Christians Explain Faith Without Works is Dead to Mormons

Apologia Utah

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They're already believing, and it's not contextually about how to be saved.

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It's to be, how to validate that you already are, how to show that you already are.

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Is that theology opinion to it? No, that's contextually what it is. What it is or what it says?

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Read it. That's why we're there. So it says, what use is it, my brethren?

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Which verse are you in? Chapter 2, verse 14. What use is it, my brethren, if someone says he has faith?

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Like Pastor Bates said, my brethren, if someone says he has faith, if he says, I believe this, but has no works, can that faith save me?

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If a brother or sister is without clothing and in need of daily food, and one of you says to him, go in peace, be warm and filled, and yet you do not give them what is necessary for their body, what use is that?

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Even so, faith, if it has no works, is dead being by itself. So, he says, but someone well may say, you have faith, and I have works.

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Show me your faith, and I will show you my works. So, in context, if someone says,

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I have faith, but they don't act, is that true activism?

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So where I was going originally was, there was a chair here, and I said,

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I believe that chair will hold me up. And he went, take a seat. And I went, no,

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I'm good. I believe the chair will hold you up. It looks kind of rickety.

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Oh yeah, no, for sure, it will hold me up. Do it. Sit. Show me. Prove it. No, no, no,

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I'm good. And I don't really believe that the chair is going to hold me up. I don't truly have faith in what

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I say I have faith in. It's a professed faith that's false. So, to kind of sum up the point of what he's getting at, it's more than a mere mental assent.

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It's more than information. It's more than like an acknowledgement of facts. There's actually, so in the

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Latin, there's like two terms, assentia and fiducia. It's really both. It's not just the one.

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I believe this, and I... Like the demons have assentia. What is fiducia? What are those two words?

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Assentia, fiducia, they're Latin terms. So, assentia is just like a mental assent or a mental acknowledgement.

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And fiducia is like an actual trusting faith that has action. So, what he was getting at, in the analogy he gave, he gave an example of assentia and fiducia in tandem working together.

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So, that's what he's talking about. But that's not a formulaic equation for how a person goes from not saved to saved.

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That's the distinction. Well, I understand what you're saying to me, but what I don't understand is, like, without trying to sound aggressive,

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I don't understand what that has to do with works coming after faith. So, what

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I'm trying to get... The point I'm trying to get across is that a professed faith, if it has no works, is not truly a saved faith.

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Those works that come after, because you actually believe what you say, I'm actually going to sit down into the chair that I believe will hold me, and I show you by sitting down in that chair, whether it holds me or not,

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I believe it because I'm sitting there. To maybe use the strawman you acknowledged of the easy -believism, antinomianism, people can just say they believe in Christ and then live a life of reckless sin.

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We could say that's a good example of where, when the works don't follow, we can clearly conclude that, okay, something is off here, right?

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But if we then say, well, if they suddenly fix it, say they do a 180 with their behavior, does that then validate that they're saved on the basis of that?

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No. What it does say is perhaps something has happened in their life, but we don't really know, but that's the best evidence that we can look at is that whatever external fruit they produce...

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Okay, so your point is that people can't do things to obtain a thing. Yeah. Okay. Yeah. What was that? Okay. Yeah, because if you think about the parable of the sower, are you really familiar with it at all?

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I don't want to assume that. I know what you're talking about, but there's a couple parables of the sower. Yeah, so like the four different types of soil, you know what

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I'm talking about there? Yeah. There's really only one that bears fruit, right? There's only one. Yeah. And the only one that bears fruit, right, where it takes root and then it bears much fruit, right?

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Not a little, but much fruit. Some 30, some 60, some... In the other three examples, they never bear fruit, right?

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Like something happens, right? It lands on the gravel or the bird comes and snatches it away, right?

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So in those three examples, you can say you're not going to see a lasting faith and works in that person's life because Jesus told us that's what would happen, right?

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So the only real ones, like he was saying, speaking to believers, the only real ones that will have any sort of fruit are the ones that actually have that root that is firmly planted in the soil.

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And that only happens when the gospel goes out. Okay, I understand what you're saying and I can even appreciate it, but that is not consistent with the

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New Testament. It's just not. I mean, like I've talked to you before, even with the example of Cornelius, his prayers and his almsgivings went up to God as a memorial sacrifice, a literal priesthood offering, and that was before it says if you believe in Peter's teachings, you will be saved.

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But his almsgivings, his charity and his

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God fear is still going up to God for a memorial sacrifice, literally a priesthood Old Testament duty.

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And so before he saves, he's doing good works. And he's, I mean, and so what you're telling me with how you understand

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James 2, it doesn't, they don't make sense. Give him the light of Cornelius. Yeah, so real quick, what

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I said earlier, how you don't see a transition described from James, where you go from not saved to saved.

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If you did, you would have a point. So the people who, you know, tell people to go away in peace, you know, you're a fool.

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And then the people that actually do it, there's not like a stark difference between those two faiths. That's not what you're saying. That's exactly what

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James is saying, that those two are two different faiths. You never see the person who says it and doesn't do it make the transition to the person who's doing it.

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That's what this point is. You don't see that in James. He's just, he is solely making a distinction between dead faith, false faith, professed only faith and true living faith.

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So to use biblical language, if you think about sheep and goats, they're two different categories of people or wheat and tares.

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You don't ever see where they like vacillate between one group and the other. Right. Jesus says at the end, the tares will be burned up.

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Right. And the wheat will be gathered. That is his church. So they will exist alongside each other.

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And that's why James is valuable, because you're going to see people, you know, in whatever church you go to who profess faith.

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They get baptized. You know, they love people around them. They seem to speak the

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Christian language. They use their terminology and things like that. But then eventually, you know, something happens and they walk away.

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Right. And we try to wrap our brains around that and go, why does this happen? Well, scripture talks about it.

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James is a good example. First John is another good example that it went out from us to demonstrate that they never were of us.

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And that's what makes you assuming people can't follow it. No, we affirm that they do fall away.

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But what the distinction we make is that they never actually had a real saving faith. They had the professed faith.

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I'm not trying to change the subject, but specifically the presuppositions of talking about things like this. When the author of Hebrews says that people crucify

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Christ afresh when they sin. So that means that they crucified Christ before in their sins.

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Yeah. And then they did something again. They crucified him again. Yeah. So doesn't that constitute a truly repentant heart?

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Yeah. So that's a good question. So Hebrews 10, I think, right? Or somewhere around there.

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That's a passage that is challenging for a lot of people. Because it seems to suggest that real believers can fall away.

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I think when you look at it in context with the Hebrew Christians, they had immense pressure on them from the

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Jews at the time to repudiate Christ, to come back to Judaism, and to basically follow in the footsteps of their ancestors, because that's their heritage, right?

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And so when you think about the unpardonable sin that Jesus talked about, this is kind of like the conventional answer to that passage.

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We think that only the Jews who lived at the time of Jesus were capable of committing this sin, because they had the law and the prophets.

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So in other words, they had all the knowledge sufficient for them to arrive at an understanding that Jesus is the

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Messiah. But what they did is they rejected him. They crucified him. They killed him. And then they repudiated him.

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And then they persecuted his bride after the fact. Yeah, if it was sufficient, why would Jesus Christ need to preach to them? Well, good question.

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Why would he need to send apostles? Good question. You have to look at Isaiah, because it actually says in Isaiah...

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Okay. I just didn't want to take it off. Okay, no, you're good. Yeah, I gotta leave soon too. But when you look at Isaiah, Jesus frequently quotes from it, where he says,

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Hearing, and they will not hear. Seeing, and they do not believe, and they do not understand. Yeah, they need a preacher to preach to them.

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Well, no, what I'm saying is this was God's judgment foretold. On the covenant breakers. And that's why

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Stephen's speech in Acts is so powerful and so condemning. Because they had all the prophets from Exodus, you know,

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Moses basically, all the way through the very last prophet, John, and then, boom, they killed them all.

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So all the blood of the prophets is on their hands. And that's why the covenant breaking was such a big deal. Yeah, so they didn't need the text alone, they needed prophets.

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Well, you remember what Jesus says in the parable with Lazarus, that even if someone doesn't believe in the law and the prophets, then they won't even believe if someone comes back from the dead.

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So Jesus' indictment is, if you don't believe what you already have, then even someone coming back from the dead won't be sufficient.

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So Jesus' standard is that the law and the prophets, they should be the ones that point you to me. Because like in Luke, where it says,

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But where does he say that they're sufficient? Sorry? Where does he say that the law and the prophets are sufficient? I'm paraphrasing there, but in the parable of Lazarus he says, if they don't believe the law and the prophets, then they will not believe even if someone comes back from the dead.

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So Jesus is making a pretty strong statement that what they have, so that's where I use the term sufficient.

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I know what you're talking about, you're talking about Luke 16 at the end of it. Yeah, I think that's right. But yeah, the larger point is just that Jesus thought, or Jesus said that that's what they needed.

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And really that would have pointed to him, because when you look later on in Luke, after the resurrection where he opens the disciples' minds to understand the scriptures and things like that, all of that's important and it's meaningful.

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But as I'm sure you'd agree, Jesus specifically pointed out, the scriptures testify of me.

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Right? Yes. And we probably high five over that, we would agree. No problems there. But yeah, that's really what it boils down to.

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Okay, so... I'm sorry if that's not the most helpful, full answer. No, no, it is, it is. I know I was talking about how does

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Cornelius fit into your understanding of James, and then there was something right after that that I wanted to get to.

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Okay. I can't remember, so it must not be the person we should talk about.

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Uh... Oh, yeah. The last time we talked, did you look at those verses that I asked you to look at?

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In terms of... Well, what I asked was I just wanted a statement of belief from you in terms of what constitutes personal holiness, righteous conduct, in terms of how it pertains to the tongue and speech.

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Did you look at any of that? Oh, that's right, you did ask me to do that. I'm going to be honest with you. I didn't set apart a study time to study those verses.

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Can I challenge you to do it again? Yeah. Are you going to the store? Are you going to get there in time?

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I'm going to leave soon, so if you want to leave with him, it's probably a good time. I'm going to leave with Thomas. Yeah, because my wife and kids...

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Is that okay if I leave with you? Yeah. I challenge you to look at that again, because I think we had a good discussion last time, all things considered.

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All right. What is... If you're saved. What is your...

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Not that you have one, I'm just assuming that you do. What is your problem with Latter -day Saints not accepting true monotheism?

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Because if one is to... If one is to assume... I would think most scholars do, that the

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Bible doesn't constitute true monotheism. Why would it be necessary for Latter -day Saints to accept that as well?

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Now, there's a huge presupposition in that that I just... Yeah. So, if I can give a simplistic theological answer, the answer would be that God considers sin of all kinds a capital offense.

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So, I would... Do you know... I would think that some sins are worse than others.

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Well, so what I mean by that is every sin is worthy of death. I would say spiritual death.

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I would say physical death, too. All of it. Whether it's lying, lust, stealing, idolatry, blasphemy, all of it.

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Okay. I have a different understanding of... Well, do we agree or disagree on that point?

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I disagree, but I'll let you continue. Okay. So, to sort of sum up that point, is that Jesus had to die for every single one of those sins, and all of them were a capital offense.

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So, to put it this way, there is not a single one that God does not hate. Okay. Was it...

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I'm not trying to get off topic again. Was it death alone, or was it something greater than death? I don't know what you mean.

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So, like, Rome crucified thousands of people. You know, was the mere death of crucifixion and blogging, does that pay for someone's sins?

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Or was it something greater than Jesus Christ did, that was greater than just mere death at the cross?

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Do you understand what I'm asking? I think so. It sounds like you're inquiring about, like, the mechanics of the crucifixion, and, like, how that equates to...

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Yeah, so, basically, what I just heard you told me, without trying to straw -mass, is that, specifically, the death at the cross is alone, is what paid for all of our deaths that we should receive for any sin that we...

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Yeah, it is wounded for our transgressions. Yeah, okay. So, if that is the case, then

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I feel that, on that basis, that every person who Rome ever blogged and crucified would have a need for Jesus Christ.

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Oh, I see what you're saying. Yeah, so, if we were to argue that every person who was crucified was potentially the

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Messiah... I'm not saying that they were Messiah. They suffered those same things. Right. But what

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I'm saying is, really, that's the only way you could, like, I guess, make the point, is you'd have to contend that there was more than one potential

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Messiah who was crucified. Because, even though it was, like, a horrible way to die, and I really can't, like, oversell, like, just how terrible crucifixion is, the reason for it was

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God's wrath was poured out on the Son in our place. Exactly.

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The penal substitutionary atonement. There was something greater, but I think they crossed alone. I don't know if you agree with that. Well, so,

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I agree that there is a very real... What's a good term for this?

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Is that there is a very grim reality to God's holiness and His justice, and that it extends far beyond, then, what we see out, like, here in space, like, you know, this world.

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Like, His justice is cosmic. So, yes, there is something far above someone merely dying on a cross, like,

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Jesus dying, you know, the Son of God being slain. That was a momentous event, the worst act that mankind has ever committed, bar none.

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So, yes, it was the worst thing that ever happened on this planet, and yet, God used it for good. So, I don't know if that, like, totally answers the question.

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Yeah, kind of. So, like, if Jesus Christ suffered the actual wrath of God, then, um,

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I think, I don't know. I mean, maybe we're agreeing, we just don't know. Because what

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I'm hearing, like, I don't know if you understand the Latter -day Saint perspective of the Gethsemane, right?

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The starting... Yeah, yeah, yeah. You're talking about starting in Gethsemane and finishing at the cross, rather than being at the cross on the cross.

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Right. And, um, there's a spiritual aspect to it, and it's not necessarily because of Christ.

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Yeah. That's kind of what I was getting at with the, we received death. Yeah, like the agony or whatever, right?

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Mm -hmm. So, we received, um, I mean, that would be what the punishment would be, right?

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I'm not like... Sorry, I'm not sure what...

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I don't know what you mean by that. Death from sin would be a spiritual punishment.

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Oh, so are you talking about humans, or... Well, I'm talking about just in respect to the... Yeah, I mean, in the

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Protestant categories, what we're saying is there's a separation between man and God, like, there's no relationship there.

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And then, you know, being spiritually dead and all that entails. But then, yes, also the physical component, namely that we all die.

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So, yeah, there's two realities there, for sure. Um...

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Does that help at all? Yeah, it does. I am going to let you go. Yeah, no problem. Thanks for talking to me again.

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Yeah, for sure. Yeah, sorry, I thought you were... Good to meet you. Thomas. Okay. I'll give you a fist because my hand's sweaty.

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Yeah, mine too. Thomas. Remember the dude that was sitting next to you? The cunt at the meeting?

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No. No, so I've been there a couple times. They do, uh...

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They do, like, various talks and stuff. Like, my pastors go there and teach sometimes, and Ed Romine from First Baptist Church, he goes down there and teaches sometimes.

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I think he just taught on Spurgeon. But, yeah, there's, like, four people that I recognize. There's Sandra Tanner, Bill McKeever, I think

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Aaron was there, and one other person. The guy who was... Mark Gomez?

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Who? Mark Gomez. Who's that? He's a... One of Sandra Tanner's really good friends.

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He usually goes to those stuff. What does he look like? Is he the... What? Latino? If I saw a picture, maybe.

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All right. I think the last time I actually, like, saw Sandra Tanner before that was, like, 2017, like, back when her shop was still open.

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So, yeah, I never really went there a lot to tell you the truth. All right, well, off you go.