So, I resigned as a pastor. Here's why...

It's always an inevitable moment. Are we live? I haven't done a live stream in a very long time.

Are we good? Are we good? Welcome back to a brand new live stream coming at you. It's Friday, it's 10 a .m.

in Las Vegas. My name is Nate Sala, and with me is my good friend, an Academy Award winning actor,

Nicholas Cage. Nicholas Cage, say hi to the fam, Nicky. What's that? Ha ha ha ha, you're crazy.

He's crazy. Moving on. Today we are celebrating 5 ,000 subscribes.

So yeah, 5 ,000, yeah, give it up for yourselves. Yeah, yeah,

I didn't know when I started doing these videos that we would be here in this moment.

So all I can say is God is good. He is in control. I am not in control, okay?

Let me say that a few times over myself. Hello everybody in the chat. Hello, James Cool Kid. Hey there, been a little while.

Alyssa Scott and Hallelujah, love it. D -Pain, welcome everybody, welcome.

James says, Nate, can we put questions in the chat? Sure, so here's the deal. I, a couple weeks ago in the community side, asked everybody, hey, if I do a live stream, would you send me your questions?

I'm gonna answer those questions, but I'm also gonna try to get some of these in the chat as well, and we'll go for about an hour, okay?

Because as we all know, you can only take me in small doses and then you're like, get rid of this guy.

I don't want him anymore. Well, let's start talking, okay? So there were, let me tell you this story.

There were a couple of times in the last 12 months where I looked at my wife and my friends and I said, you know what,

I don't know if I can continue doing YouTube, all right? That's just where God had me, and I'm gonna say more about that at the end of the video.

So stay tuned for that. I'm finally going to announce what's been going on with me, and I'll talk about what that means for Wise Disciple moving forward in the future, okay?

Is that melodramatic enough for you? Okay, well, first, let's answer some questions. So again, I went to the community tab and I looked at some things, and I am going to answer some questions.

Here's the first question. It comes from John. Thank you, John, for this question. And the question is, will you make those satire skits again that you showed us recently?

Okay, so back in the day, before we started making

YouTube videos, my team and I did an audio podcast for years. And because I had a lot more free time back then,

I would make these skits that were audio only that were satirical in nature and just funny.

Like, they just, at the end of the day, they just made me laugh to create them, all right? This was before, you know,

Babylon Bee. So this was a while ago, all right? And recently,

I dropped a video of the audio of one of those skits on the YouTube channel just to see what would happen if anybody enjoyed them.

I think it's called Church Filet. So to answer your question, John, I have a lot more skits that I've done in the past, and I would love to share those.

I don't know if I have the requisite time to think up, like, new skits and then sit down and record new skits.

And then also make Debate Teacher React videos and also, you know, continue to do my day job and be a husband and a father, you know?

So if all of that changes, I'll let you know. Thanks for the question, John. Let's move along to Spencer Chapman.

Spencer Chapman asks this. Is it wise to continue in casual debate when the other person,

I lost the question, when the other person does either of all of these things, all right, refusal to engage in your argument and instead consistently appeals to emotions, shuts you down as being combative slash phobic when their argument is challenged or use the appeal to the stone fallacy to get out of the effort of debating?

Appeal to the stone fallacy, that's like, what is that? That's just dismissing your argument outright.

Okay, right? Is it wise to continue in casual debate with somebody like this?

My answer is no, okay? But I don't just say that, all right? I get my answer from the scripture.

So here's where I would start, Spencer. If you have a friend who's like this, you have to ask yourself the question, why are they like this, okay?

Why are they refusing to engage? Why are they appealing to emotion, you know?

What kind of a person are they? Maybe that's a better question to ask. What kind of person does this?

Because depending on the answer to that kind of diagnostic question, the Bible will tell you what to do, all right?

If you go to Proverbs, turn with me to Proverbs 9. No, I didn't, I'm a professional.

I can go off camera just for a split second. Turn with me in your Bibles to Proverbs 9 and we'll look at something here.

Now, I'm only gonna focus on this one area, all right? I think everybody should do a study of the entire book of Proverbs because this is all over the place, what

I'm about to share with you. But look with me, Proverbs 9, verse seven. And this is what

YouTube wants, is for people to read the Bible live on YouTube, right? Isn't that what they want?

So chapter nine, verse seven, this is what it says. He who corrects a scoffer gets dishonor for himself.

And he who reproves a wicked man gets insults for himself. Here it is, verse eight.

Do not reprove a scoffer or he will hate you. Reprove a wise man and he will love you, all right?

Jesus reiterates this sentiment to his disciples in Matthew chapter seven, okay? In Matthew seven, he says, "'Don't give what is holy to dogs "'and don't throw your pearls to swine "'or they will trample them under their feet "'and then turn and tear you to pieces.'"

Okay, so the Bible teaches us that we need to stay away from certain kinds of folks.

And these are scoffers, mockers, and fools, okay? And if you actually persist and you push your way further into debating these kinds of folks, you're not only doing something unwise, you're disobeying the teaching of Scripture.

So my answer is no, don't do it, Spencer. And look, guess what happens when you obey the

Scripture along these lines? You end up not wasting so much time and energy on the wrong person, so that you can spend all that time and energy on someone who is like the sheep that hears its master's voice, you know what

I mean? Thank you for the question, Spencer. Let's go to Briley Wells, question number three.

Briley asks this, who are some of your favorite people in church history? Now, related to that, somebody named

Dave also asked a question, if I can pull it up here, who, it just says, favorite patristic church fathers.

Okay, great question, thank you so much. So I will say to my

Protestant brothers and sisters, I think we all really benefit as Christians to go back and read the early church fathers, okay?

When I was coming up and studying theology in school, I had to immerse myself in church history and familiarize myself with early heresies and the

Christian responses. And I'm not trying to, in any way, you know, come across like I'm an expert in any of these areas, all right?

But we need to familiarize ourselves as Christians. And the reason I say that, all of that, is we need to read the church fathers, if for nothing else, so that we can be better prepared for challenges to the

Christian faith now. Because guess what, friends? I got a newsflash for you. The challenges to the

Christian faith are nothing new. They are extremely old, all right?

Maybe they're repackaged in something that seems new, but they're really not new.

And so, you know, to go back and read Irenaeus, for example, you read his, against heresies, right?

You read his writings against Gnosticism, or you look at Athanasius, you know, and his writings against Arianism, right?

Or read Augustine, and some of the things Augustine said against Pelagianism, you know, or whatever it is.

It's extremely helpful to do that, because we're still dealing with these particular heresies.

They're just kind of wrapped up inside different cultural contexts, okay?

So, you know, to answer the question, my answer kind of centers on the individuals that I've mentioned, okay?

Irenaeus, Athanasius, and Augustine, all right? And I would suggest that you not only read them, but you reread them, okay?

Because, you know, life happens. A lot of information is coming at us every single day, right?

We're just getting saturated, oversaturated. It's just information dump every single day. And so when that happens, things kind of float out of the brain, right?

Especially when you get to be an old man, like myself. So, you know, you tend to forget, so reread, right?

Every year, try to come back and reread some of the, these are the tried and true classics that you should always be looking at.

I'm way overdue to reread some of these church fathers. So thank you for the reminder.

I'll get right on that. How we doing, by the way?

How's everybody doing in the chat here? Mike Knapp, hello from Columbia. Wow, thank you. Thank you for joining us,

Mike. Let's keep going here. Next question. I'm a one -man studio here, so just bear with me.

Next question from Dean. Thank you, Dean, for the question. Which version of the Trinity Doctrine do you think is true?

One -self, three -self, four -self, social, relational, or some other version?

Hmm, I'll be transparent with you, Dean. I'm not too familiar with the particular views that you're offering, okay?

So I don't know what one -self or four -self doctrines of the Trinity are, okay?

But here's what I do affirm. I affirm the Orthodox view of the Trinity, that God is three persons in one being, one essence, all right?

The persons are co -equal and co -eternal. This is the Nicene Creed. This is where we see the word, you know, homooushus, right?

By the way, some non -believers and false religions will try to say, oh, oh, yeah, the

Nicene Creed. That's when the Trinity was invented. Nope, the Trinity was identified and specifically acknowledged out loud at the council due to heresies floating around at the time.

But it was derived from the teaching of God's word. It was not invented, okay?

So that's my answer. I don't know if that helped you at all to the question. Next question,

Scribbling Scribe. Is that your given name? Probably not. Scribbling Scribe, how many debates do you watch in a given month?

Thank you for the question. I only watch the debates that everyone agrees that I should judge, really, no more, no less.

And the reason that is the case, maybe I've said this before. I just, I can't overstate what happened to me.

The reason that is the case now is because I got burnt out with being a debate teacher. And I got burnt out fairly quickly, okay?

So if you know anything about debates, high school, college, whatever, the tournaments are every single weekend, just about.

Every weekend. And tournaments are no small thing. Anybody in the chat, you ever been in a debate tournament before?

Like, they're pretty involved. You know what I mean? So to be a debate teacher and to be a coach, you have to immerse yourself in that life.

And the bottom line is, I did that for a time, but I realized I can't go back to that, okay?

So, you know, walking away from that life means that I no longer immerse myself in all things debates, all right?

Like I said, when you all vote and tell me what you want to see, then I'll go watch some debates.

Well, actually, hold on a second. There are exceptions, okay? There's exceptions to that. If and when there is ever a huge debate that I really do want to see because of my own personal interests, then

I'll watch that. And the reason I say that is because as I was answering this question, the William Lane Craig versus James White debate, was that a debate?

The discussion, right? On Unbelievable recently that I did a video on. I genuinely wanted to see that one.

That was such a long time coming, okay? If you haven't seen that conversation on Unbelievable, I did a reaction to that.

You can find it in the playlist. That was very, very interesting. Just put it that way. Okay, question number, we're moving right along here.

So we have about 15 or 16 questions. So I'm trying to be concise here so I can get to my announcement.

Wink, melodrama. Zach Feature. Thank you, Zach, for the question.

Zach Feature. Is it Jack Reacher? No, it's Zach Feature. Is the argument for morality just another case of God of the gaps?

Okay, hmm. Just because we cannot explain our innate sense of morality yet doesn't mean that an explanation will not be discovered.

How would you respond to this line of reasoning? Well, is the argument, the moral argument the

God of the gaps? No. So, well, there's a couple problems here, all right?

I have nine thoughts in one mouth, and so that's where my mouth is starting to malfunction.

God of the gaps refers to basically saying God did it when there is some kind of gap in knowledge with regard to science or the natural world, okay?

So in other words, because we don't have a natural explanation for something yet then therefore to appeal to God is to skip over whatever that natural explanation will be whenever it is that we discover it, okay?

That's what people typically mean when they use the phrase God of the gaps. This whole line of reasoning is silly, all right?

And now I'm gonna sound very friendly to presuppositionalists here, okay? The question,

Zach, that you have to consider is why would you assume that there must be a natural explanation for the grounding of objective morality, okay?

You gotta, that question needs to be dealt with. You gotta think about that question, right? And when you press into a non -believer's response, you're probably gonna hear something like this.

Well, I start with the premise that the only things that exist are material, okay?

All right, so now we're dealing with materialist presuppositions, okay? Within that materialist framework, all of a sudden

God of the gaps sounds great and it makes a lot of sense. I get it, okay? This was actually my thought process when

I was a non -believer, all right? I got saved when I was 30, okay? So I remember what it was like, all right?

Except wait a sec here, here's another question. Why do you adhere to the materialist view? All right, let's talk about that for a moment.

Because guess what? For a lot of non -believers, they're probably gonna say, well, you know what? I'm a materialist because the evidence for it is all around me, all right?

And there is no evidence for anything else other than what fits into the materialist framework.

So therefore, I'm a materialist. Okay, great. See, now we're pressing further into details because now we're starting to hear their verificationism come out, right?

This is where you lean in and you kind of whisper, excuse me, but your verificationism is showing, right?

And I've done videos on this before. The verification principle is basically the idea that only those things that can be empirically verified are the things that we should hold to or are meaningful.

Okay, Matt Dillahunty appears to be someone like this. Other atheists appear to adopt the verification principle as well.

But what just happened? Okay, this person started out with their framework a couple of steps too far ahead, in my opinion.

All right, this is my response, okay? They're materialists, why? Because they're verificationists, okay?

But why are you a verificationist though? Do you have an answer to that? Well, you know, because this is just where I begin.

This is my starting point for how I view the world. And at some point, you have to work your way down to some brute facts, right?

Have you heard this before? You have to work your way down to some brute facts and so this is where I start with. I start with my materialism and my verificationism.

Okay, fine, but two things about that. Number one, that's not where I start. So now what do we do?

Okay, as a Christian talking to a non -Christian, what do we do now? Your starting point is not my starting point.

Christians don't start where you do as a non -believer. So how are you going to convince me that I must start where you started?

That's number one, all right? And number two, when you start out with materialism and verificationism, your worldview cannot account for non -material entities, for non -material properties.

And so then humanity starts trying to wrestle with age -old questions, some of the oldest questions out there, like morality.

Where does morality come from, right? That's a huge discussion. Okay, that didn't just pop up a year ago, you know, two years ago under COVID.

Thank you, Anthony Fauci. No, that's the age -old question, right? But now you as the materialist have created for yourself a gap.

I didn't do that. Christians didn't do that, you did that. And you did so because of how you started out, because of your framework of viewing the world through your particular lens.

Now, all of a sudden there's all kinds of gaps from your perspective. I don't have a gap, all right?

Christians don't have a gap. Because in the Christian worldview, the universe consists of two major categories, the physical and the non -physical, the material and the immaterial, or the non -material, whatever, okay?

And so Christians have a, they have a logical explanation for things like the laws of logic, for reason and rationality, the properties of the mind, and even for objective morality.

Non -believers do not. I mean, they try to have explanations, okay?

Some non -believers try to, you know, squeeze these non -physical categories into the materialist framework, but it doesn't fit.

And that's why there are these gaps. You see that? Thank you for the questions,

Zach. Moving on to introverted Christian. Introverted Christian, this is the question.

Where do you stand on romantic comedies? And also, what is best in life?

Okay, well, romantic comedies are the elevator music of movies, okay?

You know what I mean? And even, too, like grocery store music. You know what

I'm saying? Like, have you ever noticed that some grocery stores, they play now instrumental versions of, or even like much slower acoustic versions of songs that we grew up with?

Like rock songs, you know? Alternative songs, right? Now, some people only love this kind of elevator music.

You know, that's all they wanna hear. Not me, okay? I mean, you know, when

I get into an elevator and I hear elevator music, is it Muzak? I forget. But every now and then,

I'll kinda nod my head, you know, to the song, okay? But it's not changing my life. Let's get real, all right?

It's the same thing with romantic comedies. There are some romantic comedies that I'll watch on the

TV. And let me say this, guys, all right? If you're married to a beautiful lady and she's a girly girl, you're gonna have to put up with some romantic comedies in your life if you wanna have a happy marriage, period, all right?

So that's about the extent of my foray into romantic comedies.

What is best in life? I fully recognize my answer is not everyone's answer, right?

Because I think that the answer utilize, well, it travels along using the giftings and the talents and the desires that God has given you.

And those change person to person, right? I will remind you, you know, Jesus said to seek first the kingdom and all of these things will be added to you.

And so if you put God first at the top of the list of priorities in your life, that is the very best for your life, okay?

You will feel fulfilled. You'll live a life of deep purpose and meaning and God will bless you, okay?

Thank you for the question, Introverted Christian. How's everyone doing in the chat? All right, I'm gonna try to go back through some of these in a moment and get to your questions in the chat.

I got some more coming from the community tab and I wanna make sure that I answer those first. Thank you so much for being with me.

Here's the next question. From Go Cowboys. Go Cowboys.

Here's the question. Do you have a literal interpretation of Genesis 1 -11? Thank you for the question,

Go Cowboys. I should say I used to live in Dallas. I used to live in, before I moved to Las Vegas, which now

I've been here, shoot, going on 29 years, all right, I used to live in Dallas, Texas and I was kicked out because I was not a

Cowboy fan, okay? They literally ran me out of town for rolling my eyes every time somebody said, how about them

Cowboys, right? I wasn't, that was not true. I was not run out of town. I don't, okay, let me break this into two parts.

I don't know what my position is on Genesis 1, okay?

Let me just say that. So I started out with the view that Genesis 1 is a real account of the creation.

I think this is the view of a lot of Christians, actually. And at the time, I was sort of consuming a lot of reasons to believe and Hugh Ross and those guys and they were trying to help me understand these things.

So I used to really, I used to look at Genesis 1 and the account of creation as being a real thing. That's how it really went down and in that order, right?

And that potentially creates some issues if you try to do that. But as I've sat with the scholarship on the side of treating the creation account as a polemic against false gods,

I'm seeing merit in those arguments. I'm still wrestling with them, so I just wanna be transparent. I haven't given it the time necessary to kind of fall on one side of the issue in this area.

I'm still thinking it through, okay? So that's Genesis 1. With regard to Adam and Eve in the fall and all the chapters going all the way up to chapter 11,

I take that as real history. All that stuff really happened. There really was a talking snake.

There really was a Tower of Babel. There really was a flood, et cetera, et cetera, okay? So thank you for the question.

Let's move on to Daniel Kelly. Daniel Kelly says, favorite

God debate where the atheists won. Yeah, great question. I think I've taken this question before. I was very impressed with the debate between William Lane Craig and, oh, what's his name?

Shelley, I'm having an old man moment. Shoot, I'm blanking on his, Shelley Kagan, right?

William Lane Craig versus Shelley Kagan. I thought Shelley Kagan did a great job of challenging

Dr. Craig and giving him a run for his money. Now, I understand Dr. Craig tried to win to explain that the agreement beforehand, it wasn't supposed to be a formal debate, and he was told by the venue not to push too hard, push too hard back against Dr.

Kagan. I think that's a shame because the effect of all of it is Dr. Kagan won that debate in my estimation.

And you should check it out, really. Everybody should check it out, Christian, non -Christian. You should check it out because Dr. Kagan is a great communicator and he is trained very well, okay?

Next question, actually with these, wow, I got, this is like a lightning round.

Okay, so this person, O 'Brien, O 'Brien, hello, thank you for the questions. They gave me like boom, boom, boom, lots of questions.

So this will be like a lightning round series of questions. You ready? Okay, here's the first one from O 'Brien.

O'Doyle rules, O'Doyle rules. Anyway, first question, best gospel articulation.

Mine, no, I'm kidding. I like the Apostle Peter's gospel articulation in Acts chapter two.

I like the Apostle Paul's articulation of it in Acts chapter seven. I think

I've said this before, but the Bible provides us with options when it comes to communicating to the lost about God, Jesus, and the gospel.

In Acts chapter two and Acts chapter 17, they show us that there is some wiggle room there. Next question, ethnicity and favorite philosopher.

How do those two go together? Well, anyway, so I'm half Samoan and I'm part Syrian. And if you put that together, it makes a

Filipino because everyone in Las Vegas thinks I'm Filipino. And people come up to me legit and they speak

Tagalog to me. And then I go, oh, I don't speak Tagalog. And they look at me like I'm a traitor to my own people.

I'm not Filipino, friends. I've got that ambiguous thing going on where I could be lots of things in different environments.

Once, I'll tell you this story, nobody knows this story. Once, I auditioned and got the part to play an

Italian in a musical show on the Las Vegas Strip. This was maybe 20 years ago. And I have no

Italian in me whatsoever. So that's hilarious to me. Favorite philosopher, J .P.

Moreland. I'm a huge fan of J .P. Moreland. I love Mortimer Adler. There are some other guys where I feel like they're just way too far out in the stratosphere for me to understand.

I understand every third sentence that they say and I have to go back and reread it. You know what I mean? You get people like that in your life.

For me, it's like Richard Swinburne, David Albert in the area of quantum physics,

Tim Maudlin, Plantinga. Plantinga is somebody I have to slow down, reread.

O 'Brien, thank you. Next question, favorite Bible book. Um, I can't choose just one, sorry.

I think every Christian needs to spend time with Jesus in the Gospels. I think every Christian needs to spend time in the book of Galatians and ask themselves, you know, am

I making the Galatian error in my own life? I think every Christian should read the book of Daniel, if for nothing else, to pay attention to how

Daniel comported himself in a hostile environment in Babylon, okay? I think we can learn a lot about how to act today based on Daniel.

All right, next question. Catholicism or Eastern Orthodoxy?

Neither. Best, next question. Best reads. Oh boy.

I love reading too much to list one book. I think as a Christian, besides the Bible, you need

Millard Erickson's Systematic Theology. I think you need Philosophical Foundations for a

Christian Worldview. I think you need Francis Schaeffer's Trilogy, all right? You definitely need to get yourself a copy of Tactics by Greg Koukl.

And look, check it out. Hopefully one day soon, I'll write the book version of First Aid Evangelism.

So you'll probably need that too. Thank you for the questions, O 'Brien, but, oh,

Doyle rules. Existential Empathy. Thank you for the question. This is what they say. Why do people not take

Exodus into consideration when talking about the topic of slavery? Hmm, wow.

That's an interesting question. I think, boy.

Actually, I think a lot of non -believers do. Well, it depends.

Are you talking about the story of the Exodus? God being bothered by the fact that the

Egyptians had taken his people into slavery? Or are you talking about the book of Exodus where we find a lot of the law that pertains to the treatment of slaves, right?

That's where I'm a little fuzzy. If we're talking about the latter, I think a lot of non -believers take that into consideration.

I think they point to aspects of the Old Testament law that had to do with the treatment of slaves and the handling of slaves as an argument against Christianity.

What I think these folks don't understand, in my opinion, is that slavery is not the worst thing that could ever happen to someone.

All right? And this is, look, that's not the politically incorrect, or that's not the politically correct answer.

All right? But I'll say it again. Slavery is not the end of the world. Torture and abuse is not the worst thing that could happen to someone.

The worst thing that could happen to someone is they live their life in total rejection of their creator and they go to hell.

All right? Anything outside of that is an aspect that God can and he has used for his redemptive purposes.

Okay? And I've mentioned this before, but God did not appear to be interested in upending the institution of slavery that was popular amongst humanity by the time the

Old Testament law was written. What God's plan was, so, and this is, I gotta be clear about this, if you accept that God exists, then what

God's plan was was that that would be dealt with later. Not before, but later. Okay?

And this is where I think, I've made this critique before, but I think people who are non -believers, they do this mistake of stepping half in and out of the

Christian worldview. So on the one hand, they put one leg in, it's the hokey pokey. They put one leg into the

Christian worldview so that they can try to make critiques and arguments against it. They keep their other leg out.

And on that atheist leg, they're really leaning hard. And so therefore they go, oh,

God, you know, God must have not liked slavery and, or he wanted slavery to continue to happen.

He must not have, you know, cared or anything like that. Well, no, you got to remember slavery is now over and it's been done and dealt with.

And if you accept that God exists, if you got the one leg into the Christian worldview and you're accepting for argument's sake that God exists, let's go ahead and acknowledge that slavery has been dealt with and that can be credited back to God.

Because I got news for you. Abolitionists were Christians. Okay? And their concern for slaves was from a

Christian worldview. So there we go. But anyway, it just seems to me that God, and you know,

I think it's clear, God was not interested in upending the institution of slavery back in the Old Testament days when the law was written.

He apparently, what he was doing was he was trying to do something that was more long -term and internal.

Okay? Let me also remind you that slavery was not a feature of the Garden of Eden in the beginning.

Okay? So again, this needs to go into the conversation and part of the calculus when you start thinking through these things, slavery was not

God's intention in the beginning for humanity or else it would have been in the Garden of Eden. No, instead

God had a more long -term eternal strategy that entailed people, slaves included, not rejecting him and going to hell because that's the worst thing that could actually happen.

Question number, I don't know what question we're on, we're just gonna plug along here. Question from Christian, are you a

Calvinist? And there's another question here related, how would you generally classify your theological views?

Are you Reformed? Are you Molinistic, et cetera? Thank you for the question, Christian. However, because of the nature of the videos that I make, the

Debate Teacher Reacts videos particularly, I decline to answer this question. I hope you don't mind.

There are a great many other YouTube channels out there that talk about the merits and the deficiencies of the various soteriological views and I encourage you to go check those out.

Okay, so let's move on. Question number, we're almost done. And then I will announce my announcement.

I've overhyped it now because now that I'm gonna say what my announcement is, you're gonna be like, that was it? Sorry about that.

Question number, I don't know, 13. Dave asks this question. Thanks for the question,

Dave. Thoughts on the apostolic succession? All right. This question is a little too vague for me,

Dave. All right, so do you mean that, do you mean as it pertains to Catholicism, as it pertains to Mormonism, as it pertains to maybe this kind of like this new strain of the new apostolic church?

I mean, generally speaking, let me go back. The reason why the apostles were needed in the first century was that they were the foundation of the church, okay?

Ephesians 2 .20 says, the church is built on the foundation of the apostles and the prophets, and Jesus is the cornerstone.

Someone give me an amen. The apostles, in the first century, they went out. So Jesus in Acts chapter one, he ascends up into heaven.

He gives the apostles their job. The apostles were to go out as the eyewitnesses of Jesus' resurrection and as men who spent time with him to found the church.

Okay, they are the foundation. They're part of the foundation. There is no reason why there needs to be more than the 12.

What they did and what they said in the first century served to complete the collection of scriptures that we now have, and there does not need to be any new revelation from God, as far as I can tell, that we do not already have in his word.

Am I a cessationist? No, okay? I'm just, I'm getting my ideas from 2

Timothy chapter three, verse 16, you know? That's why Paul told

Timothy, who was his student, to continue in the things that he had learned, to guard the treasure that had been entrusted to him.

That's God's word. Paul did not tell Timothy to continue in the practice of apostolic secession.

Okay, you see that? Introverted Christian, you got another question for me.

Thank you. Here is, this is a good one. This is a great question.

Do you think Christians should observe rules of etiquette such as don't talk about religion or politics at parties or at work?

Yeah, that's a great question. Great question. I think, I think Christians, I think

Christians should not follow such etiquette, okay? I think Christians should subvert social expectations and subvert societal norms, but not in the way that those terms are usually used, okay?

Usually someone says, you know, we should use subversion or we should upend societal norms, and what they mean is we should blow something up, you know, like the weather underground or something, or, you know, we should go out and do violence to other people or to, you know, people's property, like with a lot of riots and shootings that we've seen over the last few years.

That's not what I'm referring to, all right? Jesus said two things to his disciples that I think come to bear on this question.

He said, number one, blessed are you when people hate you, when they exclude you, when they revile you, because of me, right?

You gotta think, what does that mean? Because we are going to continue to be disciples of Jesus and we're gonna follow him and we're not gonna go along with the way of the world, right?

So as Christians, I understand us to be running up against, you know, going against the tide or the current of the culture.

We're like trout, we're going upstream when everyone else is going downstream, okay? But then

Jesus also said, John, what is it, 13 or 14? A new commandment I give you, love one another as I have loved you.

By this, all people will know that you are my disciples if you have this kind of love. And so what

I'm getting at is, this is a great question, introverted Christian, we subvert the culture by being loving followers of Jesus Christ.

We subvert by our love, okay? Now don't hear what I'm not saying.

Love doesn't mean being pushovers. It doesn't mean being moral relativists. Love, biblically defined, delights in the truth, amen?

So when you find yourself at a social gathering where it's understood that the etiquette, I get it, that's what

I was told. My grandmother taught me that. Don't talk about religion, don't talk about politics. I say do it, you know?

Talk about God, but do so in a way that I have advocated in the past and on this channel.

And this goes back to our first aid evangelism approach. You put the focus on the person that you're talking to, you get them to talk about themselves.

Why? Because you are displaying the love of Christ that you have in your own heart. And when people feel comfortable with you and they start revealing more and more about their values and their spiritual beliefs, because, spoiler alert, everyone is spiritual, everyone.

And just in the nature of having a conversation where you ask somebody about themselves, tell me your story, where are you from, all that stuff, this kind of stuff just spills out naturally in some form or fashion.

You just have to have the ears to hear it when it does. And when that happens, then you press into those claims, because when somebody starts talking about their values and they start talking about things that betray their world view, their underlying world view, those are all built on claims.

You can lean in with some leading questions. Tell me more about that.

What do you mean by that? How did you come to that conclusion? And when it's your turn to talk, well then you just offer your perspective from your

Christian convictions. That's kind of a broad, super fast overview of first aid evangelism. And what are your

Christian convictions, introverted Christian? The God of the Bible is real, Jesus is alive, and Christianity is true. So definitely go back and take a look at my first aid evangelism series for more on this.

It's in the playlist on the YouTube channel there. Thank you for that question. Well, now we get to the

JPEG, the thumbnail. How's everybody doing in the chat? How we all doing?

I can't look at the chat. I can't walk and chew gum, ladies and gentlemen. I can't look at the camera and then also look at what's going on in the chat and then just make sure on the other side that the feed hasn't cut off because that actually happened in one of the last live streams.

My feed completely cut off and I had to start over. So I can't, as I get older, I can't do that a lot. But anyway, how's everybody doing?

Good, okay. So, oh, Madud Briggins, I'm about to answer your question. So here we go.

Here we go. So this is from Madud Briggins. Have you leveled up to presuppositional apologetics yet?

Yeah, yeah, yeah. That's a great question. Thank you, Madud. Madud, can I call you MD? Maybe that's too soon.

Maybe I don't know you that well yet. Well, anyway, so quick story. When I got saved, one of the first exposures that I had with regard to developing my

Christian worldview was Francis Schaeffer. I've talked about this in the past. There's a chain of thrift stores out here in Las Vegas called

Savers. Anybody from Vegas? Anybody know what I'm talking about? You take a nice Saturday afternoon, you go to Savers and you just come back with a bunch of, you know, junk.

I don't know what to, my wife is gonna get so mad. My wife and I would frequent these stores, you know, back when we were newly married and very poor and I would always, she'd go off to the clothing section because she's like that and I would always go to the book section, you know, because there's always a gem somewhere.

You know what I'm saying? Well, anyway, at Savers, I came across the Francis Schaeffer trilogy at the store.

I picked it up for a few bucks, right? Started reading it one weekend and it was just a page turner.

I could not put it down. I was at my job. I used to work in physical therapy at a hospital. Over the weekends,

I'd do like 10 hour shifts a day and so on my lunch breaks and in between, you know, seeing patients, I would just be reading and reading and I blazed through all three books in the trilogy in one weekend.

It was that amazing. The thing about Francis Schaeffer is he's a presuppositional apologist.

Well, hold on a second. I should say in some circles, that's up for debate, okay? But I consider him to be a presuppositional apologist.

Maybe I can explain that later and so what I'm getting at is my first exposure to Christianity was through apologetics that was very friendly to presuppositionalism, all right?

However, as I learned more about it, and this was years ago, okay? There were things that did not make sense to me.

In other words, and what I'm getting at is the philosophy of the view. It wasn't very compelling to me, okay?

So the idea that the Bible teaches epistemology that when we go to places like Romans chapter one, where it says, well, they did not honor

God and they became futile in their thinking and their hearts were darkened. I don't read that as the

Bible teaching us how human epistemology works, okay? I don't think that that's what Paul was doing. I don't think that that's what

Paul was trying to communicate to the Roman church is that non -believers are incapable of having certain kinds of knowledge related to God and the things of God.

And so, but presuppositional, as far as I understand this, and hey, I could be wrong, okay?

I'm being schooled right now by a good friend. He's helping me to maybe fix some of the errors that I made along the way when

I was trying to learn about presuppositional apologetics. But it seems to me that out of that kind of philosophy of presuppositionalism, you'll hear a lot of precepts say that the methodology, presuppositional apologetics is the only legitimate form of apologetics, the only legitimate methodology, that all other approaches are illegitimate, okay?

Again, could be wrong. This is what I was hearing and reading back when I was coming up as a brand new Christian, and I do not agree with that, okay?

But then I met a friend recently. His name is Eli Ayala. Eli, if you're watching, hello.

And Eli is very knowledgeable about presuppositionalism. We had a conversation before, I think on my channel.

Everything's a blur when you're in your 40s, ladies and gentlemen. I don't know what to tell you about that. I think it was on my channel.

We had a conversation about presuppositionalism. He told me some things that have helped me to flesh out my understanding of presuppositionalism.

By the way, you should check out Eli's channel. It's called Revealed Apologetics. As a matter of fact, I was on his channel the other night with Matt Slick and Michael Jones and others for an apologetics

Q &A. That was pretty cool. Eli is himself a precept. Okay, and we've had some conversations about Van Til and Bonson and presuppositional method, right?

And now I'm not well read with regard to Van Til and Bonson. Okay, so Eli's helping me to become more familiar. I'm also watching his videos in these areas.

I really enjoyed his conversation with Scott Oliphant. I thought that was really great. And so what

I'm getting from Eli is, as a presuppositional apologist, it is totally appropriate to utilize apologetics approaches that fit into other styles, okay?

Like the classical method or the evidential method, right? Which I think is not only valid, but it's totally legitimate in a lot of circumstances.

So, you know, really what matters is, and I think this is, again, this is

Eli's characterization, is that you never stray from God as the ground of all rationality and reason.

You never stray from the Bible is God's word, and you never stray from Jesus' resurrection. You never stray too far from these things.

And that you identify out loud the presuppositions that non -believers have walking into a conversation about God, because facts are situated within a broader context, okay?

And so it sounds like, to me now, the presuppositional approach is an everything -on -the -table approach.

As long as it is understood that the evidences and the other style of apologetics are all kind of subordinated to the presuppositional approach, which always strives to bring the conversation back to the primary focus of a person's presuppositions,

God is the grounding of reason and rationality, the laws of logic, et cetera, Jesus' resurrection, all of that, okay?

So if I'm right in understanding this, and also,

I do not need to affirm the view, the underlying philosophy of presuppositionalism, where they go to the

Bible and they try to say that this is how human epistemology works, then you can go ahead and call me a presuppositional guy, okay, because that describes my approach very well.

I utilize all methods of discussion. I try to figure out and determine who I'm dealing with by initial diagnostic questions, and then

I have an organic conversation. I don't force anything, but I'm having a conversation that is suited to the person that I'm talking to.

And I find that model, first and foremost, modeled by Jesus himself in the

Gospels, okay? I'm following that model because this is the apostle

Paul's own words, I become all things for all people in order to win some to Christ. So I'm going into conversations utilizing a

Socratic approach. Again, I call it first state evangelism. And when I hear a non -believer's accounting of the world,

I press in and I ask them to support themselves with some good reasons. And when they can't,

I offer my own view with the overarching goal of exposing the roots of their assumptions and how they can't make them, how they can't make those assumptions unless God exists and they are understanding how he is the ground for everything that they then have assumed about the world around them.

Okay. Again, if that's presuppositionalism, count me in. Okay. All right.

Now let's go to the chat here and we'll do a follow up real quick. Oh boy.

And this is where, thank you, by the way, for communicating in the chat here. Elijah McGrath, welcome.

Let me go to, I think there's a question here from James Cool Kid.

Old earth versus young earth. Old earth. I'm an old earther. Evolution via natural selection or theistic evolution or special creation.

Okay. I am not, so I'm still sort of thinking through a lot of these issues and you'll notice that I haven't really spoken on evolution because I don't feel like I'm versed enough in this area to really kind of speak more comfortably on these things.

I'm not, I don't espouse or hold to the Darwinian evolution paradigm.

Just put it that way. Okay. Does microevolution exist? Absolutely. It happens all the time.

It's observable. Okay. So here's what I'm not saying. I'm not saying that I'm a

Christian, therefore I'm not an evolutionist. That's not what I'm saying. I think I have some problems as I've tried to understand the broader issue of macroevolution and those issues have not been significantly dealt with in my opinion.

Okay. There's a much greater conversation, I think. Maybe these are some videos to make. Although again,

I probably would instead bring on people like, I don't know, Stephen Meyer or somebody on the atheistic evolution side to have a conversation about this.

Because again, I don't know if alone I can speak very knowledgeably about these things. One of the issues

I will say right now that I have is with epigenetic information. All right.

And so just real super quick, epigenetic information. You need certain things for an organism to evolve over time to go from one type to another type.

Okay. And one of those things that you need is not only DNA, but you need something called epigenetic information.

Epigenetic information deals with the body structure of an organism. Cell structure, body structure, right?

And so mutation is the journey upon which evolution travels, right?

So DNA needs to mutate. The problem is that epigenetic information, first of all, it needs to be present for the cell structure of an organism to hold over time as it's evolving.

Epigenetic information cannot be mutated. If epigenetic information mutates, the organism dies.

That to me is a problem. And again, I don't know. Maybe there's an answer to that, but that's where I'm at.

I don't hold to the macroevolution view. Let's go to another question here. Thoughts on divine hiddenness by Elijah McGrath.

Yeah, divine hiddenness. Well, wow. So these are huge questions that I'm realizing

I'm coming up on an hour that maybe I should just jot down and spend a lot more time unpacking.

So if that's the case, if you want me to do something like that, let me know in the comments and I'll go ahead and jump on these things.

Divine hiddenness, I will say, it's not the

Lord. That's not my read of the scripture. So put it this way. It's not the

Lord that is hiding himself. It's us who are hiding ourselves from the

Lord. Why do I say that? If you go to the fall account in Genesis chapter three, I think it's pretty clear what happened and in what order.

So again, did God create the earth and the

Garden of Eden and the dynamic of relationship in there to be hidden from humanity? And the answer is no. Go back and take a look at Genesis chapters one through three.

The answer is no. God walked with mankind. Very open, visible, present.

Mankind held a very special role. They had a very special privilege.

But now we don't see God. Well, what happened? Well, humanity sinned. Eve was deceived.

Adam sinned outright. It's so funny because you go to Romans and you start, I don't wanna divert too much.

You go to Romans and you start reading about the curse of sin, maybe getting into issues of federal headship, which maybe somebody's asking me right now.

But anyway, Romans five, essentially, through one man sin entered into the world and through that one man, all men sinned.

It's like, why is the curse attributed to Adam? It's because Adam wasn't deceived. Adam literally,

Eve just walked up and said, hey man, take a bite. And Adam goes, mmkay. Way to go.

Way to go, men. Anyway, sorry, that's a separate conversation.

So what happens? Mankind sins, they disobey God. What do they do? They go and hide. They run away and hide themselves to the point where God walks in the garden as is his natural and regular constitution, natural, take that word advisedly.

And he has to go find Adam and Eve. Now he knows where they are, but he has to say, where are you?

Who's hiding themselves? It's not God. And so that's my general, the thing that I always try to communicate when we start talking about issues of divine hiddenness.

So thank you, Elijah. Maybe I can say more on that in a future video. Mike Knapp, thoughts on Calvinism.

It's something I'm struggling to understand. The big thing about Calvinism, in my opinion, is you have to, if you go to the scripture, you have to take note of kind of two categories of passages of the scripture.

And I've said this before in the past, but I think it's helpful to say it again. Number one, there is a whole category of scripture that either explicitly says this or just assumes this in some form or fashion.

God is sovereign, God is in control. It's God's sandbox, so to speak, and we're all playing in it.

And so therefore, everything that happens is allowed to take place because it is sifted through God's permissive fingers, if I can characterize it that way.

Broad categorical statements coming directly out of the scripture, all in that one category. Here's on the other side though, and this is largely assumed,

I can't think off the top of my head if there's a verse that explicitly teaches human beings freedom, but it assumes it.

It assumes that humanity is free, okay? So now we have these two categories. God is sovereign,

He's in control, and human beings are free. Now Calvinists, they acknowledge that these two sorts of categories exist in the scripture, but what they do is, and I think everybody should try to figure this out, they need to resolve it.

How do we resolve this apparent tension between these two categories of scripture?

Calvinists take the sovereignty of God and they put it over on top of mankind's freedom, okay?

So that's, I mean, if that helps you, there's so many other things that could possibly be said about Calvinism, but I think that's one of the things that you really need to begin with is that they recognize that God is sovereign.

And now if you kind of zoom in under the broader category of Calvinism, you have ways to hash that out.

So if God is sovereign and His sovereignty and His control stands over on top of human freedom, well then how do we resolve that kind of tension?

And some Calvinists, they say that both things are compatible and so they call themselves compatibilists. And now

I feel like I wanna give you an hour dissertation on compatibilism. Anyway, start there.

If you want further, we can definitely get into it. Thank you for the question. Scott Hudson says, "'Presuppositionalism is bad philosophy and bad theology.'"

Zip. Go tell that to Saiten Bruggenkate and just let him give you a soft, gentle hug in response because that won't be his response.

I'm sorry, that was sarcasm. I am coming up on an hour and I do wanna give you my announcement.

Is there any other hidden view, hidden, but the letter

E is a number three, okay? Hidden view says, thoughts on aliens. I don't know,

I don't know. I, for the longest time, so if you're catching a little underlying theme here,

I'm sort of wrestling with some greater issues and maybe where I once was, now I'm starting to kind of shift in some areas, right?

Which is a good thing. We should always be working out our salvation with fear and trembling every single day, okay? And all the implications that come along with that.

I used to think that, well, shoot, man, there is no physical evidence of aliens that we have.

Now, I'm setting aside, I'm not a conspiracy theorist, so I don't hold that there's broken down UFOs in Area 51, which, by the way, if you wanna hear that story about how

I snuck on to, or snuck past the fence line at Area 51, let me know and I'll tell you that story.

It's actually really fast, but I got busted, and stupid things that I suggest nobody do.

But anyway, so I don't hold to that view.

So therefore, because, in my opinion, there was no physical artifacts of real

UFO sightings or real aliens, I took into consideration that there was just this kind of subset percentage of actual sightings of something, right?

The vast majority of sightings probably are natural phenomena, right? Somebody looking up at the sky and noticing a planet or something along those lines.

But there was this subset of experiences where people were experiencing something, and it just didn't seem to fit into the natural laws of physics as we understand them, right?

So sometimes, sightings of UFOs, you know, they're careening at speeds that are unnatural, that break the laws of physics.

They make these turns at speeds that would completely break apart a regular ship that is actually physical in nature.

And I go, oh, well, then that's probably spiritual. That's probably non -physical. We're probably seeing things that are not real and tangible.

They're actually just non -physical. The Christian worldview has all kinds of things to say about things that exist in the dimension of the non -physical, right?

This is the spiritual realm, okay? But now it seems the Pentagon is coming out with like, hey, by the way, we have all these physical artifacts of UFOs and all these other things.

And so I go, huh. So I have to look into all of that.

I don't know what you think about any of these things. Maybe if you have some good ideas, some good links for me to take a look at,

I would love to spend a Saturday looking at UFOs. What am I saying? I'm not gonna do that.

But I do generally, I want to know a little bit more and be a little bit more informed in this area. So if you guys wanna help me out, just throw what you got in the comments below.

Okay. Let me go ahead and make my announcement. And thank you for hanging in there.

And again, this is gonna be really anticlimactic at this point. But here's what

I wanna say. I'll tell you a really quick story. Let me give you the punchline.

I have resigned as a pastor and a discipleship specialist at my local church.

I resigned. And I have taken a job with Summit Ministries. So Summit Ministries, I'll show you some of the graphics here.

Summit Ministries is an organization. They've been around for a long time, I think about 60 years.

And they put on conferences and events all throughout the year. I think the big, big events that Summit puts on is every summer in Colorado.

And it's up a mountain in Manitou Springs. And I actually was just in Colorado just literally last week or about a week ago to be around the events and stuff and see a bunch of speakers.

And Summit brings in a bunch of really great guests to speak. So it's a really great organization.

But they've been around for about 60 years. And their main goal, their main vision is to equip and support rising generations to embrace

God's truth and to champion a robust biblical worldview.

Now, in my opinion, that is huge. That is huge. I think, for me,

I find what Summit is doing to be right up my alley ever since I started out in ministry.

It's funny, because when I started doing Wise Disciple, we called it something else in the beginning, I started rubbing shoulders with other apologists and making friendships.

I mean, friendships, acquaintance slash friendships, right? But with people like Sean McDowell, Brett Kunkel, Jane Warner Wallace and Greg Koukl, who, thank

God, I'm having a little bit of a deeper relationship with now, and William Lane Craig, all the people and the names that you can think of in terms of apologetics, praise

God, I've been able to rub shoulders with and meet and talk to, Gary Habermas, others. And I noticed that a lot of people would ask me in conversations for years, are you going to Summit?

It just seemed like there was that part of the thing leading up to summer every year where they'd be like, hey, Nate, are you gonna go be at Summit and talk?

And so I knew about Summit for years and years. I wasn't quite sure what they were up to, what they were really about up until just recently.

But I just think that their heart in ministry, their strategy is it's everything, okay?

It's everything, we're playing the long game here. We're trying to, if you really think about the future of our culture and the future of the country, really, this is it, okay?

To focus on the next generation, who will then go out and develop this robust biblical worldview, which trades heavy in apologetics.

That's why I mentioned all these other speakers, because they're constantly going out to these events. There's another

Summit event coming up in Indiana, I think soon, and Brett Kunkel from Maven's gonna be there, and Christopher Ewan's gonna be there.

They bring in Elisa Childers, they bring in great apologists who are doing excellent work every single year to train up the new generation, the next generation, young students in a robust biblical worldview, because guess what?

When they grow up and they graduate college, they're gonna go into their jobs and they're gonna affect society, all right?

And that's the goal. That the goal is to have them go out and step into the private sector, to step into the public sector, to step into government leadership roles as Christians with a strong worldview and with heavy training in apologetics.

Imagine what could happen in one generation if Summit can accomplish its mission. And so now

I am with Summit. Now, there are a lot of reasons for why I resigned my position at my church.

And if you know me personally, I've probably told you why. And it wasn't just one thing, but the bottom line is,

I truly sense that God is calling me to a new and a different ministry assignment to use different parts of my brain that I used when

I was a pastor. And I think that is abundantly clear in my life and I have to remain obedient to that.

There were a few moments in the last year, in the last 12 months, where things had not yet crystallized for me.

I had not resigned yet. I didn't quite know about Summit, where I actually had some opportunities and discussions with a couple of other churches to go be a senior pastor outside of Las Vegas, all right?

Several churches in different states had reached out to me and they wanted to walk me through their process to make me their senior pastor.

And that's very humbling. It's an honor to be considered. And if you know me personally, you know that underneath the things that I do in ministry, there is a pastoral heart.

I really do care about the people in my life. I care about you all. I pray for you all.

And most of you, I've never even seen face -to -face. Maybe we've talked in the comment section here or there or through email, but God over the years has grown in me this pastoral heart.

And so I seriously considered senior pastor, you know? And who knows, maybe one day when, you know, the hair is all white on top, maybe

I'll gravitate to that. But during this time where I was exploring what it was that God was doing with me and my family,

I had to set aside the Wise Disciple videos, okay? And so if you've noticed, the videos have been dropping inconsistently.

That's why, all right? But I say all of that to say, I'm very happy that with this job at Summit, it looks like the

Wise Disciple train will continue moving forward. This ministry will move forward. And now there's gonna be some interesting overlap in ministries between Wise Disciple and other great apologetics organizations and speakers that hopefully you'll see in the near future, okay?

So stick with me, friends. Things have gotten very interesting. I would say maybe three months ago, if you'd have asked me,

Nate, are you gonna go off and work for Summit? And I would have said, what? That's crazy.

It's exciting. I'm excited. I'm excited to be a part of Summit. I'm excited to see what God does with my time there.

Pray for Summit. Summit's doing excellent work. And so, you know,

I look forward to continuing to pour into you all through this YouTube channel. So thank you very much for sitting with me and having this

Q &A. Don't forget, if you would like to holler at me besides commenting below, you can write to hello at wisedisciple .org.

Check out the merch store. You know, you can check out our website, wisedisciple .org.

And stay tuned because more videos are coming your way very soon. But in the meantime, I'll say, thanks so much for being with me and I'll see you next time.