Justification By Faith ALONE | w/ Anthony Rogers PT.1

Here is the positive affirmation of how Abraham was justified. He believed, right? Pistousan. This means believe, to hold to be true, right? To affirm.

We will trust God's word alone Where his perfect will is known Our traditions shift like sand While his truth forever stands We will live by faith alone Clothed in merit, not our own All we claim is Jesus Christ And his finished sacrifice Glory be to God alone The church he redeemed and made his own He has freed us, he will keep us till we're safely home Glory be, glory be to God alone

Post-Tenebrous Lux, After Darkness Light. Well, it is good to be back. It's good to be on tonight. I hope you are excited for this show. I'm always excited about this topic and I'm also excited that I'm doing it with my guest, the apologetic dog.

Yes, that was quick.

I'm sure you expected.

You expected me to give a much longer intro,.

But not so, not so.

I wish I could have turned on the lights on my side as well, just to, out of the darkness light coming in.

For those that don't know, I was talking to Jeremiah. His name is Jeremiah. And I think you say your last name Nortier, right?

No.

Yeah, okay.

So I think I've heard people say Nortier and I'm inclined to say that only because Hillary of Pottier, his name is spelled almost the same as yours, at least the last several letters, with the exception of an S.

But yeah, so you're in the South and I guess as a result of that

You got that 2020 going on down here.

Yeah, yeah.

So for those that don't know, I'm gonna let him introduce himself to you other than for me, I'll say, I've enjoyed watching stuff from Jeremiah. He gets the privilege of being my first full guest. I did have a show the other day where I invited some people up to ask questions, make comments, but this is the first time that I'm actually having a guest on.

I'm a little apprehensive about this because I don't know that I have the skill to really officiate something like this. I'm used to doing things on my own. I think in this sense, I'm kind of a YouTube interview bachelor.

I mean, I don't know if that makes sense, but I'm not a bachelor in life, right? I have a wife and four kids, but as far as this goes, I'm used to doing it on my own.

So I probably

I don't know how you even fit your YouTube stuff in with that schedule.

Well, my kids are older now. My youngest is 16, so yeah, so

Anthony, I have one boy who's five months old, so I'm new to the whole parenting thing.

Wow, okay, well, congrats on that, congrats. For those that don't know, Jeremiah and I not only share a love for this topic, but as his name indicates, he's interested in apologetics, and that includes then defending this doctrine.

And he and I both debated the topic, or at least the general topic in different ways. There were different specifics in terms of what we were doing. He was debating specifically the question of justification in relation to water baptism over against a advocate of Church of Christ doctrine.

And I was debating an Eastern Orthodox individual. So two very different groups of people, two very different ways of denying the doctrine of God's free grace in Christ and justification solely through faith in him and his active and passive obedience.

But nevertheless, same doctrine we were defending. Anyways, Jeremiah, why don't you tell people about yourself, since I'd probably do an inadequate job, other than to say he's a brother.

Yes, and it's an honor to be your first guest here on, I've watched your channel, so I was listening to you talk a second ago. I was like, oh yeah, I'm here with Anthony as well. So thank you for having me.

I serve as a pastor and elder at 12 Five Church in Jonesboro, Arkansas, that's Northeast Arkansas. So I always just wanna lead with that to tell people, if you're anywhere close in the area, come search us out.

We have a church website, it's pretty easy to find us and we'd love for you to come participate in our fellowship. And so I do that. I have a day job also as a hospice chaplain and bereavement coordinator.

And so I'm doing a lot of visits throughout the day and Anthony, it's so amazing to be able to talk about this gospel of grace with people that are going through hard times of life, whether they're about to reach the end of life or I'm dealing with families that have lost a loved one.

And so I get to comfort them with God's truth and a peace that surpasses anything that this world has to offer. So my heart is blessed being able to do that. And so my church family has come around me to really support my endeavors in apologetics.

And so the apologetic dog was born out of that. And my wife and I, we were trying to think of a name and a logo and it was so funny, Anthony, because she was just like doctrines of grace, dog. And I was like, yes, I like it, but I want it to be broader than just the doctrines of grace.

And I was praying about a verse to really ground the ministry, because we all know first Peter 315 is wonderful for apologetics. But the more I was reading Greg Bonson, hopefully you'll like this. Came across 1 Timothy 6 .20, where Paul is saying, oh, Timothy, guard the deposit that's been entrusted to you.

And so right there, I knew it needed to be a guard dog, meaning that all Christians are to guard the gospel of grace. And we do this by avoiding irreverent babble, pagan philosophy that tries to rival the knowledge of God and actually asserts contradictions that falsely have internal contradictions.

And I was like, ah, I'm already thinking presuppositionally, you and I have a mutual friend, Eli Yala, who's just enriched my heart and life with his ministry and his teaching. And so the apologetic dog is rooted in apologetics, Trinitarian, reformed gospel of grace.

And so I'm just telling people I wanna be broad, but I also have a few areas of emphasis. And so one of the things in Jonesboro, Arkansas, my local area, is there's the Church of Christ all over the place, and they hold to a different gospel.

They believe that participating in the ceremony of water baptism is essential and necessary in order for us to be made right with God. And so I've been able to have a lot of opportunities to talk about the gospel in light of this gospel that really says, hey, well, you have to do something.

We don't like calling it works, but read Acts 2 .38, that didn't just stand there. And so I've been able to really shed some light on context and things like that. But Anthony, that's a little bit about me and my local context.

Yeah, thank you so much. So there's a good bit of overlap. I actually think the ministry that you do when you talk about reaching out to people in the context of bereavement and so forth is very similar in some ways to what I do in terms of my primary vocation.

You know, I do prison ministry, and I go into the prisons. It's like going into hospitals in some ways, and there's a lot of difficulties associated with both of these contexts. But one thing is for people in prison is they've been yanked away from their loved ones.

And sometimes there's stuff that happens on the outside for a prisoner and he can't do anything about it. He can't, you know, they feel helpless. So anyways, there's a lot of different areas of overlap between these two things.

And of course, the gospel is the great balm for all of that. You know, the gospel is the answer. I mean, you know, to me, I often, what gets me a lot when I think about this issue and people opposing it and the very fact that we have to defend it is I think, why?

You know, why are people kicking against this? Well, sometimes, you know, people have looked at, and I don't know if you've noticed some of this. I know you've gotten some of this, but I don't know if you've noticed some of the backlash I've gotten from people.

I've had people make all sorts of slanderous statements against me, just ungodly stuff. And I don't spend as much time trying to put out all those fires. I think that's fine. You know, it is what it is.

I kind of think like David, where he said, of Shimei, God has bidden him to curse, right? Let him curse.

And I've also heard of you, quote, I believe it's Spurgeon. It's like, is that all bad things you have to say about me? Because I'm a lot worse than what you're actually accusing me of.

I didn't know Spurgeon said that, but I'm glad to know that. You know, good minds think alike, or at least, my mind thinks like one good mind, at least.

Well, I'll also say, Anthony, real quick. I'm a small YouTube channel, so I look up to you. I'm just like, man, I'm so glad people are supporting his ministry. I'm glad you're getting up late at night to go deep into the trenches of truth.

And so I just want to encourage the audience. I'm actually on a race to 1 ,000 subscribers with a Mormon friend that I have, Robert Boylan. And so we have a little bit of stake in the game. So if you can help me out, I'm closely approaching 1K subs and I'm pumped.

I should have said something. I told you I'm new at this as far as having someone on. Plus, I don't even tell people to subscribe to my own channel.

That's probably why you get so many subs, is people are like, man, this dude is so real.

I just think, you know, I've watched people sometimes saying subscribe, and then I watch their, the, you know, the, or they'll say like my video, and I watch, and I'm thinking, nobody actually presses the like button when people are pressing them to press the like button.

So it's like, you know, we all hear it and nobody does it, so I'm just gonna leave it and let it be what it is.

Love it.

But not to criticize anybody who does it, you know, it's just, I think, but anyways, what I'm getting at is sometimes people will ask, I get comments all the time. People will send me comments through Facebook, through YouTube, through all these different venues, and they'll say, you know, this person said this about you, this person said that, and they're upset for me, right?

And I appreciate that. It means a lot to me that I have a place in people's hearts, that they're concerned about these lies and these slanders and so forth.

You got thick skin, though, I've learned.

But there's a couple of things, you know, it's thick skin, and part of it has to do with my own background, which I believe was God-directed. Maybe we can come back and talk about some of that. But the other thing is just the gospel.

My great concern is how does it stand between my soul and God? I'm almost 50 years old, and I've been thinking this way for almost, you know, for, well, for about 30 years, and I don't think I have the same amount of time left.

I don't know, I mean, it's in God's hands. But at the end of the day, when I die, it's not gonna matter what sorts of things were said about me. I'm gonna stand before my Lord, and that's gonna be what matters, is what that event will mean.

And I'm not gonna be embarrassed when I stand there that day, because I know I'm standing there clothed in His righteousness. I'm gonna stand there clothed in the righteousness of the one who loved me and gave Himself for me.

And so when I think of what God thinks of me, I think of the fact that He thinks of me as His son, because I'm in His son. He thinks of me as beloved, because I'm in the beloved. He thinks of me as righteous, because I'm in the righteous one.

And on and on I could go with the different epithets. And so the point that I'm making with this is I don't understand why people want to oppose this gospel when it's so full of comfort. I've given only one example of the kind of comfort one can derive from this.

Imagine being able to walk through a crowd of people hurling insults at you, and not once have to feel like you're ashamed or have to hang your head or lose a bit of peace or whatever. I mean, that's how I feel every single day.

And then I look at these people who are opposing this gospel, who they wake up virtually every day despondent. They walk around like schleprock, like the sky is falling. Or even if that's not their every waking moment, it intrudes upon their thoughts often enough.

There's just, it seems to me like these people are fighting against, not just seems, I know it as a matter of fact, they're fighting against that thing that will grant them peace, will grant them comfort.

If you have peace with God, you could have peace in the midst of whatever storm is out there.

Anthony, you've been a wonderful role model because stepping into the apologetic sphere, I've slowly had to be able to process criticism. Probably one of the biggest pieces of criticism was over a year and a half ago or so, I went on the Gospel Truth with Marlon.

Definitely wanna encourage people to go over there. That's where they saw your debate. That's where I've had tons of debate. And I was the first live in-person debate on Marlon's channel. We flew him out from California down to the South, baby.

We had a blast. But I debated the question, is Mary sinless or was Mary sinless? And obviously I'm like, no, she's a sinner saved by grace. And so William Albrecht came at me, guns a blazing. And so that was the first time I've ever had, been in someone's crosshairs and felt it.

But honestly, Anthony was so good because I just thought, I kind of was like, you know what, Lord, you're gonna have to preserve my heart and feelings. My wife was listening to the things he was saying.

She kept looking at it. I was like, we can't stop it. So, but like you said, my heart goes to the God who saved me and he has to preserve me, right? And he's not gonna, he's not going to stop what he started.

He's gonna see it to completion. So I've looked to your guidance and your example a lot. And I just wanna thank you a lot for your ministry.

Oh, thank you. Thank you.

Yeah, and that's one of the things I'm also, I sometimes mention it just in case people miss it, but I'm always hoping it comes through. It's kind of like, I may not necessarily focus on the fact that scripture is the word of God.

It's usually an assumption of all that I'm doing, right? It's assumed in what I'm doing when I exegete the word, but I'm often thinking implicitly, I hope people see something of the beauty of scripture in the course of what I'm saying and see something of the basis for believing it to be the inspired word of God, even if that's not my direct focus at the time, right?

So for example, if I'm talking about how Christ is set forth in scripture in promise and fulfillment, typologically and in reality, I may not be trying to make an argument for the inspiration of scripture and so forth, but I'm hoping that people are through seeing Christ in scripture also at the same time having communicated to them this fact.

Well, similarly, when I'm defending the gospel of justification, I'm hoping people are seeing something of the fruits of it. A lot of people like to slander justification by faith as though it promotes godlessness, as though it promotes licentiousness.

And I think to myself, how in the world could this gospel, which strikes at the root of all sin, be itself a promotion of sin? And what I mean by that, you may have heard me mention this, but to take one example, if the gospel tells us that to God alone belongs the glory in salvation, inclusive of justification, because salvation is a bigger package than just justification.

But if justification is by God's free grace, wholly apart from our works and received solely through God-given faith in wrought by the spirit, then how could such a person be proud? On what grounds? On what grounds could I be proud and think that I somehow have a right to look down my nose at other people?

How could I, knowing that the very thing that was necessary to reclaim me for God and put me on a right standing with him was the very death of his son, his eternal son, the object of all his affection.

And he gave him for me. How could I think then that I have a right to turn my nose down at somebody else and be haughty towards them? I can certainly disagree with their lifestyle if they're not living for Christ.

I could disagree with all sorts of things, but the criteria for that is the same criteria that condemns me apart from Christ. So I'm just saying, how could this gospel be considered the license for sin if that's the case?

And I've heard you bring out that paradigm that Jesus taught about in Luke 18 with the Pharisee and the tax collector. And the pushback I get from the church of Christ is, well, that Pharisee, he was under the works of law.

He's not talking about commands of obedience that Christians are to obey. I'm like, you've missed the substance of what this man is boasting in his accomplishments, the things that he has done. But look at the tax collector.

This is somebody who is pleading for the mercy of God for him to make atonement on his behalf. He understands his wretchedness and he needs God to save him out of the quarry, how Isaiah says of Abraham.

So I'm with you. I'm like, how could we look at anything good in ourselves? It's like, no, I was a wretch and God saved me by his amazing grace.

Yeah, that story, what I usually hear when that is brought up is the Pharisee was looking to his own efforts and not to the grace of God in him, helping him to do good works unto justification. So you mentioned those who say, oh, well, he's just looking to works of law or that sort of thing.

But the way that Roman Catholics, for example, will go about this is to say, well, we believe that it's works done by the grace of God. But notice carefully how the Pharisee, maybe you're already thinking this, but the Pharisee says, I thank you, God, that I'm not like he, speaking of the tax collector.

The Pharisee didn't deny the grace of God. He didn't deny that God was there aiding him, assisting him, coming alongside of him. He didn't deny synergy, which is a watchword of Eastern Orthodoxy in the context of justification.

In fact, that's the very thing he was affirming. I thank you, God, that I'm not like that man. And it was then on the basis of works that he believed he performed by the grace of God, setting him apart, making him distinct and so forth.

It was on that basis that he thought he was right before God. The other thing I love about that story is the literal translation there when the tax collector declaims any righteousness of his own as the grounds of his confidence before God.

When he says, have mercy on me, the sinner, he's literally saying, make atonement for me. Make atonement for me, the sinner. So he's looking away from himself and he's looking for an atonement sufficient to cover his sin.

And he's looking to God as the provider of that atonement. And that's the heart of justification and of a loose gospel and so forth. Okay, so we've said all sorts of good things, I think, about this topic.

Maybe what we could do in sort of running through this is talk about, one of the things that I wanted to talk about and we can make contact between these things and our debates, if you want, or just talk about the issues or both.

But one of the first things that I wanna talk about is the whole issue of the nature and character of God. Because when I did my recent debates and it's something I think about when it comes to doing any other debate on this topic, but you always have to decide, how much time do I have for this or that?

You might have to leave things out. It's an unfortunate fact of debate, but everybody's shackled by time and strength. But one of the assumptions, at least that I'm working on when I enter into a discussion like this is that the God that we're talking about is holy, righteous, and just.

And it seems to me that errant notions of justification often lose sight of this or don't sufficiently understand what Scripture teaches along these lines. And so what I'm thinking of here is the fact that Scripture teaches that the God with whom we have to do is the kind of being who is absolute perfection of being.

He is absolutely holy, set apart from sin, so much so, and I always marvel at this. People will mention Isaiah 6 and how Isaiah speaks of being undone, and that is where this is going, and it's not a one-off.

That sort of thing is seen many times in Scripture. But what I marvel at and that people often miss is the fact that the unfallen angels in that context, the holy angels, according to Scripture, or at least the seraphim, if somebody wants to be technical, some will make distinctions between orders of being among the heavenly hierarchy and all that.

But in any case, these heavenly beings who are unfallen, who sing God's praise day and night, that's their function, that's their purpose for being. It says they cover their own eyes in the presence of God, whom Scripture says, you quoted 1 Timothy 6 earlier in that same context, it mentions God dwelling in unapproachable light, right?

So I marvel at those who think of attaining justification before such a God, when we're not unfallen angels, we are fallen sinners. So you've got this picture of these, and part of what I'm thinking of here is that there's a difference between the uncreated holiness of God and the created holiness of creatures.

Creatures, their holiness depends upon God, right? God's holiness is independent, it's underrived, it's immutable. God can't cease being holy. The angels could, if it were God's will to withdraw from them, they could have fallen just like the other angels that fell, right, with Satan.

So I'm just driving at this idea that the God of Scripture is absolute holiness, absolute purity, absolute righteousness, absolute justice. He can't accept from sinners anything less than perfection without denying himself, right?

So I don't know, you have any thoughts on that?

Yeah, absolutely, because in preparation for the debate, I think you're gonna appreciate this too, and probably had a lot of similar thoughts. Not only do we wanna put God in the highest esteem, he's all that is good and perfect, but he is the judge of all the earth who will do right.

So in preparation for, so for on my side of things, the propositional question that I debated and took the negative was, is water baptism necessary for our justification before God? And so a big part of this is saying, what is justification?

What does justification look like for us before God, who is holy, righteous, and good? And what does that look like for God to be judged? Well, the big clue is this is judicial, legal, forensic language.

And I personally think if somebody reads the book of Romans and agrees that it's legal, then the debate's over. Like that's what we were really trying to grasp to say, and we are justified on the basis of faith, apart from works of law, any works that you could possibly do and bring to the table, those things aren't gonna make you right before God.

Abraham is the precipient lead example in that, but it's my faith. And so I really try to say, look, justification is judicial. And help me out here, I believe Roman Catholics have tapped into that and realized that they can't make it judicial, at least in the way that we're trying to set it up, because they are trying to marry justification and sanctification to be elongated, right?

That it can be waned and lost over time. And then it seems like there's, and you gotta have that infused righteousness over time to kind of go back in the grace of God. When you fall out, awful. I don't see how you can have experience of salvation.

I mean, you can't. I've listened to Dr. James White ask the question, who is the blessed man? And Roman Catholics are like, oh no, I would hope to be the blessed man one day. And it's like, look, it's the person whose sin is not imputed on their account.

Not now and not ever. And so Anthony, I brought that out in my debate and the gentleman that debated, a lot of respect for, but I could tell there was a few times he was not tracking with Paul's argument in Romans four.

So that was some debate strategy on my part that I really wanted to go to Romans four and stay in the immediate context, allow Paul's argument to build on itself.

Yeah, and so since you mentioned several things there, it's hard to pick out one, but I'll run with this. In Romans, the lead up to Paul's discussion towards the tail end of Romans three, on into four through five and so forth, the lead up is talking about how the righteous wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men who suppress the truth and unrighteousness.

What Paul is doing is he's set up in his thesis statement, Romans one 16 and 17. He set up what the gospel is that he's gonna talk about, but before he gets to unpacking that thesis statement, he sets up the quandary, the problem that's created by the fact that God is righteous and man is a sinful truth suppressor who deserves God's wrath and so he begins in one 18 saying, the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men who suppress the truth and unrighteousness.

And he goes on to talk about the fact that men are culpable in their sinfulness because they're not sinning in ignorance they're sinning in the light of God's clearly revealed truth he has revealed himself and his righteous requirements through the things that he's made as well as in the very internal constitution of man, we are image bearers and by virtue of that are creatures and since all created things reveal the creator, our own constitution reveals him.

So I love this, I think of the, even the blind person can't escape a revelation of God because his own being cries out that God exists. And so this is the context in which we're sinning and so Paul says the whole world, not just Jews, but the whole world is guilty of sin and the Jews don't get off either.

Paul goes on in Romans two to talk about how the Jews are guilty and how even Gentiles sometimes put Jews to shame for doing things that the law requires that they don't have in written form. And this is what gives rise to Paul's summary statement in Romans three, where he says, and again, I mean, this is an example of, well, I just read the text, this is his summary statement.

In verse 19, he says, we know that whatever the law says, it speaks to those who are under the law so that every mouth may be closed and all the world become accountable to God. And the Greek here is especially, I think, interesting because what it literally says is, all men are answerable to God, but the law has shut their mouths, right?

So their mouths are shut and they have to speak, but they can't, right? That's the upshot and this is all legal language, by the way, the whole idea of having to give an account. Then he goes on, it says, because by works of the law, no flesh will be justified in his sight for through the law comes the knowledge of sin.

Now this connects to what I was asking about God's character because the law is a transcription of God's character. It's a reflection of what God is or is like, and therefore it's telling us what we as his image bearers are supposed to be like, right?

In scripture, it says things like, be holy as I am holy, be perfect as I am perfect. And so the law is that transcription, it's showing us what his holiness and perfection looks like in the case of men, how men are supposed to reflect that.

But through the law, we're not being told what we actually are, right? The law is exposing what we're not, how we fall short of God's glory. And so when you think about then the character of God and the law of God, how could you possibly think that you're going to be justified before that God on the basis of your own law keeping, especially now that you're a sinner?

So with the Church of Christ, I'm trying to be super charitable in this, but it really gets me going because I think they are a part of the modern day Pharisees of legalism and all the commandments that they say that they're doing to obey God.

So like a big word in the Church of Christ world is obedience or obey. You gotta obey the gospel. And when you look at Acts 2, see they didn't just stand there and do nothing. It's like, of course not.

But what their immediate objection is with Paul's argument in Romans building up to chapter four here is this is, Anthony, this is talking about works of the law. This is talking about a time before we exist here.

And so they're saying, of course, we're not justified by works of the law. So they really are gonna key in to works of law, Romans 3, 28 or Galatians 2, 16, they're gonna say works of law. And so in my debate, and I'm pretty sure I got this from you talking with Tony Costa a while back.

And I loved it because it's like, okay, how can we set up a statement that everybody's gonna understand here? So I wrote a few out and I landed on one. Want your thoughts on this? I wrote and I asked the question to the individual.

I said, I want you to hear the logic of the statement that I'm making. I have a question with it. Jesus is the son of God and he is not the son of Baal. And so the question was, since Jesus is not the son of Baal, could he potentially be the son of Asherah or Ra or something?

He's like, well, of course not. And I said, why? And I said, is it because of the positive affirmation? And he was like, where are you going with this? And I'm like, look, we're justified by faith and not by works of law or any other works that you could conjure up in your mind.

That's not gonna make you right before God. And so there's deeper issues going on here. In their mind, we're not justified by human works. And what that means are things that we do that God does not prescribe.

But if you do something in obedience to God, then they cloak this under the umbrella. Well, that's a work of God. And I'm over here like, wait, the works of God are the things that God does, right? Human works, human effort, that's all encompassing.

Now we are created unto good works in obedience to what God has called us to. So what I was just wanting to say is there is such a language barrier. We're using all the same terminology, but mean different things by when we use it.

Yeah, so it sounds like there's a confusion there. If they're trying to tie this to any biblical statement that says something like the work of God, like John 6, the work of God is this, right? We believe in him whom he sent.

They're understanding it objectively rather than subjectively. And what that means is the work of God, meaning the work that we do that God prescribes, right? As opposed to the work that God does, either in us or for us or what have you.

That's interesting. So my experience is not as much with the Church of Christ, though I have had a few run-ins with those who identify with the Church of Christ. I used to live in Las Vegas. Far more often, if we're thinking of restorationist groups, I ran into Mormons, LDS people.

You know, for those that don't know, during the 1800s, there was a whole movement afoot that gave rise to all sorts of cult groups, the Latter-day Saints, Mormons.

The Adventists are a part of that.

Yeah, the Adventist movement, the Millerites, the Millennial Dawnists, the Jehovah's Witnesses. That whole period of time spawned this. And so I was used to at least some offshoots of that movement, at least.

Well, now, Anthony, you're gonna get more since I've come on your show. They follow me wherever I go, it seems like.

Oh, you know, you say that, it reminds me of, speaking of another cultic group, I always reminded of, whenever I hear that statement, they follow me. Louis Farrakhan, I used to also deal with people who are members of the Nation of Islam.

And I remember one time listening to Louis Farrakhan, he was entertaining, if nothing else. But anyways, he was trying to say that there's this great big mothership, because in the thinking of the Nation of Islam and Louis Farrakhan, you all realize this is very relevant to justification, right?

No, this is an aside, but I think you guys will find it somewhat funny. But Louis Farrakhan believes that there are numerous embodied gods, just like in Mormonism and that sort of thing. And so it's entirely consistent with that to think of these gods in the way you might think of interplanetary travelers, astronauts, or what have you, who are in spaceships.

And he mentioned that there's this mothership that follows him around and keeps track of him. And he says, that's what's going on in Ezekiel one, when it talks about a wheel with eyes all around, right?

Anybody reading the text is not actually going to get that idea. It's describing a throne chariot and all this. But anyways, but Farrakhan says, it follows me everywhere I go. For some reason that sticks in my head.

Anyways, it's true though.

So they follow you everywhere you go. All right, so I'm going to pick up some of your

Yeah, yeah, they'll start following you too. So they can just join the long line following Anthony Rogers. And so with these groups that I just unashamedly say that have wholesale grabbed into works of righteousness, one of the best ways that I've found to really pick apart, because like I said, they're kind of the radical dispensationalists.

Well, we're not under law anymore. That's the law of Moses. We're living in a time post that. And so I was like, okay, let's go back to Abraham, right? Because he's the lead example. And yes, Romans one through three is talking about the Jews and the works of law.

But then there's a subtle shift in Romans four when it talks about in verse two for if Abraham was justified by works. Now I want your thoughts on this because I've just said, look, I don't think this could be talking about works of law with Abraham because he precedes the law by 600 years plus.