Questions and Answers with Andrew Rappaport 2

Well, welcome to the

Striving for Eternity Academy. We are glad to have you with us. This is going to be a little bit of a different class than we usually have.

We have been going, so far, we've been going through our class of world religions and we've been doing, well that's been our school and our class that we've been doing is an introduction to the major western religions.

We would have been doing Islam. We're not going to do that tonight because we're going to do questions and answers.

We just came back from NorCal Fire and that is an event we put on, an evangelism outreach and conference that we put together.

Had a great time there, but we have a Q &A at the end of those and sometimes, like this time, we don't get to answering all of the questions.

These are the ones that were not answered, so we're going to try to do that here today. We're going to try to get to as many questions as we can.

I will also encourage you, if you regularly watch the Striving for Eternity Academy and you watch live,

I encourage you to go to the Striving for Eternity Ministries Facebook page, not the group but the page, and help us out.

You know, we started doing the classes on Catholicism. We started on Judaism and then did the ones on Catholicism and then we had three classes on Catholicism with thousands of comments and hundreds of commenters and we have not been able to keep up with all of the comments.

We have tons of Roman Catholics that are engaging on those videos, those classes that we did.

Interesting thing, if you read those, you'll see I've been asking the same question over and over. They keep telling me I'm wrong, that I'm attacking the church,

I'm so mean, and I keep asking, can you name one thing that I stated that's inaccurate?

What did I say that's not true Roman Catholic teaching? I haven't gotten that one thing yet.

I'm still waiting. So if you're out there listening Roman Catholics, if you're going to say I'm wrong, if you're going to say that I'm attacking the church, at least provide the evidence.

Here's why I'm also asking you for some help here. Next class, we're going to start on Islam and so I'm sure that's really going to,

I didn't expect the response we got from Roman Catholicism. I expect a response from Islam.

So if you've ever wanted an opportunity to witness to Muslims and put the classes to work, put it to the test, this is going to be the time is now, it will be next class.

So that being said, let's get to some of the questions. I did go through these questions and at least categorized them so we could try to get some of them together.

I'm going to start with this one because it goes well with what we just were studying on Catholicism. So the question was, what is the difference between Christianity and Catholicism?

This was a question actually that I just heard recently, Matt Slick was asked on his radio program. Oh yeah,

I should, hey, you like the new shirt, the new polo that they gave me? Wrathandgrace .com

is who produces it, I think it's wrathandgrace .com. Johan makes these for us, it's a nice polo shirt, embroidered, does a great job.

He makes t -shirts and what not. So I encourage you to go out to them. But Matt Slick was asked this question, what is the difference between Christianity and Catholicism as if aren't they the same thing?

I dealt with this a little bit in the class that we did and the fact that they're not the same. Catholicism doesn't say they're the same, why?

For much of 2000 years,

Roman Catholicism has been killing Christians. They've been killing people who believe, well, like I believe, most of you believe.

And so they said in the Council of Trent and the Vatican Council that people who believe like you and I, those that believe in the

Bible alone, those who believe in justification by faith alone are anathema, are cursed.

Throughout the centuries, they had been killing Christians. So we make this distinction between Roman Catholicism and Christianity and Christianity didn't start with Protestants in the 1500s.

There have always been people who have disagreed with the Roman Catholic Church that the Roman Catholic Church killed off.

When they own the empire, when it's the emperor, you get in a situation where those that believe in the

Bible alone didn't have much opportunity to publish. Remember, this is before times when publishing was as easy as it is today.

It was a time when it was very costly. And so we do have works that some people wrote and they gave their life for that.

And so, that's a good point. Thank you. That's from the chat room.

Someone in the chat room said about Roman Catholics, they believe that we're heretics and that's the point.

We believe they're not saved by their doctrine and if they're true to their doctrine, would believe that we cannot be in heaven and redeemed by our doctrine.

So they would say that we're heretics and we'd say the same about them.

And the difference is they want to be able to say, hey, we're Christians just like you.

I've noticed the Mormons are doing this and Jehovah's Witnesses are doing this. They want to be Christians just like us, yet their foundation of their religion is to say that we had problems, that we fell away, that we needed to be restored or that we're an error and you want to be like us?

I mean, if we're an error, why would you want to be like us? Oh, it was TN Hills. Okay, TN Hills was the one that made that comment.

And why do I bring that out? She's been one of the people that have been engaging with the Roman Catholics.

I think she even has some blogs that she has been doing. Based on that, she's been doing her own study on Roman Catholicism.

And I think I read the last one, I think it was part 4 or 5 or 6 actually. But she's got several real good, interesting articles that she's got on her blog that she's been dealing with.

And so, yeah, TN, if you're in the chat, if you could post the link to your blog and that way

I can give people that. So let's move on. Next question was actually for Justin Peters, but I think

I can answer this one because we talked about it. The question is, Justin, what do you think of the

War Room movie? I know what Justin thinks about it because, well, he wrote an article about it.

And you can go to JustinPetersMinistries, I think it's JustinPetersMinistries .com or maybe .org.

And he has, I think it's up there, is his review of War Room.

It's like a 12 -page review. But let me give you, kind of in short, what his view was.

There were some good points. He's not really a fan of the Christian movie genre.

And I understand a lot of times they're cheesy, their doctrine's not so good. The Kendrick Brothers were doing really good quality movies theologically.

And then this one, the big issue, and I agree with Justin on this one, the idea of the name it and claim it, the idea that people can just pray and God's going to give them what they want was throughout this movie supposedly.

For the record, I did not watch the movie, but I've read several reviews of people who have.

Justin read it, so I'm telling you Justin's opinion. But if this was portrayed as Justin said,

I'm totally in agreement with it. But Justin was saying that the kind of name it and claim it type of prayer is prominent.

He also had a real issue with the fact that this guy who's the main character who is just not a good guy, he's having an affair with his wife and different things like this, and they refer to him as just being backslidden.

The assumption that everyone's a believer or that there's, you know, instead of him coming to repentance.

So those are some of the issues. Justin has more that he mentioned. He had some positive things to say as well, so you can check that out.

Oh, we do? Okay. So the website for Tien's blog is ktundergrace .blogspot

.com So you could check that out. And so that would be a thing that you could do is check out hers.

So let's move on to the next question. I want to try to do these kind of rapid fire. Get as many questions as we can in the hour.

Hopefully they will be helpful for you. This is an interesting one.

And this one I think was one of the ones that was in the category of, you know, there's not going to be enough time to answer this one in the format that we had.

But I'm going to read the question exactly as it is, and then I'm going to give you what

I think the person was asking. But what do we do when we are attacked by a

Christian, quote, Christian, while sharing? Okay.

So I think what the question being there is you're out on the street sharing the Gospel. That's what

I assume is the topic. And it could be two different things. It could be sharing the Gospel. One person when

I was asking, talking this question over with, I thought it could be just sharing

God's Word. And there's plenty of people who get attacked, you know, like we do here, for sharing the truth of God's Word.

And so with that, I'm going to assume that it's dealing with the issue of sharing the

Gospel. And we deal with this a lot. How do you deal with, and the reason this was one of those questions

I said that they thought were too much to answer is initially interpreted as being attacked by other

Christians just for sharing your views or your theology. But, so when we are out on the street a lot of times, especially if you're down in the

South, everyone professes that they're a Christian, and yet their lifestyle. I remember being down in Fawford, Greenville, in Greenville, South Carolina, and we had this guy who was getting really, really rude.

Just really being rude to the preacher who was preaching. And there was some guy in the crowd, two beers in his hand, he was drunk, and he was ready to get into a fist fight with a heckler.

And his argument was, well, I'm a Christian, I didn't like what he was saying about that, you know, about my brother up there. And I'm like, yeah,

I'm thinking you're not a Christian like he's a Christian. Just saying, you know. A little bit of a difference in the term

Christian. And that's the thing, we understand that there's false converts out there. I actually, I think that a lot of times when people throw out the

I'm a Christian, it's a logical fallacy, it's an appeal to authority. What they're saying is, they're attacking the

Christian preacher really because they don't like what he's saying. Or they don't like the style in the way he's saying it.

Because he's just standing up and putting it out there. And unfortunately, we're living in a generation where a lot of people, quite frankly, they want to try to live a

Christian life and live like the world. They don't want to be attacked by the world. And you're seeing this moral collapse within Christianity where they're just, you know, giving up on biblical values to accept the world's values just because they want to get along and they don't want to be attacked, they want to be accepted.

Christianity will never be accepted by the world. And so, that's one point. One of the things though with me with someone like that is my heart breaks.

I mean, it's just hard to think. They're going to be one of those people that are going to stand before Christ on Judgment Day and they're going to go,

Lord, Lord, haven't we done all these things for you? And he's going to go, I never knew you'd depart from me, you who practice lawlessness. My heart breaks for people like that.

I don't get prideful and like, oh yeah, you don't know what you're talking about. So what do we do?

The question is, what do we do when we have a person like that? Here's what I do. The way that I like to handle that is

I like to ask them a question that goes like this. If I have someone saying that they're a

Christian, I don't know what they mean by Christian. I'll ask them, how did you become a Christian? I may ask them, what church do they go to?

A lot of times they'll say they're a Christian but they don't go to church. They can't find a good church. They're a

Christian but they can't explain the Gospel. Sometimes I'll ask, can you explain the Gospel? Can you tell me how to become a believer?

They'll just say, believe in Jesus. I'll say, what if I'm Jewish and I believe that Jesus is Hitler's God and I want nothing to do with him?

That's what I grew up believing. They really don't know the Gospel. A question

I like to ask to really show and explain really the issue because a lot of times they go,

I don't go to church but I have a relationship with God. I don't need religion. I have a relationship.

Okay, you have a relationship. I ask them, how many times on average a month they read the

Bible? The overwhelming average is 3 -4 times a month.

I say, okay, 3 -4 times a month. I don't ask them if they pray because many people seem to pray when they're in trouble. I ask them how many times they read their

Bible. I say, let me give you a scenario and see how good of a relationship you would have.

Suppose you got married or when you got married, your spouse, you get back from the honeymoon and your spouse says, hey, that was a great wedding.

Love the honeymoon. I'm going to go back to my place. Maybe I'll give you a call 3 -4 times a month and we could chat.

What kind of relationship do you have? I didn't even get to the point of asking what kind of relationship you have with one woman.

She goes, I'd kill him. I said, what kind of relationship would you have? She goes, none, he'd be dead.

I said, what kind of relationship do you have with Christ if you're only listening to him, hearing from him 3 -4 times a month?

Usually they go, ow. That woman who wanted to kill her husband was just like, oh.

I mean, just deflated because it makes the point if you're going to say you're a Christian and you're going to profess that but you don't read

God's word, you're not listening to him. It's a one way Christianity. You want God to accept you on your terms and you get to direct to God the terms.

So that's not Christianity. Alright, next question. Regarding open air preaching how should we go about asking slash seeking accountability, support and oversight?

Good question. I think that with that it is a thing where when we look at that, we have to be aware that we do need the accountability.

What I suggest doing is let your pastors know your leadership know what you're doing.

Maybe they'll even come out with you. We here at Striving Fraternity have a friend in the ministry

Joe Conkle and he goes out every week with his pastor to evangelize because he asked him.

Now they go out and they take their he went out and bought a prayer stand. A prayer stand is put together from a friend of the ministry here.

GoTel I forget the word. Just look up prayer stand. You'll see it's a it's basically

I don't know I really don't know how to describe it. It basically has a telescoping pole that says prayer up top.

I think if you just type prayer stand you're going to find it. Joe just wanted to go out and hand out gospel tracts and have one on one conversations and he wanted to be accountable to his church.

So what did he do? He asked his pastor. His pastor says hey can I come with you? Yeah, okay. So every week they go out and they set up their prayer stand and they go out there and do that.

Now that's the kind of accountability we all would like to have. But what if your pastor doesn't agree?

Now the question specifically was with open air preaching because well that's the one that gets a lot of grief.

You know even at NorCal Fire this week, the host church they knew of Dan Bowen who is the guy that does all the organizing for the local organizing.

He's with open air campaigners out there in the

Bay Area and you can end up looking at someone like him and you know he's just out open air preaching.

He's friends with the pastor and the pastor's wife on Facebook and they didn't have the best opinion of you know of open air preaching because why?

They've usually seen bad examples of it. We all have. And so a lot of people are not thrilled with open air preaching and they got a chance to see

Dan in action and was like wow that's really cool. Can we come out with you next week? So it's in the chat

I'm being told that in the chat is the website for the prayer stones it's gofor for the no what is that?

It's gofor thall .org go for go for thrall

I guess. But and it's prayerstations .com I thought it was sounding like that but anyway so what you have with that is

I would first suggest you talk to your pastor um oh goforthall got it goforthall .org

there we go um and so oh

Dorothy's saying that her pastor comes out with her to Texas Tech almost every Wednesday. So you see the reality is a lot of pastors they live in the

Christian bubble where everyone they're talking to are Christians and so what you could do is you could invite your pastor and maybe it gets him to get out and evangelize as well.

Sometimes some pastors want to but they're you know they can be embarrassed as well. They have just the same nervousness as we all have so that'd be the best but if your pastor and leadership doesn't agree with open air preaching you're going to have to decide whether you're not going to do it.

You can still evangelize but not through the open air if that's the way you want to do it. If they actually ask you not to do it um now you know if they're going to ask you not to open air the question is going to be are you giving out gospel tracts with their website name on it?

Maybe the thing is say well look I'm going to do this as an individual not as a member of this church um because I'm commanded to share the gospel and so this is what

I'm going to do so that's one thing you could do I encourage you just say you know bring people with you to say would you just come and pray while I evangelize.

I used to have a person I said look they didn't want to hand out tracts or anything. I said would you just come out do me a favor just come on out and what

I'd like you to do is just pray. Just hold the video camera and the only reason we have a video camera you don't see lots of videos.

No we don't put them up. The reason we have the video camera really is for our own protection just in case people say we did something said something we have proof and this person running the video camera used to get asked all the time hey what are you guys doing out here and they were in gospel conversations over and over and over and got used to evangelizing so it's just something to think about is just ask someone to come out from your church to join you to pray while you're out there just so you're not alone but I would go to your church and so I would end up looking at your church to see what's their position going to be and if they're against it what

I would say you do is work with them try to find out why they're against it invite your leadership out and see maybe their impression of open air evangelism just as different than what you're doing if you're doing it well and they've only seen bad examples then you know you want to check that out next question

I said I'm trying to keep it short how many minutes? 20 minutes into class so I still have a bunch more questions we'll try to get through all of them alright next question top three reasons why

Christianity is true and give a little details alright why is

Christianity true three reasons so reason number one Christianity is true because it comes from God now how do you support that?

well I would support that this way every world religion is going to be bucketed into one of two things you either have religion or human effort

Islam, Catholicism, Mormonism, Jehovah Witness, Hinduism, Buddhism every ism you got every single one of them is going to say that you are saved or made right with God through human effort

Christianity is the only one that says it's by divine effort by what God did how do we know it's true?

because God did the work not man man made religions put man as the one that does the work

God created religions God does the work so since Christianity is the only one in the category of God doing the work that's how

I would say it's true it's true because it comes from God now you say wait a minute how does that prove it's true?

because God cannot lie therefore if God says this is true and He cannot lie that makes it true now some people are saying wait a minute

Andrew how do you know God cannot lie? because He said so see so you have circular logic you're saying

God we can trust the Bible because God doesn't lie but you only know that God doesn't lie because of the

Bible well yes the Bible is the most authoritative source for that the other source for that is well the fact that we get knowledge of good coming from the nature of God God cannot do evil and therefore

God can't lie we don't we need the Bible to be an authoritative source and it is an authoritative source because it comes from God so that was what two reasons third reason

I guess technically you know yeah technically three reasons but another reason

I would give would be Christianity is the only religion that well let me split this in two

Christianity is the only religion that offers true hope for eternal life but that's tied to the reason

I was going to say is that in Christianity is the only religion that where you have both grace sorry justice and mercy married together okay the reality is that when you look at even

Islam where Mohammed would say that Allah is Allah most merciful okay most merciful but not just you see because in Islam you have

Allah letting criminals go because he's showing mercy that's not justice in every religion where you have

God letting criminals go based on other good works that they do he's not just I mean would you consider a judge just if he raped and murdered somebody and he says but your honor

I never stole from anybody oh well you know what I'm going to show you mercy you did good in this area

I'm going to let you go no he wouldn't be just at all because he's not on trial for stealing he's on trial for rape and murder right you and I are on trial every human being are on trial for the sins we commit against the infinitely holy

God that's the reality we can't say look I walked this old lady across the street that's nice that's not what you're being sentenced for okay in Christianity you have justice and mercy married together

God did punish every sin or will every sin will suffer the consequence of punishment but God in his mercy took that upon himself but the punishment is still meted out he just took it upon himself so he did punish and he did show mercy and only within Christianity do you see those two married up next question alright

I know I'm trying to get through them quick we still have like almost a dozen questions left so I'm going to try to get through these in an hour regarding regarding a truth claim how would you answer a person who claims that the

Bible has too many errors to be true and I'm going to tie this actually with the next question the next question was how can one succinctly express to an honest inquirer the reliability and veracity of the

Bible so I'm going to take these two together this is dealing with a topic known as textual criticism alright how do we know that the

Bible is reliable and the argument usually goes like this that we have copies of copies of copies and those copies were changed and therefore we can't really know what the original

Bible said because of all these copies that were copying that was done so because you have some things worded in some manuscripts one way it was changed in a different way that's called a variance and anytime you have that therefore the argument states that we can't know what the

Bible said okay and because of the fact that we have these variances now let's deal a couple things with these variances real quick um when we talk about variances you'll hear those liberals argue that there's over 400 ,000 variances in the

Bible the strange thing or sorry in the New Testament the strange thing about that is that there's more than there's like only 100 ,000 letters in the

New Testament so basically you have four times as many variances than letters right or words and things so when you look at this it's like clearly when you look at that how do you have that more variance four times more variances than you do the words or letters and things like that well it's because they counted like if I misspell one word you know

I spell the word cat and one time I spell it c -o -t and one time

I spell it c -u -t and so one time it says cot and one time it says cut but the word should have been cat they count that as three variances

I would say it's one variance why? because it's one word you had it changed differently which one the right one well okay let's deal with that later but it's only one so right from there you know they're exaggerating the numbers because you can't have four times the variance than the words you know so once you do that you scale that back you find out that it's really not that much now how do we know it's reliable first off the bible was not created the way they keep arguing that it was a telephone game one person tells another person tells another person tells another in other words

I wrote a copy and gave it to one person that person made a copy that next person made a copy and so on and so on it's not how it worked it would have worked that I would have made ten copies given it to ten people a copy to each and they made ten copies and they gave it to and they made ten copies the idea there being different is when you have one person spell cat as cut you end up in a situation where now the people are okay this one guy over here said cut all these other people ninety percent of the people are saying cat who do you think is wrong when you can see these families of manuscripts and you see that everyone in this area so you know everyone in you know

Ohio got cat or cut and everyone in in New York and Virginia and New Jersey and California all say cat you're gonna say someone in Ohio misspelled it that's how you would do it and so then what you end up doing is you look and you go okay let's take a look at there and see what happened so you can get back to the original when you realize that some of these manuscript variances are all in a specific geographical area so you see that it's all those copying that was done there but all these other areas because remember these copies were going all around the world and being made all over the place so when you see all these other geographic areas having it done one way in one in one area you can probably say this chances are this one's not the right one so what can you do you can get back to the original word cat okay sometimes it's just a misspelling you know instead of you know you know cat they put

CTA you know they were dyslexic or you know they you know the context you know my mom bought me a cut today a what you know now it could be cut or it could be cat but the idea being is one of them you know and I took you know

I took my cut and played with it's fur well okay now it's not a cot it's a cat right you can figure out the misspelling uh oh yeah like autocorrect on my phone yeah sometimes autocorrect does it's own little variances so what you have though is you end up realizing that we can get back to the original in fact the fact that we have 70 ,000 manuscripts we have so many manuscripts in the new testament that we can then figure out and get back to some of the original by looking at all the other manuscripts we can figure out where the changes occurred and this is one of the things first off to the reliability let me answer this one can we successfully give the reliability it's simply this the fact that we have so many copies so many manuscripts what that allows us is to know where the variances occurred and because we know where those variances occurred because of that that's how we know that not a single doctrine is affected it's little things like you know the fact that some manuscripts say that Jesus was a carpenter others say he was the son of a carpenter but there's no doctrine based on that and so does it matter can we get back to the original that one there is one we can't get back to the original was

Jesus a carpenter we all think so it would make sense because that's the culture that he would do what you know his father did so if his father was you know his father was a carpenter

Jesus was probably a carpenter fair assumption so what if do we really need to know well we can't in some of those texts we can't get back to the original to say based on the way that that happened that variance we can't get back to the original so and here becomes the question does it affect the meaning so one is can you get back to the original two can you does it affect the meaning and so there are some things that affect the meaning him being a carpenter versus the son of a carpenter it affects the meaning however the question that has to be asked is does it affect any doctrine any teaching of the church and the answer is no so does the bible have errors the bible has copyist changes times where people would write in the margin some notes and then that worked it's way into the text we have a passage of the bible where Jesus works with the adulteress woman is brought to him that's probably not in the original manuscript why do we think that because we have some manuscripts you know it's like in different places that accounting is in different chapters well they didn't have chapters back then but it's worked it's way in different areas of the text so you know is it here is it there you know we're really not sure many people think that much of the end of Mark 16 was probably not in the original does that affect anything well only if you're a snake handler you know the only thing that really affects is everything we see in Mark is you know

Mark 16 at the end there we have other passages that talk about that we see Paul being bitten by a snake and not dying but we don't know that Jesus actually said that this would happen drinking poison okay so we don't know anything about that you know there's no accounting of that so that you know that's how

I would answer that alright we because we have so many manuscripts we actually have a better argument we don't question

Julius Caesar that he was Caesar that he died and yet we have more we have more evidence for the

New Testament than we do Julius Caesar so the I think that you know we have like I think the

Iliad is the second closest to the Bible in the number of manuscripts so we have like 70 ,000 manuscripts in the

New Testament and we have like I think they have now up to almost 600 of the

Iliad the other thing you want to note with that is how close to the original writing I think with the

Iliad it's like 1 ,500 years from the oldest manuscript we have to the original writing where in the

Bible we have within 30 years you know an area that many scholars are going to look for manuscripts are in mummies tombs in Egypt because in Egypt the

New Testament was being copied and the interesting thing is this is copies that would have been thrown away and so the other thing they look for is places where they'd whitewash the paper because paper was really expensive they'd whitewash it and write other things over it and people find that there's scripture that was whitewashed the reason that becomes important is this was stuff that was it's typically older especially in mummies tombs where we have things that are within 30 years of it's writing and this is things that people were throwing away okay so the importance of that becomes if you're trying to manufacture as the argument goes that people manufactured that Jesus was

God in the gospels and they got rid of the older copies and kept newer copies then go to places where people threw out old copies like mummies tombs like whitewashing paper and see what those older ones said because those were the ones that people weren't trying to keep around and you know what we find they match it wasn't edited that's where the

Dead Sea Scrolls was such a great find because the Dead Sea Scrolls actually dated a thousand years prior to the oldest copy of the

Bible that we had and the reason that becomes so important is because you know people were arguing like oh well

Daniel must have been written after the Romans because he was so detailed in the prophecies and so they say he couldn't have done this unless it was afterwards and oops you find something that's dated a thousand years earlier and you find out that yeah it was before the

Romans because they have it you know Isaiah was the argument with Isaiah and all his prophecies of Christ that they said there were three

Isaiahs and one was written to be you know during Isaiah's real time and then the two other

Isaiahs wrote after the history occurred but now you find a copy of Isaiah in the Dead Sea Scrolls that is identically matching with the one that we have a thousand years later.

No changes. So that's what you end up with. Alright next question.

Well this one's really not a question. Presuppositional apologetics versus evidential apologetics.

That's all it says. I guess we could say go. I think the reason this question was asked was because Jim Wallace is an evidential apologist and I would be a presuppositional apologist so it was like okay give us the differences.

I think that's what's in the question so let me give you the differences. And there's a third which is classical. Evidential apologetics would argue from the evidence to God so you'd hear some evidential apologetics say we don't need the

Bible to prove God exists to prove the things of God and so what they'll do is kind of put the

Bible on the shelf and argue from nature. Okay.

Does nature point to God? Absolutely He created it. Okay. Is it the best way to argue with an unbeliever?

Depends on the unbeliever. You know. Do people get saved by evidence?

Well actually no. They get saved by God regenerating them. But the evidence is something that God uses to draw them to repentance.

So evidence isn't necessarily a bad thing. I'm a presuppositionalist which means I don't throw out the

Bible. I start from the Bible and argue from the Bible to God. Okay.

And so I would end up arguing for two presuppositions.

There is a God and He has spoken. I don't attempt to try to prove those. Those are just axioms. They're facts.

They are. And I don't need any more than that. And so a classical apologist would be a combination.

I mean they don't throw out the Bible and they're not opposed to using evidence.

So they'll use the evidence to bring people to a knowledge of God. I don't think evidence is a bad thing.

I'm saying that as a presuppositionalist. I understand there's some who have made it a strong hard line thing that you either have you either have presuppositionalism or evidentialism.

You know and evidentialism is bad. You can't use any evidence. You know I knew one friend that you say evidence is a sin.

It's not a sin. God told us to come and reason together. God gives us evidences.

You know He tells us look at creation. Look at the stars. You know

Jesus when He walked the earth to show that He was God He said look at the works that I do.

They witness or testify of me. What was He doing? Look at the evidence that tells you who

I am. So there's nothing wrong with evidence. So those would be the differences there.

This question is what is your motivation other than the fact that Jesus commands it? The problem is

I don't know what it is. I'm going to assume evangelism. Then this question may be a little bit snarky because it says

I don't know maybe but it says do you think it's important that you have fresh breath as to not offend people when you share the gospel with?

With what? With who? I don't know. You didn't finish the sentence. But let me answer it.

The motivation is Christ commanded us to go out and I love Christ and I want to do what

Christ commands. I also have a care for the people. The people that I'm witnessing to are they die without Christ or spend eternity in a lake of fire.

I'm concerned about that. And that concern is going to make me respond differently.

If I'm going out there just because God commands me to go I can go out there pridefully and feel justified in my pride because I obeyed

God and I told that sinner where he's going to go. But if I have a compassion for them and I'm concerned and I have pity for the fact that they're going to spend eternity in a lake of fire

I'm going to respond much differently with them. Now, I'm going to be very soft spoken with them and pleading with them because I want them to understand the gospel.

Very different approach that you're going to have. Alright? So, that's that one.

Oh, the fresh breath. Thank you. Fresh breath. Yeah, why wouldn't you want to have a fresh breath?

I always carry Tic Tacs with me. And the reason I do is when I have conversations I just pop a Tic Tac in because yeah,

I drink coffee and coffee gives you bad breath so I should really just stop drinking coffee. But we should do everything not just bad breath but everything that we can do to remove any offense that anyone has, we should do it.

So, don't act like a jerk because that would be an offense. That becomes a thing.

So, let's go on to the next question. Oh, actually I kind of answered this one already.

I should have grouped it with the other. Why do professing Christians believe that they embarrass Jesus Christ?

That's sort of the thing. Why do professing believers, I think this is really, why do professing believers think that like open air preachers or Christians that are living out their faith are embarrassing

Christ? I think is how I would answer it. Why do professing Christians believe that they embarrass

Christ? It could also be, I guess the question could also be that they think that a professing believer is embarrassed by Christianity.

If that's the wording of the question then it's because people are too focused on the world.

You know, they're using the world as their standard and not the Bible. And so by the world system

God's always going to be out of touch. Because the world is against God. Okay, so that's always going to be the case.

So you never count on the world to define what embarrassment is. Why are professing believers,

I think embarrassed when they see open air preachers preaching or have Christians out there living the

Christian life? Because it exposes that they're not Christian. That's why. Okay, let's move on to the next question.

We have got about six more to go. About 15 minutes and these are the more difficult ones to answer in short time.

Any suggestions on how to encourage my wife to bear fruit slash or grow spiritually?

I've asked her to join small group and do family devotion. This is a good question and it's a hard question.

This is one that couldn't be answered in a short period of time. But you cannot change your spouse.

Period. You can't make someone spiritually grow. Your spouse, your children.

I would love to have been able to force my children to grow spiritually mature when they were younger.

It would have made things easy, right? That's not the way it works. We have to be aware of that.

You can't force them, first off. You have to know that. The phrase, you can't lead a horse to water.

But you can give them some salt and make them thirsty. And that's what you do. Just have the devotions anyway.

I knew someone that their child didn't like doing family devotions. Okay. Make them sit in their room with no toys during family devotions.

You're missing out on something. Make family devotions a fun time so that they feel they're missing out on something.

But don't make it a lecture. Don't make it somewhere no one wants to be part of it. If your wife doesn't want to be part of it, or your spouse doesn't want to be part of family devotions, find out why.

Now, if it's a wife to a husband, that's kind of harder because the husband should be leading it. And if he doesn't want to be part of it, that becomes harder.

Because, you know, there's some issues there. But the thing, though, is you want to be careful to make sure that when you're doing it, you're making an appeal by finding out why don't they want to go to small group?

You may think that they're not growing spiritually, but maybe they are just at a different rate than you or what you expect from them.

Maybe the problem is your expectations. I'm just saying. Make sure you know.

Are they having their own devotions? Maybe they're uncomfortable in group settings, in small groups even, and they don't like it.

It could be different reasons. You know? So, next question.

Share some best ways to train up a child on the way of the

Lord, balanced between exhorting my authority and the child's temperance. This is sort of similar with what

I was saying. That's why I grouped these two together. This is hard. You want to shepherd their heart. You want to break their will.

I mean, they have a sinful will, a selfish will, and that needs to be broken. And so, we want to make sure that we are doing what

God calls us to do as parents. Not overbearing and lording over the children, but having some balance there.

Just keep in mind that we're sinners. Your children are sinners. Don't expect perfection from them if you're not perfect.

And so, pick your battles. It's a tough one. I would recommend David Tripp's Shepherding a

Child's Heart as a good book to get for that. Alright, this question was for Justin Peters, but I guess

I'm going to try to answer it for myself. Do you think that all those who are under the umbrella of Pentecostalism are not regenerate?

How do you draw the line with regards to salvation?

I think the issue there is there's a difference between wacky, charismatic and charismatic. I have a lot of good friends.

Dan, who helps us in NorCal Fire, Dan Bowen, he does not believe that the gift ceased.

Now, he doesn't speak in tongues or any of that stuff, but he doesn't say that he thinks they stopped, because he doesn't see it in the text of Scripture.

He sees a good argument for it. I disagree with him, but that's okay. The point, though, being is you have a difference between someone that can believe that these gifts still exist today, but is not being overcontrolled or overwritten by emotionalism.

And that's really the issue. When you see the wacky side, you'll see that they're all based on emotions and emotions is what drives them.

Emotions is what they use to define their thinking.

So, I just dropped a card. Hold on. I'm off camera. Sorry. I dropped a card.

We got three more questions. Let's see if we can get to these in the next ten minutes. How would you address family and friends in a former church about charismaticism?

They're deeply held to these teachings and ignore those in the warning of danger.

So, again, I kept these two together. They're kind of similar. The issue here is you think they're in danger.

Maybe they're in a church that is the over -emotional kind. And so, because of that, you see a danger there and you want to spare them.

Again, it's not your spiritual walk. It's theirs. If they're believers, if they're regenerate,

I trust that the Holy Spirit is going to work on them. Maybe they never come out of it.

Maybe God never wanted to put it on their heart to come out of it. You lovingly share with them what you believe.

Now, keep in mind, though, much of the charismatic, especially the wacky kind, is based on emotionalism.

And emotionalism makes it harder to argue with because people don't use reasoning.

They use their emotions. And so it's harder. You're coming to them with, hey, look, this is what the Scripture says, but they're ignoring it because of their experience.

And that's often what I find is people will reject what the Scripture says because of their experience.

And I have to tell them, look, your experience doesn't matter. What matters is the truth. That's what matters.

And so some people like it and some people don't. Alright. Next question. Why some people are chosen and some are not?

And so this is the issue of Calvinism or Minionism. We have a lot of different issues. We have

I think three classes on this subject. We have several papers on this subject.

I have a paper on Romans 9 and 10. What you see there is, I think that, and I'm going to give this short answer,

I think that God chooses who He wants to choose, and yet that choosing is not apart from our will.

I believe that God works through us so that the choices that we make to choose Him are exactly as He intended so He gets all the credit and we get none.

And so God chooses in whatever means

He understands and we don't know. And so the best I could say is Deuteronomy 29 .29

The secret things belong unto the Lord but that which He has made clear to you has been commanded to you to teach to obey and teach to your children.

That's a paraphrase by the way. I didn't get it exact. Last question. And it was to Mr. Peters. Mr.

Peters, you mentioned promises made to national Israel. Is God still covenanting with nation

Israel or is the church true or spiritual

Israel? I'll answer that on his behalf from my perspective. Again, we have

I think three classes that we did in our systematic theology. I think they're around like 58, 59, 60, 61, somewhere around there on dispensationalism.

We have two Google Hangouts discussing on our YouTube page on covenant theology versus dispensational theology and new covenant theology versus dispensational theology.

And really that's what's at the heart of this question. The heart of dispensationalism and covenant theology is what place does

Israel and the church have? Is the church a replacement of Israel? Is Israel the church and the church

Israel or are they two separate distinct things? And I would say they're two separate distinct things. Are there illustrations that are used for both that are similar?

Yes. Does it mean they're the same thing? No. Okay, you can use an illustration of marriage to be for the nation of Israel and for the church and there's still two separate bodies.

There is, I believe, a distinction between Israel and a church. And so for that reason,

I would say that God is still having a covenant with Israel, though right now they are in a state of disobedience for a very long time as a punishment.

No different than they were in the 70 years of captivity in Babylon. And a day is coming where they will recognize

Christ as Messiah and He will work with them again. So that is my position.

And we actually got through all those questions. That was a lot of questions that we got through.

I'm glad that we were able to do it. And I hope maybe that answers some questions that some of you others had.

Every once in a while we try to do this, answer questions. Now next class we're going to get into we will get back into the

World Religion Study. We will deal with Islam. And so that will be the lesson that we will have.

And we will have a... Well, let's see, what other announcements do we have? Well, you can buy my book. It's out of print, but we're getting it back in print.

What Do They Believe? You can also check out the new website WhatDoTheyBelieve .com WhatDoTheyBelieve .com is a new website about the book.

The first printing totally sold out of the book. I was blown away by that and went so quick.

I mean, we bought enough books I thought we would have a two year inventory. And we are out of books in like four to five months.

Less than five months we're completely out. And so we are going to another printing. It's going to be a larger inventory that we're getting now.

And so we're excited about that. And yeah, we did make some subtle changes to the book as well.

In case you want to get multiple volumes you can get the first printing and the second printing. You can have two. And so that really,

I'm very humbled that book has been doing so well. Dealing with the systematic theology of the major western religions.

Really humbled by that. Really glad to see that so many people are being blessed by that book. I encourage you to get it.

And so it's also available on Amazon. So, we like to put a person to encourage. We always want to encourage you to encourage others.

And the reason we do that is because, quite frankly, most of the time we only say encouraging things about people after they're dead.

And we all need to hear an encouraging word. We have a sister who, well, she's going through a rough, a painful time, shall we say, with great joy afterwards.

And that's our sister, Amber Holmeyer. Amber just gave birth.

That was the painful part. And with great joy this is her first child.

And so she's going to go into those sleepless nights, if you've ever had a child. And you know what that's like.

Amber has been helping us here at the ministry. I'm working on a new book called Jesus Christ Claims a

Deity. I've preached like 25, 26 sermons on that. And she's been helping to transcribe that.

We're soon going to have some other people that are going to be coming along and helping with that as well. And so we're really thankful for her.

And we ask this, that you'd encourage her this week as she's congratulated her on the birth of her child.

But don't just stop there. Encourage her because over the next couple of weeks, she's going to be exhausted.

Why? Because she's not sleeping. She'll need the encouragement. So try to encourage her this week if you can.

And that'd be really good. And until next time, remember to strive to make today an eternal day for the glory of God.