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In this episode, Eli interviews Jeremiah Nortier on the beliefs of the “Church of Christ” cult and how to provide biblical responses to their teachings.
Welcome back to another episode of Revealed Apologetics. I'm your host Eli Ayala and today I have with me another special guest and we're going to be covering a very interesting and I think a very important topic.
As the thumbnail says we're going to be talking about the Church of Christ cult. We're not using the phrase Church of Christ in a generic sense. Obviously we believe that the true church is the Church of Christ but we want to make a distinction between the true body of Christ and those who distort the gospel message in ways that we will be going through today.
What I find very interesting about engaging the cults is that if you see behind me here I have a bunch of books you know there's some philosophy and theology books and you know there's this wide range of information that's out there but what I find when I interact with people who come from you know Jehovah's Witness or a Mormon background or something like that 99 .9 of the things that I typically talk about are simply basic Christian theology.
What is the gospel? How are we saved? These basic things. What is the Trinity? The deity of Christ? How can God be both man? How can Jesus be both man and God? These sorts of things come up often when I engage in cults and it kind of makes all of these other books kind of superfluous that cover you know interesting side issues.
I think one of the key keys to being a good apologist is being grounded in solid biblical theology and just being rooted in Scripture and so my guest is going to help us do that tonight as we cover the specific topic that we're going to cover today.
Now before I introduce my guest I want to kind of cover some preliminary things. On July 12th I'll be having Dr. Jason Lyle back on the show to talk about the theory of evolution. That episode will be entitled Is Evolution Viable? and of course Dr. Lyle's expertise is in cosmology.
However he has interacted a lot with evolutionary positions and things like that and because he comes from a uniquely presuppositional perspective I want I want I wanted to be come on to have an opportunity to show how a presuppositionalist will engage these very important scientific issues.
So I think that's going to be a very a very great episode and you guys are not going to want to miss that. Now I'm super excited and I can't say the details now but I have on YouTube reached 5 ,000 subscribers and to celebrate I'm going to have you guys remember a couple of weeks ago I don't I lost track how long ago it was but I had the epic presupp roundtable okay the epic presupp roundtable and I'm going to have something similar with a different set of apologists from a wide variety of different theological and apologetical backgrounds and we're gonna have a kind of a giant Q &A so I can give names to give you the names of the people who are most likely going to be joining me and I'm super excited about it because it's you know we're bringing people together that you don't normally see so in this epic I've been titled the apologetic smorgasbord right you're gonna you're gonna have this wide range of topics addressed.
I'm gonna have with me Matt Slick from CARM .org. I'm going to have on with me Nate Sala if you know if you're not familiar with Nate Sala he does those super awesome and I highly recommend you go check them out.
He does those debate teacher reacts videos excellent so you want to go to the YouTube channel the wise disciple Nate is an he's excellent at analyzing debates and so he brings a very unique element to this whole apologetic you know enterprise.
Hopefully I'm just waiting for confirmation. I'll also be hopefully having dr. Braxton Hunter from Trinity radio. I'm double-checking on that Michael Jones of inspiring philosophy has graciously agreed to also join me and hopefully we can get vocab Malone as well.
So that's gonna be our interesting kind of episode. It's just gonna be a giant Q &A and it'll be fun to see all of us coming from different perspectives engaging the audience questions all right. So I'll keep people updated on the details of that if anything changes.
Of course I'll keep you folks updated. So that's probably going to happen if it happens at the end of July maybe beginning of August we'll have to work out the dates but super excited and that's an awesome way to celebrate 5 ,000 subscribers.
Very very much appreciative of everyone who has subscribed and supports the channel so thank you very much. Super excited. Also if you guys noticed my most recent video was a part one of a study on Greg Bonson's book.
Where do I have it here. Let me see. Ah there we go against all opposition. So I covered the study questions of chapter one. The goal the dream is to do the entire book. The book I think consists of 11 chapters so that will include 11 videos within the teaching series which I will put on a playlist on my channel so folks can go back and if you're not you don't want to read the whole book.
You can kind of walk through the study questions and I expand on important themes within the presuppositional methodology. All right. So hopefully you guys can stay tuned for that and I would really appreciate it if you go back and watch that part one the more people who watch it the more I see that it's actually helping people and people are finding useful and that's going to impact how much of the time I give to it.
So it does take time to create slides and a teaching. So I really much appreciate if you guys check that video out and I'll keep chugging away hopefully covering more videos more books. After that I might cover the impossibility of the contrary.
The study questions there and we'll see how those series goes. If you guys enjoyed and find it useful I'll I'll keep going right. I'm gonna be 40 this year so I'm old but I'm not that old so I got the energy man.
All right. So all right. Well let me stop blabbing. I want to take the opportunity to invite my guests on the screen with me and he can tell us a little bit about himself and then we'll jump right into the topic of the Church of Christ cult and we'll go into the details of that Jeremiah.
Let me see if I could pronounce your last name correctly it is Jeremiah. Okay let me see.
Nortier technically yes because it's French but in the south we say nortier.
Nortier. Okay all right. So Jeremiah is easy to remember. I have an I have an older brother whose name is Jeremiah so I'll just call you Jeremiah but I won't call you mr. nort. Nortier however the French like to say it is an honor to have you on.
Why don't you tell folks a little bit about yourself and what you do and then we'll jump right into our topic for tonight. Absolutely I I forgot.
I was on the show I was listening to you open. I was just like oh this is another revealed apologetics up so I was like oh yeah I'm supposed to be talking with Eli. So Eli it's an honor to be here. I was telling you earlier when I started pursuing more of apologetics and presuppositional apologetics a few years ago I found your channel and you were steps ahead of me.
And you've really been paving the way helping me out so much. So you've been a huge influence in my life. But I serve as a pastor. I'm an elder at a Reformed Baptist Church plant in Jonesboro Arkansas.
This is the north our Kansas our Kansas saw absolutely. So if anybody is in the area I would love for you to come visit 12 5 church. We have a church website 12 5 church calm. And 12 5 comes from Romans 12 verse 5 that talks about even though we are individually one another we are one together in the body of Christ.
So 12 5 church is the church that I serve as an elder at. I also get to do apologetics at church and equip the Saints for every good work. And so I've been blessed with so much support to be able to pursue this apologetics ministry.
Eli you like the logo the apologetic dog. I do the the dog.
Looks like a beast. You got that Reformed beard. And the logo itself is very it cover it marks all that it checks all the boxes in terms of a memorable logo. So why don't you tell us a little bit about that logo.
Why a dog why the beard and why the scripture reference that you chose. Absolutely so. It's a guard dog.
Mentality I've had some people say well DOG doctrines of grace. I'm like yeah. But we're broader than that. Okay so definitely works. But the verse there is also where my heart's at too because I love first Peter 315 I live all of God's Word.
But this says Oh Timothy guard the deposit entrusted to you. Avoid irreverent babble and contradictions of what is falsely called knowledge. And so this is a guard dog. We as Christians we are guarding the truthfulness of the gospel.
We do that by avoiding worldly philosophy pagan philosophy and we expose contradictions of what is falsely called knowledge. So we care a lot about epistemology. We care about studying the truth. And you and I Eli know that revelational epistemology is King right.
So those are some of the things that I have my hands in. I also like I'm bi-vocational so I also serve as a chaplain. That's a lot of work that I do. And and and I work with bereavement and so the Lord has given me a lot of wonderful responsibilities and I just.
Want to keep pressing forward for the kingdom. Hmm. Well awesome. The first time I saw you was on the gospel truth over there at Marlon's channel. I don't remember the specific debate or thing that you were on for but I remember seeing your name and people have said really good things about you and so it's it is a pleasure to actually meet you and have you on the show.
So I'm looking forward to this discussion and looking at some of the comments. I know folks are interested in this discussion as well so thank you so much. Absolutely all right. Well let's jump right into the the issue here.
The Church of Christ. At the beginning I made a distinction between the Church of Christ generally speaking we believe that the true all true believers constitute the the body of Christ is the true church the true bride.
And then there is the Church of Christ which is this cult that some people who might be listening who are part of the Church of Christ might be offended. But why don't you actually define for us what a cult is and why we as as Christians would see the quote on quote the Church of Christ group as a group that can be considered cultic.
Absolutely a lot of people have different ideas of what a cult is and so a cult's not gonna always be. You got this crazy leader that wants you to drink the Kool-Aid. You know I mean a lot of people that's immediately to think when we talk about called it's something much more broad.
We're talking about a particular sect or group that deviate from the faith. And so a lot of cults they will tamper with the deity of Christ. Right. They'll change the nature of who God is or they will add works to the gospel of grace.
And so when we do look at you know Jehovah's Witnesses Mormons the Church of Christ denomination and I want to tell you in the audience they don't like that word. One of the major tenets of Church of Christ is they claim to be the one true church in most Church of Christ say if you're not a member of us then you're lost.
That is a red flag. Right. A lot of these fundamentalist groups that do fall into the cult if you're not a part of their party their brand their denomination then you're out. And so that's something that the Church of Christ do.
Is they say you must be water baptized as a member of their church in order to be saved. And so I believe they have made it known that they are and in fact a cult when we look at it both historically and biblically sure now.
That's very different than like you know you're a Reformed Baptist. I don't go to a Reformed Baptist Church but I am Reformed Baptist in my theology although I did have a very astute and educated Presbyterian try to convert me and this particular Presbyterian actually formally debated James White on the very topic so we we've had some interesting conversations a while back but I would consider myself Reformed Baptist but I wouldn't look at Presbyterians and say they're not true Christians.
So there's a distinction there right. You have the Church of Christ who says if you're not part of our church you're not a Christian. But that's different than what we would say with respect to.
Different denominations. Right right. So you and I have a good understanding of the Universal Church the invisible church the people of God of all time. And we have the visible church that manifest in local congregations the Church of Christ.
There they're split on a lot of things. Most Church of Christ don't see that distinction. And as we talk a little bit more about the history about Alexander Campbell and Thomas Campbell's dad they launched essentially for the first time in 1811 May 4th the Church of Christ.
And they basically anathematized everybody else. Yeah. And so this has this has a history worth looking into. And like I said they they disparage the idea of denominations. They say that's that's denominational teaching.
You need to get back to the Bible. And something else that I think is really helpful Eli's is something that I discovered as I was preparing to debate Church of Christ and things like that. Is you know how we would hold to so la scriptura.
Okay now we've heard a term called so low scriptura. It's my Bible and me under a tree. No creed but Christ. That's right. I've always thought on a spectrum who can I put over there in the so low scriptura.
It's the Church of Christ. They want really hard to divorce themselves from church history in any way shape and form. They would just say all we need is the Bible. Don't tell me about Alexander Campbell.
Let's not look at those things. In fact they have a mantra or a creed that they would deny as a creed that can't comes from Alexander Campbell. And some of the early preachers they speak where the Bible speaks.
And they're silent with the Bible silent we would test that claim to see if they're gonna break their own.
Standard when they say things like that. Okay. Excellent. And I think it's very dangerous when we detach ourselves from church history. Right. And this is the problem that a lot of Protestants have. Right Orthodox Protestants or evangelicals.
Right. We tend to be very in the moment completely disconnected to everything that's come before us and that's why a lot of Protestants have great difficulty engaging Roman Catholics and Eastern Orthodox because those those groups tend to be more connected with their history than a lot of modern evangelical Christianity.
So I think it's very important if we're familiar with church history that will actually equip us to better apologetically engage in some of the cults especially the Church of Christ cult. That's an excellent observation there all right.
Well I'm not an expert in this area so I don't know the background of the Church of Christ and how this church was established and some of the details of the history. Can you kind of go in to that for us for our viewers and just real quick I want to read very briefly something.
A quote from dr. Walter Martin who again he is. If you're if you don't know who dr. Walter Martin is. I mean I I've actually been binge watching old videos of dr. Walter Martin. If you're listening to this livestream and you don't know who dr. Walter Martin is you want to take your hand and you want to smack yourself across the face and then you want to save the name and go and search it on YouTube dr. Walter Martin was considered the father of cult apologetics and he wrote the classic work the kingdom of the cults which is in the background here and it is an excellent resource dealing with all sorts of cults and but dr. Walter Martin was an expert in the cult and he defined a cult this way.
Let me see here to do all right. So this is dr. Walter Martin quote by the term cult I mean nothing derogatory to any group so classified a cult as I define it is any religious group which differs significantly in one or more respects as to belief or practice from those religious groups which are regarded as the normative expressions of religion in our total culture.
I think it's very important to emphasize that they differ from the norm. Right from what we'd call the Orthodox. Right. So we would categorize the Church of Christ as a cult because they are diverging from essential core elements of the Christian faith.
These aren't side issues or you know debating the nature of the return of Christ or something like that these are essential features of Christian theology. So to that end why don't you kind of go into a little bit of the history and then we'll go into some of.
Their theology. Yeah so just a brief flyover. 1811 May 4th is basically when Alexander Campbell and his father Thomas Campbell they and there's a big history that they've they've moved from Presbyterians to Baptists and they weren't they weren't fitting in.
And so when they started the Church of Christ they they essentially condense salvation into a five-step process and it's hear the word believe the word repent of sins confess sins publicly and be baptized in immersion only.
Now what to this five-step plan. What's behind it. And like said there's rich history here is this Baconian philosophy this rationalism that says you can have a clean slate of mind Eli with no presuppositions.
And so from this the Church Christ all fundamentally share and those those major aspects which we wouldn't necessarily agree with but when they talked about be baptized in immersion only that's a part of the process in order to be made right with God.
Okay and so Church of Christ deny original sin. Okay now this is gonna be key in the whole discussion when we talk when we start defining other terms like regeneration it's really hard for the Church of Christ to have a good systematic theology and understanding of regeneration because they deny original sin.
They don't believe your nature really needs to be changed. They see Jesus Christ coming as a reset button. Right. And when you're baptized you hit the reset button and then you have to continue to live a holy life.
And in order to not lose your salvation and so it's synergistic to the core and something else that Church of Christ believe is the Holy. You don't have the indwelling Holy Spirit. Rather they would interpret all the passages about the Holy Spirit as the Word of God.
So not only are they so low scriptura but they are the radical cessationist. I get accused of being too radical leaning cessationist and I love my continuationist brothers. But they're on a different category.
They they believe the Holy Spirit is not in and at work in our lives today apart from just engaging with the Word of God. So there's a number of things there. Eli I didn't know if you.
Wanted to chime in. I guess I mean what. What does that mean. You said that they interpret the portions of Scripture concerning the Holy Spirit as the Word of God. I'm not sure. I understand that. Right.
So they're not viewing that as the.
Indwelling Holy Spirit like we would understand the third person of the Trinity a person they would just say as you are dwelling on the Word of Christ I think it's Colossians chapter 3. They look at the word as this is the Holy Spirit in your life as you read the word and we agree that the Holy Spirit is at work drawing us to his word.
But we possess God in us right in the sense that the Holy Spirit indwells believers regenerates us and seals us unto the day.
Of redemption. So so so when Jesus says when I leave I will send a helper that.
Helper to them is the Bible. Functionally now a lot of things that I'm saying I'm cutting right to the chase. Some of these things they will they will argue over tooth and nail for but yes when you press them enough that's what you're.
Going to get out. Okay. And so do they acknowledge the Trinity. Then when we're taking a look at the the Holy Spirit do they believe that the Holy Spirit is a.
Person within the Godhead. Okay so what I'm saying is not gonna be monolithic for the Church of Christ. Okay a lot of them tend to want to engage with the King James and New King James. Not all of them are like radically only us there but they really try to utilize the word Godhead because what another thing I Church of Christ are gonna do that.
Since they say denominations are man-made traditions and titles they just want to be referred to as Christians. So when you start saying things like are you Trinitarian I've had so many say no I'm a Christian and it's like okay let's let's back up and slow down you a Trinitarian.
Christian what you just said right there makes me think of dr. Walter Martin. I mean I'm sorry to bring it up. I mean but if I can go real quick I'm not gonna read anything from it. But there is a portion in this book I think it is.
Yeah so it's chapter 2 in the kingdom of the cults entitled scaling the language barrier and and he goes on to discuss the importance that if you're going to speak to a cultist it is important it is vitally important that you scale the language barrier.
And it seems what you're telling me they they quibble over words and phrases that we need to be very careful that we rightly and clearly define. So again excellent resource. Okay of course this video he's gonna Jeremiah is gonna go into detail for us but if you haven't if you don't have this book I mean you need to get this book.
I don't know if he covers the Church of Christ in it specifically but just generally it's an excellent resource for folks who are engaging in any sort of cult. But go ahead. Yeah well.
Defining terms is is key is ultimate in conversations with Church Christ. I just want to throw a few out there. Defining the word faith is so important with Church of Christ because you're really never gonna get off the ground until you define faith define works define justification divine define sanctification.
The word baptism many will argue it always necessarily means wet immersion. It's not true and word obey what you say it means wet immersion. A lot of Church of Christ will argue the word baptized Oh always means wet immersion.
The definition doesn't mean that and there's so many context to prove that that's not the case and many Church Christ's are are catching on that.
That's a poor argument. Okay are you so. Okay. So let me clarify. So. So when you say they understand the word baptizo to mean wet immersion what you're saying is when the word baptizo appears it always means water baptism not like baptized with fire or baptized in the spirit those phrases entail you getting wet in.
Some way for them. Yeah man to be fair I've talked with both sides. I've talked with Church Christ. Every time you see the word baptism it means water wet immersion. And then it's easy to show how that's just not true the definition and the context like you're starting to bring out and believe it or not.
Another key word in these conversations is the word obey or obedience. Okay. Because in their mind that necessarily means works. Right. We understand obeying from the hardest faith. They don't really have a category because something that they will say is you got to obey the gospel.
You got to obey the gospel. What they mean is you better be baptized the way that mark 1616. They interpret it actually 38 and we'll get into a lot of the proof text. But we believe that you must obey the gospel by faith.
Right. And then that will result in something in your life.
Yeah okay. So so what are the specific areas. So if you can give kind of a list of the areas of departure of the Church of Christ that make them cultish. I mean cultish. That's a good good podcast. They should make a podcast called cultish so so so the Church of Christ might use they might have beliefs that sound very similar to an Orthodox Christian perspective but can we kind of go down a list of like the main essential features that they deny and and why how do they defend their own position.
And then maybe we can kind of go into how we could.
Apologetically engage them. Yes. So they fundamentally deny salvation by grace through faith. They're going to redefine grace to always mean the Jesus coming. Dying on the cross in faith always means an obedient faith which we agree.
But they say a faith you're not justified until works are present right until you get into the water. Okay. So that to me is the biggest departure from orthodoxy is they redefine faith to necessarily include works instead of understanding clear distinctions the way that Paul would and somewhere like Romans 4.
Or we look at Ephesians 2 and places. But would they. Would they.
Categorize baptism as a work because I hear often people say well wait a minute well baptism isn't really work. I just had someone say something on one of the comments. I did a video on our spirit 321 well what was the name of the I forgot.
Does baptism save or is it you know it's necessary. Is it necessary for salvation. And someone says well baptism is not a work that we do baptism is a work that God does through someone. And I was I was thinking I'm like gold that doesn't.
Seem that's right. I mean that's a common response and they would a lot of times go to Colossians 212 because it is talking about circumcision made without hands. It is talking about baptism and it's Baptiste moss in the plural which is actually hearkening back to the Old Testament ceremonial rites.
And then it says the powerful working of God. And I love dr. White's series on baptism because he covers all the proof texts and he shows that in the epistles baptism is primarily doctrinal giving us theology about a spiritual truth and the application of the hearers would also be thinking about their baptism.
But here's the question that I asked Church of Christ and it puzzles them. And I and I say this in love Eli because something I pray about all the time is I want the Christ to know that I love them. I don't take any joy in pursuing this.
I truly feel like it's it's my Nineveh. I have a really good friend that has appeared on the the podcast cultish coming out of the Church of Christ movement and we've done a lot of work together the Church of Christ feel like our Nineveh since it's saturated in legalism.
There's so much hostility quibbling over words. That's not something you sign up for. And so it's something that is a calling by God. And so I always want to let the Church Christ know that. Hey I love you.
And so we talk about these things. It's totally out of love and grace. And so when I hear this all the time is well baptism is a work of God. I ask is it a work of God only. Okay. Because now now you're really getting much deeper cuz you and I believe that God is working all things together after the council of his will.
We believe in Philippians 1 6 that God begins that good work in you brings it to completion. And then here's here's the point that I'm getting at in Philippians 2 12 and 13 we work out our salvation with fear and trembling.
We understand this is sanctification. We understand baptism any works of sanctification right fit there. That's what we're ordained to good works. And Ephesians 2 and so verse 13 in Philippians 2 says it actually it's God who's at work both to will and work in you for his good pleasure.
And so the question is is it a work of God only. And I've noticed that stops a lot of church.
Of Christ in their tracks. Very quickly. Okay all right. So so this issue of baptism becomes a major issue. So let's kind of go into engaging some of those Apollo let's talk about apologetic strategy and then let's talk about some of the specific text.
Then. If so. So if the core issue is you know they they move away from an Orthodox perspective in terms of salvation justification by faith alone. Right. They don't affirm that and they kind of emphasize the importance of being baptized.
I want to deal with some of those texts but why don't we talk just about apologetic strategy broadly speaking and then kind of engage specifically. So what what some advice you can give by way of strategy to someone who is engaging these folks and really is looking for a proper way to.
Think about how to engage. Yeah well something that I've heard you say on your channel here along with other men that I look up to in the faith like John MacArthur knowing the Word of God that's primarily going to be the best apologetic is being so familiar with the truth of the real thing that you can detect the counterfeit that's even I'm sure Walter Martin would agree that that's that's kind of the bar that you judge everything and so that's that's primary and so that quickly moves into something you said earlier and Walter Martin is defining terms that list again talking about defining faith understanding from the heart.
We firmly trust in the person and work of Jesus Christ. So that's internal. Okay. And so works are external. This is Ergon from the Greek and this is huge in our strategy. Contending with Church of Christ is I really want to quickly ask what's their definition of works.
Because Eli what they do every single time is they want to give you different kinds of works works of law works of flesh works of God. And we acknowledge there are different kinds of works. But we're talking about the definition the way that Paul uses it and we'll look at some of this.
And like Romans 4 and Ephesians 2 he's talking about Ergon. It's the external actions of human accomplishments. It's everything that we do and that's not the thing that makes us right before God. And so I think contending for those definitions along with justification and sanctification those relate.
But Church of Christ seems to be Roman Catholic light Roman Catholicism they do affirm original sin. So they haven't they have a full-orbed systematic theology and they have baptismal regeneration. Church of Christ it's not so developed.
It's only about 200 years old. And since they deny original sin there's not baptismal regeneration. And what I've coined Eli is they would hold to what what I understand to be baptismal justification.
Okay I don't like those terms because their mantra is we speak where the Bible speak. We're gonna be silent the Bible silent. But that eliminates any type of teaching any type of application and they quickly break that standard so I'm just saying it doesn't work even from the start but then getting into words like obedience that doesn't always works that we do you can be obedient from the heart and that would be by faith.
And so you really have to war for these definitions. And then the other big thing is context. Context context. You got a bunch of proof texts. I sent you a list of ones that we can kind of go through all those have a context and if you're familiar with these verses it's easy to show how this is not going to result in.
A works righteousness system. Hmm all right. Well to that end we're gonna put you on the spot and I want to go through. It's a matter of fact I want to at this portion of our discussion I probably will make a separate video a snippet of where you're going to be answering this specific question.
Right. So what I what I want you to do is I want to I want to read the text and I want you to respond to each of them so that we can have. And again I want to make this a separate video so if someone doesn't want to watch this whole discussion they can go back and you know and they can watch the whole thing but they can go back and watch the specific responses to some biblical text.
So you know I'll give you a few moments to warm up there to get yourself settled. And I just want to say thank you Spencer Rice for a $49 .99 super chat. Wow dude that is amazing. Thank you so much graciousness Spencer says.
Eli. Thanks for the great content. I love it when you have guests on but this guy seems like a jabroni. I haven't heard a jabroni in a long long time. You like I'll tell you.
Something real quick go for it. So Spencer is a really good friend of mine. He's a missionary in Japan. Oh wow. He is a lifelong friend that has really shaped me in the ministry. I love him a lot and he has benefited from your channel as.
Well that is awesome. That's so encouraging to hear because you know when you're in front of the computer you're doing this. You don't really get a full grasp as to the reach of what you're doing and and who's being impacted by it.
So that's very encouraging. Thank you so much. And Spencer thank you so much man that that is amazing. I very much appreciate it. Just as Jeremiah is getting set up for his you know his grill his grilling session.
I'm gonna grill him on these passages here if you have any questions please as we normally do on this show at the tail end of the show. I want to you know read through some questions if there are any.
Sometimes we don't get some questions that's fine but if there are any questions send them in and we'll try our best to get to some of them. We want to be helpful and useful to you. So all right. Well I hope you are ready.
I have before me Acts chapter 2 verse 38. Okay so Jeremiah bro. Okay you you questioning the clear biblical fact that baptism is a necessity for salvation. What's wrong with you. Apologetic dog. Okay so Acts chapter 2 verse 38 says the following.
And Peter said to them all right. And this is in response to actually me read verse 37. This is in response to a very clear question that seems to give a very clear and obvious answer. So let's see how Jeremiah answers.
So verse 37. Now when they heard this they were cut to the heart and said to Peter and the rest of the Apostles brothers what shall we do. And this is in light of Peter's teaching and the proclamation of the gospel.
And Peter says repent and be baptized every one of you in the name of Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of your sins. And you will receive the gift of the Holy Spirit aka the Bible. What she told me there.
So so so there you have it bro. Okay clearly. It's clear what must we do. Repent and be baptized for the forgiveness of sins. What is your response. Let me start with a quick.
Response. Okay context is everything and what I have to always do at the Church of Christ is say everybody has a burden of proof to explain what that means. Okay there's a difference between reading it and giving the meaning of scripture.
That's true. I want to encourage Christians don't fall into a trap of saying do you believe this yes or no. Because the answer is yes when you read it no on how you interpret it. So when they say you don't believe that or or just just say yes or no what must I do.
And then they read it yes or no nothing else explain anytime you read scripture I agree with it but there's a difference in you reading it and then giving its meaning. And so I think very simply Eli the context here is a Jewish audience that is so key and so the Jews are being cut to the heart by the gospel.
We see a fulfillment of Joel here and the Jews ask a broad question. They say what must we do. What do I mean broad. Well we see a more specific question later in Acts chapter 16 sirs what must I do to be saved.
Okay so here's a broader question. Because the Jews crucified the Son of Glory the Mashiach. Right. And they are cut to the heart about this because this was actually God come in the flesh. And so they are asking our understanding of Judaism is wrong.
What are we to do now. And Peter is saying you need to repent. The backside of repentance is always faith. Repentant faith always goes together. That's what would justify us before God. And so now he's saying this this is how you would demonstrate that repentant faith in your unity with the authority of Jesus Christ.
And so in a very shortly that's what he's getting at there. And we've only hit half the verse. And so also when he says repent and be baptized every one of you in the name of Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of your sins and you'll receive the gifts of the Holy Spirit.
So the very simplistic Baptist argument has been for can mean because of and I've used it. I think that that's true and I can textually and exegetically you can make that move however I love how he uses for the forgiveness of your sins.
Because the V is the definite article. It means the one and only like Jesus is the way the truth and the life. No one comes the father except through me. And so this phrase is used in the Gospels. John the Baptist said this almost exact phrase that remember John the Baptist was paving the way for Messiah and he says for the forgiveness of sins.
And so he was talking about redemption that was still yet to come at Calvary. And so the night of Jesus's crucifixion he was tearing the bread passing it to the Apostles saying take this bread. Which basically is pointing to me what he's about to accomplish the next day.
And they they would drink this all this all pointed to what was about to happen. He says for the forgiveness of sins. And so my point is Peter is pointing back to Calvary with this very explicit statement for the forgiveness of your sins.
You can have your sins forgiven in total in repentant faith by looking to the one and only.
Savior. What he did on the cross at Calvary. Okay. All right all right. So what about then. Okay. All right. What about mark 16 16. Which which clearly says. My friend. Okay. You know mr. apologetic dog chew on this.
All right. Mark 16 16. All right. Whoever believes and is baptized will be saved but whoever does not believe will be condemned. Okay. Again. It's a nice flowery explanation you gave but it seems like you are adding to the text when the text clearly says look right.
Whoever believes and is baptized but whoever does not believe will be condemned. I mean it seems like you are adding to the Word of God mr. dog. That's.
That's what I would get. Is that's not what it says. That's not what says. And we're saying timeout. We're talking about its meaning. Yeah. That's why. That's why.
I'm trying my best impression of you're doing great. But by the way by the way someone said anomaly with this awesome comment here. Church of Christ Eli might be my favorite Eli. So there are different versions of me.
When I try to pretend to be someone that I'm not I try to. You know I ham it up a little bit so it can be a little engaging. But Israel thank you so much for your $5 super chat. I the $5 donation machine is back in action.
But boy thank you man I really really appreciate that. I just real. A quick reminder before Jeremiah answers mark 1616 again if you should have any questions please please please please send them in and preface your question with questions so that we could address them.
If you don't have any questions that's cool. But if you do please don't hesitate to send those in. All right all right. Jeremiah. So mark 1616 whoever believes and is baptized dude it's right there. So I have two different.
Answers depending on what I guess your your context. I'll call it the Matt slick answer the slickest man alive and the dr. James White answer. Okay cuz they're gonna be different here now. Matt slick he's the slickest man alive.
I hope to be able to do an episode with him one day. Love calm org encourage people to go check that out. Yes. So what Matt would say is we got to make sure we read the whole verse. Right. Because Church of Christ are really good at proof text.
And we got a list here. They will say all day long whoever believes and coordinating conjunction is baptized will be saved but whoever does not believe will be condemned. There's the key right. It's the believing.
And the unbelieving or not believing is what saves and condemns. When you let the whole verse speak. Okay now we still have a gift given account for and is baptized. Well it doesn't equally say whoever does not believe and is not baptized will be condemned.
I had a chance to talk to. I call him a Greek scholar but anyway he just said what we look at baptized is it's indicative. It's describing what believers do. Stephen voice. I'm so sorry Stephen your name like went out of my head.
I called him to talk about the nuances here. Okay. I recommend people looking him up. I know.
He's has he been on here before too. He has. We did the King James only episode which was X which was excellent. I mean I still highly recommend people watch that video because it is a kind of a one-on-one of sexual criticism.
It isn't actually equips you to address a bunch of other issues as well so I highly recommend that. Yes so point is Matt.
Slick. Others have pointed out you could say whoever believes and goes to church will be saved. That's what Christians do. Whoever believes and reads their Bible will be saved. That's it's indicative it's showing what believers do and we know that it's the the not believing is what's gonna ultimately end up in our being condemned.
Dr. white would take a different approach and says bro this is.
The longer ending of mark shouldn't be there and I was gonna ask you about that. I was wondering if we should mention the textual variant issue because it opens up a whole can of worms that you may not want to sidetrack you know the.
Discussion. But absolutely because if you start talking about textual criticism with the Church Christ who wants nothing to do with church history and and the manuscript tradition of how God has preserved his word what you immediately get is oh you're just trying to take out Bible passages that you don't like I have heard on one occasion a church of Christ preacher understand that and not want to camp out on mark 1616.
But overall I would say look you you have enough context clues to explain the verse and something that Stephen Boyce has pointed out. I taught him I loved him saying this is I believe historically Jesus probably said those words at the end of John's gospel.
He said and did so many things that aren't written in the Bible if they were recorded. The whole world couldn't even contain these things. So the fact that this is trying to make it into the manuscript tradition along with you know that passage in John 8 first John 5 7.
Of all these other ones these this specifically was probably said and comes out you know or through oral tradition that comes back in the text. But when you're in it when you're talking with church of Christ I would say treat this verse historically as though Jesus said it because he probably did.
And this verse gives us enough context to actually explain the meaning.
Okay all right. Okay thank you for that. Well let's move along. So first Peter chapter 3 verse 21. This is a big one. Okay. Is someone. Someone says it dude. You know I there are people who even commented on the videos.
I made a short video. If folks are wondering the video I'm referring to is baptism necessary for salvation. And someone you they probably you know didn't even watch the video. They said yes. And then they just quoted you know this particular passage.
First Peter chapter 3 verse 1. Okay so mr. apologetic dog. All right. First Peter chapter 3 verse 21. Which says the following. And it's clear as day. Right. You I know you got your little ballerina shoes on tiptoeing around the issues.
Jeremiah. Okay. Making the Bible say something that it doesn't right. Okay here's what it says. Baptism which corresponds to this now saves you not as a removal of dirt from the body but as an appeal to God for a good conscience to the resurrection of Jesus Christ who has gone into heaven and is the right hand of God with angels authorities and the powers having been subjected to him.
So there you go. Now corresponding to this baptism saves you. It literally says baptism saves you. How can you be so blind to miss what the obvious teaching.
Of this text Jeremiah. Yeah let me let me help them out. And their case. If you read the King James in verse 20 it says that they were the eight persons eight souls were saved by water. So how do we get out of this.
Yeah. Okay so I listened to your video recently. I thought you did a great job explaining this. I want to encourage people if you were to go to the apologetic dog YouTube channel I called in a live talk show with the Church of Christ preacher and we spent an hour talking about these two verses.
It was awesome. We even talked about the sovereignty of God and the depravity of man. It was great. So if you want to see it live in an action go check that out too. But I will say there's a few different approaches people could take contextually.
And it still works. We still conclude that all man this is talking about faith in Christ this is this is ultimately the baptism having a good conscience in the resurrection of Christ. But very simply I tell people in order you got to look at verse 20 and 21 together.
That's so important for this. And the only way to properly understand and I'll use the King James to help them out that they were saved through water. You have to ask the question what does that mean.
The explanation is in the Old Testament if you know the story of Noah and the Ark and the flood. That's enough to help you understand. Because I love what the ESV does. ESV understood the translators understood this.
These eight persons were brought safely through water. Okay so there's three elements in verse 20. You got to be aware of. You got to be aware of the Ark. You got to be aware of the eight persons Noah.
And then you got to be aware of the water. The water was used as a instrument of judgment. Okay. It was not salvific. What was salvific for Noah and his family was the Ark. The Ark is salvific. Okay now this is going to be our context going into verse 21 baptism baptizo.
There's a type of immersion going on there. Right. If when we know definitions of terms baptism which corresponds to this now saves you. And then he immediately says not the removal of dirt from the body.
So Peter is almost going back to Pentecost saying all right just so everyone understands and doesn't get it twisted that baptism is salvific in any way that is not what is in view here not the removal of dirt from the body.
This is not a ceremonial bath that I'm talking about. That's not the baptism here. And then he goes on to say but as an appeal to God for a good conscience through the resurrection of Jesus Christ Jesus is our Ark of salvation.
That is the correspondence in any type that was going on here. And Eli one last thing is I think it's good to define what a good conscience means. If you go back earlier in the context we go to one of our favorite Bible passages.
First Peter 315. But in your hearts honor Christ the Lord is holy always being prepared to make a defense for anyone who asked for a reason for the hope that is in you. Yet do it with gentleness and respect.
Verse 16 having a good conscience. Right. The point is having a good conscience is sanctifying the Lord in your hearts we.
Understand that this is looking to him in faith. Excellent. Very good. You do an excellent job. By the way we're gonna continue to go down the list. But I just want to give a shout out to my friend Ron.
Thank you so much for your $20 super chat. He says Francis Chan teaches the same thing about baptism being necessary for salvation so I think he's asking the question so shouldn't churches stop using his teachings.
Maybe we can kind of take a quick little sidestep and maybe you could address that question from your perspective. And Ron thank you so much man. I really do appreciate it. Yeah I appreciate the question too.
Because I grew up listening to Francis Chan I think he was a master's seminary graduate out in California where MacArthur's seminary is. Something that a long time ago he said in a sermon on Acts 2 was why are we getting so bogged down about baptism.
And I remember I remember immediately thinking because this is a gospel issue. Are you trusting in a gospel says your accomplishments your works plus your faith and what Jesus did. Or are we talking about something else.
It's it's so important and I think Francis I don't know the details of this. I would I would tread so cautiously with where Francis Chan is going now because I listened to him recently on the remnant radio.
I love those guys by the way. Sure they interviewed Francis Chan on his view of the Eucharist or communion and it's just concerning. So you always have to have your discernment up and I would just say exercise that especially with.
Francis Chan. Hmm all right. Well thank you for that and thanks again Ron really appreciate it. So let's kind of get you back on track here. So my next scripture that I'd like you to address is Acts chapter 22 verse 16.
Bro. Okay here's what it says. And now why do you wait. Rise and be baptized and wash away your sins calling on his name. So it clearly seems to be the case that baptism and the washing away of your sins is very closely connected here and so it seems to support the idea that baptism is in fact necessary for the washing away of your sins which is obviously connected to this whole idea of salvation.
I.
Actually love this verse because I remember just a little bit about me and my hometown in Jonesboro Arkansas is Church of Christ are everywhere and so that's why it's a mission field for me is because usually someone's family member or a friend of a friend or so I have so many friends are Church of Christ and so there have been instances where I had a relationship or a friendship with somebody that attends a Church of Christ and so eventually that turned into them calling their elders and us sitting down and just hashing it out as much loving way as possible.
And I'm so grateful for that because I remember one of them this probably nine years ago brought up this verse and I just remember thinking man I just I need to keep reading and studying the Bible. And I love this verse now because I do feel like I have a better grasp of the context and so something else I know I'm giving you a lot here to take okay duration but Church of Christ historically have a different method a different hermeneutic a different exegesis.
So I wanted to tell you what that is. And this kind of stems out of their Baconian philosophy where the rational mind is preeminent. You can you can have a clean slate no presuppositions and something that they go by the acronym is Cini C-E-N-I.
And it's really just three points and it's you got to understand direct command approved example and necessary inference. I come back to say okay that doesn't really encapture the grammatical historical method of interpretation.
And so what I mean is we do look at exit we do look at the original language we look at definition of terms we do look at context and they would say yes to that. But I think a fatal flaw here and this kind of pertains to this verse is you got to understand prescription and description right.
What is indicative and what's a command ultimately. And so how this plays out here is the book of Acts is a narrative book. You got to treat it like that when you look at the epistles these are doctrinal letters given to the church and so you don't interpret the doctrinal letters in light of the book of Acts.
You have it backwards. You read the book of Acts and you see what Paul is teaching how Christians are supposed to understand this in light of the letter. So I'm saying that's important and you'll see this crossover here in a second.
Sure I love what you did. You read the whole verse because typically that's good. This gets quoted as why do you wait rise and be baptized and wash away your sins. Okay but calling on his name a lot. There's a lot of things going on here in the context.
This is not the Apostle Paul speaking this is Ananias. Ananias earlier in the context when you look back to Acts chapter 9 I think it's 915 where the Lord appears to him saying hey you go and prepare for Saul of Tarsus because he is a chosen vessel of mine.
Okay because Ananias was like I don't know if this is a good idea because he's literally killing and persecuting Christians. God's like I got a sovereign plan for this. Okay. And so what you see here in this verse just on broad scope as we get closer is Ananias is being faithful to the gospel proclamation in the Great Commission.
I'm just saying that he's being faithful here. Okay and so we need to ask the questions how what did he mean. How did the Apostle Paul understand what he means. And so what I'm getting at is rise and be baptized.
I do think that is talking about water baptism especially with Matthew 28 and the Great Commission of mine wash away your sins calling on his name. So washing away your sins is qualified by calling on his name.
Now the Apostle Paul goes into great detail what it means to call upon the name of the Lord or to confess Jesus as Lord in Romans chapter 10 this is a correct move. Paul's about to interpret for us what he would have understood Ananias to be saying.
And so in in Romans chapter 10 verse 9 Paul says that if you confess with your mouth that Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead you will be saved. For with the heart one believes and his present tense justified.
And with the mouth one confesses and saved. And then he goes on to quote from the Old Testament he says for everyone who calls on the name of the Lord shall be saved. Okay now I know we got other verses but this is so good if we just actually just sit in this Paul is telling us that if you confess Jesus as Lord now I've had church crosses.
Well it says with your mouth and we would say yes. But definitions are so important. If you look up the word confession confessing this is a transformed heart of worship that manifests itself not with not only what you say but how you live the rest of your life.
So there's something more fundamental with confessing. It's a matter of the heart. And so the point is is if you confess Jesus as Lord that he's the risen Lord then you are present tense saved according to the Apostle Paul.
Now why is that important. Because if you go back to Acts 20 to 16 Eli I think this is a defeater not only for Church of Christ but also Roman Catholicism Eastern Orthodox any baptismal regeneration. I just I think this is a defeater.
And obviously there would be much debate over this. But Paul confessed Jesus is Lord before his baptism. Hmm that's huge. Because the Church of Christ most people say well Paul confessed Jesus is Lord at his baptism.
And it'll say acts 22 16. I'm like okay so if we can show that he actually confessed Jesus before his baptism and that doesn't work. He's simply demonstrating his faith when he does get baptized. Look with me at verse 8 Paul answered who are you Lord.
So let me pause. So he's on the road to Damascus. Right. He's persecuting Christians. He wasn't seeking after God. But we understand no one seeks after God. No none's good none righteous. But it's God who seeks us his own.
And so the Apostle Paul is a wonderful picture of that. Yeah. So Jesus is in the Shekinah glory of of curious. That's gonna be a key phrase here in a second the the Shekinah glory of God is is right there in front of Saul of Tarsus and he's a Pharisee of Pharisees.
He knows he is looking at God. He is looking at the divine Lord. And he says who are you Lord. And I think he's genuinely asking the question here. Then he said to me I am Jesus of Nazareth whom you are persecuting.
Jesus of Nazareth is key because he knows exactly who he's talking about. The Apostle Paul earlier in Acts had a helping hand at it. You know a helping hand in the crucifixion probably earlier on. And he was there with the the killing of Stephen.
He understands exactly who Jesus of Nazareth is. And then he says now to those who were with me saw the light but did not understand the voice of the one who is speaking to me. So now the Apostle Paul or Saul of Tarsus here he has a fully informed conscience Shekinah of glory of God that he invokes the divine name Kurios.
And now he knows it's the resurrected Jesus of Nazareth talking to him. And he says. And I said to him what shall I do Lord. Hmm. And so you can continue to build on this because Galatians chapter 1 he talks about how he received the gospel not from man but from actually Jesus himself.
The gospel is the power of God unto salvation. We're gonna see later that he prayed. Or if you go look at the context. He prayed he did all these things that I'm someone who is born again does. And so my point is actually 216 what qualifies.
The washing away your sins. It's not the water baptism. It's calling upon his name Paul already done that. Hmm excellent very.
Good man this is excellent stuff. Adam thank you so much for your $20 super chat. You guys are so generous man I really appreciate it. My goodness thank.
You so much. Can I say something about Adam. Yeah sure. Go for it. I love Adam Carmichael so much. He's a member at 12 -5 church here in Jonesboro and he. Wonderful testimony. I'd love for you to get to talk to him someday.
Sure. Wonderful testimony. And he said he knew that he had to be all in the study in God's Word. He said that had to be you know the the central point in his life that's how you you grow with your walk with the Lord.
And so that eventually led to apologetics for him. And he loved that. I guess we're men. We're fighters. Right. We like that apologetic atmosphere and so it's neat. Because he found the gospel truth. He found a lot of debates.
And this this guy with the beards on there saying that he's from Jonesboro Arkansas talking about. Was Mary a sinner. And I'm like yes she's a sinner saved by grace just like the rest of us. And so that's where I'd encourage people to go look up Marlon Wilson's channel the gospel truth.
Because that brother's doing some amazing work and that was very instrumental. God used that to bring Adam to 12 -5. And we're buds. Well.
That's awesome because you know and when I watch Marlon's show Marlon's like man we could we trying to get the gospel out there. You know he says that he's got that spunk man and God is using it. That is so awesome.
And so we I know Marlon is on right now. I don't know if he's on right now he has a comment here so he might. I don't know if he's still on but if he gave he could hear us. Marlon keep up the good work.
You're doing excellent work and it's impacting people. So keep up the good work man. Appreciate it. And Adam thank you so much for your super chat. That is that's awesome and I greatly appreciate it all.
Right. Let's let's take a kind of another sidestep and address some questions. Usually I do the questions at the back end but they're not a lot. We have a lot of viewers but not a lot of questions. Which is what kind of viewers if they're for us or against us.
Yeah that's right. But so I want to take a moment to kind of go through a question here and and then we'll continue to get back on track again. I'm speaking with Jeremiah Nortier or however one you could.
The apologetic dog on the topic of the Church of Christ cult and it is a cult in the negative sense that we've described at the beginning and so it does require some apologetic engagement and proclamation of the gospel and Jeremiah is in the process of responding to key texts that are often brought up in these sorts of discussions.
If you are enjoying this video this discussion please like the video that actually helps. If you know anything about YouTube when you like videos and you share it that goes a long way. And if you haven't subscribed to reveal the apologetics we will pray at the end we'll pray for you that God saves you from the ignorance and darkness.
I'm just kidding. Please subscribe. Please like please share. Especially if you think someone might benefit from this conversation. But here's a question from Andrew Summers. Andrew asks this may be off topic but many congregations of the Church of Christ reject instrumental music and worship.
Can you explain where they get.
This and why they are wrong. Yeah I would like to take this moment to recommend some resources that people can look at to learn more of the history of the Church of Christ. Number one Eli is there's a book written by dr. Keith Schweiner hope I'm pronouncing the last name.
Right. He's updated this book called various doctrinal positions of the Campbellite Church of Christ and this interesting Lutheran responses to those positions. So it is in response by Lutherans. I've read this multiple times and I don't agree always with the Lutheran combat but a wonderful look of history of one.
So this stems all the way back to 1811 Thomas Campbell and Alexander Campbell like said they were departing from the true church and one of their so the mantra is we speak with the Bible speak and we're silent with the Bible silent.
And so they concluded that if something is not directly said then by implication there there's no other way of understanding a text. Basically I'm getting at its vain worship to the Bible doesn't expressly say and I think they're wrong with this actually that you must use instruments.
In a worship service. I would actually say Ephesians 5 18 19 20 21. Along with Colossians 3 16 17 talks about congregationally singing to one another in Psalms hymns and spiritual songs making a melody in your heart.
That's key because it's always a heart issue. Whether you're using instruments or you're not using instruments you could do vain worship in either way that always goes back to the heart but the that Paul invokes the Psalms go read Psalm 150 you see the psalmist praising God with everything that it has and uses multiple different instruments.
Right. And so I'm saying Paul actually is directly using a worship context that would involve instruments. And then when you do look into the book of Revelation regardless of your eschatology you get a peek into the throne room of heaven and you have people using instruments to glorify God now.
I love what dr. John MacArthur has said before if instruments were good enough in the Old Testament the instruments are good enough in heaven one day. Well then surely they're good enough now when we worship and and it turns out that Paul uses gives us proof to say hey play that play the instruments it's.
But it's from the heart.
That's important. Excellent thank you for that breakfast. Gun has a question are y 'all aware of modern Church of Christ. There seems to be a movement within Church of Christ that rejects works even baptism as required and would affirm salvation by grace alone through faith alone in Christ alone are you aware of.
That development within the church. Yes and and I'm so thankful for that because I would say they're deviating from the cults. They're more liberal in terms of what the Church of Christ Spirit looks like.
And I'm thankful for that. I'm trying to think what else was gonna say. There's another sect that goes back into the church history because there was a departure of of stone and alley and Campbell. And so you have another denomination that is almost exactly Church of Christ.
It's the Christian Church. I'm trying to think of how they say it and their Church of Christ. With the only exception that they do use instruments. And so I'm glad to hear that though. Because I have talked to Church of Christ that says I I'm not saying you have to be water baptized in order to be made right with God.
They've departed from those fundamental tenants that think about it. Church of Christ. They're new and on the scene. Like earlier I said the Roman Catholic light. I really mean that they have less sacraments.
They don't have a pope. But it's the same underlying principles through and through. But they didn't they deny original sin. Anyway. I go on on those things. But but.
Yeah I've heard of that and I'm very thankful for those. Excellent Cameron thank you so much for your $4 .99 super chat. You guys are really generous I appreciate it. Thank you so much Cameron says. Oftentimes the Church of Christ will say quote it says what it says it means what it means it's so simple.
Can you explain how this hermeneutic works against them. Yes I want to first say.
This is one of my best friends Cameron Vogel saying and I don't think he would mind me saying this. He came out of out of one of those Christian churches. He he has a wonderful testimony comes out of that Church of Christ world.
And what's neat Eli is he. He was listening to Jeff Durbin sermons Paul Washer sermon really started liking Reformed theology and by the providence of God we had a mutual friend we we started. He came to my office one day.
We talked about all these things. The rest is history. And so I love Cameron Vogel saying and his family so much. Hmm what he is getting at this is something that we've experienced a lot especially in light of my Church of Christ debate and interactions more and more Church Christ.
I say this is gonna sound so bad but what it appears to me is there's a glorifying of ignorance. A lot of times it's so simple how can you reject it. And to me this is this is a white flag. That do you've reached a point in exegeting the context and the passage to where.
This is their last resort of saying it's so simple I have to you're telling me I have to understand your commentary in order to understand just a simple verse. It says what it says and it means what it means.
And this is why earlier Eli I said don't fall for the trap of it can't just be an explicit statement and you obey it. It's so much more than that. You have to look at any given verse and its context. And one great example that I try to use with my students is we can make the Bible say anything.
If we take out of context we could say the Bible actually says there is no God. But what is the context says the fool has said in his heart there is no God. So when you look into x2 you look at the context you notice I'm making sure you're reading the whole verses in Mark 16 16 x 22 16 read the whole verse extend the context.
What kind of book in the Bible is it. And so it works against them. Because we could we could come back and say John 3 16. I come from a Southern Baptist Church and I have so many Southern Baptist brothers and sisters in the Lord and I love it.
But when we started talking about predestination the sovereignty of God you know what response I got John 3 16. That's it. We don't want to talk about John 3 16. And so what Cameron's getting at is we could read something as simple and so clear as Ephesians 2 8 and 9 says what it says.
It means what it means. I don't need your.
Explanation. It's a double standard. All right. Well excellent. And and context is so important again what. The words of Walter Martin are ringing in my ears when he says when something he said. That when someone says I believe in Jesus you look them straight in the eye and you say which one clearly he believes in Jesus.
You hear this on the news right. Well the Mormons believe in Jesus and I believe in Jesus. So I consider them brothers. Well no Jesus has a context. These simple truths that we read off the page have a context and so it's very important to not relegate these sorts of discussions.
To look the text is is clear. Okay then clearly explain the context so that I can see the point you're trying to bring out. And of course context is the killer of heresy. Right. I mean this is the the thing that helps us see a verse in its proper light.
And I think that's the vitally important when engaging in these sorts of things. Now let me. Um let me. Well there's another question here I want to get to the question. You know if they keep sending questions I want to get them as you're.
Pulling one up I was gonna say to Paul's letter to the Corinthians warns of false Jesus's. What's that standard. What's that standard. Jesus says unless you believe that ego I me I am then you will die in your sins.
In John chapter 8 he's the single creator of all things. Look at the prologue of John that's the bar that's the standard and so equally. And this is how we apply it to Church of Christ. And any works rights in the system is you must receive the correct Jesus on his terms.
And that is by faith. It's not faith plus works. And you know.
The whole nine yards there. Amen amen. Saints edified say. Saints edified has a question why don't you see baptism as necessary condition of new covenant membership. Like other commands you must obey e .g. confession calling out the name.
Of the Lord repentance faith etc. Dang that. I feel like Arturo is asking me a hard question here. So if I understand it correctly there is a sense in Acts chapter 2. Actually was having this conversation with somebody earlier today.
What you do see is a type of membership happening with the visible church. They're being added to the church now. They're added to the universal church by faith which God knows exhaustively right who are his.
But there is a sense and where baptism is a demonstration of faith to the the visible church right local churches. And so we got to be careful when we're talking about in order to be justified before God and so mean.
Arturo we're great friends. I know he's had you on his channel so we're in agreement even though he's Presbyterian.
We still love him that's right he's he's wrong but he's loved by the Lord.
Something else too as you hear this word synecdoche and it's a great word if you look at a part of something it represents the whole. I'm fine with baptism being a synecdoche because that's it. That's in the sphere of your conversion.
Right. Sure. But when people say well you say faith alone what about repentance. We're saying oh no we're talking about a repentant faith. Well what about love. You're saying faith faith alone. We're talking about a loving faith.
And so we're talking about categories internally of the heart not our external actions of accomplishment. That's your Ergon. That's where we get our English word energy your human energies and a list of accomplishments.
None of that is to be added to the already finished work to tell us tie of.
What Jesus did on the cross. All right. Very good. Here's one more question. Then we'll kind of get back on track with. We'll try. Let's try one more. Main scripture the main passage that they go to if we haven't covered it already and the only reason is I typically go around two hours but I really want people to watch this and I think the shorter it is more likely people will will spend the time to watch it because this is excellent.
I think you're doing an.
Excellent job walking through. I'll never know if you'll have me on again. So I'm.
Here as long as you'll have me well I don't mind having you back on again. We definitely. You're doing an excellent job and I think you're a great resource for people so we can definitely set that up.
Absolutely so. Paul. Paul day says. Could Jeremiah comment on the stance that their Church of Christ takes in regards to the imputed righteousness of Christ in justification. Yeah Paul day. Can you.
Yeah leave the question up there Paul Dana we we've talked a handful of times over social media he's a big voice in combating the Church of Christ also. So the Church of Christ takes in regard to the imputed righteousness of Christ in justification.
Here's the problem. They do not have a robust understanding of justification and double imputation. This is actually part of the problem. And so what is justification. I know Paul Dana's but it's important to define terms.
It's being declared righteous innocent from the penalty of your guilt of your sin. So it's forensic. And so this is very important in Romans chapter 4 because we're justified by faith apart from works of law.
And then in chapter 4 that was 328 I believe in Romans. And then in 4 we're talking about this righteous that we've received by faith and not of works apart from works. And so I love what maybe you've said before I've heard Matt Slick saying it's like you have a table if you were to have two different fruit an apple and orange.
And you take the orange off then the apples left alone. So we're saying on the table of you got works and faith. We're saying you got to take works off the table. And it's faith alone by looking to Jesus trusting in him.
So what is pistis. What is faith. Well it's trusting in Christ not looking to yourself. It's like it's like what the the tax collector and the Pharisee said you had the tax collector saying God be merciful to me a sinner.
That's calling upon the name of the Lord. That's that's begging him for intercession making atonement on your behalf. That's faith right. And so by faith all of your sin past present and future gets put on the cross of Calvary.
And in exchange you get the the perfect righteousness of God and Jesus Christ the perfect obedience to the law credited imputed to your account. This actually brings up an interesting point the Church of Christ they believe that your baptism it only forgives your past sins.
And so wait a second what. Where does the Bible say that. And you can say well you've only had your past sins. It's like wait. But if you continue to live you're gonna continue to sin first John to let us know that.
And so the point is they have to break their own standard of speaking with the Bible speaks and being silent where the Bible is silent. I can.
Continue to talk more about that. But what do you think. Yeah excellent stuff man. Okay so let's see here. This is a cool comment here. Duffy Henderson says. Hey y 'all thanks for doing this. Lots of Church of Christ churches out in our area.
I'm a master student at GP TS where James White is now on faculty. Super cool. It says thanks for your work of your work. Guys we need more resource for apologetics and evangelism tools in this area. Yeah if you guys watch my channel I do typically focus on like apologetic methodology.
But I want to branch off and kind of deal a lot more with the cults and these specific areas. So I definitely would like Jeremiah to come back on and definitely do more episodes dealing with Jehovah's Witnesses Mormons and things like that.
Because listen we could. We can debate apologetic methodology till the cows come home. Right. But where does the rubber hit the road. How do we use those those tools in actual evangelistic and apologetic context and conversations.
I think it's very important that we do cover a lot of these and kind of put resources at people's disposal. So definitely Jeremiah I would like to have you on again and we could maybe maybe do a related topic.
Or if there's another area of your expertise relating to the cults we can. We can do that as well. So I would I would totally be down for for doing that. But I want to identify a mistake you made. You made a mistake.
Okay. You gave us your little flowery example of the tree and the apple and you remove the apple and look faith alone. I see what you did there. You sneaky sneaky dog you. Okay. Because everybody knows while you're yapping and yapping and barking and barking.
Notice. Bark bark. I did that on purpose. You're barking about faith alone. Everybody knows that in James chapter 2. James 2. James chapter 2 the place in scripture where faith alone is mentioned it is preceded by the word not by faith alone.
Okay I want to read for the folks to demonstrate your folly to demonstrate your ignorance and a misuse of the scriptures. Mr. apologetic dog James chapter 2 beginning at verse 17. Okay so also faith by itself if it does not have works is dead.
But someone will say you have faith and I have works. Show me your faith apart from your works. And I will show you my faith by my works. You believe that God is one you do. Well even the demons believe.
And shudder. Do you want to be shown. Do you want to be shown you foolish person that faith apart from works is useless. Was not Abraham our father justified by works when he offered up his son Isaac on the altar.
You see that faith was active along with his works. And faith was completed by his works. And the scriptures was fulfilled. That says Abraham believed God and it was counted him as righteousness and he was called a friend of God.
You see that a person is justified by works and not by faith alone. I'm not the cult. You are.
Respond a little dramatic element there. I love it. What we have to understand is James is not contradicting Paul. Okay so literally if you isolate James in a vacuum especially just a handful of those verses like let's look at the one with Abraham so he says you see that a person is justified by works and not by faith alone.
And there's a question earlier in the verse 22 you see that faith was active along with his works. Faith was completed by his works. So how can you dismiss works so fast. Well context is everything. And there's a number of debates.
I would definitely recommend people go listen to dr. white I forget who I think he debated Robertson genus. He's debated this topic you know sola fide faith alone. Go listen to that. Listen to the rub the conflicting worldviews.
Definitely recommend that. I recommend another important book. Not that you need all these to understand. We're about to look at the context. But dr. white wrote a book called the God who justifies. Go read it.
It's fantastic. So I would I would argue James. Okay you got it. Yeah absolutely love it. I actually studied that book in preparation for when I debated Eastern Orthodox on faith alone. Now they're not the same as Roman Catholics obviously.
But so much crossover happens there. And if you can defend what justifies us before God and it's our faith then it's you're gonna be able to apply that understanding whether it's Church Christ Eastern Orthodox Roman Catholics any system of works righteousness.
Right. What Mormons teach in second Nephi we're saved by grace after all that we can do. Now you need to go study that context and everything. But that's one of the giveaways of cults that have deviated from orthodoxy.
Right. Is they ultimately made a system of works righteousness. James 2 I would say what's key to the context is verse 14 14 through the rest of the chapter you got to understand in context. And I want to give it away at the very beginning Romans 4.
Really Romans 1 through 5 is talking about justification before God literally in his sight. And in Romans 3 and then for to talking about Abraham if he was justified by what he accomplished it would be it's implied men but not before God.
Right. Because before God it's only by trusting in his promises. In James 2 we're talking about a said faith before men. Is that kind of faith going to save you before God. So God is always in the context.
I've heard people say well if you look at Romans 127 religion that's pure and undefiled before God the Father. And we're saying everything's before God. Right. But what. What kind of fruit of justification.
What is the fruit of justification. Look like sure. Okay now I think I read a karm article a long time ago broke this down so wonderfully. But it's talking about a said faith. If you say you're a Christian does that automate automatically make you a Christian.
Well no. God sees the heart. God tests the heart. So many scriptures tell us. So if you have this understanding that it's talking about a said faith. What good is it my brothers if someone says he has faith does and but does not have works.
Does that faith. That said faith save him. But to keep looking if a brother or sister is poorly clothed and lacking in daily food and one of you says to them go in peace be warmed and filled without giving them the things that are needed for the body.
What good is that faith. What I want you to see Eli is this is a person to person interaction right. With a said faith. And like dr. White has pointed out so many times verse 18 is kind of the killer to really demonstrate this.
But someone will say you have faith and I have works. Show me show me your faith apart from your works. And I will show you my faith by my works. So it's person to person interaction. He's saying show me demonstrate to me if you have true living faith not a dead faith that says one thing and then and then lives in a completely opposite way.
So so you would.
Say that in James the justification and view there is horizontal how we are justified before man and the justification in the letters of Paul is vertical how we are justified before God and we need to keep those distinct.
We don't want people to we don't want to allow people to equivocate with the two different kinds of justification. There there they're the same words but the context. Right. The context obviously gives us the proper way to understand how the concept of justification is being used in those passages.
Right. We're.
Only gonna see this more in James 2 as we look at it because the question I was looking at earlier okay 21 was not Abraham our father justified by works when he offered up his son Isaac on the altar charge of Christ.
Do not want to define the term works. They want to talk about different kinds of works. Oh Romans three and four is talking about works of law. Galatians is talking about works of law talking about circumcision.
It's not talking about the definition of works. And it is that's the whole point. That's why Romans 4 is so clear in Ephesians 2. There's nowhere in the context you're gonna be able to get away with saying works of law.
He's talking about your Ergon right. Your works are nowhere going to be in the sphere of your right standing before God. But we are created for that right. We demonstrate to the world. Remember the just shall live by faith we are justified by faith.
And then we now live to demonstrate that faith to the world. That's what we're seeing with Abraham. And if you were to strip 21 out of its context that contradicts Romans was not Abraham our father justified by works when he offered up his son Isaac on the altar.
So we already understand. I want to actually develop another thought here in a second. But this is demonstrating saving faith to the world. The fulfillment of faith that justifies us before God the fulfillment is when the world sees you being salt in life.
That's what Jesus was getting at that let your light shine before men that they may see your good works to glorify your father who is in heaven. And so verse 22 you see that faith was active alongside or with his works.
That his faith was completed by his works. It was fulfilled verse 23 says. And then at 24 you see carrying that human to human interaction that a person is justified by works and not by faith alone. We would interpret that to say of course before men.
Sure. But not before God wanted. John Calvin said justified faith is never alone. Right. Our justification is by faith alone. But justified faith is never alone. It produces good works. Excellent. Very good.
I like this question because we do we do deal with presuppositional apologetics. But Marlon Wilson who is over there at the gospel truth he has a question. How can we use presupp against the Church of Christ.
And yes it can be done. Contrary to people who say presuppositional apologetics and transcendental reasoning works well when you're talking to the atheist. But surely you know when you're dealing with the Mormon when you're dealing with people with competing authority claims it doesn't work.
I had Jay Warner Wallace on who is a noted evidentialist apologist. Great resource. I highly recommend his books but obviously we have some methodological differences. He said something along the lines.
He said that when the Christian asserts his authority claim and the Mormon asserts their authority claim then at that point everyone's an evidentialist because the way you break the tie is now you need to appeal to this like objective evidence.
And of course I took issue with that and provided a respectful response there in the discussion. But it's not true. You can use presuppositional apologetics. Indeed you should use presuppositional apologetics consistently across the board.
Whether you're dealing with an atheist or a proponent of a religious position that has an authority at its center. So how would you respond presuppositionally. Just broadly speaking I know there's a lot of different ways you can apply it.
How would you respond presuppositionally to a member of the Church of Christ. Yeah cuz so many.
Thoughts. You don't understand this race through my mind and love Marlon Wilson contrary to what some people have accused him as his ministry charges money for questions. It's not true that brother is working for the Lord and we are so thankful people that support the gospel truth.
He knows what I'm talking about. I got your back Marlon. So we use precept and everything we do the Church of Christ. They have a fundamentally different view of God and a fundamentally different view of man and to give to give it all away.
You need the sovereign triune God to ground our human existence and reasoning. That's where you interviewing Brant Bosterman. I love that book so much about the vindication of Christian paradox. Talking about the Trinity.
Yeah it's awesome because it really ties everything that you need. You need to try you God. You need him to be sovereign because Church of Christ I think they are more dangerous than Mormons. Because Mormons for a lot of people they understand that they add the Book of Mormon and all that just seems super sketchy for a lot of people.
Right Church of Christ they want to only talk about the Bible and the Bible alone. And ultimately we should do that. Right. And so what we've been talking about is presupposition. We stand on the Word of God and we talk about defining terms and context.
But I think I think that's how we ultimately wore this battleground is is we are the ones that do the heavy study be prayerful trust that God will equip us for every good work. And so my point is is we really do live in the scripture.
We visit many books as Charles Spurgeon and Eli Yala like to say we live in the scriptures right. Does that make sense with the Church of Christ. We need to know the proof text. We need to know the context we really need to.
It's going to be a battle of definition of words. These are all priests. This is revelational epistemology. And so with the Church of Christ that's where you go to war. Right. They're not gonna be like the Roman Catholics that want to talk about church history which is important.
But since we see the value of looking at church history that crisis in building his church for two thousand years we see the value of going to the Saints of old analyzing their arguments and holding fast to that which is good when it comports to scripture.
We have the advantage of doing that type of study as where the Church of Christ they're going back through their proof text after proof text after proof text. Right.
Excellent. And and I think it's important how you respond to a Church of Christ proponent presupposition Lee may look very similar to how an evidentialist or a classical a classicalist Christian engages if because he hears a thing one of the key elements of presuppositionalism is the we have a great aversion to neutrality right.
There is no neutral ground as as Cornelius van Til has taught us. But he also says that while there is no neutral ground there is in fact common ground. Bonson brings this up as well. There's a difference between neutral ground and common ground.
If you are in a discussion with someone who affirms the authority of the Bible then let's go there let's look at the proof text. And and because the Bible is the authority right we can use the text of scripture to argue our point.
And so that's gonna that's gonna require some heavy lifting on our part that we need to be able to press them where we need to press them but also defend our biblical position. And you're gonna have that what's gonna look like.
You know an evidentialist I would imagine would appeal to scripture if someone was debating a scripture passage. So in that sense you're gonna have similarity there. But as a presuppositionalist yeah if they affirm the Bible let's go to the Bible and look at those texts so especially with respect to some of their theology as well if they have in a very unbiblical view of God.
I mean you could do an internal critique on their conception of God challenge the challenge them on the particular proof text that they use for their conception of God or things like that. So there are any number of ways you could apply presuppositionalism to a position like the Church of Christ you want to add something that yes something.
That Church of Christ share with Roman Catholics and basically all false religion is there's this underlying human autonomy. And so Marlon hosts the debate that I was a part of recently against two Roman Catholics me and my buddy Merrick Kaiser.
And I made a transcendental argument for solo scriptura. And my point is God must be triune and he must speak perspicuously in order for us to reason to begin with. And so my point is you can really start to develop the conversation of how do they know.
With certainty they got this problem of induction in terms of interpretation. How do they know. They have the right interpretation. They can't. They could always be wrong. Right. The problem the white swan fallacy.
I mean you got so many different presuppositional ways that you can engage but what it's gonna boil down to is everything that you've been talking about is defining terms and then context. Yeah excellent.
All right. Well unfortunately we have run out of time. This has been excellent. I definitely want you to be back on to either continue this discussion or to expand off on another topic. Hopefully we can do it.
Definitely. We do many more things together in the future. I would really appreciate that if you'd be willing to come back on. Absolutely. And folks you guys have been so generous. I mean we've had a lot of people viewing super chats.
I mean oh my goodness you guys have been. So people are feeling really generous tonight. I appreciate it. Thank you so much. We definitely need it. So thank you so much. But I hope this discussion is useful for people.
And if you leave you know comments in the comment section let me know the types of things that you guys want to hear. I want to be able to provide. A. Of course we want to focus on presuppositional apologetics but we believe that presuppositional ism applies to every aspect of the apologetic enterprise.
So if there is an area that you are struggling with in terms of how do I interact with this group with this group while maintaining the consistency with my my biblical convictions how do I apply presuppositional ism to this area that area.
Let me know. I want to. I want to make content and have guests on that will scratch that itch as I think it's very very needed. So with that said is there anything you'd like to say. Any closing remarks or things that you want to point people to that might be useful.
To them with respect to the topic we've covered tonight. Yes dr. White has been a wonderful example in the faith of debating these issues so I would say go listen to his debates. I'd say all of them but especially the ones on sola fide that we are justified saved by faith alone in the Savior alone Christ alone.
Representing tonight and so I want to have a coffee. I have a cost as God.
Made coffee. I'm not as holy as you are. You got the cool theological shirt. I got this stinking mug. I can't see it. What is it. So you got this all right. Well I mean I don't know if this people might find this offensive but I have.
I have a tattoo here. You beat me on that one. The arrows on the quiver. See. I'm I'm. You're reformed through the beard. But I'm like that you know like the new Calvinist movement where people. Yeah I got a couple of tests.
Well you know I'm like two but this one reformed theology bro. It's on it's on me. For life breath. Okay you beat.
Me but you did not beat Adam Carmichael. Does he have more tattoos. He's got all the cell is tatted it. That's pretty awesome. All right. But I interrupted you. Dr. White's been incredible resource I think.
Also really just living in the scriptures like we said earlier knowing our Savior more and more. That's going to equip our heart and our mind not only to combat sin but to also combat the lies of the enemy.
And when we talk about Colts we talk about false teachers. They are not the enemy right. Our battle is not against flesh and blood but it's against the principalities and powers that the dark force Satan is the enemy.
So we love false teachers enough to talk to them about the truth speaking the truth in love like that. That's the goal. So I want to encourage people to sanctify the Lord in your hearts as you're giving a defense for these things.
So I will be one of the major emphasis if I can get my point right. And the apologetic dog is the Church of Christ. This is near and dear to my heart. This is my Nineveh. And so definitely consider me as a resource.
I have a wonderful partner in crime Trey Fisher in Louisiana the parish of the Redeemer Church. And then he has a YouTube channel parish reformed he I think he was Church of Christ for 18 years. Came out of that.
He was on the podcast cultish talking about that. He's been on Marlon's channel that did a debate with the Church of Christ. Me and him do a lot of stuff together. So I definitely want to recommend people to go check that out.
We're talking about cults. Trey and I are going to be doing some work with cultish. We're starting to get more and more more and more involved with apologia Durbin and those guys and the guys that run cultish.
So we have a lot more content on the way. And I wanted to give a shout out to my wife who is the babe of all babes Ally Nortier. That's awesome.
Well Jeremiah thank you so much it is much appreciated. We will definitely have you back on in the future as this topic obviously is scratching an itch and so I want to be able to have you back on to you know maybe expand on the stuff that we've spoken about tonight and maybe some other areas as well.
Guys thank you so much for listening in this is this was a lot of fun and hopefully it is useful to you. You know if you if you enjoyed this conversation you know check out Jeremiah's content and the resources that he suggested.
The apologetic dog that's pretty cool man I love really do. Like the logo and the bearded dog. It's very creative. And if you are interested in supporting revealed apologetics you can do that by visiting revealed apologetics.
Calm. I also have a blog there. I have a five-week apologetic course that is offered there entitled you. If you sign up for that you get five the five lectures the PowerPoint slides the outlines as well.
And you can work through the content at your own pace. And it's a great way to support the ministry as well. There's also a section there for for donating if you feel led to do that. Other than that if you are not supporting real apologetics financially in any way.
I definitely would appreciate prayers as I definitely believe that God hears your prayers as he has blessed me and my family in amazing ways and so I definitely covet your prayers in that regard. So that is it for this episode.
Until next time guys. Take care and God bless. Bye-bye.