly. Oh, wow, my phone's been over there this whole time.

01:44:19

But think about it, who wrote the Apostle Paul? Obviously, God inspired this book through the Apostle Paul, right?

01:44:25

Well, I, Terseus, who wrote this letter, greet you in the Lord. And we have to understand is

01:44:32

God, the Bible did not float down on a cloud. God gave us his word over time, entered into our world, inspired prophets, and inspired the apostles, and as John B.

01:44:47

said, inspired men close to the apostles. And that's no problem at all because this fellow wrote the book of Romans.

01:44:57

What was the scenario? Well, Paul probably couldn't see very well. He's chained to a Roman guard and so he has someone write it for him.

01:45:04

And so I'm just saying it's incredible how God has written and preserved his word for us. He has actually spoken in real time and in space.

01:45:14

So number one, that's okay that Luke isn't directly an apostle.

01:45:22

And he traveled with the Apostle Paul. He traveled with the other apostles in the book of Acts.

01:45:30

And so he's closely associated with them. And so I've read many commentaries that say, one way to look at the gospel of Luke is the gospel according to Paul, right?

01:45:41

This is a beloved physician that was with Paul a lot. Does that make sense?

01:45:47

I'll check the chat a little bit here. Shane, did

01:45:55

I mention baptism? You were thinking it. That's good, that's good.

01:46:02

All right, let me know if you have any questions because now what we're kind of unpacking is why is it okay that Luke not being an apostle or a prophet, why is he able to write inspired scripture?

01:46:16

Well, as we looked at a moment ago, 2 Peter chapter one says that it's

01:46:21

God that gives us his word and he carries certain men along with the

01:46:26

Holy Spirit. And so he can do that to those who are closely associated with the apostles, therefore carrying apostolic authority.

01:46:41

Okay, just seeing what you have to say out there. Okay. Something else that's important because we're talking about Luke's gospel here.

01:46:51

Now, I'm sure with our crew, our side chat, we don't have to establish yet that the apostle

01:47:00

Paul, or that Paul was an apostle called out by Jesus Christ. But as long as we grant that, and that would be in Acts chapter nine, what we see in 2

01:47:11

Peter chapter three, where Peter, who was there the night before the crucifixion where Jesus said, my spirit will guide you, talking to the 12 apostles, will guide you into all truth.

01:47:27

So Peter's there, he's got the promise of Christ with the Holy Spirit being with them to low and even to the end of the age.

01:47:34

And so my point is, even the apostle Peter, as we're gonna get later into Acts chapter one, plays a crucial part in affirming those who have apostolic authority.

01:47:45

And so Peter is confirmed by Jesus to be an apostle called out. Peter affirms the calling of the apostle

01:47:53

Paul in 2 Peter chapter three. You can just look it up. Refers to Paul's writings as the rest of scriptures.

01:48:01

And so Paul says in 1 Timothy chapter five, very interesting statement, he quotes, he says, the scripture says, okay, this apostle

01:48:12

Paul speaking, you shall not muzzle an ox when it treads out the grain. Right, this is

01:48:18

Deuteronomy. This is Old Testament scripture, right? But then he says, and the laborer deserves his wages.

01:48:28

Now, this comes from Luke chapter 10 verse 17. Why is that important? Because the apostle

01:48:33

Paul calls Luke's writings scripture. Okay?

01:48:41

Which, like I said earlier, the gospel of Luke, we can kind of look at that as the gospel according to the apostle

01:48:49

Paul. So I thought that was pretty neat. Definitely wanted to share that with y 'all. Okay, so he says, just as those whom from the beginning were eyewitnesses, the apostles, ministers of the word have delivered the gospel truths to us,

01:49:04

Luke says, it seems good to me, having followed all things closely for some time past, to write, and this is really important, in orderly account for you.

01:49:19

And so as we kind of look at the book of Acts, reflecting a lot of the gospel of Luke, Luke is not just a physician.

01:49:27

I mean, he's very smart. I mean, obviously he's being inspired by the Holy Spirit writing this orderly account, but he's a historian.

01:49:33

He traveled with the apostles during Paul's second missionary journey and onward.

01:49:40

Incredible. Just want to pause, got maybe just a couple more points. We'll go for about 10 more minutes, if that's okay with y 'all.

01:49:48

We have about 12 people on YouTube. Don't know how many, let's see, out in Facebook world.

01:49:56

But we'll be wrapping up in about 10 minutes or so. Got about one more point.

01:50:02

I guess I can go ahead and answer the question for the apoplectic bear.

01:50:08

Man, I struggle saying that first word. Let me actually pull up the question again. I doubt he stayed on.

01:50:15

He's gonna accuse me of not answering his question. I did say you had to stay.

01:50:20

Let's see, it's so funny. So y 'all probably thought I forgot about this question.

01:50:26

Let's see here. Can you share your theory as to why

01:50:36

Matthias shouldn't have been an apostle? You sure persuaded me.

01:50:44

Maybe, I don't get it. Maybe I misspoke. I thought he was asking the question if Matthias replaced

01:50:53

Judas or if Peter and the apostles pulled the trigger too soon and the apostle

01:50:59

Paul was God's true candidate for replacing Judas. My theory is

01:51:09

Matthias was exactly who God wanted. So I may not be answering the bear's question the way they worded it, but Matthias definitely should have been the apostle because the apostles were prayerful.

01:51:27

They casted lots, which was an Old Testament practice. So this is before Pentecost. So it seems legitimate.

01:51:35

Peter quoted scripture. And so I think

01:51:41

God, I think it's, what is it, Proverbs 16, 33. The lot is cast into the lap, but it's every decision is from the

01:51:51

Lord. And so they had men qualified or it came down to, and we'll get into this later into Acts chapter one.

01:51:59

But yeah, it seems like the apostle Peter, who, like I said, now quoting scripture, not like the

01:52:05

Peter constantly sticking his foot in his mouth in the gospel accounts. They were prayerful.

01:52:11

And then God providentially wanted Matthias to replace Judas Iscariot. And so when we do talk about the apostle

01:52:18

Paul, he was an apostle born out of due time. So God had special purposes and saw of Tarsus' conversion to Christianity.

01:52:28

So the bear, I hope that answers your question. Once again, thanks so much for your support to the ministry.

01:52:36

Yeah, y 'all thought I forgot about that. Uh, uh, oh, he's still there.

01:52:46

Uh, I thought you'd went home. Did I answer your question to your satisfaction? Did you want a refund?

01:52:54

That is cruel and unusual to send in a super chat but then want it back.

01:53:04

And unapologetic Kyle, what does your support mean? Check this out, everyone. You got the bear, you got the cat, and you got the dog.

01:53:14

Y 'all crazy. Crazy. Drew, in the building. If y 'all don't know

01:53:21

Drew, go check out his YouTube channel. He interviewed the apologetic dog.

01:53:27

It's been a few weeks, maybe a month. Drew, thanks for catching the tail end of this live stream.

01:53:33

Like I said, we are kind of wrapping up. The bear says he gets, he's fine.

01:53:44

Yeah, I guess. Class chat GBT. Okay, so there is a final point

01:53:51

I want us to wrap up with. I love what Luke says in verse four. He says, so you gotta think, we'll back up a little bit.

01:54:03

Having followed all things closely for some time past to write an inspired account, mind you, an orderly account for you, most excellent

01:54:13

Theophilus, that you may have, this is the key. This is what I wanted to emphasize.

01:54:19

That you may have certainty concerning the things you have been taught.

01:54:26

Isn't that beautiful? That you can have certainty. I referenced the verse earlier.

01:54:36

One of my favorite verses is John 17, 17. Actually, I'm gonna talk about two verses here.

01:54:43

John 17, 17, and then, I think it's Colossians two. So, when we're talking about certainty, when we're talking about knowledge, we are ultimately talking about truth.

01:55:02

Now, God speaks in time. He has, remember, especially in the incarnation,

01:55:10

God took on flesh and dwelt among us. He met us where we're at. And so, even before the incarnation,

01:55:17

God had theophanies. God manifested Adam Carmichael, hopefully he won't get mad at me for using the word manifest.

01:55:25

Manifested himself in ways that prefigured the incarnation with Christophanies, honestly.

01:55:34

And so, God has always been coming to our level, revealing to us truth. I believe it's

01:55:39

Isaiah 65 that refers to God as the God of truth. And so, what

01:55:45

I really want to express to people is for us to be certain of anything at all, to have any degree of certainty,

01:55:54

God has to reveal to us truth. And what's so neat with Luke is you have a sharp man, who is a physician, no doubt, traveling with the apostles, who is a historian, telling us that, look,

01:56:09

I have searched all these things, I have talked with all the eyewitnesses and ministers who were there from the beginning of Jesus's earthly ministry, so that I may present to you an orderly account.

01:56:23

And so, yes, that's the means that God used. And so, when we look and we peek back into history, not as ultimate, but as true and good and a good authority, then we can understand, man, someone like Luke, that's exactly who we would want telling us about these events.

01:56:43

And so, I do want to piggyback on that thought a little bit.

01:56:50

So, all the apostles, we understand they're inspired by God, but listen to how

01:56:58

Peter begins in 2 Peter 1, starting in verse 16.

01:57:04

He says, for we did not follow cleverly devised myths, when we made known to you the power and the coming of our

01:57:14

Lord Jesus Christ, but were eyewitnesses of his majesty.

01:57:20

Okay, now I'm about to share with you something really important. Remember, we're saying in order for us to have certainty at all, knowledge about anything, we must be talking about truth, that which is real, that which corresponds to the mind of God.

01:57:32

He has to reveal himself, right? And so, yes, Peter, eyewitness, incredible testimony.

01:57:39

None of us have witnessed Jesus the way that the apostles did. They walked with him, they talked with him.

01:57:46

Think about it, we don't even have anything close to Adam and Eve in the garden. They walked with God in the cool of the day.

01:57:52

I'm saying those are just incredible eyewitness, right? Eyewitnesses. And so, with the apostles, they were eyewitnesses of the majesty and the glories of Christ, verse 17.

01:58:03

For when he received honor and glory from God the Father, the voice that was born to him by the majestic glory said this, this is my beloved son with whom

01:58:16

I am well pleased. Okay, and now he goes on to say, we ourselves heard this voice born from heaven, for we were with him, key detail, on the holy mountain.

01:58:28

Okay, so I want you to think about this. You have testimonies like Luke, who traveled with the apostle

01:58:35

Paul, giving us an orderly account, has examined all of these things. He has looked under every rock and crevice and asked all the questions, all the same kind of questions y 'all are asking me in the side chat.

01:58:47

He asked all those to the apostles themselves, right? Incredible witness, incredible eyewitness testimony.

01:58:54

And who better than Luke? Someone like Peter, who is right there with Christ. And yet, he appeals to this experience that Peter had on the holy mountain.

01:59:08

And so if you open back up to the Gospels, I believe it's in all three synoptic accounts,

01:59:15

Matthew, Mark, and Luke. And the only one that comes to mind is Matthew chapter 17, where we have the account of the amount of transfiguration.

01:59:26

How are we doing on time? Oh, we're getting close to the two hour mark. I'll wrap up with this thought.

01:59:33

So you have the amount of transfiguration, definitely in Luke's Gospel account too, because he mentions the kingdom of God, which we'll be really unpacking more of what that means in the weeks to come.

01:59:44

But I want you to understand this. Luke here talks about this as an incredible experience that he has, and he's reaffirming to us, he's a reliable eyewitness testimony because he is, right?

01:59:59

But if you recall this experience that he had, this is my beloved son with whom

02:00:04

I am well pleased. This was the voice from God the

02:00:09

Father on high in response to something that Peter said that was really dumb. Peter saw

02:00:17

Jesus, Moses, and Elijah on the Mount of Transfiguration. And he said, hey, let's build three booths.

02:00:23

And the implication might be altars, you know? And I think the implication further is for worship.

02:00:30

That's not good. Jesus Christ alone, right? So you'll hear from the apologetic dog that we are saved by grace alone, through faith alone, in Christ alone.

02:00:43

He's the only mediator between God and man that's worthy of our worship and praise. That's who we pray to. He's our intercessor, he's our mediator.

02:00:50

He's the paraclete, right, of two, right? The Holy Spirit and Jesus. But he intercedes on our behalf.

02:00:57

He's our perfect high priest. And so God the Father, I would say, rebuked

02:01:02

Peter. And remember, he has an incredible experience beholding the majesty of Christ on the

02:01:09

Mount of Transfiguration. But he says, hey, let's build three booths, three tabernacles, right? And God the

02:01:15

Father says, you need to zip it and you listen to my son who I'm well pleased, okay?

02:01:21

Now, the reason why I think that's important here is because verse 19. Now remember, Peter, a more sanctified

02:01:27

Peter is speaking here and says, and we, as the apostles, we as disciples, as true

02:01:34

Christians, trusting in Christ alone apart from our works, we have the prophetic word more fully confirmed.

02:01:45

And there's some other good translations. I think the idea, though, is that we have a more sure prophetic word, like the word of God is more certain, more true than our experiences, why?

02:02:01

Even the apostle, even someone that bore witness to Jesus Christ on the Mount of Transfiguration stuck his foot in his mouth pretty quick, his own experience and his own reasoning.

02:02:11

He is saying we have the prophetic word. That is more sure, that's more fully confirmed than anything else, to which you do well to pay attention as a lamp shining in a dark place, right?

02:02:25

This is hearkening back to the Psalms. It says the word of God is a lamp unto my feet and it's a light unto my path.

02:02:32

It gives us truth, right? It shows us the way. Until the day dawns and the morning star rises in your hearts.

02:02:40

And then it goes into how really scripture, the prophetic voice of God that is clear and calls us to faith, repentance, and salvation does not come from the will of man but comes from God who carries men along by the

02:02:57

Holy Spirit. I wanted you to have that in mind because when we're looking at Luke, when he writes an orderly account for us, yes, he's a man, but he's being inspired by the

02:03:09

Holy Spirit. He has been with the apostles.

02:03:15

He has turned over every nook and cranny, asked all the questions. He's giving us an orderly account.

02:03:20

Why? That we may have certainty. Certainty concerning the things that you have been taught, the gospel, right?

02:03:29

The kingdom of God. And so I did wanna allude to one more passage. May not confine it fast here.

02:03:35

In Colossians chapter two, here we go. That their hearts may be encouraged, right?

02:03:44

Think about the word of God that is more fully confirmed, more sure than anything else, it gives us truth.

02:03:52

Being knit together in love to reach all the riches of full assurance of understanding and the knowledge of God's mystery in Christ in whom are hidden all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge.

02:04:10

Does that make sense? I'm really wanting to make the point that if we want certainty, if we want to have all the riches of full assurance of understanding the knowledge of God, it's in Christ.

02:04:27

It's in Christ who is the way and the truth in the life. No one comes father except through me,

02:04:33

Jesus says. And then what else is the truth? Well, it goes back to God is truth.

02:04:39

God reveals to us truth by his word, right? What was it, John 17, 17. And so that's something that I seek to do in apologetics is say, look, the only way that we could know truth is if the

02:04:53

God of truth reveals to us what the truth is. He does that to us by Jesus Christ coming in the flesh and appointing apostles and those closely associated to the apostles to give us his word, which he promised to give the

02:05:13

Holy Spirit to guide us into all truth. What'd y 'all think? Leanne said, beautiful, amen, sister.

02:05:24

How many of y 'all stay out there? Oh, we still have nine. Y 'all either lasted this long or y 'all are fresh nine than how we started.

02:05:34

So if y 'all have any questions, I don't mind to talk a little bit more, but that's kind of all

02:05:41

I wanted to accomplish this first program was to kind of introduce y 'all to the book of Acts of the apostles and dwelt by the

02:05:47

Holy Spirit, but all sovereignly ordained by the hand of God and we watch his plan unfold.

02:06:03

Ah, Shane Fisher asked, oh, this is like a ghost comment.

02:06:10

Oh, there we go. Shane wants to know, when is your next class?

02:06:17

Well, I don't necessarily consider this a class, but if you consider it that,

02:06:25

I don't know. My thought is when I don't have any guests lined up to have on the show for a week,

02:06:33

I wanna stream at least once a week, maybe more, we'll see. I gotta really respect my wife's time and I'm also serving,

02:06:42

I also serve as a pastor, have debates, I have all these things on my schedule.

02:06:48

I preach, preaching twice coming up here in June. And so when

02:06:54

I don't have anything on the docket, I wanna fill that in with going through the book of Acts because I'm teaching through Acts at church and wonderful book, wonderful book.

02:07:06

So I'll keep you posted. Definitely feel free to message me on Facebook. Oh, that was the last bit and it stayed warm the whole time, yes.

02:07:17

To tell the wifey that that was a success. Okay, who else is out there?

02:07:25

I see a few more comments. Chris says, love the video, long time fan, got the privilege of meeting you at G3 last

02:07:37

September. Thank you for your work and all that you do. Much love, fam. Thank you, Chris, for tuning in.

02:07:45

Georgia, thanks so much for your encouragement as well. Hopefully the bear doesn't, the bear.

02:08:00

I love those accounts. You know that they were inspired, not in the biblical sense, but they were inspired by the apologetic dog.

02:08:08

What'd y 'all think about the newest, I don't wanna say the aesthetic, but what'd y 'all think of kind of these new scenes in Ecamm Live?

02:08:19

Y 'all like it? Hopefully y 'all read the scriptures okay.

02:08:28

Wanna give y 'all something better to look at than just my mug. Okay, I'll double check if y 'all have any parting words.

02:08:47

Yes, Shane, it will be interesting talking about baptism in the Holy Spirit. Yeah, oh yeah, all that's to come and I'm gonna be dipping back into the opening five verses a lot in Acts because it's kind of a foundation.

02:09:02

In many ways, Acts and Luke kind of overlap with the Ascension. So yeah, we'll be definitely talking about the baptism of the

02:09:09

Holy Spirit. Shane asks, are you going to review

02:09:18

Aaron Gallagher's new review of, a review of a review.

02:09:23

I got lost with all the reviews. I don't know, Trey Fisher loves engaging with Gallagher.

02:09:30

I kind of look at it as, debate me Gallagher. I'm really hoping he accepts, but as of now

02:09:35

I don't plan on doing a review of the review to the review of the review of the eight and a half hour long review. But we'll see.

02:09:43

We'll see, I'm not against it. It looks like Fergie, she says it's a good idea. Maybe we'll do it.

02:09:50

And Leanne, it's four and a half hours. And you know what stinks about his last review of a review?

02:09:58

I couldn't find a transcript on YouTube. So one hack that I use on debate prep and just doing a lot of research, especially of videos, is a lot of YouTube videos have a transcript button.

02:10:12

And so I'm able to copy and paste the bulk of that into a document and I can do word search and kind of research key points without having to actually listen to the whole thing.

02:10:21

But if I'm listening to huge chunks, I'll crank it up to times two, baby. She said, not missing anything.

02:10:32

Well, I really hope Gallagher, I guess this is a good time to kind of wind down, but I do want to once again remind y 'all of the announcements up and coming.

02:10:47

Let's see if I can find them. Yes. So as we close,

02:10:59

I just want to remind you that August 23rd, me and the Fishbone will be debating. I'm honestly not sure.

02:11:05

I think these two individuals are identified as Church of Christ. But we'll be talking about is baptism necessary for the forgiveness of all of your sins, past, present, and future.

02:11:18

And me and Trey are going, no. So you don't want to miss that debate.

02:11:26

It's a little ways off. So I'll keep y 'all informed about looking forward to that.

02:11:32

And then please be in prayer for me getting ready for having a debate next

02:11:38

February, 2025 in Tullahoma, Tennessee at the conference.

02:11:43

I guess it's titled War, the Flesh versus the Spirit. But this conference with all these wonderful gentlemen that I got to meet this past February, essentially it would be on sanctification.

02:11:55

What a wonderful doctrine. God not only regenerates us by His grace and declares us right, justifies us by His grace, which is sufficient, by the way, not just necessary, but He doesn't just say, all right, and good luck with the

02:12:08

Christian life. I'll see you in glory one day. No, He's with us in low, even to the end of the age.

02:12:13

He indwells us by His Spirit. And it's the Spirit, 1 Timothy 1, verse two, that tells us that it's the

02:12:21

Holy Spirit that indwells us for the obedience to all of what Christ has commanded us to do. And so I've been tasked to find an interlocutor to debate me on eternal security if we can lose our sanctification.

02:12:39

Who knows, we may even change it into a baptism debate. We'll see because Jeff asked for me to find an interlocutor debate opponent that is

02:12:49

Church of Christ. And to just let you all know, I challenged Aaron Gallagher for the task and I really wish he would consider it because as Shane, Shane, this is where I'm not, if he's not willing to just come debate me, then it's like, okay, he's a podcaster,

02:13:10

I get it. And he's free to do that. But if he's going to critique my video and talk about debate strategy and logical fallacies and argumentation, which to a degree

02:13:25

I respect him for, well, dude, come meet me in Tullahoma, Tennessee and let's get on a stage in front of a live audience.

02:13:32

Shane, if you're interested, message me. If you would perhaps like to debate me in Tullahoma if it doesn't work out with Gallagher, maybe you would take up that task as well.

02:13:45

But when you say he brought up some excellent points that you need to consider, I've already listened to some of it.

02:13:52

And it's nothing new, it's nothing new. So to me, it's reached the point where we just need to debate in front of an audience.

02:14:03

Okay, so you got, appreciate this suggestion. You should ask

02:14:08

Don Blackwell who lives near Tullahoma, okay. So am

02:14:13

I taking that as a no? You don't want to be the one if Gallagher doesn't want to go through with it.

02:14:23

Okay, Leanne says that would be excellent. So anyway, thank y 'all for tuning in.

02:14:32

And once again, if you have benefited from the Apologetic Dog ministry, then please like and subscribe and please share this content.

02:14:45

I've had a number of people tell me that it's so handy to hit the notification bell on my stuff because I'm going to be doing, like to Shane's question, when am

02:14:54

I going to have another class, another live stream? Don't know. I have certain dates lined up for interviews and stuff, but me teaching through the

02:15:01

Book of Acts, can I hit that notification bell? Because you never know. But thank y 'all so much for tuning in.

02:15:09

It's been a couple hours. The coffee did the trick. Once again, just want to, please ask you to like this video, to share it, but keep me in prayer.