Session 8: Q&A

I've tried to separate these into categories. And we're going to give all the hard ones to certain individuals.

No.

I'm going to take ones that are directly pertainable to the topic at hand. I'll do those first. There are some other questions that are just general questions. So the first one, first question is this.

Can an Arminian, in response to the contradiction of praying for someone to be saved, say, because we are commanded to? As Calvinists reply for why we pray when all is decreed, we'd like to address that question.

Oh, we're on already. Can you repeat the first part of the question again real quick?

Yes.

Can't an Arminian, in response to the contradiction of praying for someone to be saved? I think that was you brought that point up. I think that was a contradiction.

Right. So are they saying that maybe the Arminian could say we're called to pray for unbelievers because that's what we're commanded to, even though we hold to our view of free will and stuff like that?

That's it.

OK.

Well, there's a contradiction there in that if you say we're called to pray for unbelievers nonetheless, you're actually then praying for something that, according to your theology, God can't do anything about.

You see what I'm saying? So if God is trying to save someone as much as possible, but God can't actually successfully save the person unless the person extends their free will, what's the point of saying, well, God asks me to pray for them anyway, even though I'm praying for something that God himself cannot do, according to my theology?

So you have an inconsistency with the theology and the practical outpouring of what that looks like when we're praying for unbelievers. And it's so much easier and more biblical to assume that because God changes the heart through the work of the Holy Spirit and that God uses means, then it makes much more sense for us to pray for unbelievers because our praying is the very means by which God uses the Spirit to soften the heart, remove the heart of stone, and give them a heart of flesh.

Okay, anybody wanna pick up on that? All right, this one is, this would be a general question to anyone here. If we get the doctrines of grace wrong, how will this, how will or can that minimize the way that God gets glory?

Bruce?

Okay, so as I covered in my section on the unconditional election, it's critical that we get the gospel right because if we play a role in it, then we get credit, all right, which means the shared glory.

God will not share his glory with another. To make sure that the glory is exclusively going to God, justification must, by necessity, monogistic. It must be monogistic. It has to be God doing all of the saving, all of the justifying, making a sinner righteous, or else, again, the glory and the credit will be shared, but God will never share his glory with another.

I would just add to that that anything that we do that's contradictory to Scripture, right, is in some way diminishing the glory of God, right? And so I would say, yes, there's no question that when you put anything into the hands of man, even if it's just allegedly turning on the last switch, in some way, that would take away from God's glory, but I would also say that there are a lot of Arminians who act and live the way Calvinists should act and live based on the theology that we have and put us to shame in our actions, and I think we fail to bring God glory when we become cage-stage Calvinists or frozen, chosen, those kinds of things.

When we allow the doctrine of God's sovereignty to change the, or to affect how we view the means that he uses to reach the lost, and we don't faithfully preach the gospel the way the apostles preached the gospel, and when we use one doctrine to contradict the other, we also take away from God's glory.

So I guess I wanna say that and say we need to be careful that, yes, but at the same time, across the board, every Christian in some way is failing and falling short of God's glory.

Okay, this next question. How do you answer someone who says you can lose your salvation because they know devout brothers and sisters and family members who fell away? Micah, okay.

It's related to perseverance. Did the disciples know Jesus was gonna fall away? He appeared to be devout. That's why he was one of the 12 disciples. So I would say we have to be careful that we are not assuming we know ultimately someone's heart.

Only God knows the heart. So someone may have the appearance of fruitfulness, but the extent and course of their lives reveals, unfortunately, as it revealed with Judas, they never had the root of the matter in them, as the way the Puritans would put it.

Okay.

Jesus says broad is the road to destruction. Broad is the way to destruction, and many enter, go that way, and straight and narrow is the gate, and few enter. So the question is what do you find on Broadway?

Actors.

You find people who talk the talk, who walk the walk, and unfortunately are mimicking other Christian beliefs. They may truly think that they believe, but they don't. So that's why they need to be in a church where the gospel is constantly preached.

We need to preach the gospel to ourselves every day because the only reason anyone gets to heaven is a five-letter word called grace. It's not by what we do. It's by what God has done for us. The person may sincerely believe that going to church is going to help him read his Bible, is going to help him get to heaven.

Those things do help you in your sanctification, and we need to emphasize that salvation is justification, sanctification, and glorification. So when we say somebody is saved, we mean that they are justified, are being sanctified, and will be glorified.

That's salvation. So somebody cannot lose that if he never had it to begin with. And think about it. Would God now, after he adopts someone into his family and calls them his child, make them work for his love?

Once I gave birth, once my wife gave birth...

No. No. No. See?

Once my wife gave birth to our children, they will always be my children regardless of what they do. Now, they'll either be my good, obedient children or my disobedient children. Either way, they're still my children.

There's nothing that they can do in and of themselves to change their nature and not be my child. Same is true for a true believer or a true child of God.

Okay.

Okay, according to the doctrines of faith, would we argue that God ordained the fall of man?

I'm just gonna say quickly and then pass the mic over. This is why you need to get a copy of my book. In the back. I, and yes, we believe that God ordained the fall of man. There's a lot more to say about that, so I'll pass it to Eli here, and you could read my comments if you want to in the book.

Well, I mean, yes. We believe that God ordains everything that comes to pass. And that sounds shocking to some people, but that's the reason why everything has a purpose. If God does not ordain everything that comes to pass, and there are things that occur within time and space that are random and have no purpose.

And I don't know about you, but I rather trust in a God who allows things for a purpose than a God who has no control over certain things that are occurring. We believe in a sovereign God who works out all things after the counsel of his will.

And so that's why we can rejoice in good times and we could rejoice in times of tragedy, because even in times of tragedy, God is working out good purposes, even when we don't know what those purposes are, right?

And I think that's something that we need to see from a biblical perspective. We have to remind ourselves, right, that we can't just focus on the things we observe in front of us. We need to be able to be mature enough to step back and see the broader picture in scripture, that even in the details where we're struggling, where we're suffering, God is working out a purpose and that we trust him.

And God does not ask us to trust him with no evidence. God gives us evidence in scripture of his faithfulness to people who are going through suffering. And that even though God doesn't tell me why I'm going through a specific suffering at this time, I can look to the scriptures and see God's faithfulness and be encouraged in the midst of my suffering.

Just to add, we have to be careful to remember that while God ordains all things, he is not the author of sin. Evil is not the creation of God. It's the absence of God, okay? Evil is the absence of God because when it comes to man, remember, we all rejected God in the garden of Eden, Romans 5 .12.

In Adam, we all sinned, meaning we all made that choice through Adam and Eve. Hence, we brought evil. So every evil thing, yes, God has ordained it through allowing man to reject him in the garden of Eden and the consequent continual rejections of God in his life.

So we just have to be careful there that we do not make God the author of sin.

Okay, so let's look at this from the other option. God didn't ordain it. Did it take him by surprise? Now we have to institute plan B? Is this the God you wanna trust in who can't accomplish his purposes?

How is that gonna make you feel when you're going through a trial? Oh, he didn't ordain this. Well, who did? Is this Satan's work and now God cannot counteract it or overcome it? He didn't know that this was gonna happen?

The sovereignty of God could be the scariest doctrine or the most comforting doctrine if you understand that he's in control and everything that this God does is good. There's nothing that he does that is evil or wrong, okay?

So even in the evil that happens in this world, we know that God has a good intent in it. Look at the crucifixion. If this is not arguably the most evil act in all of history predetermined by the foreknowledge of God to bring about the greatest good that humanity could ever see, that's the God I want, the one who's in control, not the one who gets surprised and has to revert to plan B.

If that was the way he handled my life, we'd be on plan triple Z by now.

And I would just add this one thing. Whenever we face questions like this, did God ordain the fall? We just as well could ask, let's go back further. Did God ordain the fall of Lucifer, right? Why does he allow the devil to still exist?

Wouldn't it be great if after Christ had died on the cross, rose from the dead, and we all come to faith in Christ, that wouldn't have been great if at the cross, God just destroyed Satan, and we had no satanic foe to deal with, right?

But he didn't do that, he didn't do any of that. He ordained the fall, he ordained Satan, he allowed Satan to continue to live and to oppose his people, and why? We can never answer specifically about all the purposes of God, but the one thing we know, and this is really the overarching purpose, he does all things for his glory.

So in some way that we don't understand, God gets more glory by ordaining the fall than by not ordaining the fall. He gets more glory by allowing Satan to exist than by not allowing Satan. And really, everything he does that we wonder about, why would God do that?

The right answer, a right answer is always because he gets more glory by doing that than by not doing that. We may not understand it, we don't understand it, we can't figure it out. But really, it's always about the glory of God.

If synergem is a works-based soteriology, where do we draw the dividing line in terms of having fellowship with folks who profess Christ and yet hold to synergism?

Oh, well, for those who are hearing the word synergism, they'll be like, what's that? Just in case you don't know, there's a distinction, two theological terms that are very important, synergism and monergism.

Synergism deals with two energies or two efforts involved in the salvation process. God does his part, man cooperates with God. Monergism, mono, right, one, there is one acting in salvation, and that would be the Protestant reform position, where we believe that God is the one who saves and we do not contribute to our salvation.

Now, from a synergist perspective, you have to understand that in a synergistic system which claims to hold to salvation by grace through faith alone, they will not see something like faith as a work, as a meritorious work, whereas some people might see faith as a meritorious work, and so to believe that one exercises faith by their own free will is kind of a form of salvation by works.

So while we disagree from the reform perspective with our Arminian brothers, they are not affirming that salvation is gained by their works, even though we might argue the exercise of faith independent of the regenerative work of God is in a sense a work.

So they are affirming salvation by faith even though in an inconsistent and unbiblical fashion. And so in that sense, I think Arminians and Calvinists can both be Christian, it's just that we would see the inconsistency at that point and that's why we have these kinds of talks and conversations.

To add just as what Eli was saying, it's a point of maturity, it's a point of understanding. Arminianism is an incomplete, I'm being favorable at its best, Arminianism is an incomplete understanding of grace, okay, and the nature of faith.

It's not seeing it in a mature way. And that's why Spurgeon said famously that all Christians start off as Arminians because we all think we chose Christ. We don't realize that Christ chose us, right?

John 15, 16, right? When Jesus told his disciples, you didn't choose me, I chose you. So again, we just have it backward because of our immaturity and as we grow and as we mature, we see, wait a minute, oh, that's right, no, that's right, the Holy Spirit actually revealed Christ to me.

And in fact, we come into a better understanding as we grow and mature. So it's really an aspect of maturity. I don't kick out the second graders and the kindergartners in my school district, we're all a student body.

Just because the 12th graders and 11th graders understand physics and chemistry and the kindergartners and second graders don't, no, we're still a body, we're still all students. Just some students know more than others.

So we have to maintain the unity of the faith and at the appropriate time, just encourage the Arminians to, as they mature, to look a little deeper and see what grace and faith really means.

Okay, how would you answer someone who says, God is big enough to allow free will as part of his creation and plan and not conflict with his sovereignty?

It's just not in the scripture. I would say that it's, I mean, honestly, one thing I would say is, we can make all kinds of comments of what we think God can be in Campy, but from a scriptural standpoint, which is our standard, that's just not what the scriptures teach.

Secondly, I would be more concerned about a God who relinquishes his will in any sense and leaves anything in the hands of some kind of a lower life that he creates. I would be more concerned about that than a God who is ordaining all things and who is doing all according to his will.

And personally, understanding these doctrines and understanding where we are, I would be more concerned. But ultimately, at the end of the day, it doesn't matter what I think or what concern I have. We gotta go by what the scriptures say and that's just, it just doesn't teach that.

I was going to say basically the same thing. That's not what we find in scripture and I think that's clear from everything we've heard in this conference. We've heard Arminians make that argument that yes, we believe God is sovereign and in his sovereignty, in his sovereignty, he has sovereignly chosen to let man make that final decision.

And that may sound okay to some people, that may allow them to go on believing in their Arminian doctrine, but that's clearly not what scripture teaches.

It's actually incoherent, I think, that if God were to sovereignly give up his sovereignty, he would know what you would do because he knows all things. And so in a sense, by choosing to do that, he's already made the future decision certain.

You see what I'm saying? So I don't think it's an issue of, well, could God do it? I think the very concept itself, you can't avoid a sovereign decree because if God were to say, for example, I'm gonna create a world where people have libertarian freedom, okay, now you guys have to know a little bit about that kind of freedom.

By doing that, it already makes certain the future since God already knows how people would use their free will decisions. So you can't escape certainty of specific events. From the reform perspective, we just believe that God decrees because he desires a specific end to be accomplished and that God is in control of that.

It's kind of an incomplete and incoherent notion that creatures would be the final determiner of what happens at the end of the film, so to speak.

I also think because total depravity is true, the T is true, most people don't even realize that they're slaves to sin. They think that they're free. In John chapter eight, Jesus says, if you know the truth, the truth will set you free.

The Jews answered him, we are the offspring of Abraham and never been enslaved to anyone. Have you read the Old Testament? Enslaved to the Egyptians, enslaved to the Assyrians, enslaved to the Babylonians, enslaved to Cyrus and the Persians, under Roman occupation and in slavery to them.

It's a denial of the clear truth that they're not free. So because total depravity has affected every part of our will, intellect, and emotions, there's still this denial in ourselves that we're not slaves of anyone.

And then Jesus goes on to say, no, if the Son set you free, you are free indeed. You first have to acknowledge the fact that yes, because my will has been stained by sin, I am not free in all of my actions.

Here's a question for you. How many of you want to sin next week? No one. How many of you will sin next week? There you go.

Just one other thing to add to is, I think if you follow the consistent logic of that idea of God chopping off His sovereignty or submitting it to the man in some sense, you wind up having to come to a conclusion of an open theist conclusion where God, He also ordains to not know the future, that He doesn't know what's gonna happen in some sense in the future.

You wind up coming down to that. And at the end of the day, when you follow all these doctrines, you start chipping away at God and who He is and you make man God and God man, well, God less than man.

It's reversing the roles when you carry these things out logically. You take more and more away from His attributes, from who He is. God cannot relinquish His sovereignty. He can't without not being God.

It's impossible.

Was the hardening of Pharaoh's heart passive or active on God's part?

I'll take a stab at this one. God is never passive. Things don't happen to God. But to affirm what Bruce said earlier, God's not the author of evil. So His activity, I think it's helpful to think of God's hardening Pharaoh's heart as judicial abandonment.

I think Mark basically got this point, but when God chooses to release someone to their own devices, that's not passive, that's active. But it's not active in the sense of God has this big potion of evil and He uncorks it and pours it all over Pharaoh just to make sure he's not good anymore.

Also to add to that, in the whole cascade of God hardening, then Pharaoh hardening, God hardening, and Pharaoh hardening his own heart, notice in the very beginning, okay, it says that God hardens Pharaoh's heart in Exodus 4.

So that whole chain starts with God hardening Pharaoh's heart. All right, so that's the emphasis. That's the primary hardening agent.

And remember, we're starting out with understanding that God is intentionally, actively restraining all of mankind, right? That's an active, that's always in place. God is holding our molecules together every second, right?

So He is actively removing restraint when He's giving people over to the nature of their own hearts. So that's why I said He's not guilty of the actual actions. He's not, as Micah said, He's not making somebody do the evil, but He's removing His intentional restraint to lead them to do the very evil that He knows that they'll do right, that He's ordained, that He knows is the direction of our hearts, and so on.

Okay, how can we apply the doctrines of limited atonement and irresistible grace to our everyday life?

It keeps you humble to know that you were a dead sinner and God got ahold of you and softened your heart and gave you a new nature, and that He did what He did in Christ to purchase you. This is the great contradiction, in my mind, as to how some Reformed folks, while preaching the doctrines of grace, can come off so arrogant in the way that they denounce, rightly, false doctrine in many ways.

And it is a walking contradiction to be Reformed in your theology, but to be arrogant in the manner in which you teach it and walk through it with people. These doctrines are practical because they remind us and they force us to understand that salvation has nothing to do with me, God did not choose me because I was more special than someone else, and we need to constantly remind ourselves that and actively employ that truth in our everyday life, how we interact with people, how we engage in relationships, and how we look at people in terms of the lost, that we don't just look at the lost and, oh, there's just, you know, this world's going to hell in a handbasket.

No, we trust that a sovereign God can raise spiritually dead sinners, and we actively pray for them, and we recognize that it's by God's grace alone, that's all, nothing that we do.

Yeah, if you hold to the doctrines of grace, you have to seek to be the most gracious person in the room. Right? It's a contradiction in terms to say, I hold to the doctrines of grace and then be arrogant at the same time.

Jude tells us, show mercy to those who doubt, right? Be gentle, respectful in all things. These are people who are created in the image of God, and like I had said last night, and just repeating the scriptures, what do you have that you did not receive?

And if you did not, if you did receive it, why do you boast as though you did not? So even the revelation of the doctrines of grace is a gift of grace to you. Do not use that as a hammer to hit people over the head with, okay?

If you love your neighbor as yourself, you wanna share these doctrines with them. Scripture says, don't be quarrelsome, be patient with people. Guess what? That's part of your sanctification if you understand the doctrines of grace, right?

So we wanna be gentle and respectful when sharing these things with other people and not use them as a club to hit them over the head to raise yourself up over the other person. Remember, knowledge puffs up, love builds up.

Not only does doctrines of grace free you to truly love God and others, because again, true love has no expectations. It's merely giving at the expense of self for the betterment of the other, for the glory of God.

But also there's another practical application that we have to look at as well. As Anthony just correctly quoted 1 Corinthians 4, 7, what do you have that you do not receive? That also applies not just to our spiritual wealth, but also to our physical wealth as well.

There's a thing called the Protestant work ethic that came out of the Protestant Reformation, where your estate in life, the class you were born into, meaning your economic class, and even your calling as to your vocation is also seen as a gift from God.

So the very fact of your wealth and the socioeconomic class you're called into is also a gift from God. And you have to be good stewards of the wealth that God has entrusted to us, being that it is graciously given.

And that also includes the government, the civil government that we're called to participate in, to affect for the glory of God, and move the needle closest to justice as we possibly can as well. Because this is another gift that God has bestowed to us.

I mean, we've been very graced in this country as to those two things, economics and politics. God has been very gracious, and it's only because of the Protestant Reformation you even have a United States of America, where you have capitalism, which is the biblical model, the correct biblical model for an economy, not the socialism that you're seeing propounded today by the Democrats, all right?

And also a republic, a republic meaning that there's a government of checks and balances overgirded by a constitution, all right, that has biblical principles in it, like ours. So we also have that as well as a practical application of grace as well.

Great question. I'll try to give two just quick applications. We've got a missionary couple in our church who are Indonesia. They've been there for a few years now. They had to learn another language.

Two weeks ago, the wife had malaria. Again, one of their favorite passages is that Christ has redeemed people from every tribe, tongue, language, and nation. The confidence and certainty of Christ's work gives them staying power in a very difficult place to follow the Lord.

That's meaningful. Second, on a more everyday kind of note that we would face here, Colossians 3 tells us, put on therefore, as the elect of God, bowels of compassion. How can we become so frustrated with others who aren't continually criticizing us, family members, coworkers?

When we think about the mercy of God that we've received, that that should really thought about and dwelt upon, if God's given us eternal mercy, we can extend compassion to someone else who's a bit critical of us.

And one other application, which surprisingly, I don't think has come up in this entire conference. Maybe it was just assumed, but not just the two doctrines that were just asked about, but all five doctrines of grace, they are very important toward our assurance.

It's very easy. I know for me, I'm sure for most of you, I mean, we all struggle with sin. And when those struggles become difficult, it's very easy to start to doubt. And I know some people are more predisposed to doubt than others, but it can be crippling.

And it can be very distressing and depressing. And you know, as long as we see, and they can be false assurances, but as long as we see evidence of the Holy Spirit's work in us, in ways that he doesn't work, obviously, in the unsaved, when, you know, those struggles with sin and with doubt become strong, we can just look to the doctrines of grace.

I mean, what can be more assuring than the belief, the truth, that Christ died for me, for me as a substitute, right? One-on-one, he died for me, right? He drew me irresistibly by his grace. He unconditionally elected me.

We need to, you know, build our lives around those truths. And they are tremendous weapons against doubt when it arises.

Okay.

What is meant by Jacob I loved, Esau I hated? Does God hate? And then there's a follow-up question to that.

Yeah, I think when you define hate, right, would be helpful, right? When we think of hate, sometimes we think of all the emotions, the physical emotions that are attached to it, you know, there's that, we have this rising within us and this rage and this fury.

We know God doesn't have uncontrollable emotions. God isn't like us, he's not physical. He expresses things in language and scriptures that we can relate to. But when you look at hate, you look at the way that he treats individuals, right?

What he says about them. And you go back and trace that passage from Romans nine back to its Old Testament context, and you see the way God speaks against Esau, against the Edomites, basically that he's not gonna show them mercy, that he's gonna destroy them and wipe them out.

That would be the opposite of love, right? I mean, love is you're gonna do, you're trying to do the best good for that individual. You're extending yourself in some ways to meet their needs. Justly, the Edomites, just like the Israelites for that, just like Jacob for that matter, they all deserve God's condemnation, but God is gracious to Jacob, but he is not to Edom.

I mean, I don't know how, I can see how people can say or try to say that it means love less because of the hatred is used in another text about hating your parents, and we know it doesn't mean the same thing.

But again, you gotta go back to the context of where that text is taken from. And I don't know how else you can define hatred in a better way than you're not gonna show them mercy, you're gonna wipe them out and destroy them, and there's gonna be jackals living in their land.

I mean, God did that to the nation of Israel at times too, but he always restored a remnant, right? So it is, it's seen in the actions, and it is God has a holy hatred for sin. So I think we get confused because we think of hatred in a bad sense because we know that we have an unsanctified way that we can exercise hatred.

We know that it's uncontrollable, it's a wrath that's not just and righteous oftentimes. That's not to be associated with God, but there is, God does have a wrath where he pours out, and it's described as fire and brimstone and so on.

And you get a picture of that in Sodom and Gomorrah. I mean, when we say God loved Sodom and Gomorrah, at that point when he loved them in any effectual sense, he loved them and gave them life and so on, but he expressed his divine hatred and wrath toward them when he rained down fire and brimstone.

Okay, all right, the follow-up question to that is, why should we preach the gospel if God chose his people?

That's a great question. So we talk about God predestining people from before the foundation of the world. So the number of those that are predestined are set in the mind of God. And so someone might say, well, what's the point of preaching the gospel?

He's got his frozen chosen, right? That'd be a good Calvinist ice cream flavor too. God ordains the ends, but he also ordains the means. And the means whereby the ends are met is the preaching of the gospel.

So just because God has his set select chosen people doesn't mean we don't preach the gospel because God has also selected that the proclamation of the gospel is the means whereby his elected will, their salvation will be actualized, right?

That's very, very, I think an important thing to keep in mind because Calvinism does not teach fatalism. Fatalism is this idea of what will be will be. It doesn't matter what I do. That's not Calvinism.

That's not the reformed understanding of providence and sovereignty. It does matter what you do. And that's why we are obedient to the command of God to proclaim the gospel, praying that God uses us as a means to work towards his end.

Also in every major decision, every major guidance, God always gives two or three confirmations. In the mouth of two or three witnesses, every fact is confirmed, scripture says. So you have the voice of the spirit, okay, that's regenerating you, that's depositing faith and repentance in your heart.

And then when the spoken word is speaking, the Logos word is spoken and preached, you're going to latch onto that Jesus that you heard preached, okay, from the word of God, and there's your two witnesses, the witness of the spirit, the witness of the word.

So again, as of the bare minimum, in addition to what Eli is saying, God always uses two or three major witnesses to confirm the truth of a particular situation, the situation of your salvation, obviously is that serious, that he's always gonna give at least two witnesses, if not more.

I think it's helpful if we think of it like this, instead of saying God elected or chose before the foundation of the world who would be saved, or God chooses, let's say it this way, God elects before the foundation of the world who will be saved, right, that's true.

But let's take it a step further and let's say it this way, God elected before the foundation of the world who would be saved by the preaching of the gospel, right? He chooses those who will be saved and that salvation is always by the preaching of the gospel.

You know, we give the impression, I guess, or we allow ourselves to think that because God chose who will be saved, well, they're gonna get saved, but how are they going to get saved? This is what we mean when we say he ordained the means as well as the end.

He chose to save a people, or he chose a people to be saved by the preaching of the gospel.

And just to say, too, as well, that's why it's important for people who embrace Calvinism to, again, embrace both the doctrines of how God saves and the means, as our brother just said, because there are Calvinists who are afraid to use the words that would put the onus on people to respond.

No, we have to, look, you need to believe. I have no problem saying that. You need to believe. You need to come to Christ. You need to repent because they do need to do that. Now, again, does God have to be the one to open their eyes, to give them the faith?

We know that that's true, but it's through the means of the preaching that God saves. And we could even say, look, if you reject this truth, which they willfully do, in Acts, right? When Stephen, I think, is preaching, he says, look, you guys are a stiff-necked people.

He doesn't say, well, God, you know, he says, you guys are a stiff-necked people, and you always do the same thing that you've done all along to the prophets. You rejected God. You rejected that truth.

And so people will be accountable for rejecting Christ. There will be a greater judgment for those who have heard the gospel than those who have not heard the gospel. There'll be a greater judgment for those who have rejected, willfully rejected the gospel, and we need to put that to the conscience of people and not be afraid to give choice words in the sense of recognizing that that's the means that God uses and that they're still accountable for their choices.

Just to add quickly, Paul said in Galatians 1 whether we are an angel come preaching. You know, in Revelation 14, you see the angel preaching. Okay, so the main means that God uses is his church, but he's not limited to his church.