Christian Responsibility: Andrew Rappaport, Aaron Brewster, Dan Kreft, Jay Miller, Dominick Grimaldi

Dead Men Walking

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Exploring theology, doctrine, and all of the fascinating subjects in between, broadcasting from an undisclosed location,

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Dead Men Walking starts now. Oh, well, hello everyone.

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Welcome back to another episode of Dead Men Walking podcast. I'm your host, Greg Moore. Thanks for coming along for the ride. You can find us at dmwpodcast .com.

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You can check out our snarky merch, help support the show there. We have the Why Don't You Just Shut Up and Let That Be Your Wisdom, Job's 13 -5.

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Sometimes you got to just quote scripture to the pagans, you know. The Wynham Dynam, Romans 9, that's a fun shirt as well.

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We've got, what do we got? We got theology, Presbyterian Thug over there with Doug Wills.

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I mean, we got a bunch of stuff. Just go check it out, help support the show. But at the top, we have to talk about our sponsors because these guys are brothers in the

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Lord. They're building things and we want to support them. They help us get down to conferences and travel and bring you all the content that you guys love.

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Up top is Striving for Eternity. Look, we've said on this podcast for a long time, we need less pastors and more disciples.

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Now, that may be a little tongue -in -cheek, but it holds true to how important discipleship is. Striving for Eternity is a discipleship ministry that will come to your church.

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They specialize in visiting churches all across the globe. They offer weekend seminars that cover topics like evangelism, apologetics, sensationalism, and much, much more.

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They're also very purposeful about helping churches of all sizes take advantage of these seminars. So no matter what size your church is,

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Striving for Eternity is a great choice for your congregation. Striving for Eternity also offers a free online academy, properly called the

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Striving for Eternity Academy. This academy has courses that will teach you how to properly interpret the

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Bible, teach you about the world religions, help you walk through systematic theologies, as well on courses on discipleship.

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And you can always support the ministry by purchasing the syllabus online. Striving for Eternity Ministries also supports believers through quality content, like Andrew Rappaport's Rappaport podcast and Apologetics Live, a live stream on multiple social media platforms.

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Striving for Eternity also supports and disciples podcasters through the Christian Podcast Community. So if you're a church leader, pastor, elder, podcaster, or just someone who wants to know

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God rightly, go to www .strivingforeternity .org or simply click the link in this episode.

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We love Andrew Rappaport and Striving for Eternity, and you're going to hear his voice a little bit later because he's on the podcast tonight.

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But love that brother. Also Jacob Supply, he's here in Temperance, Michigan. It's that time of year, projects in full swing.

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And you know what that means. You got to take the trip up to Jacob Supply. We have guys coming from 12, 14, 16 hours away, although they do ship nationally as well too.

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What he does is he buys out wholesale. He's got building supplies, decking, name brand appliances, all 30, 40, 50 % off.

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Don't go to Lowe's. Don't go to Menards. Don't go to Home Depot. Go to Jacob Supply. He's a Reformed brother in the

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Lord. I go to church with him too. He's a really nice guy. I just saw him last night. And he's got all kinds of stuff right now on sale this summer.

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Go to your projects there. I built a chicken coop with some of his metal roofing and 2x4s out back.

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So JacobSupply .com or call him at 734 -224 -0978. Love that brother.

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Make sure you support him. Cool. Now that we got the business out of the way, we've got a fun one. I love when we jam -pack the podcast.

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And we've got five other participants, six total right now and maybe one more. And I might mess up some names.

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I might not. I don't know. You guys make sure you correct me if I do. We have Pastor Jay Miller. We have

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Andrew Rappaport, Pastor Dominic. Uh -oh, this one, I'm at Garmaldi. Did I get that,

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Dominic? That's close enough. There we go. Apologist Dan Kreft. Snuck the apologist in there.

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And Aaron Brewster. Guys, how are you all doing? Better than I thought.

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Great. Thank you. Thanks for having us. Yeah, it's always great when you ask everyone how they're doing and you got six people that all have to answer at the same time.

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But what I want to do is I want to go around the horn because we're talking about this conference that's coming up. But I'm going to throw it to Andrew Rappaport first since he gathered this motley crew of apologists and pastors and said, let's do this podcast.

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So Andrew, you've been on the podcast before. Everyone else, this is their first time. So I'm super excited. Andrew, tell us a little bit about yourself and give us a little overview of the conference.

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Not too much because then I want to go around and get everyone's introduction so the listeners can know who they are. Yeah, my name is

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Andrew Rappaport, striving for eternity ministries. You kind of mentioned in your intro there. And so I know that, you know,

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I'm really curious what you call your chickens. I mean, I know Ray Comfort has names for his chickens like dinner and lunch whenever they act up.

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I don't know if you have this similar type names for yours. Fried, baked, broiled, extra crispy.

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Yeah, there you go. So the conference that Pastor Jay, who I'm sure he's going to talk soon, is the

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Christian Responsibility in an Un -Christian World. And Greg, I know this doesn't shock you that we live in an un -Christian world.

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What? And it is hard for us to have, you know, to live that way, to act as Christians in the world and to understand what our responsibility is to the world.

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And so Pastor Jay put together a lot of great topics with a lot of great guys. And I'm going to say up front, for some of the listeners, you're going to hear some names and go,

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I've never heard of any of these names. And that's probably a good thing. We need to get out of only going to conferences where there's celebrity pastors, celebrity preachers.

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You know, we want to go to conferences where we have people that are really preaching well.

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And every one of the preachers here do a great job. I'm just going to pause for a second.

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I don't know if someone's mute. If someone mutes, are you hearing a lot of echo?

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I'm hearing background noise. There we go. It's gone. It's probably Dominic. It's always Dominic.

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I was thinking the same thing, Dominic. All right. All right. So we have this conference.

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Let's throw it over to Pastor Jay Miller, who put this conference together. Tell us a little bit about it,

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Pastor Jay. And about yourself. My name's Jay Miller. I'm a pastor at Vail Valley Baptist Church here in Vail, Arizona, a little suburb south and east of Tucson.

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This conference is really born from a single sermon. Our sanctity of life sermon this year started in Ezekiel.

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Ezekiel 3. We have a bill currently on our ballot for November called the

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Arizona Abortion Access Act, which will allow abortion up to nine months of age for any reason with the approval of anyone with a license.

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Optometrist, dentist, massage therapist, you name it. And for any reason listed in a

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DSM -5 or any medical textbook. So if you go to your dentist and he diagnoses you with gingivitis, you can abort a viable fetus without any possible regulations against it.

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And I started thinking about this and how quiet the churches in Tucson are.

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We work with a crisis pregnancy center here called Hands of Hope, and there are three churches that will let them in the door.

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Nobody's willing to speak up. And it occurred to me what God had told

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Ezekiel in chapter 3, that if he did not warn the people, they would die for their iniquity, but their blood would be on his hands.

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Started talking with Andrew and it was like, this is the message we need to get out. There is a moral obligation and a moral culpability to the

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Christians in the pews who keep their mouth shut and say nothing while travesty and horror goes on in God's world.

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So that's kind of where it was born out of. We're going to get back to that, but let's go around the horn so we can get everyone else introduced as well.

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Pastor Dominic, can you tell us a little bit about yourself? Yeah. Again, thanks for having me,

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Pastor Dominic Rimaldi. I pastor a church here in Desert Sky Baptist Church in Casa Grande, Arizona, originally from New York City.

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Did many years in prison. God saved me in prison. So other than that, just a normal, regular

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Christian that God saved by grace and hoping that this conference can bring clarity to what we're doing here today and just bringing the fruit of the gospel and showing that there is a lot of capitulation today.

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So hopefully we can iron that out through this conference. Amen. Apologies, Dan Creft.

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Can you give us a couple minutes there? Sure. Everybody's laughing.

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Yes, because of what happened before we started recording, you're always going to be apologist Dan Creft to me now.

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So apologists, go ahead. I'm trying to shed the title, but I have nothing better because that's what my website says.

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So I have to roll with it until I come up with something better. Anyway, I'm Dan Creft. I'm a seven foot tall, former basketball player.

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I played in the Big Ten. I played overseas. I went to five NBA rookie camps and got real close with the

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Houston Rockets. Did that for about three years and then started a career in website development or software engineering.

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Worked at Amazon for nine to 16 years. And then somewhere in the middle of all that,

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God got me interested in apologetics. And so I started just reading everything I could find.

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And then around, what was it? Around 2003 -ish or so,

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God called me to teach sixth graders at our church. And I did that for about 17 years and then moved on to a different church and started teaching seventh through ninth graders.

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And I've also been teaching, I love teaching mixed age groups. Anything from little kids to old people.

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It's a lot of fun. Okay, so a teacher at heart. I love it.

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Aaron Brewster, how are you, sir? Good to see you again. I'm doing really well. Nice to see you as well.

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And welcome to the podcast for the first time. I know we've hung out a few times, but yeah, give us a few minutes. Tell us a little bit about yourself.

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Yeah, so I am kind of doing two different things. I have the privilege of being the editor or one of the editors for Striving for Eternity, their blog.

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And I'm also one of their speakers. So I got connected with this opportunity via Andrew, who was great enough to suggest to Jay that they bring me down.

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I'm from North Carolina, so it's gonna be a little bit of a jaunt heading over there to Arizona. But I'm really excited about it because this will be the first time

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I've ever been in Arizona. So I'm thinking heading over there to Jay's church will probably be the highlight.

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Why go anywhere else? But I'm also the president of Evermind Ministries. I'm a biblical counselor, and I do a lot with parenting.

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Parenting is a massive part of our ministry called Truth, Love, Family and the

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Truth, Love, Parent podcast. So I've been doing that now for a long time. I've been a biblical counselor probably back 2006.

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That's really when I started that. I've been an educator on the Christian school system. I'm a homeschooling parent.

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I love all things family and I love all things God's word especially as we're taking his word and we're helping the family and the church know how to worship

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God better. Awesome. Welcome guys to the Dead Man Walking podcast. So happy to have you.

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What I wanted to do, and maybe this will be okay with you guys, is maybe go around and we'll start back with Andrew and talk a little bit without giving too much away because we want people to show up to the conference.

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Make sure you go buy those tickets. There's going to be a link at the bottom of this episode where you can go right there and get them.

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But maybe give us a little snippet idea of what you're going to be talking about and covering why you think that was needed.

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And if either one of you guys, anyone wants to jump in while the other one's talking, but we'll try to make it a round to all five of you to round out the episode to kind of give listeners an idea of a taste of what they're going to get at this conference.

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Andrew, what are you talking about? Yeah, and I will say this for a link. One link that we created to make it easier is if you go to strivingforattorney .org

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slash Val V -A -I -L Okay. And Dominic, do you need to mute again?

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Why do I even move it? It doesn't require any movement. Your microphone is trying to pick up sound around you.

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It's only when Andrew's talking. That's suspicious. I think he's doing it on purpose.

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Sorry for extra editing for you. Listen, I got 20 years for not telling, so I'll take the wait. You've got to keep that line in there.

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I'm taking it out. So, yeah, so we're if you're going to talk about Christian responsibility in an unchristian world,

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I think the number one thing we have to end up discussing is the fact that we live in a culture in America of social justice.

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Social justice is something that is probably the number one issue we're dealing with.

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And that'll be my first topic, is a warning on social justice. So, the plan is to cover what social justice is.

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A lot of people don't understand, Greg, still, how dangerous social justice is to the gospel.

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I was just with someone that is part of the Southern Baptists, their church planting board, and North America I forget the full name,

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North America planters, church planting. North American mission board. Mission board, there you go.

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And he totally doesn't understand the issues with social justice. He doesn't see that there's any concern with that and the gospel, and I'm trying to explain to him they're antithetical to one another.

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They're mutually exclusive. The message of the social justice gospel condemns the

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Christian biblical message. And so we're going to cover things like that.

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That's one talk that I'll have on Friday. The talk that I have on Saturday is really, if we're going to talk about Christian responsibility, we need to talk about the reality that we're going to be under persecution.

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This is something I've been saying for going 20, 30 years now, that Christians will be, there will be another holocaust that will be here in America, and I've said for a long time, it won't be the

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Jewish people. It will be with Christians. And so I think that we really need to focus on the fact of how do we prepare and get ready for persecution.

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I think the book of 1 Peter gives us some great steps to look at. And so the second topic

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I was assigned was to look at how do we get ready for persecution. So those are my topics.

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Wow, it's interesting. Pastor Jay, what do you got coming up for your topic? Oh, I think he muted himself.

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I was trying to silence the noise. I'm actually kicking off the conference, kind of setting the tone, and looking at the moral culpability of Christians who don't follow the teachings of Christ.

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We are obligated not only to preach the good news of the gospel, but also to the whole counsel of God.

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That means that we warn people about the eternality of life after death.

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You are an eternal creature, whether you like it or not, either to the eternity at the foot of the throne, where we spend all eternity with Christ, or an eternity in hellfire and damnation.

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Christians don't want to make people uncomfortable. We've somewhere along the lines got this idea that nice and kind are the exact same thing.

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And they're often opposites of one another. We're so willing to be nice, we're willing to be cruel by not speaking up.

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That's a lot of what I'm going to be looking at. Yeah.

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Isn't the 11th commandment, thou shalt be nice? Well, you would think so in Western Christianity, yeah.

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Yeah, the Amplified Bible adds something about the tone of your voice or something, I can't remember. The Amplified, yeah.

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Well, you know the problem is we are immersed in the Western Christian Church with materialism, and we love our things.

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It's made our life very comfortable. We love our boats and our cars and going to the lake and our deck and grilling out and our smoker and all those things.

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And what happens when you become comfortable with materialism is then you have to then stop preaching the gospel and change the gospel to, well, if I'm just nice to people, then

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I'm fulfilling the Great Commission, and I can still keep all my things. And that's what I see in the Western Christian Church, is materialism has really made us into a feckless kind of sissy kind of Christianity of, well, let's not offend, let's be nice, because we don't want to be persecuted or underprivileged like we are now as Christians.

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I would say we had a place of privilege maybe 50 or 60 years ago, and that's coming slowly, lower and lower, until we will come to a place of persecution like in Yemen or China or anywhere else where Christians are persecuted around the world physically.

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But that's kind of how I've seen. I've got to hold on to my stuff. My stuff is my God, and I can't lose that in the

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Western Church. And so I think your topic, Pastor Jay, is going to be very, very interesting.

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I'm looking forward to it. I know we are seeing a church in America that is withering on the vine because it's cut itself off from its power source.

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If the Christians in America actually acted like Christians, America would not look like America.

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We would be a totally different political, social, moral, material realm than we are today.

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Yeah. Go ahead. Because, you know, look, there are so many

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Christians, and maybe even some listening to this podcast, who just love to see a more

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Christian -like nation, a nation that is more moral and more based on biblical beliefs, and yet they won't attend a conference like this because, well, they may feel uncomfortable, or they might, you know, they want to put their weight in a guy like Donald Trump, like he's going to save them and save America, instead of looking to the one that actually has the power and authority to do that and his word that we should be getting our information from.

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Yeah. No, that's good. Dan, it looked like you wanted to say something there when Jay was talking. Can you give us what you're going to be talking about, or comment on what

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Jay said, if you wanted to? Yeah, I don't remember what I was going to say to Jay's comments. Probably something snarky, but the time has passed, so...

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So tell us what you're going to be talking about, Dan. Oh, well, I'm going to be...

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I think the biggest one is probably going to be the talk on abortion that I'm still putting together.

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Yeah, is right. I made the mistake of saying, hey, look, you're only going to you're flying me down from Washington, and you're only going to have me speak once?

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Like, well, don't you want to get your money's worth out of me? He says, okay, how about doing a talk on abortion? I'm like, uh...

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So it's totally out of my wheelhouse, and honestly, it's been a gut -wrenching experience trying to wade through all the information and just being reminded what abortion really is and the horrors of it all.

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So yeah, it's not been fun. Every time I get done working on the presentation, I just kind of walk around like a zombie for a while around the house.

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My wife's like, you've been working on your presentation again, haven't you? And I go, uh -huh. But the really interesting thing is that when

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I was asked to do this presentation, or before I was asked to do this presentation, and then several weeks later, my first -born son applied for and was accepted as an intern with Tiny Heartbeat Ministries.

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So that's interesting in God's timing there. So I've been able to tap my son's ever -increasing knowledge base that he's been getting through his internship, and I actually spent an hour and a half on the phone with Tiny Heartbeat Ministries president and getting some tips and pointers from him.

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So yeah, I'm looking forward to getting this one over because it's not going to be a fun one to give.

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But I'm really hoping that it will wake people up and get people motivated to actually do something instead of just saying, you know, c 'est la vie, right?

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My son just did a little gathering at our house just the other day while he was making a short visit from college.

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And he had a lot of his supporters came to our house when we were sitting here, and he gave a presentation.

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And he turned, one guy said, you've just turned me from a, I've always been kind of so -so on, you know, whatever, middle of the road on abortion.

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He says, you've just turned me into a single -issue voter. So praise God. I hope to, you know, hope that God uses me to have much the same effect down in Arizona.

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So that's the first presentation. And the second one is one of my own that I developed a few months ago.

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It's called Apologetics Is Not What You Think. Because I, you know, like I said in the intro,

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I got involved in politics, in apologetics, rather, back in, like, 2003. And every single person

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I ever read or heard speaking at the many conferences that I went to always had the same general same general approach to apologetics.

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You prove that God exists and then prove the truth of his word. And then I just kind of bit into that and just followed it because that's what all the giants on whose shoulders

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I was trying to stand were doing before me. But I never stopped to ask, you know, is that the biblical way to do it?

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And so when the Corona -pocalypse befell us and my entire speaking schedule fell apart and God put me on a wait program,

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W -A -I -T. And I discovered a guy by the name of Saiten Bruggenkate with whom

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I had a long conversation. He and I went back and forth for about three hours in private messages on Twitter.

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And then the next day, we did a couple more hours and then had a Zoom call. And he really challenged me with the way that I was thinking about apologetics and caused me to see that there's a better way to do apologetics.

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And so without giving away too much, apologetics I think by and large is done in an unbiblical way.

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It is possible to get good results and dishonor God in the process. And I go through that in my presentation.

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And my hope there is to get people to realize that just because you have a bunch of guys with more degrees than Fahrenheit and they sound impressive and they speak everywhere you go on YouTube.

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Their videos are popping up. Just because they're popular doesn't mean they're necessarily doing it

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God's way. And so I hope to demonstrate that and to help people understand that you don't need a degree in apologetics.

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You don't need a seminary degree. Peter, James, and John were untrained fishermen and God used them to turn the world upside down.

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So I hope to disabuse people of the notion that they need to have specialized degrees or apologetics is for those other guys.

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For the apologists. It's one of the reasons I hate the title Apologist is because it makes a distinction between one ordinary

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Joe and another ordinary Joe just by slapping a fancy title on him. And you think, oh, I'm going to abrogate all my responsibility to this guy over here because he's the professional.

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It's not the biblical approach to it. I mean, that's what I do. Someone asked me a question, I just sent him to Andrew. I said, he's got a podcast called

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Apologetics Live. Why not, right? No, on your abortion talk too where you said it might be uncomfortable though,

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I've noticed sometimes the uncomfortable talks are the ones we actually need as the body of Christ. We need to feel a little uncomfortable in those chairs and pews sometimes.

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The reason I accepted it was because the last time I was asked to step out of my wheelhouse way out of my comfort zone, it was for a homeschooling conference.

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They wanted me to do the father -son breakfast and the guy gave me a title. He says, I want you to do a topic or a talk called

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Winning at Fatherhood. And I just kind of looked at him and I'm like, I'm not James Dobson.

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You got the wrong guy. I still got four kids at home. I'm not sure most days if I'm winning at fatherhood or if I'm losing at fatherhood.

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He's like, ah, you'll be fine. Go for it. And it wound up being a huge blessing for me after much stressing out and weeping and wailing and gnashing of teeth.

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It was a tremendous experience and I learned a lot from that presentation. So there you go.

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I love it. So, Pastor Dominic, what are you talking about at this conference?

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Give us a little preview, a little sneak peek so we can get excited about it. You see,

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I knew how to mute my mic. See that? I just figured it out, Andrew. I'm getting smart with this stuff. Yeah.

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You know, for me, Satan sometimes likes to supplement the good for the best.

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And I want to look at Hosea, probably some spiritual adultery and see how sometimes there's things in people's lives that we can put before the

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Lord. Sometimes our children, our spouses and things like that. So I want to look at spiritual adultery but not in the fact that you may be worshipping an idol, but just the little things in life that sometimes come before our

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Christianity. I think that's challenging when you people may put their marriage before the

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Lord or children or grandchildren and things of that nature. I'm going to start in Hosea and I think

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I might end with the parable in the Wheats and the Tares because in that parable, there's a distinction between the wheat and the darnel.

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It looks just like wheat and they grow together and you can't tell the difference until the end.

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It's a cultural thing that we kind of don't get here in our society but in fact they say, should we cut it down?

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No, let them grow together and then at the end there'll be a separation. I think we want to be careful as Christians in what we worship.

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Sometimes we think that these things are good, but sometimes we put them before the Lord. I want to look at spiritual adultery and how that plays out.

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You might not have a little Buddha in your bedroom, but that little three -year -old might be your

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God. I know that's tough stuff, but that's just the way we're wired in America anyway.

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That's about it. Yeah, that's really interesting. I like what you said up top. Did you say supplanting best for good, right?

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I think the enemy supplants the good for the best. The best meaning Christ and the good meaning all those little

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No, absolutely, because we've talked about that a lot on this podcast where the

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Christian church, we've really, instead of desiring discernment, we desire knowledge and we think that is discernment.

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We go, well, we know a lot of facts. We know a lot of things, but like Spurgeon famously said too, discernment isn't knowing right from wrong.

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It's knowing right from almost right. I think Satan is really good at getting in that wedge of right and almost right and then also best and good.

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Let's not forget it was the tree of good and evil. There's a lot of good things that aren't godly. Go ahead.

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Calvin said our minds are idol makers. They're factories of idol makers.

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We are professional idol makers. Me first,

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Andrew second. That's the depraved man, right?

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Aaron Brewster, my man, my friend. Yes, sir. What are we talking about at the conference?

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Well, I was actually looking at the agenda and I think it's great just in God's providence that Dominic's message is going to be following mine, my first one, because originally we were calling it true worship, but I think,

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Andrew, I'm not sure if all the flowers have been printed or whatever else by now. It's too late, but I want to call it your responsibility in your worship.

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And obviously the topic here has to do with true worship and what Dominic is going to talk about.

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I think he's going to really be able to just take the springboard from where I go and dig into that even deeper because we're going to look at this idea of what is worship.

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We're going to understand the fact that worship is not just the song service that comes right before the preaching.

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Worship is not just praying. Worship is not just reading the Bible. All of those things are part of worship, but there are so many more things.

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When we see worship the way that God sees worship, the way he communicates it in the Bible, it really is going to hopefully just kind of grab us by the neck and demand that we sit down and really look at our worship from a new lens.

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So that's the first message. It's going to be your responsibility in your worship. But the second message is one that for me, both of these truths have just wrecked me over the coals so many times, but the second one really

31:45

I think it's easy for me to use terms like revolutionize my life.

31:50

We talk that way. Just revolutionize my life, but this did send me on a completely different trajectory in how

31:56

I looked at my responsibility to God, my responsibility to my friends in this life.

32:02

Because the second message is your responsibility in our worship. And in America, we talked about that materialistic bent that we have that kind of makes us just want to be nice.

32:15

And I was thinking about how during the lockdowns, even people who didn't believe that they needed to get vaccinated and didn't believe you needed to wear a mask and didn't believe you needed to stand six feet apart, those people were willing to do some of those things simply because they wanted to avoid the difficulties that would come if they didn't.

32:39

And so it's easy for us to be islands unto ourselves. And over here in our little neck of the woods and say, well,

32:46

I'm doing it the right way for me. If everyone else is just going to make the decisions they're going to make, and that's on them we say.

32:53

They're going to go to hell in a handbasket, that's on them. But the scriptures don't allow that. They absolutely don't allow that.

33:00

You have a responsibility in my worship. I have a responsibility in your worship.

33:06

And if we are not understanding what that is, we're not taking it seriously, we're failing. And I'm going to kind of jump off of just an

33:15

Old Testament illustration and dig into the New Testament commands for the church today.

33:21

But there's, you know, when you look at the Old Testament kings of Israel and Judah, they were all judged by how they interacted with these things called high places.

33:31

And I'll just tell you, the ones who worshipped God, God was pleased with them.

33:38

But He still judged them about how they interacted with the people's worship.

33:44

Whether or not they stepped into the nation's worship and stood up and said, no,

33:51

I'm not going to allow this. You're not going to do this. You're going to worship God like I'm worshiping God. So that's the bend,

33:59

I should say, the trajectory of my two messages. Your responsibility in your worship and your responsibility in our worship.

34:06

Wow, I think that's going to be very interesting because I think there's a lot of Christianese out there, and especially if you grow up in the church, you just say little phrases and then they get locked in your head and you don't grasp the meaning of them.

34:18

And one of them for me was oh, you worship in spirit and truth, in spirit and truth, right? We've all heard that. And then when you really start thinking about it and you go, well, what is in spirit and what is truth?

34:28

In spirit I would say the first thing I think of is the fruits of the spirit. And then truth is

34:33

God. The character of God is truth. And you start to really think about those words and you go, oh, there's a lot of I don't want to say requirements, but there's a lot of prerequisites to how we worship, what is right worship, what is true worship, and I think it sounds like you're going to be exploring some of those things in that talk, which

34:53

I think is much needed for the Christian church in the United States. Yeah, it's just too easy for us to compartmentalize our lives.

35:03

And we know this. Every person listening to your podcast knows that we have a tendency to compartmentalize.

35:09

But how many of us are actively fighting that compartmentalization? We know that when we're in church, we're there and we're singing the

35:15

God's honor and glory and we're praying and we're listening to the message and maybe we're even taking notes and we're talking about it with our kids on the way home, but then something magical, mystical happens on Monday and it stops.

35:28

And we're not thinking about God with the same intentionality. We're not talking about Him with the same gusto until maybe, you know,

35:36

Wednesday night if we have that midweek service or something like that until the following Sunday, because we have compartmentalized it and we didn't realize it.

35:44

And we're not worshiping Him in spirit and in truth at work and at home the way we do on Sunday.

35:51

Yeah, that's good. Okay, guys, as we kind of put bookends on this too, maybe, Pastor Jay, you could answer this, or Andrew, if you wanted to jump in.

36:00

Who's our target audience for this conference? Is it just anyone? Any believer, non -believer, or is it someone you're specifically looking for?

36:11

Who would benefit the most? I think in different ways, both the believer and the non -believer.

36:17

To the believer, it's a wake -up call. Christians should be, as one of my elders has said, men with dirty hands and sore backs.

36:27

It's time to get to work. You aren't saved for salvation's sake. You're saved for purpose.

36:33

Everybody loves Ephesians 2, 8, and 9, but then they get to 2, 10, and they go, wait a minute, you mean

36:40

I'm saved for good works prepared before time began? Yes. There is purpose to your salvation, not simply so you can stand up and say, look at me, how much holier

36:50

I am than thou. That's self -righteousness, and Jesus condemns that. He doesn't justify it.

36:57

For the non -believer, there is so much cultural Christianity that has gotten out there.

37:03

They have no idea what a Christian actually is, or is supposed to be, or what they're supposed to look like.

37:10

We welcome them to this conference so they can begin to understand exactly what we're supposed to be, what we're supposed to be doing, and what we're supposed to be transforming the world with.

37:22

There may be another person that fits in both categories, the person who thinks he's saved, but isn't, and that's what

37:29

John Sampson is going to be talking about. He's going to be talking about a gospel hope to the nations, and dealing with folks who are really what we'd consider false converts.

37:41

That becomes an issue that is needed, because a lot of people think that they are saved when they're not.

37:54

I think that if you don't know who John Sampson is, John Sampson was very active, very high up in the

38:01

Word of Faith movement, and came out. And so that'll be a good topic.

38:09

And I should mention, since we're talking, Kevin Hay's topic is right before my last one on persecution.

38:17

He's going to do a topic on living faithfully in Babylon. You look at Daniel's friends and how they were able to be faithful to God, living through the time and period in Babylon, when

38:29

God's judgment was upon them. Those are some other talks that we had.

38:39

Doesn't it just drive you guys up a wall a little bit, that we have to have a conference like this, that we've sat in under so much bad preaching, and we've allowed social justice to take hold, and secularism, and paganism, and everything.

38:54

We have to have a conference that says, this is what a Christian should be. And it upsets me that we've diluted the word

39:02

Christian so much. You know, Ligonier does a national poll every year. 65 % of the 10 ,000 people that they questioned said they didn't even believe that Jesus was divine.

39:15

A basic orthodox belief, and we've got 65 % of people calling themselves Christians, not even understanding the doctrine of Christ.

39:24

So, it always, you know, this is much needed. I'm agreeing with you, and I think everyone listening, who can make it to Arizona on those dates, should buy a ticket and go there, but at the same time it's like, man, we have to have a conference like this to turn the ship.

39:40

I feel like we shouldn't have to be doing this, but it seems like in the

39:45

Western Church, this is what's needed. What are you guys' thoughts on that? You know why?

39:51

The first thing that comes to mind when you say that is a quote from my late pastor, Ken Hutcherson, who was fond of saying where there's mist in the pulpit, there's fog in the pews.

40:02

Oh, wow, that's good. Our seminaries have been overrun by theological liberals who don't know their left hand from their right, in terms of what the

40:10

Bible actually says, and what God's Word says. And then they get into the pulpits, and they teach what they've been taught, and what tickles people's ears.

40:20

And this shouldn't come as any surprise to us, right? The Scripture talks about the great apostasy that's coming.

40:27

There's going to be a falling away, and I think we're starting to see that, if not fully in the midst of that, we're seeing the very beginnings of that.

40:36

So, it's sad, but it's not at all surprising, because Christ warned us about this. It's sort of like what

40:45

Pastor Jay said earlier, the purpose of this conference. It's really to give those of us Christians a good kick in the pants when we need it, to go and do what we should be doing, because the reality is that we need it.

40:57

None of us like it. We don't want to have that kick in the pants, but we need it to get out there and do what we should be doing.

41:04

So many Christians, it's easy for them to complain about the politics of the country, rather than doing what

41:10

God called us to do. I was thinking what Jay was saying, too.

41:15

And I say this, and I'm careful when I say this, but I think, you know, this is not Paul's day or Moses' day.

41:21

This is our day, and we're going to be responsible for how we present the gospel, and how it's presented, and so I don't know if pastors really, or apologists,

41:35

I don't know if we feel the weight that some of the

41:41

Old Testament prophets did in like Moses and Paul, and feel the weight of the importance of what we do, and we're going to be responsible if we soft -stroke this gospel, or we don't dot every i and cross every t, it's going to be a huge responsibility on our part, so you know, if people get mad at us, what can they do?

42:03

If they put us in prison, I'll take care of you guys. I know what it's like to be there, but I think that we need to be bold in the preaching of the gospel, so.

42:16

And I agree with absolutely everything you guys said. I think it is sad in many ways that some of the things that should be intuitive to God's people has to be said out loud, and have like a whole conference for it.

42:29

At the same time, I do see that there's another really valuable reason to have conferences like this.

42:35

The reality is that we need more time in God's word.

42:42

We need more time fellowshipping with the brethren. We need more time being challenged from the pulpit.

42:50

And yes, obviously, you know, we need to be getting together with our local bodies of believers on Sunday, and fellowshipping, and one anothering, and being preached to in that way.

43:00

But with all the churches that are doing fewer and fewer services, and so on and so forth, we need to take these opportunities where we get away, and we invest for a weekend in being built up so that we can go back into the battle, and we can fight hard.

43:14

So I think, yes, we need to speak this truth. People need to hear it.

43:19

People aren't hearing it, and they need it. But those of us who are hearing it, sometimes the ones that we're tempted to not go to conferences like this because our church is preaching this, we do know these things, we still need to go to, because it's going to be good for us to be around God's people, and to be refreshed this way.

43:35

I love it. So yeah, Christian responsibility in an unchristian world. August 8th through 10th in Vail, Arizona is what we're talking about guys.

43:43

Let's go around one more time as we finish this up. This is what I wanted to do. I know if I get a group of pastors or apologists, or podcasters, or anyone who does any type of preaching or teaching, they've always got something that's just kind of bubbling underneath.

43:59

It's in their heart, it's in their mind, and they're rolling it around. Maybe it's for two weeks, maybe it's for two years.

44:05

So what I wanted to do, it can pertain to the two parts. It can pertain to the conference or not, but I wanted to go around and give you guys each for the listeners, give them what's been on your heart, what's been on your mind, maybe a biblical truth.

44:21

And then also, outside of God saving you, I want you to tell the listeners one of the greatest things that the

44:28

Lord has ever done for you, in a way that he's either blessed you, or saved you from something. Outside of your salvation, we all know that we were depraved, we hated

44:37

God, we were His enemy, and He saved us. So outside of that, give us something that's been on your heart lately, and then also give us one of the coolest blessings, or just greatest things that the

44:46

Lord has given you in your life. Andrew, let's start with you. Sure, thanks.

44:52

I think as far as the thing that the Lord's really worked on me in recent years, is just really the fact that we are coming under Christian persecution, that we're living in a culture that is getting worse and worse with this, and we need to recognize it.

45:11

We need to recognize that we are living in a culture that is hating

45:20

Christ. And if we're not prepared for that, if we're not ready for that, we're really going to struggle.

45:28

We're really going to have issue. And that has been a thing I've been saying for a long time, and I think where the church has really been weak is in two areas.

45:38

I mean, a lot of areas, but two major ones is, one, teaching people how to interpret the

45:43

Bible. And I think a lot of reasons pastors don't do it is because if people in the pews know how to understand the

45:49

Bible, they may challenge the pastor, or they may not need to come to the pastor for counseling. They might be able to just go to the

45:54

Word of God and understand what God says without having to come to the pastor. And so, there's different reasons

46:00

I think that pastors don't teach how to interpret the Bible. I think it's a real problem because this is a basic skill that every

46:08

Christian should have mastered, and they should be getting that training within their church.

46:14

The other thing I think that the church is really lacking in is part of it because, as was mentioned earlier, they just want to get along.

46:23

They don't want to deal with the world attacking them, so they just want to get along with it, which allows the social justice and things like this to run rampant and just allow

46:33

Christians to be pushovers when it comes to the issues. That's a real problem.

46:39

But I think that the issue that many churches do struggle with outside of the hermeneutics is trying to get along with the world.

46:49

And this conference is going to be completely opposite that. It's going to be the reality to say, we need to stand up.

46:55

If people want to sit there and complain about, well, our country isn't doing so, well, the politics, well, what's going to happen when

47:01

Biden steals another election or whatever? The reality is

47:08

Christians have what it takes to make that change. It's called the Word of God. Power of the gospel.

47:15

Go out there and evangelize and disciple people so people would live as Christians in the world.

47:22

I've got news for you. Politicians will fake it just to get votes. If you don't believe that, just look at anywhere throughout history.

47:32

I've got to be careful. Greg is a politician. I'm a public servant, not a politician.

47:43

The reality, though, is I think the thing that God has helped me in recent years, and I was expecting you to say, what's the best book outside the

47:52

Bible? Because that's one of your go -to questions, so I'm going to answer that just so we can have it. Stephen Charnock's book on the attributes and nature of God is probably the best book to read outside the

48:02

Bible. But really what has helped me a lot in recent days has been,

48:10

I've been going through a lot with people that have been slandering me and things like that. Really what the

48:17

Lord has placed upon me is the realization that I honestly, rightly deserve eternity in a lake of fire.

48:28

If the worst thing that I have to deal with in life is going to be people slandering me and saying falsehoods about me,

48:36

I deserve so much more than that. When I look at the way life doesn't go the way

48:43

I want or people are saying bad things about me, I deserve worse than that.

48:49

So if that's the worst that I have to deal with, praise God. That's nothing.

48:56

And so it gives me more motivation to just love my Lord and Savior and to praise

49:01

Him for sparing me from eternity in a lake of fire. That's good stuff.

49:08

Aaron, how about you? What's one thing that's been kind of ruminating in your mind and your heart and then also one awesome thing that you just look back on in your life and you go, thank

49:18

God for that. Well, I have been working on a project for coming up on four decades and just last year

49:29

I kind of saw the culmination of that project, the final results, the fruits of that labor and it's been really exciting.

49:39

I've been on a couple podcasts recently and I just started on the Truth Love Parent podcast to talk about an educational model that I created that is called

49:47

Expectational Education. And I'm mentioning this now because it might seem like it's very disconnected from this topic, but it's not.

49:54

Because God, He created us to learn, He commands us to learn, and He capacitates us to learn.

50:00

And we are all disciples. We are all students. And Expectational Education has application far beyond just a school room.

50:08

Yes, it's for homeschooling parents. Yes, it's for Christian schools. But it's also for the church. And we need to understand how

50:16

God has created us to learn. So that's been something that I've been working on for a long time and again,

50:21

I'm right now starting a series talking about it on my podcast. But that ties into my blessing as well because I've always said that the greatest blessing that God can give a person is a relationship with Him, new life in Christ.

50:35

The second most important decision, the second greatest thing a person can ever have is a godly spouse.

50:41

And I praise God for my wife. And then beyond that is the family He gives us. My kids have been the guinea pigs,

50:49

I mean the willing participants in my Expectational Education philosophy and model.

50:57

And they really have done such a great job. They've proven that God's plan for our learning works every time.

51:08

My son and my daughter both graduated from high school last spring and they're both almost, they're six credits away from being sophomores in college.

51:19

And when my kids graduated, my son was 16 and my daughter was 13. And they have been fantastic students.

51:27

They have accomplished some really amazing things, not because they're geniuses and they're different than everyone else's kids, but because by God's grace the

51:35

Lord started teaching me some really important truths a long time ago about what He expects from us in our learning and in our discipleship.

51:43

And I've just tried to be faithful in teaching that to my kids. I praise the Lord that He has saved them and helped them to really grow into the expectations of God's Word.

51:55

Yeah, that's awesome. Dan, how about you? I'm just over here scribbling things down as they're coming to mind.

52:03

I think the thing that's been weighing on my heart for the past several months, probably more than anything else, is the labels that we in the body of Christ tend to throw around to describe our respective theologies.

52:19

And we create us versus them camps, rather than focusing on our relationship with Christ and on who we are in light of who

52:27

Christ is and what He has done for us. I especially see this, since a lot of my ministry is done online,

52:36

I see this all the time. You see it in social media where if you're not from my camp, then you're an idiot.

52:46

And it really grieves me to see that because I don't think we would treat each other this way if we were face -to -face, especially when you realize that I'm seven feet tall and I can squash you.

53:01

You know, it helps, I'm sure. But yeah, it's been really weighing on me.

53:09

Especially when I consider that since 1997, when

53:15

God brought me out of a period of rebellion, He has used several different men who come from different theological camps that I come from, that I find myself tenting in.

53:31

He has used everything from charismatics to hardcore reform guys to guys in Calvary Chapel to challenge me and to help me grow.

53:43

He even used a guy with tattoos. It was crazy. I mean a full -on arm sleeve.

53:52

That's kind of amateur hour what you got going on there compared to what this guy had. But yeah,

53:58

I look at, sure, I have some theological differences with them, but they're my brothers in Christ.

54:04

And I think we oftentimes forget that because we're too busy throwing labels around. And when you talk about some of the coolest blessings,

54:12

I think probably the biggest blessing aside from my family, which has already been used, and kids who walk with the

54:19

Lord, is looking back at the times when God has given me course corrections.

54:25

He's done this two major times in my teaching career where I co -wrote a

54:34

Sunday school curriculum, taught it for seven years, and then at the end of that seven years, God's like, okay, throw it in the trash.

54:41

It's useless. And I had to start from scratch. And then again, when I ran into Sai, Ted, Birkencate online, and I had to trash an entire presentation and basically a whole way of thinking that I had spent two decades developing.

55:00

And just to look back at that and think, I think of James, it says not many of you should presume to be teachers, my brothers, because you know that those of us who teach are going to be judged more strictly.

55:12

And then when I look back and I think of the times when God has given me, He's let me teach with incomplete knowledge and with teaching the truth, but in a misapplied form, oftentimes.

55:26

The fact that He didn't squash me and just say, okay, you're done. I'm taking you out.

55:33

You'll never teach again because you're just an idiot. He hasn't done that. And He's allowed me to live and to grow.

55:43

And it just makes me stand in awe of His grace and His mercy towards me.

55:50

Honestly, it brings me nigh unto tears to think about it because I was taught my dad was a jet engine mechanic in Vietnam and a diesel engine mechanic after that.

56:02

And whenever he worked on an engine, somebody's life was on the line. So when I was coming up,

56:08

I was taught you either do it right the first time or you don't do it at all. So I grew up with that mentality.

56:15

And I'm thankful that our God does not have that same mentality with us because I would have been gone a long time ago.

56:23

Amen. Yeah, amen. All right, Pastor Jay, this is your conference.

56:28

We're going to finish with you. Give us something that's been ruminating in your heart and your spirit and then one of the greatest blessings the

56:35

Lord has given you in your life. Well, I've been at Vail Valley now for three years.

56:42

This is my first job ever as a senior pastor.

56:49

Before, I spent a decade as a volunteer pastor in prisons, homeless shelters, detox facilities.

56:57

I always gravitated toward what I called the fringe. I was a fringe evangelist, going out, preaching the gospel to the people who needed it the most and nobody else was willing to talk to.

57:09

And Matthew 28, the Great Commission, has always kind of been held near and dear to my heart.

57:17

But that last line, I am with you always, even to the end of the age, has struck especially true.

57:26

When I came to Vail Valley, it was pure providence. I had no intention of being a pastor. I was happy at the prisons.

57:33

I come to this church that has hemorrhaged people from COVID, that is wildly in debt. Don't know if the doors are staying open.

57:41

And all we can do is just day by day, preach the gospel and be wholly and totally dependent on God to get us through one more week.

57:54

With every problem that's come up, with every need, he has shown himself so faithful to his church and to his bride, even the most insignificant among us.

58:08

That's really what's been on my heart for the last three years. It's a gift of God because it wasn't one that was before.

58:16

Life was on cruise control. I intellectually acknowledged my dependence on Christ and then went about my day.

58:25

Now, every day, it's going out and gathering manna and knowing that if he chooses to withhold it, there's no more for the day after.

58:35

And being okay with that. It's been an amazing transformation in my spiritual life.

58:42

Amen. Well, I said we were going to end with you, but Dom was out for a minute. Now he's back. Dom, let's end with you.

58:47

Give us one thing that you've kind of been meditating on, ruminating in your heart and spirit, and then give us one of the greatest blessings the

58:53

Lord has ever given you. Yeah, you know, just quickly, one thing that we've come to do,

59:01

I think it was something that apologist Dan said, but I think it was something he doesn't like that.

59:07

I'm teasing. I'm just I think it was something that Dan said, and Andrew's going to experience this when he comes down.

59:16

We're going to have him over my house for a few days. Once a month here in the church, we get together with like -minded churches and we just pray.

59:25

I mean, we don't pray for my cousin Pete. We pray that God is sovereign over the world.

59:34

We pray for people's salvation and then we give thanks and we spend a couple hours and we pray sometimes.

59:40

I think the first one we had, we had almost 30 people here and we just pray as a people of God and treating that the

59:48

Word of God will move forth and Andrew's going to be able to experience that and probably invite all them to the, because he's going to preach

59:57

Sunday night at the church here in Desert Sky, so you can invite everybody there

01:00:02

Andrew, so on Saturday when the Saturday you're here. So I think that's something that you know,

01:00:09

I mean, I think it's you know, they're like -minded churches. We may not agree on every nook and cranny, but on maybe some secondary and tertiary issues, but you know, praise

01:00:20

God for us coming together as a people of God and praying, just God being sovereign and praying for people's salvation and thanking

01:00:29

Him for every breath that He gives us. The other quick thing is that I had a sinus infection one day and I went to the doctor that did an

01:00:39

MRI on me and they found a brain aneurysm and by God's grace, they were able to open up my head, go and clip that aneurysm because there's no, you know, there's no symptoms to that and I didn't know who my wife was for two weeks, probably the best two weeks of her life.

01:01:00

Wasn't able to talk for a couple of weeks and they thought

01:01:07

I'd never speak again. They thought I'd never, so here I am.

01:01:12

You can't keep quiet, but anyway, that's just that's it. Praise God.

01:01:18

Well, guys, thank you so much for coming on sharing some thoughts with us. Christian Responsibility in an

01:01:24

Un -Christian World, August 8 -10, Vail, Arizona. Link below to get tickets. I'm assuming we still have a few tickets left for people to get if they want to travel out there?

01:01:34

That we do. That you do. Well, we'll link that all up, guys. Gentlemen, Jay Miller, Andrew Rappaport, Dominic Dramaldi, Dan Craft and Aaron Brewster, thank you so much for being here.

01:01:48

Thanks for having us. Thanks for having us. You bet. Guys, thanks for listening to another episode of Dead Men Walking Podcast.

01:01:55

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