Open Q&A

Apologetics Live

Subscribe

Download

Share

00

00:04

Welcome to Apologetics Live. We're here to answer your questions and challenges about God and the

00:10

Bible. Meet your hosts from Striving for Eternity Ministries, Andrew Rappaport, Dr. Anthony Silvestro, and Pastor Justin Pierce.

00:20

We are live, Apologetics Live. Again, we are out here in Orlando, California.

00:26

Andrew Rappaport, Dr. Anthony Silvestro, and Pastor Justin Pierce? Wait, you don't look like Pastor Justin Pierce.

00:32

Something happened. Yeah, something happened. No, you are Pastor Casey. So you're not

00:38

Justin Pierce. No. No, okay, just checking. For a second, I thought Justin Pierce lost some weight, you know?

00:45

But we're here from Orlando, Florida. We've been out at Beulah Baptist Church, a good church if you're down here in, well, it's actually in the

00:53

Winter Garden area, so it's a little bit of a ride from Orlando, but we pulled you in to join us tonight for an open

01:01

Q &A. And so, you know, tonight, folks, it is an open

01:07

Q &A, which means any questions you have, just go to apologeticslive .com.

01:14

I have a question. Go to apologeticslive .com, scroll down, find the section that has a duck icon, that's the

01:24

StreamYard link, and that is how you join us. We do have a regular kind of co -host here backstage, and that is

01:33

Mr. Justin Peters. How are you, sir? Hey, brothers, doing well, doing well.

01:39

I apologize for my unusually casual attire here, but this was a spur of the moment decision.

01:45

I was gonna say that, yeah, I was gonna say that, you know, that you were not expecting, you called

01:53

Pastor Casey and said, hey, what are you doing? And he said, Apologetics Live. And we roped you into joining us.

02:01

Yeah, well, I won't be able to join you the whole time, but I'll stick around for a good 45 minutes or maybe an hour or so, but yeah.

02:10

Well, Justin, if you were still here, you could join us in the hot tub for evangelism after the show, but you're already back up north, so.

02:17

Yeah, yeah, man, it has been eons since I've been in a hot tub. Yeah, well, you know, it would be good to, we've been having some great, great evangelism.

02:30

In the hot tub, we had a young lady that actually prayed to receive Christ in the hot tub.

02:38

And so that was kind of neat. And we've, you know, but right after that, of course, we got, you know, screamed at and yelled at by two lesbians.

02:49

So it was a little of both. I wasn't there for that.

02:54

No, you weren't there for that one. So I did, you know, I found this interesting and I didn't share this with you.

03:02

You said you had a question, so I'll go to your question first. Actually, my question is, is why did you decide to get such a good haircut like mine?

03:11

Why does he think everyone is trying to mimic him all the time is the real question. Actually, the sad thing is, so I keep forgetting the cameras right there.

03:20

Yeah. We both decided to cut our hair really short. For the same reason.

03:25

For the same reason, yeah. Now, the question is, after we give the reason, will Justin shave his head?

03:31

That's the question. I was going to say my hair is this short because I lost at a challenge with you at tennis.

03:38

And my bet was that I would shave my head if I couldn't win, if I couldn't lose.

03:44

And I was trying so hard to lose, but you know. Yeah. I think the first question is why are we talking about our bald heads before they get.

03:52

Yeah, I know. Well, actually, I commented earlier. I'm like, this is a terrible spotlight here because it's shining off the top of our heads now on the foreheads, but yeah, it's life.

04:03

So for folks who are regular listeners here, you know that usually when I'm home, what we end up doing is we use an app called

04:11

Wisdom, which I love that app. It's a great open air evangelism app type of app because you just get on and you can talk and people can listen and people can join and you can let guests come in and give them like 15 minutes.

04:26

The nice thing is that they have 15 minutes and it's one way that I wish I could do in the open air. 15 minutes, okay, you're done next person.

04:35

But we use that app. They sent a survey and folks,

04:41

I haven't shared this with Anthony or Casey or Justin. And so I want to go through the questions they asked on the survey because I find this really interesting.

04:51

Oh, but because I filled it out already, ah, I can't pull it up again.

04:57

So that's a bummer. All right, so here was the interesting thing they asked. I'll just go over some of them.

05:03

They asked whether you were male, whether you preferred a, who you preferred it for your audience, male, female, or non -gender.

05:12

So I clicked male, female. But then they had questions like, do you attend religious services weekly?

05:22

Or do you attend church on Sunday? I think is actually how they worded it. They asked, do you think abortion is wrong?

05:30

Do you think cancel culture is hurting the country?

05:37

It's pretty isolated. Yeah, I mean, it really was interesting in what they were, I was like, so I actually wanted to go through all those questions, but oh, well, that didn't work because I filled them out already.

05:48

All right, so with that, I'll start with some of the questions that I had that I want to talk about.

05:55

And I want to start with the topic of prayer. Pastor Casey, you, this past Sunday, just spoke on the topic of prayer.

06:04

Good sermon. Wait, did I say that in front of him? Okay, you know, I turned to Anthony, you know,

06:10

Pastor Casey did a pretty good job Sunday. It was a good sermon. Yeah, good sermon. You didn't hear that.

06:15

And it's a convicting one, so. So we went out, the three of us went out to lunch with another pastor, and there's something that we talked about with prayer.

06:26

And I want to get your thoughts on this. I made the comment that most of the people

06:33

I talk to that are Christians would say that prayer is the one area

06:39

I've never heard anybody ever say that their prayer life is good. It's always something that could use more work.

06:47

And yet if we had a conference on prayer, no one would come. It's the thing that every

06:52

Christian seems to know we need to work on, and yet it seems to be an area that so many of us don't want to work on.

07:02

What would be your thoughts? Why do you think we struggle with prayer so much with that?

07:08

You know, the first thing that comes to mind is when Jesus preached his first sermon, the

07:14

Sermon on the Mount, the Beatitudes, there were rewards there based upon what he was wanting done.

07:22

And so we naturally love to be rewarded, and we like to see the fruit of our labor.

07:29

And so perhaps a lack of fruit or a lack of evidence or a lack of joy after the prayer, a lack of effectiveness from prayer, would be some source to why folks would not be inclined to do such like you mentioned.

07:45

So nevertheless, my answer would be, well, if you're not getting the rewards from prayer, if you're not getting exactly what you think you should get out of prayer accomplished, perhaps consider reevaluating what you're praying and see what you're saying, what you're doing, how you're doing it, and see if we're actually praying biblically.

08:06

And so to your point, last Sunday's message was also impactful for myself.

08:12

And all we simply did was took a look at how Paul prayed for the church of Colossae, how he prayed for Timothy, how he prayed for the church at Ephesus.

08:22

And I encouraged our congregation to outline those passages, take the points from Paul's personal prayer life, which obviously is divine, it's inspired, and then put those in a way that you can also pray for your own family.

08:38

And I guarantee you this, when you outline those prayers, you will pray in a way that you perhaps have never prayed before because you're praying different concepts that generally aren't our stereotypical, oh, help me

08:51

God, thank you for these things, I'm done. Prayers. Yeah, no, there's something that came up.

08:57

Are you gonna put it in Chris' house? Yeah, I'll put it up. So Chris Huff says this, here's something else with prayer with what we're seeing right now.

09:04

Look at the DeMar Hamlin situation. How many only go to the Lord when they want their miracle?

09:11

And I would actually say that this is something that probably all of us do, right?

09:16

When things are going really well, we tend to not pray as much. When we've got some issues in our lives, we tend to be praying a whole lot more.

09:24

I mean, I'm guilty of that, I admit it, right? And I would think that we probably all are. And I think that one of the most striking things in the pastoral training that I'm going through at Buehler Baptist under you and in some of your, in your last sermon on this is that our prayer is supposed to be continual, right?

09:41

Pray without ceasing. And so it doesn't matter how big or how small, we're supposed to be continually in prayer.

09:48

And how many of us are actually doing this? I'm really now trying to make a concerted effort throughout the day to bring to mind something to pray about, you know?

09:58

And I'll tell you, one of the easiest ways to do it, what I've had to do is to think about all the things I'm thankful for, right?

10:05

I mean, throughout the day, we should be thanking Him for everything that we have. And you know, there's a disconnect in our prayer life as well.

10:13

Lots of times our prayer lives, stereotypically, not for everybody, are trying to remove what

10:19

God is doing in our life. Let me explain. And so if we have a hardship in our life, oh Lord, please remove this, please remove this, please remove this.

10:28

But aren't we, as Christians, called to live a cross -like lifestyle?

10:34

Embracing suffering, we're called to suffer, Philippians 1 .29. And the trials of our faith are more precious than gold.

10:40

And so nevertheless, we should spend less time trying to remove the trial instead of thanking God for the trial, because God is sovereignly, providentially working in our lives.

10:52

I've just had the awesome opportunity of making a home visit with Randy and Darla, the members of our church.

10:58

She's broken her ankle, and she's thanking God for the divine appointment that she had at the hospital, even though it's painful, and she's embracing this season in her life and feels called to strengthen her prayer life and perhaps even divert from doing so much in life to praying more.

11:16

It's beautiful. Justin, what are your thoughts? Yeah, I agree.

11:23

I agree with everything y 'all said, and I would include myself. We all have a tendency to maybe have a bit more dedicated and intense prayer life when there's an acute need in our lives or some kind of crisis that we're facing.

11:41

But we should, as Scripture says, 1 Thessalonians 5 .17, pray without ceasing.

11:47

Of course, that doesn't literally mean we pray 24 -7. I mean, that's not even possible, but we should strive to be in a place where we're in a posture of prayer before the

11:59

Lord and go to war with our sin in such a way that there's no habitual sin that interrupts our relationship with Christ in a relational way.

12:16

Yeah, prayer, we should, as much as we ask the

12:22

Lord for things, we should just spend time in prayer, and I try to do this in admitting my own weaknesses before the

12:30

Lord, admitting my dependency upon Him, praising Him for who He is, and giving

12:36

Him thanks for what He's done. And that's something in the last couple of years

12:41

I've really strived to be more intent about is to be more thankful, to thank

12:46

Him for more of what He has given me on so many levels.

12:51

So, and then let me say this while I'm thinking about it. A lot of people think that the quality of your prayer life is measured by how much time you spend in prayer, and I don't think that's a healthy metric of your prayer life at all.

13:10

I mean, if you're talking like five seconds a day, that might be an issue, but it doesn't, you hear people bragging about, oh, he spends three hours a day in prayer, and, well,

13:22

I don't spend three hours a day in prayer. The quality of your prayer life is not measured just by the length.

13:32

It's what you say, it's your heart posture before the Lord. That's what's important, far more than the number of words.

13:42

We're not looking for a word count here in our prayer life. That's not what's important.

13:47

It's just the quality of it in our heart posture before the Lord as we do it, in a short

13:54

Santa count. Yeah, that's a good point. And let me just bring up some comments that people put up.

14:00

Chris Honholds, who actually, Chris posted this earlier. Let me see if I can find his, he asked this question.

14:09

What chaos do you plan on unleashing tonight? Like, come on, Chris, really?

14:14

Like we do chaos here? I think what he's more, Chris is more upset because I posted that I did a 10 -mile run, then you and I went and played an hour and a half of tennis, and he wanted to take a nap just from reading that, so, you know, but -

14:29

I was praying while y 'all were doing that. Yeah, you were in the Word? Is that based on what our pastor we went to lunch with?

14:36

So, Justin, you're like, this is funny. He goes, he says, yeah, in Bible college, you know, all the guys would call their bed, their mattress was called the

14:45

Word. And so if someone called him up, hey, are you up? Yeah, I've just been in the

14:50

Word all morning. So, but Chris Honhold says this, he says, genuine biblical prayer humbles us before the

15:01

Lord and makes us entirely dependent on God. Our flesh and pride hates that.

15:06

And that's the thing I think of when I think of prayer, it's about dependence. Yeah, to your point.

15:12

Oh, yep, go ahead. Yeah, to your point, Colossians 4, 3 says, praying at the time, same time as well, that God will open a door for us to speak the

15:22

Word. So one of the points that we should remember, especially upon dependence upon God, is that prayer precedes effective evangelism here in the text.

15:32

We're praying for God to open the door. And so sharing the gospel is essential, especially street preaching and all, but how much more of a precedence should we set where we spend time with the

15:44

Lord in prayer? Yeah, Drew said this, scripture is our knowing of God.

15:52

Prayers are communing with Him through what He has revealed of Himself through that scripture.

16:01

And that's a really good way to put that. And then,

16:07

I don't know how to pronounce His name here. Gamora, I'm guessing. I'm guessing, okay. He just said, I am one who might take it literal and not have enough vocabulary to pray without stopping.

16:19

Plus, I can't remember most of the things in my life outside of some basic these days.

16:28

And one of the things that I'll point out with prayer is what I found helpful years ago is to pray

16:35

God's attributes back to Him, pray God's Word back to Him. And so what

16:40

I do, and we have it available at Striving Fraternity. You can go to the store. We have what actually was my prayer list and still is today.

16:48

It's basically just a chart of the attributes of God. And I start my prayers with those 31 attributes, or as Justin prefers, perfections of God, not attributes.

17:00

But I'll tell you, it is helpful to start with praying to God who

17:07

He is because I don't know about you guys, but when I come to prayer,

17:13

I usually come with a laundry list of things I want God to give attention to. And when I start praying and I'm praying through His attributes and suddenly realizing who

17:22

God is, I suddenly realized many things I wanted to, like, God, I want you to do this or this.

17:28

And I realize, oh no, God, you know what? I feel like Job when God opened His mouth and I'm like, okay,

17:33

I'll just shut my mouth and squirm away with ashes. You know, at the beginning of prayer, besides repentance and confession being primary, because God won't hear your prayers if you have ought in your life, if you're hiding sin, if you're concealing sin.

17:48

So that'd be primary. But then true prayer is going to align you with God's will.

17:55

That's, prayer is going to take your pursuits and replace them with God's purposes in your life.

18:03

Yeah. Yeah, that's right. Yeah, prayer is not about trying to convince

18:08

God to do something for us or get Him to conform to what we want. It's in God's sovereignty,

18:14

He uses that to conform us to Him and to align and to make our will more commensurate with His will and submissive to His will, not vice versa.

18:26

Yeah, private chat. So Jesse, there's in the background. And Jesse, if you want to come in, we don't have your camera.

18:33

So I don't know if your camera and mic are working. But I'll at least read it. I think it's important to make time for God each morning.

18:40

I would agree. I think that's a great time to pray as we start a morning. All right, so let me ask, because there's some people who believe you must start the day with prayer.

18:53

Let's open it up. Is there a specific time in scripture when we must pray?

18:59

Is there a specific posture we must have? Do we have to be eyes closed, hand folded?

19:07

Is there any things like that that we must do when it comes to prayer?

19:14

So Casey is chomping at the minute right now. I think we're just going to let Casey jump on this one.

19:21

Well, let me answer it easily. He's keeping, folks, when you can't see because the camera is too low, he's got his

19:28

Bible there and he's got like, he's putting his pen into a whole different spot so he can have multiple things here.

19:35

So our prayer life should be devoted at all times, not just having a specific time to be devoted.

19:41

So a devotion time is great, but we should be devoted to God continuously. Colossians 4 .2,

19:47

devote yourselves to prayer. And so prayer then, obviously, like Justin has quoted already, to pray without ceasing.

19:54

How do you continuously pray? A good question here on how you pray without ceasing is kind of answer the subject of, well, do you have to pray with your eyes closed, with your head bowed and your hands together?

20:09

Well, I would say when you're teaching children who cannot focus, they were two years old, they're toddlers, to keep their hands from grabbing on to something, tell them to put their hands together.

20:21

When they're looking around and they're at this - I think I heard this recently, like, was this Sunday? Sunday, I think

20:28

I heard this. And when their eyes are looking around so that they're not distracted to think about other things, tell them to close their eyes and pray.

20:36

And also to bow their head in a posture of humility and respect to God. Those are some elementary ways to be able to get prayer going in the right direction.

20:46

But yet we're to pray without ceasing and throughout the day. And so to kind of continue that thought, the same word for prayer is also in Hebrew, the word meditate.

20:57

And I'll quote to you Psalm 119. I think it's verse 97.

21:03

Oh, how I love your law. It is my meditation all the day, all the day.

21:09

And so we meditate on God's law all the day. And as you're meditating that word, if you look it up in the

21:15

Hebrew, it is to mutter, to kind of speak as you're going.

21:21

So God not only knows your thoughts and hears your words, but he knows the meditations of our heart.

21:28

And so we're to be walking with God and speaking with him and praying with him all the day long.

21:35

It's almost like when you start to pray, we shouldn't even say amen and cut it off and stop.

21:40

We should just continue with the Lord every single day. And one of the things that you said in your sermon, you talked about that that word is the idea of muttering.

21:50

And I actually was looking it up in the Hebrew and it has the idea also of being a word that's used when charging an enemy.

21:59

And so I thought that was interesting because what it then refers to, it's the idea of that cheer that you'll hear people do when they go to battle and they're trying to psych themselves up and get themselves ready for war.

22:12

And they yell at an enemy. It's a similar usage for prayer, which

22:19

I thought that was, I wouldn't have thought meditating in that way. So my wife brought this up to me on the way home from church on Sunday and I thought it was brilliant.

22:29

I must quote what she brought up. Isn't it humbling when you get done preaching and then your wife says something that's way better than what we preached?

22:37

Why didn't you tell me that before? That's why I tried to preach the whole message to my wife beforehand so that I could pass off her brilliance as mine.

22:45

I try, I try. So Philippians 2 .14 says to do all things without grumbling or murmuring and disputing.

22:54

And so not only is complaining like verbally wrong, sinful, but here in the text, it addresses the murmuring, the grumbling.

23:05

If you are grumbling in spirit, that's sin. It's disputing what

23:11

God is sovereignly doing in his sovereign world. And so the same thing goes for prayer as we're not to be murmuring, but to be mumbling or babbling or continuing in prayer.

23:24

It's not that we are articulating words. It's that inwardly we are with the

23:29

Lord and asking him to continuously help and to guide. And we're thanking him.

23:35

We're asking him to fill us with his spirit and with wisdom and with knowledge. Help us to walk worthy of him.

23:41

Help us to be a good testimony. Let the meditations of my heart and the words of my mouth be pleasing unto him.

23:48

It's that kind of idea. Yeah, and they just put this comment up that Tim says, great way to start your day, and hopefully it continues throughout our day as we tend to get occupied with life.

24:00

And I think that's a good point. So I'm just gonna read Psalm 5, Psalm of David in verse 3.

24:06

Oh Yahweh, in the morning, you will hear my voice. In the morning, I will order my prayer to you and eagerly watch.

24:14

Oh gee, I wonder what translation that might be. And I'm guessing that's the LSB. That is the LSB translation.

24:19

I just had to make sure that when I put the thought out there that maybe we are supposed to pray in the morning, that I would use the best

24:25

Bible translation possible for that so no one can dispute it now. If MacArthur says so, let it be.

24:31

Oh, oh, he's the Pope, huh? He's our Pope. So, you know, one of the things though, there are people who think that specific postures have to be had, your eyes have to be closed.

24:44

There's nothing in Scripture that says that you have to have your hands folded, your eyes closed.

24:52

There's nothing in Scripture. In fact, we see in Scripture a lot of different postures. You do see people that are bent over.

24:59

Why are people typically in a posture where they're bowing down? Because that's the word for worship.

25:08

And so, prayer is a form of worship and prayer is something where we see our dependence upon God and so it is a natural posture to be putting ourselves where we are dependent on someone to be bowing before them.

25:25

Does it mean we must do that? No, in fact, Nehemiah prayed standing up and with his eyes open because he was asked by the king and he quickly says a prayer.

25:38

And there's no indication that he got down on his knees and closed his eyes. He would have been standing, handing the cup to the king.

25:44

So he would have been standing and he probably would have kept his eyes open, but he could still say even a quick prayer in that way.

25:52

You look like you got something you wanna say. Yeah, you know, and a lot of prayer truly is birthed out of need. When Paul was praying for the

25:59

Colossian church, he had heard that heresy was creeping in and diluting what they perceived the deity of Christ to be.

26:08

And so nevertheless, he started off with that Colossian prayer and he was praying from an element of need there.

26:15

And some of the things that he brought up in prayer, he says that he didn't cease to pray for them at Colossians 1, 9, but then he springs up these subjects and I think they're worthy of our attention for just a moment, that they would know the knowledge of his will.

26:30

They would be filled with spiritual wisdom and understanding that they would walk worthy in a manner of the

26:35

Lord and to please him. Again, that they would have the knowledge of God, that they would be strengthened with all power according to his glorious might and then being steadfast and patient and joyously giving thanks and then enjoying the inheritance that they know that they have.

26:52

And if you outline that prayer, I think it is a perfect way to enhance our prayer lives for our own churches and for our own family members.

27:00

Yeah. And just for the record, Cole was saying, we hold hands around the dinner table to keep our kids from stuffing their faces before we bless the food.

27:14

Sometimes we open our eyes with their face and the plate.

27:21

So with children, yeah, but we don't have to hold hands to pray, okay? Just saying,

27:27

I don't mind holding my wife's hand, but sorry guys, some of you people, I don't like holding your hand. All right, so let me bring

27:34

Melissa in. She's backstage and Chris Hough was backstage, but dropped out.

27:40

And so is Jesse. Jesse's maybe trying to get his camera working, but if you guys wanna come back in, ask your questions. Melissa, what question do you have for us?

27:48

Before I ask a question, I was just gonna say, I do something each week.

27:53

I have a person, a woman that I pray with every week and that helps so much to keep things in focus.

28:01

And also I have a group, a prayer group with my church too. They do, they review the sermon and they do prayers for each other.

28:11

So those both helped me a lot with my prayers. So I just wanted to suggest that for somebody for anybody who's listening.

28:20

And my question is, okay, this is an overused verse.

28:28

So it's misused so much. And I just wanna know the correct context because people try to use it for their life and say like, oh,

28:37

I could do all things through Christ who strengthens me for like anything they wanna do, like their dreams or something.

28:43

So I wanna know like the correct, what does it actually mean? Okay, so that's, you got it open there?

28:52

Now what verse is it? It's Philippians 4 .13. I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me.

28:58

So let me read that. So one of the things we always do, right? So that's gonna be

29:05

Philippians 4 .13. I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me.

29:10

So let's back up a little bit and let's pick up in verse 10. And a lot of times that's all that's necessary in trying to understand this.

29:18

But verse 10, he says, I rejoice in the Lord greatly that now at length, you have received your own concern for me.

29:30

You were indeed concerned for me, but you had no opportunity.

29:38

Not that I am speaking of being in need, for I have learned in whatever situation

29:44

I am to be content. I know how to be brought low.

29:49

I know how to abound. In any and every circumstance,

29:56

I have learned the secret of facing plenty and hunger, abundance and need.

30:04

I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me. So as we look at the context there, and we're looking at the greater context, the book of Philippians, he's writing to a church that has been financially providing for him and taking care of him.

30:20

He is in prison. They, prison back in those days was a situation where you basically got basic, you know, bread and stale bread and water.

30:29

They didn't really take, the guards didn't take care of you. And you, the system was built on the expectation you'd have people outside coming to help provide food and clothing and comforts for prisoners and bribing the guards to get those in.

30:47

That was the system. So that's what you have. You had Onesimus who was providing that for Paul on behalf of the

30:55

Philippians. And he got so sick, he had to go home. And so Paul's writing this letter to them, sending them home, encouraging them that because now sending him home means they have, he has no one to care for him as he's in prison.

31:11

So now as he's talking about being in need or being hungry, hmm, that kind of sounds exactly like his situation.

31:20

If Onesimus returns home, he has no one to provide for his needs. And so he's saying that to them, to encourage them because they're very upset.

31:28

He's worried they're gonna be upset over the fact that he's sending Onesimus home and that there's no one to take care of him.

31:36

And throughout this book, he's explaining that. And so here, what you end up seeing is as he's finishing up his letter to them, he's telling them that whatever situation he's in while in prison, he's learned that God can take care of him.

31:54

So when we're looking at this, does this mean that I can do anything, even things that are impossible?

32:01

No. No. So, but within the context, Paul is saying he could do anything referring to whether being in need or being in abundance.

32:13

That's the context. And if we keep reading, he says, yet it was kind of you to share my trouble and you

32:20

Philippians yourselves know that in the beginning of the gospel, when I left Mesopotamia, no,

32:29

I'm saying the wrong word. Yeah, I can't. I don't know why I do that sometimes. Macedonia, no church entered into partnership with me, giving and receiving except you only.

32:43

So that's right within the context of what he's saying. Here, this church was caring for his physical needs.

32:51

So in the context, it's his physical needs. You see that before. The abundance or hungry, or sorry, the plenty or hungry, the abundance or need.

33:03

This is dealing with physical needs. And so in that sense is the context of what he's talking about.

33:09

I've seen two Christian volleyball teams playing against one another.

33:14

And both of them had Philippians 4 .13 on the back of their jersey. So I wonder which one

33:20

God loved more. Well, yes, which one won? It must've been a tie, right? Because were they both praying

33:27

Philippians 4 .13? So can we apply this to us at all? Or is it just for that was just for them?

33:35

Absolutely, I think we can apply this to us. I think that as we look at our lives and see that there's times of abundance and times where we have plenty, we can rejoice in God.

33:48

And then there's times we don't have that. Some of my own personal testimony, my story is, there was a time in my life that I was homeless.

33:57

And so I have, as some know, I come from a very well -to -do family.

34:03

So I had plenty growing up. But then I went to a time period where I had nothing.

34:09

I was living in, all my stuff was in my car and I was either in the car or I found someone that would let me sleep on their couch for a bit.

34:19

But I didn't have a place to stay. I had, I was, you know, didn't have money for food, but God provided through that.

34:27

And I can say that in all things that was going on in my life at that time, whether it was the plenty or hunger,

34:34

I could say Christ could do all things. Yeah, and I think a really important word in this is in verse 11, where it says content, right?

34:45

So it said, he's learned to be content in whatever circumstances that he's in.

34:52

And there really, I think that's the take -home message for us and the application for us is be content whatever circumstances we're in.

35:02

And pray for that. That's against our own human nature. We covet.

35:07

And you're back to prayer again. No. He is preparing the next sermon and it's gonna be on prayer, so.

35:16

But it's a good point, right? Because even in those circumstances, what do we do? Right. We should go to prayer. And you had, sorry, you said in the message,

35:26

I think, that or at lunch, I forget which, right? What is it we often do? We usually try to fix a situation.

35:34

We don't turn to God. We try to fix our own. We make a mess of it. Then after we make a good, thorough mess of the situation, then we say, hey

35:42

God, can you get me out of this? Yeah. That's the last thing. Prayer should be the first thing that we go to.

35:49

And that's really what Paul goes to. Yeah, and to your point being first, when we fight in the spirit, often people refer to Ephesians 6, 10 and the armor of God and praying on all that.

36:01

Yes, we should be praying on truth, righteousness, the gospel, faith, salvation, the word of God.

36:08

This is important. But then the first point of action after you have prayed all these things is to pray with all petitions and praying at all times of verse 18.

36:18

So once you have all the armor on, the first battle strategy point is to pray.

36:26

All right. So Justin, you have anything you wanna add to that? No, not really.

36:33

I think y 'all pretty much covered it. But yeah, I think the overall, every verse in the

36:39

Bible has but one meaning. There's only one meaning, but there are many verses that have many possible applications.

36:49

And Philippians 4, 13 is a very applicable verse, even though none of us find ourselves in a

36:56

Roman prison, but the application is that we should strive to be like Paul.

37:02

He was content even being in a Roman prison. And the only way, by the way, that he could be content in such a situation is with a healthy theology of the sovereignty of God.

37:14

Aside from that, you would have no reason to be content in a prison.

37:19

So I encourage people to work on their understanding of God's sovereignty, and that will help you by miles to be content in all things.

37:34

So that'll - And it'll change your prayer life. Oh, totally. Yeah, yeah, it's, yeah.

37:40

I mean, a healthy understanding of God's sovereignty is just, it is absolutely crucial in every aspect of our lives as believers, every single aspect of it.

37:50

And so, yes, it energizes our prayer life. It energizes our, this almost sounds oxymoronic, but it energizes our humility.

37:59

If you understand what I'm saying, it deepens our humility. It deepens our understanding of our own frailty, deepens our understanding of the glory of God and how everything ultimately is about God's glory.

38:12

Even our suffering is about God's glory. It is a privilege to suffer for Christ.

38:18

Philippians 129, it's something that is granted to us. So, yeah. Yeah, and -

38:24

So, you know, I think on that, we should bring up, there's a question that came early on, and -

38:29

Yeah, I was gonna get to some of those. Yeah, let's bring this one up now. Let me just see. Melissa, you have any other questions? No, I just wanna say thanks for answering, and also thanks for talking about prayer.

38:40

That helps too a lot. And don't forget to check out my show, Truth Be Told Radio, truthbetolradio .com.

38:46

There you go. All right, nice. Bye. All right, so, and with that, folks,

38:51

I see some people coming in and they're not connecting their cameras and mics. So, when you come in to StreamYard, so you go to pawjectslive .com,

39:00

you go down to the StreamYard link and click on that duck icon, your browser's gonna ask you if you, for permission to share your microphone and camera, and you wanna say yes to that.

39:13

So, real quick, to stay on top of that, I'll just bring this up. Melissa says this, I need Andrew Rapport to go through the entire

39:19

Bible and help me to pronounce all of the names of the people correctly. I always slaughter them, LOL.

39:25

So, I slaughter them too, but here's the thing. It was kind of interesting. Gene Klein, known as Squirrel, he is the first one that we know of to read through the

39:37

Legacy Standard Bible. And he was doing it on his, out loud, he was doing it on his Squirrel Chatter podcast.

39:44

And so, he's the first one, which would be great to say, hey, we now have an audio version of the

39:50

Legacy Standard Bible. The thing is, he was doing it on his podcast and when he'd come to the names, he'd always apologize for butchering all the names.

39:58

Now, I bet he wished. He was like, you know, I don't, when he goes, when I do a sermon, I get the pronunciations beforehand.

40:04

I bet he wished he did that now because that could have been the first. I'm actually,

40:10

I didn't know that about Squirrel, but I'm actually, I've just started a series on my

40:15

YouTube channel, Daily Readings from the LSB. And I'm following the

40:21

Robert Murray McShane plan. So, at the end of it, we'll have gone through the entire

40:26

Old Testament once and the New Testament twice. And it's, you won't see me on these videos.

40:34

It's just my voice, but, and it's nothing but scripture. It's pure scripture, so. Yeah, you've been putting that out daily.

40:41

And so, that goes through the Old Testament once, New Testament and Psalms twice, because you'll go through Psalms as well twice.

40:50

So, let's get, we got a couple of questions backstage. And again, anyone that wants to come in, feel free to join us.

40:56

Just go to ApologizeLive .com. Say that again. I'm sorry, I just saw Chris's comment there and I just appreciate it.

41:03

Thank you. Okay, which comment did Chris make that, cause we could put it up,

41:10

I didn't see it. Chris, which one? Oh, this one where he says, and it's so good.

41:18

Yeah. Oh, okay. I appreciate that. The one before it was just listen to Justin's daily reading.

41:24

And then Chris, right after that said, and it's so good. Okay, Melissa's asking who made the

41:31

LSB? The LSB was put out by the Master's Seminary. See, there was this special anointing, the

41:39

Holy Spirit that came down and helped them translate this and correct all the errors in the, oh no, sorry, that's the

41:46

King James only people. Yeah, uh -huh. Okay, so let's get, before you really, okay, for Chris Honholds, you now know who it is that's causing the chaos.

41:59

It's not Pastor Casey and it's not me and not Justin. So one character left. The only guy that doesn't have the independent fundamentals background here is the one that can make jokes about KJV.

42:12

So. Actually, I don't think, Justin, you don't have an independent fundamentals background, right? You're Southern Baptist. Not IFB, SBC.

42:20

Oh, you have both. No, no, just SBC. SBC, yeah. Okay.

42:26

That's cool. So, okay, let's get to a heavy hitting question. This is a really good one from Bill.

42:32

To anyone on the panel, I'm struggling through how God is glorified when a child is raped.

42:39

Okay, so. It's a good one. So I'll answer first so that these guys can then give a more brilliant answer and give them time to think.

42:51

You know, I was asked the question once of how could God be glorified? How could people think that God is good when we look at what happened in the

43:00

Holocaust? And my immediate answer was Israel, 1948.

43:08

Because had the Holocaust not occurred, we wouldn't have a nation of Israel today.

43:13

So God could use something like that to bring about his good. This is known as the doctrine of concurrence.

43:22

The doctrine of concurrence is the idea that God can use sinful behaviors to bring about his glory.

43:28

And the best passage for this would be Genesis chapter 50, where Joseph's brothers come to him and they make up the story that say, oh, well, dad said to forgive, you know, their dad dies.

43:41

They're afraid that Joseph is gonna go after the brothers now that the dad is gone. And they say, oh, dad said to, you know, forgive the brothers once they're gone.

43:51

And Joseph says, am I God? That what you meant for evil,

43:57

God meant for good to save many people. And so that's the thing.

44:04

What we look at is going, oh, this rape case, that's horrible. That's so bad.

44:09

Instead of looking at it and saying, what is God doing through this? Because I'll tell you, I just heard this week from someone who had, you know, an 18 year old who is the product of a rape.

44:22

And the mother thought of aborting the child. But now as this kid is graduating high school, being very smart and headed to college, and the mother didn't know what she would do if she had aborted this child.

44:35

See, if we look at just the bad situation, we may go, well, I don't see where God is.

44:41

Well, of course not, because we're so focused on ourself. We're not seeing what God may be doing in it. So, you know, theologically, we need to make sure that we understand a couple of points.

44:51

One is that when God created about 6 ,000 years ago, over six literal 24 hour days, yes, we have to make sure everyone understands that,

44:59

God looked over his entire creation in Genesis 131 and said, it is very good, exceedingly perfect.

45:05

There was no sin, there was no death, there was no disease, there was no rape, there was no anything bad within that creation.

45:10

And those things did not enter into the creation until Adam and Eve sinned, and that is what allowed all the bad stuff to enter.

45:19

And so the reality is, first and foremost, God is not to blame, humans are, for all the bad stuff in the world.

45:26

That's number one. Number two is, as Andrew was talking about this doctrine of concurrence, we have to separate two things.

45:33

So one thing is, is a child being raped downright evil? Right? Yes, right?

45:42

Obviously it is. Every abortion, downright evil. We can go down the list of evils in this society, and first and foremost, so God didn't do them, right?

45:54

They're carried out by sinful human beings. And number two, that even though those evil things are occurring, and we acknowledge that they are completely evil,

46:06

God still has a greater purpose for all of that. And here's the reality, the sin of rape will be punished.

46:17

It will be paid for. But not in our timeframe. Not in our timeframe, that's right. Maybe not in our timeframe.

46:22

Yeah, that's right. It's gonna be in God's timing, not necessarily ours. It may not be a human justice that they suffer, but it will be a divine justice.

46:30

That's right. So why don't you explain that? Well, let me ask this question first. Yeah. What if they get saved?

46:38

What if God used their act of rape to bring them to Christ? Then is there justice?

46:47

Where's the justice paid then? Well, the justice would still would be paid on Christ rather than on the individual committed a crime.

46:55

Which would be the same for every single person. Every person. Because I think one of the things is that we make the mistake of thinking like, well, that rapist, he's bad, but I'm good, right?

47:05

I think you were just teaching this at church. That's right. On Wednesday night last night, right? That people are like, well,

47:10

I'm good because I'm not as bad as that person. He rapes people. Well, the fact that God paid for our sin should blow our mind and we should stop thinking like, oh, look how bad it is for what this person is doing.

47:24

Yeah. You know, one of the best things when I'm teaching, I have an entire hour talk on the problem of evil and I walk through the entire theology on this.

47:31

And one of the things I like to point out is imagine like a yardstick. And granted, it really should be much longer than that, but a yardstick we can picture.

47:41

And if you could picture God's holiness on one side, right? So God would be at the end of the stick. He did the highest in holiness.

47:48

And then, you know, I - I'm glad he's saying the holiness on his right toward you and I. Yeah, right. I appreciate that.

47:55

Holiness out here on my left. So imagine God on one side of this, one end of the spectrum.

48:03

And then I would ask the person, who's the most evil person you could ever think of?

48:09

I mean, it might be Adolf Hitler or Jeffrey Tom or, I mean, fill in the blank, right?

48:14

Why did you point to me when you said Adolf Hitler? Because you're our token Jew. Why else?

48:24

Well, we were just talking about the Holocaust earlier and I know that your family was affected by it, so.

48:30

But the point is, God's on one side, pick whoever you think the worst person in the world is. And Hitler would be one of the top, right?

48:36

I mean, within the top three or four - Hitler, Stalin. Stalin, Mao Ming, Anthony Silvestro.

48:43

I mean, I have not killed anybody, at least, I mean, maybe my heart I have many times in my past, but.

48:49

But the point is - But we're all just as evil. But we're all just as evil, right? And yeah, that's the point. God's on one side, pick the worst person way on the other side.

48:56

And now I ask the person, I'll say, where do you think you belong in the spectrum? And people will say, well, you know,

49:02

I'm not as bad here and I'm certainly not God, I'm probably somewhere in the middle. And I would say, this is where you have it wrong.

49:08

You're way down here, maybe a hair higher than where Hitler's at or Mao Ming or others.

49:16

But the bottom line is that we look literally identical when we're comparing ourselves to God.

49:25

And God views all of us in this completely sinful state and that all of us are under the wrath of God in this way.

49:33

So I think it's just people have a wrong perception of how bad our sin actually is. And so as I made the joke earlier, okay, so we haven't actually,

49:41

I mean, I don't know about you guys, I have not actually physically murdered somebody, but yet have we all spoken ill of somebody in our past or hated people in our past, right?

49:52

Well, we've committed murder in our hearts. Or driven in New Jersey. Or driven in New Jersey. You've hated lots of people, apparently.

49:58

But this is the point is that, is that when we talk about this child being raped, yeah, it's an evil act, but what are the evil acts we've committed in our own thought lives?

50:08

Let alone everything else we've ever done. So, yeah. I think as well, it's important to mention that, yeah, we can understand these things theologically, but at the end of the day, when it comes from our earthly perspective and where we're living, whether you eat or drink or whatever you do, do it all to the glory of God.

50:27

1 Corinthians 10, 31. And if we're commanded to do all things to the glory of God, then obviously by inference, you can do things that are not to the glory of God.

50:37

So perhaps that's a difficult question to ask. It may be an even an unfair question to say, how is

50:42

God glorified in such an evil act? We should recognize that acts can be done that are not glorifying to God.

50:50

Let me bring in our other co -host. I'd have to say though, the act is not, the act itself is evil, right?

50:57

But God still has a greater plan and everything is to his glory. And that's what he's trying to say is that there's these two things going on at the same time.

51:06

God will either be glorified in the eternal destruction of that rapist or he will be glorified in that rapist new birth and forgiveness.

51:18

Either way, God is glorified in it. That's correct. And that's the overall archaic picture of this.

51:24

This is sort of, when I was in the first of the month preaching at your church, we were talking about superintending.

51:32

Superintending is a doctrine where God works through people. So the choices they make are exactly as God intended.

51:39

Now, those are choices of good. The doctrine of concurrence is the same thing on the other side.

51:46

So it's that God works through people that even though they choose to do evil, God, you can use that for good.

51:53

And so both are in play. Let me bring in our co -host here,

51:58

Mr. Pastor Justin Pierce, welcome. Good morning. How are you all doing? Good, good.

52:05

I see the sun shining behind you there. Yeah, well, it's not the sun. Oh, that's your forehead.

52:11

That's what that is. Yeah. And I did see, by the way, John Wilkinson was backstage.

52:18

He dropped out, but John Wilkinson always has, he renames himself for every show. So his name this week was, did someone mention chickens?

52:26

And so I guess at some point we must have mentioned chickens. But we gotta have new chickens in everybody's houses now.

52:34

Yeah, let me put this up, Pastor Darren, before you speak,

52:42

Justin. He said this, he said, the cross is a picture of God using evil for His good.

52:48

Evil men crucified the only morally upright man who ever lived and God used it to purchase our redemption.

53:00

Very good. That's a really good point. Excellent answer. Yeah, we, in considering evil in this world and the age old question, how could

53:10

God allow X, Y, Z to go on? All these horrible things, children getting cancer and children being raped and all that stuff.

53:18

We have to begin with Christ and then work out from there because the only person who has ever drawn breath, who never actually deserved to die, who never deserved to have anything done to Him, God put

53:36

Him to death. That's right. And it pleased the Lord to crush

53:42

Him on the cross. So you begin there and work out.

53:47

And then when you begin from that standpoint, then everything else is put into a bit more perspective.

53:55

Yeah. If I can add to that, what you're talking about here is, I posted up here 1

54:04

Corinthians 6, 9 to 10. And I like to go through this often. Or do you not know that the unrighteous will not inherit the kingdom of God?

54:14

Stopping right there. See, you have to think about this. In all of our discussions, we judge

54:22

God or we judge good or evil or justice or morality based on a temporal plane.

54:29

We judge everything based on what's going on here on earth. So -and -so is a rapist, they got by with it.

54:36

It's evil for God to allow a rape to happen. It's evil for this and murder.

54:42

And what about this? And what about what about isms? And we hear that often, that all these things and how could loving

54:49

God allow these things to happen. But we forget that judgment is most generally not seen here on earth.

54:57

God has a temporal judgment here on earth where we're gonna die. The soul that sins, it shall die.

55:03

It's appointed for man wants to die. And the reason that we die is because we're sinners. But there's also a spiritual judgment.

55:10

And that part of that judgment is that you will not inherit the kingdom of God if you're unrighteous.

55:16

The problem is, is none of us are righteous. All of our righteous deeds are as what? Filthy rags. So none of us are righteous.

55:23

And what Justin just said, we've got to have that imputed righteousness from Christ. Otherwise, we all inherit the kingdom of hell.

55:33

We all inherit the wrath of God. But then God does us a favor and he defines some of the ideas here.

55:41

Don't be deceived, neither sexually immoral. Now, is raping a child an immoral act? Yes. Is it immoral?

55:48

Yes. Then the judgment's given. The judgment is already right here. God will judge that person.

55:55

And there's never a sin. Paul Washer said that there's never a sin anywhere at any time that any man ever gets by with.

56:03

It will be dealt with. That way, God is just and justifier.

56:09

Yep. Yeah. And I see some questions that have been coming in about translations, what translations we use.

56:16

So Justin - Legacy. Well, Justin Pierce, you switched over, I believe from, was it

56:22

ESV to legacy? Well, actually I started with ESV for a good long time. Started, I used the

56:28

NASB and the LSB. Okay. And Justin Peters, I think you switched from the

56:34

New American Standard 95 to the LSB, which there was someone asking about the

56:42

LSB. LSB is based off of the New American Standard 1995 edition.

56:48

I think you came from NASB 95, right Justin? Yes. Yeah, yeah. Okay. Think of the legacy standard as the

56:56

NASB perfected. Yeah. The ESV perfected, not the

57:02

NASB. The NASB perfected. That's what I said, right? Oh, okay. I thought you said

57:07

ESV. Anthony, I think you went from - The NASB perfected. You went from ESV to legacy?

57:14

You know, or are you just - You know, I still do my daily Bible reading out of the ESV. I find it to be a smoother translation.

57:22

It's easier to read, easier to memorize. When I'm preaching in churches, however,

57:28

I will use the, I typically use the NASB 95 because a lot of churches are there.

57:35

And if it's a church that I know is LSB, then I'll switch to LSB, I have no problem with that. But what

57:40

I do now is every time I study, I will always look at the LSB when

57:47

I'm studying for giving a sermon. And I will still pull up my NIV because I still want to see what the thought -for -thought translation is just to make sure.

57:58

Because I know that there's some places where that does a better job than the word -for -word. So I still use that to pull up.

58:03

But yeah, ESV to read, and typically NASB 95 and LSB to preach from. And you got

58:08

NASB 95 there. I sure do. And I have the legacy as well. And one thing that I would caution is that this is a good question.

58:18

And when I started preaching from the legacy recently, I would say legacy, but people didn't connect the fact that that was just simply a translation.

58:29

And it was a bit confusing for some, not very many, but for some. So nevertheless, if someone's going to switch from using the

58:36

NASB or the ESV to the legacy, it really merits an explanation because that question kind of verifies the fact that it's needed.

58:47

Yeah, and I use a mix. So right now in front of me, I have the ESV because that's the one that's the nice leather that I have in.

58:56

And so this is my travel Bible that I have. And so because of that, typically when

59:02

I'm speaking at other churches, the majority of churches have ESV. So I will preach in those churches out of ESV.

59:10

But I do a lot of my study out of the New American Standard 95.

59:16

But I'm also looking at the legacy. Now my devotions this year, where last year my devotions were actually in the

59:25

New King James. So I read through using as Justin referred to the Bible study,

59:33

God takes you through the Old Testament once and New Testament Psalms twice. Yeah, and so I did that last year going through in the

59:42

New King James, which I hadn't read in a long time. So it got me back in that, but this year

59:47

I'm back in what is actually my favorite translation is the Holman Christian Standard Bible. But unfortunately no one has that.

59:54

And so I won't preach out of that. And it's, I think that that's just when

01:00:00

I would do my own translations from Greek and Hebrew into English, the Holman actually got it more than anything to where I would translate.

01:00:08

The problem with the Holman Christian Standard Bible is, I mean, what was some things

01:00:15

I liked about it? They translated the languages as languages, not tongues, slave was slave.

01:00:24

What are you saying? So Holman Christian Standard HCSB, he's saying stands for Hardcore Southern Baptist.

01:00:33

Well, that's who put it out. So it's, but being Southern Baptist, what do they do?

01:00:39

They come out with something good and they immediately ruin it and come out with the Christian Standard Bible because people understood when reading the

01:00:48

Holman's Christian Standard Bible that, oh, tongues are languages and slave is slave.

01:00:54

And so what did they do? They changed it to add the confusion because their translation had too much clarity.

01:01:02

But yeah, so I use a mix of translations. I haven't switched over to the

01:01:09

Legacy Standard Bible yet, but the, that I may end up doing it.

01:01:16

You know, I'll see in a couple of weeks, I will be down in Tennessee with Jeffrey Rice who does great

01:01:24

Bible rebinding. And so we're in talks about maybe finding a large print legacy.

01:01:33

What I prefer to preach out of actually is my large print NASB. And so it was a new

01:01:41

American Standard Bible, but I think I might end up buying myself a nice, really nice, fine leather, new

01:01:49

Legacy Standard Bible. And then we'll see if that replaces my new

01:01:55

American Standard. Justin, how's that? Hey guys, I'm gonna have to sign off. I see

01:02:02

Joanna or Joanne, excuse me, asking if I use the LSB for my daily readings. I do, or she asked which version.

01:02:09

So yes, Legacy Standard Bible for my daily readings. And I think you said that with your, the videos that you were doing that.

01:02:16

So you're, you know, if you, if you pronounce the names correctly, you can have the first, you know, audio

01:02:22

Bible with proper names pronunciated. I do try to, I do try to pronounce the names as correctly as I can.

01:02:29

If I, if I flub a name, I stop and I, you know, I'll go back and edit it out. And so I do try to get those right, as right, as right as I possibly can.

01:02:39

So yeah, each one of those, it's only about 15 to 20 minutes to listen to the readings each day, but it takes me, it takes me an over an hour to put that together because I do go back and any flubs

01:02:52

I have, I edit out. I want it to be as, as pristine as I can, as I can get it, so.

01:02:58

All right. And that's on your website or on your YouTube? That YouTube channel. On my YouTube channel. All right,

01:03:04

I'm gonna check that out because I've actually been using the McShane, recommended that to the church and I've been using that as well.

01:03:10

It's, it's incredible. I love using it. Drew Vonita, he posted out here.

01:03:16

He said that the Archangel Michael, he delivered that down to John MacArthur. That was funny, I saw it.

01:03:21

It was hilarious. Well played, Drew. Well played. If he's still with us. Yeah.

01:03:27

And two, let me say this real quick about the legacy before I sign off, I really do have to go. The one thing

01:03:34

I was hoping for the legacy standard Bible to do would be to translate, render tongues as languages.

01:03:41

I was, I was kind of pushing for that behind the scenes a little bit. And I did not prevail in that, but I will say what they did do, and it helps clarify, whereas almost every

01:03:55

English translation, when it talks about the gift of interpretation of tongues, you'll notice that the legacy says translating instead of interpreting.

01:04:06

Translating. So that gives you more of the sense that, oh, you're a trans, what is a translator translates languages.

01:04:13

Yeah. And so it was like a kind of a, a halfway in there anyway, but. Yeah. But the legacy standard is, is excellent.

01:04:21

It's worth it just for Yahweh. It's worth it just for slave. Yeah. And, and it also, it also tightens up a lot of the, the participles

01:04:31

I've noticed. And it's just good. It's not just Yahweh and slave. Those are the two biggest changes that people.

01:04:39

And you know that the thing I tried to push for was to translate baptismal as plunge or, or immerse, because, but like, why no translate?

01:04:50

I was really hoping they would take the stand on that. But yeah. So, so Justin, if we can ask, and maybe you can't say, but why, why did they not want to translate it into languages?

01:05:02

Camera's up there. I don't know. I don't know why they didn't go with that. Cause I know I wasn't the only one lobbying for that, but.

01:05:09

I was lobbying too. I don't, I don't know why they didn't. I'm not sure. But at least the, the translate got in there instead of interpreting.

01:05:18

And yeah. Well, thank you for coming on, Justin. Impromptu last minute, you know, but.

01:05:25

It was good seeing you brother. Yeah. Good to see y 'all too. God bless you guys. God bless. And now you'll, you'll have to call

01:05:31

Casey later for whatever you called him about just before we started the show. All right.

01:05:37

All right. Hit me up, Casey. All right. Good night, Justin. So you got some other questions that we've been collecting.

01:05:42

Yes. Let's pull some questions up here. So Bill, I think as a follow -up to our discussion earlier about the rapist, he says but the rapist will be judged for his rejection of God.

01:05:51

Well, I mean, he's going to be judged for his sin, right? He's going to be, so that's what he's being judged for.

01:05:58

As the same with all of us. I mean, so, so I think this is a misnomer that many people think.

01:06:05

And I think this goes along with, you know the four spiritual laws, gospel tract and the whole

01:06:11

God has a wonderful plan for your life idea. It's the idea that God has done.

01:06:17

And just to name a name. I mean, this is what we ended up seeing from Billy Graham.

01:06:25

He said, God did the 99%. It's up to you to do the one.

01:06:31

Yeah, you gotta do that one. And he would talk about that. It is our, you know, the sin of not accepting

01:06:39

Christ that sends us to hell. And there's a lot of people that think like that's what we go to hell for. We go to hell because we don't accept

01:06:47

Christ. How that works out is the idea is that people wanna say that what they're really trying to wrestle with is did

01:06:56

God choose us? Did God elect us? That's really the issue. And so by saying that some received

01:07:03

Christ then those that go to hell, it's because they rejected that. And so it puts the burden on the person for their rejection.

01:07:13

I think the problem is it doesn't purposely do this but what you end up doing is getting to the idea that men start in a neutral condition.

01:07:23

And that's not what the Bible says. Romans 5, 12 and following says that we're born in a sinful state.

01:07:31

And therefore our starting point is hell. If God does absolutely nothing, we all go to hell.

01:07:42

Rightfully so. So it's not that, oh, I'm in sin because I didn't receive Christ. No, I deserved hell because I'm a sinner.

01:07:49

So I go there. Now, the fact that God pulls some out of there doesn't mean the others are going there because they didn't receive it.

01:07:57

They're going there for the sin and they could have been forgiven, but they rejected.

01:08:03

So what they're rejecting is the forgiveness. Yeah. And that's not putting them in hell by not doing that.

01:08:13

Where this comes up a lot is in evangelism when people, when they want to divert the attention from themselves and their own sinful selves and they wanna say, hey, it's about that person on a remote

01:08:25

Island. What about that person? You mean to tell me that they're gonna go to hell just because they didn't know about Jesus and couldn't receive them?

01:08:32

Well, they would usually say, accept. That's not fair that they could never hear about Jesus and would go to hell.

01:08:38

But wait a minute, wait a minute, Anthony. Yeah. Do they know on that far away Island?

01:08:43

Do they know God exists? And if you're gonna say yes, does the Bible teach that?

01:08:50

Wow. Only one of my favorite passages of all time. Yeah, of course it does.

01:08:56

Romans 1 and Psalm 19, but Romans 1 especially is damning, so to speak, because in there, it says that everybody knows

01:09:04

God exists and despise creation and things have been made. People who don't acknowledge him suppress the truth about him and their sin and that they're without excuse.

01:09:13

Yeah. And so that person on the remote Island knows God exists. The moral laws are in his heart. Romans 2, conscience testifies, bears witness to God's existence.

01:09:22

And they're gonna be held without excuse. They go to hell, not because of rejection of Christ, they go to hell because of their sin. That's right.

01:09:27

And so that is the bottom line for all that. All right. So let's go to our next question.

01:09:33

Real quick. I wanted to actually read this just so it's clear.

01:09:40

Revelation 20 verse 12 says, then I saw the dead, the great and small standing before the throne and the books were opened.

01:09:48

And another book was open, which is the book of life. And the dead were judged from the things which were written in the books, according to their deeds.

01:09:57

Now you think about this. When you stand before God, if your name is not found in the Lamb's book of life, if it's not found written in the book of life, then you're judged for every deed you've ever done in condemnation.

01:10:09

So it's not, oh, well, you were only judged because you didn't accept Christ. No, you were judged for everything you've ever done.

01:10:17

And I wanna clarify that. It's not just the wickedness. It's everything you've ever done because all of your righteous deeds are as filthy rags.

01:10:24

And without Christ, there is no righteousness. Everything, you're judged for it all.

01:10:31

Yep. Yep, good. Yeah, so let me just, before we get to the next question, we should give a word out for our sponsor,

01:10:38

MyPillow. They sponsor the show. And if you wanna get yourself a great American -made product,

01:10:44

I am here, I am traveling with my MyPillow. I almost brought my MyPillow slippers or my slippers, whatever he calls them, because they're really comfortable.

01:10:54

But if you wanna go and check out everything they got at mypillow .com, use the promo code

01:10:59

SFE to get yourself not only a great discount, but also to be able to let them know that you heard about it here, so they keep sponsoring us.

01:11:09

I think they're doing a sale right now on their Giza bedsheets. I don't have them, so I can't speak to how comfortable they are, but I know some others who have them and love them.

01:11:20

But I know they're doing a special right now on that. So go and check that out. Also, if you wanna get yourself a

01:11:27

Logos Bible software or update your Bible software, go to logos .com slash

01:11:32

SFE to get yourself a discount. And at the same time, you'll be able to let them know that you've heard about them here so that they will continue supporting us.

01:11:44

And so we appreciate their support. So onto the next question. Yeah, so this is from Caleb, and this is a question from his daughter,

01:11:54

Hannah. Should women be missionaries? So it's funny, we talked about this last night after Wednesday night

01:11:59

Bible study. So I'm just gonna move the mic right over here. Well, why don't you just say what you said last night at church?

01:12:09

I said a lot. What were you referencing now? Well, do you think women should be missionaries?

01:12:16

You know, I think it's a great question because I was at a missionary event, a missionary training agency that was celebrating all of the missionaries that they had trained and were sending into the field.

01:12:33

104 missionaries had been trained and were being sent into the field. And just within one song, three or four minutes, there were 104 missionaries that came up on the screen real fast.

01:12:44

And so in the audience, we were able to see all of their faces. It was up in the 90 percentile of them whom were only single ladies, only a few guys and a few families.

01:12:57

And so the majority of the missionaries who were being sent were ladies. And now obviously with Southern Baptist culture,

01:13:04

Lottie Moon kind of leads the spear there, okay? So it's a great question. Can women be missionaries?

01:13:12

Perhaps we should say, should women be missionaries to start off a little bit softer?

01:13:18

Well, let me back it up though, because this becomes really part of the answer. What is a missionary?

01:13:25

That is the question, that is the heart of it. Yeah, because you had a stronger stance depending on what a missionary is.

01:13:33

Exactly, what's the purpose? So I default to Jesus as our example.

01:13:40

Who did he train and who did he send? And then you can go throughout the entire Bible and say

01:13:46

Abraham. Well, let's just do, we see that he sent Andrew, but not Anthony. Just saying there's no

01:13:52

Anthony in the disciples. I don't like it. It's brilliant. Oh man. Yeah, so the purpose of missionaries is very important.

01:14:03

You're gonna go and preach the gospel, lead people to Christ, establish a local church and equip that and move on.

01:14:11

There's a broader job description, obviously, but you're gonna get into a real shaky ground if you're sending a single lady to be a missionary, to preach the gospel publicly, to lead someone to Christ, to train them to preach the gospel, to teach the word and lead a church.

01:14:30

So obviously God doesn't permit a woman to have authority over a man. That's where the shaky ground gets.

01:14:35

And so can a woman be a missionary? We'll get to that. But should a single woman go to China, be in danger, preach the gospel publicly, establish churches, my vote is no.

01:14:51

So I think one thing that would be really good to bring up is a

01:14:57

Paul Washer sermon at G3. It's gotta be five or six years ago now. Whichever G3 conference was talking about missions.

01:15:05

And so what happened here is Paul Washer naturally was asked to preach on missionaries and who should be missionaries.

01:15:12

And he said right off the bat, I know there's gonna be a lot of people upset with me, but I'm gonna tell you right now, missionaries need to be males.

01:15:19

And not just males, they need to be elder qualified males. And then he went into the biblical perspective of missionary, which is, these are people whose purpose is to go out and establish churches, plant churches, and either be the pastor of that church or plant it and raise up somebody else to be the pastor of the church and then move on to the next town and plant another.

01:15:40

So Paul was taking a very strict definition of missionary that it must be somebody who is actually in the business of planting churches.

01:15:49

I agree. And so we have to distinguish that word missionary from the watered down version of it, of the

01:15:57

Southern Baptists and of other organizations. Which I mean, let's be honest, you have 14 year old kids, many of which aren't saved, go on missions trips that are really just humanitarian projects and they're being called missionaries.

01:16:11

So the word has been watered down tremendously from what I think the biblical intent is of that word.

01:16:18

Yeah, so what we see is, and that's why I say, we first have to say, what is a missionary? Because if the missionary is like the evangelist in scripture, someone who is going into a town, preaching the gospel, establishing a church and moving on, the answer would be no, a woman cannot be a missionary.

01:16:37

If a missionary is someone who is going on a humanitarian effort, then sure, a woman could be a missionary.

01:16:46

But I would argue the humanitarian efforts, not Christian missions, it should be about the gospel.

01:16:52

So then let's deal with the one in the middle. Can a woman go to a foreign country to share the gospel?

01:17:00

And that'd be a missionary. Well, yes. If she's married and a couple's going and they're called to missions, she's a

01:17:08

Titus II woman who is a missionary to the ladies there. She's underneath her husband's authority.

01:17:13

If the missionary couple has children, then those children are missionaries to a certain extent to the other children.

01:17:20

They have the gospel, other children don't. So again, what is a missionary is a really important question.

01:17:26

Yeah. So Drew says, 2019, thanks Drew. That was the day three, yep.

01:17:33

With COVID, I have no sense of time anymore. It is all gone. So we had this just real quick.

01:17:39

A Facebook user says, was wondering why my comments don't come up on screen. Well, because Facebook user, you have to go to apologeticslive .com

01:17:47

where the instructions tell you how to get your name on screen. And then we're more likely to put your comments on screen when we know who you are.

01:17:54

So go to apologeticslive .com and you can do that, or you could just join us and tell us your comments.

01:18:00

Or you can do like Hannah did and ask her father. Ask him the question for her.

01:18:06

Yeah. Good job. And this brought up a lot of questions. It's more likely to get asked if someone's saying, my daughter asked this.

01:18:15

Well, you know, with doing that, it brought up a lot of questions, you know. There's Yukimura Sanda.

01:18:23

He said, a missionary is not a pastor though, right? And he says, I thought that was no women pastors because I'm a guy and not a pastor, but I want to be a missionary.

01:18:34

What do you guys think about? Well, again, it depends on what, so my view, and this is just, this is me.

01:18:41

I think that the model we see of missionaries are really tied to the New Testament evangelist.

01:18:47

Someone who goes into an area and preaches. When you have someone that is going to an area and they're asking for US dollars to fund them so that they could pastor a church.

01:19:01

And that's really what some of these churches are doing. I know someone that wanted me to support them.

01:19:06

They're in another country, I guess, they're in Taiwan. And they've been there for like 40 years now.

01:19:15

And back when I knew them, they were there for over 20, 30 years and wanted funding.

01:19:22

And I said, but you've been in the same church. Like at that point, that church should be funding him because he's their pastor.

01:19:30

He's not moving on. He's just, he's a local church pastor being funded with US dollars because US dollars go a lot further there.

01:19:39

And that's not really a missionary, that's a local pastor. You chose to go to a farm field to be a pastor.

01:19:47

So I think that the mission is, it's about preaching the gospel and it's about establishing churches and moving on.

01:19:55

So what should be involved in that is training indigenous people to run the church and then you move on.

01:20:02

So if you hold to the view that I hold to, then well, no, they have to be pastor qualified because they're doing the role of a pastor.

01:20:12

And that's what you see with Paul, the apostle. He did that. Now, I will say this, before he became

01:20:17

Paul, the apostle, as he was officially in his role as apostle, he was with Barnabas and we see in Acts five through nine, that as he was going out witnessing and they were building up churches and establishing churches that they would do that as missionaries and they would bring many other people along with them and train them in the missionary endeavor.

01:20:48

Now, and so I'm sure that nobody's saying that we don't take some of the younger people along and help them grow, help them learn how to do this.

01:20:58

That's a biblical model for teaching them how to do this the right way rather than just letting them go out.

01:21:04

I mean, and the reason I say that is you see like David Platt, you know, he opened the door up at the time for Bethel church and a bunch of other guys to go out and call themselves missionaries and they're talking to spirit, raising the dead and everything else.

01:21:20

And they're all speaking in tongues and they're all over. They've actually permeated the

01:21:26

SBC's missionary model. And so now we have to look at it, what is the biblical model?

01:21:32

And that is like you were just talking about. So yeah. And that is, that's not only the biblical model. It is the model that we used to see when mission started up in Europe, you know, in America, over in places.

01:21:44

I'd like to mention another problem within the Southern Baptist convention culture. Respectfully, the

01:21:51

International Mission Board, the IMB now has a plethora of young ladies graduating from one of the six seminaries with degrees in missiology.

01:22:03

And what is happening is that they are being placed in positions of authority over missionaries.

01:22:10

And I believe the title would be strategist. So missionary strategist. The IMB is saturated and Southern Baptist churches need to know rightfully that IMB is saturated with pragmatism.

01:22:23

And so the definition of a missionary is being skewed but not only that.

01:22:31

The Southern Baptists are now trying to figure out the definition of a pastor. Yeah, they're definitely.

01:22:37

Well, you know. Two years running now. Yeah. Well, Rick Warren did us all a favor and he got up there and he said, look, we need to redefine this so that everybody understands it because he's shooting the

01:22:48

Bible out the door. So he wants to redefine it. And he just anointed three female missionaries in his church.

01:22:54

Yeah. Yeah. There you go. Yeah. Yes. And now that he is retired, a co -pastoring couple now pastors.

01:23:01

So it's just continuing on. And the committee that was to oversee the definition of a pastor was chaired by a woman.

01:23:10

And so that's. Wonder how, is it kind of like the committee that's going to figure out CRT was.

01:23:16

Yeah, chaired by. Chaired by someone who is a pro -CRT. It's unfair to the woman to be placed in a position of authority in a chairman's position.

01:23:24

And then as well to nevertheless, but back to the subject at hand from pastors back to missionaries.

01:23:32

So the international mission board, not only is unclear or perhaps ambiguous and unbiblical as to the definition of a missionary, but also they're saturating the strategy with pragmatism.

01:23:45

And so missionaries on the field are struggling with having to check all the boxes and finding a community leader.

01:23:54

And equipping them to have what's called a Bible study, which eventually becomes a church plant.

01:24:01

And oftentimes what the missionaries are saying is the pressure to establish a community leader and to get a

01:24:08

Bible study going in their home and establish a church plant is so great that they're forced to even equip non -believers to start facilitating a

01:24:18

Bible study. So you have non -believing community leaders leading a

01:24:23

Bible study and they just simply die off because that missionary can't stay with that home group

01:24:29

Bible study or home group church or whatnot. He's got to move on to the next, to the next, the next to check the boxes, to meet the quota because of the missionary strategist who are implementing these pragmatic strategies in the field.

01:24:43

Now this is not everywhere around the world. It's not with every single missionary, but by and large, this is the culture that's trickling down and being implemented.

01:24:50

Churches need to know that. And missionaries who have been in the field for 30 years, who are men, who now have young women in authority over them are struggling greatly over this.

01:25:03

And if they go against the system, they'll get reassigned, right?

01:25:08

And if they go against the system, even farther, they'll come back, they'll be brought back on furlough and their assignment will be canceled.

01:25:16

And so their life's work can be canceled. So nevertheless, it's a big issue. Missionaries is a big subject.

01:25:22

So - Let's bring this, let's bring this one up because I think this is - Okay, hold on. Because I do, we only, we got limited time and I want to do rapid fire.

01:25:29

So I just want to bring some things first off. Okay, I'll put this to Jackie. And I don't know how to pronounce the name here, Jackie.

01:25:34

Jackie, is it? Okay, it would be Jackie. So she says, I think we have biblical examples of female missionaries, maybe like Priscilla, but that's not, but that's under the help and protection of a husband.

01:25:47

She's not alone. She's not single. Yeah, we don't know whether she was, but that's a valid point.

01:25:54

Caleb ends up saying, thank you for your comprehensive answer. Hannah is watching and enjoyed listening to your answers.

01:26:01

So, hello, Hannah. We appreciate that. But pronounce

01:26:06

Jockey, not Jackie. Ah, there we go. Thank you for that. Usually I'm really good at pronouncing. And I'm usually not.

01:26:13

So - He's really good at pronouncing. Pronouncing? Pronouncing? He's incredible at pronouncing.

01:26:21

Jackie says, so missions always with the intention of building a new church?

01:26:29

I think yes, or at least with sharing the gospel. So is it a fallacy to think that we should go to a mission just to evangelize and not actually build a building?

01:26:42

I think that we could go to evangelize. I mean, I've gone to places where we went into a school, a secular school and did a

01:26:51

VBS. And so we are evangelizing and that we did as a church. But when you have someone that's a full -time missionary,

01:26:59

I think it's gotta be surrounding the gospel. And look at the great commission. It's not only making disciples, it's teaching them the full counsel of God.

01:27:07

So it's evangelism and discipleship coupled, which ends up being a small group Bible study, birth of church crew, formally named the

01:27:16

Campus Crusade for Christ. Okay, I just gotta say the thing I think is so interesting is the reason they said they changed their name because they wanted to get rid of the crusade because that has a negative connotation.

01:27:28

But what did they keep? The short form of crusade because they were, the part that they got rid of was they were a

01:27:38

Campus Crusade for Christ. So they got rid of campus, got rid of Christ and kept the thing that they said they wanted to get rid of.

01:27:44

So, okay. I lived literally three miles from that whole saga while it was going on.

01:27:51

And right now it's only about 30 miles right over there. So nevertheless, yeah, Campus Crusade for Christ.

01:27:57

Well, crew is not far from here. And so nevertheless, it was in our backyard when we lived over in Lake Noda, the

01:28:03

East side of Orlando, no more than 10 years ago. But I bring that up because part of crew or Campus Crusade for Christ is the

01:28:11

Jesus film. And one of the senior executives I was friends with and a problem with the

01:28:17

Jesus film that they found was that all of the times that they would share the film in countries around the world, it was just simply evangelistic.

01:28:27

And though evangelism was working, there was zero discipleship. And so even they found that that was a really big issue and not fulfilling the great commission.

01:28:36

So they pulled back and realigned their efforts. And so nevertheless, that being the case, yes, evangelism and discipleship eventually births a church.

01:28:46

So Jackie had asked this. She said, Shalom. I don't know if she's in Israel, but why are you on a patio?

01:28:54

So she came in late. We are in Orlando, Florida, both Pastor Casey, pastors down here.

01:29:02

But Dr. Svester and I are, I was preaching the first of the month and Anthony is teaching an evangelism training on Wednesday nights and did a

01:29:12

Sunday school. And so we are down here doing some ministry at Bula Baptist Church and also kind of vacationing in a sense.

01:29:24

You guys can't see it, but down there is the hot tub where we go evangelizing every night. And we'll have stories for like a month.

01:29:31

No, you could laugh, but there is nonstop evangelism in the hot tub because people come in, sit for maybe 45 minutes, and then they're out of there.

01:29:40

I am not getting in a hot tub with a bunch of people I don't know and toe fungus and all that good stuff.

01:29:45

I've got my hot tub and ain't nobody getting in that thing. That's gross. You sound like you wouldn't sacrifice for the gospel.

01:29:52

I will sit on the center of the patio. You can sit outside and do it, all right? That is so gross.

01:29:58

That is disgusting. See how Uncle Toddlin, how he convinced me to go to a Superbowl outreach. I never went to one.

01:30:03

And the one he convinced me to go to was in Minnesota where it was zero degrees every single day.

01:30:10

I didn't go to the ones that were down South like every other year. I went to Minnesota. He's like, don't you think that people

01:30:18

Nicole need the gospel too? Yeah, you're really suffering. Yeah, he's suffering. Jesus down here in Orlando.

01:30:24

I've suffered at two levels. Here's some good news. Tim R said, wanted to let me know. He says, Andrew Rapport, just wanted to let you know we found a church been attending for five weeks now is a non -denominational reformed church.

01:30:38

Still a bit of a drive. So be in prayer. We can move closer at some point in that.

01:30:43

And that's the right attitude, folks. Find a good church, move to it, okay? Don't sit here and go, oh, there's no good churches.

01:30:51

So we got a couple of questions just to get through here. John asks a question as they're early on.

01:30:59

What are your thoughts on pre, mid, post -tribulational rapture?

01:31:06

I think that's a question for Mr. Rapture Rapport. The rapture will happen.

01:31:13

No, I would be. I know you've heard that before,

01:31:18

Andrew. Yes, I know. I've heard that plenty of times. I know Casey has. I've heard that, that's great.

01:31:25

Yeah, it was a bunch of new covenant theologists that started that one because they were more all male.

01:31:32

So when I would come in, I was Andrew Rapture Rapport. At least your stance is clear.

01:31:38

At least the stance is clear and biblical. So I would argue that it's pre male. I think that's the clearest that we would see in scripture.

01:31:48

When we see in Daniel, Ezekiel, Revelation, it seems to be in my mind, the clearest.

01:31:54

You'd look like you're turning to Thessalonians. Yeah, we're not destined for wrath. God's not gonna pour out his wrath on his bride.

01:32:03

Okay, but then what about the pre -wrath view? Yeah, I was in Winter Garden for years before I realized that Marv Rosenthal, who previously owned the

01:32:13

Holy Land Experience here in Orlando, was a pre -wrath guy and written books and all that.

01:32:20

And it caught me off guard at a coffee shop as I walked over and saw all those books. But now I'm not at that.

01:32:26

I don't like Marv. I think pre -wrath view is really a mid -tribulational view that they're trying to fit in mid -trib with the fact that we won't suffer the wrath.

01:32:38

Maybe you should explain that more for everyone. Sure, so what you have is, let me give a real quick overview because I know we've got like 30 minutes left and we've got a couple more questions.

01:32:48

So you have three main views of end times. Amillennialism, post -millennialism, pre -millennialism.

01:32:56

And what they're talking about is when Christ would return in regards to a millennium.

01:33:04

So amillennial is A, when you put A in Greek before word, it's not. So it means no millennium.

01:33:11

In other words, we're kind of in the millennial period. It's not really a thousand years. It's just a spiritual sense of time.

01:33:18

We're in that. And so their view would be at the end, Christ's coming would come at the end and that'd just be the end of it.

01:33:25

But there's no actual millennium. Post -millennial is gonna be - Oh, I know what they mean. Yeah, post -millennial is for people who wanna have kegs of beer at conferences.

01:33:35

Don't forget their cigars. And cigars. Okay, yeah. Then you're post -millennial. Yeah, that seems to be the case, but no.

01:33:41

Post -millennial, you're gonna have the idea that Christ is gonna return. His return is gonna, the millennial kingdom is gonna happen after his return in a sense where he...

01:33:53

Their idea is that everything is gonna get better. We're gonna basically evangelize the world.

01:34:01

Everyone will be a Christian and that's gonna usher in his kingdom.

01:34:06

As we take dominion. Yeah, pre -millennial is the idea that you will have the

01:34:13

Christ return. And that return will... Then there will be a literal thousand year kingdom.

01:34:20

And that thousand year kingdom will then be with Christ reigning in that kingdom.

01:34:26

So he's not coming after. Now within that pre -millennial camp, the question is we believe that there'd be a rapture.

01:34:33

So the church would be taken out. God would then work with the nation of Israel. So the question becomes, when will that rapture happen?

01:34:40

There's a seven year period. Is it gonna be at the beginning? So pre -tribulational means that...

01:34:47

What is it you put up? Post -millennial sounds like serial. I'm pre -millennial, okay. So pre -tribulational means that the tribulation occurs before.

01:34:59

So when you have the rapture, the rapture happens first and then ushers in the seven year tribulational period.

01:35:11

Mid -tribulational means that the rapture occurs in the middle of that seven years, usually at the three and a half year mark.

01:35:19

Pre -wrath is just a little bit of hair before that. And then post -tribulational means that the church would go through that seven year period.

01:35:29

At the end of the seven years, the church would be raptured and then God would deal with Israel. We have a lot of brilliant guys on every sphere of the spectrum there.

01:35:37

And I always say that I love my post -mill friends because they work hard at trying to convert the world to Christ.

01:35:43

But - I thought you liked them for their cigars. No, I don't like that, but when it comes to making the narrow road, the broad road to fit your theological framework,

01:35:52

I just can't go there. So that's one theological rebuttal that I would have.

01:35:58

So nevertheless, but I love my post -mill friends, and I don't know if I've had any all mill guys that are friends or not.

01:36:05

I love their energy. And as I always jokingly say, that I operate like I'm post -mill, but know what the

01:36:11

Bible teaches about the end. All right. Yeah, all right. Well, and you got to think about it. A lot of it, call it the escapism to say that you're pre -millennial, pre -Trib.

01:36:22

Of course, I like to rebut that by saying, so you're against escaping hell for the wrath of God, which you deserve.

01:36:31

And, oh, it's a straw man. No, it's not. We're all escaping the wrath of God.

01:36:38

Okay, if you're a believer in Christ, you have escaped the wrath of God by the grace of God. And he's blessed you with this grace to not have to undergo

01:36:50

God's eternal wrath. And so for me to believe that God's not going to take us through the judgment wrath, but there's more to it than just that we escape as the church to wrath of God.

01:37:03

It's because God's program is not ended. It's not ended. God is now dealing with his covenant people,

01:37:11

Israel, as he promised to do. And he's restoring created order.

01:37:17

The Bible tells us all through, we see it so many places in the Old Testament where God is promising that his

01:37:23

Messiah will correct all the wickedness in the world and recreate the earth.

01:37:31

He's going to bring the state of the earth back to a proper functioning order.

01:37:37

Dr. Michael Vlock, he talks about this creation realities. And he talks about the fact that in his book, the old and the new, he talks about the fact that over and over again, we see a literal fulfillment of the

01:37:53

Old Testament promises when Christ came. And we should expect the same literal fulfillment of his second coming that he's going to do exactly what he said he's going to do, how he said he's going to do it.

01:38:03

And that includes the restoration of Israel, the establishment of the

01:38:09

Davidic kingdom, the greater David sitting on the throne. And so that's, that's should be what we see.

01:38:17

Okay, so let's, so real quick, Drew says, I love my Dispe brothers. They're great at creating a new theological position under 200 years old.

01:38:26

And so I'll just say, hey, Drew, thanks for the great example of a straw man argument for us tonight.

01:38:32

So let's deal with it. Notice that Drew's not dealing with the actual content, but Drew, reform theology was new in the 1500s.

01:38:45

So if we use your argument, I guess we should all just remain Roman Catholic, right? So no, the question is, is this stuff taught?

01:38:54

In fact, I'll give you this, was it so new? Actually, no, because I wrote a paper on Augustine's view of revelation.

01:39:06

Augustine taught that there was a literal thousand year kingdom and he was in it.

01:39:13

And that was the Roman Catholic church's view up until 1000 AD. And then suddenly went, oop, what happened?

01:39:20

Let's just say it's spiritual. I mean, that's no different than what you see with the charismatics that go, oh, these are languages.

01:39:29

Oops, we went to foreign areas and we don't know how to speak those languages. It's angelic. Instead of admitting they're wrong, what do they do?

01:39:36

Just justify it, right? And so that's what you have. So I love you, Drew, but yep, you'll be a dispensationalist in heaven.

01:39:45

I'll just, you could choose to be right now or then either way, but we just choose to be right both.

01:39:52

But a follow on, Jason says, are there any more prophecies from the word left to be fulfilled before the rapture?

01:40:00

I would say no. Because I'm pre -millennial, I say the rapture is the next event in end times history.

01:40:11

And since we're all pre -millennial, I don't think either of my brothers are gonna disagree.

01:40:16

Let's see, what is it that Drew's saying? Drew's saying, but you can't exegete the parable of the wheat and the tares in Matthew 13.

01:40:26

Sure I can, because I exegeted it as a parable and I don't make it into a literal.

01:40:35

So I don't start making it say what it wasn't meant to say. So I have no problem exegeting it.

01:40:42

Okay, last question for the evening. This one came in from Jessica. What do you guys think of Jordan Peterson biblical,

01:40:51

Jordan Peterson's biblical lectures? Good question. Did he get saved?

01:40:56

No, but I'll say this. That's why we care about his biblical lectures. He is a liberal psychologist.

01:41:02

He's a liberal psychologist who is, he's put out a thing with Daily Wire called Exodus, going through the book of Exodus.

01:41:09

Now I'll say this, Jordan Peterson has provided one of the best arguments

01:41:16

I've heard for presuppositional apologetics. Yeah. And you listen to that and go, okay, so why doesn't he get saved?

01:41:24

Well, he's got a sin problem. He's doing this film on Exodus. I have not seen it, so I can't speak directly to it.

01:41:32

What I've heard from people who have said that it's not very accurate, even who's,

01:41:39

I think the co -founder of Daily Wire is Ben Shapiro. Even Ben Shapiro has disagreed with Jordan Peterson's Exodus based on biblical stance.

01:41:52

He said that he disagreed with things that Jordan was saying that happened because it wasn't biblical. You know, the one thing that I would look at too is,

01:41:59

I've been watching quite a bit of his stuff trying to figure this out myself. And he went from a raging atheist who was a conservative of some type, at least in some vein.

01:42:13

And he started studying the Bible. And he went from a raging atheist saying, you know, the

01:42:19

Bible's baloney and all this stuff to saying on Joe Rogan's show, it's actually a video about it, where he said that the

01:42:27

Bible is not just true in the normal sense of true. He said, the

01:42:32

Bible is the precondition for all understanding of what truth is. It is therefore more true than true can possibly be.

01:42:40

And he was trying to express to Joe Rogan that the

01:42:45

Bible is the absolute standard of truth. And it's, if you listen to some of the things he talks about, it's like, he's trying to understand it.

01:42:53

And I will, I'll be the first to admit, I don't know if he's heard the gospel or not, but is he a

01:42:59

Christian? Not from Joe Rogan, he hasn't. No, he hasn't, he hasn't. But I will say this, he's trying,

01:43:05

I think he's trying to understand it. Now, that doesn't mean he's a Christian, but I do think that he's trying to understand the things there.

01:43:13

I haven't seen the Exodus thing he did. I really don't think I want to watch it because I think he's still messed up.

01:43:23

I think it's too early for him to be trying to teach it when he doesn't know it from the Holy Spirit, so.

01:43:29

All right, so we'll end the night with you getting the last word, Pastor Casey. Okay, wonderful, because I want to end it with the scriptures themselves.

01:43:37

Let scripture be your authority. When it comes to interpreting the scripture, let the

01:43:42

Holy Spirit be your helper, according to John 14, 26. And don't fall into the trap that perhaps the

01:43:48

Colossians did when Paul had to correct them in allowing a certain sect to dilute the deity of Christ.

01:43:57

It's really, really tricky. Jordan Peterson, as smart as he is, as great as he is, I would not trust a non -Christian with the text.

01:44:07

I would look to the text. It's amazing how slick psychology is and how sometimes your brain can be pretzeled on things.

01:44:16

Doubt is a tricky thing. I wouldn't submit and trust my heart and mind to a non -believer.

01:44:22

It's hard enough in the midst of believers. So above all else, guard your heart for it's the wellspring of life,

01:44:28

Proverbs 4, 23. Amen to that. So just, oh, here we go. Throw this up real quick,

01:44:35

Justin put in the chat. 1948 was, in my view, the last prophecy to be fulfilled.

01:44:42

1948 got the eschatological clock ticking. For anybody that doesn't know what that is, that's the restoration in one day of Israel being restored back to being a nation, which is biblical prophecy.

01:44:55

Yeah, and so Tim says, the hot tub must be full. Anthony is sidetracked to get the gospel out, brothers.

01:45:04

Thanks for the podcast. Yeah, we're - I keep turning around for all the noise. Yeah, we - Really loud motor sounds.

01:45:10

There is, yeah, really. Okay, I'll tell you what he's really looking at. Pastor Casey, you could see this.

01:45:16

But if you look right over there - The yacht? Anthony's favorite restaurant, it's called

01:45:23

White Castle. My wife would murder me. Oh, that's gross. I did have

01:45:28

White Castle the other day against my wife's - True story. Well, he eats it in the hot tub, doesn't he?

01:45:33

Yeah, I did have, I decided I wanted cravings for White Castle. I was fine, I'm done with it.

01:45:39

I realized - Was it worth it? No, actually it wasn't. They don't even, I haven't had White Castle since like the 90s when

01:45:45

I was in college. And so I realized there's like no meat in it now.

01:45:50

When you pay 25 cents for a sandwich, you can pay for it. Yeah, it was, it really, but it was interesting because we went in there, we went in for White Castle, I pulled in and there was a long wait.

01:46:02

Well, Anthony's wife was like, that's it. I'm like, literally, she walked back. She didn't know.

01:46:08

Yeah, we're like, that's it, I'm done. I was actually just surprised to see that the car was still there, you know?

01:46:15

But yeah, so we wanna thank Pastor Casey for joining us as we invade his church for a few weeks.

01:46:24

But I'd like to give a shout out to as well, our YouTube channel, Beulah Baptist Church, that's bbcwg .org.

01:46:33

BBC is Beulah Baptist Church, WG is Winter Garden. So bbcwg .org

01:46:39

and your message will be uploaded soon from Sunday, two Sundays ago, which was excellent.

01:46:46

You've got Justin Peters, you've got Phil Johnson, you've got Anthony and your lecture coming up as well, your teaching.

01:46:52

So there's a lot of good teachings on our YouTube channel that has just recently been uploaded. So again -

01:46:57

And your sermons. Oh, thank you. Let's not forget that. That's the bulk of the

01:47:02

YouTube now. But yeah, no. KT says, no church in the hot tub, please. We're two or three gathered together,

01:47:09

I thought. Repent, repent, that's not what it means. Twist not scripture unless you wanna be like Satan.

01:47:18

If we talked about Philippians 4, 13 earlier, we had to bring this up. Yeah, well, we do plan to go and evangelize.

01:47:24

I'm taking a look in there. There are some people down, it's actually chilly here for Florida. But the thing

01:47:30

I've noticed is it doesn't matter how cold it is, people will get in that hot tub and we will share the gospel with them.

01:47:38

We've had some great, we have had one person who prayed to receive Christ. She grew up in a Christian home, knew the right lingo, but was still trusting in her works for salvation.

01:47:49

And as Anthony said, he and a friend of ours, John, were kind of, you know, tackling the other two gay men that came in and -

01:48:00

Not really tackling them. Not really tackling them. Talking to them. Talking with them. They were conversing. So that I could share the gospel with the one lady who prayed to receive

01:48:09

Christ. But then after the woman prays to receive

01:48:14

Christ and she gets out with her husband, leaves the tub, the two gay men and the wayward

01:48:20

Christian that you were talking to leave the tub. And we have two women that come in. They had been listening to us.

01:48:27

They come in the tub and they had heard what we were saying a bit. I see a tattoo.

01:48:33

Anytime I see a tattoo, that's how I start. I wanna know what the tattoo says because that's someone's making a permanent mark.

01:48:40

So I said, what's your tats? And she says, oh, this says grace, equality.

01:48:46

And she goes, and that's for LGBT and love. And she goes, and this one says agape.

01:48:52

Now I did laugh. Agape was in English. Most people that put agape, put it in Greek, okay.

01:48:59

But she has it in English. And she looks at it. So right off the bat, I know, okay,

01:49:05

LGBT. We know where we're going with this one. And we didn't even get the chance to go there because she went there.

01:49:10

She was looking for a fight. She just turns to me right away and goes, what do you think about LGBT?

01:49:18

Or she goes, I'm a lesbian. What do you think about that? I said, I don't care. I'm a lesbian and a Christian.

01:49:23

Well, no, at first, I think she said she was a lesbian. And then when

01:49:29

I said, I don't care, she turns to Anthony and goes, what do you think? And Anthony goes, I don't care.

01:49:34

She goes, well, I'm a lesbian and a Christian. And Anthony goes, that's not what the Bible says. And that was it.

01:49:41

She stood up and goes, if you're not gonna be accepting of my way of life, I'm getting out of this hot tub.

01:49:47

And Anthony goes, I'm just telling you what the Bible says. And up she went, and there she goes.

01:49:53

And so it was funny the whole time we were talking with some others, but the whole time I could see them pointing at us.

01:49:59

And so at 11 o 'clock, they kick us all out. We're leaving.

01:50:05

I see this couple that left the tub that the lesbians were in, and they walked past us.

01:50:10

So I just jokingly say to the guy, I said, so how bad were they bad -mouthing us over there? And he goes, oh man, I don't wanna get into that.

01:50:17

And so when we get up, it turns out we're going through the same door. And I just, this is called poking the bear, but hopefully in a way of helping them to see that their behavior, because they were being completely intolerant.

01:50:33

They were looking to pick a fight. They were demanding that we had to accept their way of life, but they were not accepting of ours.

01:50:42

And so I just pointed out, I said, you got a tattoo that says agape, but you're showing no love.

01:50:49

You're just being intolerant. And I think probably at that point they might've had too much alcohol in them because the one decided she said, she threatened she was gonna kill me or beat me up or whatever.

01:51:01

And our friend John just made a motion toward her. Like, you're not gonna threaten my friend, Andrew. I wasn't worried at all because there was this gate that was between us and the guy that was ushering us out, he just kind of like closed the door.

01:51:16

And we had a great time talking to him. He professed to be a believer and we just let them go. And, you know, then they kept following Anthony around in the pool.

01:51:27

You know, what was really, what's really heartbreaking on, I mean, we, you know, we had a good time evangelizing that night, but what's really heartbreaking is that in their tirade against us, after I had said, that's not what the

01:51:38

Bible says, they both proceeded to tell us they went to Christian school. They both graduated from Christian colleges and that they were affirmed by professors.

01:51:49

They're affirmed by their families, affirmed as lesbian and married, you know, that they believe their wives, affirmed by their churches and pastors.

01:51:58

And I'm like, will somebody please stand up and speak the truth? Yeah. This is what's so sad about it is that if what they're telling us is true, that all these people have affirmed them.

01:52:11

They all lied to them. They've all lied. And so they feel comfortable with it. And the problem with that is then they go to hell feeling comfortable about their sin, thinking they're a

01:52:20

Christian. So they're not looking for it, but even worse, they're intolerant to those of us that want to tell them the truth.

01:52:27

I mean, they came into the tub in the conversations we were having and demanded that we accept their lifestyle.

01:52:35

Yeah. Right. Well, with these next two subjects that I'm gonna bring up, I risk going into Anthony time.

01:52:41

So perhaps we can just mention them and move on. But to your point, especially for you,

01:52:46

Anthony, is posture shift is curriculum and training curriculum for Christian leaders.

01:52:55

And posture shift has trained over 200 ,000 church leaders in our country.

01:53:01

And this is a posture shift towards the LGBTQ and making it inclusive, which eliminates the glossal from being exclusive.

01:53:11

And so now not only our universities and our high schools and colleges and elementary schools, middle schools, accepting and affirming, but now also there's just this massive movement within what you would think would be normal, conservative, traditional

01:53:27

Christian churches who are moving towards pragmatism, being friendship with the world, including the

01:53:33

LGBTQ. And this is simply a compromise and it is massive.

01:53:40

Okay, real quick, just use the word, but my appeal don't know that, what is posture shift? Yeah, so posture shift, you can

01:53:46

Google it and see that it's just simply training church leaders. So these trainers will come into your church and provide a seminar or a conference and train deacons, leadership, staff, pastors on how to be

01:54:02

LGBT friendly and not offensive. And it starts soft, but then it ends with it being the fact that, yes, you can be a gay

01:54:09

Christian, which is antithetical to the gospel. And with that, we're gonna end.

01:54:15

We'll pray that Drew gets saved from his post -millennial views and come to the truth of Jesus Christ.

01:54:23

Okay, just figured out. Hey, I love you, Drew. Love you, brother.

01:54:31

Well, that's why I decided to throw that in there. I love you,

01:54:36

Drew. Maybe we just go back around to the beginning when we were talking about prayer. Yeah. I pray that Drew changes his position to the right one.

01:54:47

Hey. Hey, no, we've had a lot of fun. We hope we've answered some of your questions. Next week will be another

01:54:53

Q &A. I will still be in Florida. Anthony will still be in Florida. So we'll have to see whether Pastor Casey comes on again, but I'll be on the other coast then.

01:55:05

I've got two weeks left. Two weeks before you go on hibernation in school.

01:55:13

Yeah, back to school. So on the 26th, just to let you know, I do wanna let you know to be checking that one out,

01:55:21

John Harris will be joining from Conversations That Matter, and John and I will be discussing a very well -known and very well -liked false teacher,

01:55:34

Tim Keller. Ooh, I'm glad you said it that way. And so many people like him, they love him, they think he's great.

01:55:44

But is he a false teacher? Well, John and I are gonna have that discussion.

01:55:50

Whether you agree or disagree, I encourage you to join us and let us know your thoughts.

01:55:55

So that will be in two weeks time. So until then, remember to strive to make today an eternal day for the glory of God.