Open Q&A with Justin Peters and Pastor Jim Osman, hosted by Anthony Silvestro

Apologetics Live

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May 5, 2022

Come join Dr. Anthony Silvestro as he hosts Apologetics Live with Justin Peters and Pastor Jim Osman on an open Q&A!

00:01: Hello, good evening, everyone. So obviously you see that I am joined by my co -host tonight right off the bat.
00:09: They're not in the back room. So Justin and Jim, would you like to say hi tonight? Hello, everyone out there in TV land.
00:17: Hope everyone's doing well. Good evening. So what's the weather out there,
00:23: Jim? Are you guys warming up a little bit in Northern Idaho? Yeah, it's warming up. It's raining today, but it's been up around 60 the last few days.
00:31: It was beautiful and sunny yesterday. It was a gorgeous day. And so it's starting to warm up, but probably about a week and a half maybe from planting my garden.
00:39: Wow, good for you. Yeah, we're about a week and a half, two weeks away from that too here in Ohio. So that's great.
00:46: And Justin, how were your travels recently? And we were just talking about it a little bit. Yeah, very good, very interesting.
00:53: Just did a seminar at Highland Bible Church in Woodland Park, Colorado, kind of up in the mountains there from Colorado Springs.
01:00: And it was very good. The reception of my teaching was very warm and helpful,
01:11: I think by God's grace to people because it's an acute need there because they're literally in the backyard of Andrew Womack, Karis Bible College.
01:21: And it is a massive, massive ministry there, false teacher,
01:26: Word Faith, NAR, Seven Mountain Mandate, even kind of a guy. I went and visited there.
01:34: I went on campus. I sat in on one of their classes and managed to get kicked out. Now, unfortunately,
01:41: I'll never be able to go back to Karis. I think they've got my name on a poster there. Kind of like the ones you have with the most wanted in the post office.
01:51: So yeah, I was kicked out for asking a question. Okay, so what was the question?
01:57: Because you didn't even tell me that earlier. Yeah, so the guy, his name is Barry Bennett and he's on staff there at Karis.
02:04: And he was teaching on ironically on how to be agreeable with people who might disagree with your theology and be warm and gracious and which is so ironic.
02:17: And at the end of the class, they had a few minutes for Q and A. And so I motored my scooter over there to the guy with a microphone.
02:23: And I asked, I said, well, I said, if you believe that it's always
02:28: God's will for everyone to be healed, then what do we do with all of the many faithful servants of God, Old and New Testaments, who were not healed, who were sick and were not healed?
02:41: And so that question was not well received at all. I've actually got a video of it.
02:47: I wanna do a YouTube video about getting kicked out of Karis. And, but I will say, yeah, false teachers do not like to be challenged at all.
02:58: He was quite rude, which is fine with me. I don't, you know, it's not like my feelings were hurt. But the interesting thing about it is that I had, there were several students who came up to me afterwards and were, they said you were treated very badly, it's very rude, but they also had questions.
03:19: They had questions. They said, well, we've got questions too, and our questions aren't being answered here.
03:26: They don't like to be challenged. We know something's wrong. In fact, one of those students actually ended up coming to the next night of my, of the seminar and sat in.
03:36: Yeah, so there are students there who have questions. They know something's not right.
03:41: So it was actually encouraging. Wow, praise God for that. Yeah. That's really cool.
03:48: So let me ask you guys this, you know, I wasn't gonna get into this right away, but Andrew Womack, I know a lot of people listen to him.
03:56: And I know he's a word of faith and whatnot guy, but he seems to keep a really low profile versus other people.
04:04: You know, he's got a discipleship training manual out there that at first glance doesn't look too bad until you start to dig in a little bit to it.
04:13: So what would you say about Andrew Womack? Because again, other guys we see all the time, right? And it's easy to pick them apart.
04:19: You've done videos. Pastor Jim has written a lot of stuff on these guys. What about Andrew Womack? Yeah, I call
04:26: Andrew Womack the John Boy Walton of the word faith preachers, cause he's normal looking.
04:33: He doesn't dress real flashy. He's low key. He's kind of got this all shucks kind of persona and Southern accent.
04:43: And he's just kind of down to earth, you know, he's disarming in that way. But he is every bit as much word faith as is
04:50: Kenneth Copeland. He has Jesse Duplantis come out and teach at Keres Bible College.
04:55: Creflo Dollar was there just two weeks ago. And in fact, this one of the students that came up to me afterwards and he came to the last session of my seminar there at the church.
05:07: And he's a student at Keres Bible College. And he told me when we were talking afterwards, he said, you know,
05:14: Creflo Dollar was here a couple of weeks ago. I said, yeah, I know, I saw that. And he said, when they took up the love offering for Creflo Dollar, Andrew Womack took up the love offering.
05:24: He's the one that kind of, you know, set it up. And he said to the students, now keep in mind, many, if not most of the students there are poor, you know, they're college students.
05:36: And Andrew Womack said to those students, he said, give generously because it's not cheap to fly out here on a private jet.
05:50: Oh, that's when they say the quiet parts out loud, right? Can you believe that?
05:59: I shouldn't laugh, but wow. When I was in college, I thought I was walking in tall cotton if I was able to put ketchup on my top ramen.
06:09: This guy's flying in to tell me about prosperity on a private jet. Wow. And it's not cheap to fly on a private jet.
06:17: There's not a word of a lie in that. No. Wow. So, yeah.
06:24: So he just hides it well, is what you're saying? He hides it well, yeah. Now, to be fair,
06:29: I was told while I was there that his house is not an extravagant house. He lives in a fairly modest house.
06:36: But when you go onto the campus there at Karis College, there is nothing modest about that.
06:42: I think it's 400 and some odd acres. Wow. And when
06:48: I say, I would love to know, I would love to know a dollar amount of what they have invested in there, because you really can't even imagine the size of this place.
06:58: I think they spent $50 million just on the parking garage, just on the parking garage.
07:05: And you go into the facility and it is massive. And everything is, it's luxurious, it's state -of -the -art technology, everything, even the seats in their auditorium, very nice seats with little desks that fold out, all the audio -visual equipment, top -of -the -line, state -of -the -art, even the handrails.
07:29: I wish I had a picture we could show. The handrails going down the aisles, not just some basic metal handrail.
07:36: It's thick cut wood, carved wood. I mean, the handrail alone probably is worth more than what
07:45: I make in a year. I mean, it's just, it's almost beyond description. Wow.
07:52: Well, if you're going to serve the Lord, you might as well give him the best, right? Right. I mean, Solomon didn't put seconds in the temple.
08:01: True, true. Yep. Wow. Yeah, it is, yeah, just incredible, just incredible.
08:11: Yeah. Are you thinking about doing a teaching on Andrew Womack at some point in the future? Yeah, I'm going to do a video, a
08:17: YouTube video on my second trip to Keres, kicked out of Keres, I think is what I'm going to call it. Okay.
08:23: So you'll go into a little more depth on him at that point. Yeah, yeah. I mean, he's word of faith.
08:30: He's the standard word of faith doctrine, but he also gets into the dominion theology, which is more
08:35: NAR. Right. Seven mountain mandate stuff. In fact, they're trying to like, they're trying to take over the town of Woodland Park.
08:43: They are, they had their people running for all of the city, local offices, school board, all that stuff, mayor.
08:51: And luckily they, providentially, they lost. Apparently they weren't even able to take over the mountain of Woodland Park, Colorado.
09:03: So good luck with doing the rest of the world. Wow. Interesting stuff.
09:11: Okay, so I got a quote to read for you guys. Tell me who this is. This is the goal of prophecy, to connect people to the empowering nature of God so they can become like him and display his marvelous nature to all the earth.
09:25: The prophetic connects people to the nature of God so they will become like him and reveal him.
09:31: That's Phil Johnson. I know that anywhere. Yep. Adapted.
09:38: Bill Johnson adapted by Sean Boltz. Oh, you said,
09:44: I said, Phil Johnson. Oh, Phil. Yeah. It turns out being Bill Johnson. Oh, I got a word.
09:50: I just, I got a word from the Lord. I just had one letter wrong is all. My wife was thrift store shopping today.
09:57: And so, you know, I was bored. So I went in with her and forgot my computer. Anthony, I tried reading that book in order to write,
10:05: God Doesn't Whisper. And that is the most, that guy is one of the worst writers. He's just incoherent.
10:11: He is a babbling. He just, it's a word salad, a slogan salad. Every time he puts pen to paper, it's enough.
10:18: Reading through that, I recognized that they're all English words, but then you try and put them together and ask what is he really trying to say?
10:24: And it's just, it's almost incoherent. Yeah. I kind of sped read it and I felt the same way.
10:30: Like I was, I was hoping to get some gems out of this to do on the show tonight for you. It's so difficult.
10:37: There are sentences in there that I defy you to diagram. It's impossible. Yeah. I did find amusement though.
10:46: That's a, did you see the part where Mike Bickle, I guess he served with Mike Bickle at one time in the
10:53: Kansas City Prophets. And he, Mike Bickle challenged him to track his prophecies.
11:00: Did you read that part in the book? No. Yeah. So Mike Bickle told him to track his prophecies to see how often he was right, because we need to be accountable for when we're not, which
11:12: I thought was kind of interesting that he wrote that in here. But so he said this, for about five years,
11:17: I was very particular and tracked everything that was trackable. If there's any word I gave for the future, I would get people's emails and phone numbers, even after public meetings.
11:25: I would email them a day or a week after and ask how it went. About 60 % of the time, it was amazing and brilliant.
11:31: And I grew in faith from those stories. They gave me a lot of courage to keep going. Another 30 % of the time, people still felt encouraged, but couldn't necessarily weigh my word as being accurate, clear, or already fulfilled.
11:44: Then about 10 % of the time, there was no fulfillment. And then he went on - That's basically like the
11:49: Minor Prophets. I think it's the same thing. Yeah, right? Then he tried to explain away the 10 % saying that they ended up turning away from God later.
11:57: So they weren't believers anyway. I'm on,
12:03: Anthony, yeah. So it's been amusing and scary at the same time kind of going through that.
12:12: Here's another gem I found, which is really interesting. And I'll probably do this in a future show.
12:17: Have you guys heard of Castle's Encyclopedia of Queer Myth, Symbol, and Spirit?
12:24: Gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgender love. That is at the top of my reading list, and I just -
12:31: It's been a while since you got to that one. Yeah. I've only read it twice this year, so you might quote something in there that I'm not familiar with.
12:39: So one thing that fascinates me, as you guys know, I do a lot with the social justice movement and really digging into history.
12:46: So I've got some great books on my shelf back here about the NEA, National Educated Association, how they've been filled with Marxists since the 1940s.
12:54: And there were liberals writing about this in the 1970s who were upset about the Marxists that were infiltrating their camp, even though they were liberal themselves, right?
13:03: They hated the Marxists at the time. And so it's interesting bringing this stuff out to show what's actually going on in this country.
13:09: This is nothing new. Well, I read a book by Greg Bonson, not a theonomist.
13:15: I'm not a theonomist, but, you know, good book. 1978, he wrote this book called Homosexuality. It's yellow cover with this red band and Homosexuality written across it diagonally.
13:25: And it would be like you read this book today. All the stuff that you see going on now is boom, boom, boom, boom.
13:32: All the stuff he said was gonna happen back in 78. Why? Because there were books, there were magazines, there were underground type stuff talking about how the homosexual movement was gonna infiltrate society, education, and the church in order to make it favorable and start to win people over before they crammed it down our throats.
13:54: And so everything we've seen happen in the last 20, 25 years was stuff that they were planning in the 60s and 70s.
14:01: So this book is fascinating. It was published in 1997. So 25 years ago, right?
14:09: And they have apologetics against all different kinds of religions in here.
14:16: Christianity, Judaism, Chinese Shamaism and Taoism and others.
14:21: And they're going through and they're talking about how certain groups spoke against Homosexuality.
14:28: Nearly every religion speaks against Homosexuality. But then they have, they are citing sources explaining it away.
14:37: Right? So when you talk about Sodom and Gomorrah, you guys may have heard this, but it's talked about, that wasn't about Homosexuality.
14:46: It was about not being hospitable. Yeah. So they weren't showing up for Hospitality instead.
14:52: Yeah. So, you know, that's given in here and other things. And the only religion that they said that they couldn't find a way around was
14:59: Islam. As I sped through that, which is fascinating. But this was like the apologetic for homosexuals back in the day.
15:09: Interesting. Yeah. They play in the long game. The Marxists have been. Yes, they have.
15:15: I mean, 1905 is when they officially started in this country to flip the education system. Yeah. And within decades, they accomplished their goal with Columbia and a number of other big universities that were teaching institutions.
15:28: So yeah. They've been enormously successful. Yeah. It's fascinating stuff. So, okay.
15:34: Let me change gears a little bit here. So Justin, I brought this up to you earlier and this was asked by Evan Jones, friend of ours who called me a little bit ago to ask me this question to ask you personally.
15:49: And so he said that in his church, there's a couple friends of his good and he goes to a solid biblical church.
15:57: And the son supposedly got saved at an early age at 16 years old, had a health condition that is similar to yours and that he was wheelchair bound at that age.
16:09: He's now 22, has sworn off God, angry with God, but he is willing to talk to Evan.
16:19: And so Evan called and wanted to ask if you had any videos or teachings out there on how did you reconcile?
16:27: I mean, this is essentially theodicy, right? How do you reconcile a good God, bad things happen? How did you reconcile this personally in your life with your specific situation?
16:36: And what would you tell this young man who is now angry at God? Yeah. And you also indicated to me,
16:44: Anthony, that Evan, Evan is his name? Evan has tried to email me.
16:50: I'm sorry, I just, I get so swamped. I apologize to you, Evan, for missing your email, but to answer your question, so from my personal perspective,
17:01: I guess I've got something of a built -in advantage in the sense that I was born with cerebral palsy, so I've never known anything different.
17:11: And so for me, this is my normal. I kind of, I tell people I don't miss walking like I don't miss flying in the space shuttle.
17:21: I've never done it. I'd like to try it. I think it'd be a lot of fun, but I've never done it. So I think it would be a lot more difficult to have been able -bodied and then lose that through an accident or a disease or something like that.
17:37: But nonetheless, scripture is true in binding for everyone, regardless of their life experiences.
17:46: And I would say, let me say this first. I don't want to put on a hyper -spiritual air and say that my handicap is never a trial and say that it never gets to me and say that there's never days that I wish that I wasn't, because quite frankly, there are.
18:08: Sometimes it is frustrating. And when I'm trying to do various things or just getting dressed or trying to get a shower in the morning and that kind of stuff, and I drop something or I fall, and which happens from time to time.
18:26: Yeah, if I had my druthers, I'd rather not be handicapped.
18:32: So I don't wanna come across like I'm this hyper -spiritual, super -spiritual kind of guy that never gets to me.
18:39: It is a trial. We all go through trials, and trials are not enjoyable. That's why they're called trials.
18:45: By definition, they're not enjoyable. So I wanna say that.
18:50: But also theologically, I have to come to theology. I have to come to what scripture teaches. And I know, because I know from God's word, that I deserve far worse.
19:03: Anything short of hell is the mercy of God. Anything short of hell is the mercy of God.
19:09: So I guess knowing that I deserve worse is a great comfort to me.
19:16: Also knowing God through knowing His attributes and who
19:23: He is, I know that God not only will not act towards me in any way that's outside of His character and His nature, but He can't.
19:33: God cannot do that. And so I know from scripture that God is love. He is merciful.
19:39: He is patient. He is faithful. He is just. He's holy. He's sovereign.
19:44: I know He upholds all things by the word of His power. And so I know that no matter what comes my way, whether it's cerebral palsy or maybe
19:53: I get diagnosed with cancer tomorrow or something, nothing can come to me that does not first pass through His good sovereign hand.
20:02: And so that is a great comfort to me. And it was Charles Spurgeon that said, I am certain that I never did grow in grace one half so much anywhere as I have upon the bed of pain.
20:14: David in Psalm 119 verse 71 said, it was good for me that I was afflicted, that I might learn your statutes.
20:23: The afflictions in and of themselves, isolated are not good, but it is good for us that we are afflicted so that we might learn the statutes of God.
20:32: There's something about suffering that we learn of God in an experiential way. And so I'm grateful for that.
20:41: Now, this young man who made a profession of faith and now he's suffering and is angry at God, and I would say to Evan, share with him the things
20:52: I just did, but mainly share with him the gospel. If I'm understanding the situation right, it sounds to me like he probably made a false profession of faith, unknowingly so, but from what
21:06: I understand that was described here, I don't think he's truly come to faith in Christ.
21:12: So give him the gospel. Yeah, I think Evan believes that too. So Jim, did you want to add anything to that?
21:22: No, I don't have anything to add to that. I think it's great. Okay, yeah. And obviously,
21:27: I do a lot of teaching on the problem of good and evil, especially reconciling God's sovereignty and his ordaining all things that come to pass, and yet he's not blamed for the evil that occurs, right?
21:40: That's on Adam and Eve and by proxy us. Yeah. Mike Riccardi has wonderful, wonderful teachings.
21:47: I use a lot of his stuff in my one -hour talk on that. Yeah. So, you know, the reality is, yeah, some people seem to have worse afflictions in this life than others, but the bottom line is, is when you die, you're getting a new body, and it's either going to be one that's in heaven for eternity that is perfect, will never break down, or it's going to be one that is ready for hell that will also never break down and be eternally tormented.
22:14: So, you know, the bottom line is, is that's what we have to look to. Yeah. So thank you for answering that.
22:23: So somebody asked this question earlier today, and by all means, for anybody who's listening, watching live, if you've got questions, you've got
22:32: Pastor Jim and you've got Justin here to answer all your questions. So please jump in and ask those.
22:39: But here's a question, and I'm going to start with Jim on this. This is from Rebecca Croker.
22:45: I'm going to pop it up here. First part of this is, what would you say to a Christian that's okay with curse words, saying they're just words?
22:57: So there's two questions there. I'm looking at the second one. Well, we can do the second one first, if you want. They're okay with drinking, but not getting drunk.
23:05: Yeah, let's handle the first one, curse words. Words are words, but words are tokens.
23:11: They're tokens of things that we, they're just a token that we use to express a meaning. And so, yeah, it's just a word, but if I call that, let's say you have a
23:23: Christian in front of you who makes that claim. If I were to turn the table back around to them and say, what if I were to call your mother a word that refers to a woman who sells her body for a living?
23:33: And that's how I would refer to your mother. Would you be fine with that? And they might say, well, no, I wouldn't be fine with you calling my mother a prostitute or worse words like that.
23:42: Well, why not? It's just a word, right? It's just a word. It doesn't mean anything. Well, words do mean things.
23:47: And it's true that words change over time. And it's somewhat culturally determined.
23:53: I mean, there's words that we use today that I've said in front of people that I don't,
23:59: I never grew up thinking that these things were curse words. I just, but previous generations did.
24:06: A word that rhymes with rap, for instance, is a word that some Christians say, and we say that, but there are people in this world for whom that is a horrible profanity.
24:16: It's just the same as if you were to use another word that describes excrement. In England, there are words in England that we don't think anything about saying, but in England, they're horrible
24:28: English words. So there is a cultural dynamic to it. There is a cultural sensitivity to it, but it's not all culturally determined.
24:36: Sometimes these words do mean things and they communicate horrible things. And sometimes those words communicate the sentiments of our heart and they can reveal our heart being wicked and corrupt and prideful and impenitent and profane.
24:50: And so we need to be careful with our language. And we need to be careful when we use language that it might be offensive to some people.
25:00: So that's how I would, it's not, I'm not okay with just using all kinds of profanity and all kinds of words.
25:06: It's just not right. Paul tells us to make our words be seasoned with salt.
25:13: In Colossians, we are to guard our hearts and our minds and be careful what comes out of our mouth that might edify the hearer.
25:19: And we can't run our mouths and then offend other people and then not take responsibility for it when somebody is not edified by that.
25:29: So we need to be careful with what we say because we're commanded to do so. And to have no fellowship or partnership with the unproofful deeds of darkness and the way that we use our mouths as a way that we can have partnership with darkness.
25:43: But that's my take. Yeah, no, that's excellent. You know, and for me personally, as somebody who came out of a
25:51: Roman Catholic, which is an unbelieving family, Italian where there's a lot of cursing growing up and in the family and whatnot, after you get saved, for me,
26:02: I hear these words and I like, you know, almost convulsed because you know how wicked those words are.
26:11: And I feel the same way when I hear people say, you know, OMG and things like that.
26:16: It's just, it really stuns you when you hear it. And so, yeah,
26:22: I have a hard time personally hearing curse words. And yeah, that's my quick take on it, but.
26:30: I do too, I have a hard time. Well, you know, it doesn't,
26:36: I have to say this carefully, it doesn't offend me when I hear lost people use profanity because we expect lost people act like lost people.
26:44: That's what they do, that's who they are. So what is offensive to me is when I hear Christians or at least professing
26:51: Christians use this kind of language or taking the Lord's name in vain. Yeah, that's what is offensive.
26:58: As Christians, we're supposed to be above that. Yeah, yeah.
27:04: So, okay, so bringing back up Jeff Durbin, right? He was at the conference eight months ago, nine months ago, and he spent a little bit of time explaining why he was about to curse and then he finally curses when he's at the pulpit.
27:19: Not a good thing? Not a good thing. Well, what was the effect of that to what end?
27:26: Like, what's the point of that? You couldn't have said what you needed to say without using that word? Yeah.
27:32: You stooped to the point of thinking that you need to use that word and all of its associations to communicate something that's on your heart in that moment.
27:42: And I would say, you know, you need to be more careful, more measured and more mature in your communication and your use of language.
27:50: And if you can't express yourself without using that word, what are you doing standing behind a pulpit? There's no need for it.
27:56: It's uncalled for. Yeah. Yep. Absolutely uncalled for. Yep, agreed completely.
28:02: Okay, so let's go to the second part now. What about drinking and not getting drunk? You, me, who?
28:11: Well, you can go first, Dustin. Go ahead. Well, I cannot, okay,
28:18: I cannot go where scripture does not go. And I'm not gonna go where scripture does not go.
28:23: I don't think you can make a biblical argument that it is inherently sinful for alcohol to cross your lips.
28:32: If that were true, then you shouldn't ever take cough syrup. So, and I know,
28:39: I don't think you can get around the fact that there, now, I do not think that the wine in the New Testament is as strong or was as strong as what we have in alcoholic drinks today.
28:49: There's clearly alcohol in it because Ephesians five says, do not get drunk with wine. So it was clearly fermented.
28:55: I don't think it was nearly as potent as what we have today. But Proverbs 20, verse one says, wine is a mocker, strong drink is a brawler.
29:07: And whoever is led astray by it is not wise. There are a lot of warnings in scripture about not to abuse alcohol, not to get drunk.
29:17: Getting drunk is clearly a sin. Now, me, I might take a bit of a stronger line on this than some.
29:26: I am a teetotaler and I think I'm using that word correctly. I don't drink at all.
29:31: I have no need for it. I have no desire for it. It's not a thing for me.
29:38: It's just not, it's, I have no, it doesn't benefit me any. And I also want to be very careful to never be a stumbling block to someone.
29:49: I don't wanna be out in a restaurant and say, you know, I mean, I don't even like the taste of it.
29:55: So it's a moot point for me, but say I did like the taste of it and I would have a beer or a glass of wine or whatever at my table and drinking.
30:04: I don't want someone to see me and say, oh, there's Justin Peters and he's drinking a beer.
30:11: He's drinking wine. So it must be okay. And maybe that person that sees me do that, maybe it's gonna be a stumbling block for that person.
30:20: It could be a stumbling block. Maybe that person uses me as an excuse to drink and it becomes a problem for that person.
30:26: And they, it does get to the point of them being drunk or maybe turning into alcoholic or something.
30:33: I just, I don't need it. I don't wanna, I don't wanna be a stumbling block. So I would not lose a wink of sleep if every alcoholic drink on the planet were to suddenly vaporize.
30:47: I wouldn't, it wouldn't bother me any. I think that we're told to have concern for the weaker brother.
30:56: And there are a lot of people, there's a lot of Christians, genuine sheep, true Christians, who have been saved out of that stuff.
31:04: They've been saved out of alcoholism or maybe their parents were alcoholics. And I have concern for them.
31:11: I have care for them. And so I'm just not gonna be a stumbling block for them. I just, I don't need it.
31:17: I don't think anything good comes out of it. So anyway, but if you're at home and you, the privacy of your own home and you drink a beer or a glass of wine or whatever,
31:30: I'm not gonna say that you're sinning and doing that. But I would urge a lot of caution before you take your
31:40: Christian liberty and flaunt it in front of people. That I have a problem with.
31:47: That I have a problem. And I see Christians doing that. Having bodies in a pub or over some beer and flaunting their
31:55: Christian liberties. That's a problem. That shows a disregard for the weaker brother.
32:00: And I think it's very unwise. Yeah. Yeah, great thoughts. Pastor Jim, anything?
32:07: Yeah, I would add, like Justin, I won't go beyond what's written. Scripture doesn't condemn drinking alcohol.
32:14: It does condemn drunkenness. And I know that there are people who would say, well, if you drink one drink of alcohol, then you're just one drink drunk, right?
32:20: Well, that's not true. I mean, that's like saying if you have one bite of steak, you're one bite a glutton. There's obviously a point where you cross from using something to abusing something.
32:31: So drunkenness is clearly a sin. Drinking alcohol is not a sin.
32:36: I do think that flaunting your, I don't think that exercising your Christian liberty is sinful.
32:41: I do think that flaunting your Christian liberty or exercising your Christian liberty in some circumstances can be sinful.
32:48: So like Justin, I've noticed a trend, especially with the onset of social media of Christians who when they turn 21, they have to show a picture of them, their cup of wine.
32:59: My dad took me out to the bar and here's what I'm doing. I'm 21 now, I can drink. And I think that there's a, it just seems to me that's immature.
33:08: Immature and unnecessary. You don't need to do that. And yes, you have the Christian liberty to go out and drink.
33:14: Yes, you do. That's true. And using that Christian liberty is not sinful. I can't be responsible with what everybody does with what they might see me do in public.
33:25: So for instance, if I'm out eating a steak in public, somebody might suggest, might look at that and say, well,
33:31: I guess if Pastor Jim thinks it's okay to eat steak, I can go home and eat a whole bunch of steak and become a glutton and gain a bunch of weight.
33:38: Or if Pastor Jim eats cheesecake, I can have five pieces of cheesecake, I guess, and I can become a overweight slob.
33:45: That's, I can't take responsibility for everything somebody does with my example, but I can be very careful and diligent and try the best that I can to prevent anybody else misreading my use of Christian liberty.
34:00: But eventually there does come a point as Christians where we have to be aware that we do have that liberty and we can use that liberty and our conscience should be informed by scripture.
34:11: And the person who thinks, well, my conscience would bother me. I don't wanna do it. And I'd say, okay, then that's fine. Don't do it.
34:16: I don't care. And the Christian who says that I have the freedom to drink, I'm fine with that as well. And I've been in situations where I've seen people drink and I thought, it's probably just not, that's just not the best time to do it, but that's my take on it.
34:29: And I don't condemn them for doing it. I don't think it's sinful for them to do it. Yeah, I think wine is a gift.
34:37: I mean, there are warnings in scripture and the one that Justin just gave, there are warnings in scripture, but Jesus turned water into wine, not grape juice.
34:45: And I know that the teetotaler Baptist argument is to take every negative reference to wine in the scripture and say, well, that's alcoholic wine.
34:51: And every non -negative reference to wine say, that was only grape juice. There's no alcohol there. And they read that into the, that's their hermeneutic.
34:58: The word wine is determined by whether or not it's positive or negative. And so they begin with that assumption. And I don't think we can do that with the pages of scripture.
35:06: Wine makes the heart merry. Wine makes us joyful. Wine is a sign of God's blessing. And it was alcoholic wine, not just grape juice.
35:12: So, I mean, those things, those are symbols of God's blessing into the Old Testament. And they were spoken well of in certain contexts in the
35:19: Old Testament. Drunkenness is always condemned. And I think that that's something that's unquestionable. Yeah.
35:25: And I actually take the exact same position as you on that, Jim. My biggest issue is the flaunting of it.
35:31: Yeah. There's conferences that have their entire first night of the conference with kegs of beer and social hour before they get into the conference on Saturday.
35:40: And so it's quite a popular one too. Yeah. So you guys probably know what that is, but it's,
35:45: I just, yeah, I disagree with the flaunting aspect of it, especially when there's others around that, as you said,
35:51: Justin, have gotten saved out of this. They're always going to be prone to it. They should not have alcohol drunk in front of them.
35:59: Certainly. So. Yeah. Kathy and I have a friend of ours, a lady who was saved out of lesbianism and alcoholism.
36:08: And shortly after her conversion, she was just trying to get her theological legs underneath her and try to, you know, get her bearings, find a good church.
36:15: And she contacted a pastor and a pastor said, hey, meet me at this bar, you know?
36:20: And it's like, what are you doing? That's just so unwise. So. Wow.
36:28: Not, not good. No. Well, thank you guys for that. Heidi, you said you were trying to post a question, but I've never done it before.
36:34: This is a test. Your test worked. So go ahead and ask away. KT and Jesus says that God uses secondary causes, not the chargeable cause of evil, but he fordains all things.
36:45: Going back to Mike Riccardi. Yes, that is part of Mike Riccardi's teachings. He, he says that God is the ultimate cause for everything, but he's not the chargeable cause.
36:55: And, and so, yeah, he's got some great, great teachings on that. So, you know, when he used the example of Christ's death on the cross, he talked about how it was the foreordained plan for the foundation of the world.
37:07: That God would put Jesus on a cross, right? Between the father and Holy spirit,
37:13: Jesus would go on the cross. So God is the ultimate cause of Christ going on the cross to die.
37:19: But yet the proximate and efficient causes, proximate cause were the Jews who incited the
37:25: Romans, who were the, were the effective cause for actually putting them on the cross. And that the reason why
37:31: Jesus, that the reason why God is not charged as a chargeable offense is because the
37:37: Jews and Romans carried out the evilness, the hearts that they were going to carry out anyway. And so in God's sovereignty, they did it.
37:44: It's charged to them, not charged to God and yet God ordains all things. So that's a quick synopsis of what, what those teachings were over.
37:53: And I know that all those are, his slides are available online as well as his, his sermons and they transcribed everything.
38:00: So it's all on there. So good stuff. So here's the next question from, from actually one of our church members, very nice lady,
38:09: Carol. And you got to meet her, Justin, at the last conference. So she, and she was sitting kind of right up front towards the left and, and she had two of her friends with her.
38:22: Okay. Yeah. Yeah. I remember Carol. So she asked this question when she posted this at the time of the, when you were talking about the young kid who renounced his faith, right?
38:33: Coming with God. So this is a great question. And I'd love all of you to answer this. What is this term backsliding in Christianity?
38:42: How do we properly view backsliding? Well, that's a tough one.
38:48: Yeah. That's a tough one because it's, it's like saying, are you a Calvinist? You got to define for me what you mean by Calvinist, because some people would use the term backsliding to refer to a
38:58: Christian whose, whose affections for the Lord wane, wax and wane. And this that's true for sometimes our affections for the
39:05: Lord are really warm and on fire. And we feel the Lord's presence. And we really are, our hearts are warmed and filled with joy and other times life gets tough.
39:13: And we go through a season where things are dry and it's more difficult to, to be emotionally connected or feel the affections that we should have for the
39:20: Lord. That's the natural ebb and flow of the Christian life. And that's effect sometimes by hormones or age or life circumstances or, or whatever happens.
39:28: And so that's what some people mean by backsliding is just, I'm just not on fire for the Lord as I used to be.
39:33: Other people mean that they lost their salvation. And then there's everything in between those two extremes, right?
39:39: So it could be, he made a profession of faith and now he's fallen away from that profession of faith, or it could be, he made a profession of faith and he was at church and he's no longer attending church for a season.
39:48: Or some, some pastors would think that backsliding just means that they're not attending my church right now. They're going to the other church over town where they do that expository stuff.
39:56: So obviously this guy's a backslider. So what do you mean by backsliding? There's a whole bunch of definitions there.
40:03: I would say that, is it possible for Christian to lose their salvation? No. Is it possible for a Christian to stop attending church, to fall into neglect and apathy for a period of time?
40:13: Yes, that is possible. When does that become evidence that they're not saved and their profession of faith was merely a profession and not actually a possession of eternal life?
40:22: That's where I think that there's a time factor there that I don't know that I can judge. I would say that it's possible that if somebody falls away from that profession and is continuing to live an unrepentant sin and confronted with the truth, they don't repent.
40:37: The longer that goes on, the more forcefully that goes on, the more reason we have to question their legitimacy of their salvation.
40:44: Amen to that. Yeah. And I agree with everything you just said, maybe just to add on a little bit.
40:50: Backsliding is not a term you'll find in the New Testament. It's an Old Testament concept for Israel.
40:56: And so Israel would backslide, but that would be a long season, years.
41:04: So it's not a New Testament concept. So I'm really reluctant to say that a
41:09: Christian is backslidden because I think you're comparing apples and oranges with Old Testament Israel to New Testament believers who are indwelt by the
41:19: Holy Spirit with a new covenant and all that. So I'm not comfortable talking about a
41:25: Christian being backslidden. Now, as Jim said, yes, our affections for God, even as genuine
41:33: Christians do kind of ebb and wane from time to time. And there is evidence in the
41:38: New Testament of genuine Christians who stray from the Lord for a season, for a season.
41:45: The Corinthians did it, but Paul wrote them the tearful letter, the painful letter, and brought them to a place of repentance.
41:52: So it's not something that can continue indefinitely in the life of a believer.
41:59: And there's a couple of passages, couple of texts in the New Testament that are there for this very purpose.
42:06: One is Hebrews 12. If you stray from the Lord as a
42:12: Christian in some sin, he will discipline you. He's going to put you in Hebrews chapter 12.
42:18: He's going to discipline you and he will bring you back. And it will bear the peaceful fruits of repentance.
42:24: And also Matthew 18, that's why that text is there. So if you are a
42:31: Christian and you're, as you should be, a member of a local church and you begin to engage in some habitual, unrepentant sin for a while, and that is noticed by others, as it inevitably will be, that person goes and confronts you and you follow the steps of church discipline.
42:47: And if you're truly a Christian, then you will be brought to a place of repentance by the time that process is completed, so.
42:56: Yeah, and that's really the key point of this, right? Is that backsliding, you're right, Jim, has been used in so many contexts in so many ways.
43:03: And a lot of it's used by churches who believe that you can lose your salvation, right? So we have to remove that part from the equation first and foremost.
43:12: Unequivocally, if you are truly saved, you're saved. The Holy Spirit enters into you as the guarantee of your inheritance until you acquire possession of it, as we see in Ephesians.
43:21: So nobody loses their salvation. So the question is, are they a believer who is what you're terming as backsliding, right?
43:30: That they are in a short period of time, unrepentant sin, before the Lord brings them out of it, the whole time they're saved?
43:37: Or is it somebody who made a false profession, they were actually never saved to begin with, and now we're just going off and doing what they wanna do anyway?
43:46: Right, I think that's kind of the point of this understanding. But it's the presupposition of never losing your salvation if you truly have it.
43:55: Yep. So good. Okay, so here's another good one.
44:00: Now, Michael Salmon, why do I remember this name? He's the oneness
44:06: Pentecostal, isn't he? Yeah. He's not a believer. So I'll entertain the question,
44:12: Michael, but first and foremost, if you are who I think you are, you need to repent and believe the gospel.
44:17: I think he is. And you need to understand who God is and it's the Father, Son, Holy Spirit, three persons, one
44:24: Godhead. Because you don't have the right Jesus as a oneness.
44:30: I think for a while, if memory serves, we were kind of operating under the assumption that he was like a
44:35: Pentecostal charismatic, but then the more we realized, oh, wait, this guy's oneness.
44:42: So we got bigger problems than just the continuous issue. Is he watching right now? I'm guessing he is.
44:49: So if you guys wanna say a word before he answers the question, please do it. Well, I think what you've said is adequate.
44:55: If you've denied the doctrine of the Trinity, then this question is far more secondary to that. And every question we've asked is secondary to getting that issue right.
45:04: Amen to that. That's right. I had a guy come over to my house one time. He wanted to argue with me about election and in the process of that, he started to mention my sermon from earlier that morning where he said,
45:14: I disagree with your view that Jesus was fully God and fully man. And I think he was some amalgamation of the two. And I just stopped and I said, hold on right there.
45:22: Time out. The issue of election aside, we need to deal with this issue. If you honestly believe that, you are lost right now as we speak.
45:29: Yep. So yeah, you gotta get that issue right. Michael Salmon says we have the wrong person.
45:34: I don't know. It's weird. I mean, if that's the case, then there's another guy that I think has his same name.
45:41: Yeah, but it's weird. You and I would both think the same thing. Cause that really... Yeah, yeah. Unless I'm dreaming, man.
45:47: You led me astray again. Sorry if we led you astray. And sorry, Michael, I did not mean to slander you if that is true.
45:55: So I'm obviously talking about the other one. Okay, so let's answer this question then.
46:01: That's the Christian view of dating. What is it? Is dating biblical or what the world does, right?
46:10: Cause I guess we gotta define some terms here. Or is it more of what Voti talks about in his books on courtship, which is supposed to lead to marriage pretty quickly, right?
46:21: You should have an idea really quick that this person... I think you don't enter into a courtship unless you're considering marriage for this person already.
46:29: And then you enter courtship and it shouldn't be a very long courtship before you recognize, yeah, I'm gonna marry or not.
46:36: But so I guess let's use this as the premise of their dating we're gonna use as the outside world, secular world versus biblical courtship.
46:44: How do you guys view that? So especially Jim, I mean, you're in a church, I'm sure you have young people.
46:50: Like how do you counsel young people when they're seeking a marriage partner? My counsel is always that you do not continue to date someone once you have come to the conclusion that this person is not somebody that I can marry.
47:06: And if you're not sure, if you don't think that that's someone you can marry, if you're like, well,
47:11: I just, I can't, even if you haven't come to the conclusion that I can't marry them, if you look at them and think,
47:18: I don't think I could marry them, but I might try and date them to find out, then my counsel is don't date them.
47:25: By dating, I think what we mean is the world's view of dating, in which case I would say that's completely unbiblical notion.
47:30: We're just gonna try before we buy. And we have to have a boyfriend or a girlfriend in order to be like the rest of the world.
47:38: And we should just go from one person to another until we stumble upon Mr. and Mrs. Right. And I would counsel against that.
47:46: I'm not sure about the overly structured courtship model that is often promoted in many circles.
47:54: To me, that sounds a lot like what I would call a Christian view of dating, which is I'm interested in this person, this person is interested in me.
48:01: Okay, well, go out and have coffee with that person, with some friends, spend some time with that person, getting to know them, get to know their parents, hang out with their family, have them hang out with your family.
48:13: And if at some point that continues to grow and you're like, well, this is, I could see myself marrying this person, then you need to start having that conversation and moving that direction as fast as you can.
48:24: And if you can't see yourself ever marrying that person, you get to the point where you're like, I just can't fit in with this family, they're friends or not my friends, this would be really rough,
48:31: I'm not sure I could live with this, then you need to break it off immediately. Because if you can't see yourself marrying that person, there's no point in continuing to spend the time and the resources and the effort to get to know them and you're just opening yourself up to the temptation for sexual immorality at that point.
48:48: Right. So how long should somebody be in this courtship, this
48:53: Christian courtship slash dating mode? Well, I don't know, my son, my oldest son started being interested in his current wife when he was 16 years old.
49:04: So that had to last at least two years. And so he spent a lot of time with her family over at her mom and dad's house and she spent time here and they went out with friends together and when they got to be 18 years old, then they started moving toward marriage and he proposed to her and they got married six months later.
49:24: So as soon as it was feasible for him to move out and to sustain a family, they moved right toward that.
49:31: But that was his goal, right? He knew from the time that he was very young that he wanted to grow up, get married young, have children young, get a job, sustain a family, be a man.
49:41: That was his goal. It shouldn't, I mean, if you're 20 years old and you're starting that process, it shouldn't take you but a couple of months to figure out if that's a fit or not, really.
49:51: And if it is, then make plans and get married. If you're going to get married, make plans and get married. Yeah, that seems reasonable.
49:59: It shouldn't go on, you shouldn't have these open -ended, yeah, we're engaged, we haven't set a date yet. Okay, if you're engaged more than a week and you haven't set a date, you're just either lazy or stupid or inept or apathetic or you're really not interested in this, you need to grow up, set a date.
50:13: I mean, Justin and I can figure, we're going to go have lunch and we can set a date right then. Set a date, figure out what it is and get married.
50:20: And you shouldn't be engaged for five years. I would say my counsel is don't be engaged longer than six months.
50:26: You need about six months to plan the wedding or make arrangements, right? Book the venue, find the pastor, go through the marriage counseling.
50:33: Six months is all you need. That's the open, that's the back end of that. That's the longest I think
50:39: I would ever counsel and do that. These people who say, I've been engaged for two years and we're getting married two years from now.
50:44: No, you're not, you're just opening yourself up to sexual immorality. Yeah, or oftentimes, they're just playing married couple and just waiting to formalize it.
50:55: So, yeah, I mean, you come in. They're really not certain they're going to get married and they're putting it off because they've kind of put their toe in the water and they've committed to this person, but they haven't really committed to this person.
51:06: And they're waiting for that opportunity to pull the escape hatch. Yeah. Okay, so let's dive in a little bit further.
51:12: And I'm interested because I have a 14 1⁄2 year old son who I pray he has got a great amount of Bible knowledge more than most people
51:20: I know, honestly, especially about the Old Testament. He's a sponge for it. I'm not saved yet, I don't believe.
51:26: And, but, you know, I'm already as a parent, I'm like, hmm, what families out there are good families with daughters about his age?
51:34: And so I'm already kind of looking at this. When I was younger and single, I thought the idea of arranged marriage was just horrible.
51:41: Once I became a parent, I realized there's a lot of wisdom in the idea of arranged marriages. That's what I'm saying. I got to convince him of that now.
51:49: But, okay, so, okay, the idea of the dating world is that you date somebody to make sure you're like perfectly compatible before you finally say
52:01: I do. Now, of course, most of the time you've played marriage the whole time anyway, right?
52:06: You know, sex and sharing expenses, and I mean, living together, all that kind of stuff. What do you believe about, how do you know when that person is the right one?
52:17: Right, so you say it takes, it should be just a few months, six months at most before you know.
52:23: Like, obviously you can't figure out, you can't figure out an entire person's persona within six months.
52:30: So what parts do you need to know are, these are it, this is what we need to, this is what we have to match up on and understand that otherwise we're sinners and we're gonna have to be scriptural about how we handle marriage going forward.
52:44: I don't know if that makes sense to you. Yeah, it does. Yeah, I, a lot of times we ask the question, how do
52:49: I know if this is the right one? And I think we should go into that asking, do I know that this is the wrong one?
52:55: Like, is there something about this person that I just think I cannot abide by this? And if there's not, then why would you not move forward in a relationship with that person?
53:04: Now, you wanna make sure, I think that there are certain things that you have to make sure are there compatible, that you're not being unequally yoked, that this person is qualified to be married to me.
53:14: Like, if it's somebody who is divorced and they're trying to remarry and it's an unbiblical divorce or an unbiblical remarriage or whatever your view on that is, then obviously they would not be qualified.
53:23: There are things that might disqualify them, but beyond those obvious disqualifications, if there's nothing biblically that disqualifies them, then you should be,
53:31: I think, looking for things where you're going to be alike and a lot alike, doctrinally, philosophically, ministry, the style of church, the type of church, what you believe about, a lot of secondary and tertiary issues.
53:43: It's unwise to go into a marriage relationship with somebody that, yeah, they may be a Christian, but maybe they think that they are gonna speak in tongues to ask you to pass the salt every night at the dinner table.
53:54: That's unwise, right? If your view of tongues and worship and preaching and the word of God are so divergent that you can't even discuss theology together, that's a non -workable thing.
54:06: So yeah, there might not be any moral issues that would keep you from marrying that person, but if you can't agree on theological issues, you're just in for a veil of tears for your remainder of your life, because everything becomes theological after you're married.
54:19: Where do we go to church? When do we go to church? Where are we serving at church? What's our view of spiritual gifts? How are we raising our kids?
54:25: What are we telling them is right and wrong? And the minute you have a kid, all of a sudden you have to ask yourself, whose theology are we gonna teach this kid?
54:32: So those secondary issues become very important later on. And I would say that, yeah, you could marry somebody whom you might disagree with on the subject of tongues or hearing from God or baptism or covenant or something like that, but you just, you gotta prepare yourself for, the more you disagree, the more difficult your life together is gonna be.
54:52: And you can't always ignore that. A lot of people go into marriage thinking they can ignore that, but those are just secondary issues.
54:57: We'll just never discuss those. Well, eventually you're gonna run out of things to discuss and those theological issues are gonna come up somewhere, somehow, in church, amongst your friends or whatever, and it's just gonna be a point of conflict.
55:09: So you wanna agree on as much as you possibly can going into marriage. And if you're physically attracted to this person and it's not morally prohibited and you agree on a whole lot of things and you're like -minded and you have that kindred spirit inside of you on the things of God and doctrinal, secondary and tertiary issues, then pursue marriage with that person and stop asking yourself, is this the right one?
55:34: Yeah, great advice. Thank you for that. Anything you wanna add, Justin, or?
55:39: I really have nothing to add. No, I agree with everything he was saying. Yeah, cool. So here's a question that was asked to me before the show.
55:48: And so, Justin, you met Alex Wright in Orlando when we did the conference last May at Pastor Casey's church.
55:56: And so he said he's run across this, and I've never heard this term before.
56:01: It's called intinction. When some churches dip the bread in the wine before they partake of the
56:13: Lord's Supper. And so this is, I had to look this up because I thought
56:19: I've heard them all. I have not heard this one before. Apparently it's big in a lot of Roman Catholic church,
56:27: Eastern Orthodox churches, and some Protestant churches, although I don't know that I'd call
56:32: Episcopalians Protestants, Episcopals Protestants because they're a little off, but Episcopals apparently practice this.
56:41: So rather than taking each element separately, bread first and then the wine, they dip them and take them together.
56:49: And so why Alex brought this up is because he knows somebody goes to a church in Southern Florida who has some pretty prominent people apparently at it, that they do the
57:00: Lord's Supper once a month, what we would call normally. And then every week in Sunday school, there's a group of guys that get together that have this conviction about intinction.
57:11: And so they practice the Lord's Supper every week in Sunday school, just among themselves. Yeah, I mean, that part is odd in itself, right?
57:22: Yeah, there's two issues going on there. Yeah, yeah. So, okay, the second part, them meeting alone is just off.
57:31: So I think we've gone over there. Yeah, I'm opposed to doing communion outside of the function of a local church or a body of believers.
57:41: Like there are people who say, go to the hospital and bring this person communion or do communion as part of your wedding ceremony.
57:47: I refuse to do that. Or you meet for a Bible study in a small home as a function of your church and you're doing communion.
57:54: I'm opposed to that. I don't think that that represents a high view of the sacraments. I agree.
58:00: Yeah. Yeah, every time we see communion in the New Testament, we see the local church gathered together. It's not something you do at home.
58:07: It's not something you do over the live stream with your two or three believers or whatever.
58:14: Yeah. Yeah, it should be administered by the leadership, the spiritual shepherds of a flock.
58:20: Okay. Yeah. So what about this idea of intinction? Like, is that biblical? Is it not biblical?
58:26: Is it? What is it intended to symbolize? Do you know? The dipping of the bread in the water. What's the theological symbolism that they're going for?
58:33: So in the passage on, when it tells us what to do, whether it was first Corinthians, that the way it's written, they take it as it's happening together rather than one at a time.
58:45: So that's what I've read in the websites I could find is that it's interpreted as taken together, not separately.
58:53: And that's it. I didn't see anything else theologically for it. So if the Lord's order is the bread first and then the wine, there seems to be an intentional order.
59:05: And the order seems to be reflected even in the Passover meal, if I remember correctly, and the
59:11: Lord taking each of those symbols separately and using them to point to himself. So therefore there seems to be in the
59:17: Lord's institution of that, this bifurcation between the two things and taking in a certain order and doing them separately as teaching emblems, and I don't think that communion should just be one or just be the other.
59:31: I don't think that that's it. I think that you have to have both and that they have to be taken. I wouldn't say they have to be taken like with five minutes between them or anything.
59:43: And for instance, when we do our annual meeting, we have communion, we pass out both the bread and the juice at the wine.
59:50: We don't do wine, but the bread and the juice at the same time. By the way, there are people who would argue that wine is mandated for communion.
59:57: I was just about to ask you that. Yeah, because we had, in fact, there's an interesting book since we talked about the alcohol prior,
01:00:05: I just finished this year, an interesting book called Drinking with Luther and Calvin, the History of Alcohol in the
01:00:10: Church. So it's a church history of the early church fathers, Luther, Calvin, the reformers, and how they viewed alcohol and what they did with alcohol.
01:00:17: And he makes an argument in there that we should be using wine for communion. It's a doctrinal argument.
01:00:22: It was interesting. But anyway, at our annual meeting, we pass out the bread and the juice, and then
01:00:27: I say, this is my body, which is broken for you to do this in remembrance of me, and we chew that. And then I say, likewise, the
01:00:34: Lord said, this is the cup of the new covenant. In my blood, do this as often as you drink it in remembrance of me, and we do it.
01:00:39: And it's separated by maybe five or 10 seconds. But though they're separate, they're both together, right, immediately together, because we pass them both out.
01:00:48: So I don't think that the argument could be made that they need to be separated by some specified length of time. But I don't know that the argument could be made that you dip one in the other and take them together.
01:00:56: I don't know why you couldn't take one and then, a couple seconds later, take the other. You have to,
01:01:01: I think, keep that distinction, because they are two things. There are two symbols there. Yeah. Yeah, that's my thought, too.
01:01:08: I've seen that done in a couple of churches. They've been overseas. In some of the churches,
01:01:14: I've been in a few times, a handful of times, maybe two or three times, I've seen that done.
01:01:20: And it's like, that's weird. So I guess that's what that is. I came to find out today that Mike Reed does that in his church, too.
01:01:30: Is that right? He does it right there. Yeah, so. That's definitely not the look
01:01:36: I'm going for, so. Whatever that's worth, right? So I'm gonna add Pastor Design Nichols to the show.
01:01:42: I invited him to come on. Hey. I'll answer some questions, so. I don't know if you know Jim at all.
01:01:49: I've seen you on here, but I don't think we've ever talked in person. Nice to meet you.
01:01:55: So Pastor Josiah pastors a church in Southern Illinois. So Andrew and I have been out there a few times now, so.
01:02:02: Josiah's faithful as a pastor. And written some great books on hermeneutics, by the way.
01:02:09: Really good books, so. Yeah. Okay, so our next question. Heidi gave us her question now.
01:02:16: We are warned against taking Jeremiah 29 11 as a personal promise. So I don't know if maybe one of you guys wants to tackle that part, just in case anybody doesn't understand
01:02:26: Jeremiah 29 11, why we are not to take that ourselves. But then she says, however, Hebrews 13 five quotes
01:02:33: Deuteronomy 31 six and Deuteronomy 31 eight as a personal promise to Joshua repeated in Joshua 1 five.
01:02:40: So why should we take that? So let me read Jeremiah 29 11 first.
01:02:45: And I'll let you guys address that. And of course
01:02:50: I will read the verse before it. So Jeremiah 29 11 says, for I know the plans
01:02:59: I have for you declares the Lord, plans for welfare and not for evil to give you a future and a hope.
01:03:05: Right, so we see this on backpacks, coffee mugs. I mean, it's probably the number one abused verse in the world today.
01:03:12: Maybe Philippians 4 13. But - Judge not that you be not judged. That's number one. Oh, that's another big one too.
01:03:18: Yeah, I forgot all that one. And I hear that all the time too. But so we often tell people, you gotta back up one verse in Jeremiah for thus says the
01:03:26: Lord when 70 years are completed for Babylon, I will visit you and I will fulfill to you my promise and bring you back to this place for I know the plans
01:03:35: I have for you declares the Lord and so on. So I don't know, Justin, maybe you wanna tackle that cause this is used all the time by some of your favorite guys on your calls about water videos.
01:03:47: Yeah, it is. Yeah, it's definitely overused.
01:03:53: And I don't think you can take it as an individual promise. You couldn't have even done that if you had been a
01:04:02: Jew in this day and age and you were in Babylonian captivity because the
01:04:07: Babylonian captivity lasted for 70 years. And so there were a whole bunch of Jews who died inside that Babylonian captivity.
01:04:18: In fact, you could have been born five years inside of the Babylonian captivity, lived until you were 60 years old and you would have spent your entire life in Babylonian captivity.
01:04:29: So it was not an individual promise, it was a corporate promise to the nation of Israel. So yeah,
01:04:37: Jeremiah 29, 11 is way, way, way overused. Now, Jim is actually preaching through the book of Hebrews right now.
01:04:46: So Jim, you might wanna. Yeah, I haven't got to Hebrews 13, five so I don't even know what to do with that. Okay.
01:04:53: I'm kidding. Hermeneutically speaking, there's two different kinds of promises.
01:04:59: There are promises that God makes to all these people all the time, which is universally true whether you are in Babylon or Kootenai or Cleveland, it doesn't matter.
01:05:09: God will never leave us or forsake us, for instance. And I think that's what she's quoting there, right? Hebrews 13, five. Yeah, it says, keep your life free from love of money and be content with what you have for he has said,
01:05:19: I will never leave you nor forsake you. Yeah, so I mean, that is true to all of God's people.
01:05:26: So that is a promise that I can claim. That would be like, imagine if a Christian tried to claim the promise that if they built an ark that God would preserve two of every kind and their family through a flood.
01:05:37: And they said, that's the verse I'm gonna claim. I'm gonna start building a boat in my backyard and trust that God's gonna bring two of every creature to my backyard.
01:05:44: You would look at them and you'd think that's crazy. And I'd say, well, that's the same thing is true with Jeremiah 29, 11. But there is a principle in Jeremiah 29, 11.
01:05:51: The principle is that, yeah, God knows everything and he knows me and he knows me by name, that's true. But that promise is not mine to claim.
01:05:58: Whereas the promise in Hebrews 13, five is mine to claim because that happens to be true for all God's people for Jeremiah and for the
01:06:05: Jews, the believing Jews who were in captivity and for me today and for Charles Spurgeon and for Paul and for the original audience of the book of Hebrews.
01:06:13: That's a universally true promise that God does not leave us his people or forsake us his people because he has covenanted himself to us.
01:06:21: So we always have to be careful when we read a promise that we're understanding the original intention and whether there's a principle behind that or not that is universally applicable.
01:06:32: Yeah. Josiah, you wanna add anything to that? Yeah, you wrote the book on hermeneutics, man. You should be part of it.
01:06:37: There's several. Well, I couldn't have said it better than either two of you.
01:06:44: Jeremiah 29, 11 is for, it's promising that they will return from Babylonian captivity.
01:06:52: It's not promising health, wealth and prosperity. And it says in context to build houses, plant vineyards, it says to marry.
01:07:06: So as Christians, we can look at this verse and say, well, the one thing we can pull from it is that God fulfills his promises, right?
01:07:14: So that part, everyone can take. I mean, even Jeremiah 29, 11 is tied to Jeremiah's promise of the new covenant that is to come, which comes later on in that chapter.
01:07:23: And that promise is only true in Jeremiah 29, 11 to the nation of Israel because God was covenanting with them to bring them back into the land so that he could give to them, ultimately the eschatological and salvific promises of the new covenant.
01:07:38: So God will never leave that nation. And that is true that he would bring them back into that land because it was
01:07:44: Jeremiah 29, 11 was a reminder to the nation of Israel. You are God's chosen people and he will accomplish the purposes that he laid out for Abraham.
01:07:54: That promise given to Abraham, that promise given to David, those two unconditional covenants are going to be fulfilled by God.
01:08:01: Therefore, he will bring you back into that land to fulfill the new covenant, which and to give them the new covenant, which he details in Jeremiah 31, two chapters later.
01:08:12: So that promise is not just a proverbial calendar phrase or calendar saying that we wanna put on backpacks that we just sort of thrown out there as a general feel good reminder to all
01:08:24: God's people. That's tied to the Abrahamic covenant. That promise is there because of what
01:08:30: God said to Abraham. And so it's anchored in the Abrahamic promise, not just one of these general feel good chicken soup for the soul kind of promises that Christians like to claim today.
01:08:41: Amen. And you mentioned eschatological. So I told Justin earlier today on a text that I wanna do a show on why dispensationalism is right.
01:08:53: And so I think we need to do that show in the future here because I know Jim, you know this really well.
01:09:02: I sent Andrew an email actually, and I said, I think I can make the case that in order to fulfill the
01:09:12: Davidic, the Abrahamic and the new covenant, bodily resurrection is necessary for the fulfillment of all three of those covenants.
01:09:21: So about a year ago, I made the case that bodily resurrection is necessary for the fulfillment of the Davidic covenant.
01:09:26: I'm willing to say it's necessary for the fulfillment of the Abrahamic covenant and the new covenant.
01:09:32: And I would love to make that case. And so if your eschatology does not require bodily resurrection for the fulfillment of those three covenants, then you do not have the same eschatology as Peter, Paul, Jesus, or Ezekiel.
01:09:43: Amen. So we need to do that show in the future. Yeah, I'm not gonna defend Scofieldian dispensationalism or every kind of dispensationalism, but I will defend premillennialism.
01:09:55: And if that makes you a dispensationalist being a premillennialist, then so be it. Yeah. Cool. Yeah, I'd love to do that show.
01:10:03: So, okay, that's sorry. That wasn't a little aside there. It was a good one though. I'm excited about it.
01:10:09: Sign me up. I will do that. We actually, one of our church members, Alan Beach, who's been on the show before, is an expert with End Time.
01:10:17: So he's doing a private Bible study at our house with people from different churches going through End Times.
01:10:23: And so he's working through Daniel and Ezekiel and Jeremiah. And it's gonna be 13 to 14 total hours.
01:10:30: And he's doing a one hour every other Sunday or so right now. And so it's been really good so far.
01:10:37: So I'll probably add him to that show whenever we do that one of these days. Jim, you should write another book along, or maybe add a chapter to God Doesn't Try.
01:10:47: God Doesn't Try to Have a Millennial Kingdom. I have a chapter in that book and I'm only a few weeks away from getting it written, hopefully, but it's
01:10:57: God Doesn't Try to Establish His Kingdom. That's gonna be a, that is going to be a chapter in the book. Oh, it is gonna be a chapter in the book?
01:11:03: It is, yeah. Man, that was a word of knowledge. I've just - I know, I know.
01:11:08: I'm charismatic. Wow, you just got a Sean Pace prophecy. I'm charismatic. I'm gonna start breaking out in tongues here any second.
01:11:15: Wow. If you would have said, let us say it the Lord and not, hey, this is a good idea, I would believe it was revelation. There you go.
01:11:23: Wow. All right, so here's another question. So thank you guys for giving questions. Keep asking them.
01:11:28: And I am getting to them, I promise you. I'll get to every one of them. So One Eternal Perspective, I don't know who that is, says,
01:11:35: I am in an SBC church of around 900. A concern I have is several people in my church practice yoga.
01:11:41: Any suggestions as to how I can encourage my pastor to warn people about this? Explain it's essential to Hindu theology.
01:11:51: And that's how they get rid of their bad karmas through yoga.
01:12:01: If you're gonna do stretching to Bible verses, call it stretching to Bible verses.
01:12:08: Don't - Don't stretch to Bible verses. So we shouldn't take dominion over yoga is what you're saying?
01:12:17: I shouldn't go postal on them. Just like I can't take dominion over the Hindu practice of speaking gibberish and calling it tongues.
01:12:29: Yeah. You know, that's syncretism. You know, it's bringing in worldly philosophies and blatantly anti -Christian, anti -biblical philosophies and trying to baptize them.
01:12:43: There's just no, there's no place for that. There's a scriptural prohibition against that.
01:12:49: So yeah, there's no such thing as Christian yoga that's mutually exclusive terms.
01:12:57: Yeah. Any more than you can have Christian Buddhism, Christian Hinduism. And it's nonsensical.
01:13:04: Or Christian science, yeah. Or theistic evolution. Yeah. Yeah.
01:13:10: You know, what's interesting is I've been doing some more studies into the new age, because I saw a pastor,
01:13:18: I preached at his church last Sunday, I'll be there again this Sunday in our area. And he told me that there's a lot of Wiccan and new age places that are popping up in the
01:13:28: Cleveland, Ohio area. So I intend to go visit them and see them, what's going on in there a little bit.
01:13:34: But as I've been doing some more research on new age, apparently we're seeing a lot of witchcraft, new age,
01:13:41: Buddhism, Hinduism, kind of amalgamating together into this new, new age mysticism.
01:13:49: So I don't know if you guys have read anything about that, but yoga is being incorporated into this witchcraft and new age, this new, new age thing, so.
01:14:00: Yeah, isn't mindfulness part of that as well? I mean, there's a kind of a Buddhism element to that that's kind of being brought into a lot of public sectors, public schools and universities and businesses as well.
01:14:14: Yes, there is, ton of that mindfulness. So, and of course, it brings all the other stuff in, right, karma, how often do we hear people talk about karma, which is that Eastern concept that's being brought into this new, new age stuff.
01:14:32: And it's weird, as I've researched online the best I could so far, you see elements of post -modernism into this new age in how they view things.
01:14:42: You see some of the post -truth, which is what post -modernism is turning into now. It really is just kind of this amalgamation of everything bad being put together with witchcraft added to it.
01:14:56: So it's really, it's interesting. I'll be, as I continue to research, I'll bring it out on Apologetics Live in the future.
01:15:03: I'm still trying to get my head wrapped around all of this stuff. I don't know if Linda had a question or comment for me, but she said, had my name
01:15:10: Justin Peters dot, dot, dot, and the next one, no, I don't know. I don't,
01:15:15: I haven't gotten there yet. A J .K. Bonner wrote, and I'll keep scrolling down,
01:15:23: I need as much information as possible. The church I attend is focused on the word of faith, charismatic and very focused on WOMAC.
01:15:30: Please help, I minister to kids there and have asked me to please stay. So is there anything else you can add to that,
01:15:35: Justin? Let me put that up there. Yeah, Andrew WOMAC, there's,
01:15:43: I have some of him in my DVD, Clouds Without Water, certainly not trying to sell you anything, but yeah, everything you need to know about Andrew WOMAC, I mean, he's classic word faith and New Apostolic Reformation.
01:15:54: He has Jesse Duplantis come in and speak at his Bible college, if you can even call it that.
01:16:02: So, I mean, any man who is friends with Jesse Duplantis, Kenneth Copeland, Creflo Dollar, I mean, it's the same, to paraphrase
01:16:14: Hillary Clinton, it's the same basket of theological deplorables. So yeah, he is disarming because he comes across as an all sucks down home kind of a guy, but he's every bit as much word faith as Kenneth Copeland.
01:16:30: Yeah, he comes across as being a lot more humble and seemingly more honest than some of these other guys do.
01:16:36: Yeah, but he's not honest. He's not, I mean, no false teacher is. He claims that he raised his son from the dead, and that just didn't happen.
01:16:47: In fact, there was, not too long ago, there was a claim of a couple from New York that brought their baby, drove their baby from New York to Woodland Park, Colorado.
01:16:57: So, you know, two thirds of the way, all the way across the country drove with him as he's dying.
01:17:02: And by the time they got to the Karis, the baby was dead.
01:17:11: Now, think about that. How many hospitals did they have to pass driving from New York to Woodland Park, Colorado?
01:17:17: And then they get into, what, they brought their dead baby into the, none of that makes any sense.
01:17:24: They claim they raised a baby from the dead. It just, it didn't happen. It did not happen.
01:17:30: That would have been huge. That'd have been all over the news head. Yeah, and I'll say this too.
01:17:37: If people were really getting healed, sick people were really getting healed at Karis, or Eagle Mountain Church, Kenneth Copeland, or Joel Osteen -Storch, or fill in the blank, if real genuine miracles were happening, there would be not thousands, there would be millions of people flocking into these churches in these areas, millions.
01:18:04: You wouldn't be able to fit people in there with a shoehorn. There would be packed, lined outside.
01:18:11: I mean, the cities in which these big ministries are located would balloon to millions of people each.
01:18:22: I mean, if they were real miracles, that word would get out real quickly, and you would have just hordes and hordes of people bursting at the seams, and it's just not happening.
01:18:35: Yep, that's right. So I do wanna take a quick break and just kind of announce a couple things.
01:18:43: First is the Striving for Eternity trip to Israel that's been postponed multiple times is now coming up next year,
01:18:53: February 20th to March 4th. And that trip is completely full already.
01:19:01: However, we usually lose 10 to 15 % of people for various reasons as the trip gets closer.
01:19:09: So if you still wanna go on that trip, please sign up and be put on the wait list. Chances are the first 10 to 15 % to sign up will still end up going on that trip.
01:19:19: But as we talked before the show, Justin, you and Jim have another trip as well that I think is right before this one, right?
01:19:25: It's the beginning of February, if I'm not mistaken, beginning to middle of February? Yeah. And so the one who's trying for eternity is with Matt Slick and CARM.
01:19:34: This one is you and Pastor Jim Osmond, and I think one other pastor is attending, if I'm not mistaken.
01:19:42: Yeah, that's correct. Yeah, and you guys still have five slots left. So somebody can go on.
01:19:48: What is the website that can go on to join yours? Do you know? We've got a few spots left right now.
01:19:57: We're leaving that open to folks within our congregation right now to sign up for that. So we wanna give them a little bit of time.
01:20:03: We could maybe post a link to that later on if those slots don't get taken within the next week into the show notes here in case people wanna go down to that and sign up there.
01:20:13: But we kinda committed to making it open to people in our congregation right now for another week.
01:20:19: So I can't give that out right now. I apologize for that. Yep, no problem. Sorry, I didn't mean to put you guys on the spot.
01:20:26: No, that's okay, that's okay. It's all right, no worries. Okay, so we do have someone else in the backstage that we're gonna bring in to ask a question live.
01:20:34: But before we do, there's one other question I wanna get to you in our regular chat, which is from Bill.
01:20:40: What are your thoughts on gambling? Not wise, don't do it.
01:20:49: Not wise, yeah. I mean, you're not gonna win.
01:20:54: The chances of you winning are really small. That's how they afford to build these massive casinos with all the lights.
01:21:00: And it's just not a wise use of resources. It's really not. It's not a wise use of what God's given you.
01:21:07: And the odds are so, so against you. It just, it doesn't make any sense.
01:21:14: Yeah. Yeah, before I could say that it was sinful, I'd have to have some clarification on what we mean by gambling.
01:21:21: So if I sit down with a group of friends and I put 20 bucks into a poker game and whoever wins that poker game gets all the money and then we all, and then the winner has to buy everyone dinner as a result of that.
01:21:31: That's a game. You are putting money down. It is a game of skill. If we define gambling as completely chance, like I'm trying to get rich and I'm putting up 20 bucks to pick one number out of 100 and it's completely by chance.
01:21:47: And if the motive is get rich quick, something like that, then I think that there's sinful stuff that can be incorporated into gambling.
01:21:53: But I'd need more clarification on what type of gambling we're talking about before I could blanketly condemn it.
01:22:00: Okay. And those are, I like how you gave a couple different scenarios. So let me throw this out there because I've heard people say this.
01:22:08: I'm not a fan of gambling. I haven't really thought about your scenario, Jim, on the poker night among friends.
01:22:15: What if somebody says, you know, I would go out to dinner with my wife and spend 100 bucks on a nice steak dinner.
01:22:21: So what's wrong with us going out to steak dinner or eating at home and instead going to the casino for an hour and having some entertainment?
01:22:29: Yeah, do you remember some years ago, Bill Bennett made the headlines because he was,
01:22:34: Bill Bennett was the former education secretary under Ronald Reagan. He made headlines because it was found out that he spent,
01:22:42: I don't know, a million dollars at casinos over the course of a couple of years or whatever it was. Well, it turns out
01:22:47: Bill Bennett, him spending a million dollars is like me spending a thousand bucks. So if I have a thousand dollars of discretionary money and I want to go play games with that at the carnival or at the casino or whatever it is, if I can afford a thousand bucks and I'm not wasting money and it truly is a way of relaxing and a sort of a release and it's kind of a mindless thing and it's a game and yeah,
01:23:05: I might win, I might lose or whatever. Is that really a sinful use of that money?
01:23:12: You know, if I can spend a hundred dollars taking my wife out for a meal or I take her to the arcade and I spend a hundred dollars trying to drop the little claw in to win or something, you know, is it, if I have a hundred dollars to spend and it's something we enjoy, why does it matter if it's a game that we play or if it's a meal that we eat?
01:23:30: As I think that that's something that incorporates into that. Does that mean that I would be justified to spend a million dollars that I don't have on that in hopes of getting rich?
01:23:38: No, to endanger my family? No, to take money that I should be giving to the Lord and doing that with it?
01:23:44: No, I'm not justifying any of that at all. Yeah, good. So you're saying, but if it's in your budget, go ahead, you can go ahead and do it.
01:23:54: Yeah, I mean, it's an expense that you do that you're having fun with something, you know, it's a game. We play money to play games all the time and so sometimes we win something.
01:24:02: If I go to a fundraiser and I'm raising funds for a good organization, so for instance, there's an
01:24:08: NRA banquet that they have locally here, Friends of the NRA, not National NRA, I wouldn't give a dime to support
01:24:14: National NRA, but Friends of the NRA is a local thing for like local gun ranges and training kids in gun safety, et cetera.
01:24:20: So they have a banquet that they put on here where you can pay X amount for a bunch of tickets and you put them in buckets and they draw your ticket out, you win.
01:24:29: Well, I've gone to that and I budget over the course of a year for that and I put away a little bit of money every month, like 20 bucks a month or whatever it is and I can go on at that one time a year and I go to this banquet,
01:24:40: I have a meal with friends, I buy the tickets with the money that I have, I put them in the buckets and if I win something great, if I don't, the money went to a good cause, it's the local
01:24:49: Friends of the NRA, helps out kids locally, et cetera, and I'm fine with that. That's a form of gambling.
01:24:55: For some people would say that that's sinful and wrong. My conscience is clear, I don't think it is. I happen to have won one, two, three, four, five guns doing that over a three -year period of time, at three different NRA banquets.
01:25:08: I've won five guns. Right now, I'm money ahead. If I have spent $800,
01:25:15: I mean, one time I spent like 200 bucks and I won a $700 rifle. So I have come out to the good on that every time.
01:25:23: Is that a bad use of my money? I don't think so. I mean, I consider it as just a fun evening out.
01:25:29: I'm willing to pay 300 bucks for a nice evening out with my wife once a year. It's something special. We set aside money for that.
01:25:35: And I've won some guns doing that. I don't have a problem with that. Yeah, I agree with that.
01:25:41: I guess I was thinking in the more macro kind of, you know, people that spend their - Yeah, you're playing roulette, you're playing roulette, you're putting bank in your house payment on roulette, hoping to pay it off so you can send your kid to college.
01:25:53: Right. That I think is sinful and wrong, especially if you don't have the money. So that's why I say you need to define what we're talking about, what situation we're talking about.
01:26:00: Yeah, no, that's great. Hey, that's why we're doing this tonight. So thank you guys. Okay, now let's give a hard question out.
01:26:07: Do you think everyone has a chance to be saved? I'm gonna sound like the guy who's always asking for definitions.
01:26:15: What do you mean by chance to be saved? Do you mean that everybody's gonna have an opportunity at some time in their life to hear the gospel and trust
01:26:22: Christ? No, that's not necessarily true. There are millions of people who have lived without ever hearing the name of Jesus.
01:26:27: So no, not everyone is gonna have a chance to be saved if that's what we're talking about. Anyone else wanna answer?
01:26:37: Yeah, I mean, I'm a, if you wanna use the term five point Calvinist, I believe thoroughly in the doctrine of election.
01:26:47: And Christians are gifts given from the father to the son from eternity past.
01:26:54: And all that the father gives to Christ will come to Christ to paraphrase John six.
01:27:01: So, and yet at the same time, I also believe in the accountability and responsibility of man.
01:27:07: Scripture teaches both. And as a Calvinist, I'm not, that does not throw any cold water on my evangelism.
01:27:16: In fact, it fuels it. It energizes my evangelism. It energizes my preaching. I beg people to come to Christ.
01:27:23: And if they reject him, they do so at their own peril. And it is their responsibility.
01:27:31: It's on them for rejecting him. So the sovereignty of God and the responsibility and accountability of man are both taught in scripture.
01:27:39: Oftentimes they're taught literally in the same breath from the mouth of Christ himself.
01:27:46: So they're both true. Now, how that works out in God's economy, I don't think any of us can fully understand that, but I believe both the sovereignty of God, election, also believe in the accountability of man because scripture teaches both.
01:28:01: And so I teach both. Yep. So the guy waiting in the back room who
01:28:08: I am gonna bring in in a moment or two, a couple minutes, he's asking a follow -up question right now.
01:28:16: If God elects people into salvation, does that necessarily imply God elects people to damnation?
01:28:23: Well, I wanna answer this first question first. Okay. 1
01:28:30: John 2 says, he's a propitiation for our sins and not for ours only, but also for the sins of the whole world.
01:28:38: That passage right there, just taking it as it is, shows that the world's only chance is
01:28:46: Jesus. Jesus, there's only gonna be one sacrifice for sins. There's only gonna be one payment for sins, and that's
01:28:54: Jesus. Now, Justin's right. What do we say when we take communion?
01:29:02: We say, this is my blood of the covenant poured out for many for the forgiveness of sins.
01:29:09: It doesn't go to everyone, but Jesus' sacrifice is the only chance the world has. And so we gotta kind of hold the two in unity here.
01:29:19: We have to remember that God's sovereign. Jesus only died for the elect, for those who believe in him, whom
01:29:29: God chose before the foundation of the world. But we also recognize that humans are supposed to repent and trust in Jesus.
01:29:43: And that's really all I got to say on that. Cool. You guys wanna add anything to that, or?
01:29:53: Justin? No, I don't suppose so. I mean, there's a lot more
01:30:00: I could say, but yeah. Okay. So the question really is, is
01:30:06: God's action in electing some to salvation the same as God electing some to damnation? And I would say, no, it's not the same action or intention by God.
01:30:14: In one case, election to salvation, God does something actively to the sinner, motivated by his love, that turns the sinner from his sin, changes the heart of that sinner, secures everything through the death of Christ on the cross for that sinner, and brings that sinner infallibly and securely to his salvation, sanctifies them and secures them for his everlasting glory.
01:30:35: That is all the work of God in his election to salvation. In order for God to elect, supposedly, two people to damnation, and God does not do that,
01:30:44: God does nothing. He leaves them in their sin. And so God doing nothing is not the same of God doing everything to save an individual.
01:30:52: So when people say, if you believe that God elects people to salvation, you must believe that he elects them to damnation.
01:30:57: I say, no, God elects them to salvation. He doesn't do anything. Men are damned already. We're damned because of what we did in Adam, because we fell on Adam and because of our own sin.
01:31:05: So God just leaves us to ourselves and we're damned. Whereas God has to actively do all of,
01:31:11: I've just mentioned, in order to secure our salvation. And those are two entirely different activities, if you will.
01:31:17: One is called election to scripture. The other is not. Yeah, that's right. And that's a great point.
01:31:23: Because you hear a lot of people say, well, so I'm going to go to hell because I didn't receive Christ. No. You go to hell because of your sin.
01:31:31: Yeah, that's right. Yeah, so. So many people have the idea of election, like God is up in heaven with his anthropomorphic hands out saying, no, no, no, you can't come.
01:31:43: No, okay, yeah, you in the back, you in the striped shirt. Yeah, I'll let you in. Okay, yeah, you over there in the red cap.
01:31:51: Yeah, I'll let you in. But, you know, no, that's not the biblical picture of election. The biblical picture of election is that all of us are running to hell just as fast as our little fallen feet will carry us because that's what we want.
01:32:06: We want our sin. We hate the light. We love the darkness. And so we're all running to hell as fast as we can go.
01:32:11: And God would be entirely just and fair to let every single one of us go to hell.
01:32:18: But in his mercy, he has chosen to save some. He's chosen to save some.
01:32:25: And so if he would be entirely just to let all of us go to hell, then is he any less just if he chooses to save some of us?
01:32:34: And I think the answer to that is absolutely no. No. I think one of the best passages that talk about it is
01:32:40: Ephesians 2. It says, And you were dead in the trespasses of sin in which you once walked following the course of this world, following the prince of the power of the air, the spirit that is now at work and the sons of disobedience.
01:32:56: Death was our first state. That's why we needed to have a new birth.
01:33:01: We need to have new life regenerated in us in order to be saved.
01:33:08: It's only by God's grace we are saved. By his calling out from before the foundation of time to give us grace, to regenerate us, and that we have faith and believe in Jesus.
01:33:27: Yeah. Great. So I think, well, I'll say this. Drew, he said his, so he comes on the show a lot as a guest.
01:33:36: He says he and his wife were engaged July 4th, 2017 and married only a few months later,
01:33:41: November. So going back to our marriage question from earlier. Four months.
01:33:47: Four months, yep. Yeah. So good job there. And his co -host, Chris Hough. It's his birthday today.
01:33:54: So happy birthday, Chris. Happy birthday, Chris. Who also comes on the show on occasion. Okay, so now we're gonna bring a guest on.
01:34:01: Before I get to any more questions in the comments section, again, I promise I will get to those. So I'm gonna add
01:34:06: David Neff to the show. And so some of you might remember, David, we did a debate. David does not believe in Christ.
01:34:13: He grew up in the church. Does not believe, but we did a debate on creation versus evolution. And that was a lot of fun.
01:34:20: A year and a half ago now, maybe two years ago, something like that. I think it was more about a year and a half ago now. And I know we've had more discussions.
01:34:28: I was here last week asking questions. Yes, excuse me.
01:34:34: This question that I have kind of relates to what we were talking about last week. What, if any, are the biblical grounds for divorce?
01:34:46: Sexual immorality. And if the unbelieving spouse wants to leave, then the unbelieving spouse is allowed to leave.
01:34:55: Okay, so if two people are believers, then it has to be through sexual immorality only, correct?
01:35:03: So if a person is being abusive, but it's not being sexually immoral, then that is not grounds for divorce, correct?
01:35:15: Well, there's, it's a breaking of the covenant. It's being unfaithful to your spouse whenever you are physically abusing them like that.
01:35:25: So Jim, how would you answer that question in, is abuse grounds for divorce, or is there other recourse that's supposed to occur rather than divorce?
01:35:36: Yeah, I would say that there's other recourse that could unfold other than divorce. You could have a physical separation for a period of time while somebody goes through counseling.
01:35:45: I have seen situations where we have had to put a woman into hiding because her husband was physically abusive and she was remaining reconcilable.
01:35:54: She didn't pursue divorce because it was a last recourse. It was a last option for her. So she pursued counseling.
01:36:00: She was reconcilable, hoping that God would grant him repentance. He would come to faith and repent of his sin.
01:36:06: So in such a situation, we would not, divorce is not the first option. We're hoping that that marriage covenant can be salvaged, even though that it has been violated, we're hoping that it can be salvaged.
01:36:18: And so we would always counsel that there are other ways that you can pursue with a heart of reconciliation, pursue getting yourself to safety.
01:36:29: So even with sexual immorality and abandonment by one spouse, we would say that divorce is not the ideal in such a situation.
01:36:36: And it's not required by scripture. If one spouse is unfaithful to the other, divorce is not required by scripture.
01:36:41: It might be allowed under those circumstances, but it wouldn't be required. And if I was in a counseling situation where I had a husband who had been unfaithful to his wife, and then his wife came to me and said, that's it,
01:36:52: I've been looking for an excuse to divorce this scumbag, that's it. He finally did it, now I've got it. My counsel to her would be, you've got a wrong heart in this.
01:37:00: Your heart should be one of repentance and willingness to reconcile over this. Though divorce might be allowed, you would be doing it with the wrong motivism, for the wrong reason, and with the wrong heart if you did it right now.
01:37:11: So it might be allowed, but it's not necessarily required. It's pretty clear there that in the
01:37:17: Bible, that marriage is a picture of the covenant relationship between us and God.
01:37:24: And it's also pretty clear in the book of Malachi, that God hates divorce. So it's pretty clear there.
01:37:33: It is, yeah, God hates divorce, yes. So obviously, David, the biggest issue is that, is that you need to repent and put your trust in Christ.
01:37:46: So, I mean, I'm amazed at your biblical knowledge, right? I mean, you come on with some really good questions constantly, and, but in the end, like you're gonna be in hell when you die, fraternity.
01:37:58: And so we do pray for your repentance and faith. Okay. If I'm ever up in Pennsylvania, I'll be sure to pay you a visit.
01:38:06: Yeah, well, I'm in Ohio, but Andrew's in Pennsylvania. Yeah, I keep getting into mixed up.
01:38:12: That's okay. But you're up on my friend in Maryland. Yeah, I'm in Maryland. Pastor Andrew Goines.
01:38:17: Oh yeah, he's in my same county. I know him, I know him because we clashed heads in politics.
01:38:23: Oh, I know, yeah. So funny story, about six months after we debated, my, one of my friends who is a pastor out here,
01:38:32: I preached at his church a number of times in Cleveland. He moved on to a church out in Maryland, and he calls me out of the blue and says, or texts me out of the blue and says, hey, there's this guy that's been really bugging me.
01:38:43: I'm trying to run for this political position and he's an unbeliever, really bugging me. And I wanna, I need somebody to talk to him who understands creation versus evolution well.
01:38:53: Can you talk to this guy for me? I said, sure. He goes, well, here's the post, go find, he's on the post here.
01:38:59: I go to his Facebook post, it's David. Yeah, he also has towards Pastor Goines and I are in the same county, and we've butted heads, to say we've butted heads politically is an understatement given that I'm on one end of the political spectrum and he's on the other, and we're both pretty much running for the same positions.
01:39:17: Yeah, well, who won? Well, I mean, I wasn't really in the running, but I got
01:39:22: Jeff Leo's speech. That's a whole long story right then and there. The whole political situation here in my county is a complete and total mess, but that's putting it nicely.
01:39:37: Gotcha. Yeah, but I would love to do another discussion or debate with you, I'm always down. Well, you know what?
01:39:42: Let's contact each other. We got each other's emails and we'll set it up for the show again in the future. I'd love to talk some more, but of course it's gonna be mostly,
01:39:51: I'm more concerned about your soul than I am of evolution, so. I actually do have an interesting topic that I think would be interesting to the listeners.
01:39:59: The topic that I would like to propose, did Jesus fulfill biblical messianic prophecies? I think that would be a really fun talk.
01:40:08: For the first coming? What was that? Well, I mean, there's prophecies for the first and second coming, so we're talking first coming prophecies, right?
01:40:15: Yeah, first coming prophecies. Did Jesus fulfill those prophecies? No, we can definitely debate the other prophecy, but did he fulfill the messianic prophecies and then only talking about this stuff and then did not?
01:40:26: Well, that would be an interesting discussion. I'd make sure I want Andrew on for that one too, so. Yeah, so you and I, I love these types of discussions.
01:40:35: I love these interfaith dialogues. So, and I will be here on June 2nd because I have a lot of stuff for Dr.
01:40:43: Jameson. Well, that I'm sure he'll enjoy having you ask him questions, so.
01:40:50: Yeah. And I'm glad you called Atheism of Faith. So thank you for being honest about that. I don't know. I would just say interfaith as a whole, but I would not say -
01:40:58: Interfaith, well, you're right. It is interfaith. It's interfaith Atheism. I don't really, I wouldn't really call it a faith, but.
01:41:06: Do you believe in it? What was that? Do you believe in it? Do I believe in Atheism?
01:41:12: Philosophically, there is, of course, something that's called justified and true belief.
01:41:19: So for the philosophical nerds out there, you say, I do not believe that God exists.
01:41:26: That will be a correct statement. Those who actually know philosophy and know what justified true belief is, they would understand what
01:41:33: I'm talking about when I say that. Oh, I understand the philosophical jargon. And it's just a way to try to get around what is very simply said.
01:41:42: Yeah. Thank you, David, for being on as always. I'm gonna put you on the background. I'll keep you in the show. So if you have another question, just ping me in the private chat and we'll bring you back on.
01:41:51: Yeah, I tested positive for COVID today. So I'm feeling much better than I do now, but I'm definitely glad I got the vaccine.
01:41:59: And I know it would have been a lot worse without it, but - How did you know that? Because of my medical histories and all.
01:42:09: It was the biggest lie perpetuated among the flu vaccine. And they tried to give it to a bunch of people and said, you'll be better off if you have it.
01:42:18: If you get the flu, your symptoms won't be as bad. That is literally impossible to test in science.
01:42:25: And then they made these false claims about the COVID vaccine as well. But that's a whole different show. That's a whole different discussion.
01:42:31: That's a whole different discussion. Yeah. But thank you, David. Well, we'll pray for your healing. Most importantly, pray for your salvation.
01:42:38: So I pray that God brings you to your knees on that. I gotta run. So have a wonderful night.
01:42:44: Sounds good, you too. Thanks for coming out. Thanks, David. Thank you. Okay. That was interesting.
01:42:51: He always has some really interesting questions to bring up. I didn't know that Jesus fulfilling the
01:42:56: Old Testament Messianic prophecies was up for debate. Where's he gonna go with that? I have no idea.
01:43:04: I have no idea. So that's why I gotta ask the question. So Kathy Deming says that my first time posting,
01:43:14: I've been watching for over a year, and that is the Michael Salmon, who is the pastor from Arizona. Do not show thank you.
01:43:20: I'm looking down at the comments. So at 729, he has one. He says, the biggest contradiction is
01:43:27: Calvinism, man -made doctrine and systematic theology. My brother, you guys need to repent.
01:43:34: This is not God of the Bible. This is a God that John Calvin created. Oh, my word. So he is the same
01:43:40: Michael Salmon. He just lied earlier. Yeah, it's okay. We need to repent. Yeah, but we need to repent, right.
01:43:49: And when I saw the ASU shirt, or I'm sorry, ASU thing up there for Arizona State University, I'm like,
01:43:54: Michael Salmon was in Arizona. What are the odds? I knew there was something about him that was antagonistic.
01:43:59: I really thought it was a charismatic thing, but I guess not. Well, no, he was charismatic, and he is against Calvinism.
01:44:07: That was the show, that was the several shows that were done. And I believe he was in a similar perfection, if I'm not mistaken, too, or at least a version of it.
01:44:17: But it wasn't discovered until afterwards. Somebody pinged me in the background and said, hey, that guy on,
01:44:23: I know him, and he's on oneness. Justin Pierce did a bunch of research on him, found out that that's true.
01:44:29: And so the very next show, I had told you and Andrew about it before the next show so that you knew what to do at that point.
01:44:36: But yeah, so thank you for that, Kathy. Okay, so where are some more questions here?
01:44:44: I know we had several others in here. Okay, so Carlos says this.
01:44:50: I've been observing how Christians interact with each other on social media, and it's very discouraging, especially in matured
01:44:56: Christians. The daily arguing, fighting, et cetera does not glorify our Lord. So my question is, how do you guys stay away from those behaviors online?
01:45:10: I don't get wrapped up in social media. Yeah. Oh, I'm sorry, go ahead, brother.
01:45:17: Oh, I was just saying, I don't get wrapped up in social media. I mean, I have a Facebook page.
01:45:23: I post and share. If somebody wants to argue with me on my page, I just try to treat it like a witness encounter.
01:45:35: Or if they are a believer, I try to treat them like maybe in their best light.
01:45:43: But I usually walk away from Facebook arguments. It's not gonna help them or be beneficial to them.
01:45:53: Just consider, best thing to do is remember what Paul said in Philippians 2, to consider the things of others and to consider people better than yourselves.
01:46:06: So try to think of them in a good light and try not to take everything as an attack. And if you can, stay away from -
01:46:15: Maybe show grace first before firing back. You know, what's interesting is,
01:46:21: I run into people in evangelism, my wife and I do a lot of evangelism. Wherever we're at, we're talking to people.
01:46:26: And one of the most common things we hear is about Christians who are hypocritical, right?
01:46:31: Christians who are sinning all week and think they can just go to church on Sunday and everything's good.
01:46:38: And to a degree, right? I mean, we're all sinners and we do sin all week, all week long.
01:46:44: And we do beg for God's grace. And if we're saved, he's already been given it. He's already given us his grace and salvation.
01:46:51: But the fact remains, should we really look like the world, right? Should we really put ourselves as Christians arguing amongst one another where the unbelieving worlds can see us doing these things?
01:47:05: So for me, that's something I run into all the time about Christians' inappropriate behaviors and now
01:47:11: I'm witnessing somebody. I don't know if anyone else wants to add to that question about staying away from those behaviors online.
01:47:24: Being online is difficult. It's difficult sometimes to read people's intentions because you can make a comment, but you're not always able to understand the body language behind it, the motive behind it, the affections behind it.
01:47:38: It's just difficult to communicate those things. So a lot of times people are misunderstood in some of those exchanges.
01:47:43: And I've just, I got away from Facebook. I've dropped off of Twitter a little bit and I've kind of picked it up a little bit more recently.
01:47:52: There's other social media platforms that I have a presence on, but I'm not real active on them. And I just try not to engage on any of those things very often at all.
01:48:01: Best thing to do is share Justin Peters' material and Striving for Eternity's blogs and whoever argues with those guys.
01:48:12: Nobody ever argues with me. Okay, so let me throw a couple of social things out there before I get to more of the comments.
01:48:23: Roe v. Wade. Now, obviously there's some sinister things going on in the background. Obvious, it looks pretty obvious that a liberal has leaked the information for the purposes of trying to put pressure on the justices to not come out with his decision later.
01:48:38: That notwithstanding, how do you, what do we feel about Roe v. Wade being overturned?
01:48:44: I know a lot of the Post Mill crowd says, well, I guess you're all Post Mill now. I would obviously disagree with that.
01:48:54: Yeah, and Drew Van Ida, I know you might be still be watching this, but the Post Mill guys, when 100 horrible things happen, where everything is trending down and everything is going to pot and everything is being destroyed, and we're watching the undoing of Western civilization, you point that out to a
01:49:11: Post Mill guy and they'll say, no, no, no, you just don't have the right perspective. You just need to look at the overall trend of how everything is going over the long period of thousands of years, and you'll see that it's eventually going up.
01:49:23: And that's how they deflect that. And then one good thing happens and they say, see, you must all be Post Mill. This is, we're conquering the world now.
01:49:30: It's just, it's such a double standard. And come on, man, be honest about it. So yeah, one good thing is happening, and I think
01:49:38: Josh Bytes posted this online. If this indeed does get overturned, this will be a very massive demonstration of the common grace of God to an undeserving nation.
01:49:48: And I think that it's a good first step. Obviously, it's not gonna make abortion illegal, contrary to the fevered demonic howlings of people on the left who are trying to keep this from happening.
01:49:59: It's not gonna make abortion illegal. It's going to, at most, make it marginally more difficult for some women in some places to get abortions.
01:50:08: They're gonna have to travel a little bit further to kill their children. That's all it's gonna do. Because there are states like Idaho, Arizona, Louisiana, Mississippi, Florida, places like that, that have laws on the books to immediately make abortion a criminalized offense and illegal in those states that will take place the minute that Roe v.
01:50:27: Wade is overturned. So it just means that a few abortion clinics are gonna shut down in the state of Idaho, and women will have to travel a couple miles into Oregon or Washington in order to kill their kids.
01:50:41: Yeah. You know, it's interesting. I just saw this post, but I haven't looked into the pharmacy of it yet to know if it's legit.
01:50:47: But a lot of liberals were posting ivermectin as a horse pill, right?
01:50:53: Instead of trying to discourage people from using ivermectin, which is a real drug that's used, right? It'd be like calling amoxicillin a dog pill, just because some dogs get amoxicillin, even though it's -
01:51:03: Yeah, or calling water radiator fluid. Yeah, right? Yeah, it's crazy.
01:51:09: But apparently, there are some liberals posting now that there are certain drugs you can get at the local veterinarian that will cause an abortion.
01:51:18: And so they're telling people, don't worry, you can still go out and get this. Yeah, suddenly horse medication's all right.
01:51:24: Now liberals are making horse medication great again. Yeah, that's right. Yeah. Yeah, it's absolutely amazing to me.
01:51:34: And of course, you see all the people coming out of the woodwork talking about, well, My Body, My Choice. And I'm like, yeah, well,
01:51:41: I've had two years of people chasing needles, for sure, chasing us with needles trying to get us vaccinated.
01:51:47: Isn't it interesting that all of a sudden now it's, okay, so we're back to My Body, My Choice, even though that wasn't what we were in up until about three days ago with the vaccines.
01:51:58: And now we're at least marginally kind of stepping back towards a binary understanding of gender,
01:52:07: I guess. Yeah, we're now defining women properly. What's that? We're finally defining women again.
01:52:13: Yeah, exactly. At least we're back to recognizing that men can't get pregnant and shouldn't, you know.
01:52:22: Yeah. Oh man, it is such a convoluted, liberalism is such a convoluted pretzel of a philosophy.
01:52:33: And it's just hopelessly illogical, inconsistent, convoluted.
01:52:41: Yep. And post -meal guys. It's just presenting arguments. Post -meal guys shouldn't be saying anything until decathletes like Bruce Jenner stop wearing lipstick and dresses, right?
01:52:51: Like you said, Jim, we see everything else going into it's a debauchery, total debauchery still.
01:52:58: Yeah. Yeah. And I'm not convinced it's gonna happen. I mean, I know this is a real draft or whatever, but we'll see.
01:53:06: I think the Supreme Court, if that's still their convictions, they just need to come out and rip this bandaid off and put the ruling up, put the decision up instead of what
01:53:18: I'm hearing now. It's gonna be June or July. Yeah, usually they release their first, the big cases they save to release them to the end.
01:53:27: You know, they kind of prioritize them and the earth shaking ones, they release right at the end of the term, usually. And that's usually the first week of June.
01:53:34: That's when we got the Obergefell decision was the first week in June, Obamacare first week in June. That's when they like to drop those.
01:53:40: This got drafted. Yeah, this got leaked, but I was reading
01:53:46: Michael Brown's article on the stream, the Michael Brown, the charismatic Michael Brown. I was reading his article on the stream and he mentioned in there that according to sources that he apparently knows or he cites in there that these justices have felt this way and already voted on this months ago.
01:54:04: And so the ones who have lined up to overturn
01:54:09: Roe versus Wade with this decision and voted for our side in this Dobbs case, they have already been on the record and already solidified that position months ago.
01:54:19: So the chances of them flip flopping like an Anthony Kennedy did the last time this issue came before the court is very, that's very minimal simply because Anthony Kennedy's vote came down to the last moments, the last days of the decision.
01:54:33: These people did this months ago and now here we are months later, they've got it nailed down. They know where they're at.
01:54:39: This is just a matter of now it just has to come out. So when you've got one guy who's going back and forth in the final days before a decision is released, that's when you're likely for the political pressure to have its import.
01:54:54: But if you've got a guy who came down on this months ago and now there's political fallback, the chances of them switching their position now is a lot less.
01:55:02: So I think it's trending positively. Yeah. And of course the whole interesting thing is that so many people don't know what
01:55:10: Roe v. Wade was a ruling on. It was a ruling on a woman's right to privacy in terms of healthcare.
01:55:17: It had nothing to do with abortion, it was applied that way. So if you guys look it up, you'll learn about this if you don't know that already.
01:55:26: It's really strange how they came from woman's right to privacy to abortion in that ruling.
01:55:35: Having said all that, all this does is push it back to the states even if this doesn't come out as the official ruling and there's gonna be battles in all kinds of states.
01:55:42: And as you said, Jim, it'll just cause people to travel further because states like California will probably go in the opposite direction, start legalizing abortion up to six months old, a year old or whatever they wanna do.
01:55:54: Yeah, governors of blue states like Gavin Newsom and whatever that whacked out woman is in Oregon, I don't remember her name, but they ought to be rejoicing over this because it's just gonna bring in thousands and thousands of women who wanna have abortions from red states.
01:56:09: I mean, it's gonna be like abortion tourism in blue states. It's gonna benefit financially as twisted as that is.
01:56:18: But yeah, it's not gonna outlaw abortion. It's just gonna bring it back to the states. And as Jim said, the states like Idaho and I would guess
01:56:27: Wyoming and certainly Mississippi, Alabama, Florida, South Carolina, those kind of deep red states, the
01:56:33: Dakotas, will outlaw it. But there'll still be women in those red states that wanna kill their babies.
01:56:41: And so they'll just go on a little abortion vacation, I guess, again, as twisted as that is.
01:56:48: Yeah, so let me read this for you, by the way. I just looked it up real quick. In January 1973, the Supreme Court issued a seven two decision in McCorvey's favor, ruling that the due process clause of the 14th
01:56:59: Amendment to the United States Constitution provides a right to privacy that protects a woman's right to choose whether to have an abortion.
01:57:07: So it wasn't even, again, it wasn't a ruling on abortion. It was a ruling on the right to privacy aspect of it. That's what's so really weird about that whole situation.
01:57:16: And yet it was interpreted to allow for the legalization of abortion. That was not the ruling.
01:57:22: Yeah, and Roe versus Wade is called, Roe v. Wade is called the law of the land. They say this is law. Supreme Court doesn't make law.
01:57:28: These people are morons. They don't make law. This is a judicial opinion about something which can be taken or left.
01:57:36: By the legislature, which makes the law. Yep, that's right. It's okay, let's move on.
01:57:41: I would be happy though, if with less babies being aborted. Well, absolutely.
01:57:47: We don't want all abortion to stop. Absolutely. Every state, every county.
01:57:54: But again, that's not gonna happen, as we're saying that with Roe v. Wade, it's not gonna happen just from a governmental level.
01:58:01: It's gonna have to happen at a grassroots level where people are repenting, trusting in Jesus, and seeing that unborn babies are humans and that they should have a right to live, have a chance to.
01:58:19: Moment of conception, even scientifically, you can prove that's when life begins.
01:58:24: Moment of conception. That's right. Once that egg is fertilized, that fertilized egg has its own
01:58:30: DNA. It is its own body. It is not the woman's body. It is another body that happens to be dependent upon the woman's body.
01:58:38: But that is a life every bit as much as you and I are alive.
01:58:45: Yeah, all the information needed to develop fully is there when that egg and sperm come together.
01:58:52: As you said, all the DNA. All of it's there. Absolutely, a life. I point out in my one hour sanctity of human life talks that you go to hospital websites that talk about abortive procedures and they have different language for those women versus if you go to the same hospital websites to their pregnancy sections, that they talk about this is what your baby looks like at six weeks.
01:59:17: This is what your baby looks like at three months, right? All in utero. And so it's like they're speaking out of both sides of their mouth on the same website, depending on.
01:59:28: Well, even Joe Biden and Joe, what's her face? Whoopi Goldberg in the last couple of days have said and made statements like,
01:59:37: I'm paraphrasing here, but they use this particular word. They said, you should have the right to abort your child.
01:59:44: Okay, like, okay. Say that again slowly. Child, emphasis on the word child.
01:59:52: Yep. You know what it is. You know what it is. And they don't care. That's the issue.
01:59:59: Yeah, no, they don't care. Abortion is their, I think as Jim says, blood sacrament.
02:00:06: It's their religion. It's just their God. Blood sacrifice. They worship Moloch. Yep, that is absolutely right.
02:00:14: So typically the show is supposed to end, but Andrew's not here and I am, and we have Anthony time. So do you guys mind staying on for a few more minutes?
02:00:20: Do you have the ability? I'll stay a few more minutes. A few more? Yeah. Okay, you guys tell me when we need to cut. So we'll try to get through some of these questions a little bit quicker now.
02:00:28: Yeah, I got 10 minutes. Okay, so maybe we'll end in 10 minutes. We'll have 10 minutes Anthony time tonight.
02:00:33: Okay, what hope is there for someone who was never married, but played married before salvation? Had kids out of wedlock and then the mother left.
02:00:42: The hopes in Jesus. That's your hope. You can be saved whether you lived a horrible lifestyle in the past or not.
02:00:52: The trick is to, well, not the trick, but the thing is you need to repent of your sins and trust in Jesus and you'll be just as forgiven and loved by God as if you hadn't have done those things.
02:01:08: Yeah, I mean, that is not the unpardonable sin. So there is hope in Christ.
02:01:15: So repent, place your trust in Christ and live the rest of your life for the glory of God.
02:01:21: Glory to God. And those sins are forgiven judicially. And if you come to Christ, those sins, no matter how heinous, are forgiven judicially.
02:01:31: Now, the earthly consequences of those sins remain.
02:01:36: It doesn't mean the earthly consequences of those sins evaporate. But if you truly come to Christ, there is now therefore no condemnation.
02:01:46: None. And obviously this person can get married in this situation.
02:01:54: Yeah. So just in case that they were asking that without asking it. Okay, cool. So next one, and I guess this goes to you,
02:02:02: Jim. What is the scriptural basis for not taking communion in a setting of a Bible study in someone's home?
02:02:08: I would point to the instruction that Paul gives in 1 Corinthians 11. It's given to the church.
02:02:14: The church has a body of called out believers, understanding that there's spiritual oversight there under elders and deacons.
02:02:22: That's the structure of the New Testament. It's intended to be part of the worship. As often as you gather together, and not just whenever two or three are gathered together, but the gathering of the saints for corporate worship.
02:02:34: That is obviously a structure in the New Testament that you have things that apply to the household of God itself as a gathering of people for that purpose of corporate
02:02:44: Lord's Day worship. And that's when communion should be taking place. I think it is an abuse to say that we can do the same thing in a home.
02:02:53: Now, if your home is your gathered together group on the Lord's Day, and you're doing it on a
02:02:59: Sunday morning, you're doing it with elders and oversight there or leaders and teachers, and you're doing worship, and it is in a home with a small group of people, then
02:03:06: I think you could do the Lord's Supper there because that is the church setting, even though it meets in a home as opposed to a different building.
02:03:14: But I think that what is necessary for that sacrament to be valid and done in a biblical way is that this is the church body, your local fellowship, that there's spiritual oversight, and that it's done as part of the
02:03:25: Lord's Day gathering. Great. So Michael Salmon looks like he came up, he has now admitted to who he is, even though he lied to us earlier.
02:03:38: So now he has a question for you. Do you all believe someone must believe and understand the doctrine of the
02:03:43: Trinity to be saved? Yes. Yeah. You don't have to fully understand.
02:03:51: I would say by understand, none of our finite minds can fully comprehend one
02:03:57: God in three persons, each person fully God. You know, our finite minds can't wrap around that.
02:04:03: So I wouldn't necessarily say you have to understand it in the sense of like I understand that, you know, two plus two is four or something like that.
02:04:14: But can you reject the Trinity and be saved?
02:04:19: No, no, no. I believe it because that's what scripture teaches, clearly teaches.
02:04:25: And no amount of hermeneutical gymnastics can get around the doctrine of the Trinity. So, but anyone who rejects it, they're not
02:04:35: Christian. They're not a Christian. T .D. Jakes rejects the Trinity. He's not a Christian. Sam is having a verdict now.
02:04:41: So my big issue is this, is that if we understand what happened on the cross, the father levied punishment on the son, you need the
02:04:51: Trinitarian Godhead for this to occur. Yeah. Absolutely. Yeah.
02:04:57: So, yeah. So yeah, I'm exactly where you guys are at on this. You have to believe in God, how he presents himself.
02:05:05: You can't believe in God as the Easter bunny or as the tooth fairy or the flying spaghetti monster.
02:05:12: He presents himself as one God and three persons. Yeah. But yet somebody who gets newly saved may not fully understand that doctrine, right?
02:05:20: But it's when they get taught it's that. Yeah. Most people when they're, most people who are saved, when you ask them to define or describe the
02:05:29: Trinity are gonna give you a heresy. They're gonna give you modalism because they don't necessarily understand how to describe that doctrine.
02:05:38: But a true believer, when you describe what the doctrine of the Trinity is, they will say, yes, that's what I believe. So I've had this happen where I've asked somebody, what do you think the doctrine of Trinity is?
02:05:46: And they'll give me some heresy as they try and stumble through an explanation of it. And then I said, okay, that's not what the biblical doctrine of Trinity is.
02:05:52: The biblical doctrine of Trinity is this. And then I explain it to them and I get to the end of it. And they would say, I wish I could explain it like that because that's what
02:05:58: I believe. You see, that's the difference between a believer and a non -believer. A non -believer or this Michael guy will probably listen to the biblical definition of the
02:06:05: Trinity and say, I reject that. Okay, well, you're rejecting truth and you're rejecting the one true God. Therefore, there's no salvation for you if you are worshiping an idol.
02:06:14: And somebody who hears the biblical doctrine of Trinity and rejects that doctrine is rejecting the truth in favor of an idol.
02:06:21: There, a beautiful illustration of what Jim was just talking about. And Jim knows when
02:06:26: Kathy and I lived there, we befriended a couple in our neighborhood and the lady whose name's
02:06:32: Sherry. And when I first met Sherry, I'm not sure I've met anybody who had less
02:06:37: Bible knowledge than Sherry did. And at least in the United States. I mean, when I met her and she, when
02:06:43: I met her, she was about 70 years old. She didn't even know there was an old and new Testament. So, I mean, like she knew nothing about the
02:06:51: Bible, but we witnessed to her, shared the gospel with her many, many, many times.
02:06:57: She came to church with us at Kootenai Community Church and sat under Jim's preaching, which is, and then she came back.
02:07:04: In fact, that first Sunday there was communion and Sherry leaned over to Kathy who was sitting next to her.
02:07:10: Can I do this? And Kathy said, no, no, you can't. I'll explain later. I'll explain after the service. So after the service,
02:07:16: Kathy gave her the gospel, told Sherry if she were to die right now, she'd go to hell, you know, gave her the gospel.
02:07:21: And then Sherry came back the next Sunday and the next Sunday and the next Sunday. And just at some point she was truly converted.
02:07:30: And Sherry, I had many conversations with her as Kathy and Sherry would ask questions like, well, why can't a woman be a preacher?
02:07:39: Why can't a woman be a pastor? I don't understand. And so you explain it to her. And once you explain the biblical rationale, she's like, oh, okay.
02:07:48: She was fine with it, you know? So it was a beautiful thing to see.
02:07:54: And Sherry's in heaven now. Yeah. That's great. She died of cancer just a few years after she got saved.
02:08:02: Wow. So Michael, basically you need to repent for deceiving us earlier about who you were.
02:08:09: And most importantly, you need to repent in understanding the wrong
02:08:15: God and that you have the wrong Jesus. So you need to repent and put your trust in the right Christ.
02:08:21: And since he doesn't have the right God, it doesn't surprise me at all. He doesn't have the right soteriology and he identifies the doctrines of reformed soteriology as from the devil.
02:08:31: His doctrine of God is from the devil. So therefore he's really confused. That's right. Yep. So this might be our last or second last question here.
02:08:40: Are Mennonites within Orthodox Christianity or are they in the mission field? Oh, I could speak to this cause my wife was a
02:08:47: Mennonite. Okay, go ahead. Actually, well, it depends.
02:08:53: Again, here I'm gonna die the death of a thousand qualifications. Depends on what you mean by Mennonites. There is in the history of Christianity, there's some old school
02:09:00: Mennonites in the Anabaptist tradition. Some of them were mystics. Some of them were cultists. Some of them were
02:09:06: Orthodox believers in Christ. So you need to approach a Mennonite with the understanding that some people are
02:09:13: Mennonites by religion. Some people are, there you go. That's it. Some people are Mennonites by religion.
02:09:19: Some people are Mennonites by profession, by family affiliation, by their last name, by their culture, by the foods that they eat.
02:09:24: It means a whole bunch of different things. So are Mennonites the mission field or are they saved? It would depend.
02:09:30: I would regard them as the mission field if all that they're claiming is that they're a Mennonite because I know hundreds of Mennonites who are as lost as a dog in tall grass.
02:09:40: They have no idea what the gospel is. They eat Mennonite foods. They dress like Mennonites, but they are trusting in something entirely.
02:09:46: I know atheist Mennonites. So assume that they are the mission field until they give you a valid profession of faith in Christ.
02:09:54: That's a good answer. Good answer. Yeah, we have a ton of Amish and Mennonites in Ohio. We go about 30 minutes south and we've got many, many, many, many of them around.
02:10:06: So great place to go visit for the weekend. I don't know if Chris Hough is still backstage watching or whatever, but today is his birthday.
02:10:16: I prefer to say this is the anniversary of the day of his birth because you really only have one birthday, the day you were born.
02:10:23: But anyway, today is his birthday. And a re -birthday too. Happy anniversary of the day of your birth,
02:10:30: Chris. My wife wanted me to clarify. I know hundreds of Mennonites who are saved as well, but what saves them is not their
02:10:38: Mennonitism, whatever that is. So there you go. Yeah, there you go.
02:10:44: That's good. So I think I'm at - Am I acceptable now? Okay, good. I get to sleep in bed tonight.
02:10:53: So I'm trying to quickly go through to see if there's any other questions that I missed. And I actually don't think so.
02:10:59: I think we got through them all. Cool. So -
02:11:05: Probably should talk about my pillow if you haven't already. Yeah, I know. Okay, so in a few minutes when we get off,
02:11:12: I'm about to go to sleep on my pillow, which is outstanding. So for those of you who don't have a
02:11:17: MyPillow or you want some new slippers or some new comforters, MyPillow has all these great products.
02:11:23: Please go on, use SFE as your code, and you will get lots of percentage off. I don't know what that percentage is right now, but you'll save lots of money going to your products.
02:11:32: 100 % off. Andrew's promising 100 % off. Andrew's paying for it. That's right. I typed in SFE. The next three minutes, if you call.
02:11:40: Yeah, I typed in SFE for the slippers, and it said 50 % off for the slippers.
02:11:47: 50 % off. Okay. That's a really good deal for the slippers. If you type it in twice, you get 100%. That's what
02:11:52: I meant to say. Doesn't everybody go to sleep every night on MyPillow?
02:11:59: Like whatever your pillow is. No, only you go to sleep on your pillow, Justin. Yeah. Yeah, everybody could say that.
02:12:06: I go to sleep on MyPillow every night. It's true. I do see a lot of comments on the side about abortion and different questions.
02:12:14: So maybe we ought to have a show on that in the near future. You know, we had one. So some of these questions like, what if the baby is in pain and sick, no chance to live a normal life?
02:12:22: Is that when they kill a baby? We did a show with Sarah Cleveland back last year.
02:12:28: I want to say maybe in August, August or September, who travels the country. She's an ultrasound tech.
02:12:35: She knows her stuff, travels around. She'll be at a lot of the different abortion or anti -abortion rallies out there.
02:12:41: Pro -life, when pro -life bills or abolitionist bills are being put forth. And she did a great show with us and went through the entire argument for abolitionism as well as some of the different nuances that are out there.
02:12:56: What about ectopic pregnancies and things? She answered all those questions very, very well. And so go back and watch that episode.
02:13:04: On that tonight, Pastor Jim, Justin, Pastor Josiah, thank you guys for coming on.
02:13:10: It's, I can't believe how fast this time flew. We'll have to do this again because people had a lot of great questions tonight.
02:13:17: So it was awesome. Q &A is fun, I enjoy it. They even asked about my books, which
02:13:23: I don't know. Oh, yep. So for those of you who asked about his books, there they are. And I think two of them you can get on Striving Fraternity's website.
02:13:29: The other one is through Andy Lonizak's ministry, right? Gospel Track Planet. This one, this is, these two you can get on Striving.
02:13:40: This one has to get on Amazon, so. Okay. Yeah. So Bill Ratamaker, it says
02:13:47: I missed your question. I apologize. I don't see where I missed your question at.
02:13:55: So unless you type, if you type it in really, really fast, then maybe we'll answer it real quick before I let everyone go.
02:14:03: So I think we'll hold that for next week because I know
02:14:09: I promised you guys we'd go. So again, thank you all for being on. Thank you. Have a good night.