Dangers of the “Church of Christ” Cult w/Jeremiah Nortier

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July 1, 2022

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.

00:02: Welcome back to another episode of Revealed Apologetics. I'm your host Eli Ayala and today
00:07: I have with me another special guest and we're going to be covering a very interesting and I think a very important topic.
00:15: As the thumbnail says, we're going to be talking about the Church of Christ cult.
00:21: We're not using the phrase Church of Christ in a generic sense. Obviously we believe that the true church is the
00:27: 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.
00:38: What I find very interesting about engaging the cults is that if you see behind me here
00:43: 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
00:51: 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
01:00: % of the things that I typically talk about are simply basic Christian theology.
01:06: What is the gospel? How are we saved? These basic things. What is the Trinity? The deity of Christ?
01:12: How can God be both man? How can Jesus be both man and God? These sorts of things come up often when
01:19: I engage in cults and it kind of makes all of these other books kind of superfluous that cover interesting side issues.
01:26: I think one of the 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.
01:41: Now before I introduce my guest I want to kind of cover some preliminary things. On July 12th
01:47: I'll be having Dr. Jason Lyle back on the show to talk about the theory of evolution.
01:52: That episode will be entitled, Is Evolution Viable? And of course Dr. Lyle's expertise is in cosmology.
02:02: However, he has interacted a lot with evolutionary positions and things like that and because he comes from a uniquely presuppositional perspective,
02:11: I wanted to come on to have an opportunity to show how a presuppositionalist will engage these very important scientific issues.
02:20: So I think that's going to be 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
02:35: I'm going to have, you guys remember a couple of weeks ago, I don't know, I lost track how long ago it was, but I have the
02:42: 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 kind of a giant
02:59: 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.
03:14: So in this Epic, I've been titled the Apologetic Smorgasbord, right?
03:20: You're gonna have this wide range of topics addressed. I'm gonna have with me Matt Slick from CARM .org.
03:26: I'm going to have on with me Nate Sala. If you're not familiar with Nate Sala, he does those super awesome and I highly recommend you go check them out.
03:35: He does those debate teacher reacts videos. Excellent! So you want to go to the
03:40: YouTube channel The Wise Disciple. Nate is excellent at analyzing debates and so he brings a very unique element to this whole apologetic, you know, enterprise.
03:51: Hopefully, I'm just waiting for confirmation, I'll also be hopefully having Dr. Braxton Hunter from Trinity Radio.
03:58: I'm double -checking on that. Michael Jones of Inspiring Philosophy has graciously agreed to also join me and hopefully we can get vocab
04:06: Malone as well. So that's gonna be an interesting kind of episode. It's just gonna be a giant
04:12: Q &A and it'll be fun to see all of us coming from different perspectives engaging the audience questions.
04:18: Alright, so I'll keep people updated on the details of that. If anything changes, of course, I'll keep you folks updated.
04:24: So that's probably going to happen if it happens at the end of July, maybe beginning of August.
04:30: We'll have to work out the dates but super excited and that's an awesome way to celebrate 5 ,000 subscribers.
04:36: Very, very much appreciative of everyone who has subscribed and supports the channel. So thank you very much.
04:42: Super excited. Also, if you guys noticed, my most recent video was a part one of a study on Greg Bonson's book.
04:52: Where do I have it here? Let me see. Ah, here we go. Against All Opposition.
04:59: So I covered the study questions of chapter one. The goal, the dream is to do the entire book.
05:05: The book, I think, consists of 11 chapters. So that will include 11 videos within the teaching series which
05:12: 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.
05:23: Alright, so hopefully you guys can stay tuned for that and I would really appreciate it if you go back and watch that part one.
05:30: 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
05:38: I give to it. So it does take time to create slides and a teaching. So I really much appreciate it if you guys check that video out and I'll keep chugging away, hopefully covering more videos, more books.
05:49: After that, I might cover The Impossibility of the Contrary, the study questions there, and we'll see how those series goes.
05:56: If you guys enjoy it and find it useful, I'll keep going. Alright, I'm gonna be 40 this year so I'm old but I'm not that old, so I got the energy man, alright?
06:05: So, alright, well let me stop blabbing. I want to take the opportunity to invite my guest 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
06:16: 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.
06:27: It is Jeremiah, okay, let me see, Nortier? Technically, yes, because it's
06:35: French, but in the South we say Nortier. Nortier, okay, alright.
06:40: So Jeremiah is easy to remember. I have an older brother whose name is Jeremiah, so I'll just call you
06:46: Jeremiah, but I won't call you Mr. Nortier, however the French like to say it.
06:52: 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.
07:00: Absolutely, I forgot I was on the show. I was listening to you open. I was just like, oh, this is another
07:05: Revealed Apologetics episode. I was like, oh yeah, I'm supposed to be talking with Eli. Eli, it's an honor to be here.
07:12: I was telling you earlier, when I started pursuing more of apologetics and presuppositional apologetics a few years ago,
07:18: I found your channel and you were steps ahead of me and you've really been paving the way, helping me out so much.
07:25: So you've been a huge influence in my life, but I serve as a pastor. I'm an elder at a
07:31: Reformed Baptist Church plant in Jonesboro, Arkansas. This is the North Arkansas.
07:38: Absolutely, so if anybody is in the area, I would love for you to come visit 12 .5
07:45: church. We have a church website, 125church .com, and 12 .5
07:51: 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.
07:59: 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.
08:08: 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?
08:17: I do. The dog looks like a beast. You got that Reformed beard, and the logo itself is very—it marks all the—it checks all the boxes in terms of a memorable logo.
08:29: 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?
08:36: Absolutely, so it's a guard dog mentality. I've had some people say, well, DOG, doctrines of grace.
08:43: I'm like, yeah, but we're broader than that. So it definitely works, but the verse there is also where my heart's at, too, because I love 1
08:52: Peter 3 15. I love all of God's Word, but this says, O Timothy, guard the deposit entrusted to you.
08:59: Avoid irreverent babble and contradictions of what is falsely called knowledge. And so this is a guard dog.
09:06: 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.
09:19: 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?
09:29: So those are some of the things that I have my hands in. I also like—I'm bivocational, so I also serve as a chaplain.
09:37: That's a lot of work that I do, 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.
09:48: Well, awesome. The first time I saw you was on The Gospel Truth over there at Marlon's channel.
09:53: 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 is a pleasure to actually meet you and have you on the show.
10:05: 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.
10:12: Absolutely. All right, well, let's jump right into the issue here. The Church of Christ.
10:17: At the beginning, I made a distinction between the Church of Christ, generally speaking. We believe that all true believers constitute the body of Christ, is the true church, the true bride, and then there is the
10:29: Church of Christ, which is this cult that some people who might be listening who are part of the
10:35: Church of Christ might be offended, but why don't you actually define for us what a cult is and why we as Christians would see the, quote -unquote, the
10:45: Church of Christ group as a group that can be considered cultic. Absolutely.
10:51: 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
11:00: Kool -Aid. You know what I mean? A lot of people, that's immediately to think. When we talk about cult, it's something much more broad.
11:06: 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?
11:16: 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 Jehovah's Witnesses, Mormons, the
11:28: 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, and most
11:38: Church of Christ say, if you're not a member of us, then you're lost. That is a red flag, right?
11:43: 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
11:52: 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, in fact, a cult when we look at it both historically and biblically.
12:07: 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
12:13: Reformed Baptist in my theology, although I did have a very astute and educated
12:20: Presbyterian try to convert me, and this particular Presbyterian actually formally debated James White on the very topic, so we've had some interesting conversations a while back, but I would consider myself
12:33: Reformed Baptist, but I wouldn't look at Presbyterians and say they're not true Christians, so there's a distinction there, right?
12:39: 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?
12:49: Right, so you and I have a good understanding of the Universal Church, the Invisible Church, the people of God of all time, and then we have the
12:56: Visible Church that manifests in local congregations. The Church of Christ, they're split on a lot of things.
13:03: 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,
13:15: May 4th, the Church of Christ, and they basically anathematized everybody else, and so this has a history worth looking into, and like I said, they disparage the idea of denominations.
13:28: They say that's denominational teaching. You need to get back to the Bible, and something else that I think is really helpful,
13:36: Eli, this 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 sola scriptura, okay?
13:44: Now, we've heard a term called solo scriptura. It's my Bible and me under a tree, no creed but Christ.
13:50: I've always thought on a spectrum, who can I put over there in the solo scriptura? It's the
13:56: Church of Christ. They want really hard to divorce themselves from church history in any way, shape, and form.
14:02: 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 comes from Alexander Campbell and some of the early preachers.
14:16: 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.
14:25: 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?
14:32: 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
14:43: Roman Catholics and Eastern Orthodox, because those groups tend to be more connected with their history than a lot of modern
14:50: 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
15:01: 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
15:11: 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?
15:20: And just real quick, I want to read very briefly something, a quote from Dr.
15:26: Walter Martin, who, again, if you don't know who Dr. Walter Martin is, I mean,
15:31: I've actually been binge -watching old videos of Dr.
15:36: Walter Martin. If you're listening to this live stream 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.
15:49: Dr. Walter Martin was considered the father of cult apologetics, and he wrote the classic work, The Kingdom of the
15:55: Cults, which is in the background here, and it is an excellent resource dealing with all sorts of cults.
16:03: But Dr. Walter Martin was an expert in the cult, and he defined a cult this way. Let me see here.
16:09: All right, so this is Dr. Walter Martin. Quote, By the term cult, I mean nothing derogatory to any group so classified.
16:16: 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.
16:31: I think it's very important to emphasize that they differ from the norm, right, from what we'd call the
16:38: Orthodox, right? So we would categorize the Church of Christ as a cult because they are diverging from essential core elements of the
16:47: Christian faith. These aren't side issues or, you know, debating the nature of the return of Christ or something like that.
16:54: 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.
17:02: Yeah, so just a brief flyover. 1811, May 4th, is basically when
17:09: Alexander Campbell and his father, Thomas Campbell, they...and there's a big history that they've moved from Presbyterians to Baptists, and they weren't fitting in.
17:19: And so when they started the Church of Christ, they essentially condensed salvation into a five -step process.
17:29: And it's hear the word, believe the word, repent of sins, confess sins publicly, and be baptized in immersion only.
17:37: Now, what...to this five -step plan, what's behind it, and like I said, there's rich history here, is this
17:43: Baconian philosophy, this rationalism that says, you can have a clean slate of mind,
17:49: Eli, with no presuppositions. And so from this, the
17:55: Church of Christ all fundamentally share in those major aspects, which we wouldn't necessarily agree with, but when they talk about be baptized in immersion only, that's a part of the process in order to be made right with God.
18:08: And so Church of Christ deny original sin. Okay? Now, this is going to be key in the whole discussion when we start defining other terms like regeneration.
18:19: It's really hard for the Church of Christ to have a good systematic theology and understanding of regeneration because they deny original sin.
18:27: They don't believe your nature really needs to be changed. They see Jesus Christ coming as a reset button, right?
18:35: And when you're baptized, you hit the reset button, and then you have to continue to live a holy life in order to not lose your salvation.
18:43: And so it's synergistic to the core. And something else that Church of Christ believe is the holy...you
18:51: don't have the indwelling Holy Spirit. Rather, they would interpret all the passages about the
18:57: Holy Spirit as the Word of God. So not only are they so low scriptura, but they are the radical cessationists.
19:06: I get accused of being too radical, leaning cessationists, and I love my continuationist brothers, but they're on a different category.
19:14: They believe the Holy Spirit is not in and at work in our lives today apart from just engaging with the
19:21: Word of God. So there's a number of things there, Eli. I didn't know if you wanted to chime in. I got a couple of questions.
19:27: Yeah. I mean, what does that mean? You said that they interpret the portions of Scripture concerning the
19:32: Holy Spirit as the Word of God. I'm not sure I understand that. Right. So they're not viewing that as the indwelling
19:38: Holy Spirit like we would understand the third person, the Trinity, a person. They would just say, as you are dwelling on the
19:47: Word of Christ, I think it's Colossians chapter 3, they look at the Word as this is the
19:54: 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
20:01: God in us, right? In the sense that the Holy Spirit indwells believers, regenerates us, and seals us unto the day of redemption.
20:10: So when Jesus says, when I leave, I will send a helper, that helper to them is the
20:17: Bible. Functionally. Now, a lot of things that I'm saying, I'm cutting right to the chase.
20:23: Some of these things they will argue over tooth and nail for, but yes, when you press them enough, that's what you're going to get at.
20:31: Okay. And so do they acknowledge the Trinity then? When we're taking a look at the
20:36: Holy Spirit, do they believe that the Holy Spirit is a person within the Godhead? Okay.
20:42: So what I'm saying is not going to be monolithic for the Church of Christ. A lot of them tend to want to engage with the
20:49: King James and New King James. Not all of them are like radically only us there, but they really try to utilize the word
20:56: Godhead. Because another thing a church of Christ are going to do, since they say denominations are man -made traditions and titles, they just want to be referred to as Christians.
21:07: So when you start saying things like, are you Trinitarian? I've had so many say, no, I'm a
21:12: Christian. And it's like, okay, let's back up and slow down. Are you a Trinitarian Christian?
21:18: Yes. What you just said right there makes me think of Dr. Walter Martin. I mean, I'm sorry to bring it up.
21:25: I mean, but if I can go real quick, I'm not going to read anything from it, but there is a portion in this book,
21:33: I think it is, yeah, so it's chapter two in the Kingdom of the Cults entitled
21:38: Scaling the Language Barrier. 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.
21:52: And it seems what you're telling me, they quibble over words and phrases that we need to be very careful that we rightly and clearly define.
22:02: So again, excellent resource. Okay. Of course, this video,
22:08: Jeremiah is going to go into detail for us. But if you don't have this book, I mean, you need to get this book. I don't know if he covers the
22:15: 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.
22:23: Yeah, well, defining terms is ultimate in conversations with Church of Christ.
22:28: 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 going to get off the ground until you define faith, define works, define justification, define sanctification.
22:46: The word baptism, many will argue it always necessarily means wet immersion. It's not true. And the word obey.
22:53: You say it means wet immersion? A lot of Church of Christ will argue the word baptizo always means wet immersion.
23:03: The definition doesn't mean that, and there's so many contexts to prove that that's not the case, and many Church of Christ are catching on that that's a poor argument.
23:11: Okay. So let me clarify. 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
23:30: Spirit. Those phrases entail you getting wet in some way for them.
23:36: Yeah, and to be fair, I've talked with both sides. I've talked with Church of 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.
23:49: And believe it or not, another key word in these conversations is the word obey or obedience, because in their mind, that necessarily means works.
23:59: We understand obeying from the heart is faith. They don't really have a category, because something that they will say is you've got to obey the gospel.
24:05: You've got to obey the gospel. What they mean is you better be baptized the way that Mark 16, 16, they interpret it,
24:11: Acts 2, 38, and we'll get into a lot of the proof texts. But we believe that you must obey the gospel by faith, right?
24:19: And then that will result in something in your life. Yeah. Okay. So what are the specific areas?
24:25: So if you can give kind of a list of the areas of departure of the
24:30: Church of Christ that make them cultish. I mean, cultish, that's a good podcast. They should make a podcast called cultish.
24:38: So the Church of Christ might use, they might have beliefs that sound very similar to an
24:44: Orthodox Christian perspective. But can we kind of go down a list of like the main essential features that they deny and why?
24:52: How do they defend their own position? And then maybe we can kind of go into how we could apologetically engage them.
24:59: Yes. So they fundamentally deny salvation by grace through faith. They're going to redefine grace to always mean
25:08: Jesus coming, dying on the cross. And faith always means an obedient faith, which we agree.
25:15: But they say a faith, you're not justified until works are present, right? Until you get into the water.
25:22: 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 in somewhere like Romans four, or we look at Ephesians two and places.
25:36: But would they categorize baptism as a work? Because I hear often people say, well, wait a minute.
25:42: Well, baptism isn't really work. I just had someone say something on one of the comments. I did a video on... Heart Spirit 321.
25:50: Well, what was the name of that? I forgot. Does baptism save or is it necessary for salvation?
25:56: And someone says, well, baptism is not a work that we do. Baptism is a work that God does through someone.
26:05: And I was, I was thinking, I'm like, well, that doesn't seem right. That's a common response.
26:10: And they would a lot of times go to Colossians 2 .12, because it is talking about circumcision made without hands.
26:15: It is talking about baptism and it's baptize mass in the plural, which is actually hearkening back to the old
26:21: Testament ceremonial rites. And then it says the powerful working of God.
26:28: 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.
26:40: And the application of the hearers would also be thinking about their baptism. But here's the question that I ask
26:47: Church of Christ and it puzzles them. And I say this in love, Eli, because something
26:52: I pray about all the time is I want the Church of Christ to know that I love them. I don't take any joy in pursuing this.
27:00: I truly feel like it's my Nineveh. I have a really good friend that has appeared on the podcast,
27:06: Cultish, coming out of the Church of Christ movement. And we've done a lot of work together.
27:12: The Church of Christ feel like our Nineveh. Since it's saturated in legalism, there's so much hostility, quibbling over words.
27:20: 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
27:26: Church Christ know that, hey, I love you. And so when we talk about these things, it's totally out of love and grace. And so when
27:32: I hear this all the time is, well, baptism is a work of God. I ask, is it a work of God only?
27:40: Okay, because now you're really getting much deeper because you and I believe that God is working all things together after the counsel of His will.
27:49: We believe in Philippians 1, 6 that God begins that good work in you, brings it to completion.
27:55: And then here's the point that I'm getting at in Philippians 2, 12, and 13. We work out our salvation with fear and trembling.
28:03: We understand this is sanctification. We understand baptism. Any works of sanctification fit there.
28:10: That's what we're ordained to good works in Ephesians 2. And so verse 13 in Philippians 2 says that actually it's
28:18: God who's at work both to will and work in you for His good pleasure.
28:23: And so the question is, is it a work of God only? And I've noticed that stops a lot of Church Christ in their tracks very quickly.
28:34: Okay. All right. So this issue of baptism becomes a major issue. So let's kind of go into engaging some of those.
28:45: Let's talk about apologetic strategy. And then let's talk about some of the specific texts then.
28:50: So if the core issue is, you know, they move away from an
28:56: 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.
29:04: 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.
29:11: So what's 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?
29:23: 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
29:33: Word of God, that's primarily going to be the best apologetic, is being so familiar with the truth, the real thing, that you can detect the counterfeit.
29:43: That's even, I'm sure Walter Martin would agree, that that's kind of the bar that you judge everything.
29:51: And so that's primary. And so that quickly moves into something you said earlier, and Walter Martin is defining terms.
29:59: That list, again, talking about defining faith, understanding from the heart, we firmly trust in the person and work of Jesus Christ.
30:09: So that's internal, okay? And so works are external. This is Ergon from the
30:15: Greek. And this is huge in our strategy contending with Church of Christ, is
30:20: I really want to quickly ask, what's their definition of works?
30:26: 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.
30:36: And we acknowledge there are different kinds of works, but we're talking about the definition, the way that Paul uses it.
30:42: And we'll look at some of this in like Romans 4 and Ephesians 2. He's talking about Ergon. It's the external actions of human accomplishments.
30:49: 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.
31:00: But Church of Christ seems to be Roman Catholic light. Roman Catholicism, they do affirm original sin.
31:08: So they have a full -orbed systematic theology, and they have baptismal regeneration.
31:16: 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.
31:26: And what I've coined, Eli, is they would hold to what I understand to be baptismal justification.
31:32: They don't like those terms because their mantra is, we speak where the Bible speak, and we're going to be silent where the
31:37: Bible's silent. But that eliminates any type of teaching, any type of application, and they quickly break that standard.
31:44: So I'm just saying it doesn't work even from the start. But then getting into words like obedience, that doesn't always entail works that we do.
31:52: You can be obedient from the heart, and that would be by faith. And so you really have to war for these definitions.
31:59: And then the other big thing is context, context, context. You got a bunch of proof texts.
32:05: 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.
32:19: All right. Well, to that end, we're going to put you on the spot. And I want to go through, as a matter of fact, I want to, at this portion of our discussion,
32:26: I probably will make a separate video, a snippet, of where you're going to be answering this specific question, right?
32:35: So what I want you to do is I want to read the texts, and I want you to respond to each of them.
32:43: 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 they can watch the whole thing, but they can go back and watch the specific responses to some biblical texts.
32:57: So I'll give you a few moments to warm up there, to get yourself settled. And I just want to say thank you,
33:04: Spencer Rice, for a $49 .99 super chat. Wow, dude, that is amazing.
33:12: Thank you so much. Your graciousness. Spencer says, Eli, thanks for the great content. I love it when you have guests on, but this guy seems like a jabroni.
33:21: I haven't heard a jabroni in a long, long time.
33:28: Eli, can I tell you something real quick? Go for it. So Spencer is a really good friend of mine. He's a missionary in Japan.
33:36: He is a lifelong friend that has really shaped me in the ministry, and I love him a lot.
33:42: And he has benefited from your channel as well. That is awesome. That's so encouraging to hear.
33:48: Because 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 who's being impacted by it.
33:56: So that's very encouraging. Thank you so much. And Spencer, thank you so much, man. That is amazing.
34:02: I very much appreciate it. Just as Jeremiah is getting set up for his grilling session,
34:10: I'm going to 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,
34:19: I want to read through some questions if there are any. Sometimes we don't get some questions, that's fine.
34:25: 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.
34:32: All right. Well, I hope you are ready. I have before me
34:37: Acts 2 verse 38. So Jeremiah, bro, you're questioning the clear biblical fact that baptism is a necessity for salvation.
34:54: What's wrong with you, apologetic dog? Okay. So Acts chapter two, verse 38 says the following.
35:01: And Peter said to them, all right, and this is in response to, actually, let me read verse 37. This is in response to a very clear question that seems to give a very clear and obvious answer.
35:12: 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?
35:23: 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
35:38: Holy Spirit, aka the Bible, based upon what you told me there.
35:45: So there you have it, bro. Okay. Clearly, it's clear.
35:51: What must we do? Repent and be baptized for the forgiveness of sins.
35:57: What is your response? Let me start with a quick response. Okay. Context is everything.
36:04: 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.
36:11: Okay. There's a difference between reading it and giving the meaning of Scripture. So I want to encourage
36:18: Christians, don't fall into a trap of saying, do you believe this, yes or no?
36:23: Because the answer is yes when you read it, no on how you interpret it. So when they say, you don't believe that?
36:30: Or just say yes or no. What must I do? And then they read it, yes or no, nothing else. Explain.
36:37: 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,
36:43: Eli, the context here is a Jewish audience. That is so key.
36:49: And so the Jews are being cut to the heart by the gospel. We see a fulfillment of Joel here.
36:56: And the Jews ask a broad question. They say, what must we do? What do
37:01: I mean broad? Well, we see a more specific question later in Acts 16, sirs, what must
37:07: I do to be saved? Okay. So here's a broader question because the
37:12: Jews crucified the son of glory, the Mashiach, right? And they are cut to the heart about this because this was actually
37:19: God come in the flesh. And so they are asking our understanding of Judaism is wrong.
37:25: What are we to do now? And Peter is saying, you need to repent. The backside of repentance is always faith.
37:32: Repentant faith always goes together. That's what would justify us before God. And so now he's saying, this is how you would demonstrate that repentant faith in your unity with the authority of Jesus Christ.
37:47: And so very shortly, that's what he's getting at there. And we've only hit half the verse.
37:53: 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 gift of the
38:02: Holy Spirit. So the very simplistic Baptist argument has been for can mean because of, and I've used it.
38:11: I think that that's true. Contextually and exegetically, you can make that move.
38:16: However, I love how he uses for the forgiveness of your sins, because the the is the article.
38:24: It means the one and only, like Jesus is the way, the truth and the life. No one comes the father except through me.
38:31: And so this phrase is used in the gospels. John the
38:36: Baptist said this almost exact phrase that, and remember John the Baptist was paving the way for Messiah.
38:42: And he says for the forgiveness of sins. And so he was talking about redemption that was still yet to come at Calvary.
38:50: 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.
39:03: They would drink. This all pointed to what was about to happen. He says for the forgiveness of sins.
39:09: And so my point is Peter is pointing back to Calvary with this very explicit statement for the forgiveness of your sins.
39:19: You can have your sins forgiven in total in repentant faith by looking to the one and only savior of what he did on the cross at Calvary.
39:28: Okay. All right. All right. So what about then? Okay. All right. What about Mark 16, 16, which clearly says my friend, okay.
39:40: You know, Mr. Apologetic dog chew on this. All right. Mark 16, 16.
39:45: All right. Whoever believes and is baptized will be saved, but whoever does not believe will be condemned.
39:56: 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.
40:07: Whoever believes and is baptized, but whoever does not believe will be condemned.
40:15: I mean, it seems like you are adding to the word of God, uh, Mr. Dog, Mr. Apologetic dog.
40:22: That's what I would get. Um, is that's not what it says. That's not what it says. And we're saying time out. We're talking about its meaning.
40:28: Yep. 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
40:42: Eli. So there are different versions of me. When I try to pretend to be someone that I'm not,
40:48: 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.
40:54: I, the $5 donation machine is back in action, but boy, thank you, man. I really, really appreciate that.
41:01: Uh, just real, a quick reminder before Jeremiah answers, uh, Mark 16, 16. 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.
41:14: If you don't have any questions, that's cool. But if you do, please don't hesitate to send those in. All right. Um, all right,
41:19: Jeremiah. So Mark 16, 16, whoever believes and is baptized, dude, it's right there. So I have two different answers depending on what
41:28: I guess your, your context. I'll call it the Matt Slick answer, the slickest man alive and the
41:35: Dr. James White answer. Okay. Cause they're going to be different here. Now Matt Slick, uh, he's, he's the slickest man alive.
41:42: I hope to be able to do an episode with him one day. Lovecarm .org encourage people to go check that out.
41:48: Yes. So what Matt would say is we got to make sure we read the whole verse, right?
41:54: Because church of Christ are really good at proof texting. We've 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.
42:08: 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.
42:17: 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.
42:26: I had a chance to talk to, um, um, I call him a Greek scholar.
42:31: Um, but anyway, he just said, what we look at baptized is it's indicative. It's describing what believers do.
42:39: Steven voice. I'm so sorry, Steven, your name like went out of my head. I called him to talk about the nuances here.
42:45: Okay. I recommend people looking him up. I know he's, has he been on here before too? He has, he, uh, we did the, uh,
42:52: King James only episode, which was X, which was excellent. I mean, uh, I still highly recommend people watch that video because it is a kind of a one on one sexual criticism.
43:07: It actually equips you to address a bunch of other issues as well.
43:13: So I highly recommend that. Yes. So point is Matt slick.
43:18: Others have pointed out, you could say whoever believes and goes to church will be saved. That's what Christians do.
43:24: Whoever believes and reads their Bible will be saved. That's it's indicative. It's showing what believers do.
43:30: And we know that it's the, the not believing is what's going to ultimately end up in our, um, being condemned.
43:37: Dr. White would take a different approach and says, bro, this is the longer ending of Mark. Shouldn't be there.
43:43: And I was going to 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.
43:59: Um, you know, the discussion, but absolutely. Because if you start talking about textual criticism with the church
44:06: Christ who wants nothing to do with church history and, and the, the manuscript tradition of how
44:11: 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.
44:17: Um, I have heard on one occasion, um, a church of Christ preacher understand that and not want to camp out on Mark 16, 16.
44:26: But overall, I would say, look, you, you have enough context clues to explain the verse and something that Stephen Boyce has pointed out.
44:35: I told 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
44:45: Bible. Um, 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 eight, first John five, seven, a blog, these other ones, these, this specifically was probably said and comes out, you know, or through oral tradition that comes back in the text.
45:05: But when you're in, when you're talking with church of Christ, I would say, treat this verse historically as though Jesus said it, because he probably did.
45:14: And this verse gives us enough context to actually explain the meaning. Okay. All right. Okay.
45:19: Thank you for that. Uh, well, let's, well, let's move along. So first Peter chapter three, verse 21, this is a big one.
45:26: Okay. Someone, someone says it, dude, you know, I, I, I, there are people who even commented on the videos.
45:33: I made a short video. If folks are wondering the video I'm referring to is baptism necessary for salvation and, uh, someone you, they probably, you know, didn't even watch the video.
45:43: They said, yes. And then they just quoted, you know, this particular passage, first Peter chapter three, verse one.
45:49: Okay. So Mr. Apologetic dog. All right. First Peter chapter three, verse 21, which says the following and it's clear as day, right?
45:59: You, I know you got your little ballerina shoes on tiptoeing around the issues, Jeremiah. Okay. Making the
46:05: 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 conscious, 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.
46:25: So there you go. Now corresponding to this baptism saves you. It literally says baptism saves you.
46:32: How can you be so blind to miss the obvious teaching of this text,
46:38: Jeremiah? Yeah. Let me, let me help them out in their case. If you read the
46:44: King James in verse 20, it says that they were the eight persons, eight souls were saved by water.
46:53: So how do we get out of this? Yeah. Okay. So I listened to your video recently.
46:58: I thought you did a great job explaining this. I want to encourage people, if you were to go to the
47:03: 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.
47:13: 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 and in action, go check that out too.
47:23: But I will say there's a few different approaches people could take contextually, and it still works.
47:30: We still conclude that, oh man, this is talking about faith in Christ. This is, this is ultimately the baptism, having a good conscience in the resurrection of Christ.
47:38: But very simply, I tell people, you got to look at verse 20 and 21 together. That's so important for this.
47:46: And the only way to properly understand, and I'll use the King James to help them out, that they were saved through water.
47:54: 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
48:05: ESV does. ESV understood, the translators understood this. These eight persons were brought safely through water.
48:14: Okay. So there's three elements in verse 20 you got to be aware of.
48:20: 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.
48:28: The water was used as a instrument of judgment. Okay. It was not salvific.
48:34: 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.
48:44: Baptism, baptizo, there's a type of immersion going on there, if when we know definitions of terms, baptism, which corresponds to this now saves you.
48:56: 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.
49:09: 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.
49:16: 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.
49:27: That is the correspondence in any type that was going on here. And Eli, one last thing is
49:32: 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
49:40: Bible passages, 1 Peter 3, 15, but in your hearts, honor Christ, the
49:45: Lord is holy, always being prepared to make a defense for anyone who asks for a reason for the hope that is in you, yet do it with gentleness and respect.
49:53: Verse 16, having a good conscience, right? So the point is having a good conscience is sanctifying the
50:02: Lord in your hearts. We understand that this is looking to Him in faith. Excellent.
50:08: Very good. You're doing an excellent job, by the way, we're going to continue to go down the list, but I just want to give a shout out to my friend,
50:15: Ron. Thank you so much for your $20 super chat. He says, Francis Chan teaches the same thing about baptism being necessary for salvation.
50:23: 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.
50:32: 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.
50:40: I think he was a master's seminary graduate out in California where MacArthur's Seminary is.
50:46: Something that a long time ago he said in a sermon on Acts 2 was, why are we getting so bogged down about baptism?
50:54: And I remember immediately thinking, because this is a gospel issue, are you trusting in a gospel that says your accomplishments, your works, plus your faith in what
51:04: Jesus did? Or are we talking about something else? It's so important. I don't know the details of this.
51:12: I would tread so cautiously with where Francis Chan is going now, because I listened to him recently on the
51:19: Remnant Radio. I love those guys, by the way. They interviewed Francis Chan on his view of the communion.
51:27: It's just concerning. So you always have to have your discernment up.
51:33: And I would just say, exercise that, especially with Francis Chan. All right.
51:38: Well, thank you for that. And thanks again, Ron. Really appreciate it. So let's kind of get you back on track here.
51:44: So my next scripture that I'd like you to address is Acts 22, verse 16.
51:50: 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.
52:02: So it clearly seems to be the case that baptism and the washing away of your sins is very closely connected here.
52:11: 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.
52:21: 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.
52:31: 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 many friends are church of Christ.
52:40: And so there have been instances where I had a relationship or a friendship with somebody that attends a church of Christ.
52:48: 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.
52:55: And I'm so grateful for that, because I remember one of them, this probably nine years ago, brought up this verse.
53:02: And I just remember thinking, man, 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.
53:12: And so something else, I know I'm giving you a lot here to take into consideration, but church of Christ historically have a different method, a different hermeneutic, a different exegesis.
53:24: 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.
53:31: You can have a clean slate, no presuppositions, and something that they go by, the acronym is
53:38: CENI, 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.
53:49: I come back to say, okay, that doesn't really encapture the grammatical historical method of interpretation.
53:57: And so what I mean is we do look at the original language. We look at definition of terms.
54:02: 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?
54:14: 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.
54:24: You got to treat it like that. When you look at the epistles, these are doctrinal letters given to the church.
54:30: 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
54:37: Paul is teaching, how Christians are supposed to understand this in light of the letters. So I'm saying that's important.
54:43: And you'll see this crossover here in a second. I love what you did. You read the whole verse, because typically this gets quoted as, why do you wait?
54:51: Rise and be baptized and wash away your sins. Okay. But calling on his name.
54:59: Eli, there's a lot of things going on here in the context. This is not the apostle Paul speaking. This is Ananias.
55:05: Ananias, earlier in the context, when you look back to Acts chapter 9, I think it's 915, where the
55:11: Lord appears to him saying, hey, you go and prepare for Saul of Tarsus, because he is a chosen vessel of mine.
55:17: Okay. Because Ananias was like, I don't know if this is a good idea, because he's literally killing and persecuting Christians.
55:23: God's like, I got a sovereign plan for this. Okay. And so what you see here in this verse, just on a broad scope, as we get closer, is
55:31: Ananias is being faithful to the gospel proclamation in the great commission. I'm just saying that he's being faithful here.
55:39: Okay. And so we need to ask the questions, what did he mean? How did the apostle
55:44: Paul understand what he means? And so what I'm getting at is rise and be baptized.
55:50: 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.
55:59: So washing away your sins is qualified by calling on his name. Now, the apostle
56:05: Paul goes into great detail what it means to call upon the name of the Lord, or to confess
56:11: Jesus as Lord in Romans chapter 10. This is a correct move. Paul's about to interpret for us what he would have understood
56:19: Ananias to be saying. And so in Romans chapter 10 verse nine, Paul says that if you confess with your mouth that Jesus is
56:28: 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.
56:39: 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.
56:46: Okay. Now I know we got other verses, but this is so good. If we just actually just sit in this,
56:52: Paul is telling us that if you confess Jesus as Lord, now I've had church crosses.
56:58: Well, it says with your mouth and we would say, yes, but definitions are so important.
57:03: 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.
57:15: So there's something more fundamental with confessing. It's a matter of the heart. And so the point is, is if you confess
57:21: Jesus as Lord, that he's the risen Lord, then you are present tense saved according to the apostle
57:27: Paul. And why is that important? Because if you go back to Acts 22, 16, Eli, I think this is a defeater, not only for a church of Christ, but also
57:38: Roman Catholicism, Eastern Orthodox, any baptismal regeneration. I just,
57:43: I think this is a defeater. And obviously there would be much debate over this, but Paul confessed
57:49: Jesus as Lord before his baptism. That's huge because the church Christ, most people say, well,
57:55: Paul confessed Jesus as Lord at his baptism. And then they'll say Acts 22, 16. And I'm like, okay, so if we can show that he actually confessed
58:01: Jesus before his baptism and that doesn't work, he's simply demonstrating his faith when he does get baptized.
58:07: So look with me at verse eight, Paul answered, who are you Lord? So let me pause.
58:13: 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.
58:21: None's good, none righteous, but it's God who seeks us, his own. And so the apostle
58:27: Paul is a wonderful picture of that. So Jesus is in the Shekinah glory of curios.
58:35: That's going to be a key phrase here in a second. The Shekinah glory of God is right there in front of Saul of Tarsus, and he's a
58:43: Pharisee of Pharisees. He knows he is looking at God. He is looking at the divine
58:48: Lord. And he says, who are you Lord? And I think he's genuinely asking the question here.
58:55: And then he said to me, I am Jesus of Nazareth, whom you are persecuting.
59:00: Now, Jesus of Nazareth is key because he knows exactly who he's talking about. The apostle
59:05: Paul earlier in Acts had a helping hand at, you know, a helping hand in the crucifixion probably earlier on.
59:12: And he was there with the killing of Stephen. He understands exactly who Jesus of Nazareth is.
59:19: And then he says, now to those who were with me, saw the light, but did not understand the voice of the one who was speaking to me.
59:25: So now the apostle Paul or Saul of Tarsus here, he has a fully informed conscience,
59:30: Shekinah of glory of God that he invokes the divine name curios. And now he knows it's the resurrected
59:37: Jesus of Nazareth talking to him. And he says, and I said to him, what shall
59:43: I do Lord? And so you can continue to build on this because Galatians chapter one, he talks about how he received the gospel, not from man, but from actually
59:55: Jesus himself. The gospel is the power of God unto salvation. We're going to see later that he prayed, or if you go look at the context, he prayed, he did all these things that someone who is born again does.
01:00:08: And so my point is, Acts 22 16, what qualifies the washing away your sins? It's not the water baptism.
01:00:14: It's calling upon his name. Paul already done that. Excellent. Very good, man. This is excellent stuff.
01:00:20: Adam, thank you so much for your $20 super chat. You guys are so generous, man. I really appreciate it.
01:00:25: My goodness. Thank you so much. Can I say something about Adam? Yeah, sure. Go for it. I love
01:00:30: Adam Carmichael so much. He's a member at 12 .5 Church here in Jonesboro. And he, wonderful testimony.
01:00:38: 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 to studying
01:00:46: God's word. He said that had to be the central point in his life. That's how you grow with your walk with the
01:00:52: Lord. And so that eventually led to apologetics for him. And he loved that.
01:00:59: I guess we're men, we're fighters, right? We like that apologetic atmosphere. And so it was neat because he found the gospel truth.
01:01:05: He found a lot of debates and this guy with the beards on there saying that he's from Jonesboro, Arkansas, talking about was
01:01:12: 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,
01:01:21: The Gospel Truth, because that brother's doing some amazing work. And that was very instrumental.
01:01:26: God used that to bring Adam to 12 .5 and we're buds. Well, that's awesome.
01:01:32: Because when I watch Marlon's show, Marlon's like, man, we're trying to get the gospel out there.
01:01:37: He's got that spunk, man. And God is using it. That is so awesome.
01:01:43: 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,
01:01:48: I don't know if he's still on, but if he could hear us, Marlon, keep up the good work. You're doing excellent work and it's impacting people.
01:01:57: So keep up the good work, man. Appreciate it. And Adam, thank you so much for your super chat. That is, that's awesome.
01:02:03: And I greatly appreciate it. All right. Let's, let's take a kind of another sidestep and address some questions.
01:02:10: 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 kind of viewers if they're for us or against us.
01:02:18: 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.
01:02:28: Again, I'm speaking with Jeremiah Nortier or however one you could, the apologetic dog on the topic of the
01:02:37: Church of Christ cult. And it is a cult in the negative sense that we've described at the beginning.
01:02:43: 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.
01:02:54: If you are enjoying this video, this discussion, please like the video.
01:03:01: That actually helps. If you know anything about YouTube, when you like videos and you share it, that goes a long way.
01:03:06: And if you haven't subscribed to Revealed Apologetics, we will pray at the end. We'll pray for you that God saves you from the ignorance and darkness.
01:03:15: I'm just kidding. Please subscribe. Please like. Please share, especially if you think someone might benefit from this conversation.
01:03:21: But here's a question from Andrew Summers. Andrew asks, this may be off topic, but many congregations of the
01:03:27: Church of Christ reject instrumental music and worship. Can you explain where they get this and why they are wrong?
01:03:34: 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
01:03:45: Church of Christ. Number one, Eli, is there's a book written by Dr. Keith Schweiner.
01:03:51: I hope I'm pronouncing that last name right. He's updated this book called Various Doctrinal Positions of the
01:03:57: Campbellite Church of Christ. And this is interesting, Lutheran responses to those positions.
01:04:03: So it is in response by Lutherans. I've read this multiple times, and I don't agree always with the
01:04:08: Lutheran combat, but a wonderful look of history of why. So this stems all the way back to 1811.
01:04:17: Thomas Campbell and Alexander Campbell, like I said, they were departing from the true church.
01:04:23: 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's no other way of understanding a text.
01:04:37: Basically, what I'm getting at, it's 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.
01:04:47: 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.
01:05:03: That's key because always a heart issue, whether you're using instruments or you're not using instruments. You could do vain worship in either way.
01:05:09: It always goes back to the heart. But the fact that Paul invokes the psalms, go read
01:05:15: Psalm 150. You see the psalmist praising God with everything that he has and uses multiple different instruments.
01:05:21: And so I'm saying Paul actually is directly using a worship context that would involve instruments.
01:05:28: 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
01:05:37: 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.
01:05:48: And it turns out that Paul gives us proof to say, hey, play the instruments, but it's from the heart that's important.
01:05:57: Excellent. Thank you for that. Breakfast Gun has a question. Are y 'all aware of modern Church of Christ?
01:06:03: 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.
01:06:11: Are you aware of that development within the Church of Christ? Yes. And I'm so thankful for that because I would say they're deviating from the cult.
01:06:19: They're more liberal in terms of what the Church of Christ spirit looks like. And I'm thankful for that.
01:06:26: I'm trying to think what else I was going to say. There's another sect that goes back into the Church history because there was a departure of Stone and Campbell.
01:06:37: And so you have another denomination that is almost exactly Church of Christ. It's the
01:06:44: Christian Church. I'm trying to think of how they say it. And they're Church of Christ with only exception that they do use instruments.
01:06:51: And so I'm glad to hear that, though, because I have talked to Church of Christ that says, I'm not saying you have to be water baptized in order to be made right with God.
01:07:01: They have departed from those fundamental tenets. Think about it. Church of Christ, they're new and on the scene.
01:07:06: Like earlier I said, they're 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.
01:07:15: But they deny original sin. So anyway, I could go on on those things.
01:07:20: But yeah, I've heard of that, and I'm very thankful for those. Excellent. Cameron, thank you so much for your $4 .99
01:07:27: super chat. You guys are really generous. I appreciate it. Thank you so much.
01:07:33: Cameron says, oftentimes the Church of Christ will say, quote, it says what it says. It means what it means. It's so simple.
01:07:40: Can you explain how this hermeneutic works against them? Yes. I want to first say this is one of my best friends,
01:07:47: Cameron Vogelsang. And I don't think he would mind me saying this. He came out of one of those
01:07:52: Christian churches. He has a wonderful testimony, comes out of that Church of Christ world.
01:07:58: And what's neat, Eli, is he was listening to Jeff Durbin sermons,
01:08:03: Paul Washer sermon, really started liking Reformed theology. And by the providence of God, we had a mutual friend.
01:08:09: He came to my office one day, and we talked about all these things. The rest is history. And so I love
01:08:15: Cameron Vogelsang and his family so much. What he is getting at, this is something that we've experienced a lot, especially in light of my
01:08:22: Church of Christ debate and interactions more and more with Church of Christ. I say this, it's going to sound so bad.
01:08:28: But what it appears to me is there is a glorifying of ignorance a lot of times.
01:08:35: It's so simple. How can you reject it? To me, this is a white flag. 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.
01:08:48: You're telling me I have to understand your commentary in order to understand just a simple verse.
01:08:54: 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.
01:09:04: 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
01:09:11: Bible say anything if we take out a context. We could say the Bible actually says there is no God.
01:09:17: But what is the context? It says the fool has said in his heart, there is no God. So when you look into Acts 2, you look at the context.
01:09:24: You notice I'm making sure you're reading the whole verses in Mark 16, 16, Acts 22, 16. Read the whole verse.
01:09:30: Extend the context. What kind of book in the Bible is it? And so it works against them because we could come back and say
01:09:38: John 3, 16. I come from a Southern Baptist church and I have so many Southern Baptist brothers and sisters in the
01:09:44: Lord, and I love it. But when we started talking about predestination, the sovereignty of God, you know what response
01:09:49: I got? John 3, 16. That's it. We don't want to talk about John 3, 16. And so what
01:09:55: Cameron's getting at is we could read something as simple and so clear as Ephesians 2, 8, and 9.
01:10:02: It says what it says. It means what it means. I don't need your explanation. It's a double standard. All right.
01:10:07: Well, excellent. And context is so important. Again, the words of Walter Martin are ringing in my ears.
01:10:14: He said that when someone says, I believe in Jesus, you look them straight in the eye and you say, which one?
01:10:22: Clearly he believes in Jesus. You hear this on the news, right? Well, the Mormons believe in Jesus and I believe in Jesus.
01:10:27: So I consider them brothers. Well, no, no, no. Jesus has a context. These simple truths that we read off the page have a context.
01:10:35: And so it's very important to not relegate these sorts of discussions to, look, the text is clear.
01:10:42: 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?
01:10:51: I mean, this is the thing that helps us see a verse in its proper light. And I think that's vitally important when engaging in these sorts of things.
01:10:58: Now, let me, well, there's another question here.
01:11:03: I want to get to the question. If they keep sending questions, I want to get to them. As you're pulling one up, I was going to say to Paul's letter to the
01:11:11: Corinthians, warns of false Jesuses. What's that standard? What's that standard? Jesus says, unless you believe the ego,
01:11:17: I, me, I am, then you will die in your sins. And John chapter eight, he's the single creator of all things.
01:11:24: 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
01:11:34: Jesus on his terms. And that is by faith, it's not faith plus works and you know, the whole nine yards there.
01:11:41: Amen. Amen. Saints edified, saints edified has a question. Why don't you see baptism as necessary condition of new covenant membership?
01:11:49: Like other commands, you must obey eg confession, calling out the name of the Lord, repentance, faith, et cetera.
01:11:57: Dang that, 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 two, actually was having this conversation with somebody earlier today.
01:12:10: What you do see is a type of membership happening with the visible church.
01:12:16: They're being added to the church. Now they're added to the universal church by faith, which
01:12:23: God knows exhaustively, right? Who are his, but there is a sense and where baptism is a demonstration of faith to the, um, the visible church, right?
01:12:32: Local churches. And so, um, we gotta be careful when we're talking about in order to be justified before God.
01:12:41: And so me and Arturo, we're great friends. I know he's had you on his channel. Um, so we're in agreement, even though he's
01:12:48: Presbyterian, we still love him. That's right. He's, he's wrong, but he's loved by the
01:12:55: Lord. Something else too. Um, as you hear this word, synecdoche, um, and it's, it's a great word to, if you look at a part of something that represents the whole,
01:13:06: I'm fine with baptism being a synecdoche because that's, that's in the sphere of your conversion, right?
01:13:13: 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.
01:13:19: Um, well, what about love? You're saying faith, faith alone. We're talking, oh, we're talking about a loving faith. And so we're talking about categories internally of the heart, not our external actions of accomplishment.
01:13:31: That's your Ergon. That's where we get our English word energy, your human energies and list of accomplishments.
01:13:38: None of that is to be added to the already finished work to tell us die of what
01:13:43: Jesus did on the cross. All right. Very good. Uh, here's one more question and then we'll kind of get back on track with, uh, we'll try, um, let's try one more main scripture, the main passage that they go to, if we haven't covered it already.
01:13:56: 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, will spend the time to watch it because this is excellent.
01:14:06: 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.
01:14:13: We definitely, you're doing an excellent job and I think you're a great resource for people. So, um, we can definitely set that up.
01:14:19: Absolutely. Um, so Paul, uh, 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?
01:14:30: Yeah. Um, Paul Day, can you, yeah, I'll leave the question up there. Paul Day and I, we, we, um, we've talked a handful of times over social media.
01:14:38: He's a big voice in combating the church of Christ also. So, um, the church of Christ takes in regard to the imputed righteousness of Christ in justification.
01:14:50: Here's the problem. They do not have a robust understanding of justification and double imputation.
01:14:57: This is actually part of the problem. And so what is justification? I know Paul Day knows, but it's important to define terms.
01:15:05: Um, it's being declared righteous, innocent from the penalty of your guilt of your sin.
01:15:12: So it's forensic. And so this is very important in Romans chapter four, because we're justified by faith apart from works of law.
01:15:22: And then in chapter four, that was three 28, I believe in Romans. And then in four, we're talking about this righteousness that we've received by faith, um, and not of works, um, apart from works.
01:15:33: And so I love what maybe you've said before. I've heard Matt Slick say, it's like, you have a table.
01:15:38: If you were to have two different fruit, an apple and orange, and you take the orange off, then the apple is left alone.
01:15:44: So we're saying on the table of you got works in faith, we're saying you got to take works off the table and it's faith alone by looking to Jesus, trusting in him.
01:15:55: So what is pistis? What is faith? Well, it's trusting in Christ, not looking to yourself.
01:16:02: It's like, um, it's like what the tax collector and the Pharisee said, you had the tax collector saying,
01:16:08: 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.
01:16:17: That's faith, right? And so by faith, all of your sin, past, present, and future gets put on the cross of Calvary.
01:16:26: And in exchange, you get the perfect righteousness of God and Jesus Christ, the perfect obedience to the law, credited, imputed to your account.
01:16:36: Now, Eli, this actually brings up an interesting point. The church of Christ, they believe at your baptism, it only forgives your past sins.
01:16:44: And so wait a second, what, where does the Bible say that? And you can say, well, you've only had your past sins.
01:16:50: It's like, wait, but if you continue to live, you're going to continue to sin. First John two lets us know that. And so the point is they have to break their own standard of speaking with the
01:17:00: Bible speaks and being silent where the Bible is silent. So I can continue to talk more about that. But what do you think? Yeah.
01:17:06: Excellent stuff, man. Okay. So, um, let's see here.
01:17:12: This is a cool comment here. Uh, Duffy Henderson says,
01:17:18: Hey y 'all, thanks for doing this. Lots of church of Christ churches out in our area. Uh, I'm a master student at GPTS where James White is now on faculty.
01:17:27: Super cool. Uh, he says, thanks for your work of your work guys. We need more resources for apologetics and evangelism tools in this area.
01:17:33: Yeah. I, if you guys watch my channel, I do typically, um, 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.
01:17:44: So I definitely would like Jeremiah to come back on and definitely do more episodes dealing with Jehovah's witnesses,
01:17:52: Mormons, and things like that. Uh, because listen, we could, we can debate apologetic methodology until the cows come home, right?
01:17:58: But where does the rubber hit the road? How do we use those, uh, those tools in actual evangelistic and apologetic context and conversations?
01:18:07: I think it's very important that we do cover, um, a lot of these and kind of put resources, uh, at people's disposal.
01:18:13: So definitely Jeremiah, I would like to have you on again and we could, uh, 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.
01:18:24: Um, so I would, I would totally be down for, uh, for doing that, but I, I want to identify a mistake you made.
01:18:30: 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.
01:18:42: I see what you did there. You sneaky, sneaky dog. You okay.
01:18:47: Because everybody knows while you're yapping and yapping and barking and barking, notice bark, bark.
01:18:55: I did that on purpose. Um, you're barking about faith alone. Everybody knows that in James chapter two,
01:19:01: James two, James chapter two, the place in scripture where faith alone is mentioned, it is preceded by the word not by faith alone.
01:19:12: Okay. I want to read for the folks to demonstrate your folly, to demonstrate your ignorance and a misuse of the scriptures.
01:19:20: Mr. Apologetic dog, James chapter two, uh, beginning at verse 17.
01:19:28: 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.
01:19:36: 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.
01:19:45: Do you want to be shown a, do you want to be shown you foolish person that faith apart from works is useless was not
01:19:53: 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.
01:20:04: 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.
01:20:11: You see that a person is justified by works and not by faith alone.
01:20:18: I'm not the cult you are respond, add a little dramatic element there.
01:20:26: I love it. Um, what we have to understand is James is not contradicting
01:20:33: Paul. Okay. So literally if you isolate James in a vacuum, especially just a handful of those verses, um, like let's look at the one, um, with Abraham.
01:20:48: So he says, you see that a person is justified by works and not by faith alone.
01:20:54: And there's a question earlier in the verse 22, you see that faith was active along with his works.
01:21:01: Faith was completed by his works. So how can you dismiss works so fast? Well, context is everything.
01:21:08: And there's a number of debates. I would definitely recommend people go listen to Dr. White. I forget who he,
01:21:15: I think he debated Robertson Genis. He's debated this topic, you know, sola fide, faith alone.
01:21:20: Um, go listen to that. Listen to the rub, the conflicting worldviews. Um, definitely recommend that.
01:21:26: I recommend another important book. Not that you need all these to understand. We're about to look at the context, but Dr.
01:21:32: White wrote a book called the God Who Justifies. Go read it. It's fantastic.
01:21:38: So I would, I would argue James. Okay. You got it. Yeah, absolutely.
01:21:43: Love it. I actually studied that book in preparation for when I debated Eastern Orthodox on faith alone.
01:21:50: 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 going to be able to apply, um, that understanding, whether it's church
01:22:05: Christ, Eastern Orthodox, Roman Catholics, any system of works, righteousness, right?
01:22:11: What, what did Mormons teach in second Nephi? Uh, we're saved by grace after all that we can do.
01:22:16: 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?
01:22:24: Is they ultimately made, um, a system of works, righteousness, James too. I would say what's key to the context is verse 14, 14 through the rest of the chapter.
01:22:35: You got to understand in context. And I want to give it away at the very beginning. Romans four, really
01:22:41: Romans one through five is talking about justification before God, literally in his sight and in Romans three and then four, two talking about Abraham.
01:22:51: If he was justified by what he accomplished, it would be, um, it's implied men, but not before God, right?
01:22:57: Because before God, it's only by trusting in his promises. In James two, we're talking about a said faith before men.
01:23:06: Is that kind of faith going to save you before God? So God is always in the context.
01:23:11: I've heard people say, well, if you look at Romans one 27 religion, that's pure and undefiled before God, the father.
01:23:18: And we're saying everything's before God, right? But what, what kind of fruit of justification, what does the fruit of justification look like?
01:23:26: Sure. Okay. Now I think I read a calm article a long time ago, broke this down so wonderfully, but it's talking about a said faith.
01:23:35: If you say you're a Christian, does that automate automatically make you a Christian? Well, no, God sees the heart.
01:23:41: 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?
01:23:48: My brothers, if someone says he has faith does, uh, and, but does not have works, does that faith that said faith save him?
01:23:56: If you 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.
01:24:07: What good is that faith? What I want you to see, Eli, is this is a person to person interaction, right?
01:24:13: 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.
01:24:20: But someone will say you have faith and I have works.
01:24:25: Show me, show me your faith apart from your works. And I will show you my faith by my works.
01:24:31: 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.
01:24:42: So, so you would say that in James, the justification and view there is horizontal, how we are justified before man.
01:24:50: And the justification in the letters of Paul is vertical, how we are justified before God.
01:24:57: 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.
01:25:06: They're, 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.
01:25:16: Right. We're only going to see this more in James two, as we look at it, because the question I was looking at earlier in 21, was not
01:25:24: Abraham, our father justified by works when he offered up his son, Isaac on the altar.
01:25:30: Charter Christ do not want to define the term works. They want to talk about different kinds of works.
01:25:37: Oh, Romans three and four is talking about works of law. Galatians is talking about works of law, talking about circumcision.
01:25:44: It's not talking about the definition of works. And it is, that's the whole point. That's why
01:25:49: Romans four is so clear in Ephesians two, there's nowhere in the context you're going to be able to get away with saying works of law.
01:25:54: He's talking about your Ergon, right? Your works are nowhere going to be in the, in the sphere of your right standing before God, but we are created for that, right?
01:26:03: We demonstrate to the world. Remember, the just shall live by faith. We are justified by faith.
01:26:09: 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
01:26:19: Romans was not Abraham, our father justified by works when he offered up his son,
01:26:25: 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.
01:26:36: The fulfillment is when the world sees you being salt and lie. That's what Jesus was getting at.
01:26:42: Um, that let your light shine before men, that they may see your good works to glorify your father who is in heaven.
01:26:49: And so verse 22, you see that faith was active alongside or with his works that his faith was completed by his works.
01:26:56: 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.
01:27:06: We would interpret that to say, of course, before men, but not before God. And what did John Calvin said?
01:27:13: Justified faith is never alone, right? Our justification is by faith alone, but justified faith is never alone.
01:27:19: It produces good works. Excellent. Very good. Um, 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.
01:27:31: How can we use presupp against the church of Christ? Um, 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, um, when you're dealing with the
01:27:46: 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.
01:27:53: Great resource. I highly recommend his books, but obviously we have some methodological differences. He said something along the lines.
01:28:00: 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.
01:28:14: And of course I took issue with that, um, and provided a respectful response there in the discussion.
01:28:19: Um, 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 a, an authority at its center.
01:28:33: So how would you respond presuppositionally just broadly speaking? I know there's a lot of different ways you can apply it.
01:28:39: How would you respond presuppositionally to a member of the church of Christ? Yeah. Cause so many thoughts you don't understand this race through my mind and love
01:28:49: Marlon Wilson, contrary to what some people have accused him as his ministry charges money for questions.
01:28:55: It's not true. That brother is working for the Lord and we are so thankful to people that support the gospel truth.
01:29:02: 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.
01:29:14: And to, to give, to give it all away. You need the sovereign triune God to ground our human existence and reasoning.
01:29:22: That's where you interviewing, um, Brant Bosterman. I love that book so much about, uh, the vindication of Christian paradox talking about the
01:29:30: Trinity. Yeah. Um, it's awesome because it really ties everything that you need. You need to try you and God and you need him to be sovereign because church of Christ.
01:29:39: Um, I think they are more dangerous than Mormons because Mormons for a lot of people, they understand that they add the book of Mormon.
01:29:48: Um, and that just seems super sketchy for a lot of people, right? Church of Christ, they want to only talk about the
01:29:56: Bible and the Bible alone. And ultimately we should do that. Right. And so what we've been talking about is, uh, presuppositionally we stand on the word of God and we talk about defining terms and, um, context.
01:30:10: But I think, I think, um, that's how we ultimately wore this battleground is, um, is we are the ones that do the heavy study, be prayerful, trust that God will equip us for every good work.
01:30:25: Um, and so my, my point is, is we really do live in the scripture. We visit many books as Charles Spurgeon and Eli Yala like to say, but we live in the scriptures, right?
01:30:35: So does that make sense? Um, with the church of Christ, we need to know the proof texts. We need to know the context.
01:30:41: We really need to, it's going to be a battle of definition of words. These are all priests. This is revelational epistemology.
01:30:49: And so with the church of Christ, that's where you go to war, right? They're not going to be like the Roman Catholics that want to talk about church history, which is important.
01:30:56: But since we see the value of looking at church history, that Christ has been building his church for 2000 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.
01:31:10: We have the advantage of doing that type of study as where the church of Christ, they're going back through their proof texts after proof texts, after proof texts.
01:31:19: Right. Excellent. And, and I think it's important, uh, how, how you respond to a church of Christ proponent, um, presuppositionally may look very similar to how an evidentialist or a classical, a classicalist
01:31:33: Christian engages if, because here's the thing. Um, one of the key elements of presuppositionalism is the, um, we have a great aversion to neutrality, right?
01:31:44: There is no neutral ground as, as Cornelius Van Til has taught us. But he's, he also says, um, that while there is no neutral ground, there is in fact common ground.
01:31:54: 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
01:32:01: Bible, then let's go there. Let's look at the proof texts. And because the Bible is authority, right?
01:32:08: We can use the text of scripture to argue our point. And so that's going to, that's going to 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.
01:32:19: And you're going to have that, what's going to look like, you know, an evidentialist, I would imagine would appeal to scripture if someone was debating a scripture passage.
01:32:25: So in that sense, you're going to have similarity there, but as a presuppositionalist, yeah, if they affirm the
01:32:30: Bible, let's go to the So, um, especially with respect to some of their theology as well, if they have an, a, um, a very unbiblical view of God, I mean, you could do an internal critique on their conception of God, challenge, uh, challenge them on the particular proof texts that they use for their conception of God or things like that.
01:32:50: Um, so there are any number of ways you could apply presuppositionalism to, um, uh, a position like the church of Christ.
01:32:56: Do you want to add something to that? Yes. Something that church of Christ share with Roman Catholics and basically all false religion is there's this underlying human autonomy.
01:33:06: And so Marlin hosted 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 scriptural.
01:33:17: And my point is God must be triune and he must speak perspicuously in order for us to reason to begin with.
01:33:24: 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.
01:33:34: How do they know they have the right, um, interpretation they can't, they could always be wrong, right?
01:33:40: The pro the white Swan fallacy. I mean, you got so many different presuppositional ways that you can engage, but what it's going to boil down to is everything that you've been talking about is defining terms and then context.
01:33:51: Yeah. Excellent. All right. Well, unfortunately we have run out of time. Uh, this has been excellent.
01:33:58: I definitely want you to be back on to either continue this discussion or to expand off on another topic.
01:34:05: Um, hopefully we can do it. Definitely. We could do many more things together in the future. Um, I would really appreciate that if you'd be willing to come back on.
01:34:13: Absolutely. And folks, you guys have been so generous. I mean, we've had a lot of people viewing, um, super chats.
01:34:22: I mean, oh my goodness, you guys have been so Jeff, people are feeling really generous tonight. I appreciate it.
01:34:27: Thank you so much. We definitely need it. So, um, thank you so much. Um, but I hope this discussion is useful for people.
01:34:35: And, and, um, if you leave, you know, comments in the comment section, let me know the types of things that you guys want to hear.
01:34:43: I want to be able to provide a, of course we want to focus on presuppositional apologetics, but we believe that presuppositionalism applies to every aspect of the apologetic enterprise.
01:34:55: 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
01:35:07: I apply presuppositionalism to this area or 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, uh, needed.
01:35:17: Um, so with that said, is there anything you'd like to say? Any closing remarks or, um, things that you want to point people to that might be useful to them with respect to the topic we've covered tonight?
01:35:28: Yes. Um, Dr. White has been, um, a wonderful example in the faith of debating these issues.
01:35:35: 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
01:35:45: Savior alone, Christ alone representing tonight. Um, and so I want to have a coffee.
01:35:52: I have a car. It says God made coffee. I'm not as Holy as you are. You got the cool theological, uh, shirt.
01:35:58: I got this stinking mug. I can't see it.
01:36:03: What does it say? Oh, 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.
01:36:10: Oh, you got me. 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
01:36:18: Calvinist movement where people got a couple of tats. Well, you know, I'm like two, but this one reformed theology, bro.
01:36:25: It's on, it's on me for life, bro. Hey, you beat me, but you did not beat Adam Carmichael. Does he have more tattoos?
01:36:32: He's got all the Solas tatted. That's pretty awesome. All right. But I interrupted you.
01:36:37: Go ahead. Dr. White's been incredible resource. Um, I think also, um, really just living in the scriptures, like we said earlier, um, knowing our savior, um, 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.
01:36:57: And when we talk about Colts, we talk about false teachers. They are not the enemy, right?
01:37:02: Our battle is not against flesh and blood, but it's against the principalities and powers the dark force.
01:37:08: Satan is the enemy. So we love false teachers enough to talk to them about the truth.
01:37:14: Um, speaking the truth in love like that, that's the goal. So I want to encourage people to sanctify the
01:37:19: Lord in your hearts as you're giving a defense for these things. Um, so I will be one of the major emphasis if I can get my point right.
01:37:28: And the apologetic dog is the church of Christ. This is near and dear to my heart. This is my
01:37:34: Nineveh. And so definitely consider me as a resource. I have a wonderful partner in crime, um,
01:37:42: Trey Fisher, um, in Louisiana, the parish of the Redeemer church. And then he has a
01:37:47: YouTube channel, um, parish reformed. He, I think he was church of Christ for 18 years came out of that.
01:37:54: He was on the podcast Coltish talking about that. He's, he's been on Marlon's channel that did a debate with the church of Christ.
01:38:01: 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 Colts.
01:38:08: Um, uh, Trey and I are going to be doing some work with Coltish. Um, we're starting to get more and more, uh, more and more involved with Apologia, um,
01:38:16: Durbin and those guys and the guys that run Coltish. So we have a lot more content on the way.
01:38:23: And I wanted to give a shout out to my wife, who is the babe of all babes, Allie Nortier. That's awesome.
01:38:30: Well, Jeremiah, thank you so much. It is much appreciated. We will definitely have you back on in the future, um, as this topic obviously is scratching an itch.
01:38:38: And so I want to be able to, uh, uh, have you back on to, uh, you know, maybe expand on the, on the stuff that we've spoken about tonight and maybe some other areas as well.
01:38:47: Uh, guys, thank you so much for listening in. This is, this was a lot of fun and hopefully it is useful to you.
01:38:52: Um, you know, if you, if you enjoyed this conversation, you know, check out, uh, Jeremiah's content and the resources that he suggested, uh, the apologetic dog.
01:39:02: Uh, that's pretty cool, man. I really do like the logo and the bearded dog. It's very creative. Um, and if you are interested in supporting
01:39:10: Revealed Apologetics, you can do that by visiting revealedapologetics .com. I also have a blog there.
01:39:15: Um, I have a five week apologetic course, um, that is offered there entitled Precept You. Um, uh, if you sign up for that, um, you get five, uh, the five lectures, the
01:39:26: 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.
01:39:33: There's also, uh, a section there for, for donating if, if you feel led to do that.
01:39:38: Um, other than that, if you are not supporting Revealed Apologetics financially in any way, I definitely would appreciate prayers as I definitely believe that God hears, uh, your prayers as he has, uh, blessed me and my family in amazing ways.
01:39:52: Um, and so, um, I definitely covet your prayers in that regard. So that is it for this episode until next time, guys, take care and God bless.