Apologetics Training

This is Apologetics Live. To answer your questions, your host from Striving for Eternity Ministries, Andrew Rappaport. We are live, Apologetics Live, here to answer your most challenging.

Questions. Whatever you have that you think we can't answer, we can. You doubt that? Well, go to ApologeticsLive .com. Join the discussion. You just scroll down until you see this Screamyard link, which is a little duck icon.

Click that, join, give your browser permission to use your microphone and camera. Come on in, challenge us with your hardest questions. And when I say, I don't know, just remember, that's a perfectly good answer.

Let me bring in my co-host.

Here, Drew. Bonita. How are you doing, sir? I'm doing well. I'm doing well. How are you?

Why This Episode Is About Apologetics Training

Good, good, good. So what we got today, what we plan to talk about today is actually, well, we're going to cover everything we did in the last two episodes, really the last one. But here's what we want to do today.

And if you haven't seen the last episode, this is one of those ones where I'm going to say, watch this one first and then go watch that because you'll get a lot more out of it. But what we want to do is kind of break down what we did and why we did it.

So that you guys who are watching can learn how to do Apologetics. That's the goal of this. We want to do Apologetics training. We want to teach you the how's and why's of Apologetics. And last week's episode, which was a doozy, it was a long one.

Yeah, I thought we'd go a little bit long because I knew that our guest Ben Zion was going to come in at the top of the second hour. And I just could tell from the emails, he was not going to get done in one hour.

But I didn't think we'd go that long. Now, I will grant, I cut out all the silences in the podcast and we got it down to like three and a half hours, which means we had 30 minutes of silence. I guess that's where he was thinking.

So KT asked the question, will Andrew break down everything I said wrong? Well, we actually couldn't remember anything that you did say wrong. So I guess the answer to that is no, no, we won't. But if KT wants, she could say some things wrong so that Drew can respond to it.

Absolutely. Yeah. So let me start again, like I did last week. I am still up in Boston. So it will be a little bit echoing because the best place for Wi-Fi back at the Parsonage, where they put me up and let me stay here, when I'm up this way, they're having Bible study.

And in this building, the best place for the Wi-Fi is here behind the pulpit. And so you can see if I move this down, you can see the baptism, baptistry right there, which looks kind of cool. And we got the cross.

I lit those up because, well, it looks cool, but it is a little bit echoey and I'm sorry about that. And yes, I can't figure out how to turn any lights on my right side. So I look really dark on the right.

Handling a Steamroller in Apologetics

Side and really, you know, really late on the left. Here, let me help you out. So next time you see Pastor Larry say, Hey, where's the light switch? Hmm. You assume he's going to know the.

Answer to that, but we're going to find out because he always comes in to check the building and make sure he gets his stuff before he leaves. So I'll have, I'll ask him and we will test that live. Um, so yeah, but, uh, he, and he, he's great.

You know, I, I, I enjoy talking with him. He's got like, and I'm not joking. I think my son-in-law told me he has like 50 motorcycles. Wow. Yeah. Yeah. Like he's not just a motorcycle rider. He's like a motorcycle collector.

That's amazing. Yeah. He, he sold one of his, he sold his Ninja to my son-in-law. And, um, I think my daughter's going to, was supposed to buy one of his other ones and, uh, but they, uh, she got pregnant instead.

So she hasn't been riding, but, uh, yeah. So he's, he's got like a number of them, like, like antique ones and he, he rebuilds them. And he's a really interesting guy. See my wife won't let me have a motorcycle.

Yeah, I know. So when I used to ride, I was in my college days and I knew I was so reckless. I'd kill myself. So I knew that I just shouldn't be on a motorcycle. Then I had kids and I realized, okay, I got responsibilities.

Then when the kids moved out, I thought about it. And my wife was like, yeah, no, no, you're not doing that.

See, see with my two little ones, sometimes I go, okay, I wish I had a motorcycle. Cause I just need to bang my head into something just to get the echoing of the screaming out from the.

Little ones. Yeah. So Melissa, Melissa says, Andrew looks like a little angel with light shining behind him. Of course we all know he isn't. Oh, that's good. So, so what we want to do is if you haven't seen, uh, last week's show or, or listened to it, we're going to give context.

So you don't need to see that to know what we're talking about. We want to, in this show, explain kind of the, why we did what we did, because there are some things I got feedback, even from, from one listener who he did.

He, the person was like, he knows Anthony Sylvester. He knows me. He's, he's been out evangelizing with us and goes, man, you guys just like he's evangelizing at a college campus with us. He's like, it's just, he's like, you know, it just seems so argumentative and aggressive the way you're dealing with it.

And he said that because I explained to him that I did that on purpose. And so one of the things I want to do is explain the wise, why did I approach him? Especially if you guys listen to this show regularly, you know, I approached, you know, Ben different than I did the black Hebrew Israelite until the black Hebrew Israelite until we were, he revealed himself as, as being someone who was argumentative.

And so there's, there's, I'm not saying that I'm perfect in the way that I do apologetics. I'm just want to explain the, the wise, we, we do it. So that's what we hope to do.

Today. All right. Yeah. Now there is so, so you do, you've done debates, moderated debates. There's a golden rule in debate and that golden rule is stay calm, right? Don't get overheated. Don't let your emotions take over because what we could tell from, from Ben Zion was that he got really, really passionate at every single thing you said to where you couldn't make your point and he had to cut in and cut you off because he was that passionate.

He couldn't stay calm. He couldn't listen to what you were saying and then respond appropriately. So the golden rule in debate or arguing, whatever is to first stay calm.

Yeah. And the thing is, is that this is something I'll give a, a, an kind of a way of showing this. You look at a guy like Leighton Flowers. Now for the record, I know Leighton personally, I haven't spoke to him actually in a couple of years.

I think since the beginning of COVID,.

But I was going to, yeah, I was going to save that one for later, but yeah,.

We should, I'll tag that one for later cause I was, that's going to come up. But you look at Leighton Flowers and when he does debates, a lot of people think he's winning a debate because what Leighton does, Leighton is just, he's very laid back.

He just has that very calm demeanor. And when you watch him in a debate, what I think what happens for a lot of people is he gets under their skin, you know, because he's really polite about it, the way he deals with things, but he makes really bad arguments and people get so worked up about the arguments that what ends up happening is a lot of people think that Leighton is winning a debate because he just doesn't get upset.

He's got a very calm demeanor and that is something that gives the appearance of confidence in a debate. And so I'm not saying, Hey, you should be calm so that it, you know, it looks like you're winning, right?

But it does have that effect where if you're getting so agitated, you can't wait to speak. You have to say, Andrew, Andrew, Andrew, Andrew, to use what Melissa said, right? If you can't let a person finish their sentence, you're constantly cutting them off.

What that does for the audience is give a negative view of you as a person having the discussion. In fact, it also has a negative view to the person you're discussing with. And that is something that when we're doing apologetics, I'm just going to say right from the get go, we have to remember that we are representing Christ.

We're his ambassador and we have to conduct ourselves in such a way that we represent him well. Yeah. And that's the thing we have to constantly remember. So would we expect Jesus in a, in a debate, in an argument with the Pharisees and constantly interrupting them, constantly speaking over them?

Well, no, we wouldn't. Well, then we shouldn't either. And so I don't do this. I don't do it to try to win points in debate. I do it because I want to.

Represent Christ. Well, right, right. That's it. So let's, we, before we get started with some of.

That, um, there is, we do have kind of an announcement to make and we got someone here that's going to help us make it. Oh, no, we don't. Not anymore. Wow. When you were bringing him on, just when we're about to bring him on and boom, he's gone.

So there you go. Well, it must've been his internet so much for that introduction. You know, that's it. We're done. We're not introducing him again. Uh, he's going to have to go back and listen. He just couldn't be a little bit more patient.

No, he's like, Hey, I want to be the first thing you guys talk about,.

Or I'm out of here. And so he's at, well, till he signs back on, let me just piggyback onto what you were saying about representing Christ. When we get to that great apologetic verse that Peter tells us about, right?

Always have a defense. People always rush to that section. Always be ready to make a defense, but they overlook the first part of it. Sanctify Christ as Lord in your heart. That's where we must start.

That's what you're getting at. We must first sanctify Christ in our heart as Lord, because then we are going to treat the person that we're talking to as though they are worthy of dignity and respect.

And we understand.

That they're made in the image of God. Correct. Yeah. And that's the thing. Look, folks, when you do apologetics, what good is it if you win a debate, but the person goes to hell, right?

Which is one thing I did want to say. I didn't know when we were going to get to it, but I think it's good to say now. Apologetics is a great tool, but it's only a tool to get to the gospel. Amen. And this is why for our listeners, if you watch this show and you pay attention, no matter what the discussion is or no matter who Andrew is talking to, he always makes a point to get to the gospel because he can give all the greatest evidences in the world, but those evidences are not going to save anyone.

It's the gospel. So if he gives all these evidences and he makes all these arguments and makes all these points and yet never touches.

The gospel, then he's done nothing. Yeah. And you know, one of the things is that it took what, like an hour and a half to get to the guy. I kept saying to him, I have something I really want to get to.

I really want to get to. I really want to get to. And it was hard to get there. Right. But I didn't want to end that show knowing that we had so many Jewish people listening that were listening because of Ben.

But more importantly, I was speaking to Ben. Right. And I did not want to not clearly communicate the gospel message. That's right. So that becomes really important. So Paul puts it this way, you know, to Titus is that I think he's speaking of apologetics, but he basically is saying, you know, the goal of sound theology, the sound doctrine is to shut the mouth of the ignorant.

That's the goal. So when we do apologetics, we're doing it to shut the mouth of the ignorant so that we can share the gospel. It's about the gospel. It's not about, oh, look at all this knowledge I have.

Look how smart I am. Look, I can win a debate. Look at my debating skills. None of that matters. What matters is sharing the gospel. Right. That's really what matters. So Melissa is asking, does Ben plan on coming back on the show?

I don't know. It's open to anybody. I may read some of the emails I had back and forth with him. He wants to get together with me when I'm up in Queens, which I'll be on Saturday. Just saying, we'll see.

Conveniently? No, actually, as we come home from Boston, we planned to visit family in Queens. So the plan is to be in Queens for the day. I'll see what I can do. But speaking of sharing the gospel, if this guy can stick around long enough to make an announcement, he doesn't seem to want to be here.

I guess if he wasn't the first one being discussed, he was out of here. But that's just the way this character is. But let's talk about an event, Drew, that we have where we're going to be sharing the gospel with none other than the president of Hearts for the Lost, Brian Nine.

How are you, sir?

How are you doing, sir? What's up, bro? What's up? Am I coming through okay? Because I can't.

I busted it because of the internet issues. He went upstairs to tell everyone in the family, shut the next Netflix off. Stop playing the video games. The internet. You're bogging up the internet. No, no.

Hey, so let's talk real quick. We're talking apologetics. We're talking about apologetics, training and things. Hearts for the Lost, the ministry that you work for and do a lot with. First off, for folks who may not be familiar, could you talk about what Hearts for the Lost is, the goal, and then what we're going to be doing in Indianapolis?

If your internet's working, that is. Can you hear me? Yeah, no. Oh, he's saying no. He dropped out. Okay, so let me do that.

Were you holding up your Fresca can there? Yeah. Bond Servant for Jesus asked how much sugar is in it, and I'm trying to find it because it doesn't say. It doesn't say. It says zero fat, 35 grams of sodium, one gram of total carbs, zero protein, but I don't see where it says sugars.

It says added sugars, but it doesn't say how much. Okay, so I can't. This probably won't work. Let me see. Can you hear this? Did you hear that at all? No. Okay. See, I knew that wouldn't work. I can't.

I was going to play the video he had, but I don't think that would come through. Where's it at? He had it on. Oh, because you could do it. Okay. Since I don't have my... Let me tag you in this on Facebook, and you can play the video.

Meanwhile, while you're looking that up, I'm going to just explain some of the events. So if you go to Eventbrite and just type in evangelism training conference, that's what you could type in. We basically, Striving Fraternity and Hearts for the Lost are going to get together, and we're going to do a combined evangelism training.

Both ministries do evangelism training. We do it a little differently, which is fine. There's only one way to do it. This is a free event. This is July 7th and 8th. This will be in Indianapolis. So basically, the plan that we have is to Friday night from 6 to 9, and then Saturday morning, it's going to be from 9 a .m. until 4 p .m.

And what the plan is, the schedule is Friday night, Striving Fraternity is teach on ambassador evangelism. And then Saturday morning, Hearts for the Lost will teach on their evangelism training. And then the afternoon, we're going to head out to some place, I think he's called The Circle, where we're going to do some evangelism until 4 o 'clock in the afternoon.

So the location is at Athena Church, which is at 7816 Madison Avenue in Indianapolis, Indiana. So if you're in that area, July 7th and 8th, you can go to eventbrite .com to search for evangelism training conference.

And it's a free conference. So I think lunch is included, if I remember correctly. So it's basically going to be something where what we're planning to do is going out and training people to evangelize and then going out to evangelize.

And so the idea is this, if you're not comfortable evangelizing, just not something you really like to do, it's something where an event like this is so much easier because you get a bunch of trained, experienced evangelists that will be able to take you out on the streets, not only train you during the day, but then take you on the streets and help you to train you.

So you don't have to worry about, oh, I'm going to get stuck answering a question I don't know the answer to. We'll have someone there with you that can answer those tough questions. So this is a great training ground, help get your feet wet and some great fellowships.

So this will be...

When I was at the Vineyard Church, we used to do this thing where we would go to the Marietta Square and we would sing songs and pray for people and things like that. So I approached the pastor of the church the week before we went and I said, hey, would you mind if I did some open air preaching, open air evangelism?

And he said, yeah, as long as it's done in love, I have no problem with you doing that. And so I said, okay, yeah, I can make sure that happens. No problem. And so we get there and I've got my Bible and I go to the guy who's kind of leading it and I said, okay, I'm going to set up over there because in the middle of the square, there's like this fountain.

And so I was going to perch up on top of the brick wall of the fountain. And I said, okay, so I'm going to stand up over here. And he said, actually, I just feel like the Lord doesn't want us to do that right now.

And he gave me this talk and I said, oh, okay. So then I went around to everyone at the fountain and I started telling them about Jesus personally. Yeah.

Lord just doesn't want you sharing the gospel. Yeah. Hey, you got some food you could give them? Just pray for them. Just walk around them seven times. And yeah, that's what he wants you to do. So, so yeah.

So if you go to eventbrite .com, just search for evangelism training conference, you'll see the sign that says Indianapolis evangelism conference. Uh, this is July 7th and 8th, Friday night. I'll be doing the teaching Saturday.

Uh, actually the team from hearts for loss to be doing teaching. Cause we'll have, uh, it'll be Brian, I think, and Jimmy. So both of those guys will be doing it. Uh, Brian was going to come in and make this big announcement, but his internet wasn't working.

So well. So, I mean, do I even need to play the video now that you, well, yeah, go for it. Can you share that? Well, I can't share the video. I can share the audio though. You should be able.

To share, go to present and from their share screen and you can share that. And then when are you on your, you're recording, you're doing this on your phone? Well, I pulled it up on my.

Well,. Hey, cause I don't think my, well, I don't think my, uh, my comp this computers logged into Facebook. Oh, okay. All right. Well then we'll, we'll, we'll do it next week.

We'll make Brian come in and do it. We'll, I'll, I'll figure out a way to download that or something that I should, I'll be back home next week so we could do that. All right. So let's, let's tackle some of these things.

There's some things that came in in that you start here in our comments. Why don't we deal with some of these? Um, Facebook user, which by the way, uh, if you want to not be just known as Facebook user, unless you're planning to be anonymous on the show, just go to apologize, live .com and we have instructions for how to allow Facebook to use your name so that we know who you are.

But Facebook users said this a very timely and drew you, you flagged this one, but you said, it says, was having a discussion about apologetics with my daughter and her boyfriend. He posited that when discussing topics such as abortion or homosexuality with nonbelievers, it's best to use logic apart from scripture because nonbeliever has no basis to accept scripture and truth.

Now, I don't know if this is the same Facebook user, but he also said a Facebook user of the same said, uh, I countered with an argument of the sufficiency of scripture, but I have studied enough to, uh, to do this well.

Sorry, but I've not studied this enough to do this well. Uh, any thoughts that you can share.

On this? So, so let's deal with this one first. This is, this is actually great because I had a clip of that I was, that I was going to share, but now we can, we can just discuss it here. And it's the idea, this is, this is why we're presuppositionalist because we start with scripture and we don't abandon scripture.

And what Ben was trying to get you to do was enter into, into this discussion about, well, we're trying to figure out if the new Testament was written by God. And, and your position was, I'm not falling for that.

No, no, no. It is written by God. That's not the problem I have. That's the problem you have. It is. I know that it's written by God. And so we don't abandon our foundation. We can't,.

We can't argue for the Bible if we give it up. And, and you're right. And I was going to get there later in our discussion tonight, because one of the things that I did at one point was he wants to debate the new Testament, whether it's the word of God, but not have the same standard to debate the old Testament the same way.

And what I wanted him to do was be consistent with both because both old and new Testament are the word of God. And he wants to say, no, no, no, you have to first start with the fact that the new Testament is not the word of God.

Then let's discuss it. And I can point out all the problems, but see the issue is that he has the same problems in the old Testament. He just wanted to ignore those because he says, well, that's the word of God.

Yes. And so is the new Testament. See, there was a point in there. And I know Drew, you grabbed a bunch of clips. I don't know if you grabbed that one, but there was a point where I just said, sorry, but I don't get, I don't debate the word of God.

I don't give up the word of God to say, let's do it. No, just as he doesn't do that with the Tanakh, the old Testament, I'm not going to do that with any part of scripture. Right now, we can make a fair argument that if, if there is an, an actual contradiction, like I can point out there's contradictions in the Quran.

Therefore it, I mean, definitional, like when it defines the Trinity as including Mary, well, that's not the Trinity. Right? So therefore it's a definitional issue. But if, if you have something where the word Alma can refer to a young maiden, which would also be a Virgin and it, some places says we made in, in some places refers to Virgin.

And we'll get into that more. That's not a contradiction. That's just the usage of a word and a word can have a variety of meanings. So one of the things we just have to recognize with that is the fact that when we look at these things, we have to recognize that um, there's really two areas that I do of study.

Cause you know, I get asked this a bunch, we do this show live. Any of you can go to apologetics live .com right now, join in and, and we can end up in a debate. We can end up having a discussion where you disagree with me and you're prepared for a debate.

And we had a listeners several months ago that asked about this and said, how do you prepare for politics live when people come in prepared for a debate and you don't even know that there's going to be a debate.

Okay. I've always said there's two areas I focus on hermeneutics and logic, right? And if you listen to what I did last week, it really was those two issues. I'm applying the rules of hermeneutics, that is the, the science of interpretation, how we understand language.

And that's all I was doing was, was doing that and pointing out where he was making logical fallacies, where he's making arguments that were invalid. Because if your argument is invalid, then the argument's false.

Okay. Uh, so we don't want to make invalid arguments, right? So those are the two areas. So if you say, um, and, and Facebook user, I think is Melissa. Cause she says, sorry, this is Melissa. Uh, now she's, she is a missionary to the Philippines or was she's, I think, I think now in Texas, I forget.

Um, but, uh, so, so that's who, who it is. So it's good. We now know. Um, but what we end up seeing is if we focus on how to interpret scripture, most of the debates or the arguments, the apologetics we're going to use will be applied in the area of hermeneutics, understanding how to interpret the Bible.

And then the second area I use logic. Now there's other areas you can imply, you know, or employ, but those are the two primary things I'm going to focus on. So let's, let's dig into this a bit. And I know you got a couple more comments that were there and we'll get to those.

Um, then you could check through, see if there's anything else we need to address or answer, but let me get to the main thing. So the main thing that, that Ben wanted to focus on last week was this, the usage of the word Alma Alma in Hebrew is the word for maiden.

So the whole argument he was making was that Matthew purposely deceived people by mistranslating the word Alma into Greek for virgin so that he could support the, the Christian claim that, uh, Jesus was virgin born.

And so he's saying this is, this is false. No Jewish person would ever interpret it that way. No, no Jewish person would do that. So what did I do? Okay. When you have an argument, by the way, an argument, it's not a bad thing, folks.

We do it all the time. That's how you grow. That's yeah. When we make a claim of anything, it's an argument. Okay. When you tell your children, they have to be in bed by eight o 'clock and you give a reason why that's an argument.

You don't think that's bad as a parent, do you? As a child you do. Yeah. But we make arguments all the time. The question is, are they valid arguments? So when you have someone challenges you, what do you do?

Well, here's what I did with what Ben said. I took a look at the premise of the argument. Then you look at the support of the argument. And lastly, you look at the conclusion that they're making. Okay.

So those are the three things you look at the premise, the support and the conclusion. So what was his premise? He had several premises that he made one Alma cannot refer to a virgin. Okay. So that's one premise, right?

A second premise, Matthew did this purposely. That was a second premise. A third premise is that he said that, and this was in really his kind of to his support, our support for the argument that Alma can mean virgin is that it was translated that way in the situation.

His argument, his premise of the argument was that the Christians are the ones who did that translation. So we have three different premises. What was his support for them? His support was no Jewish person would ever translate Alma as virgin.

Okay. So now what do you look to do? All you need to do is find one Jewish person that translates Alma as virgin. And the support for that argument is gone, right? Which is exactly what I did folks. When he, when he was arguing that this word does not mean virgin, my argument was, well, whoever translated this, this, the two agent understood it, that to be virgin, right?

That was done. As I said, before the time of Christ, he was claiming no Christians, Christians are the ones that, that control it, but he never gave the argument to support the claim that the spittoon was done by Christians, right?

He actually said,.

I believe it was, he said, no, no Jew would translate it that way. Or, or no Jews translated.

The Septuagint. And it's like, well, no, no, no. He said just, he, he said the first five books were translated by rabbis. And he kept saying, and this is the thing that I picked up on folks. If you go back and watch that one, he kept saying rabbis, the rabbis, the rabbis, as if, you know, a Jewish person couldn't understand this word to mean anything else because when he would say no Jewish person would translate it this way, well, that wasn't the rabbis anymore.

It's any Jewish person. Right. So whoever translated the Hebrew into Greek of the Septuagint did translate it that way. Right. Now they would have had to know Hebrew. Yeah. So his argument is they were Christians that did that.

And, and he brought up Matthew. Well, we brought up, I brought up Matthew being the fact that Matthew knew Hebrew and he was Jewish, but see the argument is, well, he did it purposely to deceive. The thing that was interesting with it though, is that in that argumentation, if you notice the issue becomes one where what he ends up doing is going, well, he did it purposely.

Well, you said, no, he, no Jewish person would do this. And now I have a Jewish person. Right. So what was I trying to do? What I was trying to do, and this is the thing to do when you do apologetics is focus on the premise, because the first thing you want to do to see if something is logically valid is to see if the premise is valid.

If, if you can show that the pro there's a problem with the premise, then you show that there's a problem with the argument. If the premise is valid, but the support is invalid, well, then you're going to point that out.

And that is where you show the invalid argument. If the premise and the support for the premise, don't draw the conclusion the way they do, then you show that. So this is how, how I approach these sort of things to look at.

This is, I look at the premise, the support, the conclusion. So what was his premise that no Jewish person would interpret it this way? Well, I answered the premise by saying whoever translated the subdued gin did translate it that way.

Right. And this, you know, I showed,.

I showed you this before we started, but for our viewers and for our listeners who can hear this right here that I'm holding in my hand is the Novum Testamentum Graeca. This is the, the critical Greek texts of the day.

It's what the new Testament of your Bibles. It's the text basis for the new Testament of your Bibles. This right here is the Septuagint, the Greek translation of the old Testament in Matthew one 23 in the Greek, it reads exactly word for word as the Septuagint, which means Matthew had to pull from a text that already existed before he wrote his gospel account.

And so if the question I would have loved to have asked Ben is that since Matthew did that, and that would only make sense to do it that way, what would be the purpose of a, if, if, if no Jew would translate the Septuagint into Greek, what would be the.

Purpose of a non Jew to translate the Hebrew into Greek? And what he, his argument that he was trying to make was that Christians did that to deceive people. So they wanted to, to try and make an argument for Jesus being virgin born.

Now, just think about that. So you're telling me that you're going to translate the entire Hebrew, old Testament into Greek just to make one or two points?

Well, the crazy thing that, that I found was he went from the Hebrew to the English translation of the Greek and I'm going, okay, Matthew didn't write it in English. It was translated from Greek into English.

Why didn't you do the translation from the Hebrew into the Greek?

Yeah. Yeah. He, he wants to focus on the English, which, and we should get to that, but so, because there is a point where you brought up with the Greek that he had to concede, and there were several things he conceded.

So let's see, Drew, at any point during the discussion last week, did he concede the point that Alma could refer to a virgin? His first premise,.

So he's saying it never can, right? He's, he's, he's saying it, it doesn't, it just doesn't mean.

That. Okay. And so the question is, could it, and I think you have a clip for us. Yeah. Let's, let's hear what he says in his own words. Alma refers to oftentimes people that happen to be virgins,.

But that's not what the word means. It refers oftentimes to people who happen to be virgins, but then he says, oh, but that's not what it means. Okay. If it refers oftentimes to people who happen to be virgins, that means that the description of virgin is wrapped up in the word.

Alma, Maiden, and Virgin in Isaiah 7:14

Alma. Well, it doesn't, it would. So, so the issue is, is that the word based in context will define what it is. It refers to a young maiden who often is a virgin. Was Mary, and I asked him this in the thing, was Mary a maiden, a young maiden?

The answer is yes. Could the word refer to her? Yes. But what was specific about her was her virginity. So in the Greek, it became more important to focus not just on her being a young maiden, but specifically she was a young.

Maiden who was a virgin who was pregnant. Yeah. And this is why you kept trying to get back to the Greek because Matthew wrote in Greek. And then you kept trying to make the point that he, he's copying from a Greek text.

And he kept saying, I don't want to discuss the Greek. I don't want to discuss the Greek, but you have to, because that's the language that Matthew's.