Justification By Faith ALONE | w/ Anthony Rogers PT.2

Original Sin, Indwelling of the Spirit, and Church of Christ Teaching

The simple fact is that James is not negating what Protestants are affirming, what Paul affirms, what Hillary of Poitiers affirmed, what Victorinus affirmed, what Cyril of Alexandria, Basil the Great, and all these others affirmed.

We will live by faith alone Clothed in merit, not our own. All we claim is Jesus Christ And His finished sacrifice. Glory be to God alone. To the church He redeemed and made His own He has freed us, He will keep us Till we're safely home.

Glory be, glory be to God alone.

I want to encourage people that the doctrine of original sin is huge. This may be news to you with Church of Christ. So they do not believe Christians have the indwelling Holy Spirit, not ontologically or actually.

They think that's all an ax paradigm, but it makes sense. They deny original sin. You do not need a transformed nature by the Spirit. And so, you know, in the whole debate of... What do you mean by an ax paradigm?

Well, their whole deal is in order to be a Christian, you got to do what the Christians did in the ax, but they're going to quickly dismiss the gifts of the Spirit. They're going to quickly dismiss any real indwelling of the Holy Spirit.

They, at large, believe that the Holy Spirit is in you only when you read the inspired Scripture. So like you had thinking Scripture, that's the Holy Spirit in you. Now, not every Church of Christ believe that.

That's just at large what's talking about. And what I was going to say real quick is in the ongoing discussion with continuationism and cessationism, I've been accused of being a radical cessationist, Jeremiah.

And I'm like, how can I paint a spectrum from somebody? Because I believe still many, the Spirit's at work in dwelling believers, transforms our nature, seals us to the day of redemption. And, you know, not to totally get into the sign gifts and how I understand that.

I thought it'd be good to actually point some people to a group that is a radical cessationist, and it's the Church of Christ. They believe the Holy Spirit does not in any way transform your nature. You have the ability to make the right decisions and do the proper works of obedience to be made right with God.

And I'm like, that's your radical cessationist that do not believe.

That they even have the Holy Spirit. Sorry to be distracted. No, you're good. So the free thinker,.

Marian Controversies, Apostolic Churches, and Rome’s Claims

This is Tyler Vela. Tyler Vela. I was on Eli Yala's channel last week or so, and we talked.

A little bit about Tyler. So now you're telling on yourself? You're telling Tyler to go listen to that and see what you said about it? Yes. Yes, please do. So I just thought it was funny he says that outs Anthony as a Presbyterian.

So if it does, it does. I didn't realize that was specific to Presbyterians that we use that term. So a man, for those that don't know, is just common jargon for a house that's usually connected to a church, either like on the same property or maybe even attached to the building.

But it's the idea is that a pastor would live there. And that was part of how the church supported him was they would support the house in the church. You'll have to forgive me. I'm a Reformed Baptist, so I didn't catch that.

I didn't know that the term manse was specific to Presbyterians. That's awesome. I learned something. Yeah. So did I. It just shows you how we can be in our own little world with certain things. All right.

Let's see here. I'm just seeing if I take a look. Yeah. So John A., I don't know what he's referring to. How's that not blasphemy? How else do we receive Christ without being born? Oh, okay. So he must be responding to or reacting to something you said about the Church of Christ view.

It's interesting, you know, Acts paradigm. I don't know. It's so odd that they would think that you don't need a new nature, that they would deny the inward presence. That's why they deny.

Baptismal regeneration. And they'll just say, we're not of the denomination of the Roman Catholics. And I'm just like, and so as I ask more questions and dig deeper, the way that they understand baptism, that's the moment that they're justified.

And so really it's this baptismal justification apart from a transformed nature. And I'm like, ah, this makes sense why you deny the Holy Spirit changing your name. This is why you don't think fundamentally you need a new heart because you think you got the tools at your disposal already.

You know, this is interesting.

Because I think, I suspect one reason they might want to say we're not part of that group, right, is because they're thinking this group is way out there, and we don't want to be associated with them.

But what's interesting is they actually end up, I think, shooting themselves in the foot, because this ends up making a point that I've made that the Council of Trent, the Roman Catholic Church at the time of Trent, had a much higher view of grace than a lot of these pseudo-Christian cults, and even then many contemporary Roman Catholics.

Because if you read Trent, they had a very high view of grace. It's not the same high view that you find in Protestantism generally, but it was a higher view of grace than you find among many Catholics today, and even then apparently this group.

The Roman Catholic Council of Trent was not Pelagian. You know, you can read Trent. They insist on grace, the necessity of grace, and will even say some things that many Roman Catholics would be shocked at.

They'd think, oh, that just, I thought that was a Protestant idea. Maine is only mostly dead. Yeah, I mean, so yeah, they definitely aren't fully Augustinian or anything like that, or even as robust as something you might read at the Council of Orange.

But, oh yeah, so this, so somebody says here, Morg, I don't know if I'm saying your name right, Morgay or Morg, says, did you see William Albrecht's video response to you on Mariology? Now, I think that guy should be ashamed to ever mention my name, right, personally.

That man should be ashamed of himself. I chased him for over a year, and his master should be ashamed as well, the guy who told him he had to debate me because he didn't want to. They both should be ashamed.

Why are they responding to me when they didn't want to debate these topics? Now, Sam jumped ship, right? Didn't.

He somewhat start out Protestant, or, now, I know he's Assyrian Church of the East or something. I don't really know his background, but I feel like there was some old content. Yeah, I always say that.

There's only one true church, and Sam doesn't belong to either one of them, meaning that he keeps talking about these apostolic churches, right? The Eastern Church, the Roman Catholic Church, the Oriental Orthodox, all these other groups.

The Eastern Church claims it's the one true church, and if you don't belong to her, then you are lost. The Roman Catholic Church claims to be the one true church. The Assyrian Church claims that it's the true church.

Church of Christ claim that they're the one true church. Right, and not only do you have to be.

Baptized, right? You got to be baptized in the church, right? Yeah, yeah. So, I think it's funny, you know, these churches that he keeps defending, he's not part of, and at least the Eastern Church would say he's lost.

Rome is confused. It depends if you're asking the the Tridentine Roman Church or post, you know, second Vatican II Roman Catholicism, you know, you might be a separated brethren, and that could mean any one of a dozen different things.

But anyways, yeah, so I have seen that they did a response to me on Mary. Now, I'm not going to watch it. I don't even care to watch it. I don't get my information from these guys. I don't think that they have the ability to deal with, I mean, first of all, for those that don't know, I've done like 10 hours on this topic.

You can be sure he's chopped up everything I've said. He's probably distorted it, misrepresented it. These guys have had no shame about lying on things I've said in the past, so I'm just not even interested in looking at that.

But I did see, I did see this. I saw that Shamoon has said he wants to debate me and somebody else, so him and William Albrecht are going, or are willing to debate me on Mary, right? So neither one of them wanted to debate me by themselves, right?

William didn't want to debate me on justification by himself. You should just be by yourself, 2v1. Well, so, well, here's what I was thinking, okay? They call themselves brothers in arms, and the way this looks to me is like neither one of them wants to do this by themselves, so they should be called men holding hands.

But anyways, don't blame Jeremiah for this, people. This is my wit. This is my way of talking. I'm just poking fun here.

Anthony, so back when I debated a Roman Catholic on was Mary sinless or not, so William made a video saying that his blood was boiling when somebody, you know, misrepresents the mother of their Lord and these things, and they invited me to come on their channel and talk, and I had about 10 people immediately say, don't do it, Jeremiah.

Don't do it, because I didn't really know them. I knew some of the old content that Sam had had, but I'm so glad I didn't, because I could detect that it would not be charitable, and I would have been roasted to no end, because I really do want to have a charitable conversation with people.

People can go look at my content, and you'll see it. The way that I debated with Gavin James in a debate, tried to show him a lot of love and grace, ask him questions, but when he was just sitting there and seven seconds ticked by, I'm just like, hey, you think on it, and we'll come back to it later, but let's, you know, kind of move on.

I don't want to kick somebody when they're down, but I just noticed that those two, they're not necessarily trying to accomplish the same goal there.

Yeah, and you know, so I've kind of gone back and forth. I'm thinking, how much more time do I want to spend directed at them, but you know, people keep asking questions, and so it keeps coming up, and you know, I don't know.

I go back and forth. There are plenty of people that I think have made the right choice not to engage that. Gavin Ortland, for example, very respected by Roman Catholics and Eastern Orthodox people, his Irenic approach and so forth, and he's actually refused to interact.

With the material those guys are putting out. Now, I talked to Gavin recently and just said, hey, I appreciate how you're able to have a meaningful interaction with William, and he says, by no means. He's like, that person is not respectful, and he was just saying what you're saying.

I refuse to like go any further. Like, I really enjoyed Gavin's debate with Trent Horn. You know what? That was respectful dialogue. It seemed like a very historical approach from both sides, but at the end of the day, I was like, you know what?

That was a refreshing conversation.

Where two men can be respectful towards one another. Yeah, and you know, I think in my debate with Seraphim, I told him at the end, I said, I enjoyed interacting with you. You're very different than the other people I've been interacting with.

If this was the sort of thing that I was doing to begin with, this is how I started engaging these groups was with somebody like Seraphim, this all would have been a different thing, and as I mentioned, I thought that what I would do is sort of draw the fire of these guys.

You know, that way other people can have respectable dialogue. I'm not going to be bothered by this sort of thing. I know for a fact that you don't.

Get bothered easy because you debated, oh goodness, I don't remember what channel it was on, but I'm pretty sure it was a Muslim, and that was a firework show, and I just remember saying,.

Oh, you're thinking of Osama Abdullah. I think so. Yes, that was brutal. Osama and I go back a long time. I debated him, I don't know, over a decade ago in Dearborn in person, and used to go back and forth with him when I was writing for Answering Islam.

He had his own website, Answering Christianity, and so we would write rebuttals against each other and this sort of thing, so we've got a long history, and I know Osama, he's guttural in his speech and so forth, but at the same time, it's sort of like a, you know, he's easy to, I don't know, I mean, the way I think of it is just, you know, underneath all that, there's a sinner, don't get me wrong, but this guy, what he's doing is more compensating than anything else.

He has to ramp up the rhetoric because substance is lacking, and I just look past some of that stuff for that reason, but anyways, yeah, so that is what it is, but oh, so Slam asked, did you and David get arrested in Dearborn?

So this was a different occasion. I don't know, David wasn't there. In fact, ironically, Sam was there with me on this occasion. Sam also debated Osama, but the debate you're talking about with Osama was probably a more recent one than I did within the past year or so, yeah, but at this debate, I was there with Sam, Eddie Dalcor, and Lewis Lionheart.

We were all there for that debate. Anyways, let's see, am I missing any questions here? Jbox says, legend has it, Osama's still calling everything a conjecture till this very day. Yeah, he's a funny, Osama's a funny man.

Actually, yeah, his constant refrain was, his constant refrain was, that's just spaghetti. Everything he didn't get back in the day, 10 years ago, he kept saying, that's just spaghetti, right? So at one point in his debate with Dr. Edward Dalcor, he kept saying, that's spaghetti, and then Dr. Dalcor at one point says, talk about spaghetti, that's just burnt sausage, right?

It's a classic debate line. Anyways.

Atheism, Apologetics, and Why the Gospel Comes First

That's good. Have you debated atheists? I'm sure you have at some point. I was just trying to recall if you engage much with online atheist philosophers.

I haven't done any online stuff with atheists. The way it worked for me was, I was converted in a hostile context, a context that was hostile to the gospel, and for that reason, got interested in apologetics, because I wanted to evangelize people, and I realized I have to be able to defend what I'm proclaiming to them as good news.

I basically decided that I would learn stuff about the groups that I was encountering. I would go to the university campus, and in those days, of course, on the university campus, I was getting bombarded with atheistic type issues.

Darwinian evolution and other things that were part and parcel of atheism, the more philosophically inclined were arguing different philosophies. Online, I haven't really done that. My basic point is just this.

I was basically dealing with things as they came. You don't get to choose, is this person going to be an atheist? Is he going to be a Buddhist? Is he going to be Church Christ? It was whoever came to me, that's who I was going to focus on.

If I kept running into them, I'm going to read their literature. Eventually, I started getting into a lot of interactions with Muslims. That directed things for me. That's why I eventually started writing for Answering Islam, and then doing debates with Muslims, and stuff like that.

It's the same thing with this whole Catholic, Eastern Orthodox thing. I had no interest in these guys. These guys created this problem. They don't like me, and they're upset about things that I say. They should have never addressed me, because that's what brought me out.

I had no interest in their groups. I was happy refuting Muslims. I was happy refuting Unitarians. If these people didn't come along and say, hey, look, we hate your gospel. We don't believe Christ is sufficient.

We want to put Mary and the in his place. We want to detract from the glory of God. If they didn't do that,.

They wouldn't have heard from me. Now I'm here. Very similar with my apologetics ministry. It really started out when we flew Marlon in, debated Church Christ live in person at the university here in my town.

A lot of my content has been helping equip people to show how baptism is a wonderful thing to glorify and show how God is working in your life. Anyway, that was a big part. Then something else that spawned in my local context is full preterism.

There are two local churches, one being an SBC church, preaching full preterism from the pulpit unashamedly so. It blows my mind. I've had a lot of those men reach out to me. I didn't really understand what was going on.

I was very comfortable in my John MacArthur pre-millennial dispensational eschatology realizing, oh, I got to start taking these things serious. For the past year, I've been studying to debunk and expose full preterism, hyper preterism, and realizing that, man, this is just an overhaul in light of all the recent stuff going on with Gary DeMar, which is just shocking.

That's another big portion of on my channel, speaking to what full preterism teaches and where it's wrong, how it fails historically, how it fails logically, and then it fails exegetically ultimately.

I will say I'm not pre-millennial anymore, but I think that is orthodox along with all mill and post mill. I will be speaking at a conference in Indiana in September. I've been invited by Eschatology Matters.

I'll be preaching on the resurrection of the dead and how that's a part of our blessed.

Hope. Interesting, Max King was a hyper preterist, and wasn't he a Church of Christ?

He was. I've tried to tell some of these men in my local town that claim to be reformed. I'm like, you've denied the historic faith. You're not reformed anymore. You're Calvinistic, and there's a distinction there.

I'm like, you're listening to Church of Christ teaching. This spawned out of that stuff only within 200 years ago. This is new on the span of church history. You're absolutely right, and it just baffles me to no end.

It's interesting. I was thinking earlier, you mentioned Bonson. I went to a Christian classical school, Christ College, when it was in Lynchburg, Virginia, before it moved down to Georgia. I don't like saying going down to Georgia.

It always reminds me that the devil went down to Georgia. Bonson was one of the people that helped start that school. He wasn't there when I got there. He died long before I went, but at the time, Ken Gentry was teaching modular courses.

He taught a modular course when I was there on eschatology. Then eventually, when I went to seminary in Greenville, when I moved to Greenville, Ken Gentry lived 10 minutes away from me, and so I would sometimes go over to his church.

Of course, he's a preterist, not a hyper-preterist, but I mention this because both Gary DeMar and Ken Gentry studied under Bonson back at RTS back in the day. Preterism, not hyper-preterism, but just the idea nobody should object to the bare term.

Everybody could be called a preterist to some extent in the sense that all preterism means is gone by or past, and so everybody's a preterist, at least with respect to certain prophecies. We're all preterists when it comes to Isaiah 714, if we're Christians.

In the same principle, we're futurists to a degree in terms of our blessed hope.

Everybody believes that Christ has been born of a virgin. We're all preterists. We believe that prophecy has happened. If you're an Orthodox Christian, you believe that there are certain things that are still future, like Christ's visible, audible, palpable second coming, his resurrection of the dead from their tombs, the final judgment, the consummation of the new.

Heavens and the new earth. Everybody's a futurist. All that was at 70 AD, man.

Well, so point being that the Orthodox preterism that was being taught by Bonson was taught to people like Damar and Gentry, but there's been a lot of issues going on lately with Damar, and I haven't paid too much attention to all of it, but from what I understand, there's questions about where he's at with respect to these things and whether or not he's embraced hyper-preterism.

I'm not going to comment on whether he has or hasn't because I haven't kept up on it, but I will say that I thoroughly, adamantly reject hyper-preterism.

I've done two shows recently with Dr. Sam Frost, who was a lead speaker of full preterism for a decade and came out of it. This dude knows the ins and outs. The concerning thing with Damar is he's refusing to affirm those essentials of our blessed hope about Christ's future bodily coming, that we are going to receive resurrected bodies fit for eternity, and that Christ is going to restore all things.

His deal, and you can kind of go look into this in your audience, is he's just saying, okay, you tell me your proof text to support those major points. And what he's been doing every time is the verses that are being brought to him, he shows how it don't mean that.

And so it's just really concerning because he's hashtagged that post-meal life, you know what I mean? And I've loved his Last Days Madness and I've encouraged people to read these things. And I think there's a beauty to partial preterism, understanding historic orthodox preterism, understanding how God was working in the early church.

But yeah, it's a whole deal. And the reason why I brought that up is going back to what you said. I wasn't searching out after having, I was comfortable in my eschatology, right? I've a lot of times told people eschatology is the third tier issue that we can talk about over coffee and disagree and shake hands.

I didn't realize somebody could have just such a skewed eschatology that it corrupts the gospel of grace. I believe it changes the nature of who Jesus is to say that he not only returned in 70 AD, but it was in spirit form.

That's Gnosticism, right? You're talking about a different Jesus at that point. And it's no longer a gospel that triumphs over sin. I don't know if this is news to you, but they believe that this world of sin continues on into infinity.

And so that has logical problems that I've gotten into. But all of this showed up in my hometown and I have to guard the flock from this. So I'm like you, I didn't go searching after a lot of.

These things. So we've shifted a little bit, but that's not a problem because we've talked a lot about justification. We've answered some questions. I don't see additional ones on justification, so I don't have a problem.

Everybody agrees with us. But one issue that you just reminded me of. So when I first encountered somebody who held to hyper-preterism, it was back in the 90s, and I had done a lot of stuff with Jehovah's Witnesses.

So I remember one of the things that was surprising to me was when I learned that Jehovah's Witnesses didn't believe that Christ is bodily risen from the dead. And part of that had to do with their idea.

They made a number of false predictions about the return of Christ. And the next time around, right, after several false predictions, instead of saying, oh, wrong date, what they did was they redefined the nature of his second coming.

And so they defined it as something invisible and all that. And this tied in with the whole idea that he's not presently embodied. He doesn't presently have a resurrected body. And so the reason I bring this up is I was talking to this person who was a hyper-preterist.

I didn't even know what hyper-preterism was. And I was talking to this person, and they said that everything happened in AD 70. And I said, well, then how do you define the nature of Christ and his—you know, I know there's a number of ways you could try to deal with this, but the way this person dealt with it was to say that Jesus was not physically raised from the dead.

It was a spiritual resurrection. And so that's how they could explain all the passages that talk about his coming, including those that we would normally interpret as a reference to his bodily coming.

So they would say that it's all spiritual. And so my understanding, at least, of some versions of preterism—hyper-preterism, maybe not all, I don't know—but is that some of them deny that Christ right now is the incarnate Son at the right hand of the Father.

Most do. They believe that He was reabsolved as.

The eternal Logos into the Godhead. And so how do they interpret that He is still the God-man interceding on our behalf as the one mediator? We'll say, well, He still has thoughts of when He was in the incarnation, and somehow that counts.

And I'm over here like, different Jesus. Paul warned.

Us about people like y 'all. So one of the things I do with these groups, besides obviously hammering those texts that talk about Christ's post-resurrection appearances, which are all quite clearly intended to drive home the point that He's a real, resurrected, incarnate person.

Yeah, but Anthony, those are before 70 AD. But, well, so part of the problem, though, even with that, is at what point, then, biblically, do you say Christ ceased having that body? Because I can keep going with this, but it gets worse.

But here's an example of what I'm talking about. In Colossians 2, Paul says, in Christ dwells all the fullness of the Godhead bodily. It's present tense. In Christ dwells all the fullness of deity in bodily form.

So he's saying, when he wrote that, now they'll say this is prior to 80 -70, but it's very clearly far after Christ's ascension that Paul's writing to the saints in Colossae, right? So at that point, Paul's thinking of Christ as having ascended into heaven and still being embodied.

But now here's why, I mean, it gets even worse. In Acts 17, when Paul's preaching to the Epicurean and Stoic philosophers on Mars Hill, Paul says that God has fixed a day in which He's going to judge the world in righteousness by the man whom He has appointed, and He's given proof of this to all men by raising him from the dead.

So here Paul speaks of the judgment that's going to be brought as being exercised by a man who was raised from the dead. And so, well, they might say that's 80 -70, but isn't that a problem,.

Right? Because he's now a man. That's Demar's stance. That day, he thinks, and how you're interpreting the Greek, that day is soon, right? It's around the corner. Rather than, like Gentry and Philip Kaiser say, it's a certainty to happen.

But it's still missing the point that it's talking.

About Jesus as a man exercising. So you can't get around this problem of denying the real bodily resurrected nature of Christ. He was embodied long after His resurrection. He was embodied after His ascension.

He was embodied when Paul wrote to the saints at Colossae. He was embodied even in 80 -70, if you think Act 1731 is talking about 80 -70. I don't. I'm just saying if you do, you have to affirm that. And now you have to deal with the very physical nature of this person in.

Connection with that event. What do you think about this? I've been teaching at 12 .5 through 1 John 4, verse 2. By this you know the Spirit of God. Every spirit that confesses that Jesus Christ has come into flesh is from God.

I believe that's in the perfect tense, right? So this is speaking to a reality that this past event has future ramifications, that Jesus is the God-man. And guess what? He's still the God-man. Theologically, He's continually interceding on our behalf.

He can only do that if He's a true representative of who we are. So I love what you're saying too. It's like no matter where you want to tackle this, we can rest knowing that not only did Jesus raise bodily, He wasn't the exception.

He was the rule. 1 Corinthians 15 says, hey, that's how your resurrected body, by the way, is going to be. That's not code for Old Testament Israel or something like that. But Jesus is reigning at the right hand of the Father, interceding on our behalf.

Amen. Sorry I wrote you off of what we initially started. I had to get Anthony Rogers' thoughts on hyper-preterism when I had.

The chance. Well, I'm happy to speak to that. I usually try to avoid aspects of the eschatological question only because in my experience, I've met people that they want to make certain things with respect to eschatology, the be-all and end-all of Christianity.

And they want to define the parameters of the faith and who's in it and who's outside of it in terms of things that I do think the resurrection of Christ, the return of Christ, the final judgment, the resurrection of the body, all those are critically necessary.

They're essential, fundamental to the Christian faith. But there are other things related to eschatology that I don't think are necessarily of that sort and that good men can differ on as we try and work towards a more mature understanding.

That's what full preterism does. They pry on those.

Things that we have charitable disagreements with, and then they interpret everything in light of 70 AD. So, it's a complete overhaul, a different hermeneutic, and I didn't realize.

How dangerous it was. Yeah. So, my point is just there's important stuff that I want to talk to that I know some people will shut me out if they know I hold this particular view about the rapture, mid, pre, post, whatever, trib, or—.

We know you're post-mill. Nobody knows. Maybe they do. I don't know. But I'm just saying, yeah, there's some things that it's strange to me that—here's an example of something that got me thinking about this.

This is not on eschatology per se, but I used to work at a Christian bookstore back in the 90s. 1996 to 2000, I worked at this bookstore. I was born in 92, by the way. Oh, really? Okay. So, I was working at a Christian bookstore when you were still a toddler.

So, this guy started working there, and he always wanted to talk to me about tongues. He went to a Pentecostal church, and this is nothing against Pentecostals. It's just this is what particular individual—I wouldn't say it's true of all Pentecostals, but he wanted to talk about tongues every day, and I was like, I'm not really interested in talking about tongues every day.

And so, one day, I stopped him. I was like, I'm going to work, and I'm like, I am not interested in talking about tongues today. Let's talk about Jesus or something. So, anyways, we go to work, and I said to him, I said, hey—because it was obvious to me that he was prioritizing this over other things, and even if just for the sake of argument, we grant that I'm wrong and he's right on that particular issue, I'm thinking, is this really what occupies your thoughts all the time?

And so, I said to him, this was intended to just sort of get him thinking in terms of priorities and what's most important and so forth. I said to him, I said, if I was dying, if you saw me, I got hit by a car, and I'm laying in the gutter, and I'm gasping for air, and you have two minutes with me.

I said, what would you tell me? So, what would you tell me before I passed into eternity? And he said, well, and I said, well, I said, would you talk to me about tongues? I said, or would you give me the gospel?

I said, would you start telling me what the gospel is? And I said, if so, what would it be? And he's like, well, and he kept hemming and hawing, and I'm like, are you serious? You don't have anything to say?

I've got two minutes, man. I'm about to die. And anyway, so then I thought, okay, I'm going to kickstart him here. I said, okay, so you'd tell me, for example, that God's eternal son, the eternal word came down from heaven, and for us men in our salvation, took on human flesh in the womb of the Virgin Mary.

I said, you tell me that, right? And then you tell me what, he goes, wait a minute, wait a minute, he goes, what are you talking about? And I said, what do you mean, wait a minute, what am I talking about?

I said, you'd tell me that the son came down? He goes, Jesus didn't come down from heaven. I said, what? And he said, he goes, Jesus, he goes, Jesus, he was born of Mary. I mean, and I'm like, what? This whole time I'm working with this guy, he goes to a Pentecostal church, and he told me he was also a youth pastor there.

And the guy didn't even know who Jesus was. I thought, I am never, again, going to assume or take for granted somebody's Christianity. I'm going to make sure that people that I talk to, if I'm out witnessing and somebody tells me they're a Christian, I'm going to make sure I ask them if they know the gospel, if they know who Jesus is.

And ever since then, I was like, this guy wanted to shut anything out that I said because I didn't agree with him on tongues. And I'm thinking, so if I start addressing things like this to people that are of that mindset, then I might not get an opportunity to talk to them about Jesus, which is far more important.

So it's just that kind of thing that weighs on me. I'm not saying I'll never speak on some of the specifics of eschatology that I tend to avoid. It's just, I keep thinking, I don't want somebody shutting out what I'm telling them about justification because I don't hold their particular view of Gog and Magog, or their view of the third temple, or the red heifer, or where the Ark of the Covenant is, or something like that.

You sharing that story made me think about a lot of times you can tell pretty quick people's pet doctrines. And no surprise, with Church Christ, it's baptism. That's the thing that they're going to talk about a lot.

They're going to want to talk four evenings in a row on Acts 2 .38.