Response to Liberal Theology

Andrew Rappaport's Rapp Report

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See website for details. One, two, three. Welcome to The Wrap Report with your host,

01:06

Andrew Rappaport, where we provide biblical interpretation and application. This is a ministry of striving for eternity and the

01:12

Christian podcast community. For more content or to request a speaker for your church, go to strivingforeternity .org.

01:20

Well, welcome to The Wrap Report. I am your host, Andrew Rappaport.

01:25

With my trusty sidekick, Bud, the wiser. How you doing, Bud? I'm doing well.

01:33

How are you? I like the, you got your Bud light on over your shoulder there with the library over it.

01:38

No, my wife is downstairs. I usually introduce myself as Bud and this is my wife, Bud Light. Oh, you're talking about the neon.

01:45

Okay, nevermind. Yeah, you got the neon light that says Bud, Library Bud.

01:54

So, yeah, you know, we're recording again. We were here to answer questions that people have and there was a discussion that came up online.

02:03

And so we're gonna deal with some of the liberal arguments that are made for scripture.

02:09

I'm trying to tackle some of this. Now, some of these things that folks that you're gonna hear today, you're gonna go, I never heard this before.

02:16

Well, what we're gonna give you is things they teach you in seminary, typically at, you know, liberal seminaries.

02:22

And it's things that you get taught. And well, if you're in a good conservative church, you probably never heard it because any conservative pastor who was taught this in school knew it's hogwash.

02:34

So yes, right from the get -go, we're gonna poison the well, not actually so, because we're gonna tell the truth about it.

02:40

It is hogwash. The poisoning the well fallacy is when you say something to undermine someone's complete argument, you know, by saying something that's incorrect about something so that it's poisoned before someone even starts, we're gonna tell the truth about it.

02:55

And so it's not technically a poisoning the well fallacy. But I know you're thrilled about this.

03:01

You couldn't wait to record. You know, you brought this up to me the other day and because I have to pester you so I can prep.

03:09

What are we gonna do this week? What do we wanna discuss? And you bring this up and I'm like, what?

03:15

I mean, I was exposed to this in college and I think that's probably the last time

03:21

I have encountered it. And that's what, 35 years ago, I guess. I'm familiar with it, but.

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And what was my response to you? Because I don't know what you're dealing with, except the. What was my response to you when

03:34

I said you were like. Yeah, you told me I need to evangelize more. Obviously you're not evangelizing enough that you're not hearing some of these arguments.

03:42

Apparently not within the circles you are. Because when you go out and evangelize and you deal with some of the folks that have been reading more of the liberal scholars, you are gonna be coming across some of these things.

03:55

And so that's why we're gonna kind of cover these things so that you're better prepared when this comes up, when someone challenges you.

04:04

And this is gonna be some things that we're gonna deal with a document, supposed document called

04:10

Q. And then we're gonna talk later about this JEPD theory.

04:17

If you don't know about that, we're gonna explain these two to you and explain how they believe these things come about.

04:26

And so what we end up seeing, let's start with the first one,

04:32

Q. Now let's be clear, as I mentioned this on Apologetics Live and someone informed me that Q is some character from Star Trek that pops in and out or something.

04:45

So Q is not some creature from Star Trek, okay? I thought it was a guy off the James Bond movies.

04:51

Wasn't he the dude that invented stuff? I don't know. It very well could be. But you're not talking about Q Anon, Peter.

04:59

This is not about that. No, yes, that's true. Yeah, there's that whole thing now too. Yeah, no, we're not talking about Q Anon. You know, okay, side note, rabbit trail, bud.

05:08

Uh -oh. But so Anthony Silvestro and I were out having lunch with people we knew.

05:14

We know them in our evangelism circles and we're talking with them, having a great lunch.

05:21

And just before we go, the wife starts mentioning something about how she's so glad that Trump is getting these children that are being human trafficked, you know, out of human trafficking.

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And I was just like, okay, yeah, I didn't, Trump, I mean, there is efforts to get children out of human trafficking.

05:43

I was like, yeah, that's a good thing. And I kind of just blew it off and didn't think much more of the comment.

05:48

Anthony, same thing. And then just before we get ready to go, she starts mentioning, like, well, you're following Q Anon, right?

05:56

And we're like, what? And because we didn't know what it was, that was the mistake. We probably would have been better off just going, yes, and walk away quickly, right?

06:06

No. Did you get educated? No, yeah, 20 minutes. And then we walked around, we walked out with going like, our head hurts.

06:15

Oh, like, I mean, just like the things people were, the things that we were hearing and it was like, this is just nonsense stuff.

06:22

But yeah, so we're not talking about that. Okay, yeah.

06:28

Good, now we got that situated. I should mention last week, I was at the Creation Museum and the

06:34

Ark Encounter, great time there. I did have a funny experience there as we're walking through.

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And this is kind of funny. So as you know, we're planting a brand new church and we're working with another church.

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And it turns out that when we were at the Ark Encounter, the pastor of the other church, he was actually at the

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Ark Encounter the same time we're having lunch in the same area. We didn't see each other. We didn't find out until this week when we were talking.

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And I said, he was like, oh, I was just at the Ark Encounter. I was like, I was there Tuesday too. It was really kind of funny.

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And so we were there at the same time, and he was saying, he goes, he was with a couple of guys and he was waiting to, he goes, we're gonna run into someone

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I know. It's just that he was expecting it. And they didn't there, but finds out that, yeah, we were there together.

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And so I told him, I was like, it was really kind of funny. So my bride kind of says, we go places.

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I mean, we even went on vacation once. We went to Williamsburg, and I just mentioned somewhere that,

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I was in Williamsburg looking at, I mentioned on Facebook and there was a guy who, he was like,

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I thought I saw you in the hotel. Like, I guess I got in the elevator and he, well, this happens a bunch.

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And so we're at the museum and I'm like, we're almost done with the museum. We're kind of almost at the last part of the museum.

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And I actually was like, okay, I think I made it through the museum without anyone recognizing me. And all of a sudden, this guy that I know who works at the museum, his name's

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Lalo, great evangelist, great, great guy. He's walking through with Alex Kendrick.

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And they're trying to, with a security kind of get them through where they were going into the, there's like the employees only section.

08:27

And we're sitting there and I turn around and I see Alex Kendrick and then real loud, and Lalo has a good loud voice.

08:35

He's like, Andrew Rappaport. Like everybody in that area is now staring at me. And he just goes, well,

08:41

Alex, you know Andrew Rappaport, I'm sure, don't you? And so we shake hands. We've never met before. And Alex is just giving me a look like, okay,

08:49

I don't know who you are, but I guess I should. And they walk off. And then everybody in that area is just staring at me because the assumption that he made was like,

08:58

Alex should know who I am. And Alex just walked off into the private area and everyone's looking at me and I'm just like, okay, let's move along quickly.

09:07

Well, I mean, there is like, you know, that John MacArthur kind of profile, that platform.

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And then right beneath it is you. I mean, everybody knows you. Yeah. Yeah, because I was at his birthday party, right?

09:21

Yeah. According to you. John MacArthur's that is, but yeah. I thought you were going to tell the

09:28

Ark story that you were going through where they stalled the animals, you know, where they put them in the stalls.

09:33

There was one for like a Rappaportimus or something. They do have, yeah, it is, it is.

09:40

The Ark, I mean, I was glad, I hadn't been to the Ark since like four months after they opened it.

09:46

So it's been some years and they've added a whole lot more. So it was really neat. When I first went there, it wasn't fully, like there wasn't stuff everywhere.

09:55

So it's really filled out. It is big. I mean, that's, and that's the purpose of it is to show you there's plenty of room for the, there would have been about 1300 types of animals.

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And so there would have been about six, 7 ,000 animals. They go through, when you go through the Ark, they go through the whole thing of the, you know, the waste system and the water system, the ventilation, all of that stuff, how they would have done things for that one year, which is really quite neat to think about.

10:21

I personally, I guess I like the museum more just because there's more you can learn there.

10:27

And maybe it's because we go to the museum first and then the Ark, when you go to the museum and then the

10:32

Ark, there's a lot of duplication over at the Ark then. But I think that they did a better job,

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I would say, in presenting the gospel over at the Ark than at the museum. The museum, they have their, you know, they're going through the corruption and, you know, their seven

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Cs of history. And they go through and they moved, they used to have gospel tracks and they moved them.

10:54

So now it's kind of disappointed. I almost wanted to physically move them myself because they used to be in the, just as you exited the room where it shares the gospel, they had a thing of tracks.

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And it used to be as you walked out, it was right there. So you kind of had to walk around it and it says, take one free.

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And I noticed that this time it was kind of in the dark. I don't know if someone kind of moved it accidentally because it had always been in the middle.

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So I almost wanted to pick it up and move it back and see if I get in trouble or not. So, but yeah, we have, so the

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Ark encounter was great. Museum was great. Just to give folks an update on that, if you haven't been out there, you should go check that out.

11:34

So let's get into talking about Q. What is Q? This is an interesting topic that many hold to.

11:41

Let me give the idea of how this comes about, why people bring this up. The idea of Q, it is short for the

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German word Quellum. This is the idea that there was a source document.

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Quellum means source. So there's this source document for the gospel accounts.

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The idea that they have is that Mark would have been the earliest gospel because it's the shortest gospel.

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And that we would have Matthew and Luke that took

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Mark and embellished from that. And then John took a little bit of those three but really embellished more.

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And so there's this source document that's missing. Now, the idea of this is that you have the source document, which is the truest of the gospels, supposedly, where they teach that Jesus is just a man.

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However, Mark embellished a little bit, just a little, and then supposedly, you have the embellishment of Matthew and Luke, and then the complete embellishment that you have when it comes to John.

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And by the time we get to John, Jesus Christ is God. So the argument that they end up trying to make is that Jesus Christ never really claimed to be

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God. It's just that they had embellished. And through that embellishment, you have the evolution of Jesus being

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God. And so you have this core document. Now, first, let me deal with the embellishment of Jesus being

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God. I've actually gone through all the gospels, but you know this, but for the audience who may be listening,

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I've made reference to it on all different podcasts, but I'm working through the study of all the claims of Jesus Christ deity through the gospel accounts.

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And as we do that, I'm looking at direct and indirect references to Jesus being God. So as I look at this,

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Matthew, 45 % of the gospel of Matthew refers to Jesus as God.

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What do I mean by that? 482 verses out of the 1 ,071 verses of Matthew refer to Jesus as God directly or indirectly, okay?

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When it comes to Mark, well, Mark is 46 to 47%.

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Luke is 39 % and John is 66 .7%.

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So now why do I bring those percentages up? Well, if you look at those percentages, you realize that Mark is the one that has the least, not, sorry,

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Luke has the least, not Mark. So they're saying Mark is the earliest and would refer to Jesus as man and then

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Luke embellished. However, Luke has less. Luke is 39 % compared to Mark, which is at 46, 47%.

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So if their theory was right, Luke should have been the first one. But the way that they did it is because Mark is the shortest one.

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And that's the argument that they end up using because that's the shortest, that was first, it was then embellished from there, okay?

14:59

Now, there's gonna be a couple of things with this that we wanna address how we actually get information and pass it along because it's a problem here.

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But what we end up seeing with it is I will actually make the case, I believe Matthew was the first of the

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Gospels. Now, I don't know if I'm gonna get myself in trouble with you, but you might have to disfellowship over this,

15:19

I don't know. I don't think so, no, no, no. You know, but there are people that have differing views with it and we don't know the exact dating of the

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Gospels being written. Why would I hold to Matthew? Well, I would say Matthew would be an earlier writing of the

15:37

Gospel because it was written specifically to Jewish people. So each of the

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Gospels has a different thing they focus on. With Matthew, the focus is on Jesus as king, the

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Jewish king, where Mark is the focus of a servant. Luke is the focus of him being human, which explains why it is only 39 % of referencing the deity of Christ because the focus is on his humanity.

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That's the focus. The Gospel of John is the deity of Christ, which is why that one has the most references.

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So you see, that's why you'd have that. But Matthew, if written to Jewish people, would have to be an earlier writing if he's writing to Jewish Christians because by the later part of the first century, there weren't as many

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Jewish Christians, there were mostly Gentile Christians. And so that wasn't as much of an issue. Now, that would be my argumentation for why

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I think Mark is not the first Gospel, but Matthew is. The reason they take

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Mark as the earliest Gospel is because of this Q theory. The theory goes like this.

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Basically, that there had to have been a source document that Matthew, Mark, and Luke got their information from.

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And basically, the idea is that we can figure out what Q is by looking at those verses that appear in Matthew and Luke and see what they share in common with Mark.

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So what they do is they say, okay, we're going to infer, we look at Matthew, Mark, and Luke.

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These are the ones we call the synoptic Gospels. And we call them that because they work together.

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There's a lot of overlay in them that's different than the Gospel of John, which John mostly focuses on the last week of Christ's life.

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And John doesn't give as much of the account of those three years of ministry as much of half the book is focused on really the last week.

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And so when they focus on those first three Gospel accounts and look at what they have in common and say, well, these all are in common, so we must get those from the same source, okay?

17:51

So we'll give an argument against that in a moment. But I've written about this in my book, What Do We Believe?

17:57

And maybe you could give a quote from Reza Aslan's book, a

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New York Times bestseller, by the way, on his book, Zealot. But let me just let folks know. I mean, I have right here in my trusty hands a hard copy of my book.

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There were only 25 of these made in hard copy. And Bud is the only person in the entire world with two hard copies, just for the record.

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I don't even have two hard copies of this book, but Bud does. So he is very special.

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He is unique in that way. He can claim he is the only person in the world with two hard copies of this book.

18:39

So for that - It's like an indulgence though, right? I mean, when I show up, I'll get like... Yeah. So you have one in your -

18:46

It's your special credit, right? It is, because that way you have one in your upstairs library, but then you have one in your collector's library, because people may not know you have two libraries.

18:55

So - I actually have one down there. Yeah. So if you could read that paragraph from my book,

19:01

What Do We Believe? Which, by the way, is available at strivingforattorney .org if someone wants to get it. Available in paperback.

19:07

In paperback, yeah. Which is the volume I'm reading from. Okay. Which means that you have three copies of the book.

19:14

Actually, I have extra copies of this, because I'm all set to give away. So I don't actually, I don't know how many copies

19:19

I've got. Which is a great idea. So I should mention that this book, it's a systematic theology that, you know, for those on Patreon looking,

19:27

I mean, it's not that thick, even in hardcover, but it tries to go through everything. And one of the things that it does uniquely out of most systematic theologies, most systematic theologies

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I know, they don't cover textual criticism. You cover that in seminary.

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And this is, there's people who are writing to debunk the Bible that a lot of atheists and Muslims will use, even some

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Mormons, to use writings of Bart Ehrman and folks like that to try to debunk scripture as being divine.

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And there's not really anyone at a lay level answering it. And so What Do We Believe? tries to do that in one of the chapters.

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And that's the chapter you're reading from. It's a great book. The foreword, just so folks know, Phil Johnson. Yeah, I'm familiar with the name, but if you open it up, actually, there is an endorsement that I was privileged to give.

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That's right, the first endorsement is from him. I have like a whole page in this. It's like a claim to fame.

20:28

Yeah, you realize that you and Chris Honholz are, you know, write a lot longer than everybody else. Yes. So here is what you have written,

20:41

Andrew. And this is from the chapter on biblical reliability, which I think is chapter two.

20:47

Yes. Okay, in his book, Zealot, The Life and Times of Jesus of Nazareth, Reza Aslan tries to make the same case, and yet you can throw out all his work before the first chapter begins.

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In the introduction, he states that he is basing his research, he is basing his research, on a document called, quote,

21:09

Q, unquote, the German Quella, meaning source. Then he states, quote, although we no longer have any physical copies of this document, we can infer its contents by compiling those verses that Matthew and Luke share in common, but that do not appear in Mark, end quote.

21:32

So the neat thing with this is what Reza Aslan is doing. It's kind of funny, because here he is, this is the introduction to his book,

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New York Times bestseller, and he is admitting, although we don't have any physical copies, wait, just stop right there.

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How do we judge evidence? He's admitting, we don't have any evidence for this.

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So there's no physical copies for Q. There's not even any references to this source document in any other books.

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So before 50 to 100 years ago, you never heard about some source document where Mark got his information from.

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So when we look at this, and this is the funny, because the people who use these arguments are people who would counter our views of creation, saying we have to look at evidence.

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And online this week, I've been dealing with, in my Christian apologetics group, with a gentleman who shares the same first name with me, and he's asking, who is the author of Q?

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And my response was, well, there wouldn't be an author since the document never existed. And he's arguing it exists.

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And I said, where's your evidence? He says the same thing Reza says, that we can infer it from what the three

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Asanoptic Gospels share in common. And I remember, Bud, where I had been evangelizing.

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This is the first time I heard about Q outside of seminary. I was at the boardwalk in Seaside Heights, New Jersey, standing and doing my weekly preaching that I would do there.

23:07

And I had a woman who was really receptive to the gospel. And I think that's what got this one young fella upset.

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He read some things from Bart Ehrman. And so he thought he was ready to tackle me, which was a mistake.

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And I'll explain why it was a mistake, not because I'm so brilliant. But basically, he took over the conversation because this woman was very receptive.

23:32

Now, I was glad that at the end of the conversation, I got back to talking with her. She didn't leave. And she was willing to pray to receive

23:40

Christ. But this gentleman came up and he's arguing. And he's arguing the same argument here, that there's this document,

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Q, that they got this from. And you may have heard this before, that the way we got the

23:52

Bible is the telephone game. That it's one person shares to another person to shares to another person.

24:00

Now, one of the things we know, Bud, about the telephone game, I know this wasn't you, but I have to admit, if I'm going to be honest, it was me, that when you play the telephone game, the fun of it is that you have some long sentence in the beginning, or a couple of sentences, like a paragraph, that by the time it gets to the end, you wanna see how messed up it gets.

24:20

That's the whole fun of the game, is seeing how messed up it is at the end. And so you have people like me that either don't care to pay attention to the sentence that's whispered in their ear, or just wanna have fun and mischievous.

24:36

And so either way, whichever one it is, whatever you hear is very different than what you say.

24:42

And you know that each person's gonna pass it along. So yes, there are times where, you know, in school,

24:48

I remember we played this game and someone said something, and of course, I ended up twisting it into something about the teacher, which everyone remembered that part, and that part came out, of which case that was nothing that was in there, not even close, just something

25:03

I interjected. And of course, now, where did that change occur? Nobody knows.

25:11

So that's the fun of that game, is to purposely mess things up. And people say, well - Is that time out in your day?

25:17

Is that what they called it? Yeah, no, I was just glad that - You get sent to time out.

25:22

I was just glad I was after the, you know, swatting of the hands with the rulers type of behavior.

25:28

Oh, yeah, yeah, true. Good thing I wasn't Catholic in a Catholic school. But the thing, though, is that people think that's how we got the

25:39

Bible, that one person wrote, another person takes that and moves on and moves on and moves on.

25:45

And they're all copying from one source. Now, in the telephone game, there is a difference between that and written and what we have with the

25:51

Bible. The telephone game is audible. And so, Bud, if you're telling me something,

25:57

I'm hearing it from one source. And once I hear it and repeat it, we can't go back to you as the source because you may not even remember what you heard.

26:04

So you don't have a way of comparing those two. However, if you were to take the copy that you have of what do we believe?

26:16

Hardcover, because this was the first printing. And you were to look at, actually, no, this was the second printing.

26:24

If you were to look, say, at some of the pages, like, you know, you'd see immediately a difference.

26:31

See, right here, I'm holding up, you would see page 26 here is on the outside. But if you look on your version, go look on your version, because you might've got one of the early print versions, is the page number on the inside?

26:43

No, it's the same. It's the same? Okay, so you got the second printing. So we had some in the first printing where the page numbers were on the inside.

26:53

Now, what can we do? If we had a copy of the first printing, what can we do with this second printing one?

27:01

We can compare them. We can open both of them up and look at them and do a side -by -side comparison and see the differences.

27:09

So you'd be able to see that in the first printing, all the page numbers were on the inside of the spine, and on the second printing, they went to the outside.

27:19

So it was something we had fixed and corrected. You would see on my book,

27:24

What Do They Believe?, it didn't have, in the very first printing, it didn't have the, on the top in the heading, it didn't have the, in each chapter, it gave the book name rather than the chapter name.

27:39

That changed after the first printing. So we can go back and compare those two. In other words, when we have a written document, unlike an audible thing, we can go back and do a side -by -side comparison.

27:50

So that's one thing that we know different than the telephone game when it comes to the writing of the

27:56

Bible. It wasn't from audible sources. This is different than what you would see in, say, the

28:04

Quran. The Quran was memorized audibly, okay? And when their soldiers started dying off, the third caliph,

28:14

Uthman, realized we need to write this down because we're gonna lose it because all the soldiers that had it memorized from Muhammad word for word, they had it memorized and they were afraid they would lose it if all the soldiers die off.

28:27

So they wanted to write it down. Now here's an interesting thing of Islamic history, which most people don't realize, the irony.

28:35

The Muslims will say they only have one copy of the Quran in Arabic, and that it's perfectly preserved.

28:42

However, when Uthman had all the soldiers write it down, he put a decree to burn the abhorrent texts.

28:48

Now what do you have? You have one copy of each of them. Each of these soldiers wrote down what they had memorized word for word, supposedly from Muhammad.

28:56

They wrote, there was one copy from each of them. And Uthman says, burn the abhorrent texts.

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In other words, this is a time where you actually could change what's in the Quran. Why? Because when you look at them, yes, now they're all written down, but he burned all but one copy.

29:12

And that became the copy. That right off the bat tells you that these guys memorized it and it was different.

29:18

That was sort of a telephone game or it's whatever they could remember, but they remembered it differently.

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Why? How do we know that? Because Uthman himself says, burn the abhorrent texts, which means there was different versions of it.

29:33

Once he burned all of those and said, this one is the right one, there should not be any more, right?

29:40

Any variances. Turns out that there are in the Arabic texts, but there shouldn't be according to them.

29:47

But that actually would be the telephone game. That's not how we have the Bible. It was a written document. So you can do comparisons.

29:53

And when it comes to Q, the argument is that there had to have been an original source.

29:59

So let me get back to the case with this young man at the boardwalk. He's arguing there has to be a source for Matthew, Mark, and Luke.

30:09

And he says that there was a source for Mark that Matthew and Luke had that source.

30:16

They had Mark and they embellished a little bit. So the idea being that Mark embellished from Q and Matthew and Luke embellished from Mark and Q.

30:27

So in other words, they had Q, they had Mark, they saw those two. They embellished a little bit more.

30:33

So the idea is that you can look at where all three of them, what Matthew, Mark, and Luke say, and where they agree that is

30:42

Q because they all got it from that document. Okay. Let's see if this works in reality.

30:48

And this is what I said to this young man. This was back when Barack Obama was running the second time for president.

30:55

It was right after the Democrat National Convention. Barack Obama had spoken on Thursday night.

31:00

I was out on the boardwalk on Friday night. And I asked this man, I said, did you hear or read about the speech that Barack Obama gave last night?

31:10

And he said, yes. I said, did the New York Times report it? And he said, well, yes. I said, did the

31:15

Washington Post report it? He said, yes. I said, what about the Boston Chronicle? He said, I'm sure.

31:21

I said, how about the San Francisco Chronicle? Sure. I said, what was the original source that they all got?

31:27

Did they all get it from the AP? Did they all wait to write their articles until the

31:32

AP came out with it? And then they all got it from there? And he went, no, that's foolish. They all were there.

31:39

I went, wait, you're telling me they're eyewitness accounts? But they have so many things that are similar and different because this is the argument that they make with Q, that there's things that they got that are similar so that has to come from the same source, but then they all have a different take on things.

31:54

And those differences show where they embellished. I said, so the fact that we have all these differences, the only thing we can look at is look at all the papers across the

32:03

United States and look at what they have in common. And that's what we have in that original source.

32:08

We can infer the original source from there. Now, was that the AP or was it something else? And he goes, you're being so silly.

32:16

They were there. They were eyewitness accounts. And I looked at him and said, oh, you mean exactly like the gospel writers claim they were.

32:25

And he just looked there and it's always fun to have that look on someone's face where his jaw opens, but no words come out because he just realizes, duh,

32:36

I just. I don't have an argument for that. Yeah, I just called my own argument stupid. He just took my argument, applied it to something else where I said it was really stupid and that's the argument

32:51

I was making for something else, right? So it's kind of fun to do. And one of the things

32:56

I had asked him, I said, well, you obviously have studied textual criticism, right? And he goes, what? And I said, well, textual criticism.

33:03

It's a branch of higher criticism and you've done a lot of background there, haven't you? And he's like,

33:08

I don't know what you're talking about. I said, well, let's assume one of us has done some research in textual criticism, which is the study that we're discussing of how we get back to the original words of the

33:20

Bible. One of us has a master's degree where we've done work in this area.

33:25

Is that you? And he's like, no, I'm still in high school. I said, okay, then

33:30

I'm gonna trust my actual study to your non -study, right?

33:36

He's like, well, I read a book. I read those books too, but here's the difference. I've read the scholarly work from Bart Ehrman as well.

33:42

And I could tell you that Bart Ehrman's scholarly work compared to the works that you read that's written to the public are very different.

33:50

Whenever, you know, here's an interesting thing with Bart Ehrman, when he references his work, he's actually saying things that are scholarly and correct.

33:58

But then when he writes for the masses, he'll say things that are correct and put them in the wrong order or make conclusions that aren't always accurate.

34:06

For example, he'll say the gospel copiers, the people trying to copy the gospel accounts were in such a rush, or the

34:13

New Testament really, they were in such a rush that they didn't have, they were sloppy and they would make mistakes.

34:19

Well, that is true. They were in a rush because the message was so important. They wanted to get it copied and out there.

34:26

That's true. Were they sloppy for that reason? That's not necessarily true, but we do see evidence that because they were in a rush, they made mistakes.

34:34

Does that mean, so he says, because of that, we can't know what the original meaning is. That's a leap that he just makes because we actually have so many manuscripts and I cover this in chapter two of my book,

34:46

What Do We Believe? We have so many manuscripts, we can go back and do that comparison. We have about 9 ,000 manuscripts now of the

34:55

Greek. And as we look at all those, we kind of know where people made those copying errors because when they copy the copying error, copy it over and over, we know where almost all of them are now and we can compare them.

35:06

And guess what? Not a single one of them affects any doctrine. Even Bart Ehrman said that in the second, in the first printing of his paperback version of Misquoting Jesus, he says, because they wanted, it was a

35:19

New York Times bestselling hardcover, so they want him to do a paperback, so add something to it, add an epilogue.

35:24

So people that have the first one will buy the second and he did that. The first edition, he actually says in the epilogue that not a single

35:31

Christian doctrine is affected by any of these variances. And the publisher, after publishing it, people start saying, wait a minute, we're using this book to say that you can't tell

35:41

Christianity because of all these changes. You can't say this. So the second printing, they took that out.

35:47

So if anyone has a first edition paperback printing of Bart Ehrman's copy of Misquoting Jesus, I will pay for it.

35:57

I want that. I want that copy. You're looking on your shelf. I see you looking. I'm looking at my shelf right now.

36:03

Yeah, I would love a copy of that. So someone found something on Amazon and you couldn't actually buy it.

36:12

It was out of stock. But yeah, this is what you end up seeing with this.

36:17

When they argue for Q, they're arguing that there had to have been one written copy that was then copied to Mark and Mark got it from this

36:25

Q and then Matthew got it from Mark and Luke got it from Mark and then

36:30

John had access to all three, but he kind of did his own thing. That's the argumentation they have for how the gospel accounts came about.

36:39

First off, as I gave arguments, why I think that Matthew would have been written first just makes more sense historically.

36:47

The fact that the only reason people say that Mark was written first is because it was shorter and therefore the others embellished, but there's no evidence that Matthew or Luke had the account of Mark in their hands.

37:02

They don't refer to this and say, as Mark said. So we don't have that to be able to say that this is the case.

37:11

So we look at these and the way we would figure out the dating of a book is if it doesn't give anything specific that we could tie to history from the dating, for example, no mention of the destruction of the temple in the book of Acts.

37:25

So we would assume that was written before that because that's a big deal they would have mentioned. So we assume it's before that.

37:31

Well, we assume that Matthew would have written first because he wrote to a

37:37

Jewish audience that was more of the earlier part of the century, not the latter part of the century. So that would be the assumption.

37:44

Can we prove it? No, but we can't prove Mark was first. They assume

37:49

Mark is first to prove this whole theory. Does that help? I mean, that kind of buttresses the argument that they're trying to make here with this non -extant, mysterious document.

38:04

And part of the problem is that there is so much similarity primarily between Mark and Luke.

38:10

There is a lot of, it's not duplication because we understand the different perspective that each of those authors are giving us of whatever accounts that they may have that are similar.

38:22

So yeah, the dating of Mark is critical for the argument itself.

38:29

From our standpoint, it doesn't, and even though we do disagree on that, I kind of fall on the side that Mark probably is the first one written.

38:38

But that does not, I don't support that because it buttresses the argument for Q.

38:48

The deductive reasoning that we're all for when this guy says we infer, okay, well, it's okay to infer.

38:54

But in this case, you don't need to unless you've got an agenda and your agenda is to deconstruct scripture.

39:00

You're not doing this from the standpoint of faith. You're doing this from the standpoint of academic scrutiny.

39:07

Well, that's okay, but you end up at two different conclusions.

39:14

And as faithful believers, we understand where the text takes us. I'm not gonna convince you by destroying your

39:21

Q argument. You destructed that guy's argument because it's unreasonable, and that's good.

39:29

You want unbelievers to be in a state of doubt because you've got an answer to come back at them with, and it's not the textual criticism.

39:37

It is the repent and believe gospel. And that's really what I want folks to realize is that if you come across someone that argues for Q, it's not something where, oh, no, they've just proven something from a document that there's no, just ask the person, where is your evidence?

39:52

And what are they gonna do? I have this all the time, where's your evidence? Well, we can infer this. No, no, no, that's not evidence.

39:58

That's a logical fallacy called begging the question. You're trying to prove the very thing with the acceptance.

40:05

You have to first accept there to be a Q to prove it. You're assuming

40:12

Q exists and then saying, well, we infer from this, but your proof precludes that you have to first accept the very thing you're holding to.

40:20

And so - Your point two, I don't want to interrupt, but your point two is very important that a lot of Christians today don't realize you've got to know your history.

40:28

This is not some 400 year old argument. Yeah. This is a 20th century argument.

40:35

You can't go to a 19th century liberal theologian and find anybody suggesting this kind of thing.

40:42

Correct. So, all right, I always go back to what Spurgeon said. If there's anything new in theology, it's wrong.

40:49

Well, it could be, but we're reformed and continue reforming. Hence we become dispensations.

40:55

In light of what? Scripture. Our infallible word of God. Yes. So not some confessional document from Westminster or -

41:07

Or a theologic systematic - Systematic theology, like what do we believe? Oh, we can't rely on that.

41:14

Well, I just challenge you to go through this book and look at the amount of scripture that's in here.

41:20

It's covered in scripture, I'm just saying. The scriptures, there are no references to the

41:26

Westminster Confession, I don't think, or the Lennon Confession. No, but at this point, when it comes to Q, Bud, sometimes, a lot of the times what you have is people think that's it, it's time to throw in the towel.

41:40

And we don't have to do that. We have answers. But speaking of throwing in the towels,

41:45

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45:07

Now, maybe you need a pillow for this next section, bud, because this may hurt your head.

45:12

So maybe you want something to lay your head down on for this. But we wanna talk about the

45:18

JEPD theory. Now, many may not - What is JEPD? J -E -P -D.

45:24

P -D. Yeah, well, there's different ways they do it. P -D, whether the P or the D is at the end,

45:30

I've seen it different ways. So let me give what they stand for, because most folks don't know. Just being contrary. Contrary, because you're good at that.

45:37

No, you're not playing devil's advocates, because you don't wanna advocate for him. Okay, just be clear. So the idea is that the first five books of the

45:48

Bible, Genesis, well, really, Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, and Numbers, those four really are where this comes in.

45:58

And then Deuteronomy is kind of by itself. But the five books, they try to say that there's different authors.

46:03

Now, where this comes in is the argument is to really counter the creationist argument.

46:11

When evolution started being taught, people were looking at Genesis chapter one and two and saying it is clear in scripture that God created everything in six literal 24 -hour days.

46:25

And people were trying to shove a gap in between Genesis 1 .1 and 1 .2. And that gave for the millions of years.

46:32

And people would say that each of those days were really epochs, they were ages. And so they were millions of years for each one.

46:39

Which I do kind of find funny, because if you'd say that each of those days is millions of years, you have the plants, millions of years before the sun.

46:47

Just saying how that could work. You know, where did the plants get their nutrition from when they need the sun for that?

46:56

Photosynthesis didn't work back then for millions of years, right? Just, you know, got to put it in its context.

47:03

So there are people, and I actually read a book from a guy who was professing to be an atheist, but then he was enlightened to the

47:12

Bible and he realized that the Bible was true because he ended up seeing that the way he looked at evolution, he said the

47:20

Bible teaches evolution. And the first thing God creates is light. And he was arguing that the first thing that would have been in the universe at the

47:27

Big Bang would have been light. And so he kind of works his way through trying to explain some of these things, not answering simple things like, where was the light that the, you know, and he just says, okay, there's light in the world, but there was no sun.

47:41

It kind of interesting how he had to scramble with some of that stuff. So there was just, there was an earth before the

47:48

Milky Way solar system, kind of weird. You know, problems that you have when you don't look at the whole thing in its context.

47:55

And so he ends up holding and teaching this J -E -P -D theory because what they're doing is they want to show that there's a difference between Genesis chapter one and Genesis chapter two.

48:06

Genesis chapter two is clear that there was one man and one woman created at the same time in the same place.

48:12

Evolution would say that there was a gap there, which is kind of weird. So you have what scientists would refer to as mitochondria male and mitochondria female or mitochondria

48:23

Adam and mitochondria Eve. There's about 60 years between them, which is a really kind of an interesting thing.

48:30

Like, so you have mitochondria Adam and 60 years later, mitochondria Eve. Mitochondria Adams had all the body parts for male and mitochondria

48:38

Eve had all the body parts for female. My question is, who did mitochondria

48:44

Adam mate with to create another Adam until there was an Eve? Slight problem there because he only had male body parts.

48:52

So it's really kind of strange what you end up seeing when you look at some of the science that they end up giving.

48:57

But if evolution was true, they would have to have a male. The first time you went from asexual, in other words, a being that like an amoeba that doesn't have a male and female to bisexual where you have male, female.

49:11

The first time that happens, you had to have that split occur where they have all the body parts for both male and female working completely and they exist in the same time frame, in the same place and they got to know what to do with the equipment, right?

49:25

It's just, and they say we have blind faith. I mean, those are beyond statistical and possibility to be true.

49:32

If that's the case, we should be seeing so much evolution. They say, oh, we see it all the time. It just happens so slowly we don't see it.

49:39

It's got to be happening a lot more and we don't see any evidence of this in the fossil record where we should be seeing it, right?

49:45

We just don't see the evidence. But anyway, let's get to the argument they're making. So the J in this

49:50

J -E -P -D stands for Jehovah. The E stands for Elohim. The D stands for Deuteronomy and the

49:59

P stands for priesthood. And so if you hear it J -E -D -P, those are the letters where they stand for.

50:07

Now, the argument goes that you have authors who use the, where Jehovah is used, you have that as the areas where you have this author referring to God as Jehovah, where you have

50:20

Elohim used, that is this other author. Deuteronomy is kind of by itself because they recognize that Deuteronomy is actually a treaty.

50:28

It's a covenant that we would see at that timeframe. So it's laid out as a covenant.

50:35

So they'd say that writer is by himself. And then you have the priest. The what? It's a - What was that word?

50:41

A covenant. Oh, okay. There are covenants in the Bible and that's what distinguishes each of the dispensations, by the way, that God works through.

50:52

But you know, and I do remember this and I confirmed it by looking it up when

50:57

I found out what our topic was this week. Your point on Genesis 1 and 2 is very important, not only for the issue of the creation of man, but this argument of J -E -D -P relies on the distinction between those two chapters with the name given -

51:17

Correct. Are used of God in Genesis 1 versus what it is in Genesis 2. So not only apparently are the books, those four or five books

51:26

Pentateuch authored separately, even within the framework of a single book, you've got this different authorship.

51:35

Within the first four books, you have a mixing of three authors, the J, the

51:41

E, and the P. And the P, yeah. The P is the one that's gonna use Adonai, if you see that.

51:46

And the idea is, so here's the idea, is that you had the Jehovah source that supposedly wrote between 900 to, 950 to 920

51:57

B .C. is the argument. So he was, the original, he places it when they got up on Mount Sinai at the covenant, puts them back to that timeframe, uses the name we refer to as Yahweh or Jehovah.

52:11

So 950 to 920 B .C. The Elohim author came along later at 870 to about 840

52:21

B .C. And what this person does is take some abstracts from the

52:26

Jehovah author, maybe redacted some, uses the term Elohim, so that's his own style of writing.

52:34

So it's written about that part. So he's doing more of an abstract style.

52:40

And he's got his writing. Now, the argument that they would make is that you had the J author, the

52:47

E author, they're both separate. Then you have the Deuteronomy author who just writes

52:53

Deuteronomy. And now you come along and have the priests. So the

52:58

Deuteronomy author, they argue, would have written around 620 was the date.

53:06

I remember seeing 620 B .C., maybe around 550, 520

53:12

B .C. So he would come later. But then really what you have is the priestly order, the priestly authors who come along and the priests are writing at 550 to 520

53:23

B .C. So these would be the priests that they're taking. What they end up doing is they take the

53:29

J author, E author, and D author. They have all these documents. And they're going to put them together.

53:36

So what they do is they redact all these works into five books known as the

53:41

Pentateuch. And so they take the J author's version and the E author's version of Genesis and of Exodus and of Leviticus and of Numbers and they're gonna redact them into one book.

53:57

So they're gonna take pieces of the J author for Genesis and the pieces of the

54:02

E author from Genesis. So they're gonna take Genesis chapter one from J, take Genesis chapter two from E, and put them together into one

54:10

Genesis account. And that's why you have different renderings supposedly of Genesis one, Genesis two. Now this sounds like, okay, it sounds like a reasonable argument.

54:19

And this is the liberal scholarship for it. What is the purpose of it? The purpose is to deny that God wrote the

54:26

Bible, that it had one author to say that Moses didn't write. Now, one of the things that has come to ruin this argument, one thing is they argued that Moses couldn't have written because they didn't have written form at that time.

54:41

And then they find a stone with writing that dates to the time of Moses.

54:47

Oops. Amazing. Yeah, and if you go to the Museum of the Bible, you'll see they have a replica of that stone up there on display and they go through tours, they explain that.

54:58

This was written at the same time as Moses. So now they have something they can date. They can prove was written around the time of Moses.

55:07

So there was writing at the time of Moses. Oops. One thing shot down. Now, there's a reason

55:13

I give the dating bud because I give this dating because when we look at the

55:19

Old Testament, we do not have copies that are as close as we do the

55:26

New Testament. In the New Testament, we have copies of it that are within 20, 30 years of its writing. That's not the case with the

55:33

Old Testament. In fact, one of the wonderful things of the Dead Sea Scrolls was that when we found the

55:39

Dead Sea Scrolls, we found copies of the Old Testament that were 1 ,000 years prior to the earliest copies we had then of the

55:47

Old Testament, which becomes really important because people used to say there were three, four, five authors of Isaiah, two authors of Daniel.

55:56

They would say that Daniel was written much later. So the first six chapters were written, then the next six chapters, and the second set of chapters were written by someone after the

56:08

Roman Empire so that it wasn't that he was predicting Greece, which mentioned by name, Rome mentioned by name, the

56:15

Medo -Persians, not mentioned by name, but mentioned two nations that'll come together and work as one. All that's laid out during the

56:22

Babylonian captivity. So they said this had to have been after the fact. What's the assumption there? It can't be supernatural, it can't be a divine author.

56:29

Again, begging the question, trying to assume the very thing you're looking to prove. That's the thing you're gonna find with liberal theology.

56:36

So they're going about it this way, and when they're doing that, what they're doing in this whole theory is to assume the thing they wanna prove.

56:46

And so they're looking and making this distinction and trying to find some way to say these were just human authors.

56:53

Now, I bring up the dates to say that when we look at the earliest copy that we have from the

56:59

Dead Sea Scrolls, we do not have anything that dates any of these books without being in complete

57:07

Genesis, complete Leviticus, complete Exodus. There are, again, just like with Q, there's no evidence, there is no document of this

57:17

J source and E source and D source, where the priest supposedly put those together.

57:24

But you have no evidence of it. It's the assumption that we, again, infer, because, oh, look, this guy uses this name and this guy uses this name and this guy uses this name, it must be this.

57:35

Or it's just that there's different names for God that have different elements. You can go to our

57:41

Striving Fraternity YouTube channel and take our class on theology, and you'll see when we get to the names of God, we talk about the differences of Elohim versus Adonai versus Yahweh.

57:54

Each of them have a different element to it. And so the name has a meaning, and because of that meaning,

58:00

God is explaining something of the covenant -keeping God versus the master, the creator, okay?

58:07

So there's differences there in the names. So as we look at the names, they have purpose. And this is what you end up seeing is what they're doing with this is trying to assume the thing that they want to prove.

58:18

That right there becomes the problem. It's the same as we had with the Q. There's no historical evidence for separate copies of the

58:28

J author versus E author. So they're not doing what they would call science, where they observe it.

58:34

They're doing what we would call fairytale. That's what Q and J -E -D -P are, fairytales.

58:41

Exactly. I mean, the motive here, you know, get behind, why are they doing this? I mean, this is not merely suppressing the truth in unrighteousness.

58:51

This is trying to deconstruct the truth. We've got to prove God wrong as a concept, but obviously their consciences must bother them horribly until they get to the point where they've so hardened it that, you know, they adopt an atheistic or agnostic position.

59:10

That's what's going on behind all this. Don't forget we've got an enemy at work, and what is he going to attack?

59:16

He is always going to attack the word of God. And that's what's going on here.

59:22

And the arguments that you make give us an apologetic, which really helps buttresses the faithful.

59:29

You're not gonna use that apologetic again to convert a guy from J -E -D -P who believes in that.

59:35

He's looking for a reason not to believe. Yeah, and - The only thing that's gonna do that is the gospel. You don't see this higher criticism being practiced in Islam or in Mormonism or Jehovah Witnesses.

59:47

I mean, we do that for them because we want to show that there's problems in their theory, but they don't do it themselves.

59:54

Christians do, that's interesting. Christians do look into higher criticism and textual criticism and do the work of textual criticism to argue, no, you guys got it wrong, right?

01:00:06

Because what they're trying to do with this, as you said, is deconstruct the truth. You see, in Islam, they already are falsehood.

01:00:13

There's no truth to deconstruct. So they don't want to deconstruct that. The atheists aren't trying to deconstruct

01:00:19

Islam, Jehovah Witness, Mormons. They're trying to deconstruct the biblical gospel, the biblical message.

01:00:27

So why is there a difference in Genesis 1 where it says Elohim? Because he's creator. And you get to Genesis 2 and it's

01:00:33

Yahweh? Why? Because he's personal God. I mean, there's a context for why these things.

01:00:39

Now, yeah, sure, you can build this elaborate structure that linguistically deconstructs this, but you're not going to destroy truth.

01:00:49

Your motive is to deconstruct something that you can attack, but you can't conquer.

01:00:56

And the thing that we end up seeing with it is, okay, how did Genesis 1 and Genesis 2 work together then?

01:01:02

Very simple. Genesis 1 is an overview of all six days. Genesis 2 zooms in on some of those specific days, but mostly on day six and zooms in and gives details that the overview doesn't give.

01:01:17

That's not uncommon. You have some document, you have an executive summary, it gives the overview. Here's what you're going to read.

01:01:23

Then you start reading the details. It doesn't mean it's written by two different authors. And by the way, I think I said earlier that Genesis, I can't remember,

01:01:29

I sometimes mix things up, but I think I said Genesis 1 was written by J and 2 by E.

01:01:35

I may have, if I didn't, I can't remember. But Genesis 1 is the

01:01:40

E author for the use of Elohim. Genesis 2 is the J author for the use of Jehovah.

01:01:46

I can't remember if I mixed that up. But you have a zooming in now of day six, really.

01:01:54

But chapter two is just the details. You have the overview. Here's an overview all six days.

01:02:01

So you have them. And then you go in specifically into, well, actually all seven days, depending how you break the chapters, right?

01:02:12

Because I think chapter two starts with day seven. But you end up having one that's an overview, one that's the details.

01:02:20

That's not very difficult. Well, Genesis 1, if you only had that, you could make a vibrant argument for a deistic kind of theology, because this is a creator.

01:02:32

He created, and then he walked away. No, no, go to chapter two. He's a personal God. He's relational.

01:02:39

He is involved with his creation, primarily with man, his image bearer.

01:02:48

So you have to understand the context. You know, the other, I mean, just the obvious argument from the standpoint of believers, go read

01:02:57

Jesus. Jesus cites Moses as the author. Paul cites

01:03:03

Moses as the author. Luke, I mean, the New Testament, when we go to those individuals.

01:03:11

Well, see, but here's the argument they're gonna have against that, though, bud, is, right? They don't believe that Jesus actually lived, right?

01:03:19

That's part of the deconstruction, is to say, well, Jesus wasn't even a historical person. I'm gonna have to whip out the repent and believe at that point, and trust the

01:03:27

Lord to do his work. There was a group called the Jesus Seminar, and they wanted to find out what Jesus actually said. And they were deconstructing the red letters of the

01:03:34

Bible. And what they would do is they'd have a voting system where if Jesus actually said it, they'd put a red ball in.

01:03:41

And if he might've said it, it was a pink ball. And if he definitely didn't say it, it was a black ball. And at the end,

01:03:47

I thought this was hysterical. At the end, there was only one phrase they all agreed

01:03:53

Jesus definitely said. And that was when the woman is caught in adultery and comes to him, and he says, "'Let him who has no sin cast the first stone.'"

01:04:01

That's the only thing they all say he said. Now, what's interesting about that is those who do textual criticism don't believe that's actually what's in the canon of scripture, because the reason for that is that account moves in some of the earlier manuscripts.

01:04:14

It moves around where it is in the gospel accounts. Some of them don't have it at all. Many believe that this was something that got added in.

01:04:22

We don't need it to, it's not needed for any Christian doctrine. We have the doctrine of forgiveness without it.

01:04:27

It's probably a true event that occurred, but it probably wasn't in the original canon.

01:04:33

So the only thing they could agree he absolutely said was probably something that was never in the canon. Not there to begin with.

01:04:39

So kind of interesting, but this is what they tried to do. Just so folks know, just one other helpful thing, and I know we've discussed this before.

01:04:49

As you're using your study Bible or any contemporary version that is an actual translation, in those places, like the long ending of Mark, it's gonna be bracketed in your

01:04:59

Bible, and there's gonna be some kind of footnote that tells you that based on the science of textual criticism, most scholars believe that this was added, just like the event you noted.

01:05:12

Depending on your translation, if you have a more word for word, formal equivalent translation, something like a

01:05:22

King James, well, King James might not do it, but if you have your New King James, you'll have a

01:05:28

New American Standard, your ESV, something like that, your New English translation.

01:05:33

But you may not get it so much in like NIVs or things like that, just so you're aware. So I hope this was helpful for you.

01:05:42

If it was, let us know. You could leave us a review. There's a link in the show notes to leave us a review.

01:05:49

We love to hear from you guys. You can always email us at info at striving for eternity .org.

01:05:55

That's info at striving for eternity .org. It would be great to hear from you. Bud and I do this.

01:06:01

We speak to you guys. We get to see each other. We don't get to see you. And we would love to hear from you.

01:06:08

It's great to know what you find valuable, what you find interesting, what you didn't like.

01:06:14

And most of the stuff that they didn't like, that came from Bud. I apologize. Well, we did get something in the email this week.

01:06:24

Someone didn't like something you had written, but in your many articles, which were great, I just disagree with them.

01:06:31

Well, I guess I just didn't go to the source that they give because I don't trust that source. So we're off the bat.

01:06:36

Oh, I thought you said you disagree with me. No, no, no. No. So, but if you email us, let us know what you think.

01:06:43

If this was helpful to you, if you never heard this before, let us know. I encourage you to get my book, What Do We Believe at strivingforeternity .org.

01:06:51

Pick up a copy and read the chapter on biblical reliability. If you're going, wait a minute, there were copyist errors, there were variants, there were things that we have in our

01:06:59

English Bible that weren't in the canon, in the original. What do you mean? My faith is rocked.

01:07:04

Don't be. Just get my book, What Do We Believe? I go through all that to show you that the Bible is more reliable than any other document that we have in ancient times.

01:07:14

It's a wonderful resource. What do we believe? It's a systematic theology of the

01:07:19

Christian faith. Very similar to something like, oh, say London Baptist Confession or Westminster Confession.

01:07:27

Yeah. Excellent resource. Excellent. Yeah. Just more accurate, that's all. So, wow,

01:07:34

I'm going to get myself in trouble with that. How are we going to do our next topic next week, folks? That was me trying to get people to email.

01:07:40

I'm going to get a lot of hate mail on that one. What do you mean you're not? The London Confession of Faith, the

01:07:45

Baptist Confession of Faith, the Westminster, they're good documents. They're good documents.

01:07:51

I'm not, and I'm not putting my book up at that level. I'm just saying. They're not scripture. They're all not scripture.

01:07:57

They're not scripture. So, with that, bud, you know what? You want to quit, don't you?

01:08:03

I want to throw in the towel, so that's a wrap. This podcast is part of the Striving for Eternity ministry.

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For more content or to request a speaker or seminar to your church, go to strivingforeternity .org.

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