42 - Calvinism vs. Arminianism, Part 4 - Irresistible Grace

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43 - Calvinism vs. Arminianism, Part 5 - Perseverance of the Saints (Can you lose your Salvation)

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Alright, well welcome to the

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Striving for Eternity Academy's School of Systematic Theology. We're glad to have you with us.

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We have some cool things to show you in this class. We're going to be dealing with some nice, fun, non -controversial topics.

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Who am I fooling? But we want to thank you all for attending.

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Welcome those new students. There's some new students that maybe have joined us. We got some new folks coming in from maybe from that attended the

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Ohio Fire this past weekend. One of the things that we put on display this weekend at the

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Ohio Fire is this. What's this? Well, if you look right there, that is the logo for Wrath and Grace Clothing.

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So what is it that we got? Well, there we go. Look at that. Oh, the new Striving for Eternity t -shirt.

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They are not on the website, on the store yet. Well, maybe by the time you watch this, if it is on YouTube, that may be then.

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So you can go to the store and pick them up. If not, you can just contact us and we'll make sure that you get one.

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But they're $15? $15. Okay, so they are $15 each. I happen to have a different one.

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Check that out. Also from Wrath and Grace ... Why can't

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I say that? Wrath and Grace Clothing. See, I should really stand up a little. There we go. So you can see the new ...

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See, the logo is too low here. I'm just too short for the camera. That's what it is.

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All right, I got to grow up. No, I hear you laughing out there. Yeah.

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So, we're in our syllabus, if you have yourself a syllabus.

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We are in our School of Systematic Theology. We're in book number two.

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Book number two, where we're dealing with God's gift to man.

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We're dealing with specifically the doctrine of salvation. The doctrine of salvation has several lessons that we've been going through, and we've been spending a little bit of time on lesson number eight.

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I know we've been here in lesson eight for a while, and some of you are going, will he ever get done with lesson eight?

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Eventually, we will. But this is what many people know of Calvinism versus Arminianism.

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We're calling it God's sovereignty and human responsibility. Most people think of God's sovereignty being

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Calvinism and human responsibility being Arminianism. It's not really true. It's not that perfect of a scenario that it's just one or the other, because the reality is those that would not hold to Calvinism still often believe in God's sovereignty.

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Actually, sometimes people who say they're Calvinists even believe that there's human responsibility. Wow, that's crazy.

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So, the reality is I think more people like to argue over it than really maybe think through it or study the other side of the argument, know what they're arguing about, just saying.

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But we've been going through for several weeks now what's known as the five points of Calvinism.

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We're eventually going to get to the human responsibility side of it, but right now we're focused on the

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God's sovereignty side of it. We're spending a little bit more time than we typically would because there's so much misunderstanding, confusion about this subject.

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For that reason, we're trying to take it slow, define terminology, explain where people have misunderstandings, and then try to correct those things.

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So, we studied the first one, and the five points are, as you remember, and if this is actually the first class, you really should go back to the earlier lessons, at least on this subject.

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But really, you should go to the first lesson, because this is like what, lesson 42, I think. So, you should really go back to lesson one, because all of what we're talking about, when we talk about this area of salvation with God's sovereignty and human responsibility, it's rooted in the attributes of God, the very nature of God, and if you understand the attributes of God correctly,

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I think these issues that people make are easier to understand. So, we are looking through the acronym

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TULIP, and TULIP is the acronym used to define the five points of Calvinism.

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So, we looked at T. T was total depravity. Total depravity.

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Now, if you remember, total depravity did not mean that you are as wicked and evil as you possibly could be.

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That's not what it means. I know some of you think that I'm always as wicked and evil as I possibly could be, but I'm actually not.

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Believe it or not, I could be worse. That's a scary thought. No, but some people misdefine it that way.

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It doesn't mean that someone is as bad as they could be. It doesn't mean that they can't do anything good morally compared to other people.

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What it means is that our whole being was influenced by sin.

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Now, what do I mean by our whole being? Well, our soul. We were influenced by sin both in our mind, our thinking, in our emotions, our heart, and in our will, our volition.

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Now, that may seem really hard for some to understand because that is the issue where some have a differing view is that some think that our will was not influenced by sin and that is the difference of total depravity.

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Total depravity is the issue that our will was influenced by sin. In other words, we cannot of our own will, notice

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I didn't say free will because that's the whole issue of total depravity, your will is not free.

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We agree, everyone agrees, you have a will, you have a volition, you take actions, but it's not free and it's enslaved to sin.

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We looked at that in the area of total depravity and our understanding our sin nature. We looked at that a few lessons ago.

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With that, we end up realizing that our will is influenced, is controlled, is enslaved to sin before we come to Christ.

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Now, after we come to Christ, I believe that we do have a free will. Why? Because the Holy Spirit now indwells us and the sin no longer has that control.

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Now we actually have an ability to choose between the Spirit and ourself. But of our own will, we cannot save ourself.

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That's the issue of total depravity. So if you think that there is no sin nature, then you would be in a camp called

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Pelagian. Now the Pelagians are those who believe that the sin of Adam was not passed on from father to child.

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And therefore, when we're born, we're born neutral. Not good, not bad, we're just are.

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And that is how they would end up seeing it. And so, then they say we, either from our culture or influence, we fall.

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But the Bible, as we looked at, makes it clear that we are born with a sin nature.

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Now, based on the total depravity, we got into the you, which was unconditional election.

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Thank you. Unconditional election is the idea that you go and you vote.

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No, no, that's not what it is. The idea of unconditional election is the idea that God elected.

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Now, God elected meaning that really, in our understanding, it would be God selected.

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God chose. Now, how did He choose? Did He choose based on something that we did?

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Well, now if we're totally depraved and we can't do anything to save ourselves, then

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God's election, His selection, cannot be based on something that we do.

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Therefore, it can't be conditional upon us. That's the idea of the unconditional election.

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If you don't believe in an unconditional election, you're believing in one of two different areas.

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Either you believe God does elect, which is biblical. It's in the Bible that God elected before the foundation of time in Ephesians.

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Now, it's either you're going to believe that election is not conditional, or you're not going to believe in election.

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It's one of the two. Either that election from God is based on something that you have done, which is what some try to argue.

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They say God looked down the tunnels of time, saw who would believe, and then chose those people.

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And the reason that is a problem is because what that does is that puts God inside of time, that He had to look down the tunnels of time, and also not only puts

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Him inside of time, which violates one of His attributes, that He's eternal, but it also violates another one, that it makes

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Him not omniscient. This is where open theists go. Open theism is this belief that God really doesn't know everything.

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His knowledge is open, and so He learns things. He's a really good guesser.

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And so He guesses who would be saved, but He really doesn't know until they get saved.

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So, He's really good at guessing what would happen that Judas would betray Christ and put

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Him on the cross. He wasn't really sure until it happened. That is heresy.

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I mean, that is a violation of the very attributes of God. It limits

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Him in His knowledge. And they do that because they somehow think they have to save His justice, like God needs us to protect

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His justice. Really? I don't think so. So, you either believe, and if you argue that God didn't elect, that we chose

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Him, He didn't choose us, then we are the ultimate source of salvation.

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If you believe, as Billy Graham taught, that God did 99 % and we must do the one, then in reality, that 1 % is what saves you.

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That's what makes all the difference. God did all that He can, and now it's up to you. So, you make that final step, and that is the thing that saves you.

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Well, then if that's the case, then even though Jesus Christ did 99%, you diminish what

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Jesus did on the cross by 1 % to add human works to it, to add human effort to it.

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And it is no longer God choosing you, it is you choosing God. That's not election. And if God looked down the tunnels of time to see who would choose

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Him, and then He chose them because they first chose Him, then the issue you now have is that it's not

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God's selection, it's human selection. It's people selecting

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God. So, the question is, who does the choosing?

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If it is a work of human beings, then salvation is not a work completely of God. So, we looked at that in unconditional election.

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And one thing I should have said at the opening of class, let me give you a fallacy that I saw on Facebook last week.

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Last week, there was, in a theological group that I'm part of, there was this question that was posed, and that is, are you a

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Calvinist or an Arminian? Now, that question right there is actually a logical fallacy.

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It is the fallacy, so you get two choices.

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Let me explain it. So, it's the fallacy of the excluded middle. The argument is you're either one or the other.

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You're either a Calvinist or an Arminian, and there's nothing in the middle. The fallacy of excluded middle is when someone gives you only two choices or a certain number of choices, and yet that's not all the possible choices that there could be.

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And that is what you end up seeing when you get these groups. When you get groups like this that argue for one side or the other, as if there's nothing in the middle, we have to be careful because right there, you end up with a logical fallacy.

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And to argue that you must be, as was being argued, that you must be a Calvinist or an

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Arminian, that is a logical fallacy. Because the reality, you could be a

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Pelagian, which is not Arminian, because the Pelagians don't believe in a sin nature, but the

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Arminians would. So right now, you have another one. I mean, there's a whole lot of excluded ones there.

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So, we looked at total depravity. We looked at unconditional election. Let's look at the L. The L, and this is all part of review,

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L was limited atonement. And this is the one, as I said when we went through this, that most people seem to have a difficulty with.

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Limited atonement, people think is that God, well, there's two ways to define it, actually.

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Really, probably the more accurate way to what I think Calvin probably taught and what his followers would have believed was that Christ died on the cross only for the elect.

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So that the issue there being is that his death was not for all people, in other words, every human being, but only for the elect.

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Now, I would agree that's true when it comes to the application. I'm not so sure that it's not true for the offer.

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In other words, we can offer to all men salvation. We can go out and preach the gospel to all people and offer them salvation from God because Christ died for all, but it's not applied to all, and that's the difference.

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So I really think where the issue of limited atonement comes in is, was it applied only to the offer or only to the application?

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Now, we all agree, unless you're a universalist, where you think everyone's going to heaven, basically, we all would agree that there are people in hell, and therefore, if there's anyone in hell today, that the application of the atonement was not applied to everyone.

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Therefore, it was limited. Now, I would agree that it is limited.

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I may not agree that it was not a legitimate offer to all.

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Now, we got into some discussion on Facebook this week about that, and, sorry, the week before, and so with that, and that was in our

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Facebook group, Striving for Eternity Facebook group, where we do discuss the topics from this class and other topics, so you can always join in there and join the conversation, but there was a question that went out on that was, you know, how that works out, and I had given an illustration and someone was kind of tweaking it a little, which is fine.

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May improve it. The thing is, when we discuss these things, it is a difficult thing for us sometimes to understand because, see,

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God knows He didn't learn, He didn't observe and see who would be saved.

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He knows who's going to be saved, and we can't understand that way of thinking, okay, but with that being said,

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God knowing these things, yes, He knows when

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He died on the cross, He knew who it was going to be applied to.

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He also knew who it wouldn't be applied to, and so, in a sense, you could argue, it is,

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I think, a legitimate way of arguing that Jesus knew who He was dying for, who was getting the payment of that.

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I can understand that argument, and in a logical way, yes, it makes sense, but where we get into trouble is if there's scripture verses that talk about Christ dying for all and that the offer is for all, then we got to deal with those, and we may have to come to a point that we say we can't comprehend the solution to it, okay, and we're going to see that when we get to human responsibility.

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I know that those who agree with the five points of Calvin are not going to like that lesson, just like the people right now who are bashing me for teaching the

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Calvinist position think I'm all kinds of wrong. So, with that said, let us get into this week's lesson, and that is irresistible grace, irresistible grace.

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So, with irresistible grace, let us give the explanation.

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That's actually in your syllabus, the letter I there, irresistible grace. If you're following along in the syllabus, you have blanks that we fill in as we go through class.

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That's the advantage of having your syllabus. It's always good to get one of those so that you can follow along, hint, hint, with the other students, just saying.

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So, always good to get one of those. So, with that, let us take a look at the definition.

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We'll have some blanks to fill in here. Irresistible grace is often explained in terms of God redeeming a person first, either chronologically or logically.

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Those are your two blanks there. Chronologically, which means in time, or logically, meaning not necessarily in time, but in a progression of order.

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If you speak to people, reformed people,

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Calvinists, you'll hear them talk about the order salutis, the order of salvation.

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So, let's finish this. It says in your syllabus there, irresistible grace is often explained in terms of God redeeming a person first, either chronologically, that's your first blank, or logically, that's your second blank, and then the individual believing.

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This teaching is the core of much of the debate between the two views.

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The two views being Calvinism or Minianism or which side you take.

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Again, I'm saying there's more views than just those two, but this whole debate that categorizes

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Calvinism or Minianism is really on this one issue, is kind of the core of it. The conflict is an attempt to reconcile whose choice came first,

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God's or man's. That's why we say God's sovereignty, human responsibility, which kind of came first.

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That's the way most people argue it. Did God choose me so I believed, or did I choose

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God so God redeemed? Which chose? Who chose first? Part of the problem is you and I think in a cause -effect that there is a single cause to a single effect, and God doesn't necessarily do that.

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Remember I said last class, I believe, that when we look at our Bible we have two causes, one effect.

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You have God writing the Bible, and you have Paul writing the Bible, and both wrote the Bible, and we have one book of Romans. So, we have one effect, two authors.

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How did that happen? Don't know. When we talk about our sanctification, we have two causes.

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God sanctifies us, we sanctify us, and result that we're sanctified. God does the work, we do the work.

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It's a joint effort in a sense, but it's really not a joint effort, it's all of God, and yet we're commanded to do it.

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How does that work? I don't really know. But just like Scripture, God works through us so that the very things that we do are as He intended them.

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So, this is the core of this whole debate. Who chose first?

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So, some opponents teach that God somehow saves people against their will, and that is a false understanding of this.

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Irresistible grace does not mean that God saved me kicking and screaming. God does not save us against our will, alright?

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Though many acknowledge that a chronological ordering is wrong, in other words, many people will say this salvation did not happen in a chronological, in a time order, that they would say it this way, and some people would disagree.

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I remember talking to a pastor who argued with me that he and I disagree by a millisecond.

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He believed that God would redeem a person, and a millisecond later they would have faith.

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They would repent. So, he believed that chronologically, within time, within a timeline,

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God saved us, regenerated us, and then immediately after that, in time, we were then repented and believed.

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So, he believed that there was this time order. But many don't agree with that.

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Many will say there isn't a time order, and they say that it's a logical order, okay?

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They will create a logical order that uses chronological terminology, which creates the confusion.

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See, there are some people who will agree that there is no chronological ordering to God's redemption and our belief.

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They would say there's no time there, but logically it makes sense to believe that God did the work first, and then

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I believed. So, they make a logical conclusion, but the confusion is when they speak like that, they often use chronological terminology, terminology of time, and it creates the confusion that some think that God saved someone before they were willing to believe.

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And that's where we get this false belief of irresistible grace that is sometimes taught that people are saved against their will.

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Now, this doctrine is, I think, best understood as a simultaneous, that's your blank there, simultaneous events.

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This doctrine is best understood as simultaneous events. God works through the individual in such a way that though the person chooses to believe,

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God worked through him so that the choice he makes is as God intended it to be.

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So, God gets 100 % of the credit, and we cannot take any of the credit, and yet we still believe.

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We still had a role to play. We still believed. I think it's best to understand as a simultaneous act.

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Now, what often happens when I say that is some people think that I'm now talking what's called synergism.

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Now, there's a difference in synergism and monergism. What does that mean?

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Mono, being one. Synerg, meaning to have a syncing or that there's a combining of it.

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So, it's what generates that salvation. Is it one source or multiple?

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Now, the thing that confuses people on an opposite end is when I say that I think this best understood as a simultaneous event.

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Some people think that I'm saying that we have a role to play in it. That it's

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God and man choosing. In a sense it is, but I still argue it's monogistic.

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It is singly an act of God. If God did not work through us, we would not choose

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God. Okay? So, he gets 100 % of credit and he is the only actor.

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You say, but Andrew, you're saying that we have a role. We believe. How could we not be an actor in salvation and yet you say we have an act to play?

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I don't know. Deuteronomy 29 .29. The issue here is again,

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I'm trying to say that I don't have all the answers to say that I have the mind of God. What I am saying is that we have to see what the scripture says and believe that.

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Okay? Now, I got a lot of verses here to go through, probably more than we have time in class, but let us try.

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Ready? Acts 16 .14, if we put that up there. Thank you. And with that one, we see here, we're going to go right from one to the other, but Acts 16 .14,

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one who heard us was a woman named

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Lydia from the city of Tyre, a seller of purple goods, who was a worshiper of God.

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And then look what it says here. And the Lord opened her heart to pay attention to what was said by Paul.

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Now, the interesting thing with that verse or that passage, I should say, is so many people know of the

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Philippian jailer, just a few verses away, when the Philippian jailer says to Paul, what must

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I do to be saved? And Paul says, believe on the Lord Jesus Christ.

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I find that very nice. Nice bookends. Here in 16 .14, he says that the

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Lord revealed it, opened up the heart, okay, of Lydia and to the jailer, it's believe.

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I mean, you get both of them there. But here you see who did the opening of the eyes, who does the opening of the heart?

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It's God. God is the one that gets the credit. Let's move on to Acts 18. Acts 18, we see here, and when he wished to cross to Achaia, the brothers encouraged him and wrote to the disciples to welcome him.

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When he arrived, he greatly helped those who through grace believed.

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So, how did they believe? They believed through grace. Now, let's look. We got several in John here.

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So, let us take a look in John 1, 12, and 13. This one's a real nice one. It says, but to all who did receive him, who believed in his name, he gave the right to become a child of God.

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And first off, it means not everyone is a child of God, but only those who believe in Jesus. He gave them the right to be child of God.

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Now, look at this. It says, who were born not of blood. That means not of your heritage, just because you're Jewish or Catholic.

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It doesn't mean you're automatically going to heaven. Not of blood, nor of the will of flesh.

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In other words, they are not just because of my desire to try to work at it.

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So, not by works, nor the will of man. In other words, not just because I desire heaven.

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I'm not going to heaven, but who? Of God. And this is really capturing every aspect.

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It's not by how we're born of genealogy that we're born of. It's not by our desire. It's not by our works.

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We're only saved by God. This belief that gives us a right to be called a child of God, we receive by God.

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John 3, 8. This is the situation with Nicodemus.

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The wind blows where it wishes, and you hear it sound. But you do not know where it comes from or where it goes.

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So, it is with everyone born of the Spirit. What that's saying there is that it is God who chooses.

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No one can see where the Spirit is going, but the Spirit knows where He's going to do, where He's going to work, and that's an act of God.

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Further in John 3, verse 27, John answered, a person cannot receive even one thing unless it is given to him from heaven.

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So, how do we receive things specifically? The issue of that grace that we're talking about, that belief, it is given to him from heaven.

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Continuing in John, John 5, verse 21. Further in the book of John, one more in John, that's 644, he says here,

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And I will raise him up on the last day. So, who is it that starts that process?

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The Father gives him to the Son. The Father is the one who draws him.

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So, the Father starts the work. Now, if you're thinking, well, gee, there really seems not to be too many verses.

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I think you're wrong. There's many verses that deal with this. So, let's go on. John, Romans 8.

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I'm doing this in this way so you see how many verses deal with this. For people that argue against this doctrine, it is pretty hard.

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For all those, for all who are led by the Spirit of God are sons of God.

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So, who does the leading? God does the leading. The Spirit of God is the one that leads.

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And if you notice here with this, you end up seeing that there's all three members.

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We've now seen God the Father, we've seen Jesus Christ, and we've seen the Holy Spirit all involved in this process.

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Which should tell us something. This should tell us that it's the Trinity that is involved in our salvation.

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We've looked at that already. Let's look at this one. This one's, I think, a killer one for those who want to try to argue against God granting even our belief.

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But it is Philippians 1 .29. For it has been granted to you that for the sake of Christ you should not only believe in Him, but also suffer for His sake.

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So, in other words, this is saying God has granted us suffering. But not only has He granted us suffering,

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He granted us our belief. He granted it so that we could believe.

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So when we suffer and we struggle, what He's saying there is that even though we might struggle and suffer and have that suffering,

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He is the same one who granted us the belief. What that means is that even our belief comes from God.

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God is the one that takes 100 % credit of our grace. All right.

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Philippians 2 .12 -13. And we're not even close to done yet. All right.

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Got many more to go. We're going to get through them. Believe it or not, we're going to get through them. Therefore, my beloved, as you have always obeyed, so now, not only as in my presence, but much more in my absence, work out your own salvation with fear and trembling.

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For it is God who works in you both to will and to work for His good pleasure.

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Now, He's speaking here to people who are already saved. So He's saying, work out your salvation, referring to the act of sanctification.

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But look at what He says. It is God who works in you. That's what we're saying.

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God works in you both to will and to work for His good pleasure. So it's God who works in you.

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Just like He does in sanctification, it is the same at regeneration, at that initial part.

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Let's move on. Sorry, 1 Corinthians 3, 6, and 7. And I may seem like I'm trying to rush, but we have many verses here to get through.

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And I am trying to get through all of them. So 1 Corinthians 3, 6, and 7 says,

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I planted Apollos water, but God gave the growth.

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So neither he who plants nor he who waters is anything, but only

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God who gives the growth. So what this is saying is that it doesn't matter that who does the work here.

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It doesn't matter at all that I went out and shared the gospel with someone, and then another person shares the gospel and sits down and studies the scriptures with that same person, because our effort, as important as it is to go out and evangelize and share the gospel and read the

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Bible with people and study the Bible with people, that is nothing compared to the work that God does. God does the work of growth.

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That plant, we can water and we can plant a seed. We can water a seed, but it is only

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God who brings new life. It is only God who brings the growth. God gets all the credit.

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Okay? Hope you're seeing that with each of these verses. Let's go on to 1 Corinthians 12 and verse 3.

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Therefore, I want you to understand that no one speaking in the

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Spirit of God ever says Jesus is accursed. And no one can say

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Jesus is Lord, meaning God, except in the Holy Spirit. So they cannot say these things except in the

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Holy Spirit. So the Holy Spirit takes the credit. Now, let us get to a rather lengthy one.

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Ephesians chapter 2 verses 1 through 9. Ready? Let us read.

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And you were dead in your trespasses and sins. In other words, a dead person can't choose things.

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You're dead. You don't get to choose. That is going back to the total depravity issue.

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In which you once walked following the course of this world, following the prince of the power of the air, the spirit that is now at work in the sons of disobedience, among whom we all once lived in the passions of our flesh, carrying out the desire of the body and the mind, and were by nature children of wrath.

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So you were children of wrath by nature. That's speaking of that sin nature. Okay? Like the rest of mankind.

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This is how all mankind are. But God, who is this? It's but God. But God being rich in mercy because of the great love which

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He loved us even when we were dead in our trespasses, made us alive together with Christ, by grace you have been saved, and raised us up with Him and seated us with Him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus so that in the coming age

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He might show the immeasurable riches of His grace in kindness toward us in Christ Jesus.

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For by grace you have been saved through faith, and this is not of your own doing, it is a gift of God, not a result of works, so that no one may boast.

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Now that is kind of a long passage there. But it is rich and I don't have the time, if I'm going to finish going through the rest of the passages, to go through that.

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But what it does talk about is the fact that salvation is completely a work of God. Many think that in Ephesians 2, 8 and 9 that the gift that's speaking of is the gift of grace.

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It is the gift to believe. Now that is true. We saw that in Philippians 1, 29.

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It could also grammatically, put that back up for a moment, and you see there, for by grace you have been saved through faith, and this is not of yourself, this is a gift of God.

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What's the gift? Some think the gift is the grace, some will say that the gift is salvation, and some will say that the gift is faith.

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It could be either of those grammatically, okay? Any of those would work grammatically.

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Let's look at one last verse for this class, and that is 2

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Timothy 2, 25 to 26. Correcting his opponents with gentleness,

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God may perhaps grant them repentance. So who is it that grants repentance? God.

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God may perhaps grant them repentance leading to a knowledge of truth, and they may come to their senses and escape from the snare of the devil after being captured by him to do his will.

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Now notice here, this looks to be in chronological order, doesn't it? It looks like God grants them repentance, and that granting of repentance is leading to a knowledge of truth.

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So it seems to be, the wording seems to be chronological, that God grants repentance, and then after the repentance comes the knowledge of truth.

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That is what it looks like, it seems to be. But that, when we look at the other passages of Scripture, I would say we may have a better understanding of that by looking at some other passages to see that what

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I'm talking about, the better understood, the simultaneous. God working through us, just like He does in Scripture, and just like He does as we saw in sanctification.

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Alright, so He does that. He works through us so that we might believe on Him, okay?

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So that is the doctrine of irresistible grace. I think it is really, if you really properly understand this, it is the issue that God takes full credit for our salvation.

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God is the one who believes, not you and not I. It is 100 %

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God. And so the encouragement to you is to see that God works through us.

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God starts the work. God is the author and the finisher of our faith.

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And that is encouraging. That says that not only does God start the work, but He is fully powerful, fully capable, and will be the finisher of our faith.

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So He gets all of the glory. To God be the glory and God alone.

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That is the issue of irresistible grace. That God selects us, chose us, and we shouldn't be boastful about that.

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Oh, God saved me, but not you. Oh, you nasty rotten sinner, you. No, no, no, no, no, no.

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God saved you and that should humble you and I. It should make us get to our knees and put our hands on our face.

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Oh Lord, out of all of humanity, out of all of the people in the world, you saved me?

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That should bring us to great rejoicing. That should give us great joy. We should be encouraged by that.

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So next week, we're going to deal with the last of the five points of Calvinism.

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Then we'll get to human responsibility. But that will be the P in the tulip, which is preservation of the saints.

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And this is the one that most people agree on. This is the one we have the least argument over. So maybe we can get less tomatoes and eggs thrown at me next class.

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We will see. But until then, if you have questions, comments, snarks, you can do one of two things.

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You can email us at theacademyatstrivingforeternity .org, academyatstrivingforeternity .org.

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You can email us or you can go to the Striving for Eternity Facebook group.

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In the Facebook group, we encourage you guys to ask questions, to interact in a Facebook group with one another so that we can get some discussion.

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And I'll say in there, as some people had some questions, like they want to know why

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I don't respond in the Facebook group. And the reason I don't respond right away is

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I want to foster discussion. Sometimes if the teacher gives the answer, everyone shuts up.

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And I don't want that. I want it to be a dialogue. I want to get people talking and discussing. So that's what we want to do, all right?

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Now, I do want to also say we just got back from Jersey Fire, sorry, from Ohio Fire. We got coming up Jersey Fire in just like six weeks.

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So if you're watching this live or within a few weeks of broadcast, register down there right away.

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I don't know what's going to be in the resource bag for there, but I'm sure it's going to be good.

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We'll have a bunch of stuff there for you. We got some great, great, great, great speakers lined up.

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Really good speakers. I'm really looking forward to it. You can go to jerseyfire .org and you can see

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Phil Johnson talking about his two messages out of the life of Lott and how that relates to the family.

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You will see Emile Zwang. He will be speaking two messages, one on passing the torch and one is an eternal perspective of your family.

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I will deal with the issue that I dealt with this past weekend. I will give the second half of the message.

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So if you went to Ohio, you're going to have to come to Jersey to hear the other half of all the stuff that I left out of defining a biblical marriage and dealing with the reason why the government has no place to redefine marriage as same -sex marriage.

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All right, we're going to deal with that. And then I got news for you. And I know there were many people after Ohio fire that came up to me and said to me that they needed to hear that message where I said some things that, quite frankly, some

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Christian people needed to hear, Christian men needed to hear about their marriage and their role in their marriage.

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And I know it hurt and you needed it anyway. Me too. So if you want any of those messages, you can always go to the store.

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I actually know. Okay, so I'm told that it's not up. Okay, it's not up in the store, but you can go to the store and contact.

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You can always go to the website and contact us and let us know you want to pre -order those.

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You can email shop at striving for eternity .org and you could pre -order those.

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It is going to be both Ohio fire and Jersey fire. So it's going to be like 13 or 14 sessions that you'll get.

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And I think the DVDs maybe like 80, $85. And I actually, I forget all the pricing. MP3, I think is 25.

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So you can get those there, but do make sure you register for Jersey fire.

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It is going to be a really good, a really good event. Really looking forward to it.

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I am trying if we can, and so I'll put this out there as an encouragement.

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If you go to Jersey fire .org, if you can, Mitch is saying $85.

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Okay, $85, 60 for the CDs. All right. Thank you, Mitch. You can also email

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Mitch, Mitch at striving for eternity .org. And he will take your pre -orders for those messages.

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But I really want to encourage you if there is enough money, I mean enough money rather soon, we need to get about somewhere between probably close to about $750 to $1 ,000 donated within the next, say,

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I think it's like two weeks or so to be able to pull this off. But we are going to try to get

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Carl Kirby Jr., who blew people's minds in Ohio with his discussion of video games and how it indoctrinates and what a danger it is to the family.

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We want to try to get him out to Jersey. We just cannot afford it with having to pay for two men, both coming from California.

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It does cost quite a bit to put these conferences on. And we've taken a major loss in Ohio.

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We're short several thousand dollars. And so because of that, it's really hard for us to add another speaker.

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But we really want to because his message is that important. And I really want to try to do that.

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So if you can give no matter how much, any little bit, if you could go to the website and better yet, you go to the

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Jersey Fire website. And if you go to the jerseyfire .org and from there, click on Jersey Fire and then donate on the

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PayPal that's there or send a check to PO Box 189

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Jackson, New Jersey 08527 and put in the thing, put in your memo

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Jersey Fire so that we know because if we get enough money for Jersey Fire to come up, we're going to do that. In the time that we have left, as you know, we do with at the end of each class is we want to encourage someone.

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We want you. We want to encourage you to encourage someone. Now, I have a brother that was nominated for encouragement, and I was more than happy to put this brother up.

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It is brother Nick Estacio. There is his website down there.

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ChangeYourCampus .com slash Estacio or Estacio, I guess that would be.

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Nick is one of my favorite guys to hang out with.

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Nick is, he's a, well, if you meet Nick, you'll realize he's a rather short fellow with a really, really tall heart.

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I mean, the guy's got a huge heart. Nick goes out. Nick is an encouragement to me when we go out evangelizing because there's,

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I don't know if it's, if you're anything like me, but there's times where I just don't feel like evangelizing. I'm just not in the current vernacular into it.

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I'm just not feeling like going out. I'm not feeling like dealing with the rejection and all those things.

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And then I stand next to Nick and Nick goes out knowing he's got a lot of health problems.

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He struggles greatly with a lot of physical issues and he gets out there and he preaches to the best of his ability and he cares so much for people and he reaches out to people in a way that, quite frankly, makes me feel wrong.

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I mean, not just wrong because of the fact that I feel like, well, gee, there's times where I don't feel like going out.

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I look at Nick and I'm like, well, I mean, if he's going out as weak as he is,

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I really should be going out. Not only that, but the fact that he's just always has a spirit of wanting to go out and share the gospel of people and care for people and love on people.

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And so if you really want to get to encourage Nick, not only go out and encourage him this week with words, both privately or publicly, but one way

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I know you can encourage Nick is go to his website down there and you can register for Repentant Witness and spend four days preaching or evangelizing with him in New York City this summer.

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I will be there. I'll actually be speaking at that event. So if you want to go, there's better reasons to go than me speaking, but the fellowship will be sweet even though I'll be speaking.

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Go for the fellowship and the evangelism. But Nick, you'll get to spend a lot of time with. I'm sure he'll be there.

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He's always been there and he's always great to spend some time with. I love this brother and if you spend any time or get to know him, you will quickly find that he will be encouraging you more than you will ever encourage him.

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And so try to go out this week, whenever you watch this, even if it's after the live broadcast and encourage Nick because he's a brother who can use a lot of encouragement.

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But what you'll find is he's going to encourage you way more probably than you are going to encourage him.

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And until next class, remember to strive to make today an eternal day for the glory of God.