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

Hello, good evening, everyone. So obviously you see that I am joined by my co-host tonight right off the bat. 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. Hope everyone's doing well.

Good evening. So what's the weather out there, 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. 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.

Wow, good for you. Yeah, we're about a week and a half, two weeks away from that too here in Ohio, so. Oh, that's great. And Justin, how were your travels recently? And we were just talking about it a little bit.

Andrew Womack and the Word of Faith Movement

Yeah, very good. Very interesting. Just did a seminar at Highland Bible Church in Woodland Park, Colorado, kind of up in the mountains there from Colorado Springs. And it was very good. The reception of my teaching was very warm and helpful, 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.

And it is a massive, massive ministry there, false teacher, Word Faith, NAR, Seven Mountain Mandate, even kind of a guy. I went and visited there. I went on campus. I sat in on one of their classes and managed to get kicked out.

Now, unfortunately, 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. So yeah, I was kicked out for asking a question.

Okay, so what was the question? 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. 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.

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. And I asked, I said, well, I said, if you believe that it's always 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?

And so that question was not well received at all. I've actually got a video of it. 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.

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, is very rude, but they also had questions.

They had questions. They said, well, we've got questions too, and our questions aren't being answered here. 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.

Yeah, so there are students there who have questions. They know something's not right. So it was actually encouraging. Wow, praise God for that. Yeah.

That's really cool. So let me ask you guys this. I wasn't gonna get into this right away, but Andrew Womack, I know a lot of people listen to him. And I know he's a word of faith and whatnot guy, but he seems to keep a really low profile versus other people.

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. So what would you say about Andrew Womack? Because again, other guys we see all the time, right?

It's easy to pick them apart. You've done videos. Pastor Jim has written a lot of stuff on these guys. What about Andrew Womack?

Yeah, I call Andrew Womack the John Boy Walton of the word faith preachers, cause he's normal looking. He doesn't dress real flashy. He's low key. He's kind of got this all shucks kind of persona and Southern accent.

And he's just kind of down to earth. You know, it's disarming in that way, but he is every bit as much word faith as is Kenneth Copeland. He has Jesse Duplantis come out and teach at Karis Bible College.

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. And he's a student at Karis Bible College.

And he told me when we were talking afterwards, he said, you know, 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.

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. And Andrew Womack said to those students, he said, give generously because it's not cheap to fly out here on a private jet.

Oh, that's when they say the quiet parts out loud, right? Exactly. Can you believe that? 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.

Right. 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. There's not a word of a lie in that. No.

Wow. So, yeah. So he just hides it. Well, is what you're saying. He hides it. Well, yeah.

Now, to be fair, I was told while I was there that his house is not an extravagant house. He lives in a fairly modest house. But when you go onto the campus there at Karis College, there is nothing modest about that.

I think it's 400 and some odd acres. Wow. And when 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.

I think they spent $50 million just on the parking garage, just on the parking garage. 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.

I wish I had a picture we could show. The handrails going down the aisles, not just some basic metal handrail. It's thick-cut wood, carved wood. I mean, the handrail alone probably is worth more than what I make in a year.

I mean, it's just, it's almost beyond description. Wow. 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. True, true. Yep.

Wow. Yeah, it is, yeah, just incredible, just incredible.

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 YouTube video on my second trip to Kairos, kicked out of Kairos, I think is what I'm going to call it.

Okay, so you'll go into a little more depth on him at that point.

Yeah, yeah. I mean, he's word of faith. He's the standard word of faith doctrine, but he also gets into the dominion theology, which is more NAR. Right. Seven mountain mandate stuff. In fact, they're trying to like, they're trying to take over the town of Woodland Park.

They are, they had their people running for all of the city, local offices, school board, all that stuff, mayor. And luckily they, providentially, they lost. Apparently they weren't even able to take over the mountain of Woodland Park, Colorado.

So good luck with doing the rest of the world.

Interesting stuff. 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.

The prophetic connects people to the nature of God so they will become like him and reveal him. That's Phil Johnson. I know that anywhere. Yep. Adapted, Bill Johnson adapted by Sean Boltz.

Oh, you said, I said, Phil Johnson. Oh, Phil. Yeah, it turns out being Bill Johnson. Oh, I got a word. I just, I got a word from the Lord. I just had one letter wrong is all.

My wife was thrift store shopping today. 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, God Doesn't Whisper. And that is the most, that guy is one of the worst writers. He's just incoherent. He is a babbling. He just, it's a word salad, a slogan salad.

Every time he puts pen to paper, it's enough. 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? And it's just, it's almost incoherent.

Yeah, I kind of sped read it and I felt the same way. Like I was hoping to get some gems out of this to do on the show tonight for you.

It's so difficult. There are sentences in there that I defy you to diagram. It's impossible.

Yeah, I did find amusement though. That's a, did you see the part where Mike Bickle, I guess he served with Mike Bickle at one time in the Kansas City Prophets. And he, Meg Bickle challenged him to track his prophecies.

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 I thought was kind of interesting that he wrote that in here.

But so he said this, for about five years, I was very particular and tracked everything that was trackable. There's any word I gave for the future, I would get people's emails and phone numbers, even after public meetings.

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. 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. Then about 10 of the time, there was no fulfillment. And then he went on

Basically like the 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. So they weren't believers anyway.

I'm on Anthony, yeah. So it's been amusing and scary at the same time kind of going through that. Here's another gem I found, which is really interesting. And I'll probably do this in a future show. Have you guys heard of Castle's Encyclopedia of Queer Myth, Symbol, and Spirit?

Gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgender love.

That is at the top of my reading list, and I just Yeah. 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. So one thing that fascinates me, as you guys know, I do a lot with the social justice movement and really digging into history.

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. 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?

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. This is nothing new. Well, I read a book by Greg Bonson, not a theonomist.

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. And it would be like you read this book today.

All the stuff that you see going on now is boom, boom, boom, boom. 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.

And so everything we've seen happen in the last 20, 25 years was stuff that they were planning in the 60s and 70s. So this book is fascinating. It was published in 1997. So 25 years ago, right? And they have apologetics against all different kinds of religions in here.

Christianity, Judaism, Chinese Shamaism and Taoism and others. And they're going through and they're talking about how certain groups spoke against homosexuality. Nearly every religion speaks against homosexuality.

But then they have, they are citing sources explaining it away. 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. It was about not being hospitable.

Yeah. So they weren't showing hospitality instead. Yeah.

So that's given in here and other things. And the only religion that they said that they couldn't find a way around was Islam. As I sped through that, which is fascinating. But this was like the apologetic for homosexuals back in the day.

Interesting. Yeah. They play in the long game. The Marxists have been. Yes, they have. 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.

So yeah. They've been enormously successful. Yeah. It's fascinating stuff. So, okay. 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.

And so he said that in his church, there's a couple friends of his good and he goes to a solid biblical church. And the son supposedly got saved in early age at 16 years old, had a health condition that is similar to yours and that he was wheelchair bound at that age.

He's now 22, has sworn off God, angry with God, but he is willing to talk to Evan. And so Evan called and wanted to ask if you had any videos or teachings out there on how did you reconcile? 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? And what would you tell this young man who is now angry at God?

Theodicy, Suffering, and Trusting God's Sovereignty

Yeah, and you also indicated to me, Anthony, that Evan, Evan is his name? Evan has tried to email me. 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, 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.

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. 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. But nonetheless, scripture is true in binding for everyone, regardless of their life experiences.

And I would say, well, 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.

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.

Yeah, if I had my druthers, I'd rather not be handicapped, but so I don't want to come across like it. You know, I'm this hyper-spiritual, super-spiritual kind of guy that never gets to me. It is a trial.

We all go through trials and trials are not enjoyable. That's why they're called trials. By definition, they're not enjoyable. So I want to say that, 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. Anything short of hell is the mercy of God. Anything short of hell is the mercy of God. So I guess knowing that I deserve worse is a great comfort to me.

Also knowing God through knowing his attributes and who 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. God cannot do that.

And so I know from scripture that God is love. He is merciful. He is patient. He is faithful. He is just. He's holy. He's sovereign. 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 I get diagnosed with cancer tomorrow or something, nothing can come to me that does not first pass through his good sovereign hand.

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. David in Psalm 119 verse 71 said, it was good for me that I was afflicted, that I might learn your statutes.

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. There's something about suffering that we learn of God in an experiential way.

And so I'm grateful for that. 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 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 I understand that was described here, I don't think he's truly come to faith in Christ.

So give him the gospel.

Yeah, I think Evan believes that too. So Jim, did you want to add anything to that?

No, I don't have anything to add to that. I think it's great.

Okay, yeah. And obviously, I do a lot of teaching on the problem of good and evil, especially reconciling God's sovereignty and his ordaining all things to come to pass. And yet he's not blamed for the evil that occurs, right?

That's on Adam and Eve and by proxy us. Yeah. Mike Riccardi has wonderful, wonderful teachings. 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.

So, you know, the bottom line is, is that's what we have to look to. Yeah. So thank you for answering that. 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 Pastor Jim and you've got Justin here to answer all your questions.

So please jump in and ask those. But here's a question. And I'm going to start with Jim on this. This is from Rebecca Croker. 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?

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.

Christian Speech, Profanity, and Drinking Alcohol

Yeah, let's handle the first one, curse words. Words are words, but words are tokens. 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 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?

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. Well, why not?

It's just a word, right? It's just a word. It doesn't mean anything. Well, words do mean things. And it's true that words change over time. And it's somewhat culturally determined. I mean, there's words that we use today that I've said in front of people that I don't, I never grew up thinking that these things were curse words.

I just, but previous generations did. 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.

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 English words.

So there is a cultural dynamic to it. There is a cultural sensitivity to it, but it's not all culturally determined. 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.

And so we need to be careful with our language. And we need to be careful when we use language that might be offensive to some people. 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.

It's just not right. Paul tells us to make our words be seasoned with salt. In Colossians, we're to guard our hearts and our minds and be careful what comes out of our mouth that might edify the hearer.

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. 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. But that's my take. Yeah, no, that's excellent.

You know, and for me personally, as somebody who came out of a Roman Catholic, which is an unbelieving family, Italian where there's a lot of cursing growing up in the family and whatnot, after you get saved, for me, I hear these words and I like, not, you know, almost convulse because you know how wicked those words are.

And I feel the same way when I hear people say, you know, OMG and things like that. It's just, it really stuns you when you hear it. And so, yeah, I have a hard time personally hearing curse words. And yeah, that's my quick take on it.

But

I do too, I have a hard time. Well, you know, it doesn't, 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. 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 Christians, use this kind of language or taking the Lord's name in vain. Yeah, that's what is offensive. As Christians, we're supposed to be above that.

Yeah.

Yeah. 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.

Not a good thing? Not a good thing.

What was the effect of that? To what end? Like, what's the point of that? You couldn't have said what you needed to say without using that word? Yeah. 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.

And I would say, you need to be more careful, more measured, and more mature in your use of language. 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, it's uncalled for. Yeah. Yep. Yeah, absolutely uncalled for.

Yep, agreed completely. Okay, so let's go to the second part now. What about drinking and not getting drunk? You, me, who? Well, you can go first, Dustin, go ahead.

Well, I cannot, okay, I cannot go where scripture does not go, and I'm not gonna go where scripture does not go. I don't think you can make a biblical argument that it is inherently sinful for alcohol to cross your lips.

If that were true, then you shouldn't ever take cough syrup. So, and I know, 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.

There's clearly alcohol in it, because Ephesians 5 says, do not get drunk with wine. So it was clearly fermented. 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, 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. Getting drunk is clearly a sin. Now, me, I might take a bit of a stronger line on this than some, I am a teetotaler, and I think I'm using that word correctly.

I don't drink at all. I have no need for it. I have no desire for it. It's not a thing for me. It's just not, 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.

I don't wanna be out in a restaurant and say, I mean, I don't even like the taste of it, so it's a moot point for me, but say I did like the taste of it, and I were to have a beer or a glass of wine or whatever at my table and drinking.

I don't want someone to see me and say, oh, there's Justin Peters, and he's drinking a beer. 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.

It could be a stumbling block. Maybe that person uses me as an excuse to drink, and it becomes a problem for that person, and it does get to the point of them being drunk or maybe turning into alcoholic or something.

I just, I don't need it. 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. It wouldn't bother me any. I think that we're told to have concern for the weaker brother, 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.

They've been saved out of alcoholism, or maybe their parents were alcoholics, and I have concern for them. 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.

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, I'm not gonna say that you're sinning in doing that, but I would urge a lot of caution before you take your Christian liberty and flaunt it in front of people.

That I have a problem with. That I have a problem. And I see Christians doing that. Having bodies in a pub or over some beer and flaunting their Christian liberties. That's a problem. That shows a disregard for the weaker brother, and I think it's very unwise.

Yeah, yeah, great thoughts. Pastor Jim, anything? Yeah, I would add, like Justin, I won't go beyond what's written. Scripture doesn't condemn drinking alcohol. 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?

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. So drunkenness is clearly a sin.

Drinking alcohol is not a sin. I do think that flaunting your, I don't think that exercising your Christian liberty is sinful. I do think that flaunting your Christian liberty or exercising your Christian liberty in some circumstances can be sinful.

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. 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, immature and unnecessary. You don't need to do that. And yes, you have the Christian liberty to go out and drink.

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. So for instance, if I'm out eating a steak in public, somebody might suggest, might look at that and say, well, 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.

Or if Pastor Jim eats cheesecake, I can have five pieces of cheesecake, I guess. And I can become a overweight slob. 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.

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. And the person who thinks, well, my conscience would bother me, I don't wanna do it.

Then I'd say, okay, then that's fine, don't do it. 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.

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. 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.

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. 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. 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.

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. 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 Old Testament. Drunkenness is always condemned. And I think that that's something that's unquestionable. Yeah. And I actually take the exact same position.

As you on that, Jim. My biggest issue is the flaunting of it. 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.

And so it's quite a popular one too. Yeah. So you guys probably know what that is, but it's, I just, yeah, I disagree with the flaunting aspect of it, especially when there's others around that, as you said, 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. Certainly.

So. Kathy and I have a friend of ours, a lady who was saved out of lesbianism and alcoholism. 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.

And she contacted a pastor and a pastor said, hey, meet me at this bar. You know, and it's like, what are you doing? That's just so unwise. So. Wow.

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. This is a test. Your test worked. So go ahead and ask away. Katie and Jesus says God uses secondary causes, not the chargeable cause of evil, but he fordains all things.

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. And, and so, yeah, he's got some great, great teachings on that.