Abortion with Mark Spence

Apologetics Live

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00:03

I want to bring you back in, I want to ask you one burning question. You're a biologist, I have two biologists here.

00:08

I have a burning question that has been asked recently, I'm wondering if you can help out with. I know that this can't be answered by Supreme Court justices.

00:19

What is a woman? Oh, you do not want me to go down this road because sex determination and development,

00:27

I mean, Dr. Jensen is probably more familiar with developmental biology than I am. But that's a really complicated question, especially when you consider the complexities of human biology.

00:38

Look, I actually do, I talk in class about sex determination, chromosomal determinants, hormonal determinants, genetic determinants.

00:45

What determines sex? See, that's, there's no short, there is no answer to that question that I could answer in the time that we have tonight.

00:56

Really? Okay. It is a really complicated question, it is a really complicated question.

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So it's not a question of chromosome X versus Y? 100 % no.

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100 % no. You can ask me the question 12 different ways if you want, but you're going to get the same answer each time.

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I don't think it's all that complex. I would answer it very simply. A woman is what God, who created the women, defines it as.

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God created her, he gets to give the definition. So it's a woman is what God calls a woman. One, two, three.

01:28

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

01:34

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

01:44

Well we are live, Apologetics Live, here to answer your challenging questions, concerns, whatever you have.

01:51

You got a challenge for us? Come on in, go to ApologeticsLive .com. That is the, where you'll find the link to participate.

01:58

This is a ministry of striving for eternity. Hope you guys enjoyed that intro that we gave there, because we will be addressing some of that here tonight.

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Before we do, we're going to, let me give you a layout of what we're going to be doing tonight. Tonight we're going to have actually two different folks come in.

02:16

If you were here last week, we tried desperately to get a friend of ours,

02:23

Les Lansphere, to come in and talk about his new film that he's putting together, Cessationist, and he just was traveling and we couldn't make it work.

02:32

So we're going to have him in for the first hour. Second hour we got a friend of ours,

02:37

Mark Spence from Living Waters. You may know of that ministry from the TV series that was done on Way of the

02:45

Master. And so he's going to come in, we're going to talk evangelism, we're going to talk abortion, prepare people how to make good arguments against abortion, because once the

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Supreme Court rules that abortion is outlawed, or we'd hope that, I guess they're not going to go that far, but they're going to at least leave it to the states.

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And I think that that is going to be a hot button issue for us to address and know how to defend.

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So that's going to be the second hour. Pastor Justin will be coming in. And so I want to bring in my friend,

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Les Lansphere here. How are you doing, sir? I'm doing so well. Thank you so much for having me.

03:24

You can have me on your show more often. This is awesome. I agree. I agree. So before we get to the film, we said we'd bring you in on this, we want to do our

03:33

In the News segment here, folks. And I don't know if you've seen this. This is what we have for the In the News segment. But you guys are familiar with the, basically the shooting that happened down there in Texas at the school.

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A lot of people are familiar with it. A lot of people have questions with this.

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It doesn't seem to make sense. The police were there. They were there like almost immediately. They didn't go in for over an hour.

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A mother is trying to go in and she's held back. You end up having someone who,

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I guess it was a border patrol agent who ended up going in and shooting this guy, but the police didn't go in and people are asking why.

04:13

There's all this confusion. Well, today I ran across this article in the news from Daily Wire.

04:20

Police officer, husband of slain teacher was detained, disarmed while trying to rescue wife.

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So here's the story here. One of the teachers that died, her husband was a police officer there.

04:38

He was rushing in to try to save his wife. She supposedly called him and informed him that she was shot and bleeding out and the other police officers stopped him, disarmed him and then detained him so he couldn't go in to save his wife and she died.

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We now are finding out that the doors were not locked. The police could have gone in and even more that the police had a tool that would allow them to break in if they had to, if it was locked and they didn't.

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There is a policy that if there's children, there's an officer has said that he was saying we must go in because there's children.

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Other officers go, well, we don't know if there's anyone in there. They were waiting for someone to give an order.

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There's folks, there's only one way I'm going to say this, Les, you know what I'm going to say because I wanted to run it by you because I don't want you to go, dude, you're off your rocker, but you didn't.

05:36

You actually agreed with this conclusion because there's only one way that I can see to explain what we're seeing here in this.

05:45

Somebody and I want and I think the investigation needs to be who this person was. Somebody did not let those police officers in.

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Somebody told them to stand down because they went against policy.

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Why? I mean, people are saying they're coward, they're afraid for their life. People don't become police officers and do what they do because they're afraid.

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OK, Chris Helmholtz, I know you're watching your your police officer. Have you were you trained to be afraid for your life or to run into danger?

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That's what they're trained for. So what's your conclusion, Andrew? So here's here's the only conclusion that that I can

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I can see makes sense. I believe that somebody told those officers to stand down so that children would die so that the politicians can push gun control.

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I know it seems crazy. I get it. I don't think I don't think it seems as crazy as you think.

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I think that 2020 and on has broken people so much that I think this is this is nobody wants to talk about how natural it is to automatically think exactly what you just said, because these people are untrustworthy.

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And and the more the facts come out about this story, especially like you feel so deceived, like we were told so many lies about this story in particular, how these brave officers did all these things and they tried all these keys to get a door that turned out wasn't locked, that they were holding people back, that the cop was in the hallway.

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He got the call from his own wife to go in and they made him they he becomes detained like as if he was breaking the law to go into the room as a police officer to save those kids and his own wife.

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It's absolutely insane. So, yeah, there's got to be some kind of some kind of stick thing going on. And then you see, you know, like all these busts and raids going on with conservatives all over the country.

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And then it looks like they're all FBI agents like, yeah, something very strange is going on.

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And I think it's if anybody's actually paying attention, I think we're all being forced to become conspiracy theorists because these things look pretty obviously like a conspiracy.

08:11

Yeah. I mean, look, after what we saw on January 6th, which there's no way to explain that other than the fact that the

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Democrats wanted to stop the voting that was going to happen because they knew that there was going to be a vote to audit and they didn't want the audit.

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And if folks, anyone listening, you don't believe me, you just have to follow the timetable.

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When you look at that, when you look at the timetable, they had to wait until, you know, the vote was declared for Arizona and there were 17

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Republicans that were going to ask for an audit. There was a procedural way of doing it. They would have had,

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I think it was a 10 or 15 day audit and that would have forced an audit. Yeah.

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As soon as Arizona gets up, what ends up happening? Arizona ends up, they announce and then all of a sudden the police come in at that exact moment to stop it and say, we got to get you to safety.

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But here was the problem. No one was in the building at that time. Oops. How did the

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Capitol police know people were going to be in the building? And they moved them not to the secure location.

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And if you see all those pictures where it looks all violent and it's all in that tunnel. And if you watch the footage that we've seen, you end up seeing that that is right where they bring

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Congress right through there with all the windows barricaded up because all the other doors they opened, you know, there's no barricades.

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It's just that one area where it's barricaded and it looks really bad and looks and all the Congress are like, oh, this was tragic.

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What happened today? And the Republicans caved. They did not call for the audit when they got back.

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So either the police knew this was going to happen. How did they know? They were ushering people into the building.

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I mean, clearly something was going on. I think they ushered them in the building because they realized like, oh, these people aren't breaking it.

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They're not like these. These are not like Black Lives Matter protesters who would bash in the windows like there's something wrong here.

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We have to open the door so that people come in so that there's people in the building. Because if there was no one in the building, if they never entered the building, how how would they explain why they stopped?

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We've got to move you guys because there's people breaking into the building and there's violence. Yeah. And then just the absolute brilliance of this is what makes me think that, you know, this is just Satan pulling strings behind the scenes.

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Nobody's smart enough to operate this way. And that's the really crazy thing about conspiracies. Like once they get up to a level where it's like, wait a second, nothing could ever be this orchestrated.

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Well, unless there's something supernatural going on behind the scenes that that, you know, has more knowledge of things than you do.

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So, you know, like you do something like January 6th, you set this whole thing up clearly, at least to some degree, there's just something devious going on behind the scenes.

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And then you use that same event that got you the result you wanted at the time. And then you keep doubling down on that same event over and over and over.

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And now we got primetime trials because they will not let this thing go because it's this that we see it as this opportunity to basically make being a

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Republican illegal. Well, what they said, I mean, it was interesting because one of one of the people in the committee said like this, we need to do this primetime.

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So this changes people's minds when they get to the voting booth. Oh, really? Maybe that's yeah, that's why

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Nancy Pelosi handpicked who could be on this. Like the Republicans couldn't pick the

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Republican representatives for this committee. You know, it's just interesting. But but yeah, I think the only way to explain this is they wanted to push gun control and someone was willing to let children die.

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And if you think that your government isn't willing to do that. Yeah, just 2020 is enough said, you know, all the nonsense we're going through.

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So with that, before we get to your film, I do have to I do have to play a little clip.

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And you guys heard in the beginning, I want to go back to a previous previous show.

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And, you know, for for you, Les, this may be the first time that you get to see this.

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But I just want to replay from the time that we had Dr. Jensen on because I got an email that we want to interact with.

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So this was part of the discussion where I would know. And I want to OK, I want to bring you back in.

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I want to ask you one one burning question, not one. But you're a biologist.

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I have two biologists here. I have a burning question that has been asked recently. I'm wondering if you can help out with I know that I know that this has it can't be answered by Supreme Court justices.

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What is a woman? Oh, you do not want me to go down this road because sex determination and development.

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I mean, OK, no, I just want to stop this. It just just smiles on everyone's faces.

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Yeah, like he's really like this was I told

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Dr. Jensen I was going to ask him this question. But just like we're just like, wow, wow. This is this is this is where the world has gone.

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So here are the rest of his answer. Jensen is probably more familiar with developmental biology than I am.

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But that's a really complicated question, especially when you consider the complexities of human biology.

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I go down that road. But I mean, it's already almost 1115. How much time do we may have to have you come back just for that?

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And I look, I actually do. I talk in class about sex determination, chromosomal determinants, hormonal determinants.

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What determines what determines sex? I see that's that there's no short there is no answer to that question that I could answer in the time that we have tonight.

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Just look at Anthony's face. It is a really complicated question. It is a really complicated, not a question of chromosome

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X versus Y. One hundred percent, no, no. So so so here'd be a question.

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Is it the bone structure? It's it's multi. OK, so let me stop this and say, why did

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I ask that question? Because this is Apologetics Live. We want to teach you guys how to do Apologetics. Why did I ask that question?

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Because this is this is a question people are not asking. He wasn't ready for that.

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That's the type of questions you want to think of when you're doing apologetics. Come up with something that you're saying, like archaeologists look at bones and they know if it was male or female because bone structure is male or female.

14:53

Correct. That's how they determine. And I'm going to give the example of Lucy. And what you're going to hear is he's he's now stuck between what has been taught for all these years and what they're trying to teach.

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They're saying this is a psychological thing. But yet the bone structure, he's going to have to say, well, the bone structure teaches men, male and female.

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You don't have 52 different genders of a bone structure. Right. And and he's going to have to you're going to because he got caught.

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This is what you want to do when you when you are doing apologetics. Don't give the same.

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This guy's brilliant. All right. He's got his Ph .D. in biology. So he's he's obviously very smart.

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I will say very cordial. I really appreciate the conversation the two of them had.

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And that's why I just took Anthony out during that show and just let them go back and forth. I thought it was a great conversation. Much of it probably went over people's heads.

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You know, what what it did reveal is that, you know, on two occasions, he, Dr. Dan, revealed that he doesn't really didn't really know and didn't really read what he said he read and didn't really know what he said he understood of Dr.

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Jensen's work. But he admitted that Dr. Jensen did know his work. So it's exactly what

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Dr. Jensen predicted and he fulfilled it. But when we do apologetics, it's fine to ask that, you know,

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XXXY go down that road. Do you think I'm going to be able to win a debate with a guy who's got his

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Ph .D. in biology over the issues of chromosomes X and Y?

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No, because he's going to throw so much at me. It's going to go over my head. And anyone listening would just is going to naturally side with him.

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So what did I choose to do? We're not on an equal playing field. He's way above me in this area, but I'm going to appeal to common sense, to things that he hasn't had to think through.

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And bone structure is one of them. That's why I went that road. So let's listen to it. Factorial, there's lots of components to it.

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When we go back and we look at, say, Lucy, we can't really know if that's really a girl, right?

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We can develop mentally, be reasonably certain based on the proportions of certain bones, specifically like hips, pelvis, that kind of thing.

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We can be reasonably certain about it. So do you see he's this is this is the professor in him, right?

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He's a he's a Rutgers professor. And he's he's appealing to what is true.

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That's why I asked that question. I asked the question because I wanted to get him to to end up in the area of having to teach what he knows to be true.

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And now he's so he's saying we'd be reasonably what we'd be reasonably because that is the bone structure.

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Yeah, you can't see her brain. So how can you be reasonably certain of anything? Yeah. So in some cases, but not in others, it's not a 100 percent thing.

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OK, like, yeah. All right. Ask me the question 12 different ways if you want, but you're going to get the same answer each time.

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Well, I want to have you come back just for that, because I don't think it's all that complex. I would answer it very simply.

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A woman is what God, who created the women, defines it as God, God created her.

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He gets to give the definition. So it's a woman is what God calls a woman. And so that was that was a clip that we had from that week.

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Well, what ended up happening was Dr. Cardinal took that whole one hour segment between the two of them,

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Dr. Jensen and him, and he had lifted that completely and put it on his

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YouTube channel. That's actually called illegal. It's a copyright infringement.

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And now he had two other videos where he's played clips and he's commenting.

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That's fine. That's fair use. And he could do that. But you cannot steal someone's property.

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And so I flagged it when I had discovered it and I got an email.

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That is interesting, because if you watch that show, folks, you saw that I had invited him.

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I gave him my email address. He had it. We had dialogue back and forth in private chat. He had my email.

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He said, you know, he'd contact me and I don't hear from him. And so on some of his videos,

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I pointed out because he was saying he'd be happy to talk to Dr. Jensen. And I said we would set it up.

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We could we could set that up. But he was, you know, saying that he was willing.

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Well, he didn't email me. So I pointed that out. So I got this email the next morning after I put the copyright infringement.

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He said, Andrew, thanks. Thanks again for having Dr. Jensen on and giving us so much time to talk.

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Like I said in my comment, I'm in the middle of summer class, actually nearing the end.

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Grading final exams will be how this week ends for me. But after next week,

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I'll be more available if you have some time to talk about evolution or be grilled about evolution.

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And I'd be I'd be happy to be there in person. So let me stop his email and address that part.

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So first off, I was probably in I was anticipating him contacting me right away.

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Did not realize he was busy. So when I commented on his YouTube channel, I'm I was doing it as if, hey, he's saying he's available to you.

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He wants to do this, but he's not making himself available. Well, he was busy. I didn't know that. So that would you know, so I I was the comment

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I made on his channel wouldn't have been that he's so, you know, he's avoiding and it may have come off that way because that's how

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I had understood it. But I was wrong. So because we like to have things correct here.

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And if I'm wrong, I admit to it. So but, you know, we did offer for him to come in and we even offered for, you know, he and Dr.

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Silvestro to do it, to do a debate on evolution. We offered to do it in person. So we'll see if that happens.

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I don't think it will. We'll see. So he goes on and says, but if you're looking for someone to talk about sex and gender and specifically transgender issues, what you should do is reach out to a trans woman or perhaps a health care provider who specializes in, for example, trans youth.

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I can speak fluently in the general terms of sex determination, but I'm not qualified to provide specific answers you'd probably want.

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Plus, generally better to have members of a specific community or someone close to it speak for themselves.

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Now, I'm going to stop there. And that's a brilliant that's just brilliant to have in writing.

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Why understand this? His channel, his YouTube channel is about is like creation myths.

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Now, I did ask him one question over and over again, is truth and consistency important?

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He never answered that question, I think, because he can't. Why? If he's going to hold his own standard, he cannot have a channel called

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Creation Myths unless he has creationists on the channel. You see, he doesn't have experts and he can't he's saying he's not qualified to speak in these things, and generally it's better to have someone of that specific group.

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So if you're going to have a channel devoted to creationists, then you should have creationists on the channel.

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I mean, that would be the thing. So a biologist can't actually answer this question, and we have to go back to the the child gender doctors, the ones that Matt Walsh interviewed that can't answer the question.

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So so who's who can answer this question? I just I just don't know. Well, he's he's telling us who can answer it.

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Only a trans woman can tell you what a woman is, not a woman. Someone who identifies biologically a woman, she can't answer it.

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You have to have a trans woman or someone who works with trans youth.

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Yeah, why? So it's not only that it's not only that trans women are women, it's that only trans women are women.

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No, it's only trans women can define what a woman is. Right. Because, well, but but that's because they're a part of the group.

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So only trans women are women. Yeah, biological women are no longer women.

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Exactly. Exactly. Right. I mean, this is what you end up seeing here is what we end up seeing is and I see

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Mark Spencer. Mark, if you want to join in early, you can come on in early. I see him. He's watching. He was like, hey, at night, you if you're if you're here, you could jump in because you probably have some great things on this as well.

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But as you as what you want to do when you have arguments like this, folks, is break it down. Look at what he's actually saying.

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What he's actually arguing is that he's saying he as a biologist. So we have a justice, a

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Supreme Court justice who says she can't answer what a woman is. By the way, she is a woman.

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She was specifically picked for that job because she was a woman. She is like, right, she had to be a black woman, so she can't define what a woman is.

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But that's what got her the job. And she can't answer it. She says biologists have to answer it.

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A biologist says he can't answer it. You need a trans woman to answer it. Well, there is a fallacy here.

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There's actually a couple of fallacies. One. And granted, Dr. Cardinal, his expertise is in the area of biology.

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Mine is in philosophy and logic. So we'll go. So this is where I will be.

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Maybe I don't know his background. Maybe he does have a background in that. We have a fallacy of identity.

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We have a fallacy of begging the question. So the fallacy of identity is that there are definitions of things.

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And what something is, is what it is. You can't change that. Here comes our brother, Mark Spence. How you doing, sir?

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Mark Spence. So, Mark, I know you're going to you're going to love this is just like gearing him up.

25:43

But but the fishes are now give this to you, Mark, to go on. We still have more of his email to react.

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But you have a fallacy of begging the question, which is when you're you're trying, you start with a conclusion and you have to accept the conclusion to be able to understand it.

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So what he what he's saying is they want to redefine, re give a new definition to what a woman is.

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But only someone that holds to this redefinition is allowed to define it.

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That's begging the question. Both are fallacies. And any time you have a logical fallacy, that means that the argument you're making, placing forward is illogical and invalid.

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And so his argument is invalid. In fact, I bet. I bet that Dr.

26:30

Cornell can define and tell us what a cat is. And he doesn't need to ask a cat.

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Mark, what do you what do you think about this? Listen, Bill Murray had said common sense is so rare these days that it should be classified as a superpower.

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We are seeing really the death of common sense inside of our lifetime.

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For somebody not to be able to define what a woman is. Is beyond insanity.

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It's as John MacArthur would say, we are experiencing the wrath of God.

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Really, the first step of experiencing the wrath and the judgment of God is for God to take a step back because the heart of man is so deceitful and desperately wicked, above all things, that without God, man will just implode.

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Right. And so we are seeing a step further than that. And we are seeing

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God pour down his wrath upon the nations in America specifically.

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You know, my prayer has kind of been different lately. You know, it's like, do I do I pray for mercy? Do I pray for grace?

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Do I say, God, in the midst of judgment, remember mercy. Remember that we're but dust. You know, I don't want, you know, the white picket fence life on my way to heaven.

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Right. David Brainerd said, help me not to loiter on my way to heaven. Right. So I want to be active.

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I want to be inspired. I want to equip people. I want to step out of the boat. Right. It doesn't matter how tumultuous the storm is when your eyes are on the

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Lord. And when we do see things like this, I think that it is enough to light a fire underneath us.

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You know, before the this presidential election, my one of my sons had asked me, Dad, who do you think is going to win the election?

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And I said, you know, I think that Trump will win the election unless he is elevated to a savior like status.

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And if that be the case, I can't imagine God allowing that to get through.

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So we are seeing the religious right and conservatives and Christians are like coming along and they were raising

28:58

Trump up to a status that. That he did not deserve.

29:04

Right. That belongs to not a president, but a king, the king of kings.

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And regardless of whose president, Jesus will always be king. And he demonstrated that back then as not allowing him to take office, but allowing a fudgesicle to take office.

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Right. A man who has no idea where he's at. And I actually say that very respectfully, that he doesn't know what planet he is on.

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Yeah, it's elder abuse. It really is that, you know, yeah, bring him out there and let him stay home with his family and because he's not in good health.

29:44

I mean, it's evident. Yeah, we had it with that line of thinking, that's even scarier, because if Trump had a savior status in 2020, imagine what people are going to be viewing him as in 2024.

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If I am a dissenters or whoever, whatever conservative has a backbone who's willing to be president, people are going to be crying out like they're crying out to the

30:09

Lord for this person to save them from this nonsense. And I do agree with you. If it's Trump, it's going to be oof.

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Yes. Listen, I have a friend who is very close to Trump and he would get a phone call during his devotions.

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And it would say, please hold for the president of the United States. He would put his family devotions on hold as Trump would get on the phone.

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And like every other word was just the F -bomb. Yeah. You know, so his kids were excited that Trump was calling.

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And this was a regular basis thing where my friend was writing on Air Force One with the president.

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He's he's very, very close without mentioning his name. And he would have to take

30:56

Trump off of speaker. So his kids would stop. I mean, they're thinking they're listening to Gordon Ramsey, you know, as he's trying to plan out a meal, he's planning out the future.

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And I go, look, this guy. I don't know much. I don't know too much about Trump other than I did vote for him because he's he was more aligned to my ideologies.

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And if DeSantis takes it or Trump takes, I'm going to vote for either one of them. Right. Whoever gets the ticket,

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I'm going to be voting for them. But when it comes to things like this, back to this whole idea of gender. Right.

31:34

I don't know if you realize, but I had produced a video on gender. What is a woman about a month and a half ago or so?

31:40

It has like a million hits, a little more than a million hits on our YouTube channel. It's absolutely ridiculous.

31:46

People think that I doctored up the YouTube channel. I removed all the people that didn't make sense, and I wanted to have it cater to what

31:55

I was going towards. And it wasn't like that at all. I put all four people that I interviewed inside the YouTube channel.

32:01

And this is the insanity of Southern California thinking as people cannot define what a woman is.

32:09

We have and I think we're experiencing that, that the loonies are running the the insane asylum, right, that that's what's taking place.

32:17

But we must not lose focus of why we're here. Right. And it's really what Jesus was to seek and save that which is lost because it's very easy to get discouraged or disquieted or disgruntled in the midst of all that's happening.

32:30

Let's stick with our marching orders. One of our members, Jason Cave, says

32:35

MacArthur's closing sermon at this year's Truth Matters was right on target as we were.

32:42

We are as a nation experiencing God's judgment. And MacArthur's closing sermon was basically, you know,

32:49

Mark, you were there. It was basically like, yeah, we expect these things and we give them the gospel.

32:54

We, you know, have a broader view than just politics. So you notice the way he closed off his sermon, you know, we were when we were there, he closed it off with just a worship song.

33:07

Yeah, that the Christian can sing in the midst of the storm. Right. Our hope is not in government or establishing here and now

33:15

God's kingdom. Oh, we want to elevate Christ and allow all the cards to fall where they may.

33:21

But we occupy until he comes, which is simply we do vote. We do get involved inside the conversation.

33:29

And there are certain people that have stepped up to have a voice. You know, I didn't

33:34

I I don't agree with Mark Dever, you know, and I just hung out with Mark Dever last week.

33:41

Right. But I don't agree with him when when he had said that the local church should not get involved in politics.

33:49

You know, I give him a mulligan, you know, with that. I do think that you have the church that is looking to the pastors and the elders, she overseers and the bishops to say, where do we go from here?

34:00

How do we navigate these murky waters? So if we're not answering questions like this, they're going to go to the world to try to make sense of their worldview and not have common sense anymore.

34:13

This is where and let me ask you, the the the video you refer to, is it this gender is fluid until you bring this up?

34:21

Yeah, that's one. OK, so that's so I'll link that in the show notes for the podcast.

34:26

But, you know, one of the things is, is that when we look at this, you know, a lot of people like Les, you referred to, you know, the recent documentary,

34:34

What Is A Woman? And when that came out and, you know, Mark, in the in the comments, I saw that you had said a woman is an adult female.

34:42

Right. And that's that's the conclusion of of that whole documentary. And so.

34:48

You look at this and and this is this is, I think, what you're saying, Mark, when the world gives the answers.

34:55

If they're they're giving an answer from a worldly perspective, you know, my answer to the question, what is a woman?

35:01

What God calls a woman. Sure. Right. And that's where I think we as Christians have to be different.

35:08

We're not we don't answer with a with a worldly answer. We give a biblical answer. And, you know,

35:14

Chris here, Chris, says, excellent point. Mark, the Bible informs that informs all that we do, including what we ought, including how we ought to vote.

35:25

So let me let me let me finish up with this. Dr. Cornell's the rest of his email, he says he ends up saying one last thing.

35:32

I saw the copyright takedown. I think that's what actually prompted to see him to contact me.

35:38

I saw I saw the copyright takedown on the video in my conversation with with Jensen that I posted.

35:47

My apologies among YouTube communities that I'm familiar with. I'm sorry in in in I lost my place now.

35:58

Sorry. Sorry. So I'll back up in my apologies among the

36:05

YouTube communities I'm familiar with. It's general practice that if someone appears on one channel, they're welcome to mirror that appearance to their own channel.

36:16

Generally, it's common courtesy to do it a week or two later. Rather than the next day, if that's not your policy on Apologetics Live, you you would like me to make it private.

36:30

I'd be happy to do that. No problem. I'd appreciate it if you'd withdraw the copyright claim so that I can do that rather than having the video formally taken down.

36:40

Basically, my response to him was to inform him that, you know, no, it's it's not

36:47

YouTube's community. Mark, you guys at Living Waters deal a lot with with YouTube.

36:53

You guys have these big bad thing. What are you like a one billion downloads or something?

36:59

Some ridiculous. I know you got over a million subscribers, right? YouTube is really clear on copyrights.

37:07

They have a three strike rule, right? You you steal someone's property three times and they remove your channel.

37:15

It's not it's not the YouTube community doesn't accept that.

37:20

It's not common courtesy. It's called stealing, especially if you end up monetizing it.

37:26

Now you're you're making money off, you know, someone else's show, you know, if you're paying them.

37:32

And so basically, I explained to Dr. Cardinale, he could have he could have done like Dr. Jensen did.

37:38

Dr. Jensen contacted me later that week or actually that weekend and asked to buy the rights so that they could use it on Answers in Genesis.

37:47

He asked for them. So Dr. Jensen at Answers in Genesis have the rights to it.

37:53

Someone stealing the work doesn't. And so so he he and I went back and forth.

38:00

I said, well, you know, as a biologist. You know, well, if you're a biologist, cannot handle a biological question because he ended up sorry.

38:09

I should read this. So his response to me was aside from having a prior commitment, because I asked him to come on if you want when we respond to this.

38:17

So he said he wasn't able to tonight. He said, take a look at your Facebook page and comments on YouTube.

38:25

Are you looking for someone to have a conversation, an expert in the field to provide information to your audience or or a foil to ridicule?

38:35

It sure seems like the latter. And I have to wonder why you think

38:42

I would remotely be interested in playing that role. Now, it's interesting, folks, remember what his

38:47

YouTube channel is. His YouTube channel is devoted to making to making fun and ridiculing

38:55

Christians and creationists. That's his whole channel. Now, do you understand why

39:02

I asked him? Does consistency because I end up saying, well, I said to him, well, if you as a biologist cannot handle biological question, then you you should really avoid the issue altogether.

39:15

Right. He doesn't want to he's avoiding the gender issue. He's a biologist. He can't determine his own sex determination.

39:23

He was he we need more time. Well, if we're giving you the time, I gave him an hour to have an informal debate.

39:30

Now notice he knew he was coming in to debate Dr. Jeanson. Dr. Jeanson didn't know that.

39:38

It was an unplanned debate, so he was ready for Dr. Jeanson, Dr. Jeanson wasn't prepared.

39:44

But guess who won? Well, it was Dr. Jeanson, because he everything he predicted would happen in the first half hour of that show actually happened with Dr.

39:53

Cardinal when he actually admitted that he didn't understand the arguments

39:58

Dr. Jeanson was making. And Dr. Jeanson, if you watch that, asked him up front. Do you have you read this?

40:04

Do you understand this? And then later he ended up going, he didn't. And so I said, however,

40:10

I asked him, however, do you care? For consistency and truth. And so he said again, right again, right to the confrontation instead of conversation, remember what

40:23

I said a few weeks ago along the lines of, quote, I could give you an answer, but it might take an hour, unquote.

40:30

That's the nature of biology. And that conversation does not seem to interest you. You're you're admirable.

40:36

You're doing an admirable job convincing me. I would not want to be that it would not be productive of my time.

40:43

And I said, well, I'm asking you if you think consistency and truth are important. So I'll make it really clear that Dr.

40:52

Cardinal, it's a two hour show. We'll give you two hours. I mean, obviously, we're going to interact with you. But the reality is, this is what you see, folks, what you're seeing with people that have a narrative rather than truth.

41:05

They're they do not want to to actually engage with people that will challenge their thinking.

41:12

And have to give an answer. If you do, it's like, oh, yeah, you're you're just you want me to be a foil.

41:18

Well, your whole show is devoted to that. You have a whole channel devoted to making fun of creationists.

41:26

We're not here to make fun of you. We do think it's silly that you have to abandon biology. Over over what the cultural issue.

41:36

And so why why is truth and consistency an important thing? And Mark, let me tell you,

41:43

Dr. Silvestro, who, you know, came up with a thing that I started doing with Jehovah's Witnesses.

41:50

The first question you ask when you have a Jehovah's Witness or Mormon is to ask this question, how much time do you have?

41:59

Because 10 minutes into the conversation, they're going to go, I got to go. They're going to make excuses.

42:04

So so he asked that question, say, OK, you said you got an hour. As soon as they say 10 minutes in, they got to go. It's like I thought you said you have an hour.

42:12

But I had someone that that this is the question he asks first. I started doing this. Is consistency and truth important to you?

42:22

Because you end up seeing here there's an inconsistency in the logic that's going on. Yeah, but he would say it is it is important.

42:31

And that's the thing we need to do, folks. When we have the truth, God's word, we have consistency and we have truth.

42:38

That's the advantage of siding on truth. It's not because we believe it. That makes it true. It's because God said it.

42:44

That makes it true. Yeah. You know, in a few weeks, we're going to be releasing a video on YouTube of a debate that I had with a professor from Long Beach State.

42:55

And he came up to the microphone and he had said his opening line was Christianity is not true.

43:03

To which I responded with, well, is there such thing as truth? To which he said, no, there is no such thing as truth.

43:11

You know, so debate over, you know, and then

43:17

I said, well, you know, is it true that there's no such thing as truth? And he said, yeah, it's true that there's no such thing as truth.

43:22

And I said, are contradictions allowed within your worldview when you communicate, are you allowed to contradict yourself?

43:29

And being consistent, he said, yes, you are allowed to contradict yourself when you communicate. To which

43:35

I said, so you're not allowed to contradict yourself when you communicate. I said, no,

43:40

I just said that you are allowed to contradict yourself. I said, yeah, no, I heard you. So if you're allowed to contradict yourself, well, then you're not allowed to contradict yourself.

43:48

And so I was just contradicting everything that he said after that point. And the students got it right.

43:53

And I wasn't there to try to embarrass him. We were filming, right? I mean, we have like a big boom mic and five cameras around and everything.

44:00

And we went back and forth for probably a good solid 25 minutes or so.

44:07

And I said, listen, allow me to speak uninterrupted for two minutes. I'll give you the final say.

44:13

And I won't even give a rebuttal to anything that you want to say. So we did that. He went his way, came back in about 30 minutes and he said.

44:21

Hey, would you do me a favor and not not air any of this footage?

44:28

I have no doubt in my mind that you're not going to make me look like a buffoon. I believe I did that myself.

44:36

So I'm just going to ask you nicely. Listen, I don't have time to talk. I have to go teach my class. I said, well, what do you teach?

44:41

And he said, I teach debate. That's what I teach. I teach debate. And he was in charge of the debate.

44:54

The whole the whole area, the faculty of debate. And I said, hey, how about a guest lecturer?

45:00

Let me come in and and teach. He goes, yeah, no, I don't I don't think my two plus students would like that.

45:05

And I go, I think your students will get a kick out of it. And so he said no.

45:10

But then he allowed me to meet with him a week later over coffee. And I said, listen, you are teaching a whole generation of students that there's no right or wrong, no good or bad, no sacred or secular.

45:23

How about we have a proper debate inside of one of your forum classrooms?

45:30

And if you allow me to do that, well, then I will eliminate the footage. But because you're teaching a whole group of students, all generation of people, that there is no right or wrong, no good or bad.

45:40

We're going to use that footage. You don't understand how important this is. And he said, yeah, no, we're not going to have a formal debate.

45:48

And I said, why not? And this is what he said. I teach from an ivory tower.

45:54

You roll up your sleeves and you talk to the common person out on the street. I would not be able to handle your wit and your wisdom.

46:02

And I said, well, what if I give you all my notes in advance, which is absolutely unheard of in a debate? I will not go up to that pulpit without anything extra than what

46:10

I give you. And you can have that a month in advance, two, three months in advance. We can talk about any nuanced area of Christianity that you want to discuss.

46:18

Is Christianity true? Is the Bible God's word? Are there other worldviews that are just as plausible? Whatever you want to do.

46:24

He said, no, I cannot do it. I said, you teach debate.

46:30

I'm like so confused. And so he chose not to do that.

46:36

And I understand that. But in a few weeks time, maybe even up to a month, we're going to release our conversation that we had.

46:43

Let me know when you do. Let me know when you do so we can make sure everyone knows about it here.

46:50

So let me do this. We want to shift gears into a film that you're working on,

46:56

Les. You weren't here last week to talk about. Mark, this may be news to you. I don't know if you've heard of this film.

47:03

It's a Kickstarter. And so right now, I'm going to just take a quick look here.

47:10

It is, I think it was 79. Yeah, 79 % funded.

47:17

So folks, that's last week. It was what? 50 % funded, I think. Something like that.

47:22

Yeah. 50, 54. So it's up to almost 80. So the goal here, folks, is to get this fully funded by the end of the show.

47:30

Okay, that's the goal. I like having high goals. I expected that goal.

47:36

I expect to be fully funded after last show. But we're going to go for it. So the film is cessationist.

47:44

This is highly important. We need to have clear biblical teaching on the ministry of the

47:54

Holy Spirit for this generation. And so, Les, I know you couldn't be on last week, but you came into this afterwards.

48:04

The guys came to you to help out. You've done some other films. Can you explain the background to why this film, why you think it's so important, and what you guys hope to achieve with it?

48:14

And before you do that, I just want to say I am so excited for this film. I have a lot of... I saw the trailer a couple of different times.

48:21

I showed my kids the trailer with Hill Johnson. And obviously, Justin Peters is a good friend.

48:27

And I'm super excited for this film when it gets out there. It's so necessary for it.

48:33

So, Les, take it away. Thank you so much. On this hot seat, though, and say, but did you kick in for the

48:42

Kickstarter? No, you don't have to. Never do that. So, yeah,

48:48

I mean, I have, I've made two films up until this point, and I kickstarted both of them.

48:54

So people have been very generous. And I've gotten a lot of really good feedback. The kind of movies that I like to make are,

49:01

I'm sort of theologically minded, but I'm also an artist and filmmaker. So whenever I get into a theological discussion with somebody at church or just out in life,

49:12

I always grab a piece of paper and I start drawing pictures to help illustrate the points that I'm trying to make.

49:19

So this is just the way I think. So I love theology. I love trying to find interesting ways to explain these things.

49:27

And I have some skills in filmmaking. So I made a movie about Calvinism.

49:34

I made a movie about Reformed worship. And so I was kind of getting the itch to make another movie.

49:41

I was, I had a couple ideas. I even cut a trailer for a different movie that I'm going to put that on the back burner for now.

49:50

And the guys that went to G3, Tim and David, they shot some interviews at G3 with a videographer.

50:00

So the footage looks awesome because they had this idea for a movie about cessationism.

50:05

And then they reached out to me to see if I would help them with animation, with editing, because they've seen my movies and they appreciated them.

50:13

So I was pretty much on board to help them. I was going to do some animation work or whatever. Then I got their trailer.

50:20

It was a very long, sort of a little boring version.

50:26

A lot of violins and it was way too long. So I was like, let me read about this trailer for you guys.

50:33

And let me see if I can come up with something a little more punchy, a little more energetic and to the point.

50:40

So I did my magic on it. And as I was doing that process, I was like, dang, this is a pretty good topic.

50:49

And I'm a cessationist. I don't think I'm, at the time at least, I don't think as passionate about it as they were.

50:57

But the more that I've done these interviews and I've been talking about it, I'm very excited about this. So I just pitched down the idea as I gave them the trailer back.

51:05

I was like, hey guys, listen, if I'm going to be working on this anyways, why don't I just devote some serious time to it?

51:11

Why don't we just partner on this? Make it three people partnering. And we'll just, I'll be as much devoted to this project as you guys.

51:20

We'll just share the project. And so they were on board. So now we're, we did the

51:25

Kickstarter together. And we're going to, we're raising this funding to make the film as a package deal.

51:33

So it'll be interesting for me because all my other movies have been a one man show fully.

51:39

So I'm going to have some support and some help on this one. It'll be great.

51:45

So very excited about it. Again, 79 % funded. We're very optimistic that it's going to get funded, but it is

51:53

Kickstarter. So if it doesn't get funded, it is an all or nothing deal. So if we don't get 100 % funded by the end, we get no money.

52:01

And this movie, this whole conversation is moot because the movie just simply won't be made. So again, we're optimistic, but we still need help.

52:10

Yeah. And Chris Hunhold says here that we promoted it on Voice of Reason Radio, hoping that helps at least a little.

52:20

All of it helps. We're trying, we're really excited. There's nine days left. And so, you know, and I want,

52:28

I'm just going to share a screen because, you know, I know some people might be not familiar with Kickstarter.

52:34

So you go to kickstarter .com and you could just type in the name and this is what you end up with. And so there is a trailer you can watch right here.

52:41

And I encourage you in your churches, send the link to folks and say, just click the link to watch the trailer. It explains it.

52:47

You can go down and see different donation levels, different things you can get if you end up donating.

52:57

So there's different rewards. I, look, folks, I am not going to ask you to do something

53:03

I haven't done myself. Okay. So we have, Striving Fraternity as a ministry has gotten behind this.

53:10

And we have donated. We're supporting this. We want this to come across. Now, Les, we started talking about this last week, but you couldn't, you ended up just being able to type.

53:21

It'd be fair to say you, our relationship started off on a rocky footing, right? Yeah. I told some things about you that were really bad and you were someone to be avoided.

53:31

I think you were told the same about me. Not really. I didn't really have any negative information about you.

53:39

I just got the impression that I, there was a certain crowd of people that decided that I was not a good person.

53:47

And they would talk a lot about me on, there's two main podcasts, but entire episodes of these podcasts would be devoted to what an evil, divisive.

54:00

And I'm trying to inject the church with wickedness. It was pretty wild, but that gave me a lot of, that gave me some pretty thick skins.

54:09

I can handle criticism pretty well. So I'm kind of glad I went through. And I love these sort of redemption stories where people meet me and then they're like,

54:20

Hey, this guy isn't so bad. I forget, I remember you and I had a long conversation over the phone.

54:26

I don't remember how we got hooked up together. I don't remember either. You definitely reached out to me, which

54:32

I very much appreciate. And I just, I'm the type of, it's like, okay,

54:37

I heard a lot about you, but I didn't actually know you. And so, you know, but we had that conversation and realized like, actually we agree on a lot of things and you and I do not agree on a lot of things as well.

54:48

I mean, theologically we don't, such as your last film, right?

54:55

Yeah, which you helped fund, which is incredible because that's the kind of guy you are.

55:01

Well, because as I said to you, I saw the work you did with Calvinist. I saw the work that I saw you were doing with Spirit and Truth.

55:08

Even though I may not hold to the regulative principle in worship, I knew you were going to do something that was going to be beneficial for the body of Christ, not misrepresenting the position and giving people something that would help them to be able to clarify and define this view, even if I don't hold to it.

55:30

I'm saying that, folks, to say this, there is a thing that maybe you are in the

55:36

John Piper camp. You know, you're open but cautious. You don't agree that the gifts have ceased.

55:44

I'm going to say, is this something that we can look at and say, they're going to do an accurate job in giving this position, and if nothing else, this helps the body of Christ to have a clear understanding of the two sides.

56:02

And so even if you're in that camp, I'd encourage you, and as you said,

56:08

Les, I'm someone that I funded a project that you did in a theological area

56:13

I don't agree with completely. Now, I say completely because as you and I talk privately, I am fully on board with the regulative principle being applied to interpretation of Scripture.

56:24

That's why I'm dispensational. And also a credo Baptist, right?

56:31

Yeah, well, I would say that you're saying credo.

56:38

I often caution people when they say Presbyterians don't believe. I'll ask this as a question, usually.

56:44

Do Presbyterians believe in believers' baptism? Of course. Because that's how it's worded.

56:50

And of course they do. An adult that gets saved gets baptized in a Presbyterian church.

56:57

So yeah, I believe we should not be baptizing infants. Right.

57:03

Disagree. But there's another episode. Actually, we had that talk once, right? We did? And did you agree?

57:10

For a very long... Oh, wow. Look, I will put this up. So Chris Honhold's saying something nice for me just so we have a record of it.

57:17

Andrew's a pretty decent guy despite what most of us say about him. So just for the record.

57:24

We got evidence of that. I give Chris a hard time. But I am looking forward to this project being fully funded.

57:33

And I'm looking forward to getting this out. This is something, folks, that I've already told

57:39

Tim and I told Les, I'm planning when this comes out to be buying like a hundred, a pack of a hundred of these to be able to just hand out to...

57:49

I mean, this is... When I'm out on the street, Mark, you do a lot of street ministry. You probably had this just as much as I do where this issue comes up.

57:58

I'm like, I just want to evangelize. I'm not interested in discussing the gift of tongues or healings on the street with somebody when

58:07

I'm trying to evangelize. So I look at this as just something that I can say, hey, here's a gift for you.

58:15

Here's something you should check this out. Let me know what you think. And that's something, Mark, I learned from your boss,

58:22

Ray Comfort, is when people would be challenging, give something challenging, just give the

58:27

DVD and say, can you let me know what you think? It's a good way to do it.

58:34

So the movie that I like to make, like I said, theological and trying to help articulate and just make basically a packaged argument that somebody sit down and watch in an hour and a half to two hours.

58:47

And we who are sort of theologically minded, we get in these conversations a lot. And a lot of people, what you want to do is either recommend a book or send them a sermon link, something like that, which obviously that's great.

59:01

And if there's a book written on the subject by a good author, nothing beats that. But to really get someone to read that, chances are really slim.

59:11

If you send somebody a sermon by some pastor they've never heard of, they're probably not going to listen.

59:17

They'll listen to the first 10 minutes and whatever. We do this all the time. There's something about a movie that's specifically on that subject, and it's designed to be pretty entertaining.

59:31

And I try to use a lot of animation and things like that to keep people engaged. So the whole point is to keep people hooked to listen to the entire argument being presented while they're sitting on the couch next to a buddy who it's like, just give me an hour and a half of your time.

59:46

Give me two hours of your time. We'll watch this thing. And then you have the discussion afterwards. So I think in that way, it's just a really effective tool for these particular doctrinal issues.

01:00:02

I don't know. It's really hard to get people to listen to a sermon or read a book. Do you plan on putting it on DVD?

01:00:12

Do I plan on putting it on DVD? Yes, absolutely. Why do you say absolutely?

01:00:18

I'm just curious. I ask this for personal reasons because we're working on a handful of different projects. And my DVD replicator actually recently sent me an email and he said,

01:00:26

Hey, I realized that the DVDs are going the way of the Dodo bird. And we have ordered millions of DVDs and distributed them.

01:00:36

This is what we need to start putting them on. The USPs. Yeah. And we do that. What's the, you're just asking why

01:00:47

I think it's so important to have DVDs? Yeah, because I mean, I don't even own a DVD player, you know, and we're gonna have a pro project, a film coming out here, uh, come

01:00:57

January. And usually we hit the universities and we hand out the DVDs, but this is the first time where we're going to skip that route.

01:01:06

Well, you guys have this right here. The living water is flash drive. This is true. And, and that's, that's,

01:01:12

I think that's where they need to go. And, and the way you guys that, you know, living water, and this is more expensive that, you know, and these, that's the problem is going to be more expensive than a

01:01:20

DVD. I mean, Striving Fraternity has these small little ones that, you know, are easy to carry a bunch of them.

01:01:28

So for evangelism, that's good, but this is nice. It's in a nice packaging. So living waters does a good job with that, but you'll see,

01:01:36

I mean, here's, I mean, Justin Peters has his is magnetic. It's really cool.

01:01:42

I feel like really cool. Celeste, you are going to do DVDs. I'd love to hear your reasoning. Well, so maybe it's just the

01:01:48

Christian audience, at least as far as, as my experience has gone, but we people still watch

01:01:55

DVDs and there's something about that physical. I also think this kind of goes back to what we were talking about at the beginning.

01:02:02

I think that the, the conservative Christian mind has a little extra bit of paranoia about their, their digital futures.

01:02:16

So having a physical object that you can pop into a physical, you know, DVD player that the government can't just cancel you're from the off the internet from you is, is nice as well.

01:02:28

But, you know, I don't know if that's the reasoning, but people still order, order my movies on DVD. You know,

01:02:37

Christians are always behind in the times anyways. Your other films do have a download because I've downloaded

01:02:45

Calvinist. Yeah. I try to make it available and, you know, as many ways as possible.

01:02:51

Yeah. We, we probably sell thousands of DVDs every week. You know, we were just noticing a huge decline.

01:02:56

You know, we should connect over the phone and share with you what our game plan is for film distribution.

01:03:03

And maybe you'll be able to glean a little bit off of that. So absolutely would love that.

01:03:08

Actually. Yeah, no, no joke. I was just talking about that today. And that's, that is an issue that I would love to discuss with you.

01:03:16

I don't, I'd also say less. There may be a guy down there that would probably be a really good interview.

01:03:23

Yeah. All right. I think,

01:03:28

I think Mark's a very articulate individual. So excellent.

01:03:34

We're going to talk. Yes. So I think and for you guys right now, just so you know, there is a private chat that you guys could exchange number.

01:03:42

And if you, if you want to, or, or, you know, I have no idea how to do that.

01:03:47

So you'll have to, I'll hook you guys up. I'll, I'll get you guys in touch. So, so folks, if you go out to Kickstarter .com

01:03:54

and you go to just do a search on cessationist, and that will bring this up.

01:04:03

We want to try to get this fully funded. Like I said, before, before the show is over.

01:04:10

So, but you guys are on your way to doing that. And so, you know,

01:04:17

I hope that, that you guys get this fully funded. I know that, you know, I, I know that a lot of people

01:04:24

I've, I've sent this through my church. So everyone in my church knows about it. I sent this for everybody in, you know, churches in the

01:04:33

G3 church network. So I put it there for everybody. You know, I, I want, I'm encouraging every one of you that's listening to get the link to Kickstarter for this and, and share it.

01:04:44

It has nine days left from, from today. And so we want to get this.

01:04:49

It's basically by the end of the month, it's got to be fully funded or the way Kickstarter works, they get nothing.

01:04:54

So it's, I'm pleading with this audience to go share that right now, go share it tomorrow, go share it the day after.

01:05:04

All right. And ask others to share it. So, so that everyone knows. All right. Do you have a, do you have a nickname for your, your listeners?

01:05:11

Like I'd be Stryvers. What are you going? No, yeah, no, I don't.

01:05:18

Yeah. I'm not like, you gotta nail that down. You know, Matt Slicks calls his, his, the folks that follow him like Carmites, you know.

01:05:26

That's pretty good. What would Living Waters, what would be followers of Living Waters? What would they be? Never, never thought about it.

01:05:35

Christian. There you go. That's what they, yeah, no, we, we don't.

01:05:41

Comforters. Yeah. That's pretty good. That is good.

01:05:47

Not bad. Yeah. Chris Honnold says, please, oh, please do not nickname us.

01:06:01

So, so folks, just, I want to encourage that and, you know, encourage you guys to, to do that.

01:06:07

Less, you know, anything else, I mean, you can stay on for the rest. We're going to talk about evangelism and especially how to, you know, abortion and how to defend the faith with, with that topic.

01:06:17

You're welcome to stay on, but anything you want to say before we switch gears? No, no, I'm good, man.

01:06:23

Thank you so much for having me. I think I'm going to go. My wife's gone. My kids are running. I think I'm going to let you guys finish off.

01:06:30

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, thank you so much. I really appreciate it. Get your strivers over to Kickstarter if you could.

01:06:38

And I really, really appreciate you having me on, man. Seriously, have me on or, you know, anytime you have some dumb topic that, that you think

01:06:46

I can handle, you know, I'm, I'm always available for you. We should, we should, we should have, we should come in and talk like infant baptism and Presbyterian versus Baptist.

01:06:56

That could be a lot of fun. I would love it. We'll set that up. All right, brother. Thank you so much. You got it.

01:07:02

Thanks, Less. Bye, Mark. Good to see you, Less. God bless you, brother. All right. So Mark Spence, before we get over to you,

01:07:08

I first have to give a word for our sponsors. So we are sponsored here by MyPillow.

01:07:16

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01:07:24

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01:07:31

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01:07:39

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01:07:46

Use promo code SFE. That's for striving for eternity. And you can get your discounted products that way.

01:07:53

So we appreciate that. So Mark, welcome to Apologetics Live. You jumped in early, but let me give a quick introduction.

01:08:00

You and I met many years ago, I think at the Ambassador's Academy, I think would be the first place that we met.

01:08:07

I don't even remember how many years ago, but we've spoken at conferences together.

01:08:14

We've done some travel together. You're with Living Waters, which is really an evangelism ministry.

01:08:22

And I think a lot of folks know you from that, but what a lot of this audience may not know is all the work you've been doing recently on the area of abortion.

01:08:32

And so originally, we originally talked about having you come on way back when you guys were going to be doing another

01:08:38

Ambassador's Academy and we were going to try to promote it to get people to sign up, but it filled up too quick.

01:08:46

So explain what the Academy is so people can look forward to it for next year, for next

01:08:51

August and what your role is and what you do at Living Waters. Yeah, thank you.

01:08:59

So my title is Senior Vice President, whatever that means. And we have an

01:09:06

Ambassador's Academy where we train people from all over the world, but we cap it off at just under a hundred people.

01:09:17

And people come and they join us for three, four days of extensive training.

01:09:22

And then we go do on the street evangelism one -on -one and we do open air preaching.

01:09:30

And this year, you know, going to have all the leaders that are part of that to come back to my house for a barbecue on Sunday where we can just kind of hang out and fellowship and talk and have a good time.

01:09:43

But that's the Ambassador's Academy. When we do advertise it, if you want to be a part of it, you have to sign up fairly quickly because it sells out very quickly.

01:09:53

And then we have quite a few people on a waiting list. So yeah, it's a great thing.

01:09:59

So Ambassador's Academy, if you want to hang out with all of us, Ray Comfort, EZ, myself,

01:10:04

Oscar Navarro, Scotty, and ask us whatever questions you want to ask us concerning evangelism and apologetics, you're able to do that.

01:10:13

And I tend to take kind of the pastors underneath my wing and allow them to ask whatever questions and stuff that they're going through.

01:10:21

And then I have late night discussions with all of them, which is really great.

01:10:27

And Chris Honholds here says, Ambassador's Academy is a fantastic opportunity. I don't know if he's ever done one though.

01:10:34

Yeah, I don't know where I met Chris, but boy, he's a good, faithful brother.

01:10:41

I don't know if I should admit to that publicly that I agree with you, but I mean, because I kind of give him a little bit of a hard time online.

01:10:50

Let me just ask this, Mark, have you watched the movie Buddy the

01:10:56

Elf? Oh yeah. What do you think of that movie? It's hilarious. Yeah.

01:11:01

Can you explain that to Chris? Because he has no interest in watching it and doesn't find it to be funny.

01:11:07

I don't know what to say with that. It is absolutely funny. I've probably watched it two or three times while I work on other things.

01:11:16

My kind of MO is to work on something while there's a movie on with the kiddos or something, but it's definitely worth watching and I loved it.

01:11:27

Okay. So Chris is saying he did graduate from the Ambassador's Academy. That's good. Now I know the next time

01:11:33

I run into Chris, I can have my challenge coin ready for him and get myself a coffee.

01:11:39

Thanks, Chris, for letting me know that. He says that's where he met you. Nice. So there we go.

01:11:46

So yeah, when it comes to evangelism, that's something that you have been doing for quite a while, and so I want to give it a chance where we can talk about evangelism, but I think that come end of the month, because I have a feeling that the

01:12:11

Supreme Court is going to wait until the end of the month to basically put out their position on abortion and then leave town so that the conservatives don't have to worry about their family being attacked and whatnot has been happening.

01:12:29

When does the recess take place? I think it's end of the month. So I'm predicting that they're going to probably release that one on the last day of the month.

01:12:41

That's my prediction. Well, that's good. I have a YouTube video coming out concerning that, so I'm very excited.

01:12:48

I'm still working on some commentary with it. So if they can wait a week, that'd be great. So someone's asking you, and I don't know if you have the answer to this, is

01:12:56

Ray going to be at Huntington Beach this Saturday? We're headed down there for a church beach day.

01:13:03

Yeah, listen, Ray is fully committed to Saturdays. We film our

01:13:09

Way the Master television show, which just began to air in April down there. There are 45 episodes.

01:13:17

We have recorded... All the interviews are done, but I think we've aired four or five episodes by now.

01:13:29

But Ray's time slot for being down there in Huntington is from 10 a .m.

01:13:34

until 11 .30 -ish. Depends how well he goes.

01:13:40

We will not have a film crew down there anymore because we got all of our interviews that we need for the season.

01:13:46

But he will be down there unless something happens. All by himself,

01:13:52

I'll be down there, but I won't be with him. And he'll have his own little microphone and filming off of his phone.

01:14:00

But you'll see him down there. He's four foot nothing. Yeah. Let me bring in Pastor Josiah.

01:14:07

He's a regular here. Just into the conversation in case he has anything he wants to add. But welcome,

01:14:13

Pastor Josiah. Hey, brother. Josiah. Now, was it you were eight years old when you became king?

01:14:20

If I remember correctly. I was eight years old when I got saved. That's better than being king.

01:14:29

So, Mark, let me ask you some questions with abortion. I really want to focus in on that because you spent,

01:14:37

I think, the last couple of years honing a argument for it. With the ruling that's going to come out, we're going to be having to deal with.

01:14:47

So let me give you more of an open -ended question. What are some of the best arguments that you would make on the area of abortion, the issue of abortion?

01:14:58

I'm leaving it broad because I want it to be where anything, someone comes up and just says they're for abortion or they think the ruling was wrong, it's unconstitutional, whatever it might be.

01:15:10

But someone's listening. They know they're going to have to defend the faith on this issue.

01:15:16

What would be your best argument you could give us? Listen, one thing that I would say and the route that I would take is sometimes people don't care how much you know until they know how much you care.

01:15:35

And so when somebody raises, for example, an objection like abortion should be illegal in the cases of rape, they're not checking to see if the baby has a heartbeat, which it does at 21 days, but to see if you have a heartbeat.

01:15:50

Do you care? Are you sympathetic towards what an individual has to go through in carrying a child for nine months?

01:15:58

So usually what I will do when they raise up an objection is

01:16:03

I'll say that's an interesting question of all the questions that you could ask or all the statements that you could make concerning the subject, you chose that.

01:16:10

I'm curious as to why. Is it just because you're a deep thinker or is this something that you're personally kind of experiencing?

01:16:21

The abortion subject is not a complex issue. It may be, the decision may be psychologically complex for the mother, but morally it's not a complex decision at all, right?

01:16:33

I mean you think about it, when black people are mistreated in a certain society, do we spin a tale about the complex agonizing decisions for the white people in power or do we condemn the evil of racism, right?

01:16:52

We live in a culture that is simply so obsessed with self -love and personal pleasure that the slaughter of our children is not only acceptable but it's praiseworthy.

01:17:03

So for me, and the reason why I got involved in this whole pro -life scenario is because the question wasn't being answered as to why abortion is wrong, and I've done a lot of role play with a lot of people that you are very familiar with where I said, hey

01:17:20

I'd like to play the role of somebody being pro -choice, you play the role of somebody being pro -life, try to convince me why

01:17:25

I should take the route of pro -life, and they couldn't do it. For the Christian, there's one reason why we are pro -life, and that is because God says it's wrong to kill fellow image bearers, right?

01:17:40

Imago Dei, we are created in the image of God, and therefore murder is wrong. So as you'll see inside of my film and what

01:17:47

I answer in a lot of my videos, my YouTube videos here, you have to answer the question about what is inside of the mother's scenario, and I don't remember if I put it inside the film or not, but one of the areas that I head down is

01:18:03

I say, hey let's imagine for a moment you're asleep on a Saturday morning and your son calls out to you from the other room with a question.

01:18:10

Daddy, daddy, can I kill it? Can I kill it? Now without having any context, you cannot answer that question.

01:18:20

You'd respond back with, you know, Jimmy, what are you talking about? What do you want to kill? If he responded back and said, hey,

01:18:26

I want to kill a cockroach. It's big, it's ugly, it's disgusting. You would agree and say, yes, absolutely, kill the cockroach and clean it up before mama wakes up and don't show your sister

01:18:37

Sally. But if on the other hand, if he responds with, it is my sister

01:18:43

Sally. I want to kill Sally. She's driving me crazy. You'd wake up your spouse in a frenzy, perhaps call a psychologist or the pastor trying to figure out where things went south and the reason of your child who wants to kill another child.

01:18:58

So the question that needs to be answered is what is inside the womb? And one of the arguments that we use in the movie 180 is, you know, imagine if you're part of a demolition company, you've been hired to blow up a building and right before you push down on the button, you see some movement in the window.

01:19:14

You're not sure what it is. Is it the shadow of a bird that's flying overhead? Is it the wind moving a curtain?

01:19:20

But either way, you're unsure whether or not this building is completely vacant.

01:19:25

Would you blow it up? And the answer of course is no, I would not blow it up. What would you do? I'd investigate. Great, you would investigate.

01:19:31

What would you investigate? Well, I'd investigate to see if there is something inside the building. So which I then say, ah, so when we talk about abortion, are you 100 % positive that it is not a human being inside the womb?

01:19:45

Are you ready to blow up the building if you would? Because perhaps it could be a human being.

01:19:53

So you have to answer the question, right? So you can answer the question philosophically, which I don't typically do. You could answer the question scientifically, which is bringing in the science of embryology and the science of biogenesis.

01:20:02

Or you can answer this question or with the others theologically, right?

01:20:09

And so we are distinct individuals created in the image of God with a separate DNA from mom and dad.

01:20:14

And because of that, there will never be another you forever. So then there's all the questions that come along, which are very easy to answer.

01:20:24

I mean, it doesn't matter what question you come up with. They're easy questions to answer. Yeah, well, we'll get into some of this.

01:20:30

So let me first put this up is that Drew says, that's a very good route, very pastoral approach.

01:20:37

So now we do have KT's asking the question of, is Justin Pierce alive?

01:20:45

Inquiring minds want to know, and there he is. Nope, he's not.

01:20:50

He's not even, not been around. Pastor Pierce is here in person, but in a hotel, you're traveling.

01:20:57

So we're glad you were able to get in. You blurred that out so we can't see your family walking past you like we were able to, like I was able to.

01:21:06

But you've been busy. So let's just update folks. Why have you been missing in action?

01:21:13

And you're going to be missing in action for a while, coming soon. Well, actually, my kids are doing a lot of swim competitions, and we've been using it as opportunities for ministry.

01:21:25

It's been a lot of witnessing. We've been doing a lot of evangelism with as many people as we can from all over the country, really.

01:21:35

Just a lot of great outreach opportunity. And we have just been traveling around really busy with that, with schooling and whatnot.

01:21:47

And of course, I told you on a side chat there a few days ago, with the seminary,

01:21:55

I am going to be out starting, I can't remember the date, the

01:22:01

August the 8th. You're going to be out for a class. So just so folks know, you're missing from action for a little bit.

01:22:08

That's why we have three or four of us here. I say three or four of us because we have three hosts, Mark. It's Pastor Justin, myself,

01:22:15

Anthony Silvestro. And then we have this, we now actually have two kind of guys that are coming in regularly.

01:22:21

Josiah here is one. He kind of is coming in and filling in as a co -host a lot. And then that guy, what's that guy's name?

01:22:27

Oh, Justin Peters. He always pops in, but he's in Alaska. He's struggling in Alaska tonight.

01:22:32

Yeah, the poor guy, he's out there killing all the grizzly bear and doing all that fun stuff. So, Pastor Justin, what do you think is the argument that's the most difficult for you, or the one that you would think would be the most difficult to ask when it comes to abortion?

01:22:49

So we can ask Mark. I want you to give Mark what you might think is the hardest question that we could get as Christians on the area of abortion.

01:23:01

That's a good question. I'm not sure. I think one of the hardest ones that most

01:23:06

Christians deal with is what about the rape and incest and things like that. And I know we deal with that quite a bit, but what do you do with that?

01:23:15

I mean, I know where I would take it, but, and oh, by the way, Mark, I'm so glad to have you on.

01:23:20

I'm so glad to be with you now. Brother, I love you to death. The last time we actually saw each other was at the

01:23:27

Creation Museum. Oh, is that right? Yeah. It's been a long time ago.

01:23:33

It's been, we did the Easter thing there. Oh, well, 2018 or 19 or?

01:23:42

Yeah. Yeah. It's been a while. Yeah. Wow. All right.

01:23:48

So Mark, what do you say the issue of rape and incest, how can we answer that? Yeah. You know, oftentimes this extreme objection is raised by abortion advocates, not because they genuinely want to hear what you have to say.

01:24:04

They're not interested in the answer, but they want to trip you up, right? It's typically a smokescreen.

01:24:10

And this is quickly demonstrated when I respond by saying, you know, less than 1 % of all pregnancies are caused by rape and incest combined, right?

01:24:23

And so let's suppose for sake of argument that I conceded that abortion should be legal in these extremely rare cases.

01:24:32

Would you be willing to ban abortion in all other cases? And if not, well then why bring it up, right?

01:24:40

And that demonstrates that they're really not interested in that. Now with that said, remember rape is a horrible tragedy.

01:24:49

You know, I think rapists should be thrown in jail, castrated and forced to do hard labor.

01:24:57

You know, on a side note, it's usually typically those who are on the left, far left that are against such harsh consequences.

01:25:07

But when I pause and I want to, you know, slowly and thoughtfully consider this question, realizing that they really could be part of that very small percentage of less than 1%, right?

01:25:23

I will even raise the question, do you know of somebody, you know, that is a product of rape or incest?

01:25:32

You know, tell me your story. You know, then if I want to kind of drive home my argument, my position, you know,

01:25:40

I might say something along the lines of, you know, why do we punish a child for the crime of the father? What civilized society, you know, does that?

01:25:47

What did the child, you know, do wrong, right? I mean, no civilized society does that.

01:25:56

But when you think of, you know, and then Stephanie Gray, she's a Catholic girl, but she wrote a really great book.

01:26:01

I read her book probably 10 times, if not more, on how to have a sensitive heart. That's really what the whole book is about, how to have a sensitive heart in the midst of this conversation.

01:26:13

She says, when raised with this question, you could say, tell me somebody who you really admire, somebody who you look up to.

01:26:20

And usually it's somebody who has risen up in the midst of the ashes as a phoenix, and have overcome just great adversity and difficulty inside their life.

01:26:34

You know, you think of somebody like Nick Vujicic, who was born without arms and without legs.

01:26:40

You know, a lot of people look up to him as a bit of a role model. And they listen to what he has to say, because he's kind of done that very thing, whether you agree with his theology or not is absolutely irrelevant.

01:26:53

But there's always an outrage of the taking of innocent human life, except for the case of abortion, right?

01:27:01

And so there's so much I can say on this. Let me just say this. There's a really great argument that Standard Reason came up with, and it's called

01:27:13

Trot Out the Toddler, concerning this. And basically, they raise this scenario.

01:27:19

I say, would it ever be acceptable for a mother who had a child conceived in rape, and now the child is, say, 15 years old, or five years old, it's irrelevant, to now kill their 15 -year -old child who is conceived in rape?

01:27:39

And the answer, of course, is no. You cannot kill a 15 -year -old. So I say, well, why not? Well, because they're alive.

01:27:47

I go, so what? Remember, the child was conceived in rape. Why can't the mother kill her child?

01:27:53

If she's allowed to kill the child when she's pregnant with the child, why not after she's pregnant with the child?

01:27:59

Because there's really only four differences that distinguish between a preborn and a newborn.

01:28:05

I won't get into all of those now. You can look up the acronym called SLED. You have Size, Level of Development, Environment, and Degree of Dependency.

01:28:14

And Stephen Schwartz went through that very well, and I go through that inside my film. But once you answer that, you see that there's no difference between a preborn and a newborn, by which you can say, well,

01:28:24

I can kill the child before the child is born, but not after the child is born. Well, the child's not in the world yet.

01:28:31

Well, an astronaut is not in the world yet if it's in outer space, but it doesn't cease being a human being because it's in outer space.

01:28:39

And it is in the world, it's just in a different location. You're just out of sight, out of mind. But there's a lot that I can say on this.

01:28:47

I just don't want to steal too much time with it. Yeah, no. Well, let me ask it this way, because I recently had someone who told me she had been raped.

01:28:57

And so her argument was that she had to have an abortion, otherwise she would have killed herself.

01:29:04

And then she would have killed the baby anyway. So now, I will admit, that heightens it.

01:29:11

That makes it a lot different because now, as a pastor, right,

01:29:16

I'm now dealing with a lot more than just trying to explain abortion or evangelism.

01:29:25

But it does make a whole new element there in the conversation because now you're dealing with someone that is very emotional about this.

01:29:35

So let me ask you, someone tells you they personally had been raped and had an abortion.

01:29:40

And like she was saying, why should I have to carry this? It reminds me of... So let me ask you how you would approach that.

01:29:47

And then I'll ask you, I'll tell you how I dealt with it and see what you think of that. Yeah, well listen, abortion does not heal, right?

01:29:56

It only creates a new wound. So you may no longer be pregnant, but you'll still be a mother.

01:30:05

You'll just now be the mother of a dead child. And if you think that it's difficult now experiencing what you're experiencing, think about on Judgment Day when you stand before God and you have to give an account why you murdered someone.

01:30:22

There's nobody that is as supremely innocent as a child in the womb, right?

01:30:29

And if you want to talk about the innocent suffering, well then you bring in the gospel because Christ was supremely innocent. He knew no sin and He became sin for us.

01:30:38

The question was once asked to a pastor, where was God when my child died?

01:30:45

And the pastor responded, the same place He was at when his child died. He was sitting on His throne.

01:30:52

And I don't know why the innocent ultimately suffer. I don't know why bad things happen that are so evil and atrocious to some people and not other people.

01:31:02

I don't get it. I don't know. I was at a local university, and I had somebody come up to me.

01:31:11

After I was that Long Beach State professor that I talked about earlier, I had a student come up to me and said, hey,

01:31:16

I have a question about the problem of evil, what you were talking about with that professor. I want to know why do the innocent suffer?

01:31:25

Why do they go through what they're going through? And I asked my usual question, why do you ask what you're asking, right?

01:31:33

And does she need me to philosophize on her, or does she need me to put my arm around her? And it was the latter.

01:31:39

She said, listen, I have cancer. Both my parents are dead. I have no siblings.

01:31:44

I have no boyfriend. I've been given six months to live, and when I die, my name, my last name dies with me.

01:31:51

And I can't for the life of me figure out why God would allow that to take place.

01:31:58

And I said, I'm sorry you're going through what you're going through. Let me help you out a little bit. I believe you're asking the wrong question.

01:32:05

There's 150 ,000 people that die every day, 54 million every year, 900 ,000 babies are aborted every year in the

01:32:13

United States, 47 .2 million babies were aborted last year worldwide, 62, 63 million since Roe v.

01:32:21

Wade, which is January 20th, 1973. But these 150 ,000 people that will die today were planning for tomorrow.

01:32:29

You're planning for tomorrow, but you're also planning for your death for tomorrow. How gracious and how kind is

01:32:35

God to stamp eternity on your eyelids to remind you that you have an appointment with death, that God has appointed for man once to die, and after this, the judgment, and God did not need to warn you that you're going to die soon.

01:32:51

How gracious and how kind is God to warn you to stamp eternity on your eyelids, that every waking moment you have, you think about death, when he hasn't done that for the other 149 ,999 people, typically.

01:33:07

Death is going to come knocking at an inopportune time for all of us, and when you answer that door, you're going to answer that door alone, and you're going to have to give an account.

01:33:16

Every utter word a man speaks, you have to give an account thereof on the day of judgment. How kind is God to warn you that you're about to die, and how kind is

01:33:23

God to allow our paths to cross, to warn you about that impending judgment?

01:33:30

You're asking the wrong question. Lodi Bachum once said, why didn't God kill me in my sleep last night for the thoughts

01:33:36

I had towards him? It's not why do bad things happen to good people, but why do good things happen to bad people? I went through the law, and I put her in contact with a pastor friend of mine.

01:33:48

I have no idea where she's at today, but that six months have come and gone. We all have that appointment, so I want to sympathize.

01:33:57

I can't empathize because I'm not in the situation of somebody who's been raped, but God is kind, and I know that.

01:34:07

Also think about it like this, though. When you say, and I'll leave it with this, and like I said,

01:34:13

I have so much stored there, but when you say that rape victims don't deserve to live, that's very telling about how you feel when you actually meet a rape victim out on the street, or when you say a deformed person doesn't deserve to live, so I'm going to kill them.

01:34:37

They have Down syndrome. I'm going to kill them. It's very telling when you see somebody inside of a wheelchair. Chris Honholds has said here,

01:34:48

Mark genuinely demonstrates how to deal with difficult topics with a soundly theological mind and a loving heart, and the reason

01:34:58

I asked it of you is because I was faced with that, and it was difficult, and in the moment, this is something, folks, to why we do some of the things we do here is so that you are thinking of these things not in the moment.

01:35:13

Have a plan. Mark just gave an excellent—I wish that I had heard that from Mark before I ran into this young lady, because I was stuck.

01:35:23

You have someone that's very emotional. It could get very heated, how to deal with it.

01:35:30

One of the things, a route that I ended up thinking of going, I had never gone this way before, but in a moment, sometimes you're trying to figure out, and what

01:35:41

I ended up doing, Mark, was I asked her what she thinks about pornography. Totally different avenue, and she's totally for pornography.

01:35:53

She watches it herself. Yeah. At what age would she like her precious little daughter to get involved in that noble profession?

01:36:00

Well, here's what I ended up saying is, there's not a single rapist that didn't start with pornography.

01:36:08

Now, it doesn't mean everyone who watches pornography isn't going to be—that they're going to be a rapist. So we look at that, but every single one of them says they started with pornography, and it wasn't enough.

01:36:23

You're saying you're against the rape culture, and yet you support the thing that's underlining that rape culture.

01:36:34

Because what I wanted to do is get it off of her emotion, try to get it to something that's say like, look, and I told her,

01:36:42

I said, I personally believe every rapist should be killed. But I mean, no different than in the film 180.

01:36:49

If you haven't seen the film 180, I think it's 180movie .com is the site to go to.

01:36:57

But go watch that film. But one of the questions

01:37:03

Ray would ask is, the question you brought up is, why punish the child for the sins of the father?

01:37:09

And I asked her that, and she didn't care. Like, she really did not care what the father did.

01:37:15

It was what she had to go through. And so after I went to pornography, she actually agreed that she saw that pornography was a problem that leads to rape.

01:37:26

And so she said, maybe I shouldn't be supportive of it. But the avenue—because we still weren't getting headway with trying to get to the gospel, which is where I wanted to go—was to then say, okay, you don't punish the child.

01:37:42

And she's like, but I don't, I shouldn't have to suffer. And I ended up asking her,

01:37:47

I said, do you think that someone with cerebral palsy chooses whether they get to suffer or not? Someone that gets in a car accident,

01:37:54

I mean, do they have the choice? It's not what they wanted, but it's what happened.

01:38:00

And someone that gets in a car accident, and now they're a quadriplegic. Life changes. You don't go and kill someone else.

01:38:09

Because the irony is, she agreed it was murder. She agreed it was a child in the womb. She agreed it was murder.

01:38:16

But she was justifying the murder. And I ended up, you know, I'm trying to go that route to say, okay, life happens.

01:38:24

We can't control that. Yeah, you know, C .S. Lewis, he said hardships are often hardships often prepare ordinary people for extraordinary destinies, you know.

01:38:39

Yeah, boy, like I said, there's so much to say here. If I was talking to somebody who has experienced rape like that, and listen,

01:38:51

I know a lot of people actually, close people. If somebody has had an abortion, it is 100 % impossible to move on from it.

01:39:08

But you can move forward. And the only way you can move forward is with God's help.

01:39:17

That's the you can escape the insanity of that evil situation, right?

01:39:23

So the enemy, here he is, he wants to define you by your scars, and then in comes

01:39:29

Christ, who wants to define you by his. And this is why it's a perfect place for the gospel.

01:39:37

And if somebody comes along and says, well, listen, I don't deserve a second chance. You know,

01:39:42

I don't deserve a third chance. Well, you didn't deserve the first chance either, right? So it's impossible to move on.

01:39:49

But people can move forward. You know, Norma McCorvey, who the whole Roe v. Wade, who was based off of, she claims that she was raped.

01:40:00

And then she later went on to say that she confessed that she was never raped. But that whole case, you know, was based upon a lie that she was raped.

01:40:11

Not surprising. So let me ask Josiah and Justin, if you have any questions on abortion, if not, we'll move to evangelism.

01:40:22

Well, one thing I was going to point out here is that one of the reasons that this topic on abortion becomes so emotional is, you know,

01:40:33

Mark, you just brought it up. This is an emotional issue. People are dealing with guilt and condemnation.

01:40:42

And so when they're dealing with this, our goal is to point them to the one that is, according to scripture,

01:40:50

Jesus, he is the one that absolves us of that guilt.

01:40:56

He takes that guilt upon himself, that condemnation. You know, there is therefore now no condemnation to those who are in Christ Jesus.

01:41:03

And I always want to try to get to that point. I've been in an abortion clinic, you know, before, as I'm talking with people, that is the primary issue, is the guilt.

01:41:15

But it's also the pride where they won't come to see themselves as the murderer, the guilty party of that life.

01:41:26

They don't want to see themselves that way. And so while they feel that guilt, it's driving their emotion.

01:41:34

It's driving their vitriol of, you know, well, I'm a victim.

01:41:40

You know, they don't want to admit that, yes, you're the victim. But when you step into that building, you become another guilty party.

01:41:51

You know, and that's just in the rape situation. In the everyday situation, the 99 .999

01:41:57

% of the situations, those are not rape situations.

01:42:03

Those are people that have been involved in already compounded sin. And, you know, they go in and decide to take that life.

01:42:14

Yeah. My question is,

01:42:26

I think, the question that every person gets to kind of one -up the pro -life guy, and is, what about the life of the woman?

01:42:36

What if the baby develops in the and also how do you swing that around to the gospel?

01:42:43

Yeah. So there's two things there, right? And what if the mother's life's in danger? My son, Nathaniel, I'm in a public library right now.

01:42:51

And my son, who keeps walking by, he's 20 years old. We were told that my son,

01:42:57

Nathaniel, whose name means gift of God or given by God, that he was developing in my wife's fallopian tube.

01:43:06

That's an ectopic pregnancy. And inside the emergency room where we found out my wife was pregnant, and it was an ectopic pregnancy, we had the emergency room doctor say, we need to go perform an emergency surgery to save your wife.

01:43:22

The child is not going to develop. I requested for a second opinion, and then I requested for a third opinion.

01:43:29

And all three doctors, emergency room doctors, said it was their professional opinion that it was an ectopic pregnancy, and that was the pain that my wife was experiencing.

01:43:39

There was just something that came over me that just was led to believe that they were wrong.

01:43:45

There was just, God gave me a measure of faith at that moment to believe that they were wrong. And I turned them away, and I was holding onto the gurney where my wife was laying down, and I'm pulling as the orderly is trying to pull my wife away into surgery.

01:44:00

And I said, no, you're not going to perform the surgery. And long story short, they were wrong. They were wrong.

01:44:06

It was not an ectopic pregnancy. My wife had a cyst that had ruptured on her fallopian tube that released about a

01:44:12

Coke can worth of blood. Had I listened to that professional opinion, my son

01:44:19

Nathaniel, who does the graphics, most of the graphics for our

01:44:24

Living Waters channel, would not be here today. That's not to say that there are not emergency cases.

01:44:33

There are ectopic pregnancies where it is impossible for the baby to grow and our technology is not at that place, sadly, to determine whether or not we can take care of.

01:44:50

But now, once again, I have to ask that question. If I were to outlaw abortion in all other cases, except for the case of the mother's life's in danger, would you be willing to outlaw abortion?

01:45:01

And the answer, of course, is no. A couple of things here. These are very simple to go through. By saying mother, what if the mother's life's in danger?

01:45:10

If the mother's life's in danger, remember these key points. Well, you don't need Planned Parenthood. You need an emergency room.

01:45:17

You don't go to Planned Parenthood. You go to the emergency room. Let's grab a hold of the $500 million that's going towards Planned Parenthoods every year.

01:45:24

And our Governor Newsom here in California wants to put a Planned Parenthood in every college, every university here in California.

01:45:31

So it makes Planned Parenthood obsolete. Grab a hold of the $500 million that's going towards Planned Parenthood, and let's put that towards agencies, pro -life clinics.

01:45:41

And there's like 20 to 1 ratio. Last time I looked, it's the amount of pro -life clinics than there are to these abortion mills.

01:45:50

Next, if a mother's life's in danger, remember this.

01:45:58

She does not have an abortion. That's not an abortion. That's a life -saving procedure to save the mother.

01:46:06

You're actually trying to save both. And if one of them dies, well, then one of them dies. That's sad to say, but that's the case.

01:46:13

An abortion is a willful, deliberate, murderous act on behalf of the mother to terminate that pregnancy, to kill the child.

01:46:24

No, that's not an abortion. She goes to the emergency room, not Planned Parenthood. And so I use this illustration.

01:46:32

I say, hey, imagine you and I were sitting by the river. We're enjoying our morning oatmeal by the fire, and we see a woman floating down the water on a log, crying, screaming for help as she holds on to a child in one hand and the log in the other.

01:46:49

You and I, we look at each other. You say, man, I don't know how to swim. I can't. This is all you. And I go, okay. I jump out into the water, and I swim over towards the mother, and I grab a hold of one.

01:47:00

Let's say in this case, the child. Would it be acceptable to grab a hold of the child and then dunk the mother?

01:47:09

No. I'm going to try to save both. If one dies in the process, well, then one sadly dies, right?

01:47:16

So if a car was on fire, and I run over inside the car, and I see that there's two people in there, if I'm only able to save one, well, then

01:47:24

I save one. I don't save the other. That's just the way it is. But I'm going to try to save both, and that's what every sane doctor is going to attempt to do, right?

01:47:34

But if it's just the mother's life who's in danger, well, typically, you deliver the baby through a

01:47:40

C -section if it's viable, right? At 21 days, it has a heart discernible.

01:47:47

At 35 days, the brain is discernible. At 7 to 10 weeks, which is when a person usually has an abortion, the heartbeat is already there.

01:47:59

The brainwaves are already there, right? So it's never acceptable to have an abortion inside these cases.

01:48:10

And to demonstrate just how rare that it is, Dr. Anthony Levitino, he's a former abortionist.

01:48:18

He had said, in my experience of over almost a decade of working as an abortionist,

01:48:25

I never had to deliberately kill a single child to save a woman's life.

01:48:37

Think about that. Never had to kill one to save the mother, which demonstrates that it's more of a facade than anything else.

01:48:45

And I have quotes up the nose for this, but I believe that we answered it sufficiently, unless you want me to keep going.

01:48:53

Yeah, no, because we are coming up to the top of the hour. I think that this is helpful for folks.

01:49:02

I'm just, as I'm seeing the comments that are going on, people are really appreciating that. This is why I thought it'd be good for you to come in and talk on this topic, because I know how good you are with it.

01:49:12

Let me just give a plug for livingorders .com, not livingorders .org, by the way, that's a church.

01:49:19

But I was noticing as I go to the website, and it's just, I'm curious,

01:49:25

I've got a question for you as I share this. I look at your YouTube channel here. Okay, so on top, we got a picture of EZ, Ray, and yourself.

01:49:37

So here's the question. Just knowing the three of you, is Ray standing on a chair for that picture?

01:49:44

I mean, seriously. Yeah, Ray's not that tall. I'm like, how did you guys get his head?

01:49:52

Yeah, and if you look carefully, EZ's even a little taller than me. Listen, I'm six, two and a half. Ray, I believe is 5 '2", 5 '3".

01:50:03

He might say that he's 5 '5", but he's not. And then EZ, I think is 5 '9", give or take.

01:50:09

Yeah, I once said to Ray, I said, I think that the reason you started when you did open air to get up on a box had nothing to do with your voice being elevated for your voice or anything else.

01:50:24

Come on, be honest. You just want to be eye level with everyone else in the crowd. To which he agreed with Ray's sense of humor.

01:50:35

That's funny. So, last question, more of a fun question. You work with Ray Comfort and Emile Zwane, two very different people.

01:50:50

Okay, granted, one's from a Jewish background, one's from an Arab background. So, we have the solution to the Middle East crisis there is just Christ.

01:50:57

But what's it like working with guys that you may think sometimes they've lost their mind?

01:51:06

I mean, Ray has come up with more crazy ideas. I've told people that if they get to go to Living Waters, do a tour, it is like a museum of humor.

01:51:19

Yes. Yes, it is. Yeah, I mean, we're actually changing a lot of that.

01:51:26

We're moving things up. People often, you know, I mean, we're blessed that our podcast is doing so well and our

01:51:33

TV show is doing so well. But Ray says concerning our podcast and our television show, we're just four idiots talking about serious theological things, you know, bringing in our own individual character.

01:51:47

That we, our podcasts are not work, you know, in any way, shape or form, right?

01:51:55

We're just getting together and talking. And we're talking about things that we're passionate about, right? I mean, talking about evangelism, that's really it.

01:52:03

You know, Spurgeon said, you know, God save us from living in comfort while sinners are sinking into hell.

01:52:14

So, we're not chasing after that white picket fence life, but that doesn't mean that we can't enjoy the journey, you know, while we get there.

01:52:25

Yeah. So, let me just, you know, Mark, you and I recently, last time we saw each other, was over at the

01:52:31

Ark Encounter. And we deal with the thing of abortion. I'll encourage folks, if you're in the Kentucky area, to go to the

01:52:38

Creation Museum downstairs. They have a new exhibit that they've just started and they're going to be adding to, you know, which is all on, basically, what goes on within the womb.

01:52:50

I think, I'm trying to remember the name of that section. I think they call it A Wonderful Life.

01:52:57

But they go through all the stages of the fetal development, the child's developing within the womb, and what's going on there.

01:53:08

And so, it's something that if you get a chance to go and check that out, I encourage you to do that.

01:53:16

It's something that is really informative and will help you in some of the arguments that you're seeing.

01:53:24

Mark has already mentioned, go check out some of the things that he has put together. You know, there was, you've had a couple of YouTube videos that is on Living Water's YouTube channel, where you have gone through and you're sharing the gospel with people that are, you know, dealing with the issue of abortion, dealing with the issue.

01:53:44

Yeah, I remember you had the one recently, not all that recent now, but the Black Lives Matter guy that you had the discussion with, that you had sent me.

01:53:53

And I encourage you guys to go check out Mark's style, how he handles these things.

01:53:59

Because I bring that last one up because Mark, that was an issue that could get very emotional as well, just like abortion.

01:54:07

And if you watch the way Mark handled himself, you'll see that there's something we can learn from that.

01:54:16

Yes, we got to deal with the apologetic issues. But one of the things and reason

01:54:21

I'm encouraging you to go check out what Mark does is because when he does this, he's not there to win a debate.

01:54:28

He wants to get to the gospel, and you can see that in the way he handles himself. So if you guys haven't, if you're not familiar with Mark, if this is the first time you're getting to hear him,

01:54:38

I hope you realize he's a well -spoken, articulate person who knows a lot on the topics he speaks on, knows a lot about evangelism.

01:54:48

And so if you check out the Living Waters, check out some of the stuff he's done, you're going to be truly blessed by that.

01:54:59

So Mark, any last things you want to say, any projects you're working on, ways people can follow what you're doing, so folks can learn more about you?

01:55:10

You can keep in prayer our pro -life film that isn't coming out until January, and we're really excited about it.

01:55:22

I deal with a lot of the subjects that I talk about here, and even then some. I actually went on a college campus with a bulletin, or not a bulletin board, what are those called?

01:55:35

Just with a petition to get people to sign my petition to legalize post -birth abortion, to see if the people would be so progressive to sign that.

01:55:44

And there were just a ton of students that signed my petition to legalize infanticide.

01:55:50

It's really the future of America. It was argued in November of 2019, before Congress, to legalize infanticide.

01:55:59

And the top book on ethics, written by a man named Peter Singer, he's an Australian guy, he teaches over at Yale, the top book on ethics, he teaches inside that book that abortion should be legal up until 29 days.

01:56:12

And I believe he has a personal conviction that abortion should be legal five years after the child is born.

01:56:18

It's just infanticide. But so working on that film, we have a project coming out soon called

01:56:26

Living Waters Equip, which is where... Finally. I've been waiting for that.

01:56:35

You started the filming of that, I'm trying to think, was it like four years ago?

01:56:40

Four years ago. It was in the studio like four or five years ago. We've always been waiting for that.

01:56:47

Yeah. So basically what it is, is we have 1 ,200 plus videos where we brought in the top apologists, professors, theologians, teachers to answer...

01:56:57

Wait, wait, wait. Top apologists and some lowlifes. Just because you filmed me and I'm not in the top apologist category, so...

01:57:05

Yeah, well, we're not going to use your... Okay, that makes sense. And they're basically all answering the same sort of questions, but it's a street apologetic, why the

01:57:15

Bible, not the Bhagavad Gita, right? And so you're given two to three minutes to answer these questions and they're not going on and on for 40, 45 minutes.

01:57:25

They're getting a street answer so that when they're out on the street, they can have a good answer to the question.

01:57:32

So they have a lot of people answering the same question, they milk everybody and then they make their own butter. What works for them?

01:57:38

And so we're really excited about that. It's a video based curriculum called Living Waters Equip. Keep that in prayer.

01:57:44

I really appreciate that. So John McKeon, thanks for having Mark on this show.

01:57:49

John McKeon said, Andrew, thanks for having Mark on, great program. Good to be here, John. John is a graduate of the

01:57:55

Ambassador's Academy as well. I think he was on Anthony's team. Nice. And Anthony, I'll be out there in August to help with leading some of the teams there.

01:58:05

So we're always looking forward to that. And with what you're saying with the

01:58:11

Equip, it's a thing where, and this goes back to something you said at the beginning, I remember

01:58:18

I had my seminary professor ask if I could teach, if I can come in and teach a class on presuppositional apologetics.

01:58:25

And I turned to him, I'm like, Steve, you have a PhD in presuppositional apologetics.

01:58:31

What in the world am I going to be able to come into your classroom and teach that you can't?

01:58:38

And his response was, I teach it in a classroom. You do it on the streets. Nice. And who was this?

01:58:44

His name is Steve Forhan. He was my seminary professor. Nice. But that's what the

01:58:52

Living Orders Equip is to be. It's not just the ivory tower theologians, but people that are putting it onto the street to be helpful for folks.

01:59:01

So I'm really looking forward to that coming out. So Mark, thanks for coming out and being on for your wisdom that you provided.

01:59:11

Listen, I'm being kicked out of this room. So you look behind me, here's the library behind me.

01:59:17

And they're closing. I need to take off. But God bless you guys. Thanks for having me.

01:59:23

Thank you for your time. Thank you for coming on. We definitely appreciate it. And God bless.

01:59:28

We'll be praying for you. Thank you, brother. God bless you guys. Next week, I believe the topic will be the

01:59:34

Southern Baptist Convention. That is, I believe, what we're going to have as a topic. Pastor Justin, I think you're going to be running that.

01:59:42

And so I will not be available. My children will be in town. And I will say,

01:59:50

I'll hold this over, give some anticipation. July 7th,

01:59:55

I may have some news. I won't be on the show next week.

02:00:00

My kids will be in town. My family will be in town. And we will be having a discussion.

02:00:07

And I think, I think I might have some news. Pastor Armon from the Philippines says, thank you,

02:00:12

Andrew Rapport, Mark Spence, and Josiah Nichols. I guess he forgot about you, Justin Pierce. No, I came in late.

02:00:19

So I don't get full benefit, full credit. Pastor Armon is down in the Philippines. I was blessed to not only be able to come out to speak at his church a couple, about three years ago, but I was blessed to be able to just, he's the kind of guy

02:00:33

I can call. Pastor Armon, you could tell me, I think I called him at like one in the morning, two in the morning.

02:00:40

And he picked up the phone. Well, okay, granted, it was only like one or two in the afternoon, his time. But I like that.

02:00:47

I like that. I have someone I can call in the middle of the night that's still awake. So, and talked with his family.

02:00:54

So, but next week, Southern Baptist Convention. Yeah, we're going to talk about the coverups, the lies, the hidden agendas, and everything that we can get ahold of.

02:01:07

And I just want to let everybody know, we're definitely going to be talking about the pastors who have been caught in compromised situations where they have taken advantage of people and tried to hide it, tried to cover it up, lie about it.

02:01:22

And I don't mind saying like Johnny Hunt, we're going to talk about you. So, we're going to talk about these things.

02:01:28

Guys, the Bible doesn't tell us to be quiet about it. We're to expose this stuff because the reputation and name of Christ and the body of Christ is going to be tainted and maligned when we're talking about, when we're talking about, that Rick Warren can step up there and, you know, lead a train wreck and tell us everybody that it's a secondary issue and we don't need to worry about what the

02:01:58

Bible says because, I mean, you know, he's better than Moses. So, we're going to talk about those things.

02:02:04

So, everybody be ready. So, folks be looking forward to that, share that so that others are watching.

02:02:11

If you got a lot out of this, please share it, especially if you don't know this becomes a podcast.

02:02:16

So, if you listen to podcasts, go and follow Apologetics Live so that you can listen to everyone.

02:02:22

Now, I will say that folks who've been listening to, who listen to the podcast, there are two dropping every month or every week,

02:02:30

I should say, until we catch up. As I said to you guys last week, we were, you know, when Anthony was doing it, he didn't have the access to be able to make the podcast.

02:02:38

I've now set that up. They'll be dropping. So, you're going to get two every week. So, with that, folks, we're out of here.