What Does the Thump Verdict Mean?

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00:10

I will tell you things that make you so angry with me. If you've got a cramp in your leg, you don't need somebody to tell you, hey man,

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I didn't see it on the x -ray, so I think you're lying about this leg cramp. No. And so this is what's so abusive about this crowd of people is that's exactly what they're doing to the person.

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They're gaslighting people with real impairments and telling them that they don't have them, they're not trusting them, they're not loving that person, they're not believing that person, they're not assuming the best about that person.

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They treat them like these guys are treating me. They treat them like liars. They gaslight them into thinking they're in sin when they're not.

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This is Apologetics Live. To answer your questions, your host from Striving for Eternity Ministries, Andrew Rappaport.

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We are live, Apologetics Live, here to answer your most challenging questions you have about God and the

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Bible. We can answer them here. No matter how difficult the question, we can answer it.

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And you say, really? Well, if you don't believe me, take the challenge. And if you ask me a really, really difficult question,

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I might just say, I don't know. And that's a perfectly good answer. Just remember that. All right, so we are here for another

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Apologetics Live. We're gonna be joined in a little bit by Aaron Brewster, who's gonna talk with us about his men's retreat he was on with men's discipleship.

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We're gonna get into that topic. We're gonna answer your questions. So if you wanna go to ApologeticsLive .com, you could join us and engage with any questions that you have or challenges maybe you want to do.

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Is that person you heard in the intro? He was on last week. That was his response, a short he did in response to us, because we just mistreated him and gaslighted him so much.

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Yeah, we'll talk about that in a moment. So want to, well,

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I should introduce myself. I'm Andrew Rapworth, the host here at Apologetics Live, executive director of Striving for Eternity and the

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Christian Podcast Community, of which this podcast is a proud member. So if you want to join us, just go to strivingforeternity .org,

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strivingforeternity .org. That's where you can find all the things about us, podcasts, my books, all of that.

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If you wanna schedule one of us as a speaker, you can go there. We now have two

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ACBC counselors as speakers. So if you're wanting something along the lines of counseling, we have two speakers that would be able to help.

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So with that, I wanna start off with, well, a couple of things just in our, just to bring up for you guys.

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I do want to, I gotta look for someone's text. He sent me a text and I asked whether I could share this with y 'all.

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But after last week's show, I got this text message.

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Got a number of actually interesting messages. People thought that we had a lot of patience with Mark, that we were, people thought that we should have hung up on him a lot sooner.

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You'll see that with this one. This is from a friend. He said, I just finished listening to last

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Thursday's Apologetics Live, all three and a half hours of it. I ran out.

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He said, you did better than I would have. I ran out of patience about an hour before you did.

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And my lack of patience caused me on more than one occasion to blurt out my response to the compatible individual out loud to no one while I was delivering mail.

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And I was only a passive listener.

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The individual was more difficult to listen to than any other guest you've had on, except for the guy that was arguing for baptismal regeneration, the blah, blah, blah, blah, blah guy.

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So to you, Andrew, I salute you. Salute you and say bravo.

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So yeah, so we did have a number of people. I'm gonna get to some other feedback with that in a bit.

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Actually, I could just do it now since we have it. So I wanted to post what his response on the video that he said.

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Well, actually, I'm gonna wait. I'm gonna go off because I'll wait till Aaron gets here because it doesn't mention

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Aaron. So I'll switch gears. And before I get to in the news section, what I wanna do is just address,

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I know there was some talk we've had with that guy, Anthony, who came in some time ago and we talked about, he tried to justify the, and I'm just looking at Melissa's asking, they just found

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Trump guilty of hush money. I wonder what he'll be charged with. I'm gonna get to that in the news section.

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I actually plan to get to it anyway, but now that we have the guilty verdict, we'll talk about that a bit.

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So Anthony, what was the gentleman who came in some weeks ago, wanted to argue that God is okay with homosexuality, that gay

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Christianity is okay, challenged me to a debate. Drew could not be here.

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He's had a tooth pulled. So I don't know why he's like crying about, like he can't get a tooth pulled and come in and talk, really, but it wouldn't have been any surprise to Drew because I actually predicted, before we did that episode to Drew, I predicted that if it went badly for Anthony, he would cry and murmur that it wasn't fair and it wasn't a timed debate, he wasn't given time to talk, that that would be his argument.

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And then he would eventually probably ask for a formal debate. And once he did ask for the formal debate,

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I told Drew, he's never gonna do it. He will back out. In fact, I told you guys that would probably be a thing.

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And you saw his, some of you saw the comments in a previous show where he announced he was willing to do the debate.

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He had no problem with it. And so we said, okay, let's do it. Well, I got an email from him.

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He doesn't wanna do it. Are any of you surprised? Nope, I didn't think so. He doesn't wanna do it because the thing that I said is we are going to have to, when we talk about the issue of Christianity and homosexuality, in other words, the idea that you can be both a

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Christian and not practice homosexuality, but have homosexual desires and be okay with it.

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As he was arguing, he has a boyfriend that he sleeps with, but they don't actually have sexual relations.

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And he tried to argue that that was not sinful. You remember that episode we did, not just go back and the episode on gay

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Christianity, I think it was called. So what we dealt with there was the fact that on that episode is the issue of, well, lust.

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Because when we talk about homosexuality, we have to realize that it's not just the act, but God judges us for our thoughts.

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And therefore we have to be realistic with the way that we think. And so God says that if you look at someone with lust, that is considered adultery.

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And that is a sin in God's sight. So it's not the fact that you just have your sexual relations outside of marriage.

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It's just the lusting for it that would be the sin as well. He does not wanna deal with the lust issue.

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Of course, I get it. I told him, I get it. Because he wants to start with a faulty logic.

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He wants to start with the fact that lusting is okay. It's just not consummating it.

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And that's where he wants to go. Well, that's the problem, right? Is that's not biblical. And so I said, well, of course, if you're not gonna argue from biblical terms, when you have to redefine lust to make your argument and say it's biblical, well, then you don't have a biblical argument.

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And it's just as simple as that. So needless to say, we won't be having that debate.

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I know he said he would, and sorry, but we won't be doing it.

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Not my fault, would have liked to, but can't do it.

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So with that, let's see. The thing that we, the other thing we have is the in the news section.

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So let me cover that. This whole thing with the Trump case. Actually before that,

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I wanna get to, I do wanna get to some funny bits in the news. Before we get to the sad things in the news, our country, the

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United States has now fallen. We are now officially a third world country in the way we handle our elections.

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That was the only thing that we needed was to have one political class putting the other political class in jail that would make us officially probably a third world country.

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And we've hit it, we've got there. But before that, I thought it was really funny in the news.

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I don't know if all of you have heard this, but in California, they made a big push in California for no gas vehicles, not even lawnmowers, trucks, nothing.

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And they wanted to make this big push to see that they are forcing electric vehicles.

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And they ended up, they were gonna spend $8 billion on charging stations for all of these new electric vehicles.

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And I don't know if you heard the news. I mean, California has done a marvelous job on creating their charging stations for all the vehicles out there.

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They were able to in one year with $8 billion, they were able to put together eight charging stations.

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That's right, you heard that right. Eight charging stations. Now I wanted to look up the exact number because I didn't know what it was and I actually couldn't get to it.

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But I think Tesla puts out about a hundred charging stations a year around the world.

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I think it sounds crazy like that. But I think Tesla puts out like eight new charging stations every couple of months or every month in the

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States. So I'm just looking at going like, all right, this is not very much that you have here is if we're gonna look at that.

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Now it is kind of interesting because one of the things I thought funny is you think, well, Tesla's doing a great job.

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Why doesn't California work with Tesla? Oh, right, because Elon Musk that didn't swallow the

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Marxist lemonade and therefore they can't work with him. So oops, yeah.

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So that's why, I mean, I just was amazed. $8 billion and all they could come up with was eight chargers and the excuses they were making for it, it was quite interesting.

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They made, it was like, well, it's a lot of infrastructure here to put this together. This was actually, it wasn't,

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I think it was the Biden administration that was doing it because it was Pete Buttigieg that was doing the talking about it.

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And he's trying to explain how it takes so much work. And it's like, really? Because there's other companies that are cranking them out pretty quickly but they won't work with those companies.

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So just saying, I think that's, what we call that, oh, a complete and utter waste of money.

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But don't worry, this administration is protecting our freedoms, absolutely protecting our freedoms because there was nothing wrong with what happened today, right?

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So if you, so today the Trump was on trial. This trial,

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I don't know how much more of a joke you can make it. For folks who haven't really followed the trial, the reality was this trial, he's got four trials that they've tried.

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Their goal is just, as Biden said, is that just being guilty is enough. They have to get them off the ballot.

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Well, the reality is that this is what they're trying to do. My prediction, we'll see if I'm right.

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My prediction is they will, Joe Biden was planning to do a, he said that as soon as the verdict came out, he would do a talk to the nation.

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And I think his talk to the nation was gonna be, this shows that no one is above the law except for me because I was declared too unable to stand trial to be able to do, like he was claimed, it was the

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Justice Department said, he committed a crime with taking documents, classified documents, but he just isn't competent enough to stand trial, but he's competent enough to run the country.

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So he says no one's above the law, but he's not subjecting himself nor his son to the law.

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His son has a court case starting tomorrow. Does anyone, has anyone heard that on the news? Just curious, any of those in the audience, have you heard that Joe Biden's son is gonna be on trial?

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And a key witness is his former son, his son who died,

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Bo, Bo's ex -wife is a witness against Hunter Biden because she's the one that knows that Hunter Biden was on drugs when he bought a gun and she's the one that got rid of the gun.

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And so she's a witness. And Joe Biden, who hasn't, I guess, visited her at all, went and visited her just before she goes to trial tomorrow.

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Hmm, interesting. So what we end up seeing is, as we look at this, here you got a guy that's saying no one's above the law except for him,

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I guess, it just seems that way. So here, what

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I think Joe Biden was gonna do was to argue that no one's above the law. And I believe, this is my prediction, that Joe Biden will probably try, if he can, and he'll just do it and he doesn't care about the law,

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I will predict that he will probably declare that anyone who is convicted cannot have secret service.

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Now, if you're not familiar how secret service works, maybe some are not, they've heard of secret service, maybe you're not in America.

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Secret service actually started, their mission was originally to detect or to prevent counterfeit money.

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They ended up taking the role of protecting the president. And so what ended up happening is their mission expanded and they are primarily in charge of the protection of the president.

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Now, one thing with that is that they have certain abilities that private security doesn't.

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This is the reason that RFK, Robert Kennedy Jr., who is running against Biden and Trump, has been complaining because every candidate gets a level of secret service.

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And there's a reason for it. When you're running for president, you get the secret service because secret service can do things your security can't.

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Secret service has the right to take over any building and do whatever they see fit for the protection of the person they're protecting.

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And so RFK has been complaining because he's being denied secret service. And many think that he's being denied secret service so that someone might kill him.

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Not saying it'll happen, but if not, he's gotta get his own security, and his own security can't do things.

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If something happens, they can't commandeer vehicles or buildings or hospitals, but secret service can.

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And this is one of the things with secret service you're gonna see is when you look at this whole case with Donald Trump, he has secret service protection, which means secret service is not going to allow, if they don't want to, they're not gonna allow

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Donald Trump to go to prison. It doesn't matter what the judge says.

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The way secret service works is they have complete and utter control over their protectee.

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They can decide whatever, and it really doesn't matter. This is why, by the way, if you haven't heard this, but it was revealed that the

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FBI, in the whole DOJ as they were going to look in Trump's house for these classified documents that he had been working with them for a year, they actually put in their documents that the officers to come and collect these documents were supposed to be in plain clothes, concealed weapons, but they had orders to kill if needed.

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So the reality, if you think about this, is Donald Trump is under protective detail from the secret service.

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The proper way of dealing with this within the agencies would have been to call the agency and let them know, but they put their operating procedure was a use of deadly force, if necessary, if Trump was to show up.

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And so the reality is the Justice Department would have to submit to the secret service because they would actually outrank them in that case.

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And so here in this case, by the way, when Biden had secret documents, that same order wasn't there.

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Interesting. But what we end up seeing here is, I don't believe that the secret service will allow

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Trump to go to prison because they'd be putting themselves and their protectee in danger.

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So if so, they would commandeer the prison section off an area. They may just keep him in his house.

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Whether he's definitely, this judge did not do what he did so that Trump could be on parole.

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He wants him in prison and he wants a gag order on him for life. And I'm sure that those two things are gonna be the result.

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So, and we'll talk about the case in a bit. But what we end up seeing with this case is the fact that they will, well, what

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I predict you're gonna see, we'll see in a few weeks, I'm sure, whether Biden is gonna try to remove the protection he has, that Trump has with secret service.

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If he removes that protection, there's one reason to remove that protection, that Trump would have to sit in prison where someone might be able to kill him, where he won't have his private security, he won't have secret service security, and someone would be able to kill him.

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Okay, that is the reality. If they're doing that, then you know the reason for this is because they want

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Trump dead. This is how third world countries operate. So let's take a look at, and some of my notes were before the verdict came out.

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So one of the things I have in my notes is, this whole trial was very interesting.

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If you haven't followed it, this is, you know, it's been interesting to see all the left going, it's a sad day in America, sad day in America.

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They're rejoicing because they've been giddy over this all along. They're saying it's a sad day and watch because now what you're gonna see, people that say that this is a travesty of justice, that this is wrong, they're already starting, hey, this is the way the justice system is, this is, hey, we're by jury, you know, we can't, good or bad, this is the way it is.

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And so what you're gonna see is now, if you don't accept the jury, then you are a justice denier.

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I haven't seen them say that yet, but that's my prediction. Prediction number two is they will be calling people justice deniers for saying that this was a sham case.

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And it was a sham case. There was no actual charge. How do you go to court and not have the charge you're being charged with known?

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I remember a friend of mine, Michael Stockwell, he's an open air evangelist. He was, we were outside at, which university?

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I think it's Princeton University. And he was charged originally with amplifying.

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The problem was is we had the recording of the chief of police saying that we could amplify.

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And so we had the chief of police there when Michael was getting the ticket.

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So clearly that wasn't gonna stand in court. So they changed it when he went to court and he got to court and he was charged with being too loud.

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And I forget what it was, something without a permit. And they didn't finish the court the next day or next time.

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They changed it like three or four times. But eventually when his trial started, it was like violent speech.

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And he was found completely innocent. It was a funny trial, very much like Trump's, I guess, in that way.

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The prosecutor, let me tell you about this story because it is kind of funny, but Michael Stockwell goes to court.

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He is tried with, they're prosecuting him.

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Well, persecuting too. The prosecutor is saying that the issue is that it was late at night.

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Michael was very loud and his words were scaring people.

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So those three things, it was late at night, he was loud, scaring people.

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Okay, so with these three charges, what ends up happening is they get their only witness.

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He gets up on stand. The prosecutor asks her, like he's saying, what time of night was it?

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And she goes, well, it was about 11 o 'clock at night. Actually, she goes, well, it was still really early.

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So it was only about 11. And he goes, well, isn't 11 o 'clock really late? And she goes, not for college.

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Things don't even get started till midnight. So point number one, gone, tick that one off.

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He says, well, did you have trouble? Were you like, what was happening? She said, well, she ran into a friend.

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She's standing in front of Michael as he's preaching the gospel. And he goes, well, was it loud? She goes, well, yeah, it was loud because we were standing right in front of the microphone.

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So we, you know, the speaker, so we just moved to the side. And he goes, well, was he being so loud?

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She goes, well, no, because there were some people blasting music outside of their dorm rooms. And that was even louder.

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So it was like being loud. Nope, tick that one off. So he goes, what happened?

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She goes, well, we decided to go to an eatery and go get something to eat. And so he's like, oh, so did you have to like walk across the street on the other way to avoid him?

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Were you scared of walking in front of him? She goes, no, we just walked right in front of him because it was the shortest distance.

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The fear, tick that one off. I mean, it was just a class, I was in court. So here was

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Michael and it was like, yeah, okay. The judge at that point was like, this is done. This is over. Like they didn't want to deal with it because it was clear that there was no case there.

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So yeah, it got, the judge said, not guilty. And Michael was out.

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Well, a similar thing that we have with Trump, okay. What you have in the Trump case was a federally, because it had to be a federal crime.

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Every federal agency that they tried to get to try this could not find a crime and did not have anything to try him on.

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What New York did and the interesting thing by it being done in New York, they purposely looked for a state where people were against Trump who wouldn't find him guilty.

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The thing is, is that they looked at something that's completely legal, okay.

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They, this whole thing of, oh, he paid hush money. Okay, I just, for the record,

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Donald Trump paid money to a woman that admitted that both of them have admitted they never slept together, but Donald Trump paid money to keep it out of the news, whether it was for, so his wife's not embarrassed or for the election, doesn't matter.

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The reality is his lawyer paid for it, paid to hush that up, okay.

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Now they're saying that's such a wrong thing. Well, Bill Clinton actually did have sex with some women and paid hush money for them before his election and no one is calling for that.

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By the way, the statute of limitation ran out on this whole thing of whether there was any wrongdoing.

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So if there's a wrongdoing, it's a misdemeanor, but it's not, you can't even charge it because the statute of limitations ran out.

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So what they tried to do was piggyback a election fraud to the payment to this woman.

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Stormy Daniels, I guess, admitted she didn't have sex with Trump until there was money she could make from it and then she ended up saying there was, that they did have a relationship.

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And so we're supposed to believe, the whole thing is we're supposed to believe someone who is a prostitute, because that's what she is.

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She can call herself a porn star all she wants. She's getting paid to have sex with people, okay.

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And so she's a prostitute. So they have a prostitute on stage that had absolutely nothing to do with the case.

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In fact, everything that she did in court, in her testimony, was exactly what that Hollywood mogul,

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I forget his name now, Weisman, I think it was, but he just got, they just ruled that you can't do that.

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So that shouldn't have been allowed because that occurred days before her testimony.

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But what you saw is they piggybacked two things together. Now, the interesting thing is they said it was a federal crime relating to the election.

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The issue is that when it comes to federal financing, this judge would not allow an expert for Trump's team to call expert witnesses on election financing.

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So you couldn't have an expert in the field of where he's being, where Trump is being charged.

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Interesting. And so almost as if they want a guilty verdict, they wouldn't allow people to talk.

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Now, here's the thing. You had the key witnesses, Michael Cohen, that's Donald Trump's lawyer. The interesting thing is

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Michael Cohen is in prison because he's lied under oath. So he's in prison.

29:04

Now they let Michael Cohen as a witness, but they would not let Stormy Daniels' lawyer as a witness.

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Now, why is that important? Well, Stormy Daniels' lawyer is also in prison for similar things. So Stormy Daniels' lawyer has publicly stated that Michael Cohen and Stormy Daniels' lawyer worked this out so that Trump would not know.

29:34

He said, he figured Trump might say no to this. And so he worked it out with the lawyer alone so that his client,

29:41

Stormy Daniels, could get the money. So the lawyer for Stormy Daniels is not allowed to testify because he's a criminal, but Michael Cohen can.

29:53

If anyone sees a double standard here, it's not actually a double standard. This is actually his son.

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I heard from Dan Bongino, and I think he's right. It's not a double standard when you're dealing with tyrants.

30:04

It is the standard. You can't go against them. They are the standard. And so what they did in this is at the opening of this trial, they did not name the charge.

30:18

Now, when you have a, just basically the way that this works, if you haven't been in court, the court will give instructions to the jury, and the jury is told that you have to be unanimous on guilt because that's to be guilty beyond a reasonable doubt.

30:39

And therefore you have to be unanimous. And you have to name the charge. What this judge did when he gave them their instructions is he gave three things, tax evasion, federal election fraud, or state fraud.

30:59

So the thing is that they never actually made those arguments in court. So he basically said, you don't even have to be unanimous as long as you all agree that he's guilty of any of these charges.

31:13

That's not the way the law works. They were supposed to say on each of the counts, okay, there's 34 counts.

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And it really, it's not 34 counts. What it is is there were 34 payments. And so they're trying to say each one of those is a separate count.

31:30

And so they're trying to say that if he was guilty of any of these three things, then he's guilty on all those 34 counts.

31:40

What they were trying to prevent was a hung jury. Hung jury is when if you had one person that was said, no, he's not guilty, then that would end it.

31:49

That would be a hung jury and they'd retry it. And so what

31:54

I think you're, you know, they didn't want that for sure. And so this was a matter of trying to get him to get a guilty verdict, okay?

32:04

This has never been done in court that I know of. All the expert analysis I've heard says this is not how you do it.

32:12

In fact, Michael Cohen, their star witness, admitted to stealing from Donald Trump in the very case that's being tried.

32:26

In other words, he argued that he felt he was owed more money.

32:32

And so what happened was is that in court, he admitted that he worked this negotiated deal of payment and he was to get a certain amount of money that he got from, you know, in this arrangement that he was supposed to give to Trump, but he kept it.

32:55

In other words, he actually committed, admitted to committing a larger, worse crime than Donald Trump was being charged with.

33:04

And nobody seems to be concerned about that. And now I just want you to think about it.

33:09

If in the exact transaction that's being discussed, the lawyer withheld money, in other words, stole money, when people steal money, do they usually let you know everything that's happening?

33:25

No, obviously not. Trump didn't know the money was stolen, which tells you that Cohen was doing things behind the scenes that Trump did not know about, okay?

33:37

So he admits that he was hiding things from Trump. And the whole case is about the fact of, did

33:43

Trump know about this? Well, the fact is that his own lawyer, their star witness has admitted that no, he didn't know everything.

33:55

And so we end up seeing that with that, you really trust that the lawyer,

34:04

Michael Cohen, did everything right. They didn't hide anything else from Trump.

34:10

Now, Trump's argument, and by the way, the judge would not allow this in the defense, but this is a legal defense.

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If any of you have an attorney for something and your lawyer's handling things, and this often happens, you have an attorney that just handles things for you, and you just say, do whatever is legally possible to get me out of this.

34:35

And you're taking the legal advice. Well, if your lawyer does something illegal, that's not on you, unless you directed him.

34:48

Actually, even if you directed him, he's supposed to be the one to tell you it's illegal and not do it anyway, okay?

34:55

But you are not, cannot be charged with your lawyer taking legal matters in their own hands.

35:03

They're the ones to provide you with legal advice. So they would not allow

35:08

Trump to make the argument or his team to make the argument that he was following legal counsel.

35:17

That's what legal counsel is. They would not allow him to argue that he was following the legal counsel of his lawyer.

35:30

So essentially, every legal means was being taken away from Trump, very much like what happened in the 2020 elections, where they would not let him bring any of the cases to the courts because the courts shouldn't be involved in selecting the president or involved in the elections.

35:46

So they said, nope, we're not gonna hear the cases. So we never actually got to trial with the 2020 elections.

35:52

When they go, oh, none of these cases worked, well, they were never put on trial. We never got to hear the evidence.

36:00

So this is what we see in this trial. So you have their star witness admits to hiding details of this, and somehow

36:14

Trump is still guilty. Another thing that I think interesting with this is

36:21

I don't know if you guys saw that Trump, or Biden had a campaign event outside of the courthouse yesterday, had some washed up actor come out and talk about how if Trump gets in office, he's never gonna leave.

36:37

You mean like he didn't leave last time? I mean, we heard this. For those of you who have a memory, you know this, but go back.

36:45

When Trump was elected in 2016, we heard that he would never leave office.

36:53

In fact, the lead up to the 2020 election, before the election,

36:59

I mean, you gotta remember, that was when the media and the Democrats were still saying we have to be violent on the streets if Trump steals this, and Trump is trying to do a coup, and he's never gonna leave office.

37:09

Just a quick question, anyone? Is Trump in the White House right now? Did he leave? Oh, yeah, that's right, he did.

37:17

Trump did leave office. And yet they're trying to say it again, like, oh, if he gets in, he'll never leave, the same way they said it.

37:26

Someone just said, so thank you, Melissa. Robert De Niro, that's the actor. Robert De Niro is a joke, she said.

37:33

So thank you, Andrew Graham also said Robert De Niro, so thanks, I didn't remember that.

37:39

I don't know pop culture, sorry. So what we end up seeing, though, is that these guys go out and have an election campaign outside of the courthouse where Trump is being tried.

37:55

This is the evidence that this is election interference. Remember, this is what they're trying to charge

38:03

Trump with, that he interfered with elections, okay? And so I, you know, one of the things in my notes, this is kind of funny, but I still,

38:13

I said the judge, if he's found not guilty, the judge will try to keep a gag order in place.

38:20

Like if he's found a hung jury or not guilty, my prediction was they would sit there and say, nope, it's a, you know, we gotta keep the gag order so he can't speak at all during the election, because that was the big thing that this really was about, is trying to keep him out of having any say in the election.

38:37

And so, but I still think they'll try to do that. And so this whole thing is election interference.

38:45

This whole thing is to keep Trump out, they purposely targeted the dates of, you look at the four trials and they purposely tied them to times of the

38:58

Super Tuesday and things like that to keep him out from being able to run for president.

39:05

They're trying everything, this judge forced him, he could not let, as normally happens, you have your lawyer go and represent you.

39:15

You don't have to actually be in court typically, your lawyer does because your lawyer is gonna fight for you and he's gonna be making the cases because you're not talking.

39:23

But this judge wasn't gonna have that. He had to be in court every day. Okay, there was even question whether he'd be able to see his son graduate because the judge was saying no.

39:34

And so what you see is that this was timed to affect the election.

39:41

By the way, I do find it funny, I heard that Donald Trump's website was down today and not down because of like a denial of service attack, it was down because so many people were trying to get on to donate to his campaign that people were complaining that they weren't able to get on because so many people were trying to donate to his campaign.

40:02

I'll be interested to see the numbers tomorrow to see how much he got raised because of this guilty verdict.

40:11

The reality is, I think this is gonna backfire because the Democrats have gone too far.

40:17

But I also want you guys to realize something. Those of you who've been listening here for a long time, you know that I've been saying this for decades, that this is what's coming.

40:29

And I said when we had Obama as president that whoever comes in after Obama was,

40:38

I figured would be Republican. And so I said that that person will come in and whoever comes in after that person, like once we found out it was

40:48

Trump, I said, whoever comes after Trump, and I thought Trump would have eight years. And then after that, I said, whoever comes in was gonna make

40:55

Obama look good because they're gonna go so far left. And what will happen is they go so far left to the point that they cannot allow the right to winning ever again.

41:10

They're gonna go so far. And we have hit that point with this because this court case has now broken the standard that we've had all along.

41:20

You have Biden out there saying he's fighting for democracy and he is the one that is breaking down the democracy.

41:27

He's the one that is fighting against democracy and fighting the way the third world country does.

41:35

He's doing everything he can. By the way, with all four of these court cases that he's got, Biden met with the

41:41

DOJ or the prosecutor days before it was announced. So let's not pretend that this is not all orchestrated.

41:52

So this is what third world countries do is they imprison their opposition.

41:58

This is what's happening now. And what you're gonna see is once you get tyranny to that point, once they get to the point that you're set to be able to just violate any law, which is what's happening, then there's nothing that stops them, save really a revolution or something.

42:27

I hope for our country, the way our country is formed, there is another possibility, which is what

42:33

I'm hoping for, is that all of the Republican states just secede from the union. That's what it would take.

42:39

Because the blue states, leave them with all their debt, leave them with all their own destruction because they're not developing anything.

42:46

Give them all their illegals, let them pay for their housing and food and everything else.

42:52

And hey, just start a new country. That would be a solution,

42:58

I think that, I would hope it would be peaceful. So that would be something that I think would be good for the country, but I don't know if it'll happen.

43:12

And so when we look at this, I think that we are now at the point where the

43:20

Democrats and the leftists, the Marxists cannot let

43:26

Trump in office. Because now that they've broken this glass ceiling, Trump would be able to have his department of justice go after like Joe Biden for so many crimes that he actually did do.

43:40

He wouldn't have to piggyback it on something else to make it fit. The reality is they're trying to try

43:47

Trump for taking classified documents that Trump legally, Trump would legally be allowed to have, and yet not go after Biden for taking it when he was a senator.

43:59

He wasn't even vice president, but even as vice president, he wouldn't have the right to those documents. And so we look at this and the reality is this has been what

44:11

I've been saying for decades now here. I'm trying to warn you because as Christians, there is a response

44:19

I think we have to have to this. And it's not a, oh, woe is me, but we have to be realistic to where we're at in this country right now, okay?

44:28

We are not citizens of this earth. This is not our home.

44:34

Read first Peter chapter two. We are, we're just pilgrims here. We're passing through.

44:41

So when these things happen, let us not sit there and think the world is coming to an end.

44:48

Christ is still on the throne. God still reigns. God is sovereign.

44:55

And so we have to remember that. And so even though like, yes, is this stuff predictable?

45:02

Yes, I've obviously been predicting it for years. And though I've been saying that this is gonna happen, what we end up seeing is the fact that we end up seeing, sorry,

45:18

I'm looking at, I don't have Drew here to check the chat so that I could just look at the starred things. I'm having to look at everything.

45:25

I'm getting distracted by childish behavior. As some others are pointing out, here's

45:30

Anthony who is the coward who won't debate me. Oh, he doesn't debate people that call him a coward.

45:36

Don't act like a coward. Don't act like you're Walt Manley and you could take on a debate and you could handle it.

45:42

And I'm so wrong. If I'm so wrong, be a man, take the debate that you said you wanted to do.

45:49

He goes, did you lust to discipline men? Doesn't even make sense, but hey, and he earlier said, do you lust?

46:02

The reality is lust is a sin. That's why homosexuality or sex outside of marriage is a sin.

46:11

So we don't make excuses for sin by saying, oh, well,

46:17

God's okay with them. That's the thing that really bothers me with it.

46:23

So someone's, so Ellie's asking, what was discussed here about men's discipleship? We haven't got to that yet because we're still waiting for Aaron to get in.

46:31

Aaron teaches his martial arts class. So he should be in at the top of the hour. And then we will be discussing that.

46:38

So right now we're discussing is, since I don't have other questions I see coming in, we're just discussing the situation with Trump.

46:45

So here's just so you guys know, as Christians, what's next on stage for America, okay?

46:52

Barring, I'm just going off past history. Could Trump get reelected and change things?

46:58

I think that Trump could get elected. I mean, if it's a fair election, yes. I think that he'd be able to get in.

47:07

Can he change things? I'm not sure how much he could change it because Joe Biden just passed a executive order that will limit how much

47:14

Trump would be able to fire people. He's got to go through a Democratic committee to be able to fire people.

47:23

So he's not going to be able to drain the swamp so easily. Okay, so Biden wants to make sure that these cronies stay in place even if Trump does get elected.

47:32

But that aside, we have to recognize that even if Trump is elected,

47:42

I think it's going to be limited what he could do. He'll try, but he's going to be fighting the whole time.

47:49

And so, by the way, D is asking, should we ask questions now or later?

47:55

You can always ask questions. By the way, I should say, it's always best to ask questions by joining.

48:00

Go to apologetelive .com, click on the duck icon. That's the StreamYard link, and that is the way to join us to ask questions.

48:07

That's the best way to do it. Jesse is saying that if Trump gets elected, he'll slow things down, but we are a nation gone under if we don't, as a nation, repent.

48:24

And so that's the problem, is that we have to be able to recognize that he might slow things down, but he's not going to stop things.

48:35

It's going to take Christians going out, sharing the gospel, people coming to repentance, and the nation repenting of the sins, sins like we just talked about with homosexuality.

48:48

So what we end up seeing is, I think that the next stage, if we look at history, the next stage will be,

48:58

Trump will probably, Biden will do something to stay in power, in office, whether they rig the election, whether they try to get something to say

49:08

Trump can't be in office, they throw him out somehow, whatever they do. And a question that comes up is, my question is taking hush money, even breaking the law?

49:21

No, hush money is not breaking the law. And so what's going to happen?

49:30

So we are aware, why does God give us so much prophecy? So that we know, it's not only so we know that, yes, this is biblical, this is what the

49:39

Bible says, this is God speaking, but another reason is so that we as Christians won't be afraid.

49:45

Why is there so much that talks about second coming and revelation, and what people can expect in the end times?

49:51

Because those who live through it can look back to the Bible and go, oh, look at all in the past how

49:57

God was right. God predicted this and it happened, predicted this happened, predicted this happened, and now we're living through this.

50:04

Well, I can trust that God's gonna get me through it because he says he will. See, that's one of the benefits of prophecy.

50:11

So with that in mind, when we look at what is happening now, we can look at these things, and I'm just saying this is what we can expect, but let's remember

50:21

God is on the throne. What can we expect? Well, I think you're gonna have the Biden and Democrats do whatever it will take to stay in power.

50:30

Why? Because right now they've gone so far that if they're out of power, the people that take over will be able to legally go after them.

50:41

They've broken that ceiling that protected people from that, and so they're gonna go after them.

50:48

So I think that what you'll see is that they are now in a mode, large parts of the

50:57

US government are in the mode of having to do anything to protect themselves.

51:03

This is not some big conspiracy, folks. If you hear people talking about, oh, it's a conspiracy, no, it is not a big conspiracy.

51:11

It is a bunch of people acting selfishly, okay? And so what you have is the fact that the people that are going to do whatever it takes to keep

51:27

Trump out of office are not doing it because of a big conspiracy. They're doing it to protect themselves.

51:33

You say, well, why was this judge? Well, the judge hates Trump, but the judge's daughter right now, because of this trial, has been making tons of money.

51:45

They've been raising money on campaigning against Trump and his daughter's making money.

51:51

So his family's benefiting from this trial. Watch, we'll see, but watch.

51:57

This judge will probably have a book. It'll be written by a ghostwriter, but he'll have a book out within probably a year about how he stood with the most important trial of the century.

52:10

This is what probably ended up happening. And so the result's gonna be that, yes, they will once, and I've said this,

52:20

I said this when Obama was president, right, that whoever came in after him, you'd have, he'd go to the right, but you'd have whoever comes after that candidate was gonna go so far left that they would have to, by that person's second election, have to keep everything locked down to where the opposition, which would be the biggest voting bloc for the

52:46

Republicans are the evangelical Christians, they'd have to keep them out of voting.

52:51

How can you keep them from voting? Well, very simple, if you're a criminal.

52:58

And so they have been running for several years now, Biden, on the fact that Christianity is the blame for all ills.

53:06

Christianity is what, you know, it's the Christians that are against homosexuality, which by the way, the

53:12

Muslims are the ones that are shooting up gay bars, not the Christians, though they blame the Christians for what the

53:18

Muslims do. So remember, Christians want those who practice homosexuality to repent and believe in Jesus.

53:27

Muslims want to kill them. And yet their big fear is the Christians. So what we end up seeing with this is the fact that the end result of this is you will see them take complete power.

53:41

They will take your freedoms. They'll do whatever it takes to take your freedom. As Christians, they will start throwing you in prison.

53:48

They will do whatever they have to. Now, should that scare us?

53:54

No, it just means we get to start prison ministry. That's all. Hey, congratulations, we get prison ministry.

54:02

The reality is that's how we need to look at these things. Okay? We need to recognize the fact that this is something that has been done before in history.

54:16

This is something that will be repeated in history. And I don't think that this is something that we as Christians have to go, oh, woe is me.

54:27

We need to recognize that God is on the throne.

54:33

He is in control. So even if things get worse, even if Christians are thrown in prison, reality is that God is in control.

54:48

You know, a great book, God Doesn't Try. I just started reading it from Jim Osman on God's sovereignty and God doesn't try doing things.

54:56

He does, he is sovereign. And so knowing the author, Jim Osman, I know it's gonna be a good book.

55:02

I know how he writes and I also know him and know he's excellent with handling the word.

55:08

So let me get to some of the comments that I have been able to try and star. Levi says, would you consider reacting to Remnant Radio's video on given a prophetic word next week?

55:22

Sure, Levi, if you could send me that, the video, I'd be happy to do it.

55:28

I don't know which specific video. So if you could, excuse me, I'm sorry, email us info at strivingforeternity .com,

55:37

info at strivingforeternity .com, that would be helpful. That way we could respond to that.

55:44

I'd be happy to do that. I've been responding to a bunch of stuff from Remnant Radio. Those guys who, you know, kind of like Anthony there, so willing to take a challenge and, you know, willing to debate anyone on the issue of charismatic gifts until someone like me says,

55:59

I'll take the debate. And what have we heard? Crickets, yeah.

56:06

All right, so let's see. Next one up that I had was KT says, with the motor voter bill, it was difficult to keep people illegally here and non -citizens from voting.

56:16

Okay, so folks that don't know, this is back under Bill Clinton's time. Bill Clinton created this bill that was to allow illegals to, well, sorry, it allowed people who got a motor vehicle license to be able to register to vote.

56:33

And the thing with that is that illegals were then allowed to get motor vehicle licenses, which gives them a sign up to vote.

56:44

Now, this is the thing. If you're not here legally, if you're not an American citizen, you're not supposed to be voting.

56:50

In fact, when you go to get your driver's license or voter ID, like here's the thing. This is part of the thing that we do apologetics here.

56:59

I want you guys thinking critically. Here's some critical thinking. The Democrats say it is racist to ask for ID.

57:07

Okay, whenever I go, wherever I go and someone asks me for ID, I always say, I'm sorry, but the Democrats say that that's racist.

57:13

People go, what? Yeah, they say it's racist to ask for ID because Blacks don't know how to get ID to go vote.

57:19

And the answer I always get is that is the stupidest thing I ever heard. And it's usually from Black people. And so the reality is that they say that Blacks don't know how to get their

57:28

ID. When you register to vote, you know what you're given? A voter ID.

57:34

If you know how to register to vote, you have the ID to show that you are registered to vote.

57:42

So the reality is you have that. You don't need to show any other, just require that to be there.

57:50

And so, so yeah, let's see. Oh, Anthony responded. He said, going by the

57:56

Greek, lust and desire are the same word in Greek. So instead of saying desire to disciple people, we should say lust apparently.

58:07

Now, this is a great example of someone who knows he can't win a debate.

58:14

That's why he doesn't take one, because he knows that words have multiple meanings and context makes the difference.

58:21

He's talking about the word in a sexual manner, which always is referring to lust, that desire, a lustful desire, but he wants to apply that and say, oh, all kinds of desire is a sin, right?

58:34

So is that what it's saying? No, we were really specific that sexual desire, lusting.

58:41

So there you go. Doreen, okay, so here's a question from Dee.

58:49

Dee says, often 1 John 5, 16, sorry, sorry.

58:56

Often, sorry, Roman Catholics often use 1 John 5, 16 to justify their belief in mortal and venial sins.

59:03

What is your take on that verse? Well, let us look that verse up and check it out. So this is what 1

59:10

John, 5, 16, and what do we always do here on this show, folks?

59:18

We never read a Bible verse, right? We back up a few verses. So let's start at verse 13.

59:25

So verse 13, starting there says, these things I have written to you who believe in the name of the son of God, so that you may know that you have eternal life.

59:37

This is the confidence which we have before him that if we ask anything according to his will, he hears us.

59:46

And if we know that he hears us in whatever we ask, we know that we have the requests which we have asked from him.

59:58

If anyone sees his brother committing a sin, not leading to death, he shall ask and God will give him life to those who commit sin, not leading to death.

01:00:11

There is sin leading to death. I do not say that he should make a request for this.

01:00:18

Now, as we look at this passage, first off, just some things that I've noticed here. First off, it's talking to believers.

01:00:25

That's clear from the context, okay? It's also clear from the context that this is someone who has eternal life, not getting eternal life, but they have eternal life.

01:00:45

So that's the first thing. Now, so this is speaking to someone that already has eternal life, they're not gonna lose it.

01:00:54

So when you talk about mortal and venial sins, as the Catholic Church does, I'm just trying to look.

01:01:03

So it seems like Aaron is having some troubles with StreamYard getting in.

01:01:11

So let's, he's trying to get in. Oh, there he is, okay. We will bring him in.

01:01:18

He's in the dark, but I'm sure he'll get bright. There we go. All right, so the idea of using this passage, 1

01:01:27

John 5, 16, to say that this is venial versus mortal sins, in other words, the idea of sins that lead to death and then you have sins that don't lead to death.

01:01:37

This is clearly speaking of sins that actually lead to a physical death, okay, from the context.

01:01:44

This isn't leading to, it's not leading as they would say, like, well, these have a different, you know, like these sins you can never be forgiven and these you can, because he's speaking to people who already have eternal life.

01:02:01

And if they have eternal life, then they can't have a, they can't commit a sin that would say they never can be, that they can never have eternal life.

01:02:13

It just doesn't work that way. Let me try to get through a couple more of these and then we'll bring up some of the comments from last week's show.

01:02:24

Andrew Graham says, people keep mentioning Obama's wife. I don't want any Dems in. So Andrew, yeah,

01:02:32

I do not believe, if you know anything about the Obamas, Michelle Obama eats public limelight, eats it.

01:02:44

I do not, she just wants to be, and look, read her husband's books and you'll know this.

01:02:52

She just wants to be rich, black, and happy, okay? She wants to be vacationing.

01:02:59

She loved being able to just go to Hawaii for months at a time and just be on vacation and they got their place in Martha's Vineyard.

01:03:08

That's what she loves. She doesn't wanna be bogged down with having to run anything. I think it is crazy to think that they'll put her in.

01:03:16

Then there's talk of Gary Newsom, okay. I don't think they'll put Newsom in.

01:03:22

In fact, I think the thing that makes the most sense is they might try at the convention to stick

01:03:32

RFK in because he actually has probably got the best chance of beating

01:03:37

Trump if it's a one -on -one match because people would feel conflicted over his vaccine policy.

01:03:43

There are a bunch of conservatives that would make that their main issue and because of that, they might vote for him because on the vaccines and the food drug administration,

01:03:53

I actually agree a lot with RFK. He's got a lot of great ideas and he's got a lot of great ways of solving some of the problems we've had.

01:04:00

On everything else, I think he's nuts. But I haven't seen polling of what it would be on a one -on -one of RFK and Trump.

01:04:09

However, if you don't know what's Biden trying to do, Biden actually knows that there is a chance that they're going to pull him at the convention.

01:04:19

So he is trying to get a virtual election before the convention.

01:04:27

So he wants them to put him in as the candidate now before the election because he knows how badly he is polling.

01:04:39

All right, so, oh, I tried starring that one.

01:04:44

We'll get to that comment. All right, so Fatima says, oh, that makes so much sense.

01:04:52

Context really is super important. Taking it away, a sure, effective way of deceiving.

01:05:00

And that's the whole thing. That's what people do. They wanna take away the context because that is what, basically, when you take away the context, you can make the

01:05:12

Bible say what you want it to say. That's the reason I always just back out of it. Back up a few verses. So Anthony's in the background in the chat.

01:05:19

He's not in the background, but he's in chat. So let's look at some of his comments. He says, there really is not a point to debate you because we have two different theological foundations for how we deal with God and gender, but I actually do enjoy your broadcast.

01:05:36

Anthony, that's the whole reason to do debates when you have two differing points of view.

01:05:44

That's the reason for a debate. I think the fact is you just can't stay to the

01:05:50

Bible. Like that's the whole thing. You can't stay to biblical terms. But later he said, I'm just tired of fighting and losing a battle.

01:05:57

If homosexual attraction is a sin, where is the power of God to deliver you?

01:06:03

Every Christian leader says, it's just your thorn in your flesh. No, it's a sin you repent of.

01:06:10

You wanna know where the power is? It's in repentance. And I'm sorry if you haven't heard that message, but that's the answer.

01:06:19

It's not in something you try to do to, you know, I know a little bit about Anthony. You know, we know that here from the show.

01:06:27

It's not a matter, Anthony, of saying, let me just try harder at it. Trying harder not to sin will lead you to sin.

01:06:36

Okay, saying I'm not gonna smoke. I'm not like, you know, this is just an example

01:06:41

I had from seminary. I'm not gonna smoke cigarettes. I'm not gonna smoke cigarettes. I'm not gonna smoke cigarettes. All you're thinking about is cigarettes. I'm not gonna drink.

01:06:47

I'm not gonna drink. I'm not gonna drink. You're just thinking about drinking. Thinking about it is gonna get you to do it. What you have to do is change topics altogether.

01:06:55

So if I was to ask, you know, Aaron here to think of the number five for the next 10 seconds, he would think five.

01:07:02

And he's doing it right now. But if I was to say, don't think of the number 27, he's got one of two choices.

01:07:08

He could think not 27, not 27, not 27, which he's thinking 27. Or he thinks about five.

01:07:14

Or in his case, he thinks something else. You know, pink elephants, who knows. But it's the idea you think something completely other.

01:07:22

That's what we have to do, Anthony. It's not, you've been in programs, I think, that have tried to use a workspace system, and I get it with, and I don't wanna reveal too much, but your family background.

01:07:35

They went into the legalism and that whole, you know, kind of Amish type of mindset with the legalism and everything, head coverings and all that.

01:07:44

Well, they're getting, that's a workspace sanctification, and they're getting into a workspace righteousness.

01:07:49

They're gonna tell you, you have to work at it, work at it, just don't do this, don't think this, don't think this, don't think this.

01:07:54

And the reality is, you're gonna keep falling into that. I wouldn't tell you that message.

01:08:00

What I'd tell you is you need to repent. You need to change your thinking, recognize it as a sin, and turn from that and serve

01:08:06

Christ. So now you're not thinking about the homosexuality, you're thinking about Christ. That's what you have to do.

01:08:13

And so I'll ask Aaron if there's any comments he has for Anthony since he came in on that part.

01:08:19

But we said that Anthony won't do, doesn't wanna debate. I did say that before you came in. But any comments there before I bring up something from last week for your, since you're here?

01:08:29

Was Anthony the gentleman that we interacted with on that one show? Well, yes, but which show?

01:08:35

The show on gay Christian. I was there, yeah, okay, yeah. Yeah, I just put this in the chat.

01:08:41

The power of God is only available for those who do the right things in the right way for the right reasons.

01:08:47

Pursue Christ and Christ honoring relationships. And that's obviously a huge oversimplification for a chat. But I will say that we never have the power of God in anything when we're running from something.

01:08:59

Yes, the Bible says that we flee temptation and that's all true. But what we so often forget is that the Bible also says what we're fleeing to.

01:09:07

And when we're, like Andrew said, when we're just trying to not do the bad things, so often that's motivated by self.

01:09:14

I wanna not do this thing. I tell you right now, I'm struggling personally with weight gain as a result of me not having the self -control to just say no.

01:09:25

And me stress eating and me wanting to find pleasure and satisfaction in my food. And that's all a sin, right?

01:09:31

And I can in my own power say, okay, Aaron, get your act together, drop some weight. You know, I've fasted for a very long period of time.

01:09:38

I can go without food. I can make these choices. But when it's in my own strength and for my own glory, it's never gonna please the

01:09:44

Lord. And it's never gonna have any lasting, true sanctifying effect and change on me. And the same thing is true in everything else.

01:09:51

I need to say, yes, these things are sinful. I need to stop, but I need to pursue Christ.

01:09:56

This is why the book, I believe it's Ephesians, tells us, let those who steal, steal no more.

01:10:03

Instead, they need to do these Christ honoring things for God's honor and glory. Same thing with lying.

01:10:09

Same thing with a number of other things in that passage, the way we speak and so on. So now that's, again, an oversimplification, but it's still not easy.

01:10:18

And I just wanna say to you, it is not easy because we are sinners. We need a support group.

01:10:23

We need Christians who will come around us and keep us accountable and help remind us of the truth.

01:10:29

And we need, too often, we try to do it on our own and we struggle not because God fails, but because we fail him.

01:10:38

Yeah. So let me play this. We opened the show with this, Aaron, but this was about you.

01:10:45

So this was a short that our friend Mark did from last week. And he's pointing at you with some of this.

01:10:52

I watched his response videos. He did some response videos to us. I was tempted to go and respond to them, but it was just, why have the back and forth?

01:11:06

He's totally misrepresented. But here's what he said. If you've got a cramp in your leg, you don't need somebody to tell you, hey, man,

01:11:14

I didn't see it on the x -ray, so I think you're lying about this leg cramp. No. And so this is what's so abusive about this crowd of people is that's exactly what they're doing to the person.

01:11:25

They're gaslighting people with real impairments and telling them that they don't have them. They're not trusting them. They're not loving that person.

01:11:31

They're not believing that person. They're not assuming the best about that person. They treat them like these guys are treating me.

01:11:38

They treat them like liars. They gaslight them into thinking they're in sin when they're not. Okay.

01:11:43

So here's the comment that he mentioned on our show. And I did read a text

01:11:49

I got about from a friend of mine saying that how patient we all were with him, that his patients ran out an hour before ours.

01:12:00

But Mark had put this as a comment on the video. He says, and it's a longer thing, so forgive me for reading this as long, but quote, if you guys notice,

01:12:09

Aaron is so toxic as to assume that a nonverbal, low -functioning autistic child should, quote, obey him, unquote.

01:12:21

He's on the verge of advocating for corporal punishment for autistic children who repeatedly, quote, disobey him, unquote.

01:12:34

That's about the most toxic view you could ever have a child with a physical mental disability.

01:12:42

And I wouldn't let my children anywhere near him. His views on behavior are so far removed from sane.

01:12:53

I just wish I would have had more time to ask questions rather than these repeatedly forcing their narrative and taking control of the conversation.

01:13:09

Watch, even the very beginning, these guys cut me off after I finish the

01:13:17

J -Mac quote and never once allowed me to express my view from the very beginning to the very end.

01:13:25

All they wanted was for me to answer questions that fit their narrative rather than get my whole view out or allow me to ask them questions.

01:13:38

The very last thing they wanted here was for me to ask questions.

01:13:44

So they spent the 10 minutes answering any, so they spent the 10 minutes answering any question

01:13:53

I did get out there while allowing me only 30 seconds to have feedback or follow -up.

01:14:01

Either one of these guys wants to go on a live debate one -on -one where I'm allowed to put out my whole view where they can't mute me, can't turn my mic down so low that even a whisper allows them to talk over me at the moment, can't interrupt me at every time.

01:14:26

I try to talk and you'll see just how corrupt, abusive their ways of thinking really is toward the mentally impaired person, unquote.

01:14:37

So that's the thing. Now, let me read some of the comments under that. The one comment says, you came in lying and accusing them of it.

01:14:48

You projected your fallacies on them the whole time. You played the victim while insulting them.

01:14:55

But these are comments on his video? This is comments, no, no. This is comments on our video. This is now people responding to him, which

01:15:03

I thought funny that someone responded that way because that's basically like, if you want to see the insulting nature, just look at the comment he just made.

01:15:09

But I responded, I said, yes, Aaron is so toxic. That is why you had to lie about what he said and misrepresent us completely.

01:15:20

You are unhinged. You need to step back and listen. In fact, the

01:15:26

Bible tells us to be slow to speak and quick to listen. You have chosen not to listen to us at all.

01:15:36

Another person responded and said, thanks Andrew, Drew and Aaron for your patience, perseverance and faithfulness in speaking

01:15:43

God's word and truth. Another person, the masked Baptist. I don't know who the masked

01:15:50

Baptist is, but he says, what we have here is an incredible war on a pointless debate. And are any of you guys credible doctors and scientists?

01:16:01

Otherwise, the argument raised in the discussion came from none of your actual medical research on how your proof stands up.

01:16:11

They must have missed the part where I was quoting the medical professionals. Yeah, hold on.

01:16:17

On top of that, you really are a bad adequate showed. So I asked him, does he believe the

01:16:22

DSM -5 to be a medical document? So I haven't seen the response to it.

01:16:29

So that's some of the feedback. So the reality for Mark is, if he would want to have a debate, that'd be fine.

01:16:38

But I predict he wouldn't be able to stay on topic. Remember, he's complaining even in this comment.

01:16:45

His complaint is we wouldn't let him talk about Johnny Mac and some article that none of us heard or something that John Mac, John MacArthur said that none of us heard.

01:16:57

And he wanted us to go off of his transcript of what he, what was said.

01:17:03

And we had him on because he was calling us liars for what we said. So it wasn't that we cut him off because he was talking about John MacArthur.

01:17:13

It's because we brought him in to discuss what he was saying about what we were saying. I'm not

01:17:19

John MacArthur. I think I said that I, we didn't, I didn't hear the thing from John MacArthur.

01:17:24

So we can't talk about it because I can't speak about things I haven't heard. Um, but the fact that he, that he denied and he goes on, you, you should, maybe

01:17:35

I should send you the video. He accused you. Okay, I promise, I promise you

01:17:40

I would not watch it. I totally, I totally would. He accused you of almost worshiping the

01:17:45

DMS -5 and not the Bible. He said that, he said that you put the DMS -5 before the Bible.

01:17:52

Like he doesn't even understand why do we bring up the DMS -5? Because he is, it's a whole world consensus was, this is how to, to diagnose it.

01:18:02

And we're just trying to say, no, the world consensus doesn't agree with that. Did I understand his quote correctly?

01:18:08

That he, he said that we wouldn't allow him to ask questions, but then he said something about spending 10 minutes answering his questions.

01:18:16

Yes. And he was only allowed 30 seconds. Yeah. You caught, you caught that? Yeah. I thought that was kind of interesting when

01:18:23

I read it too. Yeah. So you're probably right. It's unfortunate. He, he potentially would given, given the same amount of time,

01:18:32

I have a feeling. And I, and I've been in situations like this before, where even in a formal debate type setting, you ask a question, there's one question.

01:18:40

And then the answer to that question actually has nothing to do with the question. It's called the red herring.

01:18:46

Yep. And that, that happens quite frequently. And so I, unfortunately that likely would happen, but you know.

01:18:53

Yeah. So with that, let's get to our topic. Nat, you're here.

01:19:01

So, and I'll end up asking Aaron offline if he actually wants to have a debate with, with Mark on that.

01:19:06

I don't know that it'll be fruitful to be honest. But I mean,

01:19:12

I, if he wants to debate me formally, that's fine. I could do that, but I just don't,

01:19:19

I don't know that it would be very fruitful. I just, it's not that I'm afraid of a debate.

01:19:25

I think everyone here knows that I'm not afraid of a debate. I just don't know it'd be a fruitful debate after the discussion we had.

01:19:33

But if he wants one, you know, maybe we could do that. So before we get to your men's retreat and talking about men's discipleship,

01:19:45

I figure after a men's discipleship, you may be a little bit drowsy. And I know you, you don't, you don't quite understand the invigorating, enriching, wonderful taste of coffee.

01:19:58

Because you, for some reason, Aaron, you know, are just a coffee denier. Because if you don't, if you don't do something nowadays, you're a denier, right?

01:20:06

So you are a coffee denier. I'm a coffeeophobic too. That's right. You're coffee, you're coffee phobic. And so because you're coffee phobic,

01:20:15

I know that if I, so I think maybe

01:20:20

I'll give a prediction. In Arizona, you and I are going to be speaking at a conference in Vail, at Vail Valley Baptist Church.

01:20:30

This is, by the way, is going to be August. The dates for this are August, I'll get it, 8th to the 11th in Vail, Arizona.

01:20:42

And if you can make it there, this is the conference title or the conference name is called

01:20:49

Christian Responsibility in an Un -Christian World. And you can go to Eventbrite, you can go to strivingforeturning .org

01:20:56

and there's a thing right, a banner on the front that we'll have for the conference. So you can go there quickly or just go to Eventbrite and look up Christian Responsibility in an

01:21:06

Un -Christian World. You could see all the speakers, the topics. You probably won't know most of the speakers, but every one of them are excellent.

01:21:14

You know, we gotta stop going and saying like, we can only go to conferences where we know the speakers are some celebrity. No, there's tons of outstanding preachers that could preach better than some of the guys that you know and go to these big conferences for, but they just don't go to the big conferences.

01:21:32

So what we end up seeing is that at that conference,

01:21:38

Squirrelly Joe from Squirrelly Joe's Coffee may be there. And I think that Aaron is so coffee -a -phobic that he may actually run away from Squirrelly Joe.

01:21:49

That's what I think. I don't think I'd be in the same room with him. Yeah, we're gonna have to see.

01:21:55

We're gonna have to see. But if you need a good cup of coffee, which Aaron actually does need, he just doesn't know it, go to strivingforeturning .org

01:22:04

slash coffee, strivingforeternity .org slash coffee, get yourself a good cup of Squirrelly Joe's.

01:22:10

I just opened up a nice bag of, let me see what my bag is. I opened up a bag of Wisdom, which is a

01:22:17

Guatemalan dark roast. And it has a blueberry, cane sugar, plum, and vanilla flavor.

01:22:25

And I enjoy it very much. And so see, Aaron's going, that sounds good. To be fair, to be honest,

01:22:32

I've always loved the smell of coffee. It just doesn't translate to the taste for me. Well, maybe you just need more sugar and milk in it.

01:22:42

Had a little bit of coffee with my milk. Yeah, so if you guys want to get your cup of Squirrelly Joe's coffee, go to strivingforeturning .org

01:22:49

slash coffee. With that, let us, in the time we got left, we talked about a lot so far.

01:22:57

In the news section, we talked about the Trump case. A good bit of time to give people some background on that since it is a major event that happened in the fall of America today.

01:23:10

But let's get into good topics like men's discipleship. This retreat you had, where was it?

01:23:18

And you were speaking. So let's hear some of the topics that you covered. Well, a couple of things. First of all,

01:23:24

I do want to just kind of throw out a general lament on my part that I can only ever be here after the nine o 'clock hour.

01:23:31

I do work a job on Thursday nights. It doesn't get done. It's always like, oh, man, I wish

01:23:37

I could be here sooner. But just so you guys all know, I'm not one of those guys like, yeah, I'm just going to show up when I want to.

01:23:43

I like to be primed. Anyway, so with that said, I actually was not speaking at this one.

01:23:49

This is one that I was informed about months ago, and it was kind of penciled in on my calendar. I did not make the final decision to pull the trigger to go until this is going to start on a

01:24:00

Monday until the prior Saturday. Some plans had already been made that I might be able to attend, but I really wasn't able to nail everything down.

01:24:08

And part of the reason I wasn't able to nail it all down is the fact that this men's conference ran from a

01:24:15

Monday to a Monday. Okay, so this was going to be basically eight days from the half

01:24:23

Monday to the half Monday. Yep. And so work, family,

01:24:30

I was someplace else away from my family. Now, some guys came from way farther than I drove an hour.

01:24:35

Other guys came from, this was in Greenville, South Carolina. Other guys came from Pennsylvania. Two guys did.

01:24:41

One guy drove like 11 hours to be there. And I had some just, maybe not reservations, but going into it with kind of a, okay, we'll see.

01:24:54

This is interesting. But by God's grace, with what I do through Evermind Ministries, I am in charge of my own schedule.

01:25:00

So a couple of my counselees were willing to reschedule and my family was really understanding because I know when

01:25:07

I travel and speak, they're pretty used to it. So it was going to be fine and I went. And I'll tell you what,

01:25:13

I am so incredibly glad that I did. But before I talk about it, my experience there,

01:25:21

I just want to say, and this is Apologetics Live, and I want to apologize here. I want to make an argument.

01:25:27

That's not what Apologetics means, my friend. I know, but I'm apologizing by utilizing Apologetics, right?

01:25:32

Isn't that a correct use of the word? I want to make an argument here for the fact that we do not do discipleship in the church.

01:25:44

And I'm using very broad terms. I'm not necessarily talking about you and your church, but I've moved 22 times in my life.

01:25:51

Okay, so I turned 44 here on June 6th. It means I have moved once every two years of my life on average.

01:26:00

I've gone to a lot of, go ahead. Oh, I was just trying to figure, is it like people really, they chase you out of town that quickly?

01:26:07

Pitchforks and torches, it's ridiculous. Every single time, it doesn't matter. But I've attended a lot of church.

01:26:16

I've been a member of a lot of churches. And I'd say 99 .9

01:26:21

% of the individuals with whom I've interacted, either were not doing this specifically with me, for sure, 100 % weren't doing this with me.

01:26:31

But rarely did I ever hear people doing it with somebody else. And I'm a biblical counselor. I interact, I travel,

01:26:36

I speak. We are not doing discipleship in a very biblical way. Now, the

01:26:42

Bible doesn't sit down and necessarily say, this is how discipleship works, with the exception of, because it does, it talks about the one and others, right?

01:26:52

We're supposed to be one another. Ephesians 4 tells us that we're supposed to be speaking the truth in love, and we're supposed to be building each other up as the body of Christ into the head, right?

01:27:01

And it does tell us things, that we're supposed to be speaking to one another in psalms and hymns and spiritual songs. But when you take the description of discipleship in the

01:27:10

Bible, and then you layer it in with the prescriptive passages about what discipleship looks like, as we corporately are worshiping

01:27:17

God, and we're sharpening one another, the picture that you get is a life -on -life type of experience, which for the average

01:27:26

American Christian, we've created a society here in America that's very insular.

01:27:33

We don't interact with each other to any significant degree, outside of our work, school, church.

01:27:43

We might have friends who come over with some regularity, family, so on and so forth. So I just wanna throw it out there, and feel free to come on and tell me

01:27:53

I'm wrong. Feel free to light up the comment section. But I just wanna make the observation that discipleship, we are missing the mark.

01:28:03

We are missing the goal. And I have never believed that so firmly and strongly as I do now, even having come out of this discipleship, the

01:28:14

DDR, Deliberate Discipleship Retreat, hosted and led by David Bennett from Silent Word Ministries.

01:28:23

So I'll just say really quickly, again, from my own personal experience, one of the things that I found where I started to clue me in on this is that, again, as a biblical counselor working in a

01:28:32

Christian school, I had a lot of opportunities to counsel people, either people coming in asking for help, families, or people who would get in trouble, and they would find themselves not asking for help, but needing it anyway.

01:28:44

But then when I went to Victory Academy for Boys, which was a residential home for at -risk teens, I realized that my counseling opportunities, my relating opportunities with them were so different and so much more dynamic because before it was across the desk.

01:28:59

And it was not that the desk is a problem, but it was one of those things where like, we're not having an issue right now, we're talking about how in the future when you're tempted this way or this other issue comes up, how you should respond.

01:29:10

It was always talking about what happened in the past and hopefully preparing you to do better in the future. But at Victory Academy for Boys, where we live together in the same house, we could address the issue at the moment with God's truth in the hallway, in the bedroom, at the dining room table.

01:29:26

And that was, for me, it just, for me working there for those five years, just opened up my eyes to the fact that this life -on -life type of ministry of discipleship, which what

01:29:37

Jesus did with his disciples is so much incredibly more dynamic than anything that we can reproduce in our programs and things like that within the church.

01:29:49

So this discipleship retreat went for, again, these eight days, and it was done that way on purpose so that it would include a

01:29:56

Sunday and so that we could go past that mark where we actually start to be able to be comfortable with each other in relationship.

01:30:06

And it was like, we got up, we had to be there, met together at 7 a .m. And it wasn't shutting down with the exception of meals and some opportunities to step away and to work on some of the stuff that we were learning.

01:30:18

And with a couple hours, well, maybe about an hour and a half or so after lunch, with those exceptions, we went from seven in the morning to nine at night.

01:30:28

Sometimes there were a couple of nights we went. Yeah, it was. And it was chock full.

01:30:34

We actually didn't even get through all of the information. We got this binder. I wish I had it with me. I forgot to bring it in. This binder of all of the slides that he had were printed out.

01:30:43

So we had the information. It was just absolutely fantastic.

01:30:49

And it started off. He actually does three of these discipleship retreats.

01:30:56

The third one is now that you've learned these, how do we actually do discipleship in someone else's life?

01:31:04

The second one is about spiritual gifts, recognizing how God basically, how he's created you.

01:31:10

I do something very similar, but different in regard to helping parents with their children moving into college, to understand who

01:31:21

God is creating them to be, the trajectory of their lives, of who God, where he might want them to go in the future.

01:31:29

Similar concept with that one. And then the one that I went to, the first one is really about us, starting first with us, because we can't help somebody else if we're not where we need to be.

01:31:41

And the whole opening premise had to do with the fact that you cannot do if you're not being.

01:31:48

There is no doing without true being. And this kind of goes back to what was being said earlier about the homosexuality and the struggles and so on and so forth.

01:31:56

It doesn't matter what we do if we are not being who God wants us to be.

01:32:03

And so the rest of the time after establishing that point was about all these biblical spiritual disciplines that we don't do as well as we think we do.

01:32:16

And as a man in the ministry, as a man whose job it is to study the word, I tell you what,

01:32:22

I was convicted. I was convicted because my prayer life has been nothing ever in my life, has been nothing like what it could be, has been nothing like what it has been by God's grace since I've been back.

01:32:35

My time in God's word, studying it, memorizing it, learning from it, meditating on it for the past 44 years of my life is nothing compared to the rich interaction that I have had with God in his word since I've been back.

01:32:51

And it has been just absolutely fantastic. So the proposition, the challenge

01:32:58

I'm putting out there, just to kind of kick us off in case anyone wants to kind of interact with this from a asking questions or making comments type of perspective is the fact that I do not believe,

01:33:12

I firmly do not believe that the average church experience is really, the discipleship experience is happening the way that it can happen and the way that the

01:33:22

Bible presents that it should be happening, but that there are answers out there and we can do it by God's grace.

01:33:29

So I'll stop there. Andrew, let you talk. Maybe, I know you're throwing some stuff up on the screen. Yeah, no,

01:33:34

I was putting up some comments that Fatima is saying here, when I wish discipling could go on after it ended.

01:33:42

So I joined church. Let's see, wrong one. Dee had said, those who don't want to be accountable, avoid church and being connected, which is a pattern we see.

01:33:55

Fatima says, I was discipled when I became a new Christian. We met once a week for six months. We used a discipleship book called

01:34:02

Discipling Another to love Jesus, help me because I live an isolated life.

01:34:10

I mean, anything is better than nothing. Don't get me wrong. Discipleship is not,

01:34:18

I teach this often because people tend to think discipleship is, Aaron's going to disciple me.

01:34:26

He gets a book, and we're going to sit down for an hour and do a book study on some book or a

01:34:33

Bible book or, Panera? You got to go, you go someplace, you sit down and you spend an hour going through either a book of the

01:34:44

Bible or a book someone wrote. It's usually a book someone wrote. You go through it together. And look, we at Striving Fraternity, we have a book, right?

01:34:52

It's called Growing in Grace. And you can get that. And that is a book that's used for discipleship. But that is not the only way to disciple.

01:35:01

Okay. That is a way. But you know, I've discipled men while lifting weights.

01:35:10

Because one of the things when you're lifting is, you know, you do a set and you got to rest. You got to let your muscles rest.

01:35:15

So great time to talk. I've discipled guys while playing paintball because we'd play a set of paintball.

01:35:22

We'd actually use it for evangelism as well. If we had no unbelievers, it was discipleship time. If there were unbelievers, we used it as evangelism time.

01:35:29

But we'd play every Saturday. And in between each game, we'd spend half an hour before we started the next game.

01:35:36

Some guys would have to fix their markers, whatnot. So you can do evangelism. You could do it knitting.

01:35:42

You could sit with someone and just, if you have people that knit together, they could sit and knit. And there's a lot of ways to do discipleship.

01:35:50

So we got to get out of this notion that it's just reading, doing a book study together.

01:35:56

Because it's life on life. Not just being at church together. Definitely not. No. And it's definitely, you know,

01:36:01

I hear some pastors. I'll say, why do my discipleship from the pulpit? No, you don't. Because that's not discipleship.

01:36:08

It's not life on life. I mean, it's important. Obviously, the ministry of the word is desperately important.

01:36:15

They're equipping us for the work of the ministry. But listen to that. They are equipping the church for the work of the ministry.

01:36:22

The work of the ministry, as defined by the next few verses, is literally discipleship. It's evangelism and discipleship.

01:36:28

So they're equipping us to do that. Part of the problem is that we're not doing it.

01:36:33

We're not actually, we don't recognize what, how we're supposed to take what we're using or learning and then use it with each other.

01:36:41

Yeah. Yeah. I mean, it's something we have to be aware that discipleship is important.

01:36:48

And unfortunately, it's, I think that my theory, I could be wrong, but I think that what happened with the

01:36:55

Seeker Sensitive Church movement is the focus came away from life on life in the body of Christ to the pulpit and the platform.

01:37:07

And you got the worship band or worship teams. So you have your professional

01:37:12

Christians, really, like they do the singing for you because they'd sing songs that most people in the congregation can't hit those notes, right?

01:37:20

And then you have your professional Christian who's studying for you. And he's the one supposed to be evangelizing for you because you bring your friends to church so they can hear the gospel, right?

01:37:29

And it became this thing where everything became about what happens on stage at the pulpit.

01:37:35

And I think that that transformation changed the way people do church.

01:37:42

And instead of it being life on life with other individuals, it became more of a show.

01:37:48

We go to church to watch church be done rather than do church. But that's my theory.

01:37:56

Yeah, it's true. And I see the other side of that is that we've just kind of taken our modern

01:38:03

American contextualization and we try to do quote unquote discipleship within that. So it's a program that like you already said, we've got this thing, we get together, we read a book, and what's really sad, and I've always argued this.

01:38:18

I said, men's prayer breakfasts. Could we ever get a group of men to get together and pray without offering them bacon and eggs?

01:38:28

Maybe that's a little sardonic. It's a little jaded to say that. Well, no, but I don't think you're far off because think about it.

01:38:34

How many conferences do people go to? And you know what you don't see a conference on? Prayer.

01:38:40

And there's a reason. Every conference organizer knows that if you do a conference on prayer, no one will show up.

01:38:47

And Wednesday night prayer meeting or whenever you have your church's prayer meeting, if you have one, the percentage of people who show up to that on a regular basis compared to a

01:38:56

Sunday service, I mean, it is grotesquely small. And every church I've ever been to, grotesquely small.

01:39:03

Now I can't speak for outside of America. I don't wanna just paint a broad brush on the church as a whole.

01:39:09

I'm just talking about the experience here. But to my point, it's like, we look at what works in the world, right?

01:39:15

So these people get together and they've got this hobby or they do this thing together, whatever else. And so we kind of patterned discipleship after that.

01:39:22

When Promise Keepers was big, there was kind of like a sports like men's, just that typical

01:39:30

American approach to this event that we're going to have. But it allows people to stand at arm's length.

01:39:37

And so much of quote unquote discipleship is we read our thing, we did our prayer, we ask about prayer requests.

01:39:43

Maybe the guy did a really good job in press. It's like, hey, listen, listen, you've admitted to us that you're struggling with pornography.

01:39:51

Did you fail this week? How many times and when and so on and so forth. That guy may have even called us on the phone during the week to help keep us accountable.

01:40:01

But then how much of the time, once we've gotten that out of the way, do we spend talking about sports and other things going on in our lives that never wraps back around, tries to apply the things that we've been learning about God to those things?

01:40:15

And that's just, it's like, you know, 10 % Bible, 90 % guys hanging out. Yeah, well, and it becomes a thing where it's like, well,

01:40:26

I really like the sports thing. I mean, because that sports like feeling, sports event feeling.

01:40:34

And so as a guy, okay, I like that. So I'll go to this. And what we don't realize we're doing, is, and I want you to think about this, is we're really kind of saying that, like the word of God is not sufficient.

01:40:50

Because we're subtly saying that we need something more than the Bible to capture our attention.

01:40:57

And I just don't, I think that the word of God should be enough. I mean, like at my church, the

01:41:03

Chinese church where I pastored, we had, I had someone that came to Wednesday night prayer meeting and he was a pastor.

01:41:09

What in the world are you guys doing? Because we would have, you know, about maybe 70%, 80 % of the church for prayer meeting.

01:41:21

And so that was something that was like, he was like, how are you doing it? You know, we would have once a quarter, we would have the entire church get together on a

01:41:31

Saturday for a day of fasting and prayer. Now granted, we broke the fast after we were done with the day of prayer.

01:41:38

And we would break the fast by going out to dinner together, right? And so, but we would have a time for fasting for the church and praying for the needs of the church.

01:41:49

I don't know any church that does that, to be honest with you. But it was something we committed to doing. And you're definitely the outlier on that one.

01:41:56

Yeah. And I think we had people motivated for, to pray, but we did it where that was, we made that the importance.

01:42:06

We got together to pray. To study the Bible and then kind of a 10 minute prayer afterwards.

01:42:11

No, we had a time of 45 minutes of prayer. We actually did maybe a short devotional and then 45 minutes of prayer.

01:42:18

So, and I'm going to take, I'm going to step out for a second. So I'll let you talk.

01:42:24

I'll be right back. So the gentleman I invited again, I said that he's part of silent word ministries, which is a ministry to deaf and other special needs individuals.

01:42:35

However, this particular ministry that he does is not associated with silent words.

01:42:40

It's just a thing that he does. He goes around the United States and he finds groups of guys, guys who like he'll meet with a pastor or somebody else and he'll pull in guys who are already growing and already mature in the

01:42:54

Lord. Cause he wants to do the multiplication thing where he's working with these guys who will work with these guys who will work with these guys and so on and so forth.

01:43:01

If you ever have the opportunity to interact with him, his name is David Bennett. He is a fantastic gentleman to get to know, sweet and wonderful.

01:43:10

Actually I had invited him to come on the show tonight to talk a little bit about this from his perspective cause he could do it a lot more justice than I could having just attended one time.

01:43:21

But his 10 children and they're all adults but his son and actually his wife and his, sorry, there we go.

01:43:31

Try that again. His daughter and his son -in -law are getting ready to head out to Africa and as missionaries and so they're spending time with them.

01:43:39

He couldn't come. But this idea about really doing life on life, my family and I, we had to, after having that experience at Victory Academy, we're literally inviting people to come live in our home.

01:43:55

We had to embrace a new paradigm when we moved away from there. We live in Brevard, North Carolina now and we don't have at -risk teen boys living in our home.

01:44:05

And so we're basically had to do everything in our power to not just be an insular nuclear family at home most days.

01:44:16

Now, praise God, my wife and I work from home. My children have been homeschooled. My son now is actually away from home more than usual because he actually has a full -time job outside of the house and he's planning to go to a university this fall.

01:44:30

But we have for the past five years that we've been living here have had to be so desperately intentional of getting into each other's lives.

01:44:38

So that has involved our doors open and constantly inviting people into our home.

01:44:44

We have an official Friday night game night. If you're ever in the area, you are invited to come to our Friday game night.

01:44:51

It's an open door and we let everyone know that they can come. We have tons of people in the house. I sometimes think that the

01:44:57

Lord does a miracle with our home because I sometimes count up the number of people that's in here and we're like, these people shouldn't fit.

01:45:05

We regularly try to get together with my sister and her family who live near here as well on a regular basis, keeping those relationships fresh.

01:45:13

But I'm also trying to connect with people in my life outside of this to get into these scenarios.

01:45:20

I really strongly encourage young moms to get together. I know it's harder to parent outside of your house.

01:45:27

I know that the playdates are anything oftentimes but fun for the moms, but I want to encourage you.

01:45:33

You're in a position, especially if you're a stay -at -home mom with young children, you are in a position where it is a perfect place for you to be doing life together.

01:45:41

I encourage them, go over to one's house, then go over to the other person's house the next day.

01:45:47

Try to do this. Living in community is super, super important. I recommend that this time together though has to be intentional, because again, we slip into this really bad habit of just talking about what we know about, right?

01:46:05

Because as humans, we all discuss what we think is... We all discuss what we love the most, what's most important to us.

01:46:18

And so when you get a bunch of Christians together and hours go by and no one has talked about the things of God, no one has talked about what they're learning in the scriptures, no one's talking about prayer requests on their heart, no one's bringing truth,

01:46:29

God's truth to bear on the scenario. We're talking about politics, we're talking about sports, we're talking about food, we're talking about movies, but we're not talking about God.

01:46:37

That's where it goes back to the we can't do unless we are being. Because in that moment, we don't truly, genuinely have a loving, dynamic relationship with God, because if we did, we'd be talking about him more.

01:46:50

A young person who has just gotten into that crush stage of a romance, you can't get them to shut up about their new crush or their romantic interest.

01:47:03

Why? Because they're obsessed with them, because they, I would say they love them, but you know what I mean? And in the same way, we

01:47:10

Christians aren't doing that so often. So if you're going to have those mom dates where you're getting together, if you're going to, as guys decidedly say,

01:47:19

I mean, because work, man, our work structure, it's not like it used to be where in agrarian societies, where we're all working in a similar area, spending time together in that way at work.

01:47:30

We have to be intentional to get together and to do stuff together. It can't just be existing in the same space, and it can't just be talking about the same stuff that the world talks about.

01:47:39

If you spend the entire day with somebody and you go back and you remove anything that could have been influenced by God or the word, and it basically just sounds that whole day just basically sounds like what anyone else would be talking about, just with fewer swear words or whatever.

01:47:57

That's not what we're talking about. You've got to be intentional. You've got to be there having the conversation, bringing

01:48:03

God's truth to bear on it. And we can't do that unless we have that relationship with him.

01:48:10

So my encouragement and my challenge to all of us is this, and this is where, again, my eyes, again, I got a person who is in full -time

01:48:16

Christian service. I'm counseling individuals. I'm discipling people. I have my own personal time with the

01:48:22

Lord. My eyes just stretched open wide to the reality that I was failing

01:48:27

God in my time investment with him. And one of the most dynamic parts of it, the part that when he said it, it was like shackles dropped off of my feet and handcuffs fell off of my hands when he said it.

01:48:44

He was talking specifically to the guys in ministry at this point. He said, guys, so often we say,

01:48:50

I don't have time to spend with the Lord because life, right? And so it's really easy to say, well, because of work or because of school or because of this,

01:49:00

I just don't have this time to try to squeeze God in. But he said specifically to the men in ministry, he said, your time with God is your bread and butter.

01:49:12

Spend hours with him. You have to, you must, because literally that is what you're doing and your ability to minister to other people, whether it's preaching or counseling or whatever it is, it needs that time with God.

01:49:31

You've got to be face to face with him in the word and speaking with him in prayer. And I was like, wow,

01:49:36

I had been looking at this the wrong way in my ministry. Again, in control of my own schedule, I was doing less and less time with the

01:49:43

Lord because I had more and more things to do over here. And he testifies to his own experience. People say, man,

01:49:49

David, how do you get so much done? How do you accomplish so much in your life for the Lord? And he says, I spend a lot of time with him.

01:49:56

And seriously, most days he is spending at least two hours a day, just him and God and what he refers to in his garden with the

01:50:06

Lord. And that's just bare minimum of how much time he's dedicating to his time with the

01:50:11

Lord. He also goes on sometimes up to two months worth of spiritual retreats, what he calls spiritual retreats, times that he is pulling away from his life and he is going.

01:50:21

Now, he doesn't do all of that at one time. OK, he'll take three days here.

01:50:27

He might take a week there or two weeks here throughout the course of the year. But at the end of the year, he has taken two months of his life one on one by himself, away from his family, away from life and work and ministry to spend that time with God.

01:50:40

And I know that probably sounds crazy. It sounded crazy to me the first time I heard it. But as I was there we had

01:50:47

God's word open. We're seeing what he was saying about our time with him. I tell you what, I'm looking forward in this, not in this next week, but I think of the week after that,

01:50:55

I'm going to take a spiritual retreat. And this is not this is no way like patting myself on the back.

01:51:00

Look at me. I'm doing a good thing. No, no, no. This is me recognizing a deficit in my life, something that I believe

01:51:06

I genuinely need. I need to love my God better. If I'm going to have any impact on this world,

01:51:12

I've got to know him better and love him better. And getting away for a few days to be able to do that's going to be a big part of that.

01:51:20

Why wouldn't I do it? Welcome back, Andrew, to the show. What are your thoughts? Well, you have a question here that someone asks.

01:51:27

Melissa is asking if there's any good books on discipleship. So what books can you recommend?

01:51:34

Oh man, oh man. I wish I could off the top of my head. I don't have any coming to mind.

01:51:41

I will say that the year -long Celebration of God, the

01:51:46

Celebration of God podcast that I put together is starting with that first part about personal discipleship.

01:51:54

It's all about personal discipleship. It's a very niche category, but we speak a lot to that in there.

01:52:03

Obviously the curriculum or the notebook that was put together by David Bennett for this deliberate discipleship is a huge thing, but you can't go out and buy that.

01:52:13

So I'm really sorry that I'm failing you providing a good answer to your question. Do you have one, Andrew? So first off,

01:52:21

I'd say any, you know, again, this comes back down to how we look at discipleship.

01:52:27

All right. Any book can work in one sense, right?

01:52:34

So it doesn't matter. Was she asking a book to use during discipleship or asking a book about discipleship?

01:52:39

Well, you know, you might have a good point. I thought she was asking about discipleship. If it's about discipleship, then

01:52:45

I have to answer differently. Now I got to go find the question again. Sorry. No, that's OK. You're just keeping me on my toes.

01:52:52

Any good books on discipleship? So I'll say this off the bat and Melissa's probably already taking the class, but you can, we have a course that if you go to strivingfraternityacademy .org

01:53:08

or just go to strivingfraternity .org, go to our Academy page there. We have an introduction to discipleship where we go through our book,

01:53:17

Growing in Grace. But in that process, we also explain how to do discipleship.

01:53:23

What should it look like? What, you know, what are different ways to do it? So I think that there's a lot to,

01:53:33

I'm just trying to think of some books. My bookcase is covered. I can't see my bookcase that would have the discipleship category right there.

01:53:42

I'd have to get up and walk around. But I'm trying to think of some books offhand, and I can't think of any offhand that talk specifically about how to do discipleship.

01:53:55

I know I have a few. So maybe I will try to get,

01:54:01

Melissa, maybe I'll try to do that for next week, is I'll try to look to see whether or not

01:54:08

I can put together a list. So how about that? We'll do it for next week. Sounds good.

01:54:17

You had starred that question from Melissa. It doesn't necessarily deal directly with discipleship, but I did have a thought about that.

01:54:23

Well, I wanted to bring this up. So Melissa asked the question, shouldn't the ultimate goal of missionaries be church planting and becoming pastors of churches?

01:54:33

So the answer is, well, maybe. So what we think of as missionaries -

01:54:40

Yeah, well, yeah. I pretty much was going to say that.

01:54:46

But the idea is what we think of as missionaries today in the Bible would be church planters.

01:54:53

And a lot of people don't understand the role. Like, so the evangelist would go to town, to town, to town and share the gospel.

01:55:02

And there would be those that they would go and they'd establish churches, plant the church, and then move on.

01:55:11

That's what we think of as a missionary. And so the missionary should be focused on church planting.

01:55:21

In my opinion, now becoming a pastor of that church, I would say no.

01:55:28

Right? This is where I would - It starts that way, right? It starts that way. But as a missionary, he should be moving on because of his plan.

01:55:39

Like, I do know people that are missionaries. They're being funded here in America by people. And what they've done is they're in America being funded by people who are, you know, they're living in another country where they're pastoring a church.

01:55:59

So, you know, all of a sudden, it's like, are they really, they should really, they're the pastor, they should be supported by the church.

01:56:11

In my opinion. And so I don't think, I think they should be church planters.

01:56:18

They should be going out. They definitely, it should definitely not be, hey, we're helping people build houses. Okay? So that's not a missionary work.

01:56:28

But I think it should be that they're there to plant the church, establish the leadership, and then move on.

01:56:34

Train them up and move on. That's the key right there. Training nationals to do that work is so desperately important.

01:56:45

Multiplying those disciples. The missionary is in a place where he is, it takes a special know -how and it takes special preparation to be able to plant a church and to do it well.

01:56:55

Generally speaking, obviously anyone can do it by the power of God, but you understand what I'm saying. And they're going to places where these are unreached people, generally speaking, right?

01:57:05

Or it's a very dark place. And so to go in there and to try to teach them to be church planters, that's a bad idea.

01:57:14

You want to train them of how to do body life, how to do ministry, and even training some of them to be pastors.

01:57:21

That is a big task. But you're training them to stay in the church, training the nationals to do church, the glory of God in the discipleship and so on and so forth, and the evangelism of their community, and then the missionary moves on to restart that process someplace else.

01:57:39

Yeah, I mean, so the first step is evangelism. Second step is discipleship.

01:57:46

And that's part of planting the church, then training up leadership and move on.

01:57:52

Can you grab, I always say Fatima, I'm thinking that might be the wrong pronunciation.

01:57:57

If you throw up, there we go. Paul Washer had strong words against making church a base for making more churches.

01:58:04

I guess the objection is making church kind of like an MLM, multi -level marketing. And okay, what Washer was talking about,

01:58:09

I think what you're getting at here, I agree is a bad idea. We're not talking about that. The missionary who starts a church and then moves on to start another church, those churches sometimes have a relationship and they will do things, but they are not connected.

01:58:22

It is not like having a campus pastor and satellite churches. It's not that model whatsoever that we're talking about.

01:58:29

And I'm glad you mentioned that for clarification. Unless anyone else was thinking, that's what we were suggesting.

01:58:35

Well, let me give a little bit more clarification because I happen to know where she lives. So there in the

01:58:40

Philippines, you have churches like CCF where you have their main campus and when they go and plant churches, the idea that they have there is they'll go plant churches, but it's a satellite off the main church.

01:58:54

That's the multi -level marketing that you're referring to. That's what Paul Washer would be speaking against.

01:59:00

That's different, as Aaron said, of just planting new churches that there's no direct relationship.

01:59:06

The only connection is they both had the same guys help start the church. So that's what missionaries should be doing nowadays.

01:59:15

I mean, I know a couple, they've been in Taiwan for,

01:59:20

I think, 40 years working at the same church with the same people, getting

01:59:25

American funding and living in Taiwan. So, all right.

01:59:32

Amy is saying she's, I have a off -topic question, please. All right.

01:59:38

We are about to end the show, but you better type it in quick or join very quickly. And maybe we can do that for you,

01:59:44

Amy. Because, you know, you're special. We'll stick around.

01:59:51

I am praising God for Amy's, what she's been putting into the chat here talking about the

01:59:57

Lord has gotten her attention recently. If you guys ever have a chance to get in on this chat during the show, you'd need to do it.

02:00:04

Yeah. There's a lot of prayer requests going on tonight, back and forth, which is good. I always like that. You know, the way people are, you know,

02:00:12

I did get a laugh because Amy is asking if Fatima is like, you know, hey, you wouldn't happen to live near me in this state in the

02:00:20

United States. And I'm laughing going, yeah, about as far as she could get from you because she is in the

02:00:25

Philippines. Yeah. So it's pretty, pretty far.

02:00:32

So while she works on her question, type it in. It'd be a good time for me to let you know about MyPillow.

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02:01:56

So with that, let's see if Emily has her question in. She says here, was the snake originally made with feet or wings?

02:02:08

Seems to me that God cursed him to slither on his belly on the dirt. Well, that animal, we assume it's a snake.

02:02:18

We call it the serpent, but the serpent is also a reference referring to Satan. So yeah, we do seem to...

02:02:27

Huh? And dragons too, I believe. And dragons. And dragons, we do know, you know, like that's the name that we would use for dinosaurs before the word dinosaur was invented.

02:02:39

So yeah, I would say that whatever that was, whether that was just specifically

02:02:45

Satan or whether he was, you know, possessing some animal, whatever it was that the curse was that their feet were gone, you know, that they walk on the belly of the dirt.

02:03:02

And that's why many people think it's the serpent we have today. So. And that's what

02:03:07

I've heard too. I've actually never considered whether or not it might have had wings. That's kind of a cool thought. Not sure, but I think you're right.

02:03:13

Whatever it was, part of the curse was to remove that so that it had to slither on the ground.

02:03:22

So yes, good observation. Yeah, I do need to go, though. It is it is time and I can't do

02:03:27

Anthony time tonight. Yeah, and I need to go as well. But Deneen wants it to be Anthony time.

02:03:32

And I just, I know, I know. So Anthony times when we go over like last week went way over.

02:03:40

But I'm going to continue asking for prayer for Mark, the guy who was on last week, continue to pray for him.

02:03:47

And I also just say next week we were asked to leave. I asked whether we would respond to a remnant radio video.

02:03:55

If he sends it to us, then we will respond to that. If not, we may just do a Q &A and looking to get your questions answered.

02:04:03

If you have suggestions, you can always contact us info at striving for attorney dot org info at striving for eternity dot org.

02:04:10

Actually, correction. That's dot com for that one. So info at striving fraternity dot com. We're going to probably make a change, make all the addresses easier.

02:04:20

But that would be where you can contact us. You can contact us on Facebook. We have an apologetics live group. That is where we let people know if we're not going to do a show.

02:04:28

So it's good to be part of that Facebook group. And the other thing I'd say is if that's a good place to ask questions, if you want for a show topic, you can let us know.

02:04:37

So let us know what you want. And with that, we'll see you next time. Remember to glorify

02:04:43

God to to. I forget how I always end the show. Wow, that's really bad.

02:04:49

Glorify God. And now I see Drew rubbed off on me. Well, we'll see you next week.