Laborers' Podcast- Conference Recap

Welcome to The Laborer's Podcast. It is Thursday night again, post -conference.

We're glad to be back with you. Stick with us for tonight's episode. Welcome to The Laborer's Podcast, which is a part of the

Truth in Love Network. Join us as together we strive to grow up together in all things into Christ.

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Now let's join our laborers for tonight's broadcast. There it was.

Thumbs up, thumbs down. Thumbs up. Fantastic job, sir. Tyler did a fantastic job on his.

I felt like it was time for update and I threw one together, praise the Lord. Boom.

Boom. I'll be right back, y 'all. Come on back. We're going to add another one.

Uh -oh. There he is. What's up, fellas? Live on location. We are at the baseball game tonight, conference championship.

Ooh. All right. We got the top of the six, two nothing, Bendis, versus Wade.

Big rivalry here. Big rivalry. And your son's playing, correct?

Y 'all doing okay? Yes, sir. All right. Is your son playing?

Yes. Yeah. Nice. So we had the conference championship practice with my daughter and now conference championship baseball game with my son.

So we're dividing and conquering. Well, how are you feeling post -conference, laborers conference?

I'm really happy with everything. That's what I want to jump on just for a minute with you guys. I won't stay on the whole time because I don't want all the background noise.

Sorry, I had a phone call jump on there. Sorry about that. I had to delete that. But, you know, guys, I'm really happy with the conference.

We had a ton of positive feedback from everybody that attended.

Everybody was very blessed. Everybody loved y 'all's teaching. I think

Claude gets the gold star sermon of the week. That's all I've heard about is Claude's sermon. So praise the

Lord for that, Claude. You exalted Christ well and everybody. I know

Christ was exalted and every single person, like I said, that I talked to talked about how much they, you know, the teaching was spot on, the encouragement was spot on.

And I think we've got a lot of traction online through this. And so it's a lot of excitement.

So I didn't want to miss tonight. Sorry for the background noise. But I knew my schedule tonight was going to be tight if I was going to be able to jump on at all.

And so I wanted to take just a minute and jump on here and tell you guys so much. I love you and just overall great success.

People are already talking about next year. They're already making plans. They're already trying to figure out travel plans. They're already trying to figure out how they're going to get to Knoxville, Tennessee.

So really good. So I think there's a few areas that we can always every year evaluate and improve on.

I think we could, if anything, my recommendation would be, you know, picking maybe one or two topics and really diving deeper on those topics specifically.

For example, you know, if we did the family and, you know, dig deep on the family or, you know, or whatever it was, you know, or theology.

And my folks love the Q &A. I mean, they really love it. They really appreciated it.

Like I said, our folks, there's healthy diversity.

I feel like in my congregation of folks that are just grappling with theological issues, we've been grappling with for hundreds of years, you know, and they're really not wanting to settle for anything but the truth.

And I value that in our females. So that's why, you know, they're continuing to ask what seems like the same questions, you know, because they're still digging, you know, and I'm thankful for that.

And you guys helped them out a lot in that. And the last thing, you know, it really is something to continue to celebrate.

We mentioned it a lot of times, but the diversity among ourselves, you know, balanced answers with a gospel -centeredness, and, you know, that's just something that, you know, at first hearing a panel get different answers across.

Most of the time you hear panels and they're answering, they just give them the same answers across the board.

And different perspectives at first, I think some of our folks were taken back just a little bit because they're just not used to that.

I just think that's a great gift that the

Lord has given us, to love each other the way we do, and continue to sharpen one another and develop that.

So we're just honored to get to host the first one, and we look for many more years to come.

Amen. All right. Appreciate y 'all having us up here,

Brother Jonathan. I know we said a lot, but I want to make it known from here. Very hospitable group, and I know that pride is something that we're supposed to strive against, but at the very least, you can be thankful,

I think, that your church is such a welcoming, and I believe, you know, an example of what the church ought to be.

Thank you. Thank you very much. Yes, sir. Well, guys, again,

I just want to jump on here and say I love you. Like I said, I'm torn with schedule tonight with ballgames and everything else, and was hoping this would be wrapping up so I could spend the full time with you, but again, just want to jump on here and say

I love you, and Jeremy, you can take over for me from here on out. All right.

Love you, man. Talk to you later. Thank you, Brother. I'll be in touch with you, Dave. Jeremy, did you shave your beard?

I did. We have a new man, a new member. Yeah. Well, my wife been bugging me about it, and I told her

I cannot shave until at least after the conference. And then we had the conference, obviously, and then immediately was like, so you're shaving your beard now, right?

I was shaving my beard. I said, I'm not going to shave it at least until after the conference.

Oh, man. She met you at the door with a can of Barbasol and a razor, and when you walked in, it was like, all right, young man, here you go.

Hang on. I'm working on a meme share here for you.

All right. Talk amongst yourselves while I finish. It's going to be a baby face, huh? Oh, my goodness.

So, yeah, we, like Jonathan said, we had a lot of positives, and it's all credited to the

Lord. Amen. And I know if any of us were to get the compliment, and I think the compliment that Jonathan shared, something that I share with Claude, I'm edified, and I know everybody's edified by Claude.

And we appreciate him, but amongst us, people should know this, but they're not going to know it until they know us like we know us.

So if somebody gives stars or five stars or a compliment, we're giving credit to the

Lord. Amen. I mean, so there's no building each other up and puffing one another up.

The compliment's because we know from whom our blessings have come from.

That's right. And so just know that about us. We're thankful for what the

Lord taught us through Claude and through Tyler and Jeremy and John and Jonathan and Jesse and everybody.

We're thankful for what the Lord has done. I mean, the conference went really well. Amen, Rob.

I believe that. I seen the thing if you want to put it up real quick, too. That's the wrong time to look at this.

Rob's being serious and loving and everything. I'm trying to find it.

Oh, it's in the messenger. Oh, my word. You got to put that up there,

Rob. I don't know how you do it somehow. Use the force or whatever. I mean, if you or all of y 'all, if y 'all want some great memes, go to Bearded Gospel Men.

Look at Bearded Gospel Men memes. Sounds like it's got all kinds of stuff in the title right there. For the record,

Claude, I'm in a group and somebody asked for a good reformed church in the

Pigeon Forge area, and I sent them a link to your church. Praise the

Lord. I tagged you in it, but because you're not part of the group, it said it would not notify you. I just wanted to give you a heads up.

Oh, my goodness. You can just put that over my face.

Beard bereavement. And there's actually, if y 'all would keep in prayer, there's actually about two to three months ago now,

I guess, maybe longer. I'll lose track of time. There's a young man. Well, he's he's 40, but he moved from Phoenix.

He's been attending Apologia for years. This is not a conference, right? Yes. Yep.

Jacob. And and, you know, he's he started coming to the church.

And this Sunday, there's another family that's contemplating moving to Knoxville from Phoenix at Apologia Church.

They're coming to visit to check the church out. And I'll tell you what

I know. Years ago, church shopping, you know, the term church shopping got kind of a bad rap because it was done flippantly.

And, you know, with it was very shallow because they were looking for emotional needs to be met and wanting this for the kids and that for the children and so on and so forth.

But I think that there's a there's a generation of people now who are genuinely church shopping for good theology.

They're actually looking for a good theologically sound church. And so that's a blessing when you got folks come in and they'll ask you hard questions right off the bat.

You know, that's that's a blessing. And there's some guys trying to put together some good directories out there.

Yep. So 1689. Oh, I just signed us up on 1689 .com

or something. I don't know. I can't remember. I know the guys at Founders Ministries have a reformed church finder as well.

They actually go as far as listing some of the different reformed points. Like, are they confessional?

Do they hold to five points, et cetera, et cetera? Mm hmm. Absolutely. That's a wonderful resource.

Yeah, when you find that link, I'll call it out. Well, there is 1689 .com.

Yeah, I actually know the guy who runs that site. Let me make sure that that I said the right thing there.

I need to get on him because of my church ain't on there. You know, we don't we don't hold to the 1689, but he should still put me on there.

Yeah. 1689 .com. That's it. Yeah. I think I just somehow came across it on Facebook or I don't know.

Or I don't know how it happened. I just thought that's a great, great thing.

I know Founders does that. Founders .org does that as well. Sorry, Rob.

We've got off track. You were leading us in the way in which we should go. Go ahead, sir. I'm sorry. No, I mean, that's a good segue to something else that we can talk about, too.

Because one of the things as we're growing as a network that we would I would love.

And hopefully you all would love to see it happen, too, is a directory within the network.

So the ones that you mentioned. So this is what happened. The ones you mentioned 1689 .com comment was made.

Well, we hold to the 1646 and Tyler. He's non -denom, but Presbyterian.

He's not Presbyterian. You got to be one or the other, brother.

I told you. All right, well, I get to my church and I'm actually in the minority. I got a good

Presbyterian brother that goes to Red Fermanet. So you got 1689 and you've got founders that are not going to represent this.

I'm on founders. Founders. What's going there? And they like it. They have me listed.

Our church listed as 1644, 1646. OK, OK. Do they do they represent

Presbyterian? I hope not, but maybe. But they're definitely probably not going to have a church of God.

And so I would say probably not. So there we leave out Big John. And so with the Truth and Love Network, we want to not skimp on the foundations of the faith.

We want to stand firm in those truths. But we also want to acknowledge, just like we do in our podcast, that we have brothers in other denominations that hold fast to the faith and do not shy away from the truth.

Where's the directory for Apostles' Creed churches? Yeah, something like that. But hopefully that can be a part of the

Truth and Love Network. If you're a church of God, here's a good church.

If you're a Reformed Baptist, here's a good church. And we can point people in the right direction. I think you can start with, you know.

Well, this is probably unique in the fact that the Truth and Love Network spans multiple states.

But the truth, the story could be the same in each one of them. For instance, Claude would be a good reference for Knoxville and the

Knoxville area. And he could more or less. It would be somewhat of it would be a burden on him as time.

But you can say, well, I want to meet with the pastors in my immediate area and explain to them.

I would like for you to know where you stand doctrinally. Just like you sent me a paper, which I assume that paper got signed and sent back to you.

Right, Robert? Yeah, we all have access to it. Yeah. Okay. I was making sure I saw my name on the computer and send it back.

But I never got any kind of confirmation saying it was received. But a document like you sent that said something.

This is what the Christian. You can't be a Christian and not believe these things. Right. You can certainly believe more than this, but you certainly can't believe less than this.

If that makes sense at all. And say, if you would all be interested in having your name and your church on this list, then sign this paper that your church agrees to this.

And I will look at a little bit of your material online that we can or visit. And if it seems legit, then we don't mind putting your name on the resource page as some place that people can come visit.

I suppose to some degree, that's what a denomination does, isn't it? I mean, our misunderstanding denominations to some degree.

Yeah, to some degree. You've got to hold to certain doctrinal beliefs to be welcomed into that fellowship.

And so in that way, it's going to be similar. But we want to broaden our reaches beyond denominational lines.

I agree wholeheartedly. And I just want to say this before we move any further. I want to continue to reiterate this tonight because we're having a conversation about the conference.

We're having a conversation about Truth and Love Network. But just like we said before about complementing each other, we're having a conversation about Truth and Love Network because we want to point to Christ.

We want to point to unity in Christ. We want to point to Scripture. That's why we're having this conversation.

It's not about the network. It's not about us. So we want to continue to reiterate that as part of the conversation.

Let's start off with the most unique thing probably about our conference, the podcast aspect of it.

Yes, and that was fun and challenging. It was. There you go. We could have done well with a small tutorial for everybody on how it all worked.

Yeah, there was a little bit of a lack of communication from session to session there. Oh, my goodness.

You didn't like the Kung Fu fighting at the back of your sermon. Hi -ya, hi -ya.

Rob's just preaching. Hi -ya. Yeah. I think

Jeremy and I, we like talk straight through the music. And then, oh, snap, somebody's preaching. Let's go.

Oh, yeah. But overall, I mean, the idea came to life, and it was reality.

And I looked back over a good bit of it pre -service, pre -sermon, and post, and it went pretty well.

I thought it went well. I think so. It was just like a time sink. That's kind of, you know, me and Tyler were talking, and we were talking about a lot of stuff.

And then, all of a sudden, it was like, so, when are we supposed to switch over? And Tyler was like,

I think right now. So, I need to just switch over. But we had the thing where it was like at like 12 -15, you stop talking and switch over.

I think it would have been a lot smoother on that. But I think it went great, kind of the way it was.

It was just, you know, that would be a thing to improve in the future. Room for growth. Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. You don't want to do it perfect the first time.

Then you just got nowhere to get down from there, right? Yeah. Yeah, we went up. But it definitely added authenticity, how imperfect we were with it.

Yeah. I think. So, two things I liked about it. One is it was challenging.

Me and Brother Claude got to experiment on this, and we found out that it does matter when you mute the microphones.

We also, what I liked about it, is to Tyler's credit, is because there was absolutely no script, and because it was a little bit left to the individuals as to how you want to go about it, it did make it more authentic,

I believe. I mean, when I first sat down with Brother Claude, I was like, so.

It was funny. None of us have probably actually sat next to one another and actually had a conversation.

So, we got to sit down, and I was like, so, you're Tyler. I was like, oh, y 'all are so tall.

Yeah, Jeremy and I have never seen each other face -to -face before, and next thing we know, we're talking to Theonomy. Beautiful, isn't it?

Here's a question for you. Here's a question for you concerning the podcast part of it.

Most of the time when we walk into the service, unless you go to a church where you're going through a book of the

Bible verse by verse, you kind of know what's coming up next, or if you go into a conference, you may know the topic, but how many people really that often are thinking about the message that's getting ready to be preached?

We go in, and we're there waiting to be fed, and then we're fed.

So, with the podcast, some of you had an opportunity to, because I heard you guys talk about it, think about what direction the speaker might take or what we might be looking for from that speaker.

So, how did you enjoy, or what did you think about having that time to meditate and ponder on what you're getting ready to hear?

I'm going to bow out. I think it's a blessing always to know where you're going. I don't know too many folks that just get in the car and say, okay,

I'm just going to get in the car and drive. I don't know where I'm going. I don't know what I'm doing. I don't know what I'm going to face.

But having an idea of what you're going to hear, the topic, the scripture, so on and so forth, and then just to hear that impact and unfolded,

I will say it is, for me personally, it's a great challenge to, even though it was still exegetical, it was still a topic, right?

To preach topically, because I'm so used, and I've heard people say it, and I just adopt it.

A lot of folks will say it's cheating to preach expository verse by verse through the text because you know where you're going.

But I don't know of any other way, really, to preach. When I try to preach topically, I stumble and I fumble, and it's just a challenge.

But to have those parameters in general for most folks is very, very helpful.

It's like you don't want to be blindfolded when you sit down at the table. Sorry, I'm just thinking all these, right?

I mean, you're not going to sit down and just have somebody with you blindfolded, put a fork and a knife in your hand, and then say, just eat what's in front of you.

You don't know what's coming, right? It's a little bit intimidating. Speaking of food, could we make the analogy of wine tasting?

I mean, there's preparation before you sip the wine. You look at it.

You twirl it. You smell it. I mean, there's this whole experience before you actually taste the wine itself.

And that's kind of what happened prior to the sermon. You were able to meditate on it, have an experience of what's in front of you.

That's right. And then post -sermon, you were able to reflect, well, was

I on track? And just further meditation on what the speaker actually said or what the preacher actually said.

Anybody else have any thoughts on the podcast aspect of the conference? I don't know if it's something that will catch on with other conferences.

I know that we're nowhere near the model that everybody's after. Well, I think that if we were talking about making an improvement,

I think the podcast was probably the smoothest part.

I think if there wasn't an OA, and I'm sure there is, even if it had to be done externally,

I think that in the future, it might would be a good idea to have an external source for what's going on in the sanctuary.

For one reason, in the future, I'm speaking things that aren't right.

So in the future, so whenever there's, say, the question and answering portion from Friday night, we weren't able to capture that.

So let's just assume that there was questioning and answering going on on the podcast, because the next time there'll be so many people streaming, they're asking questions from home.

The questions that would be answered inside the sanctuary may be the same questions being asked, or they may be different.

However, it would be nice if there was a way that we could capture separately. So later on, you could go back to YouTube and catch both question and answering portions without having one of them walk over top of the other.

Does that make sense? Absolutely. And thank you guys for watching right now.

We really appreciate it. Absolutely. If you have any questions, probably in about four to five minutes, I'd like to jump into some of the question answers that we got from the conference.

And probably we'll try to hit on some of the ones that weren't recorded so that you guys can catch up to where we were.

But if you have any questions tonight, leave us a comment. Like you see, we're putting up some of the comments that are left tonight.

Leave us a comment. Ask us a question. Let's see. What was another highlight for you?

I know the Lord really blessed us so much. Jeremy Tyler?

On the whole conference? Yeah, sure. I told you this is the first conference

I've ever been to, so I can't compare it to other ones. But just the fellowship part of it to me was nice, just to be able to talk to other pastors.

And actually, the reason I knew about the guy from Apologia there,

Jacob was his name. Talking with him, man, it was a blessing to be able to talk with him.

He drives an hour to go to Reformata there.

And that's an encouraging thing to see that people just hunger for the word.

And we've actually seen it in the question and answer, I think. Even though some of the questions, obviously,

I wouldn't agree with if they would take the stand of some of those questions.

But it's still the fact that they were one of the guys that asked a question.

The next day I saw him and I talked to him a little bit more. And he said, the question wasn't really for me.

It was for somebody else. And it was kind of great to see this.

I mean, we could have went on that first question and answer for probably three, four hours. And none of us would have got tired and went to the

Airbnb there at like two o 'clock in the morning. But, you know, it was nice to see the hunger for the word of God.

So, I mean, that was kind of my favorite part of it was that just seeing that many people that come together wanting to, you know, just.

And it was funny. One of the things I noticed, and I think every single time, every single preacher got up and preached.

When we got to the gospel, everybody in the congregation was like, amen, amen, amen.

Excited people when we got to the gospel. And especially when we talked about the resurrection, we talked about the gospel.

When we get to the resurrection, all of a sudden, you know, you're about to hear 10 amens. It was great because you don't see that anywhere else.

Like, let Claude or John go to like the

Dallas Cowboys game and preach that same message. How many amens are you going to hear? I don't know. You probably won't hear too many because they're not here to listen to you.

And it was just kind of cool to see that, you know, people were excited about the gospel.

And I think that's the one thing that we all have in common, right? Absolutely. And it's the one thing that every single one of us, when we got up there to preach, all the people there got excited about and had in common as well.

Amen. So, I mean, to me, that was it right there, man. The communion and fellowship we have with brothers and sisters in Christ.

If I could just add to that real quick and pull two things together. In these conversations that we've had, in the conversation that we're having right now, it seems like what

I'm hearing is we're giving thanks and we have gratitude towards vertical. And we'll talk about the fellowship among us who were preaching.

But really, we're talking about the unity that Christ brings in us together.

Amen. We were the same group. We're the same body. And so, vertical was serving.

First Baptist served. They served us. And we, as the speakers, we were, and we weren't just serving as far as preaching a message.

We worked together so well. I mean, what we did together, the podcast, everything that we did, we served each other.

We didn't try to step on each other's toes. It was just so smooth among us.

So, the church body was serving. The speakers were, the preachers were serving.

Everybody was just serving. There was nobody, no personality, no celebrity, nobody above anybody else.

We were just all serving one another. And Christ brought that unity amongst

His body there. That was a beautiful thing to observe. The Apostle Paul wrote to the

Philippian church, and he said this, I thank my God in all my remembrance of you, always in every prayer of mine, for you all making prayer with joy because of your fellowship, because of your partnership in the gospel from the first day until now.

And I am sure of this. He wasn't going to leave this out. I'm sure of this, that He which has begun a good work in you will perform it until the day of Jesus Christ.

And that's really what, in the book of Philippians, that's probably one of my favorite epistles of Paul.

That's where you're at, brother, yes. It's probably what I would refer to as the mushiest gospel, right, because really there's just so much that,

I mean, that Paul is pouring out to the Philippian church about his thankfulness.

And it's all centered on and in the gospel of Jesus Christ, suffering, you know, the suffering and the joy that we live to, that we find in the gospel.

Something I heard Claude say, he's quoting Paul. I think it was Claude. I have this mind in you,

Philippians 2 and 5, have an attitude in yourselves which is also in Christ Jesus.

Although He existed in the form of God, did not regard equality with God, a thing to be grasped, but emptied

Himself, taking the form of a bondservant and being made in the likeness of men, being found in the appearance as a man.

He humbled Himself, becoming obedient to the point of death, even on a cross. And it goes on.

But one of the things that when I woke up Monday morning, I could hear Claude reading that scripture.

And it's on my mind all day. And I thought one of the things that, and this isn't just for this group of guys.

This is for the church as a whole. Have this mind in you that Christ had.

We're to be a people who minister. And that means to serve.

I've seen men who, if we're being honest, I love to listen to some of these great speakers, whether or not they're of my camp or not.

I love to listen to them. I'm not going to say their names because I wouldn't want to do anything to bring any shame or any kind of embarrassment.

But I know that if I went to a conference where big -name pastors were coming to speak,

I wouldn't see one of them tie a child's shoe. That's right. I wouldn't see one of them plunge a toilet.

Yeah. Right? I wouldn't see one of them pick up trash out of the parking lot and throw it. But I've seen these things in you men because you serve, because you understand we always have to equate everything that we do is what

Christ has done for us. We don't love until we understand how much Christ has loved us. And when we know how he's cleaned us up and saved us and made us alive, it's easy to love somebody else because we know how unlovable we are and how much

Christ loved us. And I think that if there was one thing that separated what I saw, and truthfully it's not that it's entirely unique among this group because I see it in other churches.

I've had the privilege to be able to go to many different churches and play music, and there's a church up in the mountains that I see them serve one another.

Other churches inside that same town. And they have the same thing we have going on. I've seen a

Church of God mountain assembly, a Church of God, a Baptist church, and a Methodist church. They all hold services once a month in the same location and worship

God together. And they actually have a sign when you go into the town.

I'm not going to say the town because I don't want them to come under attack. But it says the city of blank churches welcomes you to our town.

God loves you. And this is the mind they have with one another. It's like, yes, we disagree on some things.

Yes, we love each other in every area, and we can work together because it's not about us anyway.

And I think that if we can continue that mindset, gates of hell won't prevail against us.

Can I add something to that? Sure. You can take it away if you want to. I don't want to talk too much on it, but it reminded me of it's not just in the mountains of North Carolina.

It's all over the world. I could walk into a church in North Africa.

I could walk into a church in Russia. I could walk into a church in China. I could walk into a church. And the thing about all of this is it's

God. That's what it is. It's not because you're a different color than me or you're in front of mountains.

And obviously, we kind of joked about some of us have different accents. Like Jonathan, before he got off, he said, yuns, yuns, yuns.

It's okay. I understand. But it's the awesome thing that we have in a new covenant.

I was thinking about this the other day. In the old covenant, you had a small nation that worshiped

Christ on the Sabbath, right? They set apart one day a year in this small little part on earth.

Now we have it all over the earth, and we're worshiping God all the time. And God is receiving praise and worship all hours of every single day of every single nation, tongue.

And it's great to see. That's the key.

It's about Christ. It's about his glory. It's not about you or me or whether we're from the north or the south.

It's about Christ. That's right. This is how they'll know you, that you have love one for another.

That's right. And not just love for those, but especially for those of the household of faith. Isn't that what you said, Brother Claude?

That's right. I think that that's very important, Brother Jeremy. While I was speaking in terms of the things that we've witnessed personally, you're 100 % right.

If you're thinking about churches that you're shopping for, is that the right word you were looking for, Brother Claude, earlier?

Yeah. A church, whatever. I think that a clear indicator as to whether or not it's a good place is how much of God's love is in that place when you walk in the door.

That's right. And you know the difference. We all know what fake is and what real is. That's right.

And I'm very blessed to know y 'all.

Oftentimes we wait until we're forced before we do things that we should have actually been doing all along.

And I don't want to wait until the government or somebody else forces us in a position to figure out who

I can trust, who I can know, who I can love, who I can count on. I want to be doing that now.

That's right. Before I'm forced in that position. I want to know who I can trust, who I can love, who I can fellowship with, who

I can lock arms with and serve with. I want to do that now. I don't want to wait.

That's right. I don't want to be forced to do that. So if y 'all have any other comments about the conference, feel free to throw it in.

Let's transition in years for our last half. Going back to some of the questions.

One of the things that I found interesting, the main question during the first Q &A come up was about losing your salvation.

And it's a topic that we've not tackled here as a podcast, but we were able to address it that night.

And one of the characters, one of the men from Scripture that come up was

Peter. Exactly. And I thought, you know, how interesting that that is a good question.

So what was the what was the faith? What was the spiritual life of, say, the disciples slash apostles before before the cross, before the

Holy Spirit, that time that they walk with Christ? What was their their spiritual life?

Were they saved? Were they saved as an Old Testament believer like like Abraham or David?

So how far do we want to break that down before we go into it? I think that's the question I've got. Because when

I think about salvation, I don't think about salvation being different for Old Testament necessarily as I do

New Testament because it's in faith. We have one gospel and that gospel doesn't have a time stamp on it.

Right. OK. So if Abraham was saved and I believe he was, it was a matter of his faith.

We're saved and I believe that we are. It's a matter of faith, right? Not works.

It's a matter of trusting God. And one of the things that I purposely stayed quiet whenever the left side of the room started talking full disclosure for those who don't know

Brother Jeremy, Brother Tyler, Brother Claude. Y 'all may not know this until after the service. Those were a lot of my people that came to worship with us that night.

I didn't feel like it was fair for me to answer those questions because that looked like it give me some kind of an advantage.

So that's why I held the mic and I kept my mouth shut so that so that you know that I wanted there to be integrity among us.

And I don't think that. Well, I mean, that's it wasn't said in the moment, but I think that it was prudent to make sure that it's publicly stated now for the record to be clear.

Is everybody OK with that? Yeah. So I spoke to them later on that night and I said, well,

I think you used an example that you liked. I would be somewhat against that example that you used.

However, I was corrected. So I told you earlier, for some reason or other, I remember scripture better in King James English than I do in the more modern translations.

However, I study from the modern translation. So if you'll allow me from memory,

King James says in Luke 22, 32, something to the effect of Satan has desired to sift you as weak.

This is Jesus talking to Peter. He said, but I've prayed to you. And when you're converted, that's the key verse there.

When you're converted at Strong's number 1944. I don't know how to say that word in the

Greek, so I'm not going to try it. But if you've got a strong concordance, you can look it up. However, in the

NASB, this is the 1995 version. It says again, but I have prayed for you.

And when your faith may not fail and you when you once have returned again, strengthen the brothers.

And that term in 1994. Well, I've got too much stuff sitting in front of me to get it.

I've got like five Bibles in front of me. None of them have a strength. Would you read that definition that way?

I have it from the Strong's, which it says to revert, to come again, to convert or to turn.

Exactly. About exactly. So in a lot of ways. While I first read that in the

King James, I would have said that Peter wasn't actually saved while he walked with Christ.

Based on that conversation, when you're converted. But when I read that definition,

I thought it almost lends me to believe that he was saved. And this would be a falling away from the faith.

So I was forced to grapple with the idea that my entire life I had assumed

Peter wasn't saved. And lost to salvation and repented that he just simply wasn't born again yet.

Right. And that may very well be true. Because if you read that definition, it lends itself to having a twofold answer there.

So I believe in that definition. You can look at it and say really both ways.

And that may be there may be some more studies for me that needs to be done for. I understand that word better.

Well, I think if I could speak on that, I don't think necessarily we go and drill in on some

Greek word and then say, well, it means this and this. We look at his context, right?

Sure. Like all the Greek words we could we could go to. For instance, I'll just throw one out there like world cosmos.

Yeah. We could say world every single time means every single person in the whole world without exception.

But then it commands us to love not the world. So then you're saying it commands us to love not anybody ever.

Yeah. It's the same thing with that. I think. And I haven't looked at the verse apart from you just mentioning it.

I've obviously looked at the verse before. But I would say. It first, the context we see nowhere is say that that Peter was saved and then not saying it does use the word converted there.

But that does not necessarily mean that he was not converted to salvation. And I'll give you that.

So and I think that's where we're and we we all. I would probably venture to say every single one of us sitting here tonight does the same thing with some certain verse that we draw out of the context.

Something is actually it doesn't say like it does not say he was not saved. And that's and that's where I put my, you know, if it said converted to salvation.

Well, you have you have something to say. Converted, which just means turn back or to turn towards you, turn around or bring back.

And we can see this. That'd be the same word they use for repent. Now, if I could cut in here.

All right. Because I just did a quick little search on on on that word in Greek.

And it actually is used abundantly in the Greek translation of the

Old Testament for a return in that kind of context. And so I don't think it would be out of place to say that this implies some kind of repentance.

I'm given the context of verse 34. I tell you, Peter, the rooster will not crow today until you deny me three times.

So I don't think it would be out of place to say that that is a picture of Peter repenting of coming back after denying

Christ. I'm not sure that that is a picture of him being reconverted.

Yeah, I just I just wanted to add. We do that as believers, right? Like tomorrow,

I'm going to wake up and I'm going to do something very stupid. I don't know what it's going to be. And I'm going to repent and turn back.

But to me, I see that as the fruit of repentance. Repentance is a word in Metanoia, which just means change of mind.

Turning back, I would see as fruit of repentance, which is what I would. We would all agree that Peter sinned grievously.

Sure. And when that crowed the third time, he was like, what did I just do?

And he repented. Unlike Judas. That's right. Well, go ahead.

I much prefer the definition of repentance that Thomas Brooks gave, that it is the vomit of the soul.

Wow. Yeah, because you always feel better afterwards, right? It's horrible when it's happening.

I have a mental picture there. I'm not sure what to make of that. So, can

I give my two cents here before we finish? So, providentially, this is exactly where we are at the church in the text.

Peter's denial of Christ. And actually, and I'm going to read literally a quote from my transcript for the

Sermon Sunday. Concerning what the last sentence says in the text concerning Peter going away and wept bitterly, right?

Sure. The rooster crowed. Jesus looked at him. That's important to remember in the text.

Jesus looked back, turned back and looked at Peter. Peter saw Jesus eye to eye.

He was there when he was going through this. Saw this eye to eye.

The cock crowed. Jesus looked at Peter. Peter remembered. Then he repented bitterly. So, let me read this.

One last question to consider concerning this text. I can't say this will be the exact close of my sermon because I've still got another day and a half.

I've got to work on it and pray. One last question to consider concerning this text is, was this the moment in time that Peter, quote unquote, got saved?

Some men say yes. But me, I would say no based upon other passages of Scripture.

Primarily, when we go to two passages, Matthew 16, 13 -19 and 1

Corinthians 12 -3. So, Matthew 16, 13 -19 says this.

When Jesus came into the district of Caesarea Philippi, he asked his disciples, who do men say that I am?

Some say you're John the Baptist. Some say Elijah. Others say Jeremiah, one of the prophets. He said to them, but who do you say that I am?

And the Scripture states, Simon Peter replied. This was before. Yep.

Right? This is before. Simon Peter replied, you are the Christ, the son of the living

God. And Jesus answered him and said this. Blessed are you, Simon Barjona, for flesh and blood has not revealed this to you, but my

Father who is in heaven. And that's when Jesus makes the statement. And I tell you, you are Peter.

And upon this rock, I will build my church and the gates of hell will not prevail against it. 1

Corinthians 12 -3 states this. Tyler quoted this. Therefore, I want you to understand that in his sermon, no one speaking by the

Spirit of God ever says Jesus is accursed. And no one can say

Jesus is Lord except by the Spirit of God. So Peter, I think what we do with that term converted, we read into it a modern meaning rather than doing what we all just did here and looked at the actual meaning of the text.

And then we go back when a passage seems to be obscure, and we allow the

Scripture itself to speak to that passage and actually instruct us. So Peter made the confession of faith, not a, but the confession of faith that Jesus Christ is the

Son of the living God. And he made that by the Spirit of God. So, you know, that's why

I would say that, yes, it is the converse, the converse of what

Jesus said that when you are converted, strengthen your brethren. The converse of that is repentance, and that is just simply the reality of living and breathing that we sin.

We sometimes we stumble minutely. Sometimes we tumble in a major way.

Nevertheless, we will always, as believers, repent because the

Spirit of God constantly is at work within us, sanctifying us and pointing us back to the cross, back to the

Savior and His work. I think this is a perfect example of something you brought up at the conference.

And if I'm not mistaken, the question from the group or somebody in the group was trying to say,

Big John, correct me if I'm wrong, that a believer can't deny Christ, and here

Peter denied Christ, so he lost his salvation. Generally, I think that was the thought. But I think this is a perfect example of something you brought up,

Claude, at the conference, where you said, don't look at my life as a snapshot.

Right. But look at my life as a video. Look at my life as a whole, because I'm going to mess it up.

So what does Jesus say in Scripture? He says, if you deny me before men,

I will deny you before my Father who is in heaven. So what did Peter do?

He denied Jesus. He denied Jesus before men. But we know that Peter saved.

So here's a perfect example of what you were talking about. That was a snapshot. That's true.

That was a snapshot of Peter's life. We need to look at the video of his whole life.

So in that snapshot, he failed. That's right. He messed up. He sinned. But in the video capture, we see that God has saved him.

He messed up. He sinned. He repented. Yeah. And that is the analogy of Scripture in theological language.

Yep. Reading Scripture, interpret Scripture. Actually, that just reminded me of something you said,

Big John. Go for it. At the conference, you said you believe that if somebody does lose their salvation, they can't get it back.

That's correct. But in the text that was quoted, he says, I have prayed for thee that thy faith fail not.

And when thou art converted. Strengthen thy brethren. Exactly.

The question of the conference was like about Peter losing his salvation. That's correct. That was two different questions.

The question was asked initially on the right hand side of the room, which is why I answered it. The question was brought up about Peter on the left hand side of the room.

The reason I didn't answer it was because there were church members. But it would also go against what you believe, right?

No, sir. Because. Well, truthfully, I didn't believe Peter was saved at the Last Supper, because at least in that moment.

And I still am. And I still don't believe Peter was actually saved in that moment. Even though I won't deny what

Paul or what Brother Claude said is, you know, is accurate. I believe everything

Paul said is or Claude said is accurate. But in John 20 and 22, Jesus blows on Peter and says, talking to Peter and John, says, receive you the

Holy Spirit. And then he charges them. I've always viewed salvation as being something that when you're saved, when you're born again, the spirit of God dwells inside of you from this moment.

Right. And I can see all throughout the walk that Peter has and the rest of the disciples have just kind of like in the

Old Testament where there were moments in time whenever the Holy Spirit moved on these men to do things.

But there's only a couple examples until Acts where we see the spirit of God dwell in men.

And and I see that as a as a difference. Now, I want to clarify what I mean by someone losing their salvation.

I don't believe they can pick it back up again. And I know that this contentious verse of Scripture in Hebrews, two of them particular, that a lot of folks don't like to look at in that way.

I choose to until somebody changes my mind, which I always reserve the right to be corrected. I want to make that statement.

I believe that it's a very it's a very bad job of understanding

God's salvation. It makes it so that a man is safe so quickly and lost so quickly. One of the criticisms

I have about some Pentecostal denominations or denominations that teach inability to backslide is that they they make it seem as if you can't ever make a mistake.

I think that that's foolhardy because the Bible couldn't be more clear that we're fallible people capable of making mistakes.

And even after salvation, capable of sinning. And that doesn't mean that God rejects us like he's standing beside us with a massive gavel ready to strike us for any kind of slip up that we ever had, because we are, after all, frail and fallible people.

What I'm talking about is something totally different. When I talk about losing salvation, I'm talking about for whatever reason, a man has decided that Jesus ain't good enough.

That he would rather have the pleasures of this world. And I believe that God will allow him to walk away from him.

But I don't see evidence wherever or anyone in Scripture has ever come back after that. You mean like full on apostasy?

Yes, sir. Okay. And I think that we have to be very careful. Twofold for this.

One, and this is a stern warning to anybody, not just in my church, but any other church.

If you're going to adhere to the doctrine of eternal security regardless, then you have to make sure that you're teaching the full counsel and that people have informed consent before they surrender to God.

Because if we're being honest, there's times before salvation that it seemed like things in my life went smoother than after I was saved.

And I'm just being as real as I know how to be. I'm sorry I have to look down from the camera because I won't see your faces. And the camera is on a stick.

So the thing is, it wasn't until after I was saved that I found myself in any kind of a spiritual battle, it seemed like.

Right? And I didn't care how much I sinned until after I was saved. And that wasn't until sin didn't become a problem to me until after I surrendered to the

Lord. Now, now, if you make it seem as if though you say a prayer and I want to be very careful that I don't lead you in the wrong direction of what

I believe or what I'm teaching. I'm afraid I'm going to do that. So hear me out and ask questions and stop me anytime.

There's this mindset out there that says if you say what I say the way that I say it and we'll call it a sinner's prayer, you're saved, you're pronounced saved.

And there's absolutely nothing that can ever happen to you to make that salvation go away. That is a heresy that I wish would just die.

And it just don't seem to die. And most of my brothers, especially my brothers in Christ and the church of God that I talk to, they don't believe that one sin makes you lose your salvation the way that it's taught that they act like they believe.

What they're actually saying is a lot of the same things you're saying. If you tell me you're saved,

I'm going to believe you until you show me that you're not. And whenever you show me that you're not,

I'm not going to argue with you as to whether you were saved in the past before or not. I'm going to tell you you're not saved now. Call it backsliding if you want to.

And I don't think anybody argues that fact. Whereas to me, it seems like the biggest friction that causes people to disagree is one camp says, well, the evidence of your salvation isn't there.

Therefore, I conclude that you've never been saved. The other side says the evidence of your salvation is not there.

Therefore, I declare that you've backslidden. And I would say that there's a there's a strong possibility that both could be right.

My fear is that if you have lost your salvation, according to the Hebrews, that you can't renew yourself in a salvation again because you've treated the blood of something shameful.

And I don't think an example of Peter, honestly, if he were saved in Matthew chapter 16 and Peter had had this episode where he denied

God. I honestly don't believe that that would have been enough for him to lose his salvation in the direction that I'm talking about.

Right. Because that wouldn't have been the first time he denied him. He went bitterly after denying him, then turned around, went fishing and took everybody with him fishing instead of doing what

Christ had actually told him to do, which was strengthen the brethren. Right. So Peter denied him three times before a rooster crows and then denied him again by going and picking up his old life and going fishing.

Right. If we're being honest about Peter's whole whole video of life. So there wasn't just this one isolated event.

Then after salvation, he had another episode of foot and mouth disease where he and Paul had to have a little bit of come together about how he was treating the

Gentiles differently than he was treating the Jews. So Peter is an example, at least

I believe, of if you are saved, you can sin and not lose your salvation to the event that you're apostate.

But then you see things like Demas. And I don't know what you do with that.

Having loved his present world more than us, he left. Some say that when Paul says they've left out from us, therefore it proves that they were not from us is evidence of this this mindset.

I won't argue that scripture because you don't even argue in scripture. I just think that regardless of how you look at it, talks cheap.

Talks cheap. And if the evidence of your salvation isn't there, whether or not you were saved 15 years ago or whatever is irrelevant to me, if you're not saved now.

Right. Because, yeah. So am I hearing you correct?

And I think I and we, all of us are 100 % on that line.

Oh, so I see. Sorry. I need to make sure I'm. Oh, we need closed caption for the hillbilly impaired.

I think what I'm hearing you say is, first of all, what you described is called easy believism.

You say a prayer, walk an aisle, sign a card. I despise it.

Yep. A hundred and ten percent. Amen. And that's the thing about like when you go to a funeral, right?

You go to a funeral. If you know the person, it makes it it makes it almost unbearable.

If you don't know the person, if you lived for any length of time and you are truly concerned about what the scripture says about regeneration and salvation, you'll hear this typically.

Well, so -and -so died. He was 75 years old. And when he was six years old at vacation

Bible school, he raised his hand and said he wanted to ask Jesus to come into his heart.

And then they they cut it off there and they say, OK, let's just rejoice. And then the preacher, which is very much the preacher, is very much accountable for wrongdoing.

Basically, he's just preaching a guy into heaven, right? The man or the woman in heaven. We'll put it that way.

And there's no verifiable evidence. There's no demonstrable fruit of regeneration and sanctification in his life on an ongoing basis.

And so that's what many people deem or call or refer to as, quote, unquote, being saved.

Right. Are we on the same page there, John? Sure. Yep. All right.

So but then then we must go to the you know, what does what the scriptures teach? Salvation is of the

Lord. Right. It's the work of God. And then we go into that big theology goes into covenant.

Right. But there's two covenants based or three. I know there's three overarching covenants of covenant redemption.

That's the agreement of father, son and the Holy Spirit in eternity past concerning the regeneration or, you know, the redeeming of God's elect people.

Then there's a covenant of works and then there's a covenant of grace. So the covenant of works is what all men are under, even to this day before they're saved, because they're constantly trying to earn salvation and it's something that they constantly trying to do on their own.

The covenant of grace is God having fulfilled the perfect law of God set forth in the covenants of the

Old Testament. But it's Jesus himself perfectly fulfilling those covenants.

I was talking with my brother last night. So there are really two types of people. There's covenant keepers, covenant breakers.

The good news or the bad news is everybody's a covenant breaker. The good news is there is the covenant keeper and that is

Jesus Christ. And so entry into the new covenant, the covenant of grace is buying through the work of the spirit of God.

Jesus told Nicodemus, you must be born again. If you're going to see the kingdom of heaven, you must be born again.

So being brought into the new covenant itself, the covenant of grace is not a work of our doing.

It is the work of God. Regeneration from beginning to end is the work. Salvation from beginning to end is the work of Christ.

So if Christ is the one that's doing all the work, is it possible that our arms, as the old saying goes, are long enough to box with God?

And the reality is our arms are too short to box with God because we can't save ourselves and we can't keep ourselves.

But to what you're saying, I think what I'm hearing you say, and again,

I'm on this same page, that there's a big problem within Christianity in that there are a lot of people that think they are saved, but they have not been born again.

They think they've been saved because of this or that. You can name a variety of reasons.

They are not saved. So another issue that arises is this, that we can't even necessarily tell because there's a lot of good put -ons.

There's some people that have put on their whole lives, and they're going to wake up in hell because they weren't regenerate.

But we do have a modicum of ability to say, this is what the

Scripture says, and this is why church membership and church discipline is so important because this is where accountability comes in.

This is where we talk to one another. When one of us gets out of line, I've just about threw up there with Jonathan moving that around.

When one of us get out of line, this is where local church membership comes in, that we call one another to account, that we say, look, this is what the

Scripture says about sin. This is what's happening. Will you repent of your sin?

And so the answer should be, you come to me, and you say, Claude, you are doing this, and it's contrary to the

Scripture. And you sit down, and you show me the Scriptures. I have a responsibility, and let me call it this, a divine ability to repent of my sins, having been given the

Holy Spirit and sealed with His Spirit. I have the divine ability, so to speak, to repent, to get right, to swallow my pride.

Well, like Tyler said, I love that. That's better. A lot of people are swallowing their pride when they need to be vomiting out their pride.

That was a great quote, Tyler. So that's my three sins.

Brother Jeremy, I want to make sure I answered at least your question.

I don't want to leave anything unsaid in that response. No, you answered my question, because I thought that you would think that Peter was saved before that.

And the guy that asked the question was saying, his question was, Peter lost his salvation at that point.

And then we obviously know that Peter was definitely saved after that point.

But I think that you think that Peter was not saved up to that point.

I don't think, according to what Claude brought up with him confessing,

I mean, he was a disciple of Christ. He was an apostle, and he has that confession.

That confession is the rock on which Christ will build his church. And he made that confession.

So it would be hard -pressed to argue against that. The only kickback

I'd give against the confession being the rock that Christ built his church on is I've often struggled with that way of thinking.

Jesus says, it's not flesh and blood that revealed this to you, but my Father in heaven, which has revealed this to you.

This is a supernatural work of God, and I think that's the rock that Christ builds the church on.

It's the supernatural work of God. I like that too. That's the new birth.

That's what Claude brought up in John 3, is you must be born again. That actually means you must be born from above.

It tells us there's a spirit. I always, you know, I got the old

KJV mind too. It says, you know, the spirit blows where he wishes.

He goes wherever he wishes. He regenerates whoever he wishes.

You must be born from above. It's not just that you were sitting there under some preacher and he preaches the gospel, and then you go, oh,

I think I'm going to leave today. You must be born from above. The spirit must come down and regenerate you.

And see, this is where we would be in agreement, actually. What you were talking about, we as,

I don't know if you guys like being called Calvinists or whatever, but I believe in perseverance. I know you don't.

We believe in perseverance of the saints, which is not say a prayer and you're saved.

It's not, you know, people say once saved, always saved. I believe that, but it's not that it's just once saved, always saved.

It's that Christ's people will persevere, and it's because, I think this came up in the conference too.

Yeah, somebody called it preservation of the saints, not perseverance. We persevere because God preserves us.

God keeps his people, and he will not, it says nothing can snatch us out of his hand. So to me, like, and, you know,

I think you started to quote 1 John 2 there, Big John, where he says they went out from us because they are not of us.

For if they had been of us, they would have no doubt continued with us. Obviously, I make the distinction there that John is actually talking about the local church at that time.

Maybe. Yes, he has to be, but not just the local church, but also the church in general.

Because at that time, if you left the local church, you were not going to any church at all because you had no other church.

You didn't have a church around every corner that you could go to so that you separated yourself from the people of God, and therefore you're not of us.

So we believe somebody just comes up and says a prayer, and then we purposely declare him saved.

And, you know, they go off and live like heathens for the rest of their lives. And we believe

God's people actually. And but the reason we believe that is because God keeps his people.

It says in Ezekiel 36, when it talks about giving the spirit to the people, he says,

I will put my spirit within them. I will give them, I will take out the heart of stone.

I will give them heart of flesh. I will put my spirit within them and I will cause them to obey me.

So it's all on God. And that's that's where I would stand. Like it's not you said, you said a profession, therefore you're saved.

If God didn't save you, you're not saved. I don't care what you say. And if God did save you, he's going to keep you.

But, you know, I do. You did answer my question. I'm sorry. No, no, no, you're good. I just want to make sure that Jonathan's back.

I'm going to tag out here, guys. I'm sorry. I'm just a bit out in the sun all day.

Hey, I love you all. Awesome. Again, I'll talk to you later. Thank you, brother.

Love you. Let me give just a quick glimpse of context where some of those questions were rooted without going into tremendous detail.

One thing that that that that we've been grappling through is the great deception that's going on among Christianity right now among among major issues.

So, for example, how many people are calling themselves Christians, but yet are are major advocates for pro -choice or or the whole homosexual transgender deception that they're saying

God is love. God made me this way. And they're preaching this, teaching this. And you're seeing people that are leaving conservative

Christianity and being deceived by falsehood. So so they're stepping outside of church discipline.

They're leaving church discipline. They're moving away. They're pulling away from those things. And they're attracted to this this huge liberal movement.

And second Thessalonians talks about a great falling away. And so accurately describing that and people that will not submit themselves to church discipline, that will not submit themselves to that.

So we know that people who are born again do submit themselves to church discipline.

They are open to that. They are they are committed. James chapter two. You know, that's why

I made that comment a second ago. It come across as truth and love because when I go there. Yeah. But the common ground that I found with several brothers that we have talked about this for years.

And I think it's what John was trying to express was if you are genuinely born again, you're going to be living it.

There's going to be an evidence of your life. And I think everybody's saying the same thing. I've been listening to the conversation behind scenes. But I just I just wanted to give some context of why that question was asked, because we're seeing a generation of people and some of the children of our church members and in other places that were raised in conservative homes.

Brought up on Orthodox Christianity, even reformed Christianity, very clear theological teaching.

And now have just took a left hand turn straight into.

And so so these families are grappling with this, you know, like, what does this look like in the video perspective of the whole aspect of life is is right.

But. I was asked the question behind the scenes, and I know it's not a it won't bother anybody for me to bring it out if they watch this.

But, you know, if I had to preach a funeral of a person that that five years ago was living one way and now today is living a different way, you know, what would

I say at their funeral? You know, and I said the only answer that I could give honestly is by the evidence of their life, they at best have left a question mark on their life, which is a horrible place to be.

Because I can say there was something that was happening before that. They made profession. They appeared to persevere.

Then in the midst of this, they choose a different lifestyle, living a different way. They were not a prodigal son yet because they were still in the hog pen and they died.

Yeah. So so at minimal we can give a quick we have to give a question mark because we can't say they are for sure in the hands of Jesus or we can't say they're definitely burning in hell.

We have to say they went into the hands of a merciful and just God is how I preach that it's how

I typically preach it. So but that's I think that's some of the struggle that people are dealing with and the reason this question is coming up.

So it's not as we want to answer with scripture. And that's correct.

But it's it's not as hyper theological sometimes as theologians make it.

It's it's trying to rightly judge on how to plead with people in their life right now.

You know, like and it is no matter what, just preaching the gospel. We know that's the solution.

We continue to just preach the gospel to them and plead with them and cry out to them.

But but you got parents and families that their hearts are rendered and they're grasping at trying to find peace, but also trying to find truth.

Does that make sense to everybody? So I just wanted to give some context of why a question like that is continuing to be grappled with and especially the time we live in.

So anyways, I don't want to chase a rabbit trail, but I do want to ask you a question.

And I also have just a few quick things to get there before we wrap it up. But Jonathan, and this is for everybody to based on the example that you just gave,

I would like to ask a pastoral type question. So the example that you gave, you're you're confronted with that scenario at a funeral.

Do you save that for private counsel? You know, if you, the pastor, are questioning, do you save that for private counsel?

And then as part of the funeral service, funeral message, you leave out the confirmation or the question mark or denial altogether?

Personally, this is and this is a personal decision, OK? Every man has to.

But but I feel like in order to be honest, I personally do not leave it out. OK, so that all may hear the scripture says, you know, talking about because that person's fate sealed by the judgment of God.

I can't make that judgment, but their family's still alive. There's people there still alive that are still in this waffling stage.

And I have seen the council to be right. You know what I'm saying? And I've been in horrible situations where where exactly what big

John was talking about a second ago. That have been in funerals where a person has was a drunkard and a practicing drunkard, an adulterer and an abuser.

But then a preacher would say, but yeah, when he was eight years old, he died when he was eight years old.

You know, they had this one little moment of faith and then they preach them straight into heaven.

Yeah. Leaving everybody there condemned to hell, deceived. Right. I know you would.

That's exactly. And we are. That's what I'm trying to say. We've got a lot of common ground here. That's what I'm trying to say. There's a tremendous amount of common ground.

And so that's why for me personally, and it's personal conviction in practice. And I have done this multiple times, matter of fact, in twenty to twenty one, twenty three years of ministry.

My conviction is my job is to proclaim the truth as I as I see it in the scriptures in that service.

And so so I just try to be honest with that whole counsel of scripture that I'm I'm not the judge and jury.

They say that will be known our fruits. And if there is no evidence of fruit or the fruit of that person's life in their moment of death is sinful.

It's a practicing. And that's what I'm saying. First gone is any man that says he knows

God, but yet continues to practice and sin is a liar. And the truth is not in. Yeah. So there is an evidence.

There's a good possibility this person's a liar that they lied about that.

I don't call them liars in the midst of that moment. You know what I mean? But but that's something

I think we all have to grapple with as ministers of the gospel, because the most comforting thing we can do to someone is not necessarily preach their loved one into heaven to preach the hope that they have.

That adds as people who are still alive, the grace of God is still available.

You're still on this side of judgment that and always start that with Hebrews 927.

It's a point in the amount of time to die and then judgment. Yeah. This person that's in this casket, their judgment is sealed.

You there's still hope. And here's the hope. Here's the good news. And then you do the best you can to preach the hope of the gospel.

That that that is our comfort. Our comfort is not in the final destination of our loved ones.

Our comfort is in the finished work of Christ and promote Christ.

And so, again, that's what I'm saying. There's my whole point is this. There's there's some really practical levels of grappling with this that that does make the water murky, man.

I mean, I know we can really like lay the hammer down on our convictions as we're as we're nailing scripture.

And I have a very strong conviction about the perseverance of the saints. And that's why

I say there's an evidence in your life. If there's not an evidence, I fall more like in line with John.

I'm not I'm going to probably say they were never genuinely born again. They're liars. They should be confronted with that.

And then they're saying, no, I'm not a liar. Then I'm going to say, well, then why are you living a lie? You're making them cross. So one of two things, you know, either hold fast and bear fruit with your repentance or be born again.

One or the other. But there's no middle ground in those two things. Either way, you're born again.

You're going to follow Christ. You're going to be fighting the good fight and you're going to hate your sin.

Plead with God to sanctify you and be grappling with that. And that's the evidence. So I see a question down here and I want to I want to touch it for a second if I can.

So I fall more in my circle outside of truth and love.

I fall more on the reform side than I fall in the typical center line church of God camp on this.

I've heard this preached several times that this is evidence that your name can be blotted out of the book of life.

I've been pretty clear on my stance that I believe that it's possible to lose your salvation, but not renew it again.

And I think that this would be an example of what that might would look like from from revelation. Maybe I haven't spent a great deal of time studying this position.

And I'll tell you why. I very, very, very, very seldom have a conversation like this with people because of what

Jonathan was saying and what Jeremy was saying. I with them with as much respect as I know how to give it.

When I say this, please don't take this as careless or sacrilegious. I couldn't care less about your confession.

Don't you tell me you don't know who the Lord is or tell me you do know who the Lord is. Your conduct will tell me right.

And as much as I need to even know, for instance, I have the abundance of the heart to mouth speak.

If I'm with you all the time and nothing and I say cushions, I'm not talking about just four letter words. I'm talking about if everything that comes out of your mouth sounds like it should come out of a tomb.

Right. Then I see that your man doesn't have any hope in anything. And there's other examples.

But most of the time, most time people speech betrays them. Right. If you're ever spending time with somebody.

So the reason I don't really get caught up in the weeds is too much as whether you can or argues whether you can or can't lose your salvation is because I'm more concerned about the current state than I am about the previous state.

If somebody is lost now, I keep going back and making it right. Ten years ago, wouldn't fix it.

And and that's my concern really is now and moving forward. I don't want to paint a picture that I've lived perfectly since salvation because that is clearly and ultimately not the case.

I have messed up and dropped the ball multiple times since coming to know the Lord. So I would not adhere to any teaching that would say that if you've come to know the

Lord in a full capacity, the salvation that you're never going to send again, that's utter balderdash. And I wouldn't condone it in any regard whatsoever.

Well, that's a five dollar word, John. Yeah. Well, I've been hanging out with y 'all too much. I want to take a stab at the revelation question, too.

And I want to say I want to say thank you, Carrie, for your question. We really appreciate it. Absolutely. Here's my quick stab at the revelation question.

Let me read the passage so that everybody's familiar with it. Verse five says he who ever comes will thus be clothed in white garments and I will not erase his name from the book of life and I will confess his name before my father and before his angels.

So the first thing that I want to do is just get rid of all those lenses in which we've been taught to look at revelation through.

Like one example is the seven churches of Revelation represent different stages of church history.

I just want to look at the text. Sure. Let's see what it says. So I go back up. I know that it's written to the church of Sardis.

And then I look at first to wake up and strengthen these things that remain, which are about to die.

So the author of Revelation is speaking to a church in which something is about to happen.

So from my perspective, I'm looking at he is speaking to a church in which something drastic is going to happen.

I'm I'm looking at this as a parallel to Matthew chapter 24 that we're speaking of the coming up, coming up with Jesus judgment on the end of Jerusalem and the destruction of Jerusalem in the temple in 80 70.

So he's telling the church of Sardis, you don't get on board because judgment's coming to Jerusalem in the temple.

I can take a stab at it, too. Yes, sir. That's that's interesting because I never thought of it like that before.

Oh, I knew he was going there. But it is actually interesting.

I might look into it. But one of my first reading of it was I. I saw the question pop up immediately and I go

I go click on it and it says he that overcomes the same shall be clothed in white raiment and I will not blot out his name in the book of life.

Exactly. It doesn't say that he will. It says that he won't know. Are we to say, well, then we'll make other.

The argument is, well, then that means that he will. It doesn't say that he will. But let me let me cross reference.

This is what I like to do. This is what scripture is amazing. And we can never get enough of it and we can soak it in all the time and learn so much from it.

But there's so much that that that goes. And this is how we know that is divinely inspired, too, because one these happen to be the same author.

But we can look at one author who didn't know another author and they still agree.

First, John five. It says in verse four, it says whatsoever is born of God overcomes the world.

I think we'd all agree that when we're born of God, that's being that's when

John chapter three being born again. That's when we're born of God. It says that we will overcome the world.

It doesn't say if they overcome the world, whatsoever is born of God overcomes the world.

And this is the victory that overcomes the world. Even our faith. So it's by faith that we overcome the world.

And it says that we will do it. So if John tells us at first, John, that we will overcome the world if we have faith.

And then Revelation chapter three, he says, he that overcomes. How do we overcome the blood of the land and the word of your testimony?

I had to do it now. I mean, John tells us by faith. And it says so.

So he that overcomes, we will overcome. That's not a question. If you're a believer, if you have faith, if you've been born of God, you will overcome.

And the fact that you it says he that overcomes, I will not blot out his name out of the book of life.

It doesn't say you will. He says he will not. So what if someone doesn't overcome? I don't think those people exist.

Well, I mean, and that's it. But that's what I'm trying to say is there's there's and I don't disagree with you.

OK, let me first of all say that. But what I say is there is a healthy question there because Rob referenced

Matthew 24. They that persevere to the end shall be saved.

So there's like a conditional there's a condition to the salvation in both of those statements.

Those that overcome. I will not. So there's a condition for overcoming the condition of those that persevere to the end shall be saved.

So if they don't persevere, then what if they don't? What if they don't? What if they don't overcome? What if they don't? And so that that's where the question mark comes in.

That murky's of the water is, is there the option which goes all the way back to chase the right where we're at? Let me throw one of the cost reference in, though.

Sure. This was interesting because I just grabbed my

Bible app and started looking at this. So in Exodus, did you guys cross reference with Exodus at all?

I did first, Peter. Listen to this. And again, Gary, thank you again for the question.

Absolutely. It's talking about where Moses and the golden calf. The next day, Moses said to the people, you have sinned a great sin.

And now I will go up to the Lord. Perhaps I can make atonement for your sin. This is the foreshadowing.

It's it's a it's a typography. It's a sure make an atonement. So perhaps

I can make atonement for your sin. So Moses returned to the Lord and said, Alas, this people has sinned a great sin.

They have made for themselves gods of gold. But now, if you will forgive their sin.

And then Moses says, I'm interesting. I've never I've never seen this before. So this is the first time. So I have not studied this out.

It's just interesting. So then Moses says, if you will, if you will forgive their sin, but if not, please blot me out of your book that you have written.

But the Lord said to Moses, whoever has sinned against me, I will blot out of my book.

But now go lead the people to the place about which I have spoken to you. Behold, my angels shall go before you.

Nevertheless, in the day when I visit, I will visit their sin upon them. And the

Lord's plague on the people because they had made the calf, the one that Aaron made. And so so that's that's a pretty interesting cross reference that does give.

Yeah, I will. And I will visit their sin upon them. And so so, you know, again, there's some kind of tension there that we can't just ignore because the same

God doesn't change. Not so there is some tension there that we have to work through.

And again, this is just off the hip. Yeah, I want to add to that for a second because I don't want to make it worse.

I don't want to make it worse. But I want what I want you each to do.

Listening at home, standing beside me on the screen, I want you to live out your convictions,

OK? I mean that with my whole heart. If you don't subscribe to my conviction, I'm not trying to persuade you.

Right. I just I want that caveat out there. First Peter one twenty four, four, four.

And this is not I'm not taking great lengths to catch it in context. I'm trusting you to do your homework for he was foreknown before the foundation of world would appear in these last days forsake you.

First Peter one and twenty. The book that he's talking about in thirteen eight,

I believe it is. Oh, I can't read it. And you'd learn to worship him.

Everyone whose names now we're talking about. I believe this is talking about the beast and stuff. We'll worship him whose name had not been written from the foundation of the world and the book of life or book of the lamb had been slain.

But I want to say it was first Peter twenty four for known from foundation world would appear like these last times. My thought process was and remains that the reason for not being able to repent again and salvation if you've completely forsaken

God is because your name was written in the book of life and he blotted it out.

It's a permanent thing. And I don't say that to bring fear to anybody or just my personal convictions on it.

And I like I said, I listen respectfully. And to to date,

I haven't heard enough evidence to make me change my mind. But I reserve the right to be wrong. And at least consistent.

And you're more consistent than the person that says you can lose your salvation and tomorrow get it back the next day, lose it the next day, get it back.

Yeah. Well, let's see that to me. That's just that acts like that makes God seem psychotic to me.

Right. I just can't see God forcing you to be in his presence. I think that I will not concede the fact that there is divine sovereignty at work.

I won't I won't argue with that because it's all over Scripture. At the same time, there has to be a certain amount of willful surrender because to me.

Willfully choosing to love God means more than coercion. And what that looks like still ain't got a good idea.

I said this to Brother Rob in person. I've said this to as many people who's ever had the sore displeasure of listening to me for any great amount of time is

I I can't explain the infinite. I can't explain God in every area.

There's there's a massive amount to me that is still mysterious. And I don't I don't have all the answers.

Not even close. Let's let's help make sure we get our language right, though. What I'd say, John, is it's never coercion, but it is regeneration.

Sure. But regeneration, regeneration, that's the work of God. Right. Man can't make himself right with God.

God makes man right with himself. Right. Regenerate part of the regeneration is the awakening of one's soul, the heart of stone.

Totally with you. You know, and that's what I'm trying to say. We agree with. So I think we all agree, too. It's never it's never coercion.

Yes. I'll give you that malicious manipulation. You're right. All right.

And maybe I maybe I made it sound. No, you're not. We're just making sure everybody that's listening.

Yeah. Fans. The angels were created. I said this on Sunday morning. The angels were created. And whenever they rebelled, there's no chance of repentance.

Right. Man has been given an opportunity to repent. Now, I know man was created in God's own image.

And he's and we're unique in that. I just I think that there's got to be because there is this difference between us and the angels that were created.

Yes. I know that we love God because God's grace and his kindness has been shed on us and draws us and makes us feel like him and leads us to repentance and all that.

I'm not I'm not I'm not insinuating in any way that any of the love that we have towards God is initiated of our own.

I'm not saying that. But we would all know that there comes a time whenever this wicked man that I am would rather do something besides worship

God and praise God. And I have to I have to be diligent to put him on the cross. Right.

And the things that I don't want to do, sometimes I do. And the things that I don't want to do are the things that I do do.

And I'm torn at times, to be honest. And I would rather sleep in as opposed to get up and pray.

That's just me. I'm lazy. I'll be honest. You know, there's times that I know

I need to be studying my Bible and I'll do it. And then there's times

I'm watching Westerns, you know, and it's like, I got to get this TV off. And then I find myself watching two more episodes.

You know what I mean? And this is just my this me dealing with my flesh. I'm not trying to paint myself as some super spiritual dude by no means.

I'm trying to be real with you. Even a dog is going to testify. That's my boy.

He's being loud on the Pentecostal dog. Let me take 30 more seconds.

I'll be quiet for the rest of the night. So I had a conversation following up with this this week with a lady that is struggling because of something that happened in her life many years ago.

And she was raised up in the old school Pentecostal mindset. And she constantly lives in fear that she's lost her salvation constantly.

And and so that's where on both sides of this equation, John, and address the easy believism, the danger of of the deception, of believing in vain, as I believe as Paul would address it, is is that.

And then there's the other extreme. Literally, the ones that I take the task really harshly on this issue.

They'll take first John one nine. But if you have you die with unconfessed sin, you go to hell.

So so there is a manipulation that leaves people without peace in constant fear that maybe they didn't confess enough and maybe they didn't say it right.

And maybe, you know, maybe there's some kind of sin of omission that they don't even know of. And it's just and it views

God. It makes God as this bully that's just waiting to throw him in hell rather than a father who's had a plan of salvation.

And so so that's that's the two extremes that that we all disagree with.

We all vehemently oppose those extremes that are not the character of God.

And not the teaching of Scripture. And that's why just just before we sign off tonight, that's why there's a lot more common ground in what we're saying.

I hope everybody realizes that there's a lot of common ground. And that's why I said earlier, the best thing to say is if you are born again, then the evidence of that is going to be very clear in your life.

And we can all stand in James chapter two. You say faith, but I'll tell you what, I'm going to show you my faith by my works.

I'm going to live this thing out. I'm going to go hard after God and I'm going to live this out. And then if and then the problem is, then we start running into scenarios.

We start with this person did this. And I've seen this person in this. And what about this? What about that?

You know, and that kind of stuff. And at the end of the day, guys, just to be honest, when those kind of things come up, we really should start saying a lot more.

I don't know. We shouldn't purposely say, well, that person's definitely say cause

X, Y, Z. Or we shouldn't purposely say that person's condemned. The reality is we can't see a person's heart.

We can only see the evidence and the fruits of their life. And so, so I'm not trying to like be waffly here.

I believe if you're born again, and I know I'm over my 30 seconds. God disciplines those whom he loves.

And so one of the biggest evidences in your life, if you're really born again and you do fall prey to sin, there will be a discipline that comes into your life.

And in those he doesn't discipline on the other hand, guess what? You're not his. Use a good old

King James word. You're an illegitimate bastard. You're not his. So, so that's also a big test.

It's not just a matter of the wheel of man and the will of God, as much as the evidence that comes into one's life is they're following Christ.

And when sin comes, daddy gives them a spanking because they're his. And he loves them. And he's a good father.

And that's where that's at the end of the day, where I come to the perseverance of the saints, because the first Peter chapter one is used reference in John.

It is the power of God that keeps us standing in the power of God means that as a little rebellious kid,

I can try to run toward the road and I can try to run toward things, but my father's bigger, stronger, and faster.

And there's exactly how to bring me back. So it's not coercion, but it's just like we do with our children.

We disciplined, you know, and we can't say that we ever grow up in God's kingdom.

Now my children will outgrow my discipline into adulthood, but the reality is in the kingdom of God, we'll never outgrow our father discipline because we will never arrive to a mature.

Let's equal with the father. I expect my children to arrive to maturity level. That's equal to, and I hope surpasses my maturity level.

You don't say because I'm still pretty immature sometimes in the kingdom of God and in his economy, we will never achieve the point of adulthood equality with God.

We will always be his children. Therefore he always disciplines those who are his as a good father, which then as first Peter says by the power of God keeps me standing in the faith.

And so without just running rabbits and scenarios, you know, that's what we got to look at. But, um, but I think it's a great conversation to continue, but we won't to destroy those extremes that I was mentioning.

Sorry for going into that, but that's what I'm trying to say. The, the demoralizing fear mongering that, that hyper charismania creates, or this easy believism that I was raised in and Baptist life and those kinds of stuff.

That's like, just say this prayer and sign this card and you're born again. You know, we want people passionately resting in the finished work of Jesus and passionately following hard after his mission.

And I think that's what we're all after. Let me try to wrap things up for us. We've gone a long time, which is really good.

It's a really good conversation. Just a bit of encouragement for you students of the word out there, pastor

Jonathan brought up those verses that you come across that will leave us with a question mark.

Sometimes here's a bit of encouragement for you in biblical hermeneutics, the art and science of studying scripture.

One of the tenants of biblical hermeneutics is interpret those harder to understand passages with the clear passages.

So dig into the word and there's, there's a lot of clear passages out there that will help you answer those that leave questions.

So dig into the word, dig into those cross references and find those clear passages to help you understand those that leave you with questions.

Some of them, you'll spend a lot of time on, but there are clear passages that will help you with that.

And one of the questions that I've had locked in here for a long time for the sake of time, just give me a,

I'm going to ask you a yes or no, ask you a question that's not a yes or no question, but I'm going to have to ask you just to give a yes or no answer.

So despite our differences in eschatology, I think we all agree that Jesus time on earth, that time of the apostles, the old covenant was ending and the new covenant was beginning and the kingdom was beginning in Christ.

And so God has always had his elect and God has all, but God has dealt with his elect differently with the old covenant saints than he does the new covenant saints.

And the primary difference is the Holy Spirit. And I'm thinking, would that affect how we were looking at Peter a while ago?

Yes. Okay. Okay. It's a deeper conversation with, we can dig into it and have lots of answers, but I think that was a missing piece of our conversation is looking at how

God dealt with old covenant saints versus new covenant saints, where the Holy Spirit comes, is sealed and remains for those who believe in perseverance of the saints.

So with that being said, thank you for watching labor's podcast. I do want to ask

Tyler, you've been quiet for too long. Would you, would you mind to share the gospel with us?

And then Jeremy, would you close us in prayer? Of course. So we've been talking about salvation and that's a big fancy word for being saved.

And the reality is what are we, what are we saved from? And that is why we call the gospel.

Good news is that every single one of us, because of the nature we inherited from birth, the standing that we received by being descendants of Adam, we are centers that we are where it counts.

We are dead in our sins. We are dead in our sins and trespasses and in need of mercy that we are in need of pardon for that sin, but that we inherited and the sin that we ourselves commit.

And so the remedy for that was

Christ, son of God, second person to Trinity came down in the, the likeness of human flesh.

He lived the perfect life that you and I could never live. It says in the song of Solomon that he came down the mountain, that he came seeking us leaping like the heart, like the dough over the fields, over the mountains.

So he, he ran to us. So he, he came with such vigor to reconcile us to himself that he bounds over the hills.

He's likened to a graceful animal, an animal with, with vigor and force. And it says, my love calls to me because every single one of us is called by God to repent and believe that he is who he says he is, that he is, he is

God who came down to die in our place on a cross to bear the, the weight of the justice for our sin in our place.

And that he rose triumphantly from the grave because they weren't rigid because he was

God that, well, he, he died as a human. He was still a God and couldn't stay dead.

And so he rose from the grave, the grave demonstrating that he had power over gray, over the grave, over death.

And now he is resurrected and reigns at the right hand of God, the father making intercession for us day to day, that he is continuing to make our case before the almighty judge, that he is continuing to keep his people.

He is continuing to deal with us as his people. If we are in Christ.

And so we, as a truth and love network, we implore you to come unto Christ in faith and repentance to seek the

Lord while he may be found to call in his name for mercy and grace and forgiveness.

Let's pray guys. Heavenly father. We thank you so much for this time that you've given us here to, to sharpen one another, to hopefully sharpen those listening

Lord. I know we, we don't all come from the same perspective.

Lord, we know that your sheep hear your voice and they follow you. And just thankful to be followers of, of Christ.

And that's what we're known for. And as was mentioned, Lord, you know that because you gave us your spirit, which as I preached on this past Sunday, that it's the

Holy spirit dwelling within Holy people called saints, that we will live like that.

We're just thankful that you've called us your people. You've given us your spirit.

And I just pray this evening that as the gospel was brought forth, that you would save your elect, that you would cause them to look upon Christ.

As your word tells us, as I mentioned earlier in Ezekiel 36, that you would give them a heart of flesh and, and take out the heart of stone, give them your spirit and calls them to obey you.

We can just rest in your work Lord. We're thankful to be your servants and to just lay down our lives for your glory.

And I pray that your people were edified tonight. Your name was glorified. In the name of Christ.

Amen. Thank you for the laborers podcast. We appreciate and love you.

We hope to see you next time. Thank you for joining the laborers podcast.

Remember, Jesus is King live in the victory of Christ. Speak with the authority of Christ and go share the gospel of Christ.