Can Christians Take Each Other to Court? | Apologetics Live 0031

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00:25

The quietest show I've ever been on. Wow. You forgot about that one,

00:42

Matt, huh? Forgot about what? That old clip. I didn't see anything.

00:49

Damn, neither did I. Are you hearing me?

01:01

Yeah, we hear you, but nothing's happening. Ah, okay, so... All right, well, the intro, that didn't work.

01:08

I played the clip, Matt. I thought you were hearing that. I guess you weren't hearing that. I played the clip from long ago of our babies.

01:17

Do babies exist? Do babies exist? Wow. Yeah. So, yeah, that was a clip from the old days.

01:26

I don't know why it didn't play for you. That's too bad because...

01:31

Operator error? Yeah, it could be. So, Matt, your surroundings look a little different from the last time you've been on.

01:38

What's been happening? So, as you guys know,

01:45

I'll keep this really brief. We're supposed to move to Arizona and we found out...

01:52

And so we scheduled new paint. We scheduled new carpet. We scheduled new countertops and things like that.

01:58

Got to get the house ready. I've been here almost 15 years. Okay, standard stuff. And then we discovered that the insurance for Neek, my wife's insurance, the deductible will start over again as soon as we get there to Arizona.

02:12

And we can't afford that. So we postponed the move five months. But we still had all the stuff scheduled to be done in the house.

02:19

So for weeks, and this is why I've been on for a lot, getting things ready and moving stuff, the house was empty.

02:29

And we have a 2 ,500 square foot home. Everything's in the garage except for the bare minimum.

02:34

My bed, what she sleeps in, a TV, two couches, her computer setup, and that's about it.

02:46

So that's what's been going on. And plus, I hurt my back by picking up a pair of socks.

02:52

That was a month ago. So I was out of commission for a while. I mean, I was crawling on the ground trying to survive.

02:59

That was just bad. And then Neek's had some more medical issues. We just had the doctor's appointment today with her.

03:06

And that's what's been happening. And in a half hour, I got to take off and do stuff that she can't do.

03:12

Because we have our French foreign exchange student, who was here seven years ago, is now visiting.

03:20

And we've got to have a little shindig tonight. My wife said, oh, so tonight, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, we're going to do that. And I'm like, okay.

03:26

And there you go. Well, and I should introduce everyone. This is

03:31

Apologetics Live. I forgot to do that. Matt Flick from karm .org. Myself, Andrew Rapport from Striving for Training.

03:38

We're joined with Eli. Eli, actually, I know you got the Apologetics Mystery, and I'm forgetting what it is.

03:44

Sorry. Revealed Apologetics. And I work for the Historical Bible Society that has a

03:49

Facebook page where they can see short videos that I do answering certain questions and things like that.

03:56

And it's what? What's Apologetics what? Or what Apologetics? Revealed Apologetics. Revealed. Revealed Apologetics. Yeah. So if folks want to join in, they could go to ApologeticsLive .com.

04:08

And it looks a little funky, Matt. What is going on with the website?

04:15

And so we got hacked three or four days ago. And they got it running.

04:22

It was down most of one of the days. And that's the status of the site.

04:28

I don't know what's going to happen. Right now, for folks who understand the language, the

04:36

Cascading Style Sheets is not looking too good. And that's why everything's looking really messed up right now.

04:45

For folks who don't know this, basically, what the CSS does is give you that uniformed look and feel.

04:53

And that's just not working right now. So no, it's not. A lot of things are not working.

04:59

And let's just say that, boy, my life has been tumultuous lately.

05:09

And now that. And I'm like, whatever, you know. I'm going to try and work some solutions.

05:16

We'll see how that goes. Well, God is still on the throne, man. He's still on the throne.

05:23

And he's certainly testing us. Man, yeah, it's been tough.

05:31

Well, okay. I'm not going to be able to do most of the stuff that I had planned to do for tonight.

05:38

If you guys couldn't hear that opening clip, that's really disappointing. I probably will end up needing to reboot my computer to be able to do that.

05:45

But that would be a bummer. Now, Matt, you're going to be with us for a little while.

05:52

Right. I'm going to leave at the bottom of the hour in order to go do stuff to get ready stuff for the people who are coming over tonight.

06:00

Family and a foreign exchange student with her boyfriend, you know, from France. You know,

06:06

I told my wife, okay, I'll not do apologetics live tonight. She just stared.

06:11

She completely forgot about it. And I'm like, you know, it's okay. You know, it's all right.

06:17

We'll just, it's no big deal. Yeah, this is, this is called life and it happens.

06:23

Life happens. Yeah. So, but, you know, so you're not going to move kind of right away.

06:32

We got problems with the website. So things that we could be praying for.

06:40

Now, Matt will be here the next three weeks for sure, because I won't be. Yeah, then we can have a good shows.

06:47

Yeah. Dr. Anthony Sylvester will be coming in. I'm sure Eli will be coming in.

06:53

Probably some good discussions on creation science. NAR, I'm sure will come up.

06:59

Oh, yeah. Topic that both Matt and Dr. Sylvester love to talk about. I'm sure that they'll talk about Catholicism and Matt, you've missed it.

07:09

The Catholics have been very upset with us in the show. Poor babies. Yeah. Um, I guess for those who watch the show and comment in the different groups, especially in our, you know,

07:24

Matt, there's a group that you and I have that you created called Christian Apologetics. We've been getting some crazies in there.

07:33

Oh, yeah, that's normal. Yeah. I mean, we've, we've got a one guy that like every, every post he wants to say that basically works are necessary for salvation.

07:44

I think we're probably gonna get ready to boot him because it's like, okay, we've warned you, like do one post, one a week if you want.

07:51

We don't mind disputing on it, but some of these guys don't want to learn. No. They're just here to troll.

07:58

They're just here to troll. Which is kind of like the Catholics that we've been getting. They're very strong behind the keyboard.

08:07

Right. But we only have the one guy, James, that's willing to come in. But it was interesting.

08:13

Off air, he told me, because he, I booted him last week, because he just speaks right over.

08:20

I mean, you know his tactic. You've dealt with him and you guys did a timed debate. And he's like, this is the, what's he go by?

08:29

Traditional Catholic or Catholic. Oh, yeah, yeah. Okay. And he's like, I can look when I did a timed debate with Matt.

08:36

I didn't talk over Matt. I'm like, so what? You're only going to, you know, obey the rules of the program if you're forced to.

08:45

If it's a timed debate, like just follow the rules. That's right.

08:50

Follow the rules. What's the big deal? Yeah. Otherwise, you look like Eli. It's not bad, right?

08:57

I'm a good looking Puerto Rican guy. Good looking Puerto Rican. There you go. That's a good comeback. Okay. Well, if we're going to be honest about this,

09:04

Matt. If we look at the three of us, I think you and I would agree that, yeah,

09:10

Eli's probably the best looking between us. Yeah, I would definitely agree with that one. So, all right, let me bring in early

09:20

Mark King. If you want to unmute yourself, he came in first.

09:27

And folks, if you want to join, I did drop, I'll drop the link in again to those watching online.

09:33

Um, because it is a little bit confusing if you go out to the website right now, because the, because of the problems that Karma is having, and it's a little hard to see where the link is to join.

09:44

So, and so, um, we, uh, if you want to join in, go ahead.

09:51

I see that Mark changed his camera angle, but, uh, I don't know if Mark, are you there?

10:00

Yes, I'm here, Andrew. There we go. All right. So you have any questions for us tonight or, or topics?

10:07

Andrew, just, just, uh, just a pleasure to listen to you guys. I'm here in Australia, Sydney, and, uh,

10:14

I listened to Matt Slick for probably the last two years. And, and, and I have grown significantly because of you guys, uh, the likes of you and John, and John MacArthur and, and so forth.

10:27

I was Catholic, then became a Pentecostal. And then I, by pure default, uh, found a

10:35

John MacArthur, um, uh, study Bible. And it was kind of like a downhill slide for me, if you might say, because I got woke and started to really realize that the power of God is in knowing his, his, his word.

10:54

And, and just listening to you guys has been just my growth. I feel so much stronger now than ever before.

11:03

And, um, and I can, I feel now that I can mix it up with almost anybody, because sometimes

11:10

I'm even saying, Matt, that doesn't sound right. I'm going to check that out, you know, or, you know, something.

11:18

And then I go and check and I go, no, he's right. Actually. He's right. So wait, wait, wait, you were doubting me.

11:23

Spiritual gifts are for today. When you check it out. I mean, this is, listen,

11:29

Mark, this is what we all do. When Matt says something, we, we, we question it.

11:35

And then if we study and we find he's actually right. We're, we're surprised too. It's, you're not alone.

11:42

Thank you. Appreciate that. Hey, listen, I'm surprised when I'm right. Matt, you're going to love this one.

11:49

A full barrel, full belly bear just gave a super chat of $4 and 99 cents.

11:55

And says, awesome. He says, Matt has a voice and face made for radio.

12:02

And that is true. That is true. I appreciate that. Do you know who full belly bear actually is?

12:07

No. Who? I don't know. No, I don't know. But we thank you for that. So, so Mark, let me ask you a question.

12:15

You said a term that maybe in Australia, it doesn't have the same meaning in America.

12:22

I've seen another term. And it is? Woke. Yes. So for, for folks, maybe understand it so we can understand what did you mean when you say you you're woke?

12:36

Because that has a different meaning in America these days. Yes. Yeah. True. Very true.

12:41

It's just that, for me, I woke up, it was, it was a stage in my life where I started to realize it just wasn't enough.

12:56

Just turning around and saying, you know, I'm a born again Christian, and I go to this church.

13:02

And, and, and, you know, and just quoting one, one scripture.

13:12

So God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten son. And that's pretty much all we, we kind of knew.

13:18

And the guys that I was running with, there was only two of them that really got into, into scripture that kept me going.

13:30

You know, the church was a very big church. Eight, 900 people, but there was only two guys that, because they knew scripture that kept me going and just kept this hunger going until my eyes opened out.

13:44

And that's sad because out of a church, let's say eight, 900, and only two people that I found were, were biblically sound and strong.

13:57

And that really kept on helping me that I thought that was sad.

14:06

And I thought, you know, I, I need to do something about this. I need to do something about this.

14:12

And I was a Christian for 20 years, 25 years. And, and, and I thought this is not right.

14:19

This can't be right. This Christian walk, this can't just be this. So how did you first, uh, first find

14:29

Matt? You said his radio program or was it his, uh, the, the

14:34

CARM website that you found? Andrew, everything was just by accident.

14:43

Nobody pointed me in any direction. I found Chris Roseborough.

14:49

I started to listen to him. Uh, actually what I found was the sermon audio website by accident.

14:58

Okay. And I started to download sermons from sermon audio. And it just went from there.

15:06

Then I found this, this John MacArthur study Bible, and then I started to investigate

15:11

John MacArthur and it just continued to grow from there.

15:18

Then, then I found podcasts. Then I found, you know, uh, um,

15:24

Chris Roseborough. Then I found you, Matt, uh, apologetics live.

15:29

And it was a snowball after that. Now I'm probably sitting with, you know, uh, over 500, um, you know, podcasts.

15:41

And I listened to podcasts every day, all day. I don't listen to no radio stations. Don't listen to no music, you know, um, because I am on the road, uh, seven or eight hours a day, five days a week.

15:55

Are you a, you're a truck driver, son? I'm a sales rep. So it's okay. Yeah. You know,

16:01

I don't, do you know that a couple, a couple of places you can get some podcasts, Matt Slick, you listen to Matt Slick live on podcast.

16:08

Actually, I listened to Matt Slick every night when I go to bed.

16:13

Is that like you torture? Is that like torturing yourself before going to bed? I did.

16:22

I listened to Matt every, every night. And, um, what I did, I started putting the timer on for 15 minutes and I realized a stupid old iPhone would go off.

16:32

So then I went and put the timer on for 30 minutes. Now it's 45 minutes, Matt. That's almost the whole show.

16:40

I know. I know. I know. So Matt, for folks who don't know, um, you could, if you just do in almost any app, podcast app and search for Matt Slick or Christian Apologetics Research Ministry, you'll get

16:54

Matt's podcast, the radio show that he does Monday through Friday. And that is, uh, that's also on sermon audio.

17:02

That's where it's hosted. You can also, if you like podcasts, Mark, is you could go to Christian, uh, basically the

17:11

Christian, uh, Christian, Christian podcast, community .org. I'm trying to remember if it was the .org

17:17

or .com. So it's .org. Christianpodcastcommunity .org brings you to a whole list of, actually, you could search for that on your

17:26

RSS feed and that gives you all of them. Uh, but you may want individual ones, but there's like seven, seven or eight of them up there now.

17:34

And still growing as we have a couple more, we just added one last night and we get two more to add.

17:41

So I'm actually, I, I actually wrote that down. You causing problems for me,

17:47

Andrew, because I'm trying, I can't keep up with what, you know, what everything, because I listened to JD Hall.

17:55

Um, I listened to, and all of you guys, what happens is this, if people only realize is that all of you guys are sound brothers and, and sisters in that you affirm the, the key essentials.

18:14

You might differ on little things here and there, but what I love about you guys, you, you, you, you still show that love and affection to each other.

18:26

And I see that between you, Andrew and Matt, and I see, and I listened to Eli as well.

18:33

Uh, uh, uh, some of the, some of the things that you might disagree on Eli, I listened to, to Chris Roser and JD Hall that, you know, uh, uh,

18:43

Dr. James White and, and JD Hall. And so it's, it's amazing.

18:48

Cause you're in Australia. You're, and this is the thing for folks. I mean, we're sitting here doing apologetics live.

18:54

It turns into a podcast. I mean, you could, for folks who are watching, if you'd want to listen, you could just search for the podcast politics live.

19:01

But this is the thing that always amazes Matt and I is that we're sitting, I mean, he's in Idaho right now.

19:08

I'm in New Jersey and you're sitting in Australia listening in live.

19:15

Yes. It's the beauty of the technology. Um, it's just amazing. I mean, we had a guy like years ago that Matt and I, he was from Australia and he would call in every week asking just great questions.

19:28

He was a nurse and he would get off of work and come into the show and is when we used to do it on Sunday nights.

19:36

And it was just always amazing. He'd ask great questions and he was reading like some of the top apologists and yet he wasn't claiming to be a believer.

19:45

Wow. And it was a place where he could get answers. He said he couldn't get anyone there to give him answers.

19:50

And here he is in Australia. We've had people from India and Chile and it's just amazing the technology.

19:58

So while we have Matt here, I know you've just given Matt a head that's so big it's not fitting in camera view right now.

20:07

He's just telling the truth. Actually, Andrew, I'm going to tell you this.

20:13

Matt, I go to Africa quite a bit. I do come to the USA because my brother lives in Pennsylvania and my daughter's a student athlete at Hofstra in New York.

20:24

So I do a lot of travel, but the best way that I can get people to learn is give them your calm website.

20:35

And I was in Africa about four weeks ago and I set my uncle up with your calm website.

20:44

I set him up with the podcast on his iPhone. I set another Anglican minister up with Podbean and podcast and your calm website.

20:56

So maybe I'm a Matt slick.

21:02

You're a Carmite. Carmite. Yeah. You know, we do have a guy that works for Carm in Africa.

21:12

And Matt, I don't think that other site, it's not up and ready yet, right? The African one.

21:18

No, there's been issues. Yeah. But we do have a guy that's working on taking all the

21:24

Carm material and getting it up in Africa. And for folks that don't realize,

21:30

Matt, I just heard, I don't know if you've heard this, do you realize that the shift in Christianity has changed from America and the

21:38

Western world to Africa? Africa is now the number one continent sending out

21:44

Christian missionaries. I wouldn't be surprised at all. It's freaky to think that they're sending a missionaries to America.

21:54

Yeah. I mean, you know, America is just in trouble all over the place. Yeah, it is.

22:03

You know, you know, guys, I wanted to ask one question, though, if you don't mind,

22:10

I don't want to take too much of your time, you know, five minutes just so you know.

22:16

Yeah, I understand that. I really do. The question that I wanted to ask you is this, because my wife and I have got have had this had a little bit of a bargy bargy on this is this, you know, the

22:30

Bible speaks about there's a chapter, there's a scripture in the Bible that speaks about not taking your brother to court.

22:40

Right. OK, I, I am of the opinion that if the person is a born again

22:52

Christian, you've got to sort things out before it even gets to that stage. Right. If you can't sort it out before it gets to that to to to that stage, then what do you do?

23:07

You just put on the gloves, get in the boxing ring. I just duke it out, you know,

23:14

I think I think

23:20

I want to take some more disagreements a little bit more serious. So what can you please explain that one to me, guys?

23:33

Because I just what do you do when you before you go to court and you want to talk to Christian brother and the

23:42

Christian brother doesn't want to get reconciled? What do you do? Is that it? Yeah, like what you're supposed to do.

23:51

I'm not in this situation. So, yeah, I'm going to be getting changed while I get talking.

23:56

I have this portable mic. Sorry. Just trying to do as much as I can. That was way too much information.

24:03

I'm going to come in the shower while I go in with my waterproof mic. By the way, just before you answer, full belly bear says

24:15

BJJ versus Krav Maga. I think BJJ wins. I always thought this.

24:23

I always think it depends on the person. Oh, well, it will.

24:29

But equal, I think an equal. So Krav Maga, you get your one shot. If you don't take me down with one shot, then

24:37

BJJ would probably dominate. But BJJ, they don't do what

24:42

Krav does. So in Krav, the idea is to destroy the person before you're both on the ground.

24:51

So, I mean, you know, I just got to withstand your first. And I mean, just listen, I'm not worried.

24:56

I mean, the guy threw out his back for two weeks picking up a sock. That was too heavy for him.

25:01

Yeah, I know. But, you know, I knew a guy who was very good in martial arts.

25:08

And you know what? You get somebody who's really good in judo versus someone who's so -so in Krav Maga. Who's going to win?

25:14

You know, or vice versa. I think it's the person. Well, skill always is overbrown.

25:22

Yeah, yeah. Skill is where it's at. But I do think that there's some martial arts that are better than others. But still, you know.

25:29

And like my instructor says, he says, and he's been teaching for 30 years, like four or five different styles, you know.

25:38

Avoid a fight because the guy may not know anything. Just get a lucky punch. You know. So you live in a state where you can just carry and solve things that way.

25:46

But poor Mark isn't getting a good question answer. No, I was going to get back to it.

25:51

See, I was transitioning with the guns. I wasn't calling, guys. This poor guy, I see his face.

25:57

He's like, hey guys. Oh no, I'm going to I'll definitely answer the question after Matt ends up.

26:04

Guys, I am a African brawler. I grew up in Africa. And you guys are bringing me back to it.

26:13

I gotta go, guys. All right, Matt. If you want to join back in later, we'll be making fun of you for the next hour and a half while you're gone.

26:21

And that's all. There should be a whole bunch more to make fun of. Oh yeah. But the show's only two hours. We only have so much time to make fun of you.

26:29

Let's just start with the A's. All right, I gotta go. Hey, brother Mark, man.

26:34

It was really nice talking to you. Thanks, Matt. Thank you so much. And keep up the good work. I know it's very hard for you.

26:41

I know. I understand perfectly. But you are an absolute blessing to this world.

26:49

Don't let anybody move you left or right. Every single bit of information, you have no idea how much impact it has.

26:59

It changes people's lives. Praise God. Praise God. Amen.

27:05

All right. Well, thanks, Matt. Hopefully, you can join back in later. Okay. I won't stop the broadcast.

27:10

I'll just bail. Yeah, just close the window. Yeah, don't stop the broadcast. Then we'd have to beat you senseless.

27:17

That's right. Yeah. Okay. All right, guys. Matt and technology doesn't always work.

27:23

So here's the thing, Mark. Let's look at what the verse actually says that you're referring to. It's 1 Corinthians 6, 1 and following.

27:31

So it says this. When one of you has a grievance against another, does he dare go to the law before the unrighteous instead of the saints?

27:46

Do you not know that the saints will judge the world?

27:53

And if the world is to be judged by you, are you incompetent to try trivial cases?

28:03

Do you not know that we are to judge angels how much more than matters pertaining to this life?

28:12

So if you have such cases, why do you lay them before those who have no standing in the church?

28:20

I say this to your shame. Can it be that there is no one among you wise enough to settle a dispute between the brothers, but brother goes to the law against brother and that before unbelievers to have lawsuits at all with one another is already a defeat for you.

28:46

Why not rather suffer wrong? Why not rather be defrauded, but you yourselves wrong and defraud even your own brothers.

28:57

And so looking at what he's saying there, it's the issue that he's having is that these are people that didn't even make any attempt to solve this within the church.

29:10

They went right to the law. Okay. That's one of the things that we clearly see from the context here.

29:17

So right off the bat, and I don't, you know, you're, you asked a general question. It's always hard sometimes to answer general questions because when it comes to sound like this, well, there's a whole lot of things that, you know, you have people that claim to be a believer and yet do things that are criminal.

29:34

I mean, like, for example, here'd be a thing in the United States, for example, if I'm to obey

29:41

Romans 13, okay, that I obey the laws of the government,

29:49

I, in my position, having been a pastor, being a pastor, if someone is,

29:56

I'm trying to think the other fields that are mandatory, I think medical doctors, pastors, basic counselors, you know, are what's called mandatory reporters.

30:06

In other words, if you came to me and you said, I raped someone or I killed someone,

30:15

I must report that. That brings it before the unbelievers. Now that's following with Romans 13.

30:22

Now, would that be a violation of this verse here? Because I'm bringing it to unbelievers, but it's a criminal act.

30:31

Yeah. You see, so there's a whole lot that comes into that because then you have Romans 13 in play, you know, and there are, so I'm going to try to give general answers, but there is one thing to keep in mind.

30:44

One thing that you have happened often with people is they'll be like, oh, well,

30:50

I can sue that person because I don't consider him my brother. So done. Yeah. I mean,

30:55

I've seen that before where someone will just, because I want to sue you, you're not a brother in Christ, that may be that they have legitimate reason for saying, hey, look,

31:08

I don't see fruit in your life. And so there's reason that they're doing that. Yeah.

31:15

But at the same time, it could also be, hey, I really want to sue you and I want to feel right and vindicated, so I'm going to do it for that reason.

31:22

Yeah. So trying to give some general principles from this verse instead of answering every specific, because there may be lots of things in play.

31:31

One thing that the verse is very clearly saying is you bring it before the church before bringing it to unbelievers.

31:39

Yes. Right. Rather to be wronged. Okay, now, yeah, to suffer the wrong.

31:47

Yeah. But what if I'm doing something to hurt somebody and you have no ability to stop it within the church, right?

31:58

Yeah. Then you have a difficult position because if you don't bring it, if the church doesn't put a stop to it, if you don't stop me.

32:06

Yes. Then using the law to stop me helps someone else. But if you don't stop me,

32:12

I'm hurting someone else, right? You see, that could be in play. And that's

32:17

Andrew, that is the very, that's my thought. And that is if people like this don't get stopped, there is that ongoing, that ongoing hurt, that ongoing.

32:33

Because these generally, these are behaviors that people continue to perpetrate, continue to practice, because nobody has ever stood up to them.

32:45

And this is where my wife and I were actually talking about is that, okay, so how do you stop these habitual habits?

32:57

How do you stop these people that have got this constant, constant—it doesn't matter where they go, what they do, there's just a habit—that it leaves a trail of destruction in the church?

33:10

Okay, so now you bring up a new aspect to it, right? It's the habitual part. You know, one of the reasons why

33:18

I believe we should discipline people within the church, we should point out when we see someone in sin, so many of us want to look at this verse and say, oh, just suffer it, just, okay, they wronged you, just deal with it, just suffer.

33:32

But if someone does this and they're not confronted, it's actually bad for them.

33:37

Their spiritual maturity will be limited because they're no longer going to be growing the way they should be growing.

33:49

They're stunted in their growth because of the fact that they're being allowed to sin, they're actually sometimes being enabled to sin, when it's a repetitive thing.

34:00

Yes. If they've been—now, there's some differences here. If they've been confronted multiple times and they continue doing it, that might be a sign that someone's not a believer.

34:09

Yeah, yeah. It depends on what the issue is, how serious, how aware are they?

34:16

Is it something that they recognize as a sin? Because if they recognize it as a sin and continue doing it without repentance or saying, yeah, but it's okay, or they justify it, then you may want to start to question whether they're a believer, right?

34:34

Yes, yes. We're all going to have sins that are somewhat habitual to us.

34:42

All of us are going to have differences. Yeah, yeah. So I think we're all going to have that.

34:47

We're all going to have some things that we could say, well, if we look at our own lives, there's things we habitually do.

34:53

Yes. But I think that there's also things we have to be aware that there's things we do we never even knew was wrong until someone pointed it out, or we weren't even aware we were doing it.

35:04

Yeah, yeah. I think you bring a good, well, I guess the text itself, it says, when one of you has a grievance against another, does he dare go to law before the unrighteous instead of the saints?

35:19

In other words, it's not telling you that you can't bring someone before the courts, but you should really think about bringing people before the courts before you've taken it up with the church.

35:31

That's one aspect. And then you have Matthew chapter 18, where it talks about how we're to confront the brother in sin.

35:37

And so when you're saying, well, if he's a brother, how should I go about this? Well, if you follow the method laid out for us in Matthew 18, where it says, if your brother sins against you, go and confront him privately.

35:47

If he listens to you, you've won your brother over. But if he will not listen, take one or two others along so that every matter may be established by a testimony of two or three.

35:55

And then eventually it gets to the point where if he is unrepentant, even after being shown his sin, he's to be treated as an unbeliever, in which case you're not bringing him for the church anymore.

36:05

You have every right. You're within your biblical right to bring him before the courts if the situation calls for something like that.

36:12

So I know where the question comes from. It's kind of like an uncomfortable, what if it's a situation that, man, should

36:19

I press charges in this situation? If it's a brother, you should try to settle it within the household of faith.

36:26

But there are certain contexts where biblically we are allowed to step outside those bounds and avail ourselves of the courts and things like that.

36:34

Yeah. Guys, thank you so much. That actually, both of you, you've clarified it perfectly for me because now

36:43

I see that it's not just saying you should not take your brother to court.

36:49

I can see the actual process. And this is where I am finding scripture so much beneficial because you guys explained it, giving scripture, giving chapter and verse.

37:03

Now I can see that this kind of a thing, there's a process. Go and see your brother if he doesn't listen.

37:12

Speak to the elders in the church and so forth. When that doesn't work, then you start looking to say, if it's a serious enough issue, if it's something that is not serious enough, then maybe we should just let it go.

37:28

Yeah. And this coming Sunday on my Wrap Report podcast, the weekly one,

37:36

I have two of them, a Wrap Report daily, Monday through Friday, which is just two minutes long, and then my Wrap Report, which is once a week, usually for about an hour.

37:42

This week, Dr. Danny Purvis and I discussed church discipline and addressing someone who had a very different view of church discipline, basically arguing you only discipline only within your immediate church and only for crimes like serious offenses.

37:59

And so we kind of addressed that and explained how church discipline is supposed to be done. I have an older podcast on the

38:05

Wrap Report that goes through it in detail, and I'll probably, when

38:10

I get back from the Philippines, I'll be actually teaching a pastor's conference on church discipline.

38:17

We'll see how many pastors show up for that one, but I'll probably have those available when we get that.

38:23

But the thing to notice here is that the issue Paul raises is he's really saying it's a shame that these people are going before the church, before unbelievers.

38:33

You're telling me there's nobody in the church. There's no one with the wisdom to help out with this situation.

38:42

And keep in mind, it's a sad indictment to say, to ask that very question, say there's nobody.

38:51

Is there anybody that has got a little bit of wisdom to deal with these issues?

38:57

Yeah, and he scolds them by appealing to the fact that we'll judge heavenly beings. It's like, if you're called to such a great task in that realm, how could you not deal with kind of the minimal tasks that we face in everyday life?

39:12

Very true. Now, keep in mind, when it comes to, you know, Eli brought up Matthew 18. When it comes to Matthew 18, a lot of people don't understand

39:20

Matthew 18. There's four steps that we see in church discipline for Matthew 18.

39:26

Some people see three, and some people miss the most important word in Matthew 18 on that first step.

39:35

So, if you look, this is Matthew 18, and it's going to start in verse 15, and it says,

39:46

If your brother sins against you, go and tell him his fault between you and him, here's the key word, alone.

39:56

Alone. You see, most of the times, if someone offends me, what do you think in my flesh is the first thing

40:05

I want to do? Post it on Facebook. Yeah, you want to tell others, right?

40:12

True, hey. Okay, instead of going to the person alone, and then what do I want to do when I come to step two, where it says, but if he doesn't listen, take one or two witnesses.

40:20

What do you think most people do when they take a witness? Before they bring the witness over to talk to the person, what do you think most people do?

40:30

Explain, oh, this is what this guy did to me, right? So now, your witnesses are no longer, you know, biased, because they walk in with a preconceived idea, prejudging the situation, so now when they hear the guy speak, they're already drawing conclusions.

40:51

No, the witnesses should be just that. They're witnessing unrepentant, so unless they're eyewitnesses to the actual event, when

40:59

I've had to practice this, I'll pull up guys and say, hey, look, can you meet with me a situation that needs church discipline?

41:06

I need some witnesses. What's the matter about? You'll find out when you get there. Well, who's it with?

41:11

You'll find out when you get there. I don't give them any details until they're there. Why? Well, you know what?

41:18

I have seen times where people come in church discipline situations, and they think someone's offended them, and they realize in the discussion, the witnesses start asking questions, and they realize, oh, they were the one that was wrong.

41:32

Now, if your witness is already prejudging the situation, guess what? That's less likely to happen, which is why many people will tell people their side of the story, right?

41:42

Very true. Very true, Andrew. The missing step here, as we look at this, is if they don't listen to the two or three witnesses, it doesn't say put them out of the church.

41:53

It says in verse 17, if he refuses to listen to them, tell it to the church. Yes. And if he refuses to listen to the church, in other words, if he refuses to listen to everybody in the church coming to him saying that you're in sin.

42:08

Now, this isn't, hey, you have a disagreement, right? You maybe think that the carpet we should get is blue, and I want it green.

42:17

Those colors would probably be bad. But the issue being is that's not a sin.

42:25

It's also, we have to be careful to say, we don't want to sit there and say just because the three of us agree that the guy's in sin, that it's a sin, the whole church has to go to him.

42:36

It has to actually be a sin, and you're judging the unrepentance. If the guy doesn't even recognize that it's a sin, then you have to first go to the

42:48

Bible and show that. Yes. Now, if he's justifying it, that may be something different, but it's not always as clear cut as, okay, hey, we went with two witnesses.

42:57

He didn't listen to me. Therefore, we go to the church. Yes. If he's in sin,

43:02

I mean, I knew of a case where someone committing adultery, and he knew what was wrong, but he wasn't going to repent, and so the whole church had to go to the person, and it was through that that he realized, yeah,

43:20

I mean, he knew what was wrong. Well, that's different than you bring it to a church, and everyone's pointing out the sin.

43:26

It's a clear sin. So it's only after he doesn't listen to the sin that you put him out and treat him like an unbeliever.

43:32

Now, if he has gone through all those stages, you have to believe that he must not be a believer.

43:41

That's what the rest of that ends up saying is if two or three witnesses have gathered and they agree that there's unrepentance here, you have all the witnesses, treat him like an unbeliever.

43:52

Well, if you're going to treat him like an unbeliever, and now you have to take it to court, well, that process would lead you to say he's not a believer.

44:00

Yes. Because that's what Scripture ends up saying here is the final result, where they say, you know, whatever is loosed on earth or loosed on heaven, he's saying, treat him as if he's, well, actually, at the end of verse 17, if he refuses to listen to church, let him be to you as a

44:17

Gentile and a tax collector. In our terminology today, someone who's not saved. Yeah.

44:23

You see? So if you've gone through all that, and it's still not resolved, then you're at that point saying, well,

44:30

I'm not taking a brother to court. I'm taking an unbeliever to court. Yeah, yeah.

44:37

Wow, that is awesome, guys. That is absolute. Thank you so much for your time,

44:44

Andrew and Eli. One thing that I have learned in my

44:51

Christian walk, and I learned it from a lot of you guys, is that what you just did, you did an exploratory explanation of my question.

45:03

And that I find absolutely awesome because that is how

45:09

I learn. Well, and that's how we should all learn. Now, before I'm going to ask Eli, so before I do, let me just give a shout out to Full Belly Bear.

45:16

He gave another super chat. So we always read these when they come in. He gave $4 .99

45:23

to Karm, and it says, I don't want Andrew's head to get as big as Matt's butt, dot, dot, dot.

45:33

This is some very wise counsel. And I should mention, the super chats go to supportkarm .org,

45:40

not strivingforeternity. It's the arrangement that we have with Karm. This show is owned by Striving for Eternity.

45:48

That's who puts it on. And we do that. We do it in working with Karm.

45:55

We have a good relationship with the two ministries. So the super chats and the money from YouTube actually goes to Karm.

46:03

And that's because we host it on Karm's channel. And because they can monetize and our channel doesn't.

46:11

So those super chats that people know, just to be clear, goes to karm .org. So if you want to support the channel for this program, you can, for Striving for Eternity's part, you're welcome to go to strivingforeternity .org

46:25

slash donate, and that'd be a place you could donate there. Now, what you just said,

46:31

Mark, I'm going to ask Eli. There's a, Eli, do you notice a drastic difference between the way

46:39

Mark responded and the last, say, two weeks that we had with some of the

46:45

Catholics as they were in here? I suppose it's easier because Mark seems to already agree with our position.

46:56

So I suppose the Catholic has a bone to grind. Well, not so much that, but even the guy,

47:01

I don't know if you were in here last week, I don't think, for the guy that came in early that was saying that baptism ended with Jesus.

47:10

But I think I, yeah, I was there for that. Oh, were you? I mean, what do we do? Oh, that's right. You were. And all we did was we read scripture, literally.

47:18

Right. We didn't do anything else. We literally just read scripture. But you see, Mark is concerned about the text, whereas that other gentleman, you could tell just the way he expressed himself, he was concerned with a particular understanding that he wanted to get across.

47:33

And so when you pointed to the text and it didn't jive with his understanding, he defended his presupposition as opposed to the text itself.

47:40

Mark seems to be a guy who just really wants to walk through the text and allow the word of God to speak for itself.

47:46

And I was at that guy's stage, Eli, as well, where I had my preconceived, my predispositional thoughts and ideas.

47:57

And yes, I wanted a God that was my creation, shall

48:04

I say, you know, until I learned that you can't just take the law of God.

48:10

You got to accept the wrath of God as as well. You know, I think the reality, too, we all come with presuppositions to the text and it's impossible.

48:20

It's impossible to come to the text without them. But it is the humble spirit that one needs to have in allowing the text to reshape the presuppositions with which we come to the text and even willing to bow to the authority of scripture once the scripture itself challenges those assumptions that we initially bring to the text.

48:37

And that needs to govern how we think. And that is the key,

48:42

Eli, when I found that when I started to bow to the text, bow to scripture and bow to say

48:51

God is sovereign. And I will never forget when I learned, I thought to myself, I thought, you know what?

48:57

Hindus believe that their God is sovereign and they never question it.

49:02

Buddhists believe that their God is sovereign and they never question that, that sovereignty. You know, why can't us

49:10

Christians look at our God and say, you are totally sovereign? You know, there's a thing, there's a thing that I often say that there's a difference between the people who say they believe in God's sovereignty and those that actually do.

49:27

Yeah. And, you know, we were talking earlier about the term woke. I'm trying to put a podcast together with a couple of guys, and I want to talk about the issue of the whole social justice warrior mentality and the sovereignty of God.

49:41

Because when we look at the sovereignty of God, I don't think you could be a social justice warrior and believe that God is truly sovereign.

49:51

Because the whole idea of social justice is that we have to bring about the justice, not trusting in God.

49:58

But if you believe God is truly sovereign, then you're going to trust that he's going to bring about that judgment, that justice.

50:06

But maybe not today. I was just teaching last night in church through Isaiah chapter 10, and here

50:12

God is saying he's going to bring the Assyrian army in to judge Israel, right? And they're going to be his tool.

50:19

And Israel's got to be wondering, like, you know, what in the world? How do you have these

50:27

Assyrians come in and judge us? We're your chosen people, right? But he's warning them, if you don't turn from these idols,

50:35

God basically says, I'm going to bring the Assyrians in, and they're going to be a tool to bring you under judgment. And then right after that, he's like, but their day is going to come.

50:44

You know, he says the Assyrian king is going to be proud and think he's done all this. And he's going to say, look at all what

50:50

I've done. I've conquered all these lands. And God says, yeah, now I'm going to put you in your judgment. So even though he's the tool of judgment on Israel, God later brings

50:58

Assyria under judgment. And that's the thing is we think we have to be the tool of judgment.

51:06

Then we're not trusting in God's sovereignty. The whole thing I was teaching through there is God is sovereign.

51:11

And even though his judgment may not be in our time frame, his justice will come.

51:19

Yeah, yeah. But that doesn't mean that we don't work in the here and the now. I think it was, and I quote this all the time when

51:26

I talk to people is St. Augustine, I think it was St. Augustine, where he says that when we pray, we pray as though everything relies on God, but we work as though everything relies on us.

51:36

So that when we're trusting in God's sovereignty, we're not just sitting on our hands doing nothing. We trust that God uses means and we try to obediently be those means or acknowledge that God may be using means that we need to, you know, trust that he's working these things out unto his glory and for our good.

51:54

So I think that's important because a lot of people take it to the extreme where the sovereignty of God is so overemphasized that people just sit idly by not doing anything.

52:01

Okay, so balance there. So Eli, let's have some fun discussion here. So not that I think we disagree on this, but so the issue there though is do we trust in God's sovereignty?

52:14

If we're going to say we're trusting in God's sovereignty, but for the social justice warrior who is saying that liberation comes through this freedom, that, you know, giving the freedom to people, to righting wrongs that were done generations ago and blaming people that didn't actually do those wrongs, right?

52:36

Now we're getting into a different definition of what justice is. So I think what we have to do,

52:41

I'm going to say is we, I don't, I'm not saying we're against justice. I think as Christians, we're for justice in this world as well as in the next.

52:49

We should actively work towards it. And we should actively work toward it, but a justice by God's definition, not the world.

52:57

In other words, I don't think that, you know, people who are alive today in America are responsible for a slavery from a hundred years ago.

53:10

None of those, they were, none of them were slaves and none of them were slave owners. Now there is slavery that goes on today that none of them want to talk about in human trafficking.

53:20

But, you know, when we look at it, there is a justice I think that is being misused, a claim for justice.

53:29

What's a redefinition of justice and placing it within a paradigm that's really alien to scripture, but they want to piggyback off the language of scripture so that they can give kind of a divine approval as to how they're going about what they're doing.

53:44

Actually, Andrew and Eli, I grew up in South Africa under the apartheid regime.

53:51

I'll be 51 this year. I left South Africa when I was 18, 19. I was at that time,

53:58

I was the only school age person allowed to speak in the

54:06

Durban Parliament debating society. And on a Monday night, I would go there and I would sit with all of these guys, these parliamentarian guys and all of that, and would be in the chambers.

54:18

And I heard how they spoke, even spoke disparagingly and derogatorily towards Blacks and other non -white nationalities, right?

54:34

Now, I believe, this is me, I believe that two wrongs don't make a right.

54:42

I believe that we don't go back and reinvent the wheel. We don't go back and say, right, it's my turn now.

54:50

You had your turn. Now it is my turn. I cannot answer for what was done before.

54:57

I don't think I should pay for what was done before either. But I think as a believing, born -again

55:04

Christian, we should move on. We should stop regurgitating what had happened.

55:13

We can't change that. What was done is done. Yeah, I mean, look, I say this all the time because, you know,

55:20

I have distant relatives that were, you know, killed in the

55:26

Holocaust. Yes, I've heard you say that. So should I go to Germans and demand that they give me money?

55:36

Well, they didn't technically do anything to me or my parents or my grandparents.

55:43

But their relatives, right? So, like, there's got to be, you know, they didn't do a wrong, actually.

55:52

The people that are, for those that were not involved, that are still in Germany, right, they didn't do anything.

55:58

It was their ancestors. I don't think that they need to make up for wrongs that were done, even though, like, when you understand

56:08

Holocaust, right, they just came into people's homes and were able to kill Jews, take over their homes. So do they have to return that property?

56:16

Well, now that that property has been in someone else's hands and they had nothing to do with the takeover of it, right?

56:24

You see, it becomes a lot of different things there. But I don't think it's just to then punish someone who had nothing to do with it either.

56:33

I agree. And this is the kind of thing, Andrew, that I also fight with. Even here in Australia, between the

56:44

Aboriginal issue and so forth, we're still having people that think that, well, they are entitled to, one, justice of an issue that happened 50 years ago.

56:57

They're entitled to a massive monetary payment. And it seems to be this constant issue of entitlement in the modern world of minority groups.

57:11

Yes, it's sad. It should never have happened that they were treated and punished the way they were.

57:17

I agree with that. But when do we draw the line? When do we move on and we say,

57:23

Lord, we want to make the situation better by doing things like showing love, by helping out in any way, shape or form, by giving direction?

57:36

I come from Africa four or five weeks ago, and I sat with a bunch of students mapping out an educational process on how they could get out of the life where they are in.

57:50

Well, you know, let me just maybe tweak or kind of correct something you said.

57:56

I don't think it's just minorities that feel entitlement. I mean, I think it's actually a reaction.

58:03

Generations ago, and even in some countries today, the entitlement was expected by the noble class, right, the elite class.

58:13

And they had the expectation of that, that because they were born of a certain family, they had certain entitlements.

58:21

It's just that now we've kind of changed it. And now we're saying the underprivileged deserve those entitlements.

58:28

And so that mentality is my argument. It was wrong for the nobles to have that.

58:34

It's wrong for the underprivileged to have that. We shouldn't be thinking that we're entitled to other people's property, to other people's work, to other people's things.

58:45

I absolutely agree, Andrew. And well said, because you actually put it in a much more clearer way.

58:51

So if anybody out there thinks that I'm just trying to be nasty or harsh or anything like that, it's not that.

58:59

It's exactly what you said, Andrew, you know, and I agree wholeheartedly.

59:07

But anyway, gentlemen, I thank you for your time. I hope I haven't wasted it.

59:12

No, no, it wasn't a waste. And I'll just I'll end with this before you go. You know how you end racism? Yeah.

59:19

By ending racism. You never end racism by trying to right the wrongs with a reverse racism.

59:28

That's still racism. Exactly. I mean, all that is, is a pendulum swinging back and forth, back and forth.

59:36

And and you're starting to see it now in America, where all the talk is about white supremacists. You got a bunch of people that are upset with the way they see things and the pendulum is swinging.

59:51

I find it, Andrew, I am sorry, but I just think, when do we move on as a total, as a total nation or as a total group of people, as Christian brothers and sisters that have grown in in Christ?

01:00:08

When do people even start to realize that there's, you know, there's non -Christians and there's

01:00:16

Christians? And that's the only difference we have. You know, the

01:00:22

Bible talks only of two races of people. The unsaved and the saved. Yeah, absolutely.

01:00:30

Absolutely. Andrew, thank you very much. Although one question, I am,

01:00:35

I, I, you, I'm a podcast monster now. I downloaded your rap report, your report, your pod, your pod.

01:00:46

You got, you got the, the, the twist. It's Andrew Rapport's rap report. So you, so there's two of them.

01:00:54

There's two of them there. There's a two minute daily one. Yes. And then there's the rap report, which is the weekly one.

01:01:01

I like that rap report and I'm falling behind on my podcast hours in the day because now

01:01:08

I'm going to ask Eli, Eli, do you have a podcast going as well? Um, I don't have a podcast that I run, but I participate in a podcast every other

01:01:18

Thursday with my pastor and worship pastor called the biblical world brew, where we talk about, uh, coffee and theology, reform theology and different aspects of theology, which is kind of fun.

01:01:30

There's three of us there and we kind of go back and forth on some important topics and some fun topics as well. Um, and then you can find my stuff on Facebook where I post most of my videos and things like that.

01:01:39

And what's your surname Eli? I'm sorry. Your last name. Oh, my, my, my last name is

01:01:45

Ayala. A Y A L A. Y A L A.

01:01:51

Now, I'm sorry. I think I just, okay.

01:01:59

All right. No, I am. But if you're looking for him on Facebook, which I think I thought

01:02:05

I did download that podcast that you, you mentioned, but now I have to add to my 251 ,000.

01:02:16

See, all you have to do is add the Christian podcast community. If you just add that one, you'll get like, you know, seven or eight ones on one feed.

01:02:26

And then you could just say, Hey, I'll just have the one that I have to. Wow. Thank you, Andrew. Guys. Thank you so much.

01:02:35

I listened to your Molanism discussion. I didn't have much of a clue about it, and I'm starting to learn slowly of it.

01:02:46

It's a very complex issue, and I'll just keep on hammering away. But thank you so much, guys.

01:02:52

And keep going because you got no idea. I look forward to every podcast come

01:02:57

Monday morning. I'm ready to download, you know, so keep it going.

01:03:05

Well, we certainly will with the Christian podcast community, because I should do a quick look.

01:03:11

I'll give you all the podcasts that we have out there. I should give a shout out for all of them and the new ones that are there and coming.

01:03:20

So if I could spell correctly. What I also do, Andrew, is

01:03:26

I find I go on to Podbean and I find all of these podcasts, and what

01:03:33

I do is, because when I share, I've got a Christian group on my Facebook, and when

01:03:39

I share, if I share your podcast, like this podcast, and I share it, a lot of people on Android can't open it.

01:03:51

Well, okay, so here's the thing. Yeah, there's some who have that. The podcast you'll see on Christian podcast community, we put on Android.

01:04:01

We put it everywhere we can. And I just gave you the link to the whole list.

01:04:07

But we have Andrew Rapport's rap report. We have the rap report daily. What's going to be coming soon after Justin and I return from the

01:04:15

Philippines is Didakay with Justin Peters. I've been waiting for that as well.

01:04:20

I know, so have I. But he and I are leaving next week for the

01:04:26

Philippines. We'll be there for two weeks. I'm bringing my equipment with me to make sure he's recording.

01:04:32

He's like, oh, I'm waiting for the intro. No one cares if you don't have a good intro. That is true, that is true.

01:04:40

Yeah, we have Theology Gals with Coleen Sharp and Angela Whitehorn. Apologetics Live with Matt and I.

01:04:48

So You Want to Be a Podcaster is with Coleen Sharp and myself. Uh -huh. Five Solas Podcast.

01:04:55

That one is an excellent one with James Watkins. He just started, does a great job. The two new additions are

01:05:02

Blue Stocking Baptists. So we have the Theology Gals or the Presbyterians. These are the Baptists. So we have to be balanced there.

01:05:10

And we just added Are You Just Watching? For those people who like to watch Hollywood movies. Well, not just Hollywood movies, but like movies.

01:05:17

They're once a month and they just give a review of the different movies that are out there.

01:05:23

And so those are the current ones. And we got a couple. We have two or three more that are going to be added very shortly to that list.

01:05:33

Andrew and Eli, one of the things that I have learned in the last two years, listening to all of you guys and so forth,

01:05:40

I've learned this. Don't judge a Christian by their denomination.

01:05:47

Example, a Presbyterian or whatever. Judge them by their theology. Yeah. I mean, like Matt's a

01:05:55

Presbyterian, but he's not wrong because of that. He's wrong because he's just wrong. See, wherever he disagrees with me, he's wrong.

01:06:04

That's all. You're not going to drag me into this. Oh, I think anybody that listens to this show knows that Matt and I don't agree completely in our theology.

01:06:18

Well, well, more than just Presbyterian versus Baptist. No, no, true.

01:06:24

But you guys are brothers in Christ and the way you handle all of that is an absolute treasure because for me, it taught me how to handle these things.

01:06:37

It taught me that, hey, listen, I need to look because when I came out of the Catholic Church said that we are the only ones, there's no one else.

01:06:45

And then I went into the Pentecostal Church and the one that I was at. It said, hey, we are the only ones.

01:06:52

There's no one else. So from what I learned from you guys is that, wait a minute.

01:06:59

What's your theology? Do we agree on the fundamentals in truth?

01:07:07

You know, and that's where for me, the brain started to tick.

01:07:12

And I started to go, well, wait a minute. I need to change a lot of things.

01:07:17

I need to renew my mind on a lot of things that I thought I was right on.

01:07:25

Well, you know, it was very interesting. A couple of years ago, Matt and I were, we often go to conferences and debate each other because people are less, it's informative, but they want to see the way he and I debate one another because we care for one another, but we disagree with each other and we disagree and still can remain friends.

01:07:43

Someone asked him at one of the conferences, how it is that Matt and I can remain friends when we have so many differences theologically.

01:07:51

And I think Matt's answer was very insightful. Matt said, because both Andrew and I know that we're wrong in our theology somewhere.

01:08:02

And I said, that's right. We don't know where it is. If we knew, we would change it.

01:08:07

But we both acknowledge that there's areas we're not going to be perfect in our theology, this side of heaven.

01:08:14

And I think that's why he and I can disagree. And it's like an iron sharpening iron type of relationship because we'll discuss things.

01:08:24

I mean, off air, I know Eli, you do this too, right? And sometimes we'll even argue a position we don't believe just to sharpen one another's arguments and strengthen it.

01:08:38

Andrew, I actually was invited at a Reformed Baptist church to argue for Molinism.

01:08:45

So I was in a room filled with Reformed Baptists and a bunch of guys who were preparing to go to a conference where Molinism would be discussed.

01:08:54

And I had to defend Molinism against a room full of Calvinists. And I'm a Calvinist. In that situation,

01:09:00

I had an opportunity to defend a view I didn't hold. And we kind of had a really interesting discussion. If you're going to debate an issue, you should be able to do it.

01:09:09

I had when I used to work at Lucent Technologies after Bell Labs got split off and became that, there was an atheist that had a

01:09:18

TV show, a local TV show, and he wanted to debate me on his show. And I said to him,

01:09:23

I'll be happy to debate you, but here's the premise of the debate. There's two things I want. He's like, what are they? I said,

01:09:28

I want you to debate Christianity. I'll debate atheism. And then I want you to bring 10 people, 10 people whose lives were radically changed for the better because of their belief in atheism.

01:09:42

And I'll bring hundreds whose lives were changed for the better because of Christianity.

01:09:48

He wouldn't do it for the first premise. He goes, I couldn't argue for Christianity. I said, why not? Don't you understand what it is you argue against?

01:09:55

I said, because that's what I'm going to put on display. I'm going to display you know nothing about Christianity, which you attack all the time.

01:10:02

Good point, you know, where I would fairly, I mean, the end result would be, I would be able to end it and say, now folks, here you have someone that totally misrepresented

01:10:11

Christianity, but you won't hear that claim. He's not going to make that claim with me. Why? Because I won't, I don't need to misrepresent the other positions.

01:10:18

It's the whole thing I did with the book. What do they believe? I took other people's views and argued it without misrepresenting the position.

01:10:25

If I think that my arguments are so weak that I have to misrepresent someone else's, then

01:10:34

I should change my argument, right? I mean, we should be able to fairly represent the other person's view and then be able to address the issue that we have with it without misrepresenting them.

01:10:48

Because if you have to misrepresent them, then maybe your argument's not so good. And that's what

01:10:53

I tell people all the time. When they misrepresent me, I thank them. I've done that sometimes here.

01:11:00

I just thank people and they look at me like, why are you thanking me? Because you just conceded the argument. You don't have an argument.

01:11:08

Yeah, yeah, yeah. There's been, because now, because I feel with, because I have embraced expository preaching and I've embraced a lot of you guys and a lot of preachers that actually do that, because you learn so much, you learn so much.

01:11:32

And what it does, it just breeds a seed inside of you, a hunger to know more and more and more.

01:11:42

So your week is a week of growth. And I find that when you guys do this, when you really hold into scripture, you got to be humble enough to turn around to yourself and go, hey,

01:11:59

I don't know everything. I need to go and study so that if I come against this guy again,

01:12:06

I will have some ammunition. I'll be able to answer them or I'll be able to even argue for them.

01:12:14

Well, when Matt will do debates against Matt Delahunty, any of these guys, there's times,

01:12:23

I'm sure Eli, you've probably done this as well, but I'll take a Matt Delahunty's position and argue with Matt to help him in debate prep.

01:12:31

It helps you to strengthen your arguments if you know the arguments well enough. So I end up taking a

01:12:36

Matt Delahunty position, try to argue it. And it helps. The one person

01:12:41

I hate doing that with is Sy Tembrunke. I hate taking the opposite side with Sy because he's just so good that it's like within a few minutes, you're like, just stop already.

01:12:56

I started to watch some of his YouTube videos and I listened to him talk at one of the conferences they were asking him questions.

01:13:10

And I thought, wow, this guy is so blunt, but truthful, but he makes you think.

01:13:20

And did you know what, Andrew? I did. I gave another fellow Christian that advice because this guy was talking to his brother and his brother was just, oh, that Christian blah, blah, blah.

01:13:32

And I said to him, why don't you just turn around to him and just say, listen, reason why you don't want to be a

01:13:37

Christian is because you're too gutless. And you like the filth that you are living in.

01:13:48

You're just a pig in mud. And he said, you know what, that's something that would really hit him.

01:13:57

And when I was saying that, I thought, I hope I'm not going to destroy this man in any way.

01:14:04

But it registered to me that, yeah, some people, you just got to be straight up.

01:14:11

Yeah, you know, this is where we're all gifted differently. Cy is just, there is no beating around the bush with him.

01:14:21

And it's, he's, but you know, the thing I always love about him, he has such a high view of God. You know, if you watched a film he did on How to Answer a

01:14:30

Fool, one of the things I everybody, the thing that so many people tell me they appreciate about is when he was in on that TV show with Eric, and he just got up and left because he said he wasn't going to sit there and let them, you know, talk bad about his

01:14:46

God. You know, this is someone he loves. And he, you know, that high view of God that he has is what motivates him.

01:14:52

Let me give a quick shout out real quick, because FullBellyBear gave another $4 .99. And this one's going to take some explaining.

01:14:59

He said, shout out to quote whoever unquote wrote chapter 17 in the book, sharing the good news with Mormons.

01:15:07

I don't know many Mormons, but I love that chapter. He's referring to a book that was written by several, about 20 different authors,

01:15:15

Matt Slick being one, myself being one, and he refers to chapter 17, which is a chapter on open air evangelism, which was written by myself.

01:15:25

And so I do appreciate that, FullBellyBear. And don't forget to go out to strivingfortraining .org

01:15:32

slash donate and send some funds that way as well, folks. We would greatly appreciate it. I should announce for folks,

01:15:39

I told some people about this earlier this week, and we put it in our newsletter. If you don't get our newsletter, you can go to strivingfortraining .org

01:15:46

and sign up for the newsletter there. But we're going, both Justin Peters and myself, we are going to the

01:15:52

Philippines to address issues. We'll be doing a pastor's conferences. We got a pastor's conference we're going to deal with on church discipline.

01:16:00

Justin will deal with the topic of child conversion, childhood conversion. I will then do a seminar on open air evangelism, which is what chapter 17 and sharing the good news with Mormonism is about, is open air evangelism.

01:16:13

I'll be doing that, and then Justin and I will be leading some teams out on the streets to evangelize. Then Justin and I will be dealing with both in Manila and Cebu.

01:16:22

We'll be at a discernment conference. And the agreement that both of us have with this church, the churches,

01:16:28

I should say, is once we land in the Philippines, they will take care of everything for us.

01:16:35

It's just not getting there. And Justin and I have both committed because the need is so great with the

01:16:41

NAR that's there and some of the churches are starting to work with the Catholics now. We've agreed that we're going out there.

01:16:47

Regardless. And so both of us, tickets are about to get there and back.

01:16:53

We're $2 ,400 each. We've to date at Striving for Training, I think raised about $850 of it.

01:17:01

So we have our monthly supporters that allow us to do these things. But the more monthly supporters we get, the more of these sort of things we could do.

01:17:11

We did get an invitation last week to go to Africa, and we have one to go to the

01:17:16

Baltics. To deal with the NAR issue. And we would like to do those things, but we can only do them if the funds are there.

01:17:24

So if folks want to go to strivingfortraining .org slash donate, and there's if you go to the

01:17:30

Patreon, it'll explain the different gifts that you can get. We give those gifts whether you pay through Patreon or PayPal.

01:17:38

But on the Patreon link, we'll show you the different whether you give $2 a month, you get what do we believe $5 a month you get.

01:17:45

What do they believe and what do we believe? We add for I think it's $10 a month.

01:17:50

We add the Dr. Sebester's book on the origin of kinds. And then for $20 a month, we add the book that we were just talking about sharing the good news with Mormons.

01:17:59

So which, you know, each of those are $15 to $20 a piece. So getting all four for just $20 a month, we get those after a little bit.

01:18:08

But that's what helps us be able to go out to these places and do some of these things. So, you know, same with Justin.

01:18:16

I don't know how much he raised for the trip. You can go to justinpeters .org to donate to him and help him get out to these different places.

01:18:23

He just got back from the Ukraine, I think like two weeks ago. I mean, it's like, if it was me,

01:18:30

I would have put these together and just said, I'll fly from the Ukraine to the Philippines and not come home and turn around and go right back out.

01:18:39

He's a madman. Yeah. Yeah. Andrew, one of the things that I learned from Satan, Brig and Gate, you don't put my

01:18:51

God on trial. That's right. And that's because of his high view of God.

01:18:57

Yeah, yeah, yeah. So, guys, look, I must say I must go because I think

01:19:04

I'm hogging the whole show. Thank you so much. Thank you for your time. I didn't think

01:19:09

I would have had the opportunity to talk as long. And well, you know, there's there's not too many.

01:19:16

We're going to, you know, I added John in, but he's a regular. Andrew here, who's also here is a regular.

01:19:22

Yeah. John's not important. Although I added Andrew before you go, because Andrew also let me make sure his volume is up.

01:19:30

Yeah. Let me check that. OK, so Andrew is also an Aussie. I'm sorry,

01:19:36

Andrew. I've heard of I've heard you.

01:19:41

You ask a few questions and I've gone, wow, that's that's that's awesome. That's that's something that I would have asked.

01:19:48

So, you know, thank you for standing up for us Aussies, Andrew. Yeah, yeah.

01:19:55

Severity. OK, so now here's a question out of curiosity, because this would be really funny if we find out you guys live like a mile from each other and you met on a show based out of New Jersey.

01:20:06

So roughly generally where each of you live, see how close you are from one another.

01:20:13

I'm in Sydney. I live on I live in in Sydney, but I'm on I'm on the on the central coast, which is the coastline area of Sydney, probably about an hour out of Sydney City.

01:20:25

So, yeah. Sorry. Gosford or Wyoming.

01:20:32

Yeah, Gosford. I used to live in Wyoming. It's away from me.

01:20:40

OK, where are you now, Andrew? I'm in Brisbane, so I'm nine hours drive north.

01:20:46

OK, but you guys used to live near each other because for folks, folks who don't know, Australia is about the size of the

01:20:52

United States, maybe a little bit larger. So give some perspective. Yeah, like I said, it's a nine hour drive northbound for him or southbound for me.

01:21:05

Yeah, but the thing is, though, Andrew, is this is that Australia is about the size of the

01:21:10

United States and it's only got the population of New York and New Jersey combined. Yeah, yeah.

01:21:19

What's the rest of what's the rest of Australia? Why is there no one else there? Well, hey, if you really if you really want to see condensed, my wife is from Hong Kong.

01:21:31

Hong Kong is about the size of New Jersey. New Jersey is like the fifth smallest state in the US. Hong Kong is about the size of New Jersey, a little bit smaller and has,

01:21:42

I think, more people. I forget now how it was. I think it's more people than New York, Texas and California combined.

01:21:51

It's something like that. I mean, it's super dense. So, yeah, that's that's a little bit much.

01:22:00

Well, as long as they don't live down in Ipswich. What's that, John? As long as they don't live down in Ipswich.

01:22:07

I heard that's like the the forbidden city in Australia, I guess. A lot of people don't like Ipswich. Woodridge is the place.

01:22:14

Woodridge would be the place you don't want to live. Okay. My parents live in Logan, which is pretty much just stone's throw from it, depending on which way you go.

01:22:28

But there are good parts and good and bad parts of just about every suburb. But Woodridge seems to have the bad.

01:22:35

I've got a couple of properties in Logan, Andrew, and I've got relatives that have lived there for over 30 years.

01:22:41

So I know Logan very well. Yeah, Woodridge, you would know that. I don't think it's changed much.

01:22:48

No, it hasn't. I got married, I got divorced, so sad story.

01:22:55

I shifted from South to North Brisbane. But when I was in Sydney, I was born in Sydney itself.

01:23:02

I lived there till I was two, where we moved to Wyoming. When we got out of Wyoming, we went to Kellyville.

01:23:08

From Kellyville, we went to Brisbane. Ah, there you go. Now, this is the thing for both of you.

01:23:16

You guys got to find a way to get some churches to invite me to come out to Australia. It's the one place

01:23:21

I've always wanted to go. So, you know, work on that. Work on that. I will,

01:23:27

Andrew. I will. That would be great. It's one place I'd love to go.

01:23:33

Yeah, yeah. Yeah, no, good. We would love to have you. You'd be welcome.

01:23:40

I think Ashcroft could host you. It's big enough. Yeah, yeah.

01:23:48

Actually, I might send you a link, Andrew, when I get a chance of a church here that I think would benefit greatly from you.

01:23:57

So, yeah, I'll try and tee that up. All right, that'd be neat.

01:24:02

All right, so I also added

01:24:08

Cody, if you wanted to unmute yourself at all. So we got about, look at the time, about 30 minutes left.

01:24:14

I'm not going to be able to do what I had originally planned. I'm going to give the link one more time for anyone who wants that's in the chat.

01:24:24

Since my audio wasn't working, I wanted to play a video that Eli and I were going to respond to, and Eli didn't watch it yet.

01:24:32

So he's not going to be able to respond at all. But there was actually, which

01:24:37

I don't recommend, Christian Broadcast Network, but on that network, they had a

01:24:43

Muslim imam that was discussing terrorism of Muslims.

01:24:49

And he was warning, which just blew me away listening to this. He was warning the world and specifically a

01:24:56

Christian saying, we've been warning you Christians about these radical Muslims. Yes, we had that here last week or the week before.

01:25:08

One of the current affairs shows actually, yeah, they had it on.

01:25:15

I actually posted it on Facebook. I'm not too sure if I'm on your Facebook as well,

01:25:20

Andrew. So, you know, but yes, he's been and it's not just him. There's about four or five others that have been sending out the alarm bells and have said openly have said, if we are warning you, then you are in trouble.

01:25:37

Yeah, well, you know, a lot of people may not even understand why the Muslim community doesn't say anything.

01:25:47

And because if you look within Christianity, right, when we get some wacko that does something and says he's a

01:25:54

Christian, we're very quick to say, no, no, no, no. Here's what a Christian is. This guy, you know, like we had the guy in Christchurch, New Zealand, or this recent at the synagogue and the media is like, oh, they're

01:26:06

Christian. They're Christian. And it's the Christians are saying, wait, look at what the guy says. He's not

01:26:11

Christian, you know, just because someone attends church doesn't make them a Christian, you know. So you look at that and we're quick to call that out.

01:26:21

And so sometimes we have a hard time understanding why the Muslims don't. The reason is, is for certain

01:26:27

Muslims, you know, keep in mind when it comes to Islam, the Quran, they all hold to, but the

01:26:33

Hadiths, they don't. There's difference. There's differences that they're going to hold to in those writings after the

01:26:40

Quran. So based on that, depending which ones they hold to, what you end up seeing is that there is basically a part in one of them that says that if you basically question another

01:26:57

Muslim, whether you question his Islam, whether you question him being a Muslim, what you're doing is revealing that you're not one.

01:27:05

Now, in a Sharia state where the Sharia law is the law, in a

01:27:13

Sharia state, if you leave Islam, if you convert to something other than Islam, you can be killed.

01:27:21

So if I question, if I'm a Muslim and I question another Muslim's faith, then

01:27:26

I'm calling myself out as an unbeliever, which now means someone could kill me for leaving

01:27:32

Islam. Yeah. You see, so that kind of is going to keep people from speaking out against the ills that they see.

01:27:42

Sure. For sure. For sure. We see your wife there behind you.

01:27:52

You didn't warn her that she could be in camera view, huh? Yeah, and she's on world view too.

01:27:59

My wife's from Russia and her father is a Baptist, is a minister as well.

01:28:07

So we are on the same page on a lot of things, Andrew. I'm also an evangelical

01:28:12

Christian. I'm also an evangelical Christian Baptist. She doesn't like to be called Baptist. Yeah.

01:28:19

Well, my family, I have a grandmother and a grandfather that's Russian, but Russian Jewish.

01:28:26

Yeah. No, good. Good. Anyway, guys, thank you so much. I have to run. Been an absolute pleasure.

01:28:33

You're welcome to come back anytime, Mark. We really appreciate you coming on. Anytime we can answer any questions.

01:28:39

Thank you so much, guys. Bless you. All right. So Andrew, Cody or John, you have any questions for Eli and I?

01:28:49

Not a question, more of a statement, really. You were talking about the Muslims before and true twist of fate.

01:28:58

My parents had a young guy who came out on the boats when the boats were coming out to Australia from Sri Lanka.

01:29:07

He went back to Sri Lanka because he lost his appeal to stay. And he was at the third church that was targeted in the recent attacks.

01:29:19

Wow. And he got away just before the bomb, I think. So, yeah,

01:29:26

I have a special hatred. So he was there but had escaped beforehand?

01:29:37

Yeah, he was at the church. He hadn't gone back to that church for a long time, but he went back to the church.

01:29:43

And on that day, he left the church and then the guy came in and he had some sob story about a daughter that didn't exist.

01:29:51

And he carried a briefcase in and that was the bomb. Wow. Yeah, you know, let me check the date.

01:30:01

June, what day is that posting? No, May 26th. Being that I'm headed to the

01:30:07

Philippines, I actually had to have all of my podcasts for May all scheduled up.

01:30:13

So I have a whole bunch of them. On May 26th, you're going to hear an interview with me.

01:30:20

I was on the Reboots podcast and you'll get to hear how I got saved.

01:30:26

And I have a similar type story. I was 20 minutes after leaving a McDonald's and a guy had shot up the place.

01:30:35

And so we had just left shortly before. That was an event that actually, it was several days after that, that I ended up getting saved.

01:30:45

But that had to play into it. But yeah. He'd been saved before.

01:30:51

He was saved before when he came. In my case, that helped me realize how short life could be.

01:31:01

You know, you're going to live till you're 80. You know, you don't even think about death.

01:31:06

But when you almost die there, you know, now Mark has someone else and his wife is on camera.

01:31:13

Okay. She was walking behind him. So obviously his wife is not like Matt's wife and my wife.

01:31:23

You know, you wouldn't see my wife. Actually, my wife never even enters this room when we're on camera.

01:31:30

It's true. Hey, Andrew. Yes, sir. My audio is not real good.

01:31:37

So I'll just ask and then mute and you guys just talk it out. I'd like to hear you and Eli's thoughts.

01:31:43

I messaged you since you got your whole podcast schedule done. How would you guys go about introducing the topic of what's going on currently regarding the social justice movement inside evangelicalism to your pastor, who is theologically sound and, you know, but is just unaware this is going on and that I've seen little flashes here and there of some egalitarian type stuff entering the church.

01:32:13

And I just, not through him, but just, you know, in conversations with other.

01:32:19

How would you go about like, it seems like every time I talk about social justice stuff, like it's, you can't,

01:32:26

I don't know how to talk about it to someone who's not up on it, I guess, in regards to what we're seeing, you know, in the

01:32:35

FTC and stuff like that. How would you go about introducing that just at a starting level to them?

01:32:42

Yeah, and I'll say this as well next week when I'm not here, when Dr. Silvestro is here, come in and ask him that as well.

01:32:50

And I'll tell you why. When we were at the Shepherds Conference, if you listen to the Shepherds Conference Q &A, that obviously became an issue.

01:32:57

And a lot of people were, as pastors, were clueless of what the issues were. Anthony had some good conversations with different pastors that he was just with, and he had told me about.

01:33:09

And so he was bringing them up to speed with the issues. So he may have some good insights as well.

01:33:15

I'll give real quick my thoughts and then I'll let Eli give his. But I think the thing you have to do is help them to see what the issues are.

01:33:22

And the issues are not as clear, because when you see some of the guys that are not completely on board with, for example, the statement of social justice in the gospel, what you see is you see some people who they're looking at this and saying, we have people who are feeling that they're being wronged, and we want to help them to right that.

01:33:53

And that sounds good. The issue that you see, though, is they don't always see where this is going, because it's a much larger issue than just trying to be fair.

01:34:08

I mean, we want to be fair, but this is not always about being fair.

01:34:14

There's a political agenda behind this whole thing, and that's the part that most people don't want to see.

01:34:22

And that's the part that we kind of have to help them with. So you brought up the issue of women's role in the church, and you might have a conservative pastor, but that's usually where it starts, is there.

01:34:36

Typically in the past, that's where it started. Now, I think that starting point of the liberalizing of a church is not starting with the women's role anymore, but it's starting with the racism.

01:34:49

But what's behind both of those very quickly is that of homosexuality and accepting of homosexuality.

01:34:56

And so, you know, it would be a thing where, you know, actually, I'm just seeing what

01:35:02

John is pasting in the comments, and I agree with him. Have your pastor listen to Daryl Harrison and Virgil Walker on their

01:35:10

Just Thinking podcast, and if Mark's still listening, you should definitely get Just Thinking podcast.

01:35:18

In fact, at the Christian podcast community, we have awards at the end of the year of the best podcast for the previous year, and Just Thinking was the overall winner of the best

01:35:30

Christian podcast for 2018. It's excellent material, and it would help your pastor to see just what some of the issues are, and it's from two

01:35:41

African Americans, so it's not two guys that are white that are bashing on blacks.

01:35:48

It's guys who are saying what's wrong within their own community. So that may be a little bit more helpful.

01:35:55

Another one, and I'm just going to look up the name, because I think he changed name from prescribing to prescribed or vice versa,

01:36:02

I think it's Prescribed Truth or Prescribing Truth. Give me one second to find it.

01:36:09

I'll tell you, this is probably something that would happen in a sit -down, 30 -minute kind of conversation scenario to somebody that's really just introductory -level oblivious.

01:36:22

Yeah. Well, see, the thing is that they're oblivious, and it's Prescribing Truth podcast.

01:36:29

Both of those are going to—what it is is give them that and let them see what the issues are.

01:36:35

So the resources you could give, those would be two podcasts where you could give them some things to think about and listen to.

01:36:42

You can give them the link to the Social Justice and the Gospel. I think it's Social Justice—now I've got to look it up—Statement on Social Justice.

01:36:52

Ah, I've got to look this up. Um, if any of you guys remember what the Statement on Social Justice and the

01:36:59

Gospel is offhand, just shout it out. So, okay, it's

01:37:06

Statement on Social Justice dot com. You could give him just the link on Statement on Social Justice dot com, and it goes through all the affirmings and denyings.

01:37:19

I mean, there's over 11 ,000 people that sign that now, and you could look it there and see, you know, as some quick things.

01:37:30

Now, if you're in a five -minute conversation with your pastor, what do I do? What do I say? Really, I would ask—I would address the issue of justice.

01:37:41

Is it God's justice? Are we trying to have some human justice that we're trying to force upon others where they're not really responsible?

01:37:52

Because that's really the issue, is the justice that is trying to be forced upon people, and the issue of God's sovereignty.

01:38:02

I mean, that's where I would end up starting. Because the real issue where it affects the gospel is when people start saying that the gospel is not enough, and we need social justice.

01:38:16

We need to right wrongs of the past. We need to have liberation. It's really what is called

01:38:21

Black liberation theology. Or, you know, sometimes it's some—you know, you see it in different forms, same thinking with feminist liberation theology, but it's liberation theology that you're seeing.

01:38:33

And if you word it as liberation theology, a lot of pastors may know that and immediately know what's wrong with it, but not see that this is that same thing slipping its way in.

01:38:43

So, Eli, what would be your thoughts? Well, I guess trying to inform someone who's completely oblivious to something.

01:38:50

I mean, you said that the pastor in question is grounded in solid theology.

01:38:56

I think in a very simplistic way is to first be able to identify the specific trends that you see that is troubling within the church, and then bring it to the pastor in such a way that the conversation is framed with bringing things back to the standard of Scripture.

01:39:14

So as a concerned congregant, you say something to the effect of, hey, you know, I know that this church values the

01:39:20

Word of God. I know you as a pastor value the Word of God, and I see very troubling trends that I wanted to kind of discuss with you.

01:39:26

I know that you might not be familiar with this stuff, but hey, what do you think about this, this, this? And you clearly identify those specific trends that you think are kind of veering off and see what your pastor thinks about.

01:39:38

Maybe he will get the force of what you're saying when he realizes that the specific things that you are identifying, he hasn't really recognized before, and he notices that they're actually way outside the bounds of Scripture.

01:39:48

And I think that's one way you can kind of open the door to bring some of the seriousness of this topic to his attention, which would hopefully encourage further conversation or more investigation privately within his own research and studies.

01:40:01

You know, one of the things— You sound just like Greg Kokel, dude.

01:40:06

You're so, like, direct and disarming and just kind of— Hey, hey, you know,

01:40:15

I know Greg. Don't insult Greg that way. Andrew is militant and confrontational.

01:40:23

Oh, wow! So, you know, another thing you could do, depending on the pastor, and, you know, here's one thing you could do, and I know that I've done this with a pastor.

01:40:37

I just pulled up the page statement on socialjustice .com. And what you could do, as I did with one local pastor here, that was like, well,

01:40:46

I don't really see this as a big issue. And so I said, well, here's a statement that has a bunch of affirmations and denials.

01:40:53

I said, you should check it out. And he was like, I don't have time for statements and things. So it's a big enough issue that here's some of the people that were the initial signers of this.

01:41:02

John MacArthur, Votie Bauckham, Phil Johnson, James White, Tom Askell, Josh Bice, Justin Peters, Tom Buck, right?

01:41:12

I just listed names like that and said, these are not men of, you know, ill repute or something.

01:41:19

These are guys we look up to. And as you go through that list, and then you can see that, you know, those were the initial guys that were at the initial meeting in Texas.

01:41:29

And then there were those of us who were involved with it. Some were involved early on, and some of them are like, you know,

01:41:37

R .C. Sproul's wife has signed on, Douglas Wilson, myself.

01:41:44

I'm just trying to look at some of the names that are on that second stage. Allie Stuckey, if you're familiar with the

01:41:53

Relatable podcast, Tony Costa. I mean, these are men and women who are, you know, respected people.

01:42:03

So, if they're behind this, maybe that gives them something to say, well, gee, if John MacArthur is backing it, maybe

01:42:10

I should look into that. Might be another way you can go. Also, there's a great sermon that Phil Johnson just did.

01:42:22

It's on his podcast feed, and it's actually really good.

01:42:29

It's called Worthless Virtue. And he really does discuss a lot about the whole thing about the social justice movement and all.

01:42:39

And you should check it out. I think it's his latest sermon that he just did. Yeah, maybe drop the link in here as well,

01:42:51

John, if you have it, and we'll drop that out. What were you saying,

01:42:57

Cody? I was going to say, I'd like to issue a challenge to Dr.

01:43:04

Flowers and those that run in his camp. If you're going to address

01:43:11

Calvinism, this social justice issue seems to be a predominantly in the

01:43:20

Calvinistic community of the SBC, and it's kind of where it's devised. I want to challenge

01:43:25

Dr. Flowers and his crew, who are noticeably silent on the issue, to weigh in on it.

01:43:33

I'll have a lot more respect if you have an opinion about this, because it appears to me it seems like that side of the

01:43:44

SBC is waiting for the Calvinists to cannibalize themselves. So I just wanted to issue that.

01:43:51

So you're issuing a formal declaration for Dr. Flowers, who we know he listens to this show.

01:44:02

You'd like him to formally come out and take a position on the issue of social justice?

01:44:12

Yeah, and it doesn't have to be one side or the other. I would just like to hear his thoughts about it, because I haven't heard anything from that camp, and I'm interested in hearing it.

01:44:25

All right, so here's what we'll do right now. I am texting

01:44:31

Leighton Flowers right now, and letting him know that Cody would like him to come on to Apologetics Live and give an answer of...

01:44:45

Yeah, who am I? You're the man.

01:44:51

Wait, are you saying someone doesn't know who Cody Robbins is?

01:44:57

I mean, wait. Yeah, I know, right? Does Matt Slick know who you are yet? I think he just now knows, after several years and thousands of conversations, he's getting it.

01:45:09

Okay, for people to get this backstory, Cody, we met in Dallas, Texas, when

01:45:14

Matt was having the debates with David Smalley and Matt Dillahunty.

01:45:21

How many times did you have to reintroduce yourself to Matt Slick? Since then? And that was two years ago?

01:45:27

No, start with just that weekend. Oh, no, it was just... Okay, so how many times since then have you reintroduced yourself to Matt and had to explain who you are?

01:45:40

Virtually every time. I have a list that I run through of all the different ways that he might remember me, and then it usually comes to him, but it's an exhausting process.

01:45:51

See the cross on his picture there? Cody made that and sent it to Matt, and Matt still doesn't know who this guy is.

01:46:00

Oh, that's right. You sent him a big cross, and he still doesn't know. That's right. Because you had said that,

01:46:06

I'm the guy that sent you that cross. That's why that's my profile.

01:46:12

That's simply the only way I can remind him.

01:46:18

Okay, so we got 10 minutes left. Let me bring Charlie Spine in. Charlie, if you want to unmute, please make sure that your volume's up.

01:46:29

So Charlie could vouch if he comes in. Matt, in some areas of his life, has a memory that will blow you away.

01:46:39

He can remember details of church history and heresies. I mean, so many things. You're like, how does he remember all this?

01:46:47

And then it comes to meeting someone like Cody, and it's like the brain of a goldfish.

01:46:57

The memory of a goldfish, like, hello, I just met you three seconds ago. Who are you again?

01:47:03

I can empathize. I was in a band that played around for a long time, so I had a lot of those kind of people.

01:47:09

I get it. I understand. I don't hold it against them. Oh, I do. I have that kind of memory, too.

01:47:15

Well, no, see, Cody, have you ever heard what happened that time

01:47:23

Matt first met Josh? And you know Josh. Oh, yeah.

01:47:28

Okay, so I mean, here we're at DC for the

01:47:34

Reason Rally. Josh lives in that area. Josh set up a place where we can all meet to have sushi.

01:47:42

Now, first off, for the record, Josh was super excited. He would follow Matt and I, and he had these blown out of proportion views of both

01:47:50

Matt and I. He thought of us as these really serious -minded guys who are always just doing nothing but talking scripture.

01:48:00

Wow, he must have been disappointed. Oh, yeah, it was a rude awakening. As we're sitting at sushi, it was—I'm trying to remember who else was there—someone from Texas, and I can't remember his name, but basically, we just completely—it was like a rip -fest, and Josh was like, oh, just in horror.

01:48:20

But literally, five times in the course of about an hour, five times,

01:48:28

Matt asked me, so who—at first, it was, who are you waiting for? Josh.

01:48:33

Who's Josh? I explain it. Ten minutes later, 20 minutes later, so who are you waiting for? Josh. Josh who?

01:48:40

I explain it. Then we're sitting, he meets Josh. He's like, so who are you? Josh now explains it.

01:48:47

We're sitting, we're now at the table halfway through, and Matt looks at me and says, so who's this guy again?

01:48:54

Dude, the memory of a goldfish. I just say my brain is full.

01:49:00

I can't remember, but it doesn't go over real well with my wife. Yeah, because you married her, and she doesn't want you thinking that you were empty -headed when marrying her.

01:49:13

No, no, whenever I can't—I can remember everything else in every single little conversation I have, but I can't on theology, whatever, but I can't remember what she told me about where she's going tomorrow or whatever, or that she did the dishes.

01:49:28

I can't ever remember that, or I need to do. Sometimes I forget who people are.

01:49:44

I do. I forget that all the time because just the sheer number of people I meet, if I meet them just once, it's hard for me to—I have to talk to a person a couple times or have something that gets me that memory, and so I understand that, but if I'm sitting at a table with someone, usually

01:50:01

I may forget their name, but I don't forget the context that quickly. No, no.

01:50:07

And unfortunately, Charlie must not be there. We could get Charlie to vouch for this, I'm sure.

01:50:14

But all right, we got about five minutes left, so—five or ten minutes left.

01:50:21

And any last questions from any of you guys? John, I should ask you, are you going to do an after show?

01:50:29

Yes, there's going to be an after show. I'll be posting the link here shortly, and yeah.

01:50:35

What channel is it on YouTube that I could direct people to because I never remember? Atomic Apologetics.

01:50:41

Okay, so you are going to do that one. Now I think about it, I meant to call you or send you a text earlier.

01:50:47

Um, any of you guys that are here, any of you guys listen to The Dividing Line?

01:50:54

Yes. Did you hear the shout -out to someone that's in this room?

01:51:00

Yes, James White called out John Wilkinson, Atomic John, I think is what he called you.

01:51:10

Yeah. Yeah. That's my

01:51:15

Twitter handle, atomiclujohn. Yeah, and he goes, that's an interesting name.

01:51:21

I wonder what that means. And yeah, there's a whole background story of that, but I don't want to bore you guys.

01:51:27

Yeah, well, it was fun. I mean, you got to remember, I listen at triple speed. So when

01:51:32

I heard that, I was like, wait, wait, what? Did he actually call out John? So I was like, okay,

01:51:39

I should back that up. Yep, he did. Yeah, it was quite shocking.

01:51:46

I was very at that. I do have a quick question for you.

01:51:51

Sure. Because I've listened to you guys talking about the charismatic gifts. Just a quick deal.

01:51:57

I mean, I love Justin Peters, but I hear him use this argument often that if somebody's saying they're prophesying now, that it should be in scripture.

01:52:10

What do you do with somebody who prophesies in, say, the book of Acts?

01:52:18

All right. Well, I think that what his argument may be may be a little bit, maybe not represented as well with that.

01:52:32

So the issue, he says, if someone is prophesying, it's equal in authority to scripture.

01:52:39

Right? So what he would say then is that if you're claiming that you're speaking

01:52:48

God's word, then you're making a claim that it's inspired because it's from God.

01:53:01

Now, not everything, because God clearly would prophesy things to be that we don't have written down, okay, because there's references to that.

01:53:12

So what we have to realize is that it would still, that prophecy, even if not written down, is equal in authority to scripture.

01:53:22

So I would say if someone has a true prophecy from God, then it's equal in authority to scripture.

01:53:30

Now, not all scripture is going to be, I mean, there's scriptures that were for the nation of Israel that wouldn't be applied to us today.

01:53:39

And so there are passages that apply to specific people, and I think there's prophecies that could be equal in authority to scripture because God said it, but it's not directed for everybody.

01:53:55

In other words, I don't believe that the black letters and the red letters have any difference in authority in scripture because God said them all.

01:54:04

It's the fact that God said them that made it authoritative. Not a church just saying, oh, we recognize these books.

01:54:12

That doesn't make it authoritative. It's because God spoke it. So I would say that if someone had a genuine prophecy today, it would be at equal in authority.

01:54:22

Must it be in scripture? I don't think it would have to be. I don't think that every prophecy that was ever prophesied was written down and in scripture.

01:54:35

But if it's a prophecy, then it's from God, and it's equal authority. And so that would be the way

01:54:41

I would end up addressing it and saying it. So I might not have as strong of a view as Justin does.

01:54:48

Okay. I mean, I lean your direction. I just didn't think that was a good argument, because when you start looking at, well, what do you do with the people that prophesied in early church that's not in scripture?

01:55:01

Yeah. You know, so I mean, I agree with Justin way more than I do

01:55:07

Matt Slick, but he and I don't agree on everything, you know? So I mean, there could be areas where he's wrong,

01:55:18

I doubt it, but, you know, it's probably me being wrong. So with that,

01:55:26

I'll close out the show. I know I'll put a link when John sends it to me for the after show that he usually hosts.

01:55:35

And that's more of a free -for -all type of discussion. They go after the show and discuss things.

01:55:41

But as I said earlier, this is a podcast that will be turned into a podcast shortly afterwards.

01:55:47

So if you want to go to Apologetics Live and listen to that, we mentioned several podcasts that are part of the

01:55:52

Christian Podcast Community. You could check them all out. It is a growing community. If you're interested in podcasting or you are a podcaster, and you are a

01:56:01

Christian, and you're on Facebook, I should say, you can go to the Christian Podcast Community and join our group.

01:56:09

If you don't get asked a bunch of questions when you join, you're in the wrong group, because there's a couple of ones with the same name.

01:56:16

But we are there to help disciple people in podcasting, help them to be better podcasters, both in quality and in content.

01:56:26

And so that's some things available to you. And just to let folks know, we do have

01:56:33

Ohio Fire that will be June 1st in the Cleveland area.

01:56:39

So if you're up in that area that Saturday, it will be Dr. Silvestro, Michael Coghlan, and Pastor Austin Hessler will be speaking.

01:56:48

And then afterwards, they're going to be going out and doing some evangelism. We just got the dates solidified for EquipJersey.

01:56:57

If you want to be part of the, I don't remember if I called that Ohio Fire or EquipOhio. We changed the name and I always do the old one.

01:57:05

But it's EquipOhio and EquipJersey. The second weekend in July, I think that's 12th and 13th, we'll do the

01:57:11

EquipJersey, where we'll do a similar thing. We train folks, then we go out and do some evangelism.

01:57:18

So those are some things that we have coming up with Striving Fraternity. Different speaking events.

01:57:24

I don't have Dr. Silvestro's going to a couple of churches in the Cleveland area.

01:57:30

I'm going to be speaking, but I don't have them offhand. So you can check him out on Facebook or join the

01:57:37

Striving Fraternity group on Facebook. He usually posts where he's going to be speaking there. And as I get them,

01:57:45

I usually will try to announce them on different podcasts. Be praying for Justin and I as we head out to the

01:57:52

Philippines. I head out to Dallas this weekend and I come back and I have one day before I leave.

01:57:59

For first, I'll be heading out to Idaho, which is where I'll meet up with Justin. I'll be preaching at his church.

01:58:07

And then he and I both head out to the Philippines. We'll be there for about two weeks. It's like 10 days, I believe, two weeks with all the different travel and whatnot.

01:58:17

But we'll be at the two different islands, Manila and Cebu, doing four different conferences and seminars.

01:58:25

So if you could be praying for us, praying for our wives who are behind and without us, so they would greatly covet your prayers.

01:58:37

And we just are grateful that you guys continue to come in. If you find some value in this show, let others know about it.

01:58:47

Let them know how it's helped you, that others would be listening, that others would be joining in, that others would come in, ask their questions.

01:58:54

Even some give challenges. And if you really find some value and want to help out, you can go to strivingfraternity .org

01:59:02

slash donate. You can give a one -time donation, give a monthly donation. Monthly donations do help us a little bit more because we have monthly bills to pay.

01:59:11

And it would be a way of showing support for the show. So we're grateful to be here. And next week, as I said, next three weeks, actually,

01:59:20

Dr. Silvestro will be here with Matt Slick. I'll try to join in. I'm sure Eli will join in, and you'll get some great minds there discussing things and answering your questions.

01:59:30

So check that out. And so until next time, remember to strive to make today an eternal day for the glory of God.