How Jesus Saves Sinners (A Conversation with Author Matthew Everhard)

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Two Credo Baptists and a Pedo Baptist walk into a podcast.

00:03

Sounds like the start of a joke, but it's actually the start of today's show.

00:07

Thank you for listening to the Conversation with a Calvinist, which begins right now.

00:30

Welcome back to Conversation with a Calvinist.

00:32

My name is Keith Foskey and I am a Calvinist, and I am super excited today to be joined by two friends, one brand new friend, Dr.

00:41

Reverend Dr.

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Matthew Everhard, Senior Pastor of Gospel Fellowship Presbyterian Church.

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He is a graduate of Malone University of Ashland Theological Seminary and of Reformed Theological Seminary in Orlando, and he currently is living just north of Pittsburgh.

00:59

Is that correct? That's right.

01:01

Yep.

01:01

You got it.

01:02

Absolutely.

01:02

Absolutely.

01:03

And we are thankful that you have given the time to our program today.

01:06

And I want to welcome back to the show, my friend, David, who is the audio voice behind Matthew's book.

01:14

Matthew wrote a book called Souls, How Jesus Saves Sinners, and David is the voice, the buttery golden voice behind the wonderful book, Souls.

01:24

Hi, David.

01:24

It's good to have you.

01:25

Hi.

01:26

Thanks, Keith.

01:27

Yes, sir.

01:28

And David, you've done this with me before.

01:31

I want to remind our audience that we had you on not too long ago when we had Will Dobby come on to talk about his book, which was a wonderful devotional book, which takes people through theological truths.

01:43

And if you didn't get to see that show, you can go back and find that in our archives.

01:47

But David, you're now a regular on the show.

01:50

Having now been on your second time, we're going to call you one of our, not as regular, but still one of our regulars.

01:59

And I'm thankful to have you.

02:00

I'll be picking a caricature to be drawn on my behalf.

02:03

Yeah, we have the CWAC crew and we all have caricatures as well.

02:07

Well, I want to switch back over to Matthew real quick, because I'm super excited to be talking to you, brother.

02:14

I've only recently come to know your ministry through your book, but also through your YouTube page.

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And I have found just listening to you a few times that I almost feel a little bit like I'm a little out of my league.

02:28

You are a true scholar and a very, very brilliant pastor.

02:34

And so I'm thankful to even just be able to have a conversation with you, ask you questions, get to know you a little bit better.

02:40

And as I was going through your YouTube page, I was noticing things that I think are really, really helpful for people.

02:46

I love the video you did just after the Grammys where you're talking about Madonna and you brought in Jonathan Edwards talking about Madonna.

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I mean, who does that, right? That's like really, really cool that you did that.

02:58

And then there was the video on five things that would make preaching better.

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It was just all kinds of good stuff.

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And I watched several of your videos, was very encouraged by it.

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And I'm going to link all that in the description below.

03:11

So if you're watching this on our YouTube page, you'll be able to go over to Matthew's page, find all of his videos are great quality, great content and good godly information for everyone.

03:24

So Matthew, if you would, just for a minute, tell us a little bit more about yourself.

03:27

I know I've talked about where you went to school and that you and your family live up in the Pittsburgh area, but tell us how you came to know the Lord and how you became a scholar of Jonathan Edwards.

03:38

How did that even happen? Well, yeah, thanks.

03:42

Thank you so much for having me on the show.

03:44

I really appreciate it.

03:45

By the way, your stuff is hilarious too.

03:47

And I'm just thrilled to be with you today.

03:49

Your content is amazing and very, very glad that you'd have me on the show.

03:53

So I grew up in Northeast Ohio and I was raised in the church.

03:57

I was raised in a Lutheran church.

03:58

I learned a lot about the Trinity and some of the creeds and things like that, but I really didn't have a saving experience of Christ until I actually visited a Pentecostal church.

04:08

I know that's kind of strange for a Presbyterian, but yeah, I got saved at a Pentecostal church.

04:13

We only went there a couple of times.

04:16

People get saved in Pentecostal churches.

04:19

We all agree.

04:22

One of them.

04:23

We never went back though, to be completely honest.

04:26

And then it wasn't very long before I realized the sense of calling on my life, actually really discipled in a large non-denominational church.

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And then of course, eventually I found my way to a Quaker college and a Brethren seminary.

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So logically I would end up an ordained Presbyterian pastor as the Lord would have it.

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So it's been a wild ride, but I'm thrilled to do the Lord's work.

04:50

I was just thinking this morning about how I love being a pastor.

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I love all my responsibilities, preaching, teaching, mission trips, counseling people, writing books and things.

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I love everything I do.

05:03

And I'm just so thankful for this life.

05:04

Being a pastor is one of the best lives you can live.

05:09

And I'm just grateful every single day that God would use me.

05:12

And as for Edwards, Edwards came into my life strongly when I was working on my dissertation project at RTS Orlando down in Florida.

05:20

And I needed a topic and I got the advice, if you're going to pick something, pick something that's going to grab your heart for the rest of your life.

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And when they preach your funeral one day, that they can truly say that changed your life studying that topic.

05:32

And so at that point I was stressed.

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I was frazzled.

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I was kind of at the end of my rope and I needed to talk, I needed to study on joy.

05:42

So I ended up delving into Jonathan Edwards' theology of joy.

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And I wrote my dissertation, something to the effect of Edwards and Edwards' theology of joy, the Holy Trinity and eternal happiness or something like that.

05:58

So that was the name of my dissertation.

06:01

So cool stuff.

06:02

Yeah, absolutely.

06:03

And later on in the show, I am going to be asking you five questions that I have about Edwards.

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And some of them, you may think are just, well, this is an easy question because for you, you know it all.

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But for me, I'm so interested in his life and ministry and things that I've read differing accounts of.

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And I want to kind of to go to you as the source on those things, but that's not.

06:30

That'd be great.

06:30

Yeah, that's something we're going to do a little bit later.

06:34

But before we do that, I do want to have a little bit of fun with you and David.

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One of the things that I have brought into my show, a couple of months ago, I began doing a segment, and I'll bring up the segment card right now, called This is Craziest Things This Week.

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Craziest Things This Week is where I take my guest, you, David, and Matthew, since I have two guests today, I'm going to show you a video that you previously have not seen.

07:09

Now, I'm assuming we all share probably the same views on what this is going to be, but I'm going to be curious as to getting your immediate response.

07:19

Now, this is something that is being promoted in a church.

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And again, I just want to show it to you without any context and let you respond what your immediate thoughts are.

07:33

Okay.

07:36

Oh, if it isn't you, my favorite person.

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Well, Saturday the 4th, this coming Saturday at 7.30 PM, there's going to be a host of drag here in St.

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James' Church of Piccadilly.

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Imagine that.

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Well, look at this.

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I've got a flyer right here.

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And we're going to have River Medway.

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We're going to have Veronica Queen.

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We're going to have Son of a Tutu, Angus Chi.

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And of course, me, which is even better.

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So come along 7.30 PM, Saturday, this Saturday.

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See you then.

08:08

So the St.

08:09

James' Church at Piccadilly is hosting a drag queen event.

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And the reason why I bring this up is I hear people tell me sometimes that we actually exaggerate the craziness going on in churches and these things aren't actually happening.

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So I thought this might be good to point out that, yes, these things happen and are being advertised.

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So brothers, thoughts? Keith, I don't know how many strikes you have on your YouTube channel right now.

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So I want to be careful about that, but I have some pretty strong opinions on the perversity agenda.

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And I suppose I could say that that kind of thing is obviously quite disturbing to me.

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I want to use words like delusion and demonic and perversity and things like that.

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But again, I want to be careful.

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I'll take my strikes on my own channel, but I want to be careful how much trouble I get you in.

09:00

Hey, this is what we're here for.

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Don't censor.

09:04

Let them have it.

09:06

Yeah.

09:06

I mean, I am honestly convinced that the entire transgender phenomenon is something of a demonic manifestation that has diluted the entire culture and unfortunately is seeping into the church.

09:18

It's really, really dangerous.

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I constantly warn my people about the three-headed dragon of communism, neo-Marxism, and transgenderism.

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I think these are three ideas that are really, really disruptive to our nation, to our culture, and the moment that it seeps into the church, man, we have to fight with the sword of the spirits and don ourselves with the armor of the Lord.

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But this is a real, really tricky moment that we're in here in history, and would that we would experience another great awakening like they did in 1740 in the time of Whitfield.

09:55

Amen.

09:56

Give me those three again, because I really like that.

09:59

I'm no Ed Litton, but every once in a while I do like to use somebody else's outline.

10:05

I don't know if you get the Ed Litton joke.

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You're not a Baptist.

10:08

No, I don't get that joke.

10:10

I'm sorry.

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The current president of the SBC was accused of plagiarizing sermons.

10:15

So, yeah, sorry about that.

10:19

I'm going to step behind.

10:20

The three-headed hydra of communism, neo-Marxism, and transgenderism, I think those are just three massive deceptions that are plaguing the church and certainly the culture at large.

10:32

Absolutely.

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Absolutely.

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A hundred percent agree.

10:34

David, you seemed a little surprised by that video as well.

10:38

What were your initial thoughts as a man of God? I can't say I'm surprised.

10:45

I mean, I'm guessing that's a Church of England church.

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I mentioned St.

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James Church, I believe.

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I say they, I think that was a he.

10:55

I believe the word drag was used.

10:58

I understand the Church of England is at least discussing having blessings of same-sex unions, to which I believe it was Calvin Robinson referred to that as sacramental sodomy.

11:12

Now, drag.

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I'm just taking notes.

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You guys are, yeah.

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Drag is not the same thing as homosexual behavior, but clearly they're in the same ballpark of not being within God's plan for marriage and life.

11:31

I don't know how it can be any more clear than that.

11:33

Absolutely.

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Absolutely.

11:35

And I know that didn't have anything to do with your book.

11:37

This is just one of the ways that we get to know our guests, is put something in front of you and say, how would you respond to this as a man of God or as a pastor or both? So now we want to move to another segment of the show, and this is maybe a little bit more lighthearted, a little bit more fun, is we're going to move to the part where we're actually going to do a giveaway.

11:58

Today, we are going to be talking about the book Souls, and this book was written by Matthew Everhard, our guest today, and it has been given to us in audio book form by David.

12:11

And again, as I said, his buttery golden voice.

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And so we are going to give away five, not one or two or three, but five copies of the audio version of this book.

12:24

And here's how we're going to give away these five copies of the audio version.

12:29

If you would go to our YouTube page, if you're listening to this on any other format, if you're listening to this on our podcast, or if you're listening to this on Facebook or somewhere else, take a moment, go over to the YouTube page, go down to the comments and the first five commenters who leave their favorite soul song.

12:51

You got to mention the song or you don't count the first five people to mention their favorite soul song.

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And I said mine earlier, does anybody remember I said before the show? Living in America by James Brown, the godfather of soul, Rocky four, all of those things.

13:08

Yeah.

13:08

So you got to put your favorite song.

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And if you don't know a soul song, you can put living in America.

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If you just don't have a favorite soul song, but you got to go, you got to put that in the comment, the first five people to put those in the comments, we will contact you and we will provide you with a free audio download of the book Souls.

13:28

And that's how we're going to do this week's giveaway.

13:31

And I want to thank you gentlemen, both for your generosity and donating to the show.

13:36

So just to clarify, they don't have to have the word soul in the title of the song.

13:39

It just has to be of the genre of soul music.

13:42

Is that right? Yeah.

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And some people might say living in America doesn't count, but I say, if it was sung by James Brown, who is the godfather of soul, it counts.

13:50

They count that.

13:51

Yeah.

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Would you say you feel good about this giveaway? Yeah, I feel good.

13:57

How? Do I kiss myself? Woo.

14:00

No, sorry.

14:01

This is James, James Brown.

14:03

All right.

14:05

Well, now we're going to take a few moments and we're going to actually talk about the main subject of today.

14:10

And that is the book Souls.

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I have recently had the opportunity to go through this book in audio and I have several things I want to mention about it.

14:19

Then I have some questions that I want to ask Matthew.

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First of all, I want to say, number one, Matthew, it was a great book.

14:27

It was great.

14:28

Listen, David, again, hearing your voice, but also, and it is interesting knowing you.

14:32

I've heard many, many audio books, but I don't know any other audio books.

14:37

What do you call yourselves? Are you narrators? Yeah.

14:41

I don't know anybody else, but I can see your face when I am listening.

14:45

So that's weird.

14:46

That is a little weirder.

14:49

You have a very weird face.

14:51

Thank you.

14:51

Well, no, no, no.

14:53

Not exactly what I meant, but no, no, no.

14:56

It's like you're talking to me.

14:59

It's like you're across the table reading it to me.

15:03

And that's a little interesting, but I want to say, I believe that this book is wonderful for Christians of all levels.

15:11

Again, I'm a pastor, teacher, been a pastor for 16 years, but I still gleaned some things from the book, especially, and I'm not going to give anything away for those who haven't read it yet, but there's a portion in the end where he talks about the Titanic.

15:24

I thought it was a wonderful illustration.

15:26

It was a great part of the book.

15:28

It really helped me and sort of just putting a picture to some of the things that we were talking about in the book or that he was talking about in the book.

15:36

So I would say great for people of all levels, but specifically for new believers.

15:43

We have in our church five people right now who are awaiting baptism, and I've decided I'm going to give all five of them copies of the book because even though we would disagree on baptism, we may have to talk about that another time.

16:00

We could debate right now, and David could be the moderator right now.

16:05

I don't think I mentioned baptism in the book though, do I? You don't.

16:09

Yeah.

16:10

No, no, no, no, no, no.

16:10

The book takes a very neutral position on ...

16:13

You mentioned what baptism signifies being a sign of covenant and things like that, but it wasn't anything that I wouldn't be able to endorse.

16:21

Nothing you said would be something ...

16:23

Yeah, yeah.

16:23

So that was great.

16:24

But again, we have ...

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Just last night, I was counseling two of our people who were being baptized, and I told both of them, hey, go find this book, listen to it or read it, get the Kindle version, whatever's easiest for you.

16:39

But I told them I wanted them to read it before they were baptized.

16:41

So just so you know, this is ...

16:43

Yeah.

16:43

Wow.

16:43

Praise God.

16:44

That's great.

16:44

Great to hear that.

16:45

Thank you.

16:46

Yep.

16:46

And that's the next thing I want to say is it's a short read in the sense that the audio version is less than five hours, I think, which is really for somebody who wants to get through a book in a relatively short amount of time, this book qualifies.

17:00

I mean, I've done books that are 20, 30 hours on audio, and were really, really, really long.

17:05

This is a great short read.

17:07

It's a good introductory read.

17:09

And it is available on audio for people who have maybe a long commute, or maybe that's just the way that you learn is through audio.

17:16

And I do have to ask you, Matthew, because this is a debate.

17:19

David and I talked about this last time.

17:20

If somebody listens to the book, do you qualify them as having read it, or do you say not so much? And again, I'm not asking you to take a stand here.

17:29

I count it, man.

17:30

I count it.

17:31

I keep track of the books that I read.

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I have a little chart in my ...

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I have kind of a daily diary thing that I fill out.

17:36

And if I listen to an audible book, I count it as having read it.

17:41

Now, sometimes I will read the physical book as I listen to it, like I did that with 1984.

17:47

I had the physical copy of it, and I listened to the audible book because the audio retelling was so fantastic.

17:53

It made it come alive to me.

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But I definitely count it, man.

17:56

You're good to go if you do that.

17:57

Hey, and let me say, you mentioned 1984.

18:00

You just went up the rankings.

18:02

I thought you were cool before.

18:04

I know you're cool now.

18:06

You have just ...

18:07

That is a book that everybody has to read, and not only that, but Fahrenheit 451.

18:11

If you like dyscopia novels, those two are the two that you have to understand, because these are things that are exactly happening in our culture today.

18:20

It's almost like our culture is inspired by these books.

18:22

They're learning some of the techniques of memory holing and the 12th edition of the updated standard language text, and all these kinds of things are coming straight out of these dystopian novels.

18:32

It's scary, but it's also quite astounding to think about how some minds, in terms of these fictional created worlds, were able to foresee some of the very problems that we're having today.

18:45

Absolutely.

18:45

Absolutely.

18:46

I did a show, I guess it's been about a year ago now, where we went through, was he a prophet? Was the writer of 1984, and for the life of me, it just went out of my brain.

18:59

What's his name again? Orwell.

19:02

George Orwell.

19:02

Yeah, George Orwell.

19:03

Yeah, yeah.

19:03

The title was, was Orwell prophetic? Did he have a prophetic voice? Obviously, I don't mean in the sense of God prophesying through him, but did what he say come true? The answer is, yeah, it's coming true all around us.

19:17

It's pretty weird because some of the things he talks about, like the screens where they can literally watch what you're doing.

19:22

I mean, he wrote that in a day where that technology did not exist and wasn't even close to existing, and now we're seeing all that kind of thing with the facial recognition software.

19:31

I mean, just look at where China is today.

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That's where the United States of America looks like it's going to be going five or perhaps sooner years from now.

19:40

But all of that, scanning, the watching, the constant monitoring, the social credit score system, these are things that we need to be really aware of very quickly because it looks like they're happening.

19:50

No, absolutely.

19:50

And my favorite of Orwell's is actually Animal Farm.

19:53

Yeah, that's good too.

19:54

And I, man, I make that, that's like our kids have to, I have to read that.

19:59

Like my kids, like this is like, look at this and this is how people take over and rob you of your freedoms and things like that.

20:08

There's so much power.

20:08

All the animals are equal, but some are more equal than others.

20:12

That's right.

20:13

That's right.

20:14

David, have you ever read or done the voice of any dystopian novels like that? I have not.

20:20

I have not recorded any fiction, but I am a big fan of everything you've mentioned so far in terms of not just good writing, but in terms of the concepts they contain.

20:34

And Animal Farm is, of course, much more subtly veiled in terms of the allegory.

20:41

Yeah.

20:41

Maybe not subtly, but it's concealed within the allegory.

20:45

But the same concepts are there.

20:46

The transition from the, we are the saviors of the people to, we are your benevolent leaders.

20:54

You should do everything that we need.

20:57

You see that right there in Animal Farm.

21:00

And by the end, of course, they look from man to pig and pig to man and can't tell the difference.

21:04

That's right.

21:05

That's right.

21:07

Well, moving back to the souls, the souls, the book's souls, I want to ask you this question, Matthew, because in the very opening of the book, you made a statement.

21:21

You said that you weren't going to say anything new.

21:27

And even though I would say that you did put some nuances on some things that were really good, really what you did though is you did proclaim the ancient gospel, the gospel that's been proclaimed for 2,000 years.

21:39

You did that.

21:40

And I know that was your intent because that's what you said.

21:42

You said you weren't attempting to do anything new.

21:45

And that's what we don't want in theology is we don't want novelty.

21:48

So I get that.

21:49

But why did you choose then to do this book if you knew that it really wasn't in one sense breaking new ground? What was your motivation? As a writer, I typically tend to do things that are a little bit more scholarly.

22:06

Most of my publications are in the field of Jonathan Edwards studies, the articles that I've worked on, some of my academic research is Jonathan Edwards-oriented.

22:15

And though I love that and I have a clear passion for that, and we'll talk about that later perhaps, I'm really a local church pastor.

22:21

That's really what I do.

22:22

And so my mission is to preach the gospel and to take ancient truths and make them relevant.

22:27

Of course, they're always relevant, but to make them clear again to the day and time that I'm living in, which is right now.

22:34

And so I say at the beginning of the book that if anything I said was original or invention or innovative, I'd be deeply embarrassed because I'm not trying to be particularly creative in this book.

22:43

I'm simply trying to take the gospel and to give it away to as many people as I can through the exposition of the Word of God.

22:52

And so I don't think there's anything particularly genius in this book at all.

22:56

In fact, I'm not really, despite all the kind words you used about me, I'm not really a very innovative or free-thinking type person.

23:04

I am one who tends to try to be a repeater of that which is good and that which is ancient.

23:10

And so given then the fact that most of the writing I do is somewhat academic and people aren't always interested in that, I just had a real desire to do a book that was just about the gospel.

23:21

This is the book that I've always wanted to write, and I just needed to do it, maybe even for my own sake if nobody reads it.

23:28

But I wanted to take all of my best content that I'd been preaching and teaching, some of my best stories and illustrations, and just put it into a very compact, short, and eminently readable, just short form.

23:41

I actually call this a gospel tract.

23:43

That's what it is.

23:44

It's a larger gospel tract, you know, like the tracts that you hand out that are usually like four pages.

23:49

This one is just 150 pages, but I just go through the basic essence of the gospel, trying to lead people to Jesus.

23:55

That's what I'm really doing here.

23:59

Absolutely.

23:59

And I'm a huge fan of gospel tracts.

24:02

We use a lot of gospel tracts here at our church.

24:04

We buy them by the case, and we give them away.

24:08

And I like that you said that because that really is something that sometimes people need more than just the small little booklet, or even for us, sometimes it's just little business cards that have just enough information to give somebody a way to contact us.

24:25

And there are times where, you know, we do an evangelism event every year.

24:31

For 10 days, there's a huge county fair near us, and we put on a booth, and we give out about 3,000 gospel tracts during 10 days of meeting people and talking to people.

24:42

And sometimes we meet people and have really great, lengthy conversations.

24:47

And it is tough sometimes.

24:48

All we have to give them is this little card.

24:50

So it might be that having some of those books on hand would be a value in a situation like that.

24:57

If a church was out meeting people, even going door to door, I know that some churches still do that.

25:03

We do that, yeah.

25:04

Yeah, go to their community.

25:05

And if you get in a conversation where somebody does want to know more and being able to give them something, because I must say, one of the scariest things I find, and I'll let you speak to this, is that so many people are getting their information from YouTube.

25:23

And here I am, I'm producing for YouTube, so I'm not saying all of YouTube is bad.

25:27

But some people get all their information about life and the Bible and everything else from YouTube.

25:33

And as a pastor, sometimes my biggest hurdle is having to untie all the knots that the world ties in people's minds.

25:42

And I mean, do you find that as well, that people come to you and watch stuff about the Nephilim and all this stuff and have all kinds of ideas? So one of the reasons I wrote this book is because I had been asked to teach at a missions conference every year for a number of years.

25:58

And it was a training conference where I would have a whole week to do a series on sin and the cross.

26:04

That was the topic that I was assigned, and I was very pleased to do that because I assume they picked me because I was the best sinner that they knew.

26:11

So sin and the cross.

26:13

And this conference was supposed to be for 20-somethings that were ready to go on the mission field for basically a whole summer or a gap year or something like that.

26:22

And I assumed that these, mostly being college kids or college graduates, would have a vast familiarity with the gospel.

26:32

And so I started talking about words like justification and propitiation and sanctification.

26:39

And Keith, I got to tell you, wide-eyed saucers is what I got back.

26:44

These young people had not been trained on the gospel in their churches.

26:47

I don't know what they were getting, but they were not familiar with some of the basic categories of Christian terminology.

26:54

Bible words, propitiation and justification, these are Bible words.

26:59

And yet these concepts were completely flying over their heads.

27:02

And so I had to revamp what I was teaching and do it again year after year after year, different group each time.

27:09

And two responses that I would commonly get, Keith, were one, utter fascination with the depth of Scripture and a desire to learn more about the gospel.

27:17

And then the second response was like offense, that they had never heard that God is angry at sinners and that His wrath needs to be placated by the atoning work of Christ on the cross.

27:29

So there were some who actually didn't want to finish the class, because this is not what they had been getting in their worship-tainment style, kind of doctrinally shallow, very superficial theology, if any theology at all.

27:45

And so yeah, that's part of the reason why I wanted to write this book, is because I wanted to clarify once again, what is the gospel? It's the good news of Christ, right? But that good news is only good if you presuppose the bad news, which is that we are fallen sinners and we need a Savior, else we will find ourselves in an eternally woeful predicament.

28:05

So part of the reason I did the book is just to clarify, what is the gospel? Amen.

28:11

And it's so funny, I wish I could actually go and get it, but we have a six-foot-wide wooden sign.

28:17

It's six foot by about 10 inches tall, but we hang it over our booth at the Callahan Fair, and it says, what is the gospel? That's what the sign says, because we live in the Bible belt.

28:30

I mean, we're in Northeast Florida, we're basically South Georgia.

28:34

So everybody we talk to has been to church most of their life.

28:39

A lot of people would say they're Christians, but if you ask the question, what is the gospel? I remember a pastor one time, I was like a youth pastor who came to the table and we were talking and I pointed to the sign, I said, well, what is the gospel? And he said, and again, this is the youth pastor, this is the guy in charge.

28:56

He said, well, that's a hard question.

28:59

I said, it shouldn't be for you.

29:00

This is literally your job, dude.

29:02

They hired you to do this, right? I mean, like a church pays you, like you do this and you don't know what the gospel is.

29:10

Well, that's a hard question.

29:11

No, it's not.

29:13

It's a deep and profound, and it's a question that has layers that you could dig into, but you should know what the gospel is, man.

29:22

This is your job.

29:24

Yeah, yeah.

29:24

And so, yeah.

29:26

All right.

29:26

Well, and again, not trying to be mean to that dude.

29:29

If he ever hears this, it'd be too ugly, but this is not something that should be a question mark.

29:36

Exactly.

29:37

Totally agree.

29:38

Yeah.

29:38

So Matthew, if I may, you got into on the book, but I think there are a lot of people in America today who think the gospel is being nice and that's not the gospel.

29:49

But it's that old, I think it's falsely attributed to Francis of Assisi with the whole, preach the gospel at all times, use words if necessary.

29:58

You can't preach the gospel by your life.

30:01

You can do good things by your life.

30:03

You can't preach the good news of Jesus Christ to saving sinners by being nice to people.

30:08

Yeah, yeah.

30:10

I mean, the word itself, euangelizamai, is a verb to gospelize.

30:15

It means to herald.

30:16

It's the kind of word that they would use in the context of a messenger going out to report the results of a battle in the days before modern communication.

30:24

And so, you would have a runner who would run from one city to the next city and he would herald the news.

30:30

And we see, for instance, an example of this, like when David's son Absalom is killed, the herald comes back and he thinks it's going to be good news.

30:38

And so, he evangelizes, he gospelizes.

30:41

Unfortunately, David's upset because he loves his son Absalom.

30:44

But you get the idea that it's a herald who runs with a message to proclaim.

30:50

And so, in our case, it is the good announcement, euangelizo, good euangelizo to announce.

30:59

And so, what we're announcing is that there is a Savior who has come.

31:02

And what we're proclaiming, this message has content to it.

31:06

It's not a feeling.

31:07

This is not an emotion or a feeling that comes over us as we're singing praise choruses.

31:12

But no, the gospel is an announcement with content.

31:15

And the content of it is the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ avails to atone for the sin of those who repent and believe.

31:23

So, that's what we're heralding, is we're trying to urge people then to respond to the message.

31:27

And they respond by repenting of their sins and by placing their faith in Christ.

31:32

But the message that we're announcing is an objective, historical, it's a fact.

31:38

It's a fact that corresponds with reality as it is.

31:42

It's that Jesus Christ was incarnate, that he lived the perfect life to fulfill all of the law on our behalf.

31:49

So, his active obedience is supplied in his life.

31:51

And then his passive obedience is his suffering or his death on the cross, which has sin-atoning value to it, the propitiatory effect of his blood.

32:01

And then his resurrection, then, as the Scripture says, he was raised again for our justification.

32:05

And so, we could make that more complicated.

32:07

We could also talk about the ascension of Christ and the session of Christ and things like that.

32:11

But at its essence, what we're proclaiming as the kingdom of God is at hand, God has sent a Redeemer who actually not just theoretically has the ability, but actually has done the work of saving atonement for the elect of God so that we who place our faith in him might not perish, but have eternal life in his name.

32:31

So, there's the gospel in brief.

32:35

Amin, and thank you for sharing that.

32:37

And that makes me think about something that you did say in the book as well, because you were talking about how God saves the sinner, and you talked about God being the one doing the work of regeneration, and it's not like a pie where we have half or 80-20 or even 90-10, where we participate and our participation sort of finishes God's work, but that salvation is a all of God, a what we might call a monergistic work.

33:12

And so, in that, there may be some who would disagree.

33:20

I recently had Leighton Flowers on my program, who is opposed to Calvinism.

33:27

We've been doing some things together, and, you know, very nice man, but obviously we disagree on quite a bit.

33:34

But that's one of the areas of the book that we would, in fact, disagree with certain others, that we would say salvation is not something that we do, but something God does for us.

33:48

So, yeah, I'm a Presbyterian, which means I'm Reformed and Calvinistic in my soteriology, and so the book is written from the perspective of one who is Reformed.

33:56

We confess the Westminster Confession of Faith, and so there are a few times in the book where I quote the Westminster Confession directly, and you get the impression that I am who I am as you read the book, though I tried not to come at this topic from a partisan spirit.

34:12

In other words, though you can, if you're in the know and you know what you're looking for, obviously, I'm presenting the gospel through the doctrines of grace, which is what we Calvinists think of as the good news, that salvation is of the Lord, that he has done it all.

34:27

Of course, we wouldn't deny that there's a response of the human heart.

34:32

We have to repent of our sins and believe in Christ.

34:36

And yet, even before we can do that, the Spirit of God has to enable the heart to repent and to believe, because as it stands, without Christ and without regeneration, without our hearts having been converted, first, we have dead hearts.

34:50

We're like Pharaoh, whose heart was hardened.

34:52

We're like, as it says in Ezekiel, we have stone hearts that need to be replaced with a soft heart of flesh.

34:58

And so, that's actually part of the good news of the gospel, is that God, through his Holy Spirit, does that regenerating, life-giving work of enabling the heart to repent and to believe in the first place.

35:10

So, we consider that part of the good news.

35:13

And again, the book is not partisan.

35:15

I'm not attacking Arminianism necessarily, though I am writing from a reformed perspective on today's salvation works.

35:21

Sure.

35:22

And I certainly didn't mean to insinuate that it was in any way unable to be enjoyed by someone who wasn't necessarily reformed.

35:32

But this is what we believe God does.

35:35

We believe that God saves, and that salvation is of the Lord.

35:40

And that is a message worth proclaiming, that it's not our works mixed with God's works, but it is God who has done it.

35:51

Now, I do want to ask David, before we move into the next portion, I want to ask if David has any additional questions.

35:59

We talked a little bit before the show, but I have one final question.

36:03

I'll let David go first, if he has anything to ask regarding the book.

36:06

You having read the book probably more than any of us, how many times do you read a book when you're recording it? I do a pre-read all the way through that's looking for words, phrases I don't know or realize that maybe I think I know, but I don't.

36:24

It's a little bit of research.

36:26

And then after making any notes on that, as I'm going through, sometimes I'll end up just having to re-read a section because I'll realize I didn't quite catch it the first time, and maybe I'm not delivering it quite the way I had originally thought I was going to.

36:40

I realize that I didn't entirely catch the draft or something like that.

36:44

But generally speaking, I've read everything at least twice, and then I'm listening to it again.

36:48

And then, because that's the way I am, I kind of forget it all later.

36:53

Not intentionally, but I'm very good at getting the general drift of something and not very good at remembering a lot of the fine details of it.

37:01

But because I was just re-listening to the book yesterday in anticipation of this podcast, Matthew, I wanted to ask you, why is it you are the resident expert on the topic of sin? I don't know.

37:13

I don't know.

37:13

I've seen something in my life.

37:15

Maybe there's something very contradictory in my background, perhaps.

37:20

I don't know.

37:21

I don't know.

37:22

Well, I am a sinner.

37:23

I know that for sure.

37:24

And that's one of the initial indications that the Lord is working in your life when you recognize your own depravity.

37:31

And Paul's sense of his own sin was that he was the chief of sinners.

37:34

And sometimes we look at that and we're like, gosh, Paul was such an amazing missionary and such a faithful stalwart, gospelizer.

37:42

He was an apostle, and he's stoned almost to death, and he's almost shipwrecked, and he's beaten, and he's in prison.

37:49

And we think, gosh, this looks like a very faithful man.

37:53

And yet, it's true.

37:55

His background is that he blasphemed and persecuted the church, as he says in another place.

38:00

But that's the common experience of the believer, is that when we come to grips with our sin, it just weighs upon us.

38:06

We think of a Christian in Pilgrim's Progress, as he's carrying that heavy load off his shoulders, and he could do nothing with his burden.

38:16

And there's that beautiful moving scene when that burden finally falls off his back.

38:20

And I think for those of us who look at our own sin as just being this insuperable obstacle, that there's no way we can do anything about it in and of ourselves.

38:28

We find such freedom, and salvation, and new life when we come to reckon with the fact that Christ has actually borne our sins for us on the tree.

38:39

And that's why we recognize our sinfulness, but man, are we thankful for Christ and his atoning work for us through his blood.

38:48

Absolutely.

38:49

Absolutely.

38:50

And David, unless you have something else, I want to ask one last question about the book, then we're going to move on to the Jonathan Edwards conversation.

38:56

Hey, can I jump in real quick? I just want to say that.

38:58

Oh, yes, please.

38:59

Please.

38:59

David did such an excellent job on the recording of this book.

39:03

If there's anybody who happens to be a writer out there who's looking for the premier guy to do your audible version, because honestly, I didn't have the recording equipment myself, and I'm not even sure I had the time to record the book with all of the other priorities.

39:16

But if you're looking for a guy, you should definitely check out David K.

39:19

Martin.

39:20

Awesome job on my book.

39:21

Very thankful for it.

39:22

Truly professional.

39:24

Easy experience.

39:25

Led me through the whole process.

39:26

It was easy as cake.

39:28

Thank you.

39:29

Amen.

39:30

And yeah, we'd love to hear David's voice more.

39:35

Again, it's buttery goodness, I promise.

39:41

That's just a little joke around here.

39:43

That's what we call great voices, buttery goodness.

39:47

Buttery goodness.

39:48

All right.

39:48

My last question about the book, and again, I endorse the book.

39:52

I encourage people to read it, encourage people to use it as a gospel track.

39:55

Use it, especially with baptismal candidates, people that are new, who they want to give the gospel to in a very readable, digestible form.

40:06

But if I asked you, and this may be a weird question, so forgive me if it's a little odd, Matthew, but if I said, what one chapter or maybe even one section of the book that you most feel like was the best part? And the reason why I ask this is I remember years ago, I was thinking through, oftentimes what we...

40:29

Because I've written a couple of books and I've talked to other authors and stuff.

40:33

It's like, we had one thing that we felt like we really contributed in the book.

40:37

And that was, everything else is important, but obviously there was this one part that really touched our heart or it was almost the reason for it.

40:46

And we've heard you talk about the gospel today, how much you love Christ and love the gospel.

40:49

So obviously that's, but is there one part of the book, if you said, man, this is the part I feel like is really, I wanted to drive home? Well, probably two things.

40:58

There's a story where I talk about the death of Socrates, which really strikes to the heart of what the soul is and whether or not the soul can be immortal.

41:06

So from a philosophical perspective, that story is very interesting.

41:09

It comes from Plato's work, Phaedo or Phaedo as it's variously pronounced.

41:14

And it's just a great question that just leaves the reader hanging with what is the soul and is it truly immortal and does it live after death? But you mentioned it earlier.

41:26

And whenever people read the book, the one thing they always say that was helpful to them is the Titanic illustration in the very last chapter, wherein I try to describe the course of human history as something like the Titanic hitting the iceberg in Genesis chapter three, when Adam and Eve fall into sin and of course, bring humankind into woe and misery and death.

41:49

And if you know the story of Titanic, you know that the unsinkable ship sank, obviously everybody knows that.

41:55

But some people also know too, that the lifeboats that were fitted on the Titanic had the opportunity to save many people as the ship was going into the waters, which were just a few degrees above freezing, very cold night.

42:10

And people went hypothermic and died within just a few moments of going into the water.

42:15

But there's this moment when those who are saved in the lifeboats have the opportunity to decide whether they're going to go back into the melee to try to save some people who are flailing in the water before they go down to their cold death.

42:31

And unfortunately, of the 20 lifeboats that were available and of the few that were saved, only one lifeboat that we know of went back in to actually try to pull people out of the wreckage of Titanic.

42:44

And the rest of them just kind of sat there and they were content to be safe and to know that they were going to live another day and that salvation was coming.

42:52

And so the book really ends with a challenge to go share the gospel.

42:57

Don't be like that person who is safe and secure in Christ, but unwilling to take any risks to bring the good news of the gospel to those who need it most.

43:07

Be brave and be bold like that one lifeboat that did go back.

43:10

Sure, they brought themselves into some risk, into some jeopardy, but they were able then to essentially pull someone else or a couple of persons onto that lifeboat and to bring them into safe harbor as well.

43:21

So people that have read the book have said that that is a lasting illustration that seems to click.

43:26

It seems to make sense and it is somewhat motivating then to go out and share the good news with somebody who needs to hear it.

43:32

Awesome.

43:33

Awesome.

43:34

Well, thank you for that.

43:35

And again, thank you for the contribution to the faith.

43:40

I think it really is.

43:42

Yeah.

43:42

Absolutely.

43:43

Well, we're going to move now to our five fun questions I have here printed out for me.

43:48

When I say five fun questions, this is fun for me because I'm a nerd.

43:54

You are a Jonathan Edwards scholar.

43:57

Anytime I talk to anyone who is an expert about anything that I personally enjoy, and I do enjoy Edwards, and I'm thankful for what he has contributed to our faith, I want to pick your brain for hours, but I know we don't have time to do that, but I can ask you my five questions.

44:14

First of all, this one actually comes from one of my elders because I talked to him this morning, told him I was going to be interviewing you.

44:19

And I said, what would you ask if you were going to talk to an Edwards scholar? And he said, well, when you started, did you find that Edwards was a hard read? And what do you tell people who say he's too hard for them to read? What are your thoughts on that? So it depends on where you start.

44:35

If you were to start reading Freedom of the Will, which I think is Edwards' hardest book and probably one of the least beneficial, at least to me, then you will be utterly frustrated because the way that he works through those concepts, first of all, they're very hard concepts.

44:50

He's trying to work out the relationship between divine sovereignty on one hand and human responsibility on the other hand.

44:56

He's arguing for what we call a compatibilist position, that those two things are not inherently contradictory, but they can both be true.

45:06

And yet the way that he does that is so circular and so much of the Puritan style that those who are unfamiliar with a lot of the terms and concepts of logic in those days would be very frustrated with that book.

45:20

And they would think that Edwards is hard.

45:22

However, if you were to start off with his sermons, you will not find him hard because he's actually not a very hard person to read.

45:30

So I would say maybe start with the sermons or start with some of his shorter treatises.

45:35

There's a great one called The Distinguishing Marks of the Work of the Spirits, which he wrote about the revivals.

45:42

But you could also read his resolutions.

45:43

If you want to read something that you can say that you've read Edwards, you can read his resolutions and be done in about 20 minutes and you will have read something that is of great benefit to the soul.

45:54

So don't start with Freedom of the Will, start elsewhere.

45:58

And I actually have, I think I have somewhere, a suggested reading list in order of difficulty, starting with the easiest things and working its way to the harder things of Edwards.

46:08

For those who are interested in delving in, that'd be a great way to approach it.

46:13

Go from easiest to hardest.

46:14

Yeah, I think that's a wonderful answer and wonderful advice as well.

46:19

Would love to get that list personally.

46:21

Yeah, that'd be great.

46:25

Second question, and this is one that both he, both my elder and I both wondered about because we both heard differing accounts of this.

46:34

Sinners in the Hands was obviously the one that most people are familiar with as far as Edwards' sermons.

46:40

Did he really preach Sinners in the Hands in a monotone voice? That's what we often hear is that he read it in a monotone voice that, because, you know, when we, when we, when we hear that, that sounds rather odd, but was that actually how that was done? Yeah, that's a yes and no answer because it's, it's yes if we're comparing him to George Whitfield, who is the premier preacher at the time of the Great Awakening.

47:08

Whitfield is doing very dramatic things.

47:11

He's preaching without notes, though of course he's preaching the same sermons over and over again.

47:15

But he's going, he's doing very theatrical things.

47:19

Whitfield was actually raised in a home that was kind of a bar and had a little bit of like a stage out in the front part, so he was raised just kind of learning dramatic presentation.

47:30

And so if you were to compare Whitfield to Edwards, then yeah, Edwards was a little bit more of a dull presenter.

47:35

However, he is not described that way by people who actually heard him preach.

47:40

So compared to the standard preacher of his day, Edwards is considered a good preacher, not necessarily great in terms of his, his presentation style, but he was not considered boring by people who, who actually heard him speak.

47:55

Now one thing is interesting after Edwards came, I'm sorry, after Whitfield came through in 1740, Whitfield preached at Edwards' church and actually stayed in the, in Edwards' home.

48:06

Edwards seems to have been motivated to try some different things in the pulpit, and he, he began to start to move away from the full manuscript style, and he actually wrote smaller handheld manuscripts that he could kind of palm in his hand like this as he was preaching.

48:23

He could never quite get away from the manuscript entirely, but he tried to be a little bit more free in his delivery like Whitfield was.

48:30

But just wrapping this up, probably his best deliveries were actually done when he was a missionary in Stockbridge after he got fired from Northampton, because there he re-preached some of his sermons.

48:43

He, I don't want to say dumbed them down, but he simplified them for a mixed language audience.

48:48

He had an English church and also was teaching to Native Americans through a translator and through some English-speaking Native Americans.

48:56

And apparently those were probably his best in terms of just natural delivery, just getting out the Bible and speaking truth to the people.

49:04

He was probably really at his oratorical best there.

49:09

Awesome.

49:09

And I, and in your video on five helps for pastors, you, you had, you, you had talked about writing a manuscript but not taking it into the pulpit.

49:18

I think that's, that's really, really helpful.

49:22

And David, have you ever read any of Edwards into any audio that people have listened to? Like, have you ever done your version of Sinners in the Hands? I have not.

49:32

No, I have not read that aloud.

49:33

Yeah.

49:34

Yeah.

49:34

I might be interested to hear from the, the, the golden voice to hear you.

49:39

Yeah.

49:39

Interesting.

49:40

Yeah.

49:43

I've read through it, I haven't read it aloud.

49:45

That would be interesting.

49:46

Yep.

49:47

All right.

49:49

Another question on the Sinners in the Hands sermon, obviously that's one so many people are familiar with.

49:55

Have you, is it true that he had already preached that sermon before and that when it, when it made its impact, it was actually a repeated sermon? Yeah, that's exactly right.

50:07

He preached the same sermon to his home church, the North Hampton church, the one a few as a pastor for 23 years.

50:13

And it was unremarkable, nothing special happened, but the real event that we think of pertaining to Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God happened at a different church at Enfield, not too terribly far away, but in the Great Awakening, what they were doing is they were itinerating quite a bit more than usual.

50:31

They were exchanging pastors in different pulpits.

50:34

You preach here for six weeks, I'll preach there this weekend, that kind of thing.

50:38

And it was at the Enfield church, not his home congregation where the kind of falling out of the pews and the trembling and the prayer meeting on into the late night, that actually took place at a different church.

50:51

But when he preached it at home, it was just another Pastor John sermon for them.

50:56

That's interesting.

50:57

Yeah.

50:58

Well, and that brings me to my next question, which is in regard to his home church, many people know simply by virtue of historical fact that he was removed from his church in, I forget the name, you just said it.

51:16

North Hampton.

51:16

North Hampton.

51:17

Yeah.

51:18

The circumstances from what I understand, and I just want to know if I'm right, the circumstances from what I understand had to do with the fencing of the table in regard to people who were participating in communion who were not actually believers.

51:31

Am I describing that correctly? I'm sure there's more to it, but is that a...

51:37

It did have to do with the circumstances of fencing the table.

51:40

That's right.

51:41

Edwards was formerly the associate pastor under his grandfather, Solomon Stoddard, who considered the Lord's Supper to be a converting ordinance.

51:52

See, in the halfway covenant, they had this problem of receiving people into membership who had been baptized, and can you baptize the children of people who were baptized but hadn't come to the Lord's table? You got all these complications.

52:04

Solomon Stoddard tried to solve that in the halfway covenant agreement, whereby he would permit people to the Lord's table as long as they had been baptized themselves and were not living a scandalous lifestyle.

52:18

So it was more of an open communion, not quite as open as we many times do today, but it was more of an open communion.

52:25

Edwards had had some real misgivings about that.

52:29

He realized that he was going to have to try to double back on his grandfather's own policy, and he waited quite a while to do this as his conviction seems to have grown.

52:39

But in 1750, then, he did try to fence the table more strictly, wherein he would require people to come to the leadership of the church, give a credible profession of faith or testimony of saving grace in order to come to the table.

52:54

And that caused a scandal in the Northampton congregation.

52:59

He tried to defend his position on that matter.

53:03

They were not interested in hearing it, so he published some things on that.

53:06

But at the end of the day, that was the straw that broke the camel's back.

53:10

There were other tensions that make the situation far more complicated than that.

53:14

There was some party spirit within Northampton.

53:17

There were some family tensions, not in Edwards' own family, but amongst his broader family.

53:22

People have been in positions of prominence.

53:26

And then some other missteps that Edwards had made previously in his pastorate that had unfortunately kind of lost some of the trust of some of the powers that be in the congregation.

53:35

Yeah, but that was the issue.

53:37

He was fired from Northampton, and then he goes on to serve as a missionary to Stockbridge, where he ends up writing some of the best things that ever wrote.

53:46

And so in God's providence, we can say, if it hadn't been for his firing, we might not have nature of true virtue, the end for which God created the world.

53:55

We might not have freedom of the will, which he wrote in Stockbridge.

53:58

So some of his real genius comes because he got fired, and he finally had the freedom to do those things.

54:05

So that's kind of cool.

54:07

Absolutely.

54:07

And interestingly enough, we had members of our church.

54:12

They're not with us anymore, but they were members of our church.

54:15

Their last names were Stoddard.

54:17

And one of the things that they liked to talk about was that they were descendants of Solomon Stoddard, so which made them in some sense familial related to Jonathan Edwards.

54:30

Yeah, very cool.

54:31

Very cool.

54:31

All right, last question, and then we're going to begin to draw to a close.

54:36

The Encyclopedia Britannica describes Jonathan Edwards as the greatest theologian to be born on American soil.

54:44

Now, I'm assuming you agree, but I want to hear it from you.

54:48

Do you think that they made that correct? Yeah, I do agree with that.

54:52

And the reason is because Edwards is not just a genius, but a polymathic genius, and there's a distinction there.

54:59

So a genius is one who's really, really smart, right? But a polymath is one who contributes in multiple fields of human inquiry.

55:07

So what makes Jonathan Edwards really so interesting is that he is obviously a pastor.

55:13

He's a local church pastor, but he's also a missionary.

55:16

He's also a theologian.

55:18

And his work in philosophy, though controversial, is some really first-rate stuff.

55:24

And so Edwards is notable for those who would study him, whether from a theological perspective or a church history perspective, of course, his work in the revivals, his role there, just a crucial point in pre-American colonial history.

55:42

But yeah, his writing is truly of genius caliber.

55:45

There's a lot of things that he does that are very creative.

55:48

Sometimes he presses the envelope a little bit too far.

55:52

And I will be the first to tell you, I do not agree with Jonathan Edwards on several issues.

55:57

Not every issue, but there are a few things that I would say I would vehemently disagree with Edwards, but I appreciate his real genius.

56:07

And I can't think of anybody that has that broad of a dispersal of genius that is quite like him.

56:16

So philosophy, missionary contributions, pastoral work, his work on natural science is the other thing too.

56:30

I human biology, he's got interesting work on light and rainbows and things like that.

56:36

Most people just are not thinking that broadly in terms of the scope of divine revelation.

56:43

It's really quite interesting.

56:45

Absolutely.

56:46

It amazes me when I think about the gifted men of the past, thinking of Edwards and going back further into Calvin and Luther, the things that they were able to accomplish.

56:59

Calvin had written the Institutes, I think by the age of 27, the first edition.

57:04

These guys are doing these things with quill pens and bottled ink.

57:10

We have Lagos and Accordance software, which allows us to do searches of original languages and things.

57:19

They were just brilliant men.

57:25

So often we spit on the past, thinking that we are so far above them when in many ways we're standing on their shoulders and thankful for all that they did.

57:40

Yep.

57:40

Yep.

57:40

For sure.

57:41

For sure.

57:42

Well, brothers, I'm going to draw us to a close.

57:44

I want to end by asking both of you to please once again share with our audience how people might contact you.

57:50

I'm going to start with you, David.

57:51

If somebody's interested in an audio book, if somebody's interested in learning more about you and learning about how to get into it, because you're connected with Audible and all these different things, you would be able to help somebody do that.

58:02

Tell them how to get a hold of you.

58:03

I see davidkmartin.net, but let them know.

58:11

Oh, you're muted.

58:13

Sorry about that.

58:13

No worries.

58:15

Sorry.

58:16

I was coughing there a minute ago and I muted it when I was doing that.

58:19

You know, probably the simplest way is davidkmartin.net, not .com.

58:24

Somebody else already owned that and I wasn't willing to pay the fee for it.

58:27

But davidkmartin.net and there's a contact form there that will send me an email.

58:33

You might get an email back from a different address, but that's the simplest way probably to contact me.

58:37

I'll also mention I have a YouTube channel where I excerpt some of the books that I record and there is an excerpt from Souls on my YouTube channel.

58:45

Maybe, Keith, if you could link to that in your show notes, people who want to hear another excerpt besides the sample that's already there on Audible can hear another six minutes or so from the book and see if they're interested in either the text or the audio book.

59:02

Absolutely.

59:02

Absolutely.

59:03

Again, thank you for being on the show today and for contributing to continuing the education of God's people.

59:10

Thank you.

59:11

Matthew, again, it was so good to hear from you today and to learn from you and to get to pick your brain.

59:16

Can you tell our audience how people can get a hold of you if they're interested or to look at your information online? Sure.

59:24

Well, you can go to my YouTube channel.

59:26

It's just youtube.com slash Matthew Everhart is my name, Matthew Everhart.

59:31

Then you can follow me at Twitter at Matt underscore Everhart.

59:35

Those would be two ways to stay connected.

59:37

And I'd love to love to follow up with anybody out there.

59:40

Absolutely.

59:41

Absolutely.

59:42

Well, thank you, gentlemen, again, for being on the show.

59:44

I want to thank you, audience members who have been with us today, who have been listening for this last hour.

59:49

Thank you for being with us.

59:50

Thank you for showing your support and encouragement to the show.

59:53

And I want to invite you, if you have enjoyed this show, to go and find our other shows.

59:59

You can go to Calvinist Podcast dot com.

01:00:01

That will take you straight to our YouTube page.

01:00:04

You'll see that we have a couple of years worth of podcasts now that we've done on a variety of subjects.

01:00:10

And we also have a entire series of comedy videos that we have put out.

01:00:16

Our denominational meetings, people seem to really enjoy them.

01:00:19

So I would encourage you to go to our YouTube page.

01:00:21

And also, again, don't forget, we're giving away five copies of the book Souls.

01:00:25

If you go on to this video on our YouTube and put in your favorite soul song and and the first five people to do that will get a audio book version of the book Souls, How Jesus Saves Sinners.

01:00:38

I want to also remind you that we now have a way for you to support the show.

01:00:41

And if you are interested, you can go show your support at BuyMeACoffee dot com slash your Calvinist and follow me on Twitter at your Calvinist.

01:00:50

I want to thank you again for listening to Conversations with a Calvinist.

01:00:53

My name is Keith Foskey and I've been your Calvinist.

01:00:57

May God bless you.