Interview from Growth Project Radio | Rapp Report Weekly 0022 | Striving for Eternity

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August 11, 2018

Andrew was interviewed on Growth Project Radio. How important is it to have sound doctrine to teach sound theology? In this podcast, we interview special guest Andrew Rappaport. Join us as he expounds on his newest book, “What Do We Believe”. Andrew has an extensive background in Judaism as well as 30 years’ experience of “Open Air...

00:00: Wow, that is, that is insane. And I've never ran into a
00:05: Hare Krishna or however you said that. I've read about them. And I've never ran into the black
00:12: Hebrew Israelite, which you handled masterfully. Please, if anybody can listen to this, go to strivingforeturning .org,
00:19: look for his podcast and listen to that or just go to his Facebook page and watch that interaction.
00:24: It'll blow your mind seeing how he handles somebody in a live format like that. Hey, we got something special, we hope for you guys this week.
00:34: What we're gonna be doing is we're gonna be playing this week a podcast interview that I was privileged to be on with Growth Project Radio.
00:44: They had me on and interviewed me. And we're gonna play that in its entirety. I will have some comments afterwards as well.
00:51: But we wanted to also let other podcasters know that we are willing to come on to the podcast.
00:58: You guys will do the same thing we did with Growth Project Radio. We will give the podcaster, the host, a free copy of What Do We Believe?
01:09: If you have me on for an interview. Well, we'll give you three copies to give away to help promote your podcast.
01:18: And we may even play that podcast here to help promote your podcast to our audience.
01:25: We also are gonna, at the end of this, we'll probably give you some news. We got some big things happening with the
01:32: Christian Podcast Community. Starting in September, you're gonna see more activity there with other podcasters.
01:40: Not gonna give you some of the names yet, but they are well -known names that are gonna be coming over and doing some podcasting.
01:48: Should be starting in September. And so I do want to let you know, before we play this interview, that I want to encourage you to go out to our
02:02: Patreon's page. The link is in the show notes. And think about subscribing to not only this podcast, but being a
02:11: Patreon, which would mean that you support us financially. We have an opportunity to be on the radio.
02:19: We are having actually a couple of opportunities. One is to put our daily, two -minute daily podcast on the radio five days a week.
02:29: But had met with someone that owns a couple radio stations, he would like to syndicate the rap report and he would like to get even a two -hour, possibly, weekend apologetics.
02:46: And so we're talking with him about that, but it takes money to do that. They don't just give radio time.
02:53: So we need your help. We're gonna be looking to raise quite a bit of money to be able to get all of that on the radio.
03:00: And so we could use your help in that way. And the best way to do it is to go to our
03:06: Patreon page, to go and donate there. The more donations we get at each of the different levels, we're gonna be able to first put the rap report daily on.
03:18: I think that he said that's gonna be, I think like 40 ,000 a year just for two minutes.
03:25: That's crazy. But it does get the message out to many folks. And I think it's gonna be about $100 ,000 to be able to get the hourly on.
03:35: So if you guys could help us out, a lot of people doing a little goes a long way.
03:41: But hey, if you can, a lot of people giving a lot is even better. So we could use the help, appreciate it.
03:49: Here is the interview with me when I was on Growth Project Radio.
03:55: And like I said, I'll be back after the podcast interview to give you guys some more news.
04:07: Welcome to the Rap Report with Andrew Rapaport, where we provide biblical interpretations and applications.
04:14: This is a ministry of striving for eternity. For more content or to request a speaker or seminar for your church, go to strivingforeternity .org.
04:32: Growth Project Radio. Growth Project Radio. Begin, begin, begin. Three, two, one.
04:39: All right, we're live with another episode of Growth Project Radio, coming to you live on this beautiful Tuesday night from our
04:47: Growth Project studio in beautiful Kissimmee, Florida. I thought it was St.
04:52: Cloud. Is it? It's on the border. Are you in there? I never have gotten that. You know what, you live too far to know the area.
04:57: This is Kissimmee, on the border of St. Cloud. We are right down the road from Disney, your favorite place in the entire planet, which
05:04: I haven't figured out yet because I don't have as much of a good a time as you do there, but it's fun. It's fun.
05:09: Hey, we got people from Texas in the house. Good. Connie, good to see you. Make sure you put them notes up for us. Connie, thank you so much.
05:15: We also have some other new guests in the house. Yeah. Got our Roblox studio that my daughter put up.
05:21: She heard the last show. She heard that I wanted some guests on the podcast, and so she decided to bring me some.
05:27: So they're going to observe from the background today. She's laughing. She's enjoying that.
05:33: You know, I want to say a whole bunch of stuff, but I'm too excited about our guests. Let me get some out of the screen here, and I'm going to bring them up, but I'm going to introduce them first because we are doing this live, of course.
05:45: And so tonight we have, you know, I'm going to geek out a little bit or maybe, what do you call that?
05:52: A fanboy a little bit? Because we have Andrew Rapoport. He's the founder and president of Striving for Eternity Ministries.
06:00: He also established the Equip Conference, used to be Spread the Fire Evangelism Training and Outreach, which he does.
06:05: He's the instructor for Striving for Eternity Academy, an online school that teaches hermeneutics and systematic theology.
06:12: He's also the author of a book called What Do They Believe, which is a systematic theology of major Western religions.
06:19: And also the book that we're going to talk about tonight is What Do We Believe? And it's essentially a systematic theology of the
06:25: Christian faith. Help correct me if I'm wrong. You know, it's weird knowing he's sitting there because it makes me nervous. Yeah, I know, you get it wrong.
06:31: Yeah, I'm going to get thrown out. Everything Robert said was wrong. I'm going to get kicked out of the Christian podcast community.
06:37: This guy's a heretic. He already questioned our schooling and everything. He's also the founder of the
06:42: Christian Podcast Network, which we are in the process of hopefully, hopefully becoming part of.
06:48: And also the host of one of my favorite podcasts. I listen to it daily. It's the Wrap Report, which is mostly a two -minute podcast.
06:55: And then he does like a wrap -up at the end of the week. Today's episode was great. If you guys are into discussions on the street and really urban apologetics, or apologetics and theology in action, it's a great episode to listen to because you hear him talking to a black
07:09: Hebrew Israelite. I'm afraid to say black because I got pretty upset about that, but a Hebrew Israelite. And it's a great discussion about context and proper interpretation of scripture and using just basic hermeneutic principles.
07:22: That we all need to know. But we all, for the most part, suffer from not knowing. That's right. For the most part.
07:28: I'd like to welcome to the show, Andrew Rapoport. Oh, I should have had sound effects ready. There is no reason to be a fan boy of a nobody from nowhere, all right?
07:37: Well, I've learned so much from you and what you said, one of your good friends, Matt Slick. You guys have taught me so much in theology and apologetics.
07:46: And to be honest with you, just listening to your show, if somebody listens to your show for a month, they're gonna be eons and light years beyond where they started.
07:56: Well, you know, and you guys are talking about hermeneutics. You know, Matt Slick, whenever he preaches, he's got one thing he always wants to do.
08:03: He always wants to bring up theology in every sermon. He wants it because he feels theology is that important.
08:10: For me, it is always hermeneutics. It doesn't matter what message I preach. If I'm behind a pulpit,
08:16: I'm teaching hermeneutics even if people don't realize it. Sometimes I'm just asking questions, why would we interpret this this way?
08:23: But I'm always trying to give people skills and tools to learn how to interpret on their own, because the reality, most of the, how can we say this politely?
08:34: The bad stuff that we hear on the radios. You know, all the popular podcasts,
08:41: I just met with a radio station owner this past week and he was telling me how almost all the bad podcasts, they have tons of money and they're all bad theologies.
08:54: If you get into bad theology, get money. It's the good, solid theology that has no money behind it.
08:59: And if people understood how to interpret scriptures properly, there wouldn't be all this bad theology on the radio and on TVs because people wouldn't tolerate it.
09:10: That's right. They wouldn't have the money. I mean, that's in essence what you're saying. You're exactly right.
09:15: The reality is, this is something that Robin and I has been a passion of ours from the very beginning, is that we work on the presupposition that the vast majority of believers in this country are theologically a mile wide and an inch deep, hermeneutically, maybe even worse off than that.
09:31: And so you're exactly right. That idea of being able to teach people, every single time you get the opportunity to do it, whether I'm sure it's one of your classes or whether you're preaching or whether what we're doing tonight, it's probably the same thing that we want to do, and that is we just want people to really and truly understand what this word means and who
09:49: God really is as opposed to the bad stuff, which is not anywhere close to who
09:55: God really is, but kind of who we maybe want Him to be sometimes or presume for Him to be or whatever we can make
10:02: Him be in order to increase our giving. And so it's a breath of fresh air to hear you guys.
10:08: It is an amazing thing. Even though none of us have any money, we're preaching the right thing. So that's a good thing.
10:14: Somebody send us some money so we can fix this problem we're having. Well, you wrote two great books. You wrote,
10:20: What Do They Believe?, which is really discussing a lot of what other false religions and Western, I guess
10:27: I said Western religions teach. Is that correct? Yeah, I mean, What Do They Believe? is 14 years of my life devoted to other religions.
10:35: And my wife told me get out, like I was starting to study Buddhism and she's like, get out of this stuff and start studying the
10:41: Bible again, because she wanted what little hair I had left to stay. But basically what it is, is it goes over the major Western religions.
10:48: So I studied Judaism, which is my background, Roman Catholicism, Islam, Jehovah Witnesses, Mormonism, Christianity.
10:55: I decided to look at it from their authorities. I didn't want to be accused of misrepresenting them.
11:03: I didn't want to be using documents that they wouldn't accept. The reality is most people don't have
11:09: Korans in their house, Book of Mormons, Pearl of Great Price, Talmuds, things like that. So I wanted to put lots of quotes in there.
11:16: And I look at them, systematize them into six doctrines. Well, what's their authority? What's their view of God, specifically the
11:22: Trinity? What's their view of Jesus Christ, specifically the deity? What's their view of man's sinfulness, salvation, and end times?
11:30: And I went through each of them. Then after I was done, I went to authorities in those religions and asked them to review the chapters.
11:37: And I was glad to see that people have said that I'm accurately representing the different positions.
11:43: In fact, I was at a Mormon outreach in Utah. And one of the Mormons told me that, he told me there is no
11:50: Christian that properly represents Mormonism. And I said, well, you could take a look at my book.
11:56: And he said, he says, fine, I'll rip it apart. And the only thing he could come up with that was of any significance was the ordering in which
12:04: Jesus and Lucifer were born. That was it, which was not a major thing in Mormonism.
12:10: He actually had to admit that it was accurate, which probably hurt him. I'm gonna have to get a copy of that one.
12:17: I hadn't gotten to read that one, but I did get to read, What Do We Believe, which I couldn't put it down, actually.
12:23: Gage, flip to the cameras so I can show the world this cool book there, see? My camera, there we go. Yeah, What Do We Believe, which actually you've generously given us too to give away as a promotion for the show, correct?
12:33: No, three. I'll do that to me again. Another thing you got wrong. I'll do that to me. He did that to me when we were setting up the meeting.
12:39: I reminded him, he goes, what is this about? I'm like, oh, man, give me a heart attack. He didn't hear what
12:45: I said though. I said, you're not correct, it's not two. We're giving you three to give away. Oh, three.
12:50: Oh, there you go. Oh, bonus. Even better. The one was just for you. Awesome, well, excellent.
12:56: Well, I will be running a promotion this week to give those away to the listeners and whoever else wants to get in on that.
13:03: This book is good. It's essentially a systematic theology. Now, for my listeners that don't know, what is systematic theology?
13:12: Sure, systematic theology, basically what we want to do is take the categories of topics and put them together.
13:19: So we go through the entire Bibles. For example, we're gonna look at something like the deity of Jesus Christ. We're not just gonna go through the
13:26: Gospels or even the New Testament because a lot of what we see is in the Old Testament. So we go through the entirety of the
13:32: Bible trying to categorize the entire Bible into things like the deity of Christ, the deity of the
13:40: Holy Spirit, the Trinity, salvation. How do we come to all these things?
13:45: Because the first thing as we talked about, hermeneutics is essential to every
13:52: Christian, but having a sound theology is important because so many people think theology is just for the
14:00: Ivy Leagues and for pastors or someone like that who studies. I had the opportunity of being used to lead a
14:09: Mormon to Christ basically on an online discussion. And through the discussion and started phone calls, she came to Christ and she keeps saying,
14:19: I don't want theology. That's not me. I can't handle that sort of stuff. But all the questions she keeps asking me are all theology.
14:30: Can I lose this salvation that I just got? I'm struggling with sin and I'm just not sure how to deal with this.
14:39: And I'm always afraid that God may kick me out. So things like that, that's theology.
14:45: And the problem is that if you look at most systematic theology books, you can look at John MacArthur's new one that just came out,
14:53: Biblical Doctrine. You could look at Wayne Grudem. You could look at the several volumes of Hodge or any of those, they're very thick.
15:02: Yes, I did the Wayne Grudem one when I first discovered theology. And I was like, wow, speaking of MacArthur, I see some
15:08: MacArthur study commentaries in the background there. Yeah, if I move the camera up, there's the study guides up there, yeah.
15:16: Nice. I actually had a pastor who came, we were candidating him and his starting question was to say, what do you think of John MacArthur?
15:26: And he told me later, he asked that question because either everyone loves him or hates him. There's nobody in between.
15:33: Not a whole lot of middle ground when MacArthur is. No, and my response was, MacArthur pretty much discipled me.
15:39: And he was like, what? Yeah, from afar, because I've read every book he's written, study guides, books, commentaries.
15:48: I mean, I actually read all of his commentaries like a book cover to cover. So it's, yeah, I'm that nerdy, sorry.
15:54: You and Danny both probably. That sounds like something, Danny. So how can we use, oh yeah, continue your discussion with that.
16:01: Yeah, I mean, the thing is that if you have something like, even
16:06: Charles Ryrie's basic theology where he purposely kept those chapters short, it still takes you four and a half months if you take one chapter at a time, one chapter a day to get through, because it's like 96 chapters, they're thick.
16:19: I wanted something that was small enough that could be used in a Sunday school classroom, could be used for discipling, could be used with anyone so that if somebody gets saved, they can take this book, they can read through it, and they would be able to understand the basis of theology.
16:38: Will they pick everything up? No, but on a second reading through, they'll pick up more and more. One of the things
16:43: I tried to do is write for all levels, maybe not someone like Danny, but someone who does some study into theology and reads like a
16:53: Wayne Gruner son could read this and still learn some things. There's actually one chapter that I haven't found in any systematic theology book that I've read so far, which is why
17:03: I included it, which is the second chapter on the reliability of scripture. And the reason that's so important is you cannot go on the streets nowadays and not have to be able to defend that.
17:13: That is the number one thing that comes up, either, oh, the Bible's been edited, it's been copied, it was a telephone game, we don't have the
17:21: Bible anymore. And all those things are easy to answer, but people don't have the tools to do it.
17:28: And I wanted to take something called textual criticism and make it easy to understand for all levels.
17:35: But you actually picked out my favorite chapter. Of all the ones that I enjoyed in the book, the second chapter on the reliability of scriptures,
17:43: I think because it includes so much from an apologetic standpoint,
17:49: I found all of it practical, but that one of the more practical chapters you wrote,
17:54: I thought it was outstanding. And when I reflect back, I was at Southwestern Seminary in 92 through 94 in Fort Worth, Texas, and that was just about the time the seeker -sensitive movement came out, which was, of course, very, very light on theology, and that's being relatively generous.
18:13: And now we've seen that even more so and even worse from the emergent church standpoint.
18:18: And then I go to some place like Princeton Seminary in New Jersey, which is very heavy on theology, all bad, but very heavy on theology, and there was no interest in their part to kind of make that practical.
18:36: So that actually, you're talking about this actually leads into the question that I really wanted to ask you, or at least one of them that I really wanted to ask you, is how important is it for sound doctrine in order to be able to implement practical theology?
18:51: It's extremely important because it's the foundation. One of the things, when
18:57: I teach my class on systematic theology, I start with the attributes of God for a very simple reason.
19:04: All of our theology is rooted in an attribute to God. You take the biggest debate we have,
19:10: I think, in Christianity, the Calvinism -Arminianism debate, right? How many trees have been killed over that debate?
19:18: And the reality is, if you take a look at the attributes of God and you start listening to some of the arguments people make, you realize that a lot of people have trouble because they start making
19:28: God as if he's bound by time or he's not omniscient. You'll hear people say, well,
19:34: God looked down the tunnels of time to see who was going to choose him, and then because they chose him,
19:44: God then elected them before time. That puts God not only within time, but it also makes him no longer omniscient that he had to wait to see what someone was going to do to then make a decision.
19:58: He didn't make decisions. God just knows everything, which we can't wrap our heads around.
20:06: But you think about this, God never had a bright idea in his life. He never observed anything, which is how we get ideas.
20:15: He didn't observe something, go, oh, that's neat. I didn't notice that before, or let me make a choice.
20:21: He just knows it. We can't comprehend that. You think about the big struggles that people have when they come into Christ, get in the church, their struggles of holiness, their struggles of keeping themselves away from the sinful lifestyle that they just came out of, and there's these struggles.
20:44: And the reality is, well, God is holy, and that's why he calls you to be like him. Most of the things that we as pastors deal with really are theology questions.
20:59: And a lot of the things that you'll hear as you have people come into the church, quickly, if you've been in the church long enough or studying theology long enough, your radar goes off.
21:11: You see someone come in, some quick questions you can ask. Ask about the deity of Christ. It's amazing how quickly you could find out someone's really off the mark.
21:21: No, it's amazing, isn't it? I had someone on the street that told me, he wanted to correct me in a loving way.
21:28: This was, I was out in California doing some open air evangelism. And when I got done, this guy comes over and says, hey, you know, that was great.
21:36: But you know, one thing you said that I just wanted to correct, you said Jesus is God, not that he's the son of God.
21:43: I said, yeah, that's right, he's God. No, no, no, he's the son of God. I said, do you even know what that term means?
21:51: Because that's a title for Christ that we don't use today. People think he's the offspring of God.
21:57: That's exactly right. Including people who've been in church for a while. Including people who've been in church for a while.
22:04: Oh yeah? Yeah, well, this guy was in church his whole life. Wow. What's amazing is, you know, simple things, like I asked him,
22:12: I said, so I guess you're saying that Barnabas was born from the offspring of encouragement? Because that's what
22:17: Barnabas means, son of encouragement. Or maybe James and John, we always thought that their parents were
22:24: Mary and Zachariah, but I guess those were the names of two, you know, like the lightning bolts or something, because they're called the sons of thunder.
22:31: Yeah, exactly. You know? And you know, you find things like in Mormonism, they'll get stuck where they'll see
22:38: God described in physical attributes, and they'd start to say, well, God was once a man.
22:44: God the Father was a sinful man on another planet that became God. It's like, no, that's an anthropomorphism.
22:52: That's just a way of describing God in a human way that we can understand. Yeah, absolutely.
22:59: I think we're, are we coming up to a break? Yep, I think we're up to a break right now. Let me do this here, finagle in here.
23:04: Let me see, exit full screen. You know what? We probably should have canned the commercials. We'll be right back with more
23:10: Growth Project Radio. In a moment, stay tuned. Dr.
23:34: Danny Purvis here. I wanted to invite you to our newest podcast project, Five Minutes of Truth.
23:39: This weekly podcast is packed with clear biblical truth in a short five -minute episode. You'll be surprised at the amazing truths that can be found in some of the most obscure and most common parts of the
23:51: Bible. Visit growthproject .org for episode notes and additional episode -related resources.
23:57: Also available on iTunes, Google Music, and many of the popular podcasts. In this is love, not that we loved
24:06: God, but he loved us and sent his son to be the propitiation for our sins. 1
24:11: John 4 .10. The word propitiation, as used in this verse, is one of my personal favorite words in all of the
24:19: Bible. John Piper, in his book, 50 Reasons Why Christ Came to Die, defines propitiation as, quote, the removal of God's wrath by providing a substitute.
24:30: The substitute is provided by God himself. The substitute, Jesus Christ, does not just cancel the wrath.
24:37: He absorbs it and diverts it from us to himself. God's wrath is just, and it was spent, not withdrawn, end quote.
24:46: This very explanation of propitiation is what God used to open my eyes and heart to the gospel.
24:52: Do you know Jesus as your propitiation? This has been another Growing Moment with Robert Houghton.
25:04: We are back with more Growth Project Radio. Took a little break there. You know,
25:10: Danny, we're gonna can the next break. Sounds good to me. That's too much trouble with all this video stuff. All these moving parts here.
25:15: We're not that smart. Unfortunately, they won't hear our commercials about Right Now Media and the
25:21: Five Minutes of Truth podcast and the Bible Support Group. All those great things we've got going on. Yeah, growthproject .org
25:27: and even Striving for Eternity. We have one of their commercials on here now. Speaking of Striving for Eternity, we are returning with, as soon as I can pull them up, yeah, next time we are not doing a break.
25:37: So, all right, we're here with Andrew Rappaport again. Andrew, you are back on live. How'd you enjoy that break with no audio on your end?
25:44: Well, no, I heard audio. I think I heard you guys invite me down to Florida in studio. That's what I heard. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
25:49: We're gonna pay your fare. That's exactly right. You know, speaking of that, you guys do offer training that you do travel for, correct?
25:57: That is correct. We have a bunch of seminars that we travel and the way we do it, you can clearly see that I came out of Judaism and I must have left it behind because the way we do things is not for money.
26:09: But we basically do seminars. We travel around. We have seminars on Bible interpretation made easy.
26:16: We have Dr. Anthony Svestro will do creation science. If you haven't heard that, he does a great job. Both he and I do presuppositional apologetics.
26:25: We have a pastors evangelism course that we do. And then we have one of the other speakers,
26:32: Pastor Frank Mullis. His expertise is not an expertise anyone wants to have, but he is one of the leading experts in the state of Georgia for sexual abuse crimes.
26:44: And he does seminars on how to protect the church against sexual abusers. Crazy statistic, but I think it's 75 % of the people that get arrested for sexual crimes, it is their first offense.
27:00: Everyone thinks that people are re -offenders and they do these background checks. And he says, background checks don't do anything.
27:07: It only catches 25 % of the people and even less because that 25 % know how to hide it better.
27:14: So he ends up teaching people what to look for. And the way we do the seminars is we just say, hey, can you at least cover our travel?
27:22: If, you know, love offering or whatever. And there have been times that our travel hasn't been covered and we're okay with that.
27:29: Sure. That's a great feed. You know, I've always heard your commercials on Wretched Radio, which has always been cool.
27:34: And then when I found out the two are connected, I was like, that is cool. Especially when I heard Todd's voice for your promo.
27:41: I was like, oh, that's so cool. I don't know why, yeah, I'm sorry, I'm geeking out again, aren't I? We have some live questions here.
27:49: Well, a live statement actually. Connie Farmer mentioned that she's kind of struggled with understanding the Trinity.
27:54: Now, is that something that you went through in the book? I can't remember. Yes, I did. And so we have a chapter on God and we go through the
28:02: Trinity. And one of the things that I say is that the Trinity is a solution to a problem.
28:08: What's the problem? The problem is when you go through the scriptures, you see that God the Father is referred to as God.
28:15: Jesus Christ is referred to as God. And the Holy Spirit is referred to as God. You see that Jesus is not the
28:21: Father. Jesus is not the Spirit. The Spirit is not the Father. You see them separate. You can see that Jesus is baptism.
28:28: You see all three of them distinct from one another. You can also see that each one of them has attributes that only
28:37: God has like omniscience or eternal. You end up seeing that all three of them does the work that God alone does.
28:47: In Isaiah, it says God alone created and everything that was created, he did it alone.
28:53: But you see that God the Father is stated that he did the creation. The Spirit did the creation.
28:59: The Son did the creation. So that's a problem because it sure seems like all three of these people are
29:07: God and yet they're separate. How can they be three in one? That is what the
29:12: Trinity is there. It's the solution. It is a human construct. I admit that. It's people trying to wrap their heads around something we can't comprehend.
29:22: And in doing so, came up with the terminology of three persons in one God. This past week,
29:29: I was in New York City. Anyone that wants to get their feet wet doing open air evangelism especially, come with us.
29:36: It's not even striving for a trinity, does it? I've been doing the training for this group but it's
29:41: Christian Collegian Network and they call it Repentant Witness. But we go for four days and it's like 14 hours of evangelism on the streets of New York.
29:49: And we spent a good portion of Friday night dealing with three or four guys that do not believe in the
29:57: Trinity. They believe you can lose your salvation and gain it and lose it and gain it over and over and over.
30:03: They believe you have to be sinlessly perfect to keep your salvation.
30:09: And you go through all that. And we focused on the Trinity that first because of the fact that they had a problem.
30:17: And you could hear in their language where one of them actually said that God the Father died on the cross.
30:25: That's a problem. Without a doctrine of the Trinity, you can't solve that problem.
30:32: Then of course, we got into doctrine of salvation which they really needed to understand because they thought that you're saved by grace but then you maintain it by your works.
30:43: And so that becomes a different gospel. And as we dug into it more and more with them, we started to realize that.
30:49: So yeah, we spent about three, four hours just talking theology with those guys on the streets.
30:55: Now, let me ask you a question. So for people who are listening who would like to get into street evangelism and open air preaching and all that, they might be intimidated at the idea that they may not understand all of this theology in here.
31:07: Tell us your thoughts on that. Okay, first off, I do it on a regular basis and I'm intimidated by doing street evangelism.
31:16: That's in God's company. So look, I have people that always come up to me and say, Andrew, I can't do the way you do it or the way
31:25: Ray Comfort does it. And the reality is you could if you were doing it as long as we were.
31:31: I mean, I've been doing open air evangelism I was actually talking with Ray about this a couple of weeks ago. I've been doing open air evangelism as long as he's been in America, which is 30 years now.
31:40: Wow, and he still has a loss of accent. Yeah, no, and he's been doing it for like 40,
31:46: I think 42 years now or 40 years. And so, you know, it's a simple thing.
31:52: A friend of mine, Mark Spence said, whatever question you get asked on the street that you don't know the answer to, that's what you study.
32:01: Study that, get the answer. The next thing that someone challenges you with and you don't know the answer to that, that's what you study.
32:07: And over time, you build up a repertoire of answers to the questions.
32:13: And the reality, there's only about maybe 10, 12 questions you really need the answer to because they're gonna get asked in different ways.
32:22: It's really not a lot you have to know to be on the street because you're gonna hear it over and over. Someone's gonna either, they're gonna talk about the reliability of scripture.
32:31: They're gonna say God doesn't exist. They're gonna say all religions are the same. It's some basic questions you're gonna hear all the time.
32:40: Yeah, so for me, when I first got saved, I heard Hell's Best Kept Secret, which scared the tar out of me, which led me into sort of some of their
32:47: Way of the Master training stuff. So I learned the good person test and I still have a diary to this day that I wrote into it.
32:52: I wanna go do this. So I went to a gas station with a million dollar bill gospel track and scared out of my mind,
32:58: I must have made four attempts before I actually finally talked to somebody and I had no clue how to respond to half the stuff, but slowly but surely, just like you said,
33:05: I'd go home and I would learn the answers to these different things and it strengthened my faith, which was excellent.
33:11: There was times I went home thinking, man, that was a good point that person had and my faith was shook a little bit.
33:16: But when I found the answer and I found out that God's word stood firm, I was encouraged.
33:23: Well, here's what we're gonna do for you, Robert. We're gonna make sure that next year you sign up for Living Waters Ambassador Academy and we'll make sure you're on my team.
33:32: Yes, I'm always willing to go there, bro. Straight up, I'm going. We're going, it's got the Growth Projects Fund in that one.
33:38: I'm going, I'll be out there. I'll be geeking out at seeing Ray Comfort and all those guys. I did the
33:43: Deeper Conference one year with them. They did the 500 and Todd and all those guys went out into Atlanta.
33:50: I think it was put together by Marcus Pittman, if you know him. He was with Apologia and Jeff Durbin and those guys, but we went out and covered downtown
33:57: Atlanta and did one -on -ones and Todd was on my team. That was kind of cool. Well, I've never told this story publicly.
34:09: Not that I know of, but I'll give you a story of what happened at one of the Deeper Conferences. Exclusive on Growth Project Radio. I could get in trouble because it's somewhat embarrassing to write.
34:18: So I got him pretty bad on a practical joke. Ray Comfort came over to a table in the green room and he comes over to me and he says, hey, look,
34:25: I really want to make a good impression with Frank Pastore. Can he sit with you guys? And I'm like, oh yeah, sure,
34:32: Ray, no problem. Ray turns around and Frank's signing baseball cards for Mark Spence and his kids.
34:38: And I turned to the two guys next to me, Mike and Greg, and I just turned to him.
34:44: I'm like, guys, you know, as soon as he sits down, we're getting up and leaving, right? And they're like, oh yeah. So literally, here's
34:50: Frank. He puts his plate down, goes sit down, the three of us get up, turn around and walked out of the room.
34:55: We stopped just at the door and we turned around and started coming back. Ray Comfort was as red as I've ever seen him, red.
35:04: And he's like, oh, I'm so sorry, Frank, I didn't know. And Frank's like, oh, I'm going to get along great with these guys.
35:10: That's great. I would have loved to been a fly on the wall for that. So I can't wait to give some of these out. I'm hoping some people dive in there.
35:17: I read so many things, I had to lend it to Danny so he can read it. So I forgot all the different things that I like, but I thoroughly enjoyed it.
35:24: Having gone through it. I'd send you two. Wow, I didn't believe you. People say things, but doing them is a whole nother thing.
35:32: Andrew, I did want to ask you something that was going through my mind as I was reading your book.
35:40: Yours is a very accessible systematic theology, which is one of the things that Robert and I have been striving for.
35:47: I think it was Einstein that said, if you know a complex construct, but you can't explain it in a way that the average person can understand it, then you really don't know it.
35:55: And so what we've tried to do is make all of the things that we do here at Growth Project, one of the things I really appreciated about your book is making it accessible.
36:03: And one of the things I really liked about it is the infusion of, which you don't see in a lot of these things, is the infusion in apologetics into, you can see your love and your passion for apologetics woven into the systematic theology.
36:17: But my experience has been, and of course, like I said, I got my MDiv between 92 and 94 at Southwestern Seminary.
36:26: I didn't have to take one apologetics class. I did take it because it was an elective, but we didn't have one class, and it was only a two -hour class.
36:32: It has since exploded. Apologetics has become a really big deal. But the problem that I've noticed, and you can correct me if I'm wrong or if I'm off base on this, my understanding of this and my observation has been that we still have most believers who think this is like a niche ministry.
36:50: Good point. Ravi Zacharias, Christian apologist. Andrew Rappaport, Christian apologist.
36:56: The reality is we're all Christian apologists. Robert Houghton, Christian model. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
37:01: That's exactly what everybody's saying. Well, no, he's got a point there because there's so many
37:07: Christian models and magazines. I think you're right.
37:13: Listen, I think that every Christian is a missionary. Every Christian is a theologian. Every Christian is an apologist.
37:21: Yeah. When we are studying God's word, we are theologians. It's the study of God.
37:28: Every Christian should be studying to know God better. Everyone should be sharing their faith.
37:35: That's what the Great Commission is. To first, you can't make disciples and teach someone everything the
37:40: Lord's taught you if they don't know Christ. So the very first step is evangelism. And that is going to involve apologetics.
37:46: Now, here's the thing. I think that there's been an explosion in a good way of presuppositional apologetics.
37:53: Oh, yeah. Cornelius Van Til is my man. Huh? Cornelius Van Til.
37:58: I don't know if you read much of Van Til. I love that guy. I have his complete works I read through, but here's the thing.
38:05: Van Til is not at a lay level. No, no. It's like reading stereo instruction sometimes.
38:12: Yeah, even Bonson's not at a lay level. I mean, that's why I think the work that Dr. Anthony Sovestro did in his book on the origin of kinds that we have is very good because it does a great job of that.
38:23: The other book is, I think it's called The Fight's Right. And this is probably for just purely presuppositional apologetics.
38:31: I think probably the best book to get, I think it's The Fight's Right by Jay Lucas.
38:37: Somebody put the link, Connie put the link in the thingy. Yeah, very accessible. And he's really teaching presuppositional apologetics without using the terminology.
38:47: But I remember in seminary, we didn't have many apologetics courses. The reason that we had what we had was because one of the professors was getting his
38:57: PhD in presuppositional apologetics, which freaked me out when he invited me in as a speaker one day for his class.
39:05: I'm like, you have a PhD in this stuff. Like, what am I gonna teach that you can't? And he said something very interesting.
39:11: He says, I teach it in a classroom, but I watch you do it on the streets. And it's very different.
39:18: He said, my students need to know how to take what I teach to the streets. And that's a missing element in the apologetics.
39:27: Because what you see is you see the apologetics that are taught in books, like we mentioned with Van Til, that are way above what most people can comprehend.
39:37: And people that love studying that study that, or you get into some of the apologetics that's more evidentially based and you're memorizing lots of different key facts of science and things like that.
39:48: And then you have guys on the street that are defending the faith that don't have a background in either theology or apologetics.
39:56: And sometimes, and look, if you want proof of this, just go on YouTube and type in street preaching and you're gonna see plenty of examples of really bad evangelism and really bad apologetics.
40:09: You see people that are looking to win a debate, nail some unbeliever, and walk away to pat himself on the back with his friends going, that a boy, because he just shut some guy's mouth, but didn't present the gospel.
40:23: Exactly. Yeah, one of the things that I have seen every, there's the law of unintended consequences really affects almost everything that we end up doing, no matter how good it is.
40:33: And one of the things that I have seen in this explosion of apologetics has been a lot of people treat apologetics as an end instead of a means to an end.
40:40: And I have always looked at apologetics as a means to an end. And the end is being able to get the gospel out there, not trying to win a debate.
40:48: And because we have so many people who engage in this who are really bright people. I mean, again, one of my favorites is
40:53: Ravi Zacharias. The guy, I wish I had a third of his brain. I mean, he's just a really, really bright guy.
40:59: And so the average believer a lot of times will hear these guys speak and then will say,
41:05: I could never do that because I'm not that smart. And so it is almost, apologetics is almost seen more now in a lot of lay people's eyes as an intellectual endeavor as it is more than anything else.
41:15: But that's the beautiful thing about presuppositional apologetics, because you don't have to know a whole lot of details. It's really simple.
41:21: I tell people this, it's as simple as this. There's two presuppositions that I hold to. God exists.
41:29: He has spoken. That's it. And those are two things I don't give up. And so when people start challenging me and they say, well,
41:36: I don't believe that God exists. Yes, you do. No, I don't. Yes, you do.
41:42: He says you do. Romans chapter one says that you know that God exists, you suppress it in unrighteousness.
41:48: So you know he exists, you just suppress that. And like, how could you tell me that? I'm not telling you that, God tells me that.
41:53: He's written it down. When we get into arguing these sort of things with people and they start saying, well,
41:59: God does not exist. I have seen no evidence that he exists.
42:04: And I'll just turn and say, oh, you'd like evidence. Yes, okay, so you want to appeal to your ability to reason.
42:12: You want things like truth and knowledge. And you want the laws of logic to come into play. And you'd like some morality to say something's right and wrong, correct?
42:19: Yes, okay, all those are immaterial things. None of those are chemical reactions. That's immaterial.
42:25: You can't pour a cup of knowledge. So therefore, that can't come from your view that there is no
42:32: God. That can only come from an immaterial source. Somebody gave you that ability to reason.
42:40: Animals don't have that kind of ability to reason. Laws of logic, I love, because people will say, well, the laws of logic are constructs that we have discovered in our human mind.
42:50: I'll say, okay, so are you saying before there was a human mind? Because all of us at some point agree, there was a time before there were humans.
42:59: I would say it was about six days. Others want to say millions of years. But there was a point before a human mind.
43:07: Can we agree to that? Yes, okay, would you argue that the universe could have existed and not existed at the same time in the same way before there was a human mind?
43:20: What I'm doing is bringing the second law that you learn in logic is the law of non -contradiction. You can't contradict something.
43:26: So you can't have the universe existing and not existing in the same way at the same time. Now they have a dilemma.
43:32: The dilemma is if they say that the universe could have existed and not existed at the same time in the same way because there was no human mind to discover it, they've just contradicted the law of non -contradiction, which makes them illogical.
43:47: Or they end up having to agree with me, which they don't want to do. See, because if they say that they accept contradictions, then
43:55: I just tell them that I'm right. They say I'm wrong. I say, no, I'm right. They say they're wrong. I say, look, I'm right and you can't disagree with me because you accept contradictions.
44:03: I don't. If you think that I must be wrong and you must be right, then you're agreeing with my worldview.
44:10: It's a fun way of doing it with folks, but what I'm doing is I'm trying to help them to realize that the way they can see that God exists is their ability to do the science that they claim proves
44:22: God doesn't exist. That's similar to the tag argument, correct? No, well, the tag argument would be a little bit different in the sense that it's going to deal with some things that are, you know, looking at things that are immaterial and finding a source for it.
44:43: The one reason I don't use what's known as the tag argument is because, well,
44:49: Christians don't realize this, it was developed by a Muslim. Oh man, darn you, man, for teaching me that.
44:55: No, I'm kidding. Yeah, actually, Matt and I have talked about it. It is a good argument, but the tag argument does not get you to the
45:04: Christian God. Right. It's an argument for God. For God in general. And I'm going to argue from the
45:10: Bible for the Christian God. And the way I'll do that is the fact that the God that exists has got to be one that's immaterial, absolute, and universal, why?
45:22: Because the laws that we see are universal. We see that these laws are absolute. There are things like absolute morality.
45:29: People say, no, there isn't. Really, give me a case for rape. Yeah. It's always wrong everywhere.
45:36: And no one's going to think of a reason that's good. And they'll try to appeal to things like harm.
45:41: Well, you can't harm another person. You know, there was a dentist here in New Jersey that had, when women were put out and he's doing surgery, he actually raped,
45:53: I think it was like 27 women or something like that. One of them got pregnant. She said, okay, this is either a miraculous birth or something happened.
46:01: And they were able to force a DNA test and find out that he was the father.
46:07: And so other women started realizing, wait a minute, I thought something was strange too. All of a sudden it came out to different patients.
46:13: Well, here's the interesting thing. There were several women who he admitted to having violated and yet they had no harm done to them.
46:23: They suffered no signs of harm until they had found out that they had been raped.
46:30: And so the interesting thing with it was, I tell them, so then it's not the harm, the act of rape. So I always ask the question, is the act of rape always wrong?
46:38: And they always say yes. But the only way you can say that is to appeal to God because if you appeal to harm, well, here's a case where no harm was done.
46:46: Really, we should not let people know they were raped. Yeah. Because if you don't let them know, then there's no harm done in those cases.
46:54: And they're like, well, no, it was without consent. Well, how do you know it was without consent?
47:00: They were unconscious. And now consent's being tossed out the window these days.
47:05: So we're getting there. But I think your point is well taken too about there's a difference between arguing, for lack of a better word, debating, having a conversation that leads to the idea that there is a
47:19: God as opposed to strictly the Christian God because the data keeps bearing out that in America anyway, atheism has not really caught on.
47:30: There's still the vast, vast majority of people in this country believe that a God exists. And so I think you're right.
47:37: I think our tact ought to be, our strategy ought to always be not to just argue the point that God exists because the number percentage -wise of people who believe that are really very small, but actually leading them to the right
47:47: God is really probably the most important thing to do. You know, Al Mauler in his daily briefing this morning referred to an article that came out from a, not an atheist, but a secularist.
48:00: And he was bemoaning that secularism or atheism hasn't taken on enough yet. Like why is it not catching on?
48:07: And he's trying to figure out how to get it to catch on, but he basically realizes they've been trying to force the secular mindset for generations, and still it's not taking hold like they expected it would by now.
48:23: Especially when you compare it to how successful it's been in Europe, and where the rates of atheism are extremely high.
48:29: The percentages of atheism are extremely high, and people can't quite figure out why it hasn't caught on here when you have the media supporting it, and you've got famous celebrities and musicians and athletes,
48:43: I mean, you have all these people and everything, all the machinery is behind atheism, but it still has not caught on like they had hoped it would here.
48:51: Now, how often do you run into - Well, here's the interesting thing that you see. Atheism in Europe has created a vacuum in their attack on Christianity, and what's filled that vacuum has been
49:02: Islam. And there are some well -known, high -profile atheists that are starting to recognize this.
49:09: You know, they start to see that as they've been attacking
49:14: Christianity, something far worse is coming in behind it, filling the vacuum, that void.
49:21: That's interesting, I hadn't heard that. Yeah, that's interesting. And the simple reality, atheism versus Islam, atheism loses because they're not willing to risk their life for it, and Islam will.
49:33: That's exactly right. That's a good point. Now, in your experience on the streets, how often do you run into, I'm just guessing here based on my experience here, majority of the people you probably run into are false converts, and how many are really truly atheists?
49:48: Well, I live up in the Northeast, so I don't have too many false converts. Oh, okay. We got a lot of them down.
49:55: No one's a believer here. We're not in the Bible Belt. Which is one advantage, but I get into many that profess to be atheists.
50:02: In New York City, where I love to evangelize it, Union Square Park, one of the reasons
50:08: I love it is you have everything there. While we're standing up doing open -air preaching, just down the way a little bit are the
50:15: Hare Krishnas. Everybody there is spiritual. They all have a different view. We have one guy that's been heckling me for going on 10 years now, and he's trying to create his own religion.
50:27: And so, he models it after a decade, I don't know. Yeah, oh yeah, he's got tracks and everything.
50:32: Wow, that is insane. And I've never ran into a
50:38: Hare Krishna, or however you said that. I've read about them, and I've never ran into a
50:43: Black Hebrew Israelite, which you handled masterfully. Please, if anybody can listen to this, go to strivingforeturning .org,
50:52: look for his podcast and listen to that, or just go to his Facebook page and watch that interaction.
50:57: It'll blow your mind seeing how he handles somebody in a live format like that. You know, there was another video,
51:07: I'm trying to remember. I'm trying, it was in Cleveland where we were, and we ran into the
51:13: Black Hebrew Israelites. Now, the reason I did that podcast on The Wrap Report was because a lot of people were seeing the video of me in New York City on Saturday night.
51:24: We were doing some open -air evangelism. I was actually not gonna do any because my voice was really on its last legs.
51:35: And so I didn't wanna blow my voice when I was gonna be preaching the next day. We had a guy that was standing up on the box, and a single guy came up who was espousing the beliefs of Black Hebrew Israelites.
51:48: And so I started feeding this one guy some things to say, and it was kind of a discipling on literally in the street form.
51:56: And I had him read a passage and explain the passage. And all of a sudden, we had like four or five of these
52:03: Black Hebrew Israelites. And if you have not seen them, they can be very aggressive, very aggressive.
52:11: And one of the things I wanted to do is give folks, if you are gonna do street evangelism and you're in a city, you're gonna see
52:18: Black Hebrew Israelites. I wanted folks to have an idea how to handle it. Just as simple as staying on top because those guys wanna jump all over the place.
52:28: They cannot stay on a topic because once they have something they can't answer, their pride is such they just, they gotta be right.
52:34: So they jump all over. They come in a pack and they just out over shout you, just nonstop shouting things.
52:44: And you'll see in either in the video or on the podcast, we play the audio. I'm trying to get them to commit to one -on -one dialogue.
52:52: Me with one person, and I chose the person that was the most reasonable of them and try to get them to commit to just one -on -one and finishing a topic.
53:01: And you see how difficult it was for them, but you see, I don't give up on that. I just stay on the one topic.
53:07: And one of the things that you end up hearing, you hear a little bit of their theology and their theology is extremely, extremely racist.
53:16: They believe that the Blacks will bring about World War III, that whites will be enslaved to them and they will rape our women.
53:25: That is exactly what I've heard said over and over as I go across the country and deal with Black, Hebrew, and Israelites.
53:32: These things that there's gonna be a World War III where they're gonna be a slave masters, we're gonna be their slaves and they're gonna be raping our women.
53:40: That is one of the things. And all of this is the idea that they believe that they are the
53:46: Hebrews that came from Africa. And they base it on one verse.
53:54: I mean, I can base my lineage back to Levi by going my father to his father, father, father, all the way back.
54:03: That's how you do a genealogy. They take it from one passage of scripture.
54:10: Pull this down. I don't know if you wanted to go into that. Oh yeah, please do. We have probably 10 minutes left.
54:16: So yeah, I thought this was fascinating to me. And again, it's a good example of just context and basic hermeneutics.
54:23: Yeah, I was gonna say, this is hermeneutics. This is the verse that they have. They say, this is Deuteronomy 28, verses 68.
54:31: And it says, and the Lord will bring you back in ships to Egypt, a journey that I promise that you shall never make again.
54:38: And there you shall offer yourselves for sale to your enemies as male and female slaves, but there will be no buyers.
54:47: And what they argue is that only the African slave trade, that's the only time people were sold as slaves in ships.
54:56: That's their argument. And therefore, this is a promise to the Africans in the
55:02: African slave trade that they are Israelites. And this was a prophecy of them.
55:08: Now, here's the problem. They take the word ship literal. You'd think, okay, well then Egypt must be literal, right?
55:14: No, Egypt means bondage. So you say, well, it says, I will bring you back in ships.
55:20: So when was that previous time you were in America? Like, oh no, we were in bondage.
55:26: Oh, when were you in bondage? In Egypt, literal Egypt, or just a bondage
55:32: Egypt, right? Then the other thing that they have a hard time with is it says that they sell themselves as slaves and have no buyers.
55:41: That's not the African slave trade. Not at all. That does not describe the African slave trade in any way. But they take what they want and throw away.
55:49: And in that video, you see them go to Isaiah, their favorite passage to say, the way you read the Bible is precept upon precept, line upon line, hear a little, there a little.
55:59: So they say, you don't read the Bible like a novel. You go hear a little, there a little. And so what
56:04: I've done, and in the podcast, I go through this. I actually do use their hermeneutic to prove that Jesus is white.
56:14: Yep. And I do that out of Mark nine. And what ends up happening is the verse talks about his remnant being white.
56:20: And they're very quick to say, that's his clothes. I said, that's just figurative of his color of his skin.
56:25: And using it against him. Exactly. They have no argument because if they're gonna say that I have to actually use words meaning what they're supposed to mean, then they have to also.
56:38: Yeah. Yeah, that was a great example. It was masterful because if you see the video, they're shouting, they're surrounding him, they're talking over you, and you stayed calm and you said, hey,
56:49: I let you talk. Let me defend my position, essentially. I'm quoting verbatim here. And he went through that same exact line of reasoning right there in front of this whole crowd.
56:58: Now, I'm willing to bet that the Hebrew Israelites didn't repent right there. But there was someone in that crowd that heard the word of God and saw truth in action.
57:08: And God's gonna use that, you know? Well, the thing is, right after that, and this wasn't on video, but I had two of those black
57:16: Hebrew Israelites talking to me. On either side was a large group of white people. And they were interested because they're hearing this.
57:23: And they're seeing the behavior back and forth. But the thing that ends up happening with the way you conduct yourself, if you're gonna do street evangelism, get a book called
57:31: Sharing the Good News with Mormons. Read my chapter on open air evangelism in there. It deals with just evangelism in that way, but specifically targeted to Mormons, but it still is helpful.
57:41: Because they say that not everyone should do it. And if you're gonna do it, you have to do it in a way that you are appealing to the crowd.
57:48: The reality is I went out to a homosexual parade after it was over, a whole bunch of people that were at this gay pride parade that were very angry with me.
57:58: But the way that I conducted myself ended up being that when I got done doing the open air,
58:04: I had four of the, two of them were the biggest hecklers, but four of them came up to apologize for their behavior.
58:11: Why? Because they saw the difference. I kept telling them, look, I'm here because I love you and care for where you spend eternity.
58:21: That's why I come out. That's what motivates me. Amen. Well, Andrew, we got five minutes left.
58:28: So if there's anything, where can everybody find you at? Give us the list of, I try to write them all down. You're involved in so much.
58:35: Right here in that little camera right there. No. It's literally where you can find it.
58:41: Yeah, that's literally where you find, look, you know. Although I got a better face for radio. They could find everything at strivingforeternity .org.
58:51: We are, as you mentioned, we're starting a Christian podcast community. Right now, there's only two podcasts on there.
58:58: Mine, which is the rap report, which people can subscribe to. I would love that. You can write some reviews on iTunes.
59:04: We'll put a link in the description as well. That's a great podcast. Folks, go to the
59:10: Growth Project radio, go into iTunes, write reviews, because let me tell you what they won't, okay?
59:17: Okay, they got a bigger team than I do when I do my podcast. So they're actually looking at lots of people. But it is greatly encouraging for them to get your feedback, to know how listening to these podcasts on Growth Project radio is affecting you.
59:33: Amen. Because they don't know that. They don't see you. Yeah. Thank you. So go out there and write some reviews, please.
59:39: Yes, amen. It's nice to know people are there. Talk to ourselves. Yeah. Even though we reached 20 ,000 downloads.
59:46: Yes. Yeah. In a couple months, we just hit 20 ,000 in our first couple months here. So that's pretty good.
59:51: Yeah, we're excited about that. But what Andrew's saying is exactly right. You know, they're kind of nameless, faceless folks.
59:58: And we're glad they're downloading and we're glad they're listening to us. But man, it would be nice to kind of hear how we're doing.
01:00:03: If we're not doing a good job, tell us that too, by the way. I'm gonna have to pick back up on my modeling career, you know? Yeah. I did,
01:00:08: Andrew, for your information. I modeled for Righteous Wretch Clothing. I did one shoot, just so you know.
01:00:15: So there are Christian models and I am the one. He was a hand model. So don't let it get to his head.
01:00:21: Yeah, I was gonna say it's a hand model, right? Yeah. But you know, in the Reformed community, if you have a cool shirt and a beard, you're automatically like, cool.
01:00:29: You know what I mean? It's street credit. You got a point there. That's right. Well, brother, thank you so much for being with us tonight.
01:00:35: Thank you for all you're doing for the kingdom. Thank you. Guys, go out and get this book, What Do We Believe by Andrew Rappaport.
01:00:41: You can find it on strivingforeternity .org. Is it on Amazon yet? That one's not on Amazon yet.
01:00:48: We're waiting for the Kindle version, which I'm slow in getting. But that should be out on Kindle soon.
01:00:53: And then we'll have it out on Amazon. But you help the ministry better. You're giving
01:00:59: Amazon five bucks or Striving for Eternity five bucks. Amen. Please get it from us.
01:01:05: We don't like supporting Amazon. And we'll be doing a giveaway, guys. So make sure you look out for that. We'll be giving out three copies, generously given to us by Andrew Rappaport.
01:01:14: Andrew, again, thank you so much for your time this evening. If you want to, just stay on hold for a second. We'd love to talk to you for a moment afterwards.
01:01:20: Anything else you'd like to say? Thanks for having me on. For your audience to know that I download this podcast.
01:01:26: I listen to you guys all the time. Hey, you hear that? I'm not just a guest. I'm a fan. You hear that? Hey, that's cool, you know what?
01:01:33: We appreciate it, Andrew. Thank you very much. The Roblox people are happy in the background too. Absolutely. This is a great show.
01:01:39: Andrew, thank you again. Thanks for everybody who's been listening to the show. Thank you for all your support. Dan, did you have any closing statements?
01:01:44: Nope, it was a great show. Loved every second of it. I loved it. A lot of fun. It was neat seeing Danny be so quiet for one show.
01:01:51: Everybody's surprised for that. Usually he's the guy with all the work. But thank you, Savannah, for handling the time and everything else.
01:01:58: Gaze, thank you for the camera stuff. Connie, thank you for doing all the stuff in the comments and putting the links and handling the podcast description.
01:02:05: And thank you guys so much for showing love to us and making us feel like we're doing something for the kingdom. Next week, start
01:02:12: Ephesians. Oh yeah, we're starting Ephesians next week. We're going through another book in our same fun format, but Ephesians is deep.
01:02:18: We plan on having some guests on to dive even deeper. Hopefully getting a lady from Theology Gals.
01:02:24: Her name just slipped my mind. What's her name, Andrew? Colleen. Sorry, I was muted.
01:02:30: Colleen Sharp, not Colleen. Colleen. I've been abused for years because I mispronounced it.
01:02:36: All right, well, it's Colleen Sharp. Hopefully she doesn't hear this episode and ban me from the group. But hopefully have her on one of the episodes as something we're working on.
01:02:43: Maybe we'll have you back on, Andrew. And anytime you want to crash the show, let us know. We'll definitely have you on.
01:02:49: Man, this was a great show. And if there's anything we can ever do for you, Andrew, please, we're a phone call away.
01:02:55: Absolutely. Yeah, same here. You guys know how to get ahold of me now. Absolutely. Well, again, everybody, thank you so much for watching the show.
01:03:02: We will see you next week. I hope you guys enjoyed that interview.
01:03:32: It was a privilege to be on with the guys over at Growth Project Radio. I really appreciate them.
01:03:38: I listen to their podcast. And I do encourage you to subscribe to their podcast. Go rate them on iTunes.
01:03:45: You can rate us as well. We do appreciate that because, well, it actually does pretty much nothing in trying to get yourself higher in iTunes.
01:03:57: Yes, you say, but wait a minute. Every podcaster says, rate me on iTunes because it'll help get us better known.
01:04:04: No, actually, it doesn't. But we do appreciate the 25 folks who have rated us and given us some reviews.
01:04:17: And that does go a long way for us in making us know that the work that we're doing out here is having an effect on you.
01:04:29: And so we appreciate it. So we got a new one in this week. I'm gonna read this for the first time since it was just given to me.
01:04:38: So this is from Bite Size Brilliance, five stars. And they say, if you are looking, actually, no, it's not.
01:04:47: Their title is Bite Size Brilliance, sorry. It's from R -H -D -A -D -X -4.
01:04:56: Nice handle, I guess. But here's what they say. If you are looking to learn theology and apologetics, but you suffer from a short attention span like I do, then this is the only, that's in all caps by the way, only podcast for you.
01:05:15: Each of the two minute episodes are packed with more information than most shows cover in 10 times the time.
01:05:24: The longer episodes are just as informative and engaging. If you're looking for growth, that's in all caps too, then this podcast project, that's in all caps, from Andrew Rappaport is for you.
01:05:40: I'm almost wondering if this is someone from Growth Project Radio. Growth and Project are all in caps.
01:05:47: Don't know, but maybe. But whoever it is, appreciate that. We're glad that this podcast has been helping many and that many are being blessed by that.
01:06:01: Wanted to, before we go, let you guys know of some events coming up in case you're in the area.
01:06:08: We will be having a very busy September and October. In September, the 14th and 15th and 16th, so September 14th to 16th, we will be in Redwood City, California, that's
01:06:26: Northern California. Dr. Anthony Silvestro and myself will be speaking at the Equip NorCal event with Brother Mark Spence.
01:06:37: Next weekend, the weekend after that, we'll be in Carnation, Washington, be doing a seminar on what do they believe and that's gonna cover some different world religions.
01:06:50: The following weekend after that, that's September 28th to 29th, we will be in Mount Laurel, New Jersey at the
01:06:59: South Jersey Apologetics Conference. The week after that, I'll be in speaking at Gyre Church in New Jersey, that's in Marlboro, New Jersey.
01:07:10: I don't think that's actually open to the public. I'll find out and folks want to know, they can let me know, that you can contact us at info at strivingforreturn .org
01:07:20: about any of these events and we'll get you the details if you don't have them. The weekend after that,
01:07:25: October 12th to the 14th, I will be in Kootenai, Idaho for a evangelism, ambassador evangelism seminar.
01:07:35: And so if you're in that area, I encourage you to come out. And then the week after that, gee, this is sounding like I'm gonna have a really busy
01:07:43: September, October, but the week after that, we're going to have an outreach in New York City.
01:07:49: We have some folks flying in from around the country, guys who attended the Ambassadors Academy with Living Waters.
01:07:55: We're gonna have a little bit of a reunion. We're gonna take them to New York City to do some evangelism.
01:08:01: And that is an interesting place to evangelize. That's a place to get,
01:08:07: I was gonna say get your feet wet, but yeah, that's more like being thrown into the shark tank. But that is some events.
01:08:15: If you're in any of those areas and you want more details, please feel free to email us at infoatstrivingforattorney .org.
01:08:23: We'll get you all the details. It was in our most recent newsletter. We're gonna have another newsletter that should have some details about some of the other events.
01:08:32: If there are things that you want us to address on these podcasts, you can also email us at infoatstrivingforattorney .org.
01:08:39: Let us know that. One last thing is that we would greatly like to hear from you is if there's a way that we could be a blessing to you in your church, if we can come to you and put on a seminar,
01:08:54: Bible Interpretation Made Easy Seminar, our Ambassador of Evangelism Seminar, Creation Science, Presuppositional Apologetics, or even
01:09:04: Dealing with Sexual Abuse. We have seminars on a wide range of topics. And if you would like us to come to your church and put on one of our seminars at your church, we would greatly love that.
01:09:17: So hope that you enjoyed this week's podcast. We have something planned for next week.
01:09:23: And we may be, maybe, announcing this week a debate with me and a black
01:09:32: Hebrew Israelite. We are working on it. We'll see if it comes to pass. Be looking forward to that.
01:09:38: This podcast is part of the Striving for Eternity ministry. For more content or to request a speaker or seminar to your church, go to strivingforeternity .org.