FRIDAY NIGHT LIVE ***Q&A with Mr&Mrs YourCalvinist***

Live from the Theo shed in beautiful, Callahan, Florida. It's Friday Your Calvinist podcast is filmed before a live studio audience and and welcome back to your Calvinist podcast, Friday night live with Mr. And Mrs. Your Calvinist.

Yes, this is Keith and Jennifer Foskey coming at you for our last Friday night live of the year. This will be the last time we do this show for 2024 next week. It will be our first show of 2025. So thank you for joining us tonight and being with us for tonight's show.

We have a lot of questions to get to that came to us through our email box. I'm looking forward to walking through the answers to these questions with you. But before we do that, I just want to say, Merry Christmas.

I know Christmas was a couple of days ago, but if you're like our house, you're still sort of in that Christmas zone. Christmas movies are still playing on our television.

Toys are everywhere.

Yeah, it's we're still dealing with the melee of all of the things all over the floor. We have yet to really clean up. We've still got, uh, if you look around enough, you'll probably still find some Christmas wrapping paper.

Even though I am the wrapping paper, just monster. When it's on Christmas morning, I'm not happy unless I'm collecting wrapping paper, shoving it into a trash bag because that's my job. When somebody opens a gift, I'm like, that's great.

Didn't even know I got it for you, but congratulations. Give me your wrapping paper right now.

What did we get?

That's right.

What'd you guys get?

It was like, it was from you.

I didn't know.

No idea. I bought gifts for one person this year. Her, that's right. She bought from my mom, my mom and step mom. She brought from my dad and stepdad. She bought for all of our kids. She bought for all my nieces and nephews, all my brother's kids.

Wait, you know what?

I'm I'm, I am fibbing. I did buy for one person. I did buy for one person other than you. My brother, Bobby and my brother, Bobby and I have a long running tradition of buying each other movie based Christmas gifts.

So this year I bought him a, uh, uh, clock, but it was the, it was based on the dashboard of the DeLorean from back to the future. So it has all the times, uh, from the, from the back to the future movie.

And it's got the red and the, the, the Amber and the green light. It's a really neat clock. Um, so that was my gift for my brother.

He got you a really cool gift.

Oh man. You know what?

I meant to bring it out here tonight. He got me a cup that says Pepsi and shoe polish. Why didn't I bring it tonight?

Oh man.

And he got me this really cool book. It's an AI book that tells the story of this podcast by, by collecting information and printing it out.

It's just neat.

I'll have to bring it on the next show. Uh, I meant to bring it out here tonight and show it to you guys, but it's really.

Cool.

So my brother and I, we just have this kind of tradition and, and so that, that was fun, but otherwise, like I said, most of my gifts are for this lady right here. And, um, do you have a good Christmas?

Did I do you right boo?

You did boo.

I did.

Okay.

Well, good.

I'm glad.

Well, it's good to see everybody out here tonight. We are going to get quickly into the questions, but before we do that, I just want to remind you of our, uh, sponsors. We have a few sponsors that we're going to be talking about through the show.

Our first one and longest running sponsor is Tiny Bibles. If you've been watching the show for any length of time and you haven't checked out Tiny Bibles yet, go do that today. Tinybibles .com. It's the smallest printed Bible on the market.

They also have the tiny gospel of John, which is available, uh, to read and give out it. They also have the 1534 edition of the Tyndale New Testament, which is able, it's not tiny, it's huge, but it's able to be purchased and they've got a new American standard Bible version coming out in the spring.

I'm going to have a commercial to show you in a few weeks as we begin to get closer to that. So be on the lookout for that commercial when it comes.

All right.

So we're going to mix up the commercials or the ads rather into the questions. So we don't spend all of our time at the beginning on that. So we're going to move right into our first question to get the ball rolling tonight, because what we do here on Friday night live is we answer questions that come in through email, through YouTube, through X and through Facebook.

I'm calling it X now. I said, I was not going to do that. I said I was going to keep it as Twitter, but I'm calling it X. Uh, people send in questions to us. We write those questions down on this little piece of paper right here.

And I don't write my answers down. I get my answers on the fly, but we put them all together so that we're prepared. Jennifer asked the questions. I answered the questions. We banter a bit and we move on.

If you have a question that you want to submit, you can go to Keith Vosky .com.

And send the question and put it in the chat box.

You can put it.

Yeah.

If you want to chat with us tonight, we're watching this right here. I see some of our regulars to legit is here. Factless Cowboys here. Thank you guys for being here. We're so glad. I think I saw normal guys here.

I think I saw Mary up there.

Yep.

She's here. You guys are awesome.

And you guys who hang out with us every time I see Mary's name.

I think Mary, Mary, well, maybe let's hope not. Let's hope she's not all right, but thank you guys for being with us. All right, Jennifer hit me with the first question.

All right. Questions about sermon prep. I hope this email finds you. Well, I was curious about your sermon prep steps. You mentioned your use of chat GPT for your email summaries and content help. Do you use that platform to help with your sermon prep?

I have heard people champion it as a means to help them flush out their thoughts. And I have heard people label it the devil. I am interested in your wisdom. Thank you for your time and blessings to you and your family.

First of all, thank you for that question. Thank you for reaching out. The person who asked that question, and this is a subject that I really enjoy talking about. Sermon preparation is obviously one of the biggest parts of my job as a pastor.

I preach every week. Actually, I preach multiple times per week. So a lot of my week is spent preparing for my sermon on Sunday. And then of course I teach on Wednesday nights. I teach on Thursday mornings at set free.

So I'm always preparing for those and for the academy class that I teach. So there's a lot of preparation that goes on a lot of reading, a lot of studying. And it's part of my job. It's been part of my job now for almost 20 years.

I enjoy it.

I love it.

And so just so you know, the person who asked this question and anyone else, I did a series on practical tips for new pastors. And it was a series called Not Only Water. It was based on Paul's admonition to Timothy, where he said, take a little wine for your stomach and not only water.

The idea was that was a practical thing that Paul gave to Timothy. And I wanted to give a practical bit of advice to younger pastors. I'm still younger myself. I like to think, but I'm not as young as some of you who may just be starting out.

So it was my sort of way to give back, to try to help out. So I will link the Not Only Water. I'm going to put that in my notes right here. I'm going to link that below because if anybody's interested in looking at those, I talk about prayer for pastors.

I talk about sermon preparation. I talk about the steps that I take and all those things. I don't talk about AI because I actually made that series almost two years ago now. And at that time, AI wasn't as available.

It's amazing how much things have changed in two years. AI wasn't as available to me at that point. And so I didn't include the use of AI because it wasn't something I was doing, but I am now, so I'll talk about it now.

So let's talk about the ethics of artificial intelligence. And real quick, I want to ask this question and maybe you might even be interested in, in, in jumping in here. Um, you know, chocolate knocks, chocolate knocks from cross politic is a friend.

And he and I had talked about him coming on my show and doing an entire show about ethics surrounding the use of AI and how AI can be rightly used in like content creation and things like that. So if you're interested in me doing that show, I'm trying to get my schedule ready for 2025 and I've already got a couple of guys scheduled for the early part of January, but pretty much my schedule is wide open and I'm looking to invite back some guests that I've had on before.

I'm going to have Layton flowers on again. I'm have James white on again, but if you are interested in me having chocolate knocks on to talk about artificial intelligence, put that in the comments. I think that would be interesting.

Um, but I want to, I don't want to do it unless you guys want me to do it. I want to know that there's an audience for my shows. No reason to make a show if nobody's going to watch it. So let me know if you're interested in me having chocolate knocks on and uh, and I'll do that.

Is this the question that's going to be, that's the next question, isn't it?

Yeah, that's it. That's coming up brother. Uh, yeah, that, that, that will be on in just a second. So before we get there, let me finish this AI question.

All right.

So I think that AI as a tool is going to become just as common in the next 10 years in our internet usage as search engines were. 20 years ago when they came out, I remember I worked for America online.

Oh, by the way, I didn't ask you.

What do you think about chocolate knocks coming on?

I think it's great.

You like him, right? Chocolate knocks a great guy, funny guy, family man, good man.

All right.

Sorry. I didn't believe that I was going to ask you. And I forgot to ask you.

I love having very interested in AI. I don't know a lot about it.

Do you use AI at all? No, none at all.

None at all.

Okay.

Well, I've become more of a user of it. And like I said, I think in the next 10 years, it's going to become just as common, maybe even more than maybe even sooner than 10 years, it's going to become just as common as search engines were 20 years ago when I started working for America online in 1999.

If you don't know what America online was, they used to give out the internet on CD ROMs, if you can believe that the internet came on a disc, it said, we'll give you a thousand hours for free. And by the way, for a person who worked for AOL, if you know anything about AOL and you saw those little CDs, one would say a thousand hours.

Another would say 2 ,500 hours. Another would say 3000.

It was all a lie.

It was unlimited. They just didn't want to say unlimited because nobody wants unlimited. They want to amount. They want to see that they're getting a thousand hours, 2000 hours, five. It was all marketing.

It was a big scam. And I know that because I was told that by corporate. So it was a lie.

Insider secrets.

Absolutely. Absolutely.

All right.

So, um, I see. Jeannie just put down, you've got mail. I can't take an email during the show.

Um, if you want us, if you want, maybe they've said you've got mail, like,.

Oh yeah, you've got mail.

Like, yeah.

Okay.

Well, I thought she meant she sent me an email.

Well, okay, cool.

All right.

So, um, speaking, getting back to AI, where AI is good. Is AI is good as a tool, but it is, it's not something that should take the place of the work that we normally would put in to sermon preparation.

So for instance, where would it be? Absolutely unethical. What would be unethical to say, okay, this week I'm preaching John one, one to go into, uh, uh, um, chat GPT and say, okay, write me a sermon, 2 ,500 words on John one, one to three.

And it does it now. It can do that.

I've seen it happen. And you know what?

Sometimes it's not that bad. Sometimes it's even better than what some people might write on their own. Here's the problem. That is not something that you drew out of the text and that you're presenting to the congregation based on the Holy spirit's work in your life, as you're studying and preparing the text to preach, that isn't, that is a machine doing that for you, I would say right away, that's unethical, that would be wrong.

That would be the wrong way to use the tool. However, here is a potentially right way to use the tool. In John one, one, there are three clauses. There's John one, one a in the beginning was the word and RK ain't how log us there's John one, one B.

And the word was with God Kai Theos or, uh, Kai and the word, uh, Kai, uh, halagas prostante. Uh, sorry. I missed, I was trying to be all fancy and I messed it up now like a fool. And then the last clause is John one, one, three, which is, uh, Skynet writing service, John one, one, three, Kai Theos and halagas.

And, and the word was God in the third clause of John. There's something called a predicate nominative, which is the, there are two nominatives in that sentence. There's Theos and there's lagos and halagas is the nominative of the sentence.

It's the subject. That's the subject case in Greek. And then Theos is what's called the predicate nominative. It's still in the subject case, but it's used as in, in English, we would call that the predicate.

I know you're like, yeah, it's okay. Yeah, it's sometimes it's just sometimes these overly technical things aren't really helpful, but this is one of those times where. There is some technicalities here that are helpful.

So if you went into chat GPT and said, how could I explain a predicate nominative to a group of people? How, what's the best way to explain predicate nominative and get an idea from AI on how to better present a subject, how to better present a fact.

How could I better present the predicate nominative in John one, one C right. I don't think that's unethical. I think you're getting help in the same way that you might pull out a commentary or you pull out a book.

I think that's the way that you could use it and it would be helpful. Also, I just got done teaching eight weeks on the subject of church history, early church history. And there were times where I just needed dates for stuff.

I needed the date of like the, um, the Diocletian, um, the Diocletian persecution, uh, and, uh, or no, I'm sorry, the Demetian persecution, which was the first empire wide persecution. Now it was in the book that I was using for the class, but I didn't know what page it was on.

So I quickly put it in. I could Google that, but chat GPT is like Google, right? It's, it's, it's pulling up information and it's telling me where the information's coming from. So that's helpful. That's a quick way to get a small piece of information.

I already know this, but I did, I had forgotten the date. So I need the date. It was two 49 to two 51.

I remember it now.

So those are times when, um, uh, Dr. White's whiskers are trembling here. And Keith's great. Hey, don't give me a hard time.

Okay.

I'm doing my best here.

I should be using this for homeschooling.

Yeah.

So I think that chat GPT, I think that grok, I think that, uh, whatever Facebook's got going for it now, which will never be as good. Um, I think these are tools that can be useful. I think that it's interesting that, um, we're having to ask this question because it's showing how quick the technology is, is coming at us.

And here's two predictions. I'm not a prophet nor the son of a prophet, not even the husband of a prophet, but I'm gonna tell you this. Two things I predict are going to happen. Number one, I think seminaries are going to start having classes on the proper way to use AI ethically.

I can't say that's going to happen, but I believe it's going to happen because I think it's, it's, it's, it's coming. And, and the second thing I think companies like Logos and Accordance and all of these other programs that are already providing us materials in ways that we never had 50 years ago, nobody had Bible works or Logos or any of this stuff 50 years ago, I think they're going to start having AI tools in the software.

And I think it's probably going to be for the better. So that's my thought on AI. What are some of the dangers? It could make people lazy only if you allow it to make you lazy, only if you allow it to make you unethical.

The tool itself is not unethical. It's how you use it. The kid who is doing a paper for school and he says, Hey, write me a paper about the second world war, and it writes a paper that's unethical. But the kid who's doing research.

Yeah, yeah.

It's going to say something about a certain Christian prince.

Bazinga.

I gotta be careful.

Or it's written awkwardly.

Yeah, it's going to be like, you know what? I heard a teacher. This was brilliant. To, to, to help catch children who were just putting her instructions into chat GPT and getting their papers, she would have in the small print of her instructions were like, if they just copied and pasted it in there, it would have something like add the word unicorn into this somewhere awkwardly.

And like, she would read it. And if she saw the word unicorn, she would knew AI made it because it did that. So that's so genius, the person who is doing that. Uh, okay. Somebody say careful now.

Oh yeah.

Yeah.

That's, that's dangerous.

Okay.

Um, all right. Don't know what's going on.

Okay.

All right.

So that's, um, my, my thoughts about AI. Um, oh, by the way, this is something interesting. Sheldon just said something. I want, I want to respond to that. He said the AI is only trained on the input.

So the input is wrong. Everything will be wrong. That is correct. And, and, and I have proof of that, which is really cool. The other day I was on chat GPT and I just asked it a very simple question. I said, how would you summarize the prologue of John's gospel?

John one versus one to 18. And it gave me a paragraph summary in that paragraph summary. It said these words. It said the, the prologue of John demonstrates superior theology. And I said, superior theology.

It knows who it's talking to. It knows it's talking to me because that's my line.

The input with somebody on this channel.

Well, no, I'm the importer. I'm the importer in the outdoor.

Okay.

All right. All right.

You guys out there. I was just kidding with the whole thing. I see. No, y 'all know. I'm anyway, I see that stuff popping up there.

Okay.

So my answer is you have a responsibility to your congregation to read the text, interpret the text and apply the text according to your effort and how the spirit has given you wisdom and skill and education.

AI is a tool. AI should not be the one doing the work. That's my answer.

All right.

Crosswalk church in Daytona.

Who's that? Is that it's Chris. Where's he at guys? If y 'all don't know this guy, Chris, Chris, it's great to see you, brother. And I look forward to seeing you next year. Our church may be hosting the, uh, Southeast regional fire conference.

And I hope Chris and brother Mitch, who are the pastors at crosswalk of Daytona will be with us. Love you guys.

It's good to see you.

Thank you for watching tonight. All right. Let's, uh, let's, before we jump to the next question, that was a great one. Let's just quickly talk about this. This is what do we believe it is an introduction to systematic theology.

It answers a lot of questions about what we believe as Christians. It is put out by striving for eternity ministries. And right now, if you go and purchase this book and you go to the link that's in the description, which will be in the description when the show is done, because I haven't put the links in yet, but when the link is in the description, you go and purchase this book, use my name, Keith as a coupon code, and you will get a discount.

So don't forget if you're interested in looking for a book that will help you. If you're teaching systematic theology, if you're learning systematic theology, if you just want to learn more about the Bible, go check out that book.

At the link below. All right, Jennifer, let's move to the next question, which the person who asked it is in the, in the comments. So let's get to it.

Okay.

Thoughts about snake handling churches.

All right.

So from AI to snake handling, that is one extreme to the other.

Okay.

I've known about snake handling churches for a while, but I haven't thought much about them. I've never seen one in my life. Have you ever interacted with brothers from those churches? Apparently they also drink strychnine, a poison.

Okay.

So, um, all cards on the table. I have never had a conversation, interaction, or email exchange with anyone from a snake handling church. I am crazy aphidiophobic. And if you don't know what aphidiophobia is, that is the fear of snakes.

I am like 10 times Indiana Jones. And if you know anything about Indiana Jones, he was very much afraid of snakes. And I'm afraid of his fear. Like I'm so afraid of snakes. It's crazy. One day my wife texts me, I was sitting in this office.

She texts me, she goes, your son has caught a snake. And I said, I typed, I texted back. I said, not my son. He does not carry my DNA. I don't know who this child is. You're talking about that. Not my child.

I walk outside. My son is holding the snake by the tail. Like Moses, he is sitting and it's dangling. And he's doing this sort of, um, uh, crocodile hunter, a whole crikey looking at this thing, swinging it around and I'm going nuts.

She's laughing and I am not. I, uh, uh, this was the craziest thing I've ever seen. I don't care if it was voted the nicest snake in its class. It's a snake and it's awful.

He was not holding a Cobra.

It's in the Bible.

It was a friendly snake, by the way.

I just quoted billing ball for anybody who knows.

Okay.

James, James, James.

Yeah.

Well, if you, yeah, I want to, I want to invite you James to not do that. Please don't do that. Uh, but it's good to see out there, brother. Hope you're feeling better. Uh, it's, uh, it's good to see your face in the picture, of course.

All right.

So, so everything I'm going to say about snake handling churches is. Um, it is, is not in direct contact with snake handlers. I've never had a direct contact with snake handlers. I've never got involved with any of them, but I did grow up going to holiness churches with my mom's side of the family.

And, and the only reason why I bring that up is some of the same beliefs have some crossovers in the holiness movement and in the snake handling movement, because a lot of these. Pentecostal sort of hyper charismatic movements sort of all swim in the same water now, just to be clear, my mom's church never handled snakes.

I don't think they believed in handling snakes. I'm just saying, I remember being in churches with her when I was younger and there was a lot of shouting, a lot of running around, a lot of being slain in the spirit that was very common.

Um, I mean, I've told the story before about how I would see the pastor walking on the pews and I remember seeing his leather shoes walk by and he's snapping his fingers going, are you going to hell? Are you going to hell?

I mean, he was very, very animated and he's a, he's, he's a good man.

I know him.

He's a, he's actually a friend of mine looks just like Ned Flanders. Tell me I'm wrong. You know exactly what I'm talking about too, right? Great guy, but he's, he's very charismatic, hyper, I would say hyper Pentecostal, hyper charismatic.

So with that being said, um, the belief in snake handling obviously comes from an, uh, what I would say is a wrong interpretation of the final verses of Mark's gospel. Now this takes on a whole other issue and that is the question of whether Mark's, the ending of Mark's gospel is even authentic because those who study textual criticism know that there are three major textual variants in the new Testament, which is the longer ending of Mark, the pericope, adultery, and the Kamiohonium.

All three of those are argued by, by people who practice textual criticism as to whether or not they're authentic. And I've done shows on those before. In fact, my buddy who's often here, he may even be here tonight, does a channel.

Uh, his name is Dwayne Green. He does a channel on textual variants. He and I did a show together. I did it on his channel on, um, on textual variation. So, but let's just say for argument's sake that Mark 16 is authentic.

Let's just, let's just not make the variant the issue. It does say that there are those who will, um, be bitten by serpents and they will not die though, drink poison and not get sick. And so those who take that scripture and apply it to this practice of handling snakes, drinking strict nine, I watched the person who sent this email and sent in a video and, or with the, with the email and I just, it was too long of a video to show and the video was these people just screaming, this guy was saying, I went to the doctor and he said, I had a disease and I forget it was like hepatitis or something.

And he said, I went back the next day and I didn't have it anymore. So they're very confident in this, but here's what I know. Um, there is no reason to tempt the Lord or to put the Lord to the test. And any thing that we see in scripture, like Paul being bitten by the snake on the Island of Malta and that snake not hurting him, that is not an encouragement to us to go out and pick up snakes and expect to not be injured.

That's, that's not what those texts are there for. I don't even think that that's, if that's, if Mark, if Mark 16 is authentic, I don't think that that's what Mark 16 is trying to tell us. I think Mark 16 is actually pointing to what happened in the life of Paul.

Paul was bitten by a snake and it didn't hurt him. It was a demonstration of his, uh, protection from the Lord for his apostolic ministry. But it's not something that we're supposed to go out and tempt the Lord to go out and, and, and try last, uh, not last year, but a couple of years ago, James White did a debate with, um, him and Jeff Durbin, Durbin debated two atheists.

And one of the atheists pulled out antifreeze, Preston antifreeze. And he said, drink this antifreeze, prove that you're a real Christian, because if you're a real Christian, you can drink this and the poison is not going to hurt you.

And then he screamed at the audience and said, you see this guy? He really doesn't believe it. If he believed it, he'd drink this antifreeze. In fact, Anchor just mentioned that literally you beat me to it.

Yeah, you did.

Um, so I think that people who practice this, and this is not, I'm not trying to impugn them as people as, uh, I'm not trying to impugn them as, uh, their intelligence or anything like that. But I do think oftentimes this is a replacement.

This is a replacement for genuine spirituality. These grandiose activities, drinking poison, handling snakes, and all of these things are replacement for simple lived out Christianity. The fruit of the spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control against such there is no law.

The fruit of the spirit is not handling snakes and drinking poison. And that's just the simple answer. There's no reason to do it. It's foolish. And many of these people have died. There are documented cases of these people handling snakes, drinking poison, and it taking their life.

And I think it did. I think it was a demonstration of foolishness and therefore I do not endorse it. I think the people who are practicing it are often practicing it in ignorance. And the most dangerous thing in the world is a person who is confidently ignorant.

We were just talking about that.

Most dangerous thing in the world is confident ignorance. And that's what happens when people are handling snakes and drinking poison. So that's my thoughts about that. All right, Jennifer, let's move on to question.

Confident about things on the internet that they don't know about.

That's right.

Okay.

Now I have to mention this. I, I, I, um, I do work with set free ministries. I've talked about that before. I've done a podcast, uh, during set free, uh, fundraiser. And, um, I go there a lot and a lot of those guys who are new coming into set free or just off the street.

Some of them are just getting off drugs and things like that. And oftentimes they, when they start sobering up, they start wanting to argue the Bible, which is not the time to argue the Bible. You need to start listening, not arguing.

And one of the things that I often want to argue about is the Nephilim. And so I told my brother who works there, he works in ministers there. I said, I was going to have a shirt that says, if you care more about the Nephilim than you care about G or if you try, if you, how did it, how did it say it, if you, if you, if you ask as many questions about Jesus as you do about the Nephilim, you'd gross, you, you would have a better spiritual life.

I think is how it said, but basically that's, that's this kind of thing. We want to deal with this stuff over here. That doesn't matter. The Nephilim don't matter. I mean, it's a great question and you know, people can talk about it, but it doesn't matter if you don't know who Jesus is.

It doesn't matter if you figured out the Nephilim.

All right.

Okay.

All right.

Okay.