Exposing Chris Date in Debate | Rapp Report Weekly 0029 | Striving for Eternity

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00:00

All right, so there was a debate on the topic of hell, like that should be an issue nowadays, and it's not with Jehovah Witnesses.

00:09

What? Someone that professes to be a Calvinist that doesn't believe in hell? Well, we have one of the proponents of those debaters here today to discuss that debate, and we're going to see, well,

00:21

I would argue that he was on the winning side because, well, he agreed with the Bible. Welcome to The Wrap Report with Andrew Rappaport, where we provide biblical interpretations and applications.

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This is a ministry of Striving for Eternity and the Christian Podcast Community. For more content or to request a speaker for your church, go to strivingforeternity .org.

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All right, well, welcome to another weekly Wrap Report. I am your host, Andrew Rappaport, and I am glad you are with us.

00:53

Some quick announcements, September 27th, that's a Thursday night. I hope you plan to be at your computer.

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Some of you have been asking for it. Many of you have been demanding it. Well, we are back.

01:05

It is going to be a new show called Apologetics Live. It will be with myself and none other than Matt Slick from karm .org.

01:14

We will be doing a live two -hour show, 8 o 'clock Eastern time, every Thursday night.

01:20

We will take your calls. It is either going to be a Google Hangout or it might be some other platform. We're not sure that yet, but the website we're setting up for it is apologeticslive .com.

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When you go there, you're going to be able to see where to join the call, where to go to watch it.

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Hopefully, we'll even have a chat built right in. But what I can tell you is I know we're going to be doing it that day.

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We are still working out details. However, September 27th, if you go to just before then apologeticslive .com,

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we're going to have the information there. Every Thursday, you'll be able to go there to get all the details.

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This is for you. You have a challenging question. Maybe you don't believe in Jesus Christ and you want to challenge

02:05

Matt Slick of karm .org. Come on. We'll take that. This is different than his radio show because you're going to have a longer time.

02:14

We're going to be having some debates coming up. I think we're trying to work some debates with some Catholics, maybe even a debate slash discussion between Matt Slick and Leighton Flowers.

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We're going to see. We're trying to talk about that and many other topics. I don't think the debate that we're hoping for is going to work out because I think our guest today might have demolished any chances of this guy coming on with Matt.

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But I think that may be off for right now. We're going to see. But here's the thing.

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There's other news that if you've been listening to the daily report, the daily rap report, you have been listening to the fact that we have been playing each day, different articles, short articles.

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They're two minutes long, so it's not that long. We've been reading to you and giving short comment on the statement on social justice.

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I encourage you to go to the statement on social justice. Go out there and check it out. It's amazing how many people are telling me that I am racist for signing that statement, that whether I realize it or not,

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I supported slavery because, oh wait, no, I never owned a slave. Oh wait, no, no one in my family ever owned a slave.

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I was told that I, because of the fact that my parents came here, are first generation here, that they received the benefits of living in America and that gave me white privilege.

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Really? There's been blacks living here for generations after generation. If just being in America gave me white privilege, I guess they're whiter than me.

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I'm just saying. I mean, the reality is, is that we will never end racism with racism, but there is no end goal in that.

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And that's one of the things we bring out in that statement. One of the things we did in a podcast that we did earlier with Josh Bice, who is the primary editor of the statement, what you end up seeing is there is no end game for this.

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The goal is to keep attacking Christianity until, basically their goal is until we're silenced.

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That's when social justice ends, when we get socialism in America and all over the world, because they think they'll do it better and Christianity is completely silenced.

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It hasn't worked anywhere before, but they think they can do it better as every other socialist and communist has argued.

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So with that, I would like to introduce our guest today. He has recently done a debate on the topic of hell, and this is my friend,

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George Alvarado. George, how are you today? How are you doing, Andrew? So George, you did a debate with,

04:39

I should first say you're from G220 Radio Ministries. You got a program that you do there.

04:45

So before we introduce the debate, why don't you talk about G220, which is, you know, we love

04:50

G220. I know we've had a long relationship with you guys. And so talk about G220, what the goal is and what your shows are.

04:59

All right. So at G220 Radio, it's Ricky Gantz and Mike Miller and I now. We have various guests on the shows that can be heretics, that can be, you know, very well -known people or lesser well -known people or people who aren't well -known at all.

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And we'll talk about a variety of different topics in a very conversational format. You know, we'll debate in a sense, but in very, you know, kind of an open conversation.

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We've had recently, you know, some big time heretics like Keith Giles on the show, who also, you know, is one of those rethinking hell proponents, but a lot of other heresies that he has a show and talking about homosexuality and whether or not

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Christians can be homosexual. And, you know, we talk about various different things on a normal everyday basis.

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So we try to capture what it would be like to talk and fellowship or just debate. Like if you were to, you're on the street or you're on your couch or you're in a

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Walmart somewhere. And we just try to have a sort of a conversational based format to where people can just listen in the conversation, depending on what the topic is.

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So we'll have a variety of topics and some of the bigger things Ricky's doing right now, he's going through the London Baptist Confection.

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I'm actually going through the Synod of Dort right now with Dr. Sinema, which has been a really good series, very educational.

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And the reason why I'm basically doing that is to show that sometimes modern Calvinists, we tend to use history as a bludgeon tool against maybe some people who disagree with us, who are other types of Calvinists, quote unquote, or maybe even opinions.

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And the Synod of Dort tends to be that one that kind of surrounds the conversation. So going into history, seeing the nuances of history, explaining what happened at that Synod, I think has been very, very useful, very, very helpful.

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And it actually is a hallmark as to how things like certain kinds of Arminian theology spread.

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So anyways, those are some things we're doing at GC20 and we're having a great time. So folks know your background, your active duty right now, your background though, which became important for this debate was linguistics.

06:50

Yeah, linguistics. So I have a master's in linguistics.

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The reason why I haven't pursued my master's yet, obviously, is because of time. But even before then, I had plenty of mentors in my life, people that I was able to go to, to talk about language in general, as well as linguistics within the

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Greek and Hebrew and a lot of other things. So I think most of my Christian walk, I've had various, many influences in my life, whether it's a line

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I've been able to talk to mentors, pastors, friends, who are all linguists. So guys set me up in a different way to enjoy language and to explore linguistics.

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So I definitely enjoy the topic. I enjoy the subject. I enjoy the academia of the linguistics. Are you saying that serving our country is taking too much time?

07:33

That's what it sounds like you're saying. Yeah, it's definitely a tough job. So pray for your people in the Air Force and the

07:39

Army and every other branch. Well, I mean, I can understand you saying that for Army, you know, for like, you know, guys like Ricky, but...

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Here we go. Here we go. It's on. All right, we're gonna leave the

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Army -Air Force debate aside. Always comes up. Always comes up. It does, because we all know that Army's better.

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So just saying. Well, Army and Marines are my hero, if it makes you feel any better.

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They're my heroes. See, the thing is, is that you're on my show. So you're like going, I can't really challenge him to it.

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If I was on G220, I think, well, if I was on G220, you'd be outnumbered because Ricky would be on my side. So I'd still win.

08:19

Well, you know, Air Force is usually outnumbered, but you know how we handle things with airplanes. So don't worry about it. This is true.

08:26

So let's talk about the debate. You did a debate with Chris Date. Chris Date is from Rethinking Hell.

08:33

Very good debater. I think you'd agree with that. He's a very good debater. And we're going to talk about later on what makes him such a good debater, why he is a formidable opponent.

08:43

But he was very much afraid to debate you, it seemed. I mean, it took a long time to get this debate to happen, didn't it?

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Yeah, it took almost, I think, a year and a half, two years, I think, if I'm right about my time slot. So it did take a little bit to try to get him on.

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But in the beginning, where there didn't want to be a debate just for clarification, it slowly turned into he'd be to do a formal moderated debate.

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And the reason why there was such delay is because I wanted to do more of a conversational debate like we do on the show. And he didn't agree to that.

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So for the longest time, it was very difficult to try to get us to come together to agree on a format that we can agree to.

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And of course, we finally did. And then, you know, that's how this came about. And that format was a formal debate and then an informal discussion.

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So it was actually two separate and two different moderators, one of your selection, one of his selection.

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And I thought it was well, you know, he wanted the time to debate. So that was the moderator of your selection.

09:39

The moderator of his selection was someone that he felt more comfortable with. And the moderator of his selection was somebody who did hold to eternal conscious torment.

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So he told me before the debate that he felt that would be fair enough. So, you know, that was a good choice on his part,

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I guess, to help show that he's not trying to be biased. Yeah. And I want to get into some of the technical things of that debate.

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It was a very technical debate, but here's the thing I do want to say. What is it that you see as the difference between a formal debate and a discussion?

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You want a discussion, you want a formal debate. What's the difference with those? Well, when you do study linguistics, especially discourse analysis, we all know in different contexts, conversations can flow differently, whether it's online in conversation between somebody, you know, depending on the geographic location as well.

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The power struggles between the person you're speaking to, as well as the person is being spoken to, as well as the debate structure.

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There is times, you know, time you're working against, you know, there's maybe certain kinds of information you could only get out a certain kind of time.

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You know, we talked about that in the second part of the debate. It's very difficult sometimes to get 15 minutes of information in. So you tend to speed up your speech, maybe to try to get it in, or you slow it down, or you have to leave stuff out.

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And in conversation, at least, you have a little bit more of a freedom with that if you have certain topics you want to get to.

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And you can actually instantly follow up and follow up and follow up and continually follow up if you want to be able to continually, you know, hit on a specific topic.

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And it's a little more free -flowing. It necessarily doesn't have this, you know, restrictions that a time debate would.

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And if you only have an hour slot, obviously, there's that time restriction, but you have a little bit more wiggle room, depending on the direction you want to go.

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So, you know, there are pros and cons to every single type of context. And, you know, that for us, we wanted to really have a formal, informal kind of conversation,

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I guess, so that way we can kind of get down to the integrity of some of the base presuppositions of their arguments.

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All right. So, after this, let's get to, I want to start discussing the debate itself, how you think it went and what the arguments were.

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So, let's discuss that after this. Okay. So, George, this debate, what was the premise of it and how do you think it went?

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You know, the main proposition, you know, was, you know, conditional immortality, true or biblical. And of course, you know, conditional immortality as they define it, is just talking about life, being the cessation of life, having that being the punishment for sin.

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So, what we're trying to figure out is, you know, is conditional immortality biblical, but in the debate, you know,

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I did this purposefully is that I wanted people to understand is that we believe that immortality as well, people who believe in eternal conscious torment is conditional upon believing in the

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Lord Jesus Christ. And that immortality is defined biblically as not only something that, you know, we don't die in the sense that we are no longer going to go into the second death or even the first death.

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We're not going to experiencing anything, any kind of punishment from God, but life is also defined as Jesus defined in John 17 as knowing

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Christ. So, I definitely, in the beginning of the debate says, I believe conditional immortality is biblical and so most people do.

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But the idea is how you define life, how do you define death? How do you define destruction?

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How do you define, you know, punishment? And that's where it really comes down to the crux. So, it's not necessarily is conditional immortality true?

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Is conditional immortality as a destructionist defines it true? And that's the reason why

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I worded that from the beginning of the debate. Okay. So, you use some terms that for some people may be new terms. This was a very technical debate that I think you and I both agreed with and it had to be because you were really trying to reach out to people in his camp to show the problems that they have technically.

13:41

And we're going to see if that's a tactic that was necessary later, but give us some of the definitions, some of the terminology that you were using both in your description and in the debate.

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So, people can, if there's anything to pick up on. Yeah. So, you know, in conditional immortality, you know, immortality being deathlessness, being physical life.

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So, how we would interpret our death now, you know, if we died now we're life's body. Of course, consciousness is the bigger part of it and, you know, it results in annihilation or a cessation of existence.

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But death is the punishment for sin instead of eternal conscious torment. So, in order for us to have immortality, you know, most people believe according to what their position is.

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And unfortunately, some people in our camp do believe this without knowing it, is that we're born with an innate immortality that when we die, you know, our spirits will live on forever.

14:31

And of course, when we resurrect, we'll go on forever because the soul is indestructible. Well, some people believe that, some people don't, you know, there's just a lot of, you know, controversy behind that.

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Of course, they quote various historical teachers and authors and even contemporary that show that this is what they believe.

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So, they say that immortality is not innate, it's conditional. And because it's conditional, that means once you stand before God, if you're to be judged as a sinner, you'll be judged as guilty.

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And of course, the punishment is death by fire. So, that means sooner or later, you're going to be consumed by the fire and the fire will, you know, turn you to ashes or what have you.

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And then you'll be no more. And that's the punishment for sin. And that punishment lasts forever.

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They're thus the eternal aspect for them. So, that's the basic gist of what conditional immortality teaches is that it's conditional upon believing in Jesus Christ.

15:19

Only when you believe upon the Lord Jesus Christ and receive salvation will you be immortal forever.

15:25

You'll live forever and you'll, you know, be with Christ forever and no harm of the second death, which is like our first death will happen to you.

15:33

So, I don't know if that clarifies anything. Yeah, that's helpful. Now, the second question that I'd have is your background in linguistics.

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How did that help in this debate and why I actually, when I first heard your arguments against them, realized that you're specifically skilled to handle this debate and this argument.

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Explain to folks why your background helps. Yeah, it helps because when you study linguistics and you study nuances, that means, you know, you study the various ways words can be used in particular contexts.

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You know, for example, you know, if you remember the movie Wreck -It Ralph, when the guy's like, you can't.

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No, I don't. I don't. King Candy. I use this example all the time. It's something that people resonate with.

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Anyways, in the movie, King Candy has a guy, his glasses, and Wreck -It Ralph is about to hit him or whatever. And King Candy says, you wouldn't hit a guy with glasses, would you?

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And he grabs the glasses from his head and hits him with the glasses. He said, you hit a guy with glasses, well played. And the reason why that is, is because in comedy or even language in general, there can be something called ambiguity in language, where it can go from one way or the other, where King Candy meant you won't hit me in the face with a punch.

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While I'm wearing glasses, the with turned into an instrument and he hit him with the glasses.

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And the word with can have that kind of ambiguity. Well, it's the same thing with words like eternal or maybe other words that they may use within the language that, you know, whether it's in Greek or English, that some people like, you know, retaking hell or maybe other groups will capitalize on the language.

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And most people who aren't familiar with how language works, or maybe even some of the nuances of how certain word clusters work together to make a specific meaning, they will probably be oblivious to it or just be easily co -signing to what they believe.

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They'll say, well, it makes sense. They're making a cogent argument, not realizing that there are some subtle nuances that they're taking advantage of.

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And, you know, that helps when you know about how language works and you can see right through some of those arguments.

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In dismantling this, the whole argument that they make over there, rethinking hell, it's all based in the ambiguity of language.

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They rely on that. So, yeah, I mean, they probably would say that they wouldn't. Obviously, they'll think that their position is very clear, but they're, you know, capitalizing on some of the nuances and ambiguity that language can go from one direction to the other.

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The reason why this debate hasn't really died, pun intended, because it's because there's, you know, when you look at language, you can go one way or another in certain contexts, but when you look at the language of scripture as systematically as a whole, especially when it comes to the

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New Testament language and how it uses punishment, which is, to me, it seems obvious when you're looking at the systematicness of how the

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New Testament works, especially the hermeneutic of the New Testament in relationship to the old, you can see that it's a done deal.

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The reason why it's been such a large argument or a predominant argument throughout church history has nothing to do with the fact that, well, it was just because everybody believes it.

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No. And even in, you know, first century, when they try to say people like Athanasius or Irenaeus believed in conditional immortality or something like conditional immortality,

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I'm sorry, it's a lie, because when I read their writings, and I've asked other people who are scholars for those writings, they all say the same thing.

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They believed in eternal conscious torment. And I have quotes on our page or my blog, ourcommonsalvation .com, that goes through some of those things.

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So it's really something that I think is very interesting. You know, the whole debate was very challenging. Trying to exercise some of the mental capabilities that I had,

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I didn't know I had, and it stretched me as well. There's some things that are some huge challenges, but, you know,

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I'm thankful overall for it. All right. Well, after this, what I want to do is I want to talk about the tactics that you and I have seen and also a concern you and I have with this group.

19:10

So right after this, I want to talk about that. The good news is Striving for Eternity would love to come to your church to spend two days with your folks, teaching them biblical hermeneutics.

19:24

That's right, the art and science of interpreting Scripture. The bad news is somebody attending might be really upset to discover

19:30

Jeremiah 29 11 should not be their life verse. To learn more, go to strivingforeternity .org

19:37

to host a Bible interpretation made easy seminar in your area. Now, I know

19:43

Jeremiah 29 11 is your life verse, is it not? No, it's on my pillow though.

19:52

So when I sit down and I read it, it definitely gives me comfort. Yeah. All right.

19:57

So you and I have a joint concern that, you know, Chris Date comes from more conservative circles, claims to be a

20:04

Calvinist, though I believe, I don't know if you share in this, but I believe given enough time, he's going to give the

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Calvinism up. I he's slowly starting to. But one of the concerns you and I have and a major concern when

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I talked to him personally about was the fact that he works with universalists.

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He works with unbelievers that he knows and he's not sharing the gospel because the issue of rethinking hell seems to be an idol.

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It seems to be more important than the gospel to lost people he works with for this podcast. He has people that he works together, he partners with, right?

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And I think Paul makes this clear, light and darkness shouldn't be partnered together, but he partners with unbelievers for the purpose of rethinking hell.

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Why should that be a concern for us as believers and really for Chris overall? Yeah. As far as him being conservative, the more and more

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I look at some of the writings, the only thing that he calls himself Calvinist, I think is the only thing that makes him quote unquote conservative.

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But like we did in debate, we talked about how do you define life and death? He didn't flinch. He obviously doesn't believe eternal life is defined as knowing

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Christ. He said it plenty of times, said in Len's debate, he said in other debates, which if you want to watch the debate and go into that, you can see the consequences of that.

21:14

And like you said, sooner or later, you're going to have to give, something's going to give. But it's a concern of mine.

21:19

I said that right from the beginning of the debate is that for me, it's not so much the topic of annihilationism that's such an issue for me.

21:25

It's ecumenism. There's open theist within the camp. There's people who deny penal substitutionary atonement.

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There's people who deny original sin. There's people who have put off things like the inerrancy of scripture and that kind of thing.

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And Christ has said blatantly that he believes that evangelical universalists aren't heretics.

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And they call them evangelical universalists to separate themselves from secular universalists. So they try to make that distinction.

21:51

But nevertheless, it's still an issue. And to be a part of this ministry, I think is not scriptural.

21:56

It's not biblical. But this is and because they all have in common this redefining of hell or having different views of what hell is.

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That's the reason why I think there is this shared bond here is to try to remove or do away with, distance, demolish, whatever each of their motivations are.

22:14

I can't go into each of their hearts, but it's to look at the quote unquote scriptural view of what hell is and to have discussion.

22:20

When in reality, you can have this discussion, but the problem is their language is as such as if you believe in eternal conscious torment, especially recently, you can't even believe that the atonement because the atonement is something that we look at when it comes to the punishment and how it relates to hell and death.

22:36

So you can't look at that biblically either. And that's some serious language. That's not secondary issues here.

22:41

So there's a lot of that goes into this discussion. And it's very, very concerning. Yeah. I thought that was one of the things Len picked up on when he debated him was the atonement and how he really is giving up the biblical definition, even the

22:54

Calvinistic definition, he claims the Calvinist of the atonement. And so, but there are some reasons that we say he's a very good debater.

23:02

He's got certain tactics he uses. And this is one of the things I do want to bring out because for people just to listen to him, they can be overwhelmed in thinking that he's making very good arguments.

23:15

But I'm going to say, I'm not going to speak for you. You may agree. I'm going to say he uses very deceptive techniques to make arguments seem impressive when they're not one of them.

23:26

Yeah. I think one of the, sorry, go ahead. One of them. Go ahead. Yeah. No, go ahead. Go with the one of them because it's probably going to be what

23:32

I'm thinking about. The one, the first one I was going to bring out is he, he talks very quick and, and drops like thousands of scripture verses.

23:39

So it sounds like the scriptures are agreeing with him or he'll quote men like MacArthur Piper or some of the early church fathers to make it sound like they agree with his position.

23:48

So, yeah. Or he, you know, in that sense, he'll, he'll use their, their material, whether when it does agree with him or, you know, try to refute it when it doesn't, you know what

23:57

I mean? And, you know, he's kind of, you know, taking jabs at them, but the whole shotgun approach or machine gun approach to just give you scripture after scripture and scripture or argument after argument after argument, especially on social media online,

24:09

I'm sorry, I'm going to put out names because these men are all over the online. It's like you, the minute you mentioned rethinking hell, these people tend to show up like William Tanksley, Peter Grice, you know, some of the, the ones who have to defend their ministry and their name will start coming on.

24:22

And of course, they're going to make their arguments in a way that it seems like everybody just comes out of the woodwork all of a sudden. And that's sort of the same principally, the same kind of tactic, whether you're using it verbally or online forums, where all of a sudden now all these guys just come out of the woodwork and they have to spend this view.

24:36

So it seems overwhelming and overwhelming somebody definitely is a tactic that you shouldn't fall for. Yeah. Well, I experienced that with Chris when

24:43

I pointed out, which is the second thing I was going to want to bring out. He always refers to our position as the traditional position, even though we argue from the scriptures and he'll argue from the scriptures, but he always seems to want to bring in early church fathers or philosophers, even unbelievers to make his point to, oh, well, you know, not everyone believes that the soul's immortal, arguments like that.

25:07

And he, he, he defends it from the Apocrypha I've heard him use all these other writings. My point is, is that the biblical view would be the one that's based on the scriptures alone.

25:17

We don't need any other writings. And that's usually how I hear people debate with him. And, and he'll appeal to early church fathers.

25:24

He appeals to scripture. It's not that he doesn't, but when I pointed out that he also appeals to early church fathers in his arguments, therefore his would be the traditional view.

25:34

Ours would be a biblical view. I experienced exactly what you said. All of a sudden, all these guys start contacting me all pretending to be like, they're just concerned.

25:42

They want to make sure things are, that I'm saying things right. And really what they're doing is they kept trying to trap me in a way that they could then say, oh, see,

25:50

Andrew was wrong or Andrew lied or Andrew did something. And Chris stays silent during that. And then once they think they got something and what they got was really funny.

25:59

I remember with me, it was, I posted at the same time someone else posted and I was responding to a post above. And so when

26:04

I hit send, the other person had sent just before me. So I didn't see theirs until after. And so the way it laid out, it looked like I was responding to that person and use that, say,

26:14

I'll see. And I'm like, but you've changed your argument with me three times. You kept different tactics, but it is that mob mentality where they all jump in and to defend.

26:24

And I think you said it well, to defend their position of rethinking hell. I really think that that's become an idol where,

26:31

I mean, for me working with unbelievers, if I'm at a secular job, my concern is their salvation.

26:37

I'm not going to put sharing the gospel with them aside to promote a position. Now at a secular job,

26:43

I'm there to do that work. I'm not there to evangelize, but if I'm doing a ministry, how can

26:48

I do ministry with someone who is an unbeliever and then not even be concerned about the gospel with them?

26:54

To me, that's a real problem. I mean, it's like saying that you're going to pastor a church with an unbeliever, with a universalist, and you guys are going to co -pastor.

27:03

Yeah. I mean, they would say that they don't agree with universalism. They'll say that they wouldn't work with them in quote unquote ministry.

27:10

They just simply have had them on the show to talk about it or they've been in books with them.

27:16

They're not necessarily agreeing or co -signing their position or endorsing their position before the show.

27:21

He has admitted to me that some of the guys he works with, maybe not on the show, but the guys he works with are unbelievers.

27:28

And I'm like - I'm not disagreeing with what you're saying. What I'm saying is that they're going to backpedal and say this a little bit.

27:34

They're going to say, well, we don't endorse these people. Yeah, that's fine. I guess not endorsing them, you can make a difference there.

27:40

But once again, like you said, there's still a concern there. Why aren't you telling these people that they're heresies?

27:46

Well, because they don't believe it. I've actually had people who've contacted me. I've talked to privately even before we get to do this debate.

27:53

And I even got to talk to one of them before. I guess one of the main hitters, he was a primary commenter on most of these forums on the phone.

28:01

And after we were done talking about annihilationism, I asked him, why don't you believe some of these other positions are heretical?

28:07

He's like, well, we just don't believe that they are. Do you have any biblical proof that they are? We kind of went over some of those things, but they didn't believe that.

28:13

They didn't think that my position in saying that these people are heretics was valid. So I'm like, well, I know we can agree to disagree, but I think you're very dangerous.

28:21

Yeah, I see a lot of confirmation bias within there. But one of the other things that they do, a big tactic, and one

28:29

I mentioned earlier, because it is what gave you the advantages, there is a definite reliance on the ambiguity of language within their argumentation.

28:39

Explain that tactic, how Chris uses that tactic, why it's so effective? Well, the main one is the fact that the death, the punishment for sin, eternal punishment, as in Matthew 25, that the punishment for sin is death, is it eternal?

28:52

They'll say, well, we believe it's eternal. What do you mean you believe it's eternal? If you're talking about the cessation of existence or life or privation of life, it's a one -time act.

28:58

But they say that it's eternal in the sense that it's a one -time act and that it lasts forever. And that's exactly what the scripture had in mind.

29:04

It's not eternal punishment, eternal punishment, or I'm sorry, it's not eternal punishing, it's eternal punishment. And then they'll go to other scriptures where you'll show the redemption that was purchased for us.

29:13

They'll show how those are one -time acts that last forever, or they'll use the Greek word, the perfect tense, you know, it has a one -time action that has abiding results.

29:20

And they'll kind of go over all these different areas that believe or show that the position is quote unquote valid or viable.

29:27

But when you go back to Matthew 25 and you see the prepositional phrase going into eternal fire, and you work that in with the whole text and what it's trying to illustrate, as well as some of the words that they use and look at the rest of the

29:39

New Testament, you put all this together, you don't necessarily come out thinking, well, that's punishment in the sense of just the death penalty.

29:46

But they'll use words in the Greek, they'll use the words in the Septuagint, in every other context, it talks about death or the death punishment or capital punishment.

29:54

Sure. But does that mean that in this context? And if you look at this word with all these other words combined, it changes the meaning and that's the way how language works, but they tend to do that and they use those kinds of tactics.

30:04

So looking at some of those ambiguities, seeing how they typically use these strategies, why they're able to, you know, once again, make their positions seem reasonable is because that an ambiguity like eternal punishment, they'll formulate the argument, they'll frame the argument, which is very, very important in presuppositions.

30:21

When you talk to somebody, how you frame an argument can make it sound more convincing. But if you're able to see through that framing, you're able to see through those presuppositions, you're able to see through those ambiguities and see the nuances that are being played there, then you're not so easily deceived.

30:34

You really don't kind of fall for that. You're able to kind of point out where, okay, I see what you're doing there, but that's not exactly what the text is saying.

30:40

You know, one of the interesting things is knowing his tactics. You almost took his tactics and diffused them by,

30:46

I mean, he became a joke in the debate that you were talking faster than him.

30:51

He even mentioned that you may be the only person that is a faster talker and gets more content in a shorter period of time than him.

30:59

You were very attuned to the ambiguity of language, but there was something else that a tactic he uses often with folks that completely,

31:08

I think, fell apart with you. He tries to use the Greek to silence people. And right off the bat, he did that with you, tried to use the

31:16

Greek and all of a sudden woke up to the reality that you understood the Greek specifics in this.

31:24

And he gave up that tactic pretty much in the debate with you. I thought that was amazing. He does this because most people don't know

31:30

Greek. Explain why the Greek and some of the specifics were so important and why he tried to do what he did and how you're able to counter that.

31:41

Okay. Well, first off, I want to be able to encourage people who have an English translation, who may not know as much

31:47

Greek, that the translations, you know, they tend to do a fairly good job, a very good job. Actually, the people who are on these boards, they try to get those languages, the language out into the common tongue.

31:57

So when you have an English translation, if you can learn how to read your English translations in your own mother tongue and you understand how certain words work together and why, you know, you have a preposition here or a verb here as opposed to a noun, you can still defend this.

32:13

You can still defend your position. Now going into the Greek, you know, it's important that you understand, at least if you're going to study

32:18

Greek, understand that you have to get past something called lexical studies, where it's just word studies. Word studies are dangerous.

32:24

They don't do that often, but they do, I'm sorry, they do do it often, but they don't do it in a way that makes it look like they're only doing word studies.

32:31

And what I mean by that is if you see the word, you know, eternal, they'll focus on the word eternal or they'll focus on the word punishment, and then they'll see how it's used in other contexts.

32:38

And they're just doing just the word study. Well, if you look at Greek and you look at language in general and you see how words affect the meaning in relationship to other words, or maybe even the whole discourse, paragraph, page, chapter, book, then it's easier for you to kind of see through some of that stuff.

32:53

Learning Greek will help you because we're in Jude 7, which was one of the main verses that we were looking at, where it talks about Sodom and Gomorrah undergoing the punishment of eternal fire.

33:04

When you read that in English, it looks like the author is saying that they were an example, that Sodom and Gomorrah were an example by undergoing a punishment of eternal fire.

33:13

And the way it's read there, it seems like, oh, they're just talking about a past punishment. And in your English translations, it feels like that. But in the

33:18

Greek, that's the actual present participle of means and the way the rules work within that context.

33:24

Okay. Notice I said that in that context is that what Jude was saying, just like the demons were an example in the past, just like people who got destroyed in Egypt were an example in the past.

33:34

You'll see all the verbs in the Greek are aorist or perfect tense, which is sort of showing a pastness, but all of a sudden he gets to Sodom and Gomorrah and shows how they're also, you know, sort of an example.

33:45

And he uses the word, they are an example by undergoing a punishment of eternal fire. But the word undergoing there is a present participle of means.

33:52

So basically what the Greek is doing is it's expounding upon how the inhabitants of Sodom and Gomorrah are an example.

33:59

By what? By undergoing now a punishment of eternal fire. The grammar there, the Greek grammar there, the words there and how they work, it's a little more specific.

34:07

Like I said, you can go to my page, rcommonsalvation .com, it goes through some of those. But if you understand the

34:12

Greek and the grammar there, you can easily say, well, in English, sure, it looks reasonable, but in the Greek, you can't make that argument.

34:18

So it is an advantage to understand how sometimes Greek words work together. And of course, understanding linguistics, you can get, pick that up a little easier.

34:26

But most people aren't going to be in tune to that because unfortunately, Western Christianity, American Christianity, not only are we undereducated as far as reading

34:35

God's word in general, but, you know, what we used to be educated on as far as what people taught their flock and that kind of thing is now just kind of falling apart.

34:43

And I've told people the reason why this movement, not as big as people think it is actually, let me just say that. But the only reason why this movement would gain any ground is because people just don't know how to read scripture.

34:51

Yeah. And what I'll do is get you to give me all of the links to different articles that you're referencing here, and we'll put those into the show notes so that we have them.

35:00

But I personally, I can't read Chris's heart, but I believe that when you opened your mouth about the

35:05

Greek in the cross -examination part, I think he suddenly went, oops, this tactic of shutting people down with my handling of the

35:13

Greek is not going to work with George because he kind of gave up on that tactic that I've seen him use over and over again.

35:20

Yeah. He was, he was still, I mean, he still pressed it, you know, in certain areas, you know, but, you know, I had the opportunity to kind of rebuttal, which was a good thing.

35:27

And it's mostly in those second debates. So most people will watch the first debate. It's getting, it's getting more views, unfortunately, in the second debate, a lot more meat starts coming out, especially when dealing with atonement, which

35:36

I encourage people to listen to, because that's where you really start to see some of the bad argumentation when it comes to the atonement.

35:43

But yeah, you know, you have somebody who may or may not want to bludgeon somebody, or may or may not want to, you know, intimidate somebody.

35:50

I don't know, like you said, his heart, but at this point, it seems like this is the case often, you know, when you run into people who are wanting to educate, quote unquote, rethink things, and then they're going to, they're going to just overwhelm you with a subject or maybe a topic that you're not familiar with.

36:04

And just like in the streets, man, you know, if you grew up in the street, you can be a bully for a little bit, but there's always somebody who's going to be bigger than you is going to come around.

36:11

And I'm not saying I'm the bigger one, because I really want somebody else who is more educated, much smarter, who understands the

36:17

Greek to be able to look at some of my arguments and just take them and run with them. I really do. I really want some more people who have been doing this for years to take them on.

36:24

But like I said, this movement is such a tiny movement. I don't think most of the scholars or academics really take notice of it.

36:30

It's only those who are within the academia who are already those positions that, you know, will put it into a commentary or write an article about it or what have you.

36:38

And that's it. They'll move on with their lives, because for them, it's truly a secondary issue. But for rethinking, hell, it seems to be a primary issue.

36:44

You just hit on one of the tactics, and this is why I think he is a good debater because of the style and the tactic he does.

36:52

Doesn't mean that he's right on his position, but he's very good at debating. I mean, being able to give a lot of content short period of time, very effective.

37:00

It makes it sound like you have a lot of weight on your side. He throws tons of scripture verses out, never gets into exegeting.

37:08

I mean, I think that's where, like you said, the discussion part of it, that fleshes that out a lot more. In a formal debate, you can run a clock and giving scripture verse after scripture verse after scripture verse, or giving quotes from somebody that doesn't agree with his position, but quoting them in such a way that makes it sound like it, all those things help.

37:26

But I think what really does help is when people don't understand, for example, the Greek in this case, to understand the participles and all of that.

37:35

And if it wasn't someone like yourself who understood that debating him, most people go, oh, I don't understand that.

37:40

And this is true for anyone. Like you said on the street, you and I like doing evangelism. One of the things you get when evangelizing is you'll get someone that just tries, an atheist that's trying to say something to get you to be like, well,

37:52

I don't know, right? Because once you say, I don't know, there's this sense like they feel the pride, they know something you don't.

37:58

You feel inferior, like maybe he's right. Now, I never feel like someone's right when it comes to sharing the gospel.

38:04

Yeah, me neither. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. That's fine. I don't claim to know everything.

38:09

No, not a problem. But when you do have people just having discussion on any topic, when someone makes you feel inferior, what it naturally does to the person is make you think that person is right.

38:21

And Chris has a great way of, a great ability of being able to do that to people. He uses the

38:26

Greek to do it. You kind of silenced it because you understood the nuances of the Greek as he was trying to do.

38:31

And it didn't leave people that are watching with the impression that he knows more than you in that.

38:37

And that was an effective thing that you did, but it's also something people have to notice. And I'm wanting to break this down as more of a tactics, not so much on the argument that he's making, but this is like, you get professing atheists that try the same sort of tactics.

38:53

And if Christians can identify the tactics that are done, I think that they can wade through and cut through all of the nonsense to get to what the real issues are.

39:02

Like you did in the debate where you kind of cut through a lot of the ambiguity to make them where you had to answer really specific things because you understood the need for that specificity.

39:12

Because look, people like this can be very frustrating to deal with, especially online. The constant redefinition, the constant ambiguity, the gang mentality that we mentioned, it makes it,

39:23

I've been dealing, you know this, I've been dealing with the Black Hebrew Israelites of recent, and they have the same type of thing. Exactly the same.

39:29

They want to debate you in groups. They want to go after you in different clusters.

39:35

And they want that ambiguity. They want to jump all over the Bible and not stick to one text and read it within its context.

39:41

It's the same frustration. So for people that not just dealing with rethinking hell, Chris Date, let's discuss some of those tactics briefly.

39:49

What it is that you see in those tactics? How it makes us frustrated and how to overcome that?

39:54

Because you did a great job with him doing that. Okay. So one of them, you know, obviously we just talked about, you know, don't be frustrated or feel disillusioned about maybe some of the arguments that they're making that make it sound like they're correct when they use words a certain way, like eternal or eternal fire, you know, meaning from God, not necessarily a fire that lasts forever or burns their wicked forever.

40:17

Just take your time. Realize that, you know, you're maybe not familiar with the art from there is okay.

40:22

You know, just listen to what they have to say and just kind of wade through the argument. If you get into them, you know, get into it with them.

40:28

Just be cautious with the kind of forum you choose to use an online form, you know, understand that the tactics they may use is the, is the being able to control or manipulate the conversation in an online form.

40:38

You can't have the same kind of back and forth that you do in conversation, understanding the context in which you're having the conversation is part of equipping yourself on some of those tactics because online, they're really good at being able to just copy paste quote, and then, you know, write five page book that you don't have time to read, but they just want to make it look good for other people who are going to that time.

40:59

So understanding the context where you're talking and how the conversation flows is also very, very important. You know, seeing that they overwhelm you sometimes with maybe some texts or scriptures, like you said, and, and kind of stacking, you know, the, the shotgun or machine gun approach.

41:13

Once again, they'll fill over one with that, you know, maybe just pick one or two scriptures and just trying to hit on that as much as you can.

41:18

Trying to have a systematic understanding of scripture, not necessarily just a narrow view. What I mean by that is that they may even get you or pin you to a scripture that proves their position in a sense, because the way they're using the language, and you have to take the whole of the new

41:33

Testament into consideration when it comes to this discussion. Don't ever forget that while they're, while they're magnifying a specific portion of scripture, always pan back and think about the rest of scripture and how everything works together.

41:45

They do the same things, you know, they have various podcasts in which they describe how all these other scriptures work together.

41:50

But once again, remember they have to frame it, which is another tactic. They have to frame the argument a certain way in order for us to read a particular scripture a certain way.

41:59

And what I mean by that is like in Revelation where it talks about the smoke of their torment will rise forever. It talks about the punishment that we receive in Revelation 14.

42:07

They'll take what smoke means from the Old Testament, you know, how that is a symbolic to mean that the punishment lasts forever, you know, no rest day or night.

42:16

They'll show from Old Testament scriptures or other areas, how that could possibly mean that, or possibly mean this, and they'll maybe even use the language of probability that we're used to atheists hearing, you know, that they could be this, could mean that, doesn't necessarily have to mean that, doesn't necessarily mean this, that you'll hear those types of terms being thrown out all the time.

42:34

And it makes you feel like, well, there's got to be a viability here. Well, not necessarily. So when you look at Revelation 14, there's definitely a uniqueness to that passage in that all the words are coming together to formulate an idea that these people will be punished in this fire forever.

42:48

But if they can get you to take it apart and then, you know, just focus on this area of the, of the, of the scripture by, you know, focusing on just the fire that ascends forever, uh, looking at the

42:58

Old Testament, now they got you. If they can get you to believe part of the frame, then, you know, sooner or later they'll get you to believe the rest of the way of how they frame their argument.

43:06

So pay attention to how they frame their arguments and what they're using, because oftentimes they will use

43:11

Old Testament scriptures to validate what they're, what they're basically trying to say. And it seems valid because obviously in Revelation and many of the

43:18

New Testament is based upon Old Testament language. So we have to believe that, but they're using, once again, a presupposition you would agree with, and then they'll frame the argument a certain way to where it sounds like they're right.

43:28

So you have to be able to pay attention to that or else you'll be duped and it would be an instant. Um, and the other thing, you know, as far as the mob mentality and gaming mentality, you know, just be aware that, you know, if you do get multiple people coming online, or maybe even in discussion somewhere, you know, it's normal, it's normal for them to do that.

43:45

I think because, you know, they, they so believe this, so they're going to want to be able to jump on it like we do, depending on, you know, if somebody says

43:51

Jesus Christ isn't God. So if that happens, don't feel overwhelmed. Just take one person and just talk to them only.

43:56

Don't worry about what everybody else is saying. Yeah. I did that with the black people in Israel, like in New York, where they were trying to gang up.

44:03

It's like I tried to deal with one person. And the other thing is to read in context. I mean, the last verse of Isaiah, it says this, and they shall go out and look on the dead bodies of men who have rebelled against me for their worm shall not die, their fire shall not be quenched, and they shall be abhorrence to all flesh.

44:24

And when I was doing a back and forth discussion with Chris on, and I tried to say just to a few verses, that verse and Daniel, Daniel 12 too.

44:32

And he couldn't deal with that verse without jumping to Ezekiel or somewhere else. I said, wait, you already agreed.

44:38

We read it within its immediate context first before jumping. That's the thing that a lot of people don't do.

44:44

They'll, they'll say that they understand the right things of how to do hermeneutics of interpretation, but then they break it.

44:53

And this is a tactic you often see with people. When they're about to break the very rule that they just affirm, they usually state it.

45:01

It's funny because they'll state it so you think they're not doing it because they understand the rule. And then they go and do that.

45:07

One of the reasons I think Chris likes to do formal debates. I saw this in your debate. I saw it in Len's debate.

45:12

He has, and this again, what makes him a good debater, not necessarily right, but a good debater.

45:18

He uses a tactic of using up almost all of his cross -examination time to make an argument and forms the question, which is really an argument.

45:27

And the question is a simple like yes, no question. So you're answering very quickly. And really what he's doing is using all that time to further his argument.

45:35

So what he does is, and this is a great tactic for debating, and I think when people are experienced at debating,

45:42

I think you pick these things up better, but it's really running the clock to make sure he's actually giving himself more time to make his arguments and asking a simple yes, no type question.

45:52

What that ends up doing is it doesn't add any of your time. You're not doing any explaining. That's one of the tactics

45:59

I find very interesting that he does. He did it with you. Let's do this. I want to take a break and I want to try to wrap up with this part, with something he said in the debate where I thought he crossed the line.

46:11

So let's discuss that after this. Ding dong, Jehovah's Witnesses. Ding dong,

46:18

Mormons. Christian, are you ready to defend the faith when false religions ring your doorbell?

46:24

Do you know what your Muslim and Jewish friends believe? You will if you get Andrew Rappaport's book,

46:31

What Do They Believe? When we witness to people, we need to present the truth, but it is very wise to know what they believe, and you will get

46:39

Andrew Rappaport's book at whatdotheybelieve .com. I think that's how the Jehovah's Witnesses and Seven -Day

46:45

Adventists started, rethinking hell. That was their key point too. Let's talk about one thing that where I thought

46:51

Chris Day crossed the line with you, and it's interesting that people online were trying to accuse you of personal attacks and hominems against Chris.

46:59

I listened to that. I didn't see anywhere where you did that, but he clearly did.

47:05

He accused you of being guilty of heresy, and you ended up having to correct him that he was misrepresenting your view.

47:12

So he basically spent a good two minutes explaining that what you held to was heresy, that it was wrong, and that you needed to repent of it.

47:21

And then as soon as it got turned to you, you said, that's not my position. Yeah, it's the issue of atonement, and one of the other tactics that I want everybody to be privy to is making a distinction without making a difference.

47:34

Learn that, because it happens a lot, and we could possibly fall into it too, where because Jesus Christ died on the cross, therefore the final punishment of the wicked is death in the same sense.

47:45

And though we believe that Jesus Christ died, this is going to the heresy, we know that that's part of the punishment.

47:51

I mean, that's part of what he did to fulfill atonement for us. But in his mind, in their mind, you know, the position of eternal conscious torment skirts dangerously close to heresy, as we pointed out in some articles as well in the video.

48:05

And by saying that, you've raised the bar. You've made this now a secondary, primary, quote -unquote, issue now.

48:10

You've pushed up the language. You don't talk like that without necessarily crossing the line. And I showed how in his logic, it doesn't necessarily mean that we render the death of Christ, because they say, because we believe that Jesus Christ, when he was alive, cried out, it is finished.

48:25

And then we say, and then he died. We make the death of Christ, we render it an afterthought, and we render the salvific value of Christ's death to zero.

48:34

None of us believe that. But he's saying our logical conclusion would be that that would be the case.

48:39

That unless, you know, if Christ bore all of God's wrath and atoned for our sins while he was alive, why did then he go on to die?

48:47

He makes this argument all the time. He does it in lens debate. He does a lot of other people, and it leaves people confused.

48:53

Number one, making a distinction without making a difference, because we don't believe that. But it's a very interesting argument to make, because you can see he's trying to relate the final punishment in which a person dies in the second death, the same way we die in the first death, in the sense that we go into an unconscious state.

49:06

And he's trying to say that in Christ taking our, in him dying, which we believe that that was the death, was when the moment the atonement was satisfied and the punishment was satisfied.

49:17

Once again, when we look at the scripture, we know that the holistic of from Christ's birth all the way to his ascension and his intercession for sinners and his return, there's a whole other work.

49:26

It's a chain. If one link in the chain is broken, the whole work is incomplete. But if you look at the language of scripture, it says that when

49:32

Christ was on the cross, he said what? It is finished. And the Greek there is a perfect tense. I mean, at the moment he said it, it was finished.

49:39

That doesn't mean that the death that we believe that the death is rendered to zero. But if you're going to say that we believe that, then you're going to say that Jesus believed that, or that the scriptures believe that.

49:47

When at the moment he spoke, it is finished. It was finished. It didn't mean that the death didn't mean anything. It didn't mean the resurrection wouldn't mean anything.

49:53

It doesn't mean the ascension wouldn't mean anything. But that's the logic that he's pushing to us, saying that this is what we believe, when none of us believe that.

50:00

None of us do. And it wouldn't necessarily quote unquote, skirt dangerously close to heresy, because nobody here is saying that, you know, when we say, and then he died, as if we believe that the death is rendered zero, just because we say that.

50:14

It's just sequential. It's chronological. Of course, then he died. He said it's finished and then he died. That's how the scripture words it.

50:19

That's how we say it. But because we believe God took, or Jesus Christ took all of God's wrath while he was alive. And when he cried out, it's finished.

50:26

It was the sins were atoned for. We believe that all the death, therefore it doesn't have any value in the salvific court.

50:31

We don't believe that. None of us believe that. None of us say that. But to him, that's the logical conclusion. And when I called that out,

50:36

I said, that's your logic. No one believes that it's logic, according to Chris, not logic, according to how the scriptures define how we use our language.

50:44

And you can quote all the people you want, like Wayne Grudem and everybody else that they point to on rethinking health, but ask any one of those other guys, how they defend the faith and how they look at the salvific atonement of Christ and how everything works together.

50:55

Just because you believe that death is a necessary component of the atonement doesn't mean your position is correct. So that's making a distinction without making a difference.

51:02

And that's something we have to be privy to. It's actually a logical fallacy of equivocation where they are equivocating words, giving them two different meanings and making it seem the same.

51:12

And one last thing that I noticed is that they play the victim card. I mean, as you saw afterwards, as soon as the debate's done, they're accusing you of all kinds of, oh, he was doing ad hominems.

51:22

They jump right to the victim. Oh, the attacking crit, yeah. Yeah. And this is what we see in our culture.

51:29

Our culture is all about defending the victims right now. And this is what the whole social justice movement is about.

51:35

If you can play that you're the victim, then everyone has to defend you and no one's supposed to be attacking.

51:41

And the whole time they're attacking. I mean, it was Chris that did an ad hominem attack, accusing you of heresy.

51:47

That's an attack of the person saying you believe something, especially when you don't believe. But I think you handled yourself outstandingly.

51:55

And one thing before we close out, you know, this is coming. How about we play a game? Time now to start the spiritual transition game.

52:07

And maybe for any of the guys on Rethinking Hell that listened to this, this may be the first time they hear the gospel because I don't know if Chris is sharing it.

52:15

So, I mean, he told me that point blank that he doesn't with them. So this is a game where you're going to give me something.

52:22

You're familiar with this game. You're going to give me something and whatever you give me, I have to transition to the gospel.

52:28

And the reason we play this game is so people learn that it becomes easier to share the gospel when we turn the conversation spiritual.

52:36

Many people try to figure out how to do that. And you can take any conversation and turn it to the gospel with practice.

52:43

If you keep playing this game, there's a lot of practice, you get better, and then you can turn conversations, any conversation, find a way to turn it to the gospel.

52:53

I'm going to try to stump you. Yeah, like you're going to do. Matt Slick already did that once.

53:00

Let's go to hell, go to the gospel. That'd be in the context of it. Absolutely.

53:06

Yeah. That's pushing you too far close. I have to try to do something left field. So let's see.

53:12

Do I just point out a topic or a word or how do you want me to do it? Whichever you want to do it. Okay. So are you familiar with...

53:20

Okay. Hey, let's do it. We just talked about the show. Linguistics. Let's say you're having a conversation with somebody in linguistics.

53:28

Go from linguistics to the gospel. I will go from linguistics from the gospel and we will see if you being

53:33

Mr. Linguistics will enjoy this because this is actually how I do go. I've done this before. So I'm going to reuse something.

53:40

Look, when we look at linguistics, there is something amazing about language. When you study language, you can see, for example, we have differences within different Chinese dialects.

53:52

You have Mandarin, you have Cantonese, you have Taiwanese. What you end up seeing is, for example, the

54:00

Cantonese is from inland, from Canton. You end up seeing that there was this changes in language when different cultures start having people move from one area to another that you could tell the movement of groups of people because of the language.

54:16

The language changes. The example would be Yiddish. I'm sure you are familiar with that.

54:21

No, maybe not. Yiddish is something that's a mix of German and Hebrew. And it was something that became kind of its own language, but it's a mixture of those two.

54:31

We see that with languages, that as people move around, there becomes a picking up of some words of one language, some of another, and it eventually becomes its own language.

54:40

And we could see movements, we could see population growth and change through language.

54:46

But what's really interesting is as you go back and back, language goes back and you end up with about 13, 12 or 13 proto languages, first languages.

54:56

Interesting thing about 12 or 13 is because there's a click language that some argue is not a language.

55:03

I think it actually is because it does have a grammar, which would be what defines it. And I actually took, and maybe this will, maybe

55:10

George doesn't remember I talked about this with him once, but I actually took a course, a university course on linguistics, which is where I learned about the proto languages.

55:18

Now what's really neat about proto languages is this. So 13 places around the earth, people suddenly started speaking languages for the very first time, different languages that can't be traced back.

55:31

That means if you believe in evolution and you're going to be arguing that language evolved, it couldn't have evolved once.

55:38

That miracle of someone finally speaking and developing a language had to happen 13 times in 13 different places.

55:45

I actually would argue that that fits more with something else, something we see in the Bible, that God distributed people around the world and changed their language where they had one language and now all of a sudden they had 13 languages.

55:56

And then those languages morphed and changed. Why did God do that? God did that because people were being so sinful.

56:03

They were pulling their resources together almost like we have with technology today, where today we have a new tower of Babel.

56:10

We have a tower of Babel being built on the internet where people pull resources together to do evil and to glorify man.

56:18

And God punished that. And the way he chose to punish it at that time was to separate people by language.

56:23

But you know what? There's going to be a different separation. And by the way, that separation is going to be based on the works that we do, whether we do good works or bad, but we got a problem.

56:32

All of the works we do, even those ones we think are good, look as filthy rags in God's sight because it's self -righteous for us to compare ourselves to God and say that we could do good.

56:41

He's absolutely perfect and you and I break his law. But here's what God did. God came to earth and he paid the fine.

56:47

Now we owe an eternal fine, eternal, like forever and ever, not with any kind of death that just goes out of existence, eternal.

56:55

And that's why Jesus Christ uniquely had to come and die on the cross. Being a hundred percent fully

57:00

God, he could pay an eternal fine. If it was a temporal death, anyone could pay that temporally.

57:06

But the reality is, is that Christ was fully God. So he paid that fine being fully God. He could pay the eternal fine, but he also was a man who never broke

57:14

God's law. And therefore, because of that, he could pay the fine of other men. That's what makes

57:19

Jesus unique. And that is what he did. God Almighty to pay the fines of people that if we repent from trusting ourself as a good person, repent of our good works, trust in Jesus Christ, we can have eternal life from linguistics.

57:32

I knew you took a turning. It all turned when you said separation.

57:39

The minute you capitalized on that one word and you made the transition, I think that was the point. As soon as that happened, that's when the transition was made.

57:46

That's really good. But the nice thing about playing this game is if you do it well, people don't even realize the conversation just changed.

57:53

What just happened? How did I get into a spiritual conversation here? And I actually had that happen once.

58:00

I had a guy in New York that we were talking about something. I don't even remember what, and it transitioned. And he literally looked at me and goes, how did we get into a conversation about God?

58:09

I said, well, because that's what I wanted to talk to you about. Yes. Learning how to transition is a very beneficial skill.

58:17

And if you're a first time here, this transition game, I think a lot of people are learning, especially when it comes to witness and it benefits us greatly because I think it's just a basic skill to have.

58:26

So George, I'm going to get to see you hopefully soon in a couple of weeks. I'm hoping next weekend from when we're recording,

58:34

I'll be at Carnation Washington. You going to be there? No, you're not. You know, go talk to a general or someone high up and say, hey,

58:43

I need off. I knew when you were coming, I talked to one of the guys who was coordinating. I saw the dates and I was like, oh man.

58:50

So yeah, I'm going to miss it. You know, Pastor Carl should have some pull. I mean, he's, you know, he's in a real branch.

58:57

Sorry. Yeah. What are you talking about? He's in a real branch. He's in the reserve air force.

59:04

I thought he was army. Oh no. Well, he was on my side. I thought he was army or is it that he's trying to, he's trying to go army as chaplain.

59:12

I think he's, I thought he is reserve army. He wanted to go army. I'm going to try to convince him not to.

59:18

Well, you won't be there at the conference to do that. I'll win there too. I hope.

59:24

Well, I will be in your side of the country, actually a head out tomorrow from when we're recording this.

59:30

So by the time everyone hears it, I'll already be out of San Francisco and be preaching in Washington. But I will be going to Idaho up at Jim Osmond and Justin Peter's church.

59:41

That's going to be coming up. And so looking forward to that. George, before we go, anything you want to let folks know about or any of the other projects you're working on?

59:50

No, I mean, we talked about it at the beginning. I would probably just say if you guys are listening and you're curious more about the topic, once again, whatchamacallit.

59:59

Do you have any new books coming out or is there a way people can get a hold of your old book on PDF?

01:00:05

Yeah. Possibly the Greatest of Mission can be found on G20 Ministries. It's free in PDF. You can find it. Or if you went to the

01:00:10

Possibly Facebook page, you could find the link directly at the top. You could just click on it and then you could read it for free.

01:00:16

I've been working on two or three books, but obviously time and a lot of the things kind of go against me.

01:00:22

So maybe when I get out and have a little bit more time and do a little bit more ministry like I want to, then

01:00:27

I'll be able to publish those books. So we'll see. Well, we'll look forward to that. And I'll put the links for Oposity in the show notes.

01:00:33

So George, thanks for coming on. I really appreciate it. Appreciate all that you're doing for the Kingdom of God. Thank you.

01:00:39

Thank you, Andrew. 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.