Bonus: Father’s Day

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Show Introduction and Father's Day Bonus Episode

Four, two, three. Welcome to The Rap Report with your host, Andrew Rappaport, where we provide biblical interpretation and application. 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.

Well, welcome to The Rap Report. I'm your host, Andrew Rappaport, the executive director of Striving for Eternity and the Christian podcast community on a special Father's Day edition of The Rap Report.

This is a bonus podcast. What I decided to do some time ago was to interview different people with some stories about their dad. Well, to encourage you. And so we're gonna hear a couple of stories today.

I will introduce different people. We have at least three different stories for you to be able to listen to. Some are very touching. Some are a little bit sad. And some, hopefully, we'll encourage. So I hope that you will enjoy this podcast.

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Promo code SFE. Go to MyPillow .com or call 1 -800 -873 -0176. That's 800 -873 -0176. Again, use promo code SFE so that they will continue sponsoring our show. With that, let me start with the first that we have.

Anthony Silvestro's Father's Conversion and Deathbed Salvation

I will admit that this will be the sadder one. And, well, it's a voice you're going to be familiar with if you've been listening to anything that we produce at Striving for Eternity, if you listen to Apologetics Live.

It's one of our own speakers. It is Dr. Silvestro. Now, I did say to each person we wanted to have it between 15 or 20 minutes. Well, if you know the history with Dr. Silvestro, well, he went 34 minutes.

So, as usual, you tell him 15 minutes and it's gonna be 30. No, actually what it is is his story was so touching and it actually had more than just his dad, but also he's gonna talk about his wife's dad because something happened with both of their parents, both their fathers in a very short time.

I know this one is a sadder story, but don't worry. Hopefully, you'll be encouraged and hear even more with a really touching story that'll be coming soon. But first, let us start off with Dr. Anthony Silvestro.

Well, if you're familiar at all with Striving for Eternity, you will recognize this next person, both in voice and in name. It is one of the speakers at Striving for Eternity, Dr. Anthony Silvestro. And this is gonna be some, if you listen to Apologetics Live, you're familiar with his voice and his face.

If you've had us out at your churches, you'll be familiar with him. But wanted to bring Anthony in to talk about something that happened just this year with his dad, even. But this, Anthony, welcome to The Wrap Report and on this Father's Day episode, wanna give an opportunity for you to share about your dad.

Oh, thank you for having me on. Be happy to do so. So, and I got to meet your dad, so it's a little bit different than some of the other stories we'll have on the show. But your dad was not very Christian, shall we say, right?

He wasn't a Christian for most of his life.

No, no, in fact, I mean, we grew up as Roman Catholics and I considered ourselves good Roman Catholics because we went to church three times a year, not just Christmas and Easter, but also Palm Sunday.

And then if you include all the weddings and funerals, you could probably triple that number, so.

So he wasn't very religious. So tell us about your dad. Tell us what, some things that I know, I happen to know some of the story, but that you could share about your dad.

Yeah, absolutely. You know, my dad was one of those guys, he was born in Italy and came over as a teenager in 1967 to America with his parents and siblings. And his whole goal in coming here was he wanted his kids eventually, before we even had us, to have a better life than him, right?

And that was his motivator for himself and work and motivating factor that he tried to use with us. And so my dad was one of those guys, he worked his tail off. He actually did really well for somebody who was just a dirt poor Italian immigrant coming into this country as a teenager, barely skirting through high school.

And when my dad had the, he had the dream of all of his kids becoming doctors. As it turns out, I'm the only one that kind of made it, becoming a dentist.

But... You do have a doctorate though, right? It's a doctorate. Okay, just check it.

I jokingly say this because he had me pegged to be a medical doctor, my next brother Vito to be a dentist and the youngest brother to be an optometrist. Like that's what his dream was. And as it turned out, I'm the one who became the dentist and my two brothers went different directions, although they're doing well, but they went in completely different fields.

So that was pretty interesting. But my dad had this thing with him. He did well and yet he wanted his kids to do even better. I mean, that was his whole thing, right? All monetary. He wanted his kids to do better financially in life.

And I'll never forget, because I wasn't saved at this time, but when I graduated dental school, became a dentist, started working, you may have heard the story on a previous podcast, but the doctor I was working for up and died eight to nine months into me working for him.

He was supposed to work for five more years and have me slowly buy into the practice and that all evaporated pretty quickly. So I bought the practice a lot earlier than I ever anticipated. And what was neat about all this is my dad had his challenge for us growing up and is that I want to be able to have a day where I know you're so financially well off that you could take me out to dinner and I can order whatever I want and you don't bat an eye.

To which, that was his dream, right? Is that he could do that. And obviously everything else would follow. Now granted, I'm unsaved at this time after I had graduated. And so I took him up on his challenge, own the practice, doing well.

And so I tell my dad, I said, let's go out to a steak dinner. And so we went to a great restaurant to which my dad and my mom, who were still married at the time, he ordered the most expensive steak and lobster combo on the menu.

He ordered a bottle of wine that was multiple hundreds of dollars and he smiled the entire time doing it. He had a ball. Not that he couldn't afford it himself, right? Just this was his, it was his gauge, right?

All these years. So needless to say, I got a very expensive bill and I was happy to pay it. My dad was, again, a great motivating factor all those years, financially, business growth, that kind of stuff.

But something changed early on in my dental career within the first three to four years of practice, I'd gotten saved. That changed everything. You know, while I had guns to better my dad in his fortune that he had amassed, that was my aim.

Suddenly my aim changed. And so God continued to bless the practice that I had and then had married Julie and she worked there with me for years. And he blessed the practice for a long time. But what ended up happening is God was changing my heart slowly.

He was taking away my love of money, love of success, love of all that kind of stuff and changing it into a love for his word and to go out and preach his word, the gospel as well as apologetics. And my dad saw that change, didn't really know what to make of it.

But I spent years witnessing to him. And I remember multiple times telling him the story about the different Egyptian pharaohs. And I'd say, you know, dad, you know, those pharaohs, you think about it, these guys prepared for their burial by having in today's value hundreds of millions of dollars of treasures being buried with them.

Gold and silver and rubies and all kinds of stuff. They had 50 plus slaves that would be buried with them alive. And among other things, why? Because the pharaoh was making sure he was wealthy for his afterlife.

And yet, what does the Bible say about this? But your treasures and storehouse is rotting, right? And that the bottom line is you aren't taking anything from this life onto the next. In fact, pharaoh who thought he was going to live an even richer life in his next life, instead the moment he died would face God immediately and have to give an account for all of his sins and to which he'd be judged and be put in hell for eternity.

In the lake of fire. And the worst part is all that money that was put into that tomb was all looted within the first year or two after pharaoh died, right? So I shared this with him multiple times trying to show him, Dad, this is you.

Like, this is you amassing this wealth and everything when you can't take it with you. And he knew he couldn't take the money with him you know, mentally. But yeah, it didn't translate to how he lived his life, right?

And so he could never understand. He could never understand this, right? He was blinded as an unbeliever, but I witnessed to him for years and I should also say as a parallel tract, which is interesting as my wife's father.

It was a devout Catholic and you know, I mentioned this to you a little bit earlier, Andrew, but you know, because I wanted to mention him as well in this, but her father was devout Catholic. Her whole family's devout Catholics.

There's a whole line of nuns in that family. And there are many times that my dad and or her dad was at my house when you were in town. I've witnessed to both of them. Yeah, you've witnessed to them, right?

You've, I mean, you've had your shot at them, right? You've witnessed them multiple times. We had Justin Peters over the house for a conference about five years ago now and Justin Peters took a shot at each one of them sitting in my family room.

I'm really convinced that you would have all of us over your house just so different people would witness to your father and father-in-law.

Honestly, that was actually Julie's plan was to do that. So she made special dinners to make sure they would come over while you guys were at the house in order to, I mean, so, you know, you've had how many times to witness to each one of them?

Yeah. You know, Justin had a few times, Mike Stockwell and Robert Gray each had multiple times and I'm sure I'm freaking other people, but Chris Sipley was one of them back in the day, but there's a number of guys who came through here to witness to both of our fathers over the years.

Julie's mom had passed away about a year before we got married. My mom had been estranged for years at that point. They got divorced early on in my dental career. So this is the story of my father, right?

And Julie's father interwoven in all this stuff. The thing is, I can tell you is my dad never had peace. You know, the peace that a Christian has, you know, and unbelievers don't have it. And Christians who don't walk by faith, walk by the power of the spirit, also typically don't have peace either.

And so, you know, sometimes it can be a little confusing, but this was my dad over the years. And what was interesting about all this stuff is is my dad during the COVID. And I know some people have heard this part of the story in a previous podcast.

My dad, when he got sick with pneumonia, I was giving him vitamins. This would have been 2020, November 2020. And I was giving him the vitamins, all COVID response vitamins. And he was actually doing quite well at home for about five days until his mom and his sister scared the daylights out of him, said your son's killing you, you need to go to the hospital.

And they were telling him this for days. So my dad finally said, okay, I'm gonna go to the hospital. And he calls me up and he says, he goes, I know you don't want me to go, but I'm gonna go to the hospital.

Like, you know, they're all scaring me. I want to go. I just, I'll be out in a few days. I go, dad, I don't want you to go. I'm not going to bring you. If you don't bring me, I'm driving myself. To which I said, okay, dad, I'll drive you.

I disagree with this. You're doing fine at home, walking around, everything. And just like hundreds of thousands of other people, the hospital killed him, you know, between taking away nutrition, no vitamins, certainly no ivermectin, hydroxychloroquine.

They throw oxygen remdesivir into you, and which has killed numerous people. Happened to my dad, right? But I say this story because this is what God used in my dad's life. My dad went in as a healthy guy, 67 years old, into the hospital.

And within, within a day was at the brink of death. The funny thing is when my dad went in there and it was still kind of a joking thing, like my dad will be out in a couple of days and my brothers are texting.

We're all in a text chain and they'll, he'll be out. You'll, dad, you'll be out soon and you'll be eating your pasta again and that kind of stuff. I was still preaching the gospel to my dad. I'm like, you know what?

God's scaring him. I'm going to, I'm going to, I'm going to take him out of the hospital. I'm going to take advantage of this, right? I'm going to give the gospel to him constantly. And so I was sending a number of texts in this text chain to my dad and to my brothers regarding the gospel.

And about four days in, five days in, something like that, my brothers contacted my mom, who again, who has been estranged, divorced my dad for years this time. They're all three. My two brothers and her are ganging up on me to say that we don't want you doing this to your father.

You're causing extra stress. You know, let him get healthy. First, get out of the hospital and then you can do whatever you want with him. But don't do it now where it's doing this to him. And so I'm like, I took a couple days off, right?

I didn't share the gospel at all over text or over phone. You know, there are times my dad couldn't even talk because the oxygen was killing his lungs, you know? So I took a few days off and then finally on day eight of his hospitalization, he ended up being there for almost six weeks, by the way.

On day eight of his hospitalization, I was the point of contact for his work and they were bombarding me almost every day. When's he, is he feeling any better, feeling better, feeling better? So finally on day eight, I get another text from his boss to say, you know, because my dad was a tool room manager for Boss Aerospace at the time.

And so I got a, I got a text asking when he's going to be back, what's going on? Should we expect, should we expect an extended leave? So I texted my dad and I said, hey, what do you want me to do with your work?

Because I keep getting bombarded. Right now, the tone seems to have changed in the text. I go, dad, the reality is even if you got out tomorrow, which you're not, you're not going to go back till January.

I mean, let's be honest, like you're going to need some time to recoup and everything once you get out. And this was my dad's text response back. He says, I don't care about work. I've had hours of reflecting on my life and what's important.

I asked God to forgive my sins and to follow him. He's my savior.

Now, at that point, I mean, you've, you have shared multiple times. And so you're hearing this, you're reading this, not quite sure, but then there was a text, I believe, that gave you some confidence that this was.

Well, here, here's the,.

That's right. And here's the thing, like what flashed in my mind was, I remember my dad years when we were growing up. My dad always had this knowledge of God, believed God was there, but never repents, right?

And so he, I remember him always saying to people that, you know what? People will believe in God when they're on their deathbed. So you were thinking that's, that that's what's happening here. That's what's happening, right?

I'm really skeptical. I'm like, yeah, yeah, right. I'm sure. But then he goes, then he, he goes on to tell me that I literally, I texted him next and I said, what does it mean to be forgiven? Right? Because I want to know, see if he even understands.

And he says, pray, pray for his forgiveness. I am learning.

He knows what I mean in my heart. I cried at the same time. So that was his response to me. I'm like, which sounds, sounds good, but at the same time, could be false.

So then I call him and he could barely talk, right? He could take the oxygen mask off, give a couple of words and put it back on. And, and so I said, what do you mean by your text yesterday, dad? And he goes, he goes, I, he goes, I recognize everything you've told me all these years was right.

And I was wrong. I've asked Jesus to forgive me and he has. He's my savior. I'm like, wow. Okay, cool. And he's like,.

I gotta go. I'm having a hard time. Get off the phone. So, and this is what you have been praying for since you got saved. Oh, absolutely. And now it happens.

And now, now it apparently happens, right? Well, here is, here's what you were alluding to just a moment ago, Andrew, which was their fruit, was their fruit, right? Was their fruit. And on day 12, so we're talking four days later, he shows fruit to the salvation.

He sends a text to the, on the text chain with my brothers and I, and it says, Domenico, tell your mom. I need her to forgive me for how I treated her all those years. To this day. I can't figure out why none was her fault, which actually isn't even true.

It was, you know, both, but none was her fault. I asked God to forgive me also and wash my sin and I will follow him as my savior. Now, I'm floored because now, now I see a fruit of salvation. And this was one of multiple texts he has sent out in asking for forgiveness.

But this was the one that just, that convinced me like he was converted. He was converted on his deathbed. And what it took was God literally stripping everything out of his life. And putting him in a hospital bed.

And in saving him through that. I mean, it's, it really is astounding for me. Even now, as I, you know, you know, have tears in my eyes, just thinking about what had happened, how, how God had, had done that for him.

I called, you know, a couple days later now and grant, I call every day, right? And, but some days he just couldn't talk. So he would text a small message and couple days later is the last time I actually talked to him live.

He can only say a couple of words, but in the background, he had Psalm 23 and a couple of other messages that were playing on this continuous loop in his room. Some nurse, he asked to, and I never found out who this was, by the way, I would have loved to have known, but some nurse set up through Bluetooth speaker to play Psalm 23 and a few other things just in his room on this.

So as I'm listening to him, I heard it on a loop. It was only five or six minutes. And he was listening to this constantly as he was in his, in his room. And it was only, it was only a day after that, that I got the call from the doctor to say that he was tanking.

And the only way to try to save him was to knock him out in a, into a medically induced coma and put him on a ventilator. To which I was dead set against, but, you know, we, my brothers and I agreed to put him on it and he went on it.

And, and literally my dad lasted on that ventilator for somewhere around three and a half to four weeks before he finally died. And so God, God, literally in the last days of my dad being conscious, changed his heart from a heart of stone to a heart of flesh and, and saved him, you know, and as hard as that was for my father, to be taken away from me at such a young age.

And my son who, my dad was his best friends. They hung out a ton together. My dad worked so hard growing up in his own businesses that, that he saw maybe five soccer games of mine in his entire life, right?

With my son, he watched every single one of them for the time. He was young, watch every single baseball game. I mean, my dad was, was when my, when Anthony was born in a week old, my dad had been over our house every day for many hours.

And I joked with my dad at the end of the week, said, man, dad, you've spent more time with Anthony than you did my entire childhood. Like in this first week of life, my dad looked at me sternly says, look, I know I messed up the first time with you guys.

I got a second chance. I'm not messing up again. And my dad spent so, so many hours with Anthony up until the point he passed. It was really incredible to watch, you know? And so, I mean, Anthony was blessed with a wonderful relationship.

It was just sad. It ended as soon as it did. But, uh, but having said all that I had told many people that I would rather my dad, um, get saved and die and not have the 15 extra years. I thought I was going to have with him, um, or 20 because our family tends to live into the late eighties, um, versus him living and not being saved and going to health fraternity.

Yeah. And that was really the bottom line, you know? And so I'm forever grateful on the other side of the fence though, is, um, is Julie's father who, um, Julie had Julie's fears older than me. And she also, um, was one of the youngest of many, many, many children.

So her dad, um, it was old, much older when he had her and her dad was 97 years old at the time. My dad was 67. So I was the first born. My dad had me when he was really young. So her dad was, was, was hardcore Catholic till the end.

We witnessed to him for years as well as you, Andrew and Justin and other guys faithfully, um, witnessing to him. Well, my dad was hospitalized in the hospital. Julie's dad was in home hospice. And, uh, you want to talk about God being long suffering and second Peter three, nine.

This was, this was God being long suffering. Julie's dad was, was given long life. And a lot of her people and her family lived till they're almost a hundred. And, uh, Julie's dad was, was another one.

I'm 97 years old. He's in home hospice. They thought he was going to die in the first couple of weeks of it. And here he is five months later. By the time my dad passes away, he's still in home hospice doing okay.

It was really incredible. But, um, a lot of our focus really was turned towards her dad at this point. And, uh, her dad, just to, just to get to it, passed away six weeks after my dad did, we knew it was coming.

When my dad passed away, we saw, um, we saw things really started changing her dad. And, uh, and so what we did is we spent a lot of time with her dad witnessing to him the last month. I mean, we were there two, three, sometimes four times a week for an hour or two at a time.

The, her entire family, um, because there's six other siblings were taking turns, um, being there around the clock. And so Julie was there a lot. I was spending a lot of time there as well. Um, Anthony was spending time talking to him.

I was spending time witnessing to him and just spending time getting stories of the war. He's a world war two vet at some great stories as a, as a bomber. Um, his life was spared many times during the war that he recounted was always thankful to God for, for that.

The problem is, it was, it was the God of Catholicism, you know, the false God of Catholicism. And, uh, I, uh, I spent the last month to, well, three weeks or so of his life spending many, many, many hours there.

I mean, there was the last week with her dad in home hospice. I was there. Oh, 13, 14 hours. I said the two days before he died, I spent, and we knew it was coming. I spent six hours straight with him, um, witnessing to him and talking over and over again about the authority of God's word versus man's interpretation.

Cause he believes highly in the Pope of the magisterium in their interpretive powers. Um, he believes in their ability to forgive sins on behalf of Christ. They believed a lot in, of course, Mary, right?

All this stuff about Mary ology that Catholics don't want to admit to, but it's certainly there. I mean, one thing that I really recall is the, that last six hours stint I had with him to, to witness to him.

I was telling him how the Catholic church believes in all this heresy, including, um, giving Mary aspects of deity to which he said, Oh, it's not happening. It doesn't happen. That's not true. You're just making that up.

In the meantime, while I'm witnessing to him, the Catholic channels on the background, right? So I'm battling with that as well. And wouldn't you know it in God's providence, literally right after I said that, and he denied it, the priest on the TV says, hail Mary.

Who's omnipotent in the saving of sinners. And I said, Mr. Seminole, did you just hear that? Did you just hear what the priest just said? Like literally we're just talking about this. He told, he says that Mary is, uh, is, is omnipotent.

He's all power. She's all powerful in the salvation of sinners. Did you not catch that? To which he wouldn't even respond. Unbelievable. Well, um, you know, the, the sad, the sad thing to say is that, is that he, as far as we know, didn't repent, you know, that was the second last day he was alive.

The last day he was alive. Um, he couldn't talk. He was, he was there with his chin down his chest. He could hear you. He could somewhat respond, but you could tell the body and the brain were shutting down.

Like everything was just shutting down. And, um, and sure enough, by the next morning, he, he had died. We had gotten the call about nine in the morning. Um, when the sister that was staying there, woke up and went and checked on him.

And then he had, he had passed away peacefully over the night. Um, while he was, while he was not able to respond, um, Julie did take full advantage of that. By the way, she, she sat there next to him and continued to whisper in his ear and, uh, and witness to him and, uh, tell him there's still time to repent and put his trust in Jesus to forsake the Catholic church and the Pope.

Um, obviously we, we have no clue about him, although, you know, obviously we know the last things that he said. So, you know, for us, it was a really interesting time in early 2021 between, um, mid January when my dad passed to either the end of February, beginning of March when Julie's dad passed.

But, um,.

Comfort, Family, and Witnessing to Unbelieving Relatives

You know, it's, yeah, my, my bride did a similar thing when we were sitting at the bedside of her, her dad, who we think had passed at that point. And, uh, but she, we weren't really sure. We couldn't tell.

And my wife did the same thing, just got really close to him and just, you know, explain the gospel. But both sides of your families, both your family and Julie's family, uh, they did not like the fact that you were sharing the gospel with your, your dads.

Did they? No,.

You know, my family was, they were kind of indifferent to it. Um, until my dad was in the hospital bed and then they weren't happy about it because it was causing them stress. In fact, both of my brothers that were devout atheists for years, um, they, I asked him to read a copy of my book on the origin of kinds and they read it.

And they're like, you know what? We've been kind of thinking this already. There's no way God can't exist with the way the world was wet, which is, I'm like, yeah, this is exactly what Romans one would say.

But, uh, so my brothers have been less hostile over the years of the gospel in Julie's family. She's got six siblings. One is a Christian who, um, very nice guy. He's not as deep in his theology as where he needs to be.

But I, I absolutely believe that he is, he is saved. Um, and then she's got four other siblings, uh, one other brother and then three other, uh, sisters who are, who are not, um, they're Catholic in name only.

Um, one regularly says that she will be happy to party in hell with her friends drinking and smoking and playing, you know, card games. And another one is that she's Catholic, believes in God, um, but is really a universalist.

I mean, why can't homosexuals and why can't Buddhists and why can't whoever else go to heaven? Um, the one sings in the church choir, the Catholic church choir. She's, she's a little bit more devout. And the other one is a little bit more of an agnostic Catholic.

But every time that we had a family get together on Julie's side, her dad and I would somehow get into a conversation about religion and we would be, we would trade. He never avoided it.

Actually. I mean, he, he, he started it with me a couple of times. He was interested in discussing it. He loved, he loved talking about it. Um, yeah, you know, the thing is, is that as, and this is the thing that I think really touching with, with what, what happened in your family.

I mean, it was six weeks having to deal with it back to back. No, it was hard for your son. Cause he was, he was close to both grandfathers. Both, yeah. But you guys took the opportunities to witness.

And, and though in, in Julie's dad's case, we don't believe he got saved. I think it can encourage people because with your dad, you, you guys made many opportunities for them to hear the gospel. And I think a lot of people, I, I, myself included, I think of my dad and say, like, I don't know if he'll ever get saved.

Right? We, we try to witness to him, but the years of prayer, the years of witnessing, and what you didn't expect would happen happened. Happens. That's right. No, you're, you're absolutely right. And, and even for the other side of it, right.

For, for Julie's dad,.

You know, imagine my plight in this, right. You know, God's sovereign. Why, why did he, why did he choose to save my dad and, and probably not hers? Why? I don't know. Yeah. Right. I have no idea. Well, you know, what we do know is that, is that we were faithful.

And so Julie has been able to, to rest easy. I mean, we've had conversations about this and she's been able to rest easy because she's like, we did our job. We did what we were called to do. We preached it to my dad.

We preached it to my siblings. We did. We did what we were called to do.

And the results are not in our hands that those are in God's hands. But I mean, there's so many people out listening and I'm sure you, you know, this as well as I, that there's people who are listening and saying, well, I've, I've, maybe I haven't been praying for my dad enough.

I maybe haven't been witnessing to my dad enough. Maybe this, this would encourage folks to say, you know what, God can, he could take a very wealthy man that is self-sufficient, which is I think the reason why it's so hard for people of wealth to come to Christ is because they're self-sufficient.

They're not used to depending on anyone but themselves. And he can strip that man of everything so that there's nothing left, but Christ and he could see him. Yeah, amen to that.

That's, that's absolutely right. And and on Julie's side, you know, some of the, one of the things that she wrote is, you know, she, she came home that last night that she knew he was going to pass away the next day.

And we were actually doing apologetics live. And so I had to come home a little bit early. You know, I didn't say anything to him. She talked that whole time while he was out of it. But she says how she, she came home that night.

She waved to me in the door is like a glass door here in the office. And she said she went straight to bed in tears, praying for mercy that he heard the gospel and repented, you know, and but then Julie says this while she was praying that she also, praised God for his display of, of long suffering with her father and his mercy and letting him live 97 years to hear the gospel so many times in the last, you know, 13 years of his life that Julie and I had 14 years, 15 years, whatever it's been, we've known each other at that point and that she, she sang a hymn in tears and, and she, the only words that she really recalled was, you know, that I am the Lord.