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Apologetics Live

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Welcome to Apologetics Live. We're here to answer your questions and challenges about God and the

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Bible. Meet your hosts from Striving for Eternity Ministries, Andrew Rappaport, Dr. Anthony Silvestro, and Pastor Justin Pierce.

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Well, we are alive. Wait, what are you doing next to me? This is a...

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I am finally in his digs. It's real. He's here. These are real books, too.

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This isn't just a fake thing. That's right. Well, welcome to Apologetics Live. We are here to answer your challenging questions.

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Anything you have about God and the Bible, we can answer. That's what we do here. We're here to answer those questions.

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So, anything you have, go to ApologeticsLive .com. Join there. What you do is go down to the bottom, and you'll see underneath, there's a little button or icon for the duck.

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That's the StreamYard icon. Just go there to join in the discussion. Those who watch on YouTube and Facebook, you guys, and Twitter can leave comments there, and we would be able to see that,

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I hope, as well. I'm not sure if we see Twitter. That's a good question. Someone watching on Twitter, let us know. Put a tweet out.

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We do have a super chat already. So, in YouTube, you can pay to get us to make sure we're going to answer your question.

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What it is, if you give us a super chat, that highlights it, and we get to that. Someone did. Brad George did one before we even went live.

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So, we'll make sure we get to that. So, I'll just mark that one. It's a good question, too.

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All right. Well, so, before we get started, I'm here in the Silvestro digs.

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So, this is the first time, actually, I think we're doing Apologetics Live together in your place.

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We're here. That's right. Yeah, we've done a couple of mine. But, we got some stuff in the news, in the news segment.

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Just to get Anthony triggered a little bit more. It's always fun to do the in the news segment, because it gets him triggered.

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But, he already knows this one. So, I found it interesting. We've been seeing, ever since Barack Obama, this idea of letting illegal aliens into the country.

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And what they would do is take them as they come across the border and ship them to all the red states and just drop them off.

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And states would sue. And the argument was that the states didn't need to know that these illegal aliens were being dropped off in their state.

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So, some of these states decided, specifically Florida and Texas, that they were going to send the illegals to the states that have set themselves up as sanctuary states.

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That kind of makes sense, doesn't it? I mean, if they're a sanctuary city or sanctuary state for illegal aliens, doesn't that mean they want them and they're set up for them?

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They want them. They're going to take care of them. They're open arms welcoming, is what they say. Yeah. And they should have the resources.

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Yeah, they should. Except, New York is quite upset, because 6 ,000. That's right, 6 ,000 illegal immigrants were dropped off in New York.

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Almost 10 ,000. 9 ,600 were dropped off in DC, and the mayor there is very unhappy.

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Galvin Newsom, there in California, says that this is cruel, what the

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Republican governors are doing in playing with people's lives and that this is inhumane.

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Some of the liberals called the Governor Abbott and Governor DeSantis Nazis for doing what?

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For busing and flying the illegals into the states that said they want them.

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I'm quite confused with this. If they are a sanctuary city, sanctuary state, and they want the illegals, why are they upset when they're only getting a fraction?

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They're getting 6 ,000 to 9 ,000 compared to the border states that are getting millions.

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Millions, that's right. But you must admit, it's kind of funny that they dropped them off at Martha's Vineyard, which is where the liberals typically go, the ones that have a lot of money, that usually are the ones spouting off about wanting to be sanctuary cities and wanting illegals to come to the country, that now they're the ones upset that their town is being overrun by illegals.

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I find it ironic and hysterical. And it's very interesting what is happening because of Martha's Vineyard, the home of Barack Obama, the home of other famous people like Oprah Winfrey.

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I think the Clintons may even have a place there, but they're very upset. So what are they doing? Well, Joe Biden's actually using

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COVID arguments saying that there's a state of emergency and they're going to ship the illegals out of Martha's Vineyard back to Mexico.

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Huh. If you drop off the illegals in sanctuary cities, they're welcome until they show up, is

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I guess what it is. They might as well say, we're a sanctuary city, illegals are welcome as long as they don't come here.

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Because if they do, we're going to ship them back to Mexico. It's pretty typical liberal logic.

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So, well, liberal and logic don't go too well together. Yeah, I know.

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So last night, last night you and I got together with your brother, your brother Vito. Yeah. And he is, he's not a

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Christian. And yet, as I talked with him, he came up with one of the best arguments

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I've heard against abortion. Yeah. Now I have to say, first, I have two younger brothers.

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They both are not Christians, but something happened five or six years ago, right after I, right after my book came out.

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And, and my one brother called me and it's like, you know, I'm having a real, real struggle with, with this evolution stuff.

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He goes, I know you teach against it. He goes, it doesn't make any sense. Like when you start looking at it, it doesn't make any sense.

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Which brother was that? That was Vito. That was Vito. Okay. And then Dominic shortly thereafter said it. And so I gave him each copy of my book.

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They, they read through it and doing a lot more research. And they're, they've always been conservative fiscally, just, you know, nothing else and certainly not been

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Christians. So it was interesting watching. It's been interesting watching them over the years.

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I feel like God's drawing them still not to repentance yet, but, but I think their eyes are being opened more and more.

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So I wanted that as a background before we get into this. So he and I were talking about the issue of abortion and he made a comment.

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He goes, I don't believe abortion is a pro -choice issue. Now think about this.

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You're speaking to someone you know is not a believer. And he says that, and you really don't know his position. It's the first time I ever met him, not quite sure where he's going with it.

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And he turns and says this, it's really an issue of irresponsibility. It's not a pro -choice issue.

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It's a pro irresponsibility issue. It's, he said, the issue is they don't want to take responsibility for their actions.

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And I thought that was brilliant. And I told him I'm stealing it because it really was a great way of explaining what the abortion issue really is.

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It's not about choice. It's about having sex without consequences.

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And many people would say, but really reframing it when they want to say they're pro -choice just by saying, well, no, you're actually pro irresponsibility and let them think about that because that's really the, at the heart of the issue for them.

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So, yeah. All right. So we got some questions that came in. You want me to bring the first one up?

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Cause yeah, it looked like you were going to, well, we should do the super chat one first. Yeah, we should do a super chat one first. So here's a

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Brad George. And if you want to give a super chat, we would be happy to have that. That goes to striving for eternity.

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Uh, and that, that basically will pop up on our screen with this bright color. So we see it, uh, gives us even a countdown timer, but, uh, it helps to donate to the ministry.

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And so you just do, you do that on YouTube to do that and just click the dollar sign. So Brad George says this,

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I'm going to read this and let you give the answer. Cause I think you're more researched on this since I haven't read what

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Chuck wrote. Uh, Hey brothers wanted to get your thoughts on Doug Wilson. I believe you have seen

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Chuck O 'Neill's post about DW being a false teacher and someone to avoid is

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DW someone to be avoided. So I'm going to let you, cause

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I actually didn't see Chuck's post. Yeah. I have my own thoughts, but yeah, I have.

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And, uh, and I think Chuck makes some really, really good points. So let me say, give an overview of what

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Chuck's post was. If you could not, I mean, don't read the whole thing, but just, well, yeah, the two main points that Chuck brings up.

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Um, and, and, and fairly, so one is, is, um, he's, he uses very harsh language to women.

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Okay. Um, and, and not necessarily Christian women and just women in general, women in general.

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So that's, that's one, one big issue. Um, the other one is his seeming love affinity for Roman Catholicism and some of the, what we would call

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Roman Catholic apologists of yesteryear, GK Chesterton and, uh, and, and others. So those are the main areas of focus and why

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Chuck has, and Chuck is a, is a good friend of ours, friend of the show. Um, and, and I will say that Chuck is, has a history of documenting what he says.

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He doesn't just start off things. Yeah. And if you don't, and if you don't believe that, see the amount of hours of work he did on the whole

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Mike Reed Tony Miano situation back in the day, um, that allowed me a good jumpstart into all the research

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I ended up doing after that. So, so when it, when it comes to, when it comes to Chuck, he is, he is a precise type of guy and, uh, and he does his research very well.

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So I do trust all those things. And, and he did provide several resources here in, um, in these

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Facebook posts. Having said all that, one thing that I have seen with Doug Wilson, he kind of flashed on the scene a few years ago.

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And, and it really, the big splashes at G3 three, four years ago now. Well that, okay.

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So that was a big splash into Baptist circles, into Baptist circles. That's correct. He's been in Presbyterian circles with, uh, what was known as federal vision.

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Correct. And from what my understanding is federal vision has been deemed heresy in every

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Presbyterian denomination. Um, he has, he, he was actually on Chris Arnzen show saying that he doesn't use the labeled federal vision anymore.

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And Chris asked him, what do you disagree with within federal vision? And he didn't have anything. So I think what he that's,

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I can't be sure, but it sounds like it sounded to me when I listened to that show that he doesn't like the label federal vision because it's, it's got a bad nomenclature.

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Um, but he does, he doesn't disagree with any of the teachings. Yeah. That's that. And that would be, I think a fair synopsis.

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So here's, here's my biggest issue. Yeah. So Drew Vanita is saying, uh, Doug has distanced himself from federal vision about in the last year.

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Yeah. He's done that for several years. Well, the label, the label, the label, not necessarily the teachings, which, which causes me if you, there's several reasons that someone who might disavow the label, right?

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I, I don't typically, as you know, I don't typically hold to the label Calvinist unless I'm speaking to someone that has the same definition as I do.

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Right. Because that term has so much, you know, so many different people have different ideas of what that means.

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There's so many people have false views of it that I don't just agree because I don't know what they mean by it.

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But it seemed like he was disavowing the label because it's deemed heresy or, or isn't viewed well.

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Well, if it's not viewed well because of the teaching and you haven't given up the teaching, whether the, whether you have the label or not, it matters what you teach.

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So if the Presbyterians are saying, this is what, what they deem heresy or problematic teaching, and you still teach that, whether you go with the label federal vision or not,

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I think you're still in the same boat. Yeah, no, that's right. But, uh, but Chuck focused on a couple of different things and, uh,

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I'm going to touch on the Roman Catholicism thing first. So as a, as somebody who grew up Roman Catholic, I, I, I am very, very precise about understanding and teaching what justification is versus sanctification.

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Okay. The Roman Catholic church is very imprecise and, you know, mixing those things up and that's why and purpose, right?

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And that's why if Catholics all across the board in terms of what they believe, what they think they believe, they're not even sure what the church officially teaches and believes.

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But having said all that, it's, it's very easy for us to sit here and say, according to Galatians, any other gospel is, you are accursed, right?

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If you believe in another gospel and that the gospel taught in Galatians and the rest of the Bible is one of faith alone. The Catholic church in their official

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Roman Catholic catechism, as you have chronicled in your book, what do they believe as well as other areas, you have pointed out that they teach the opposite of that faith plus work, faith plus works, right?

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And so, so we have a very clear cut difference between Christians and Catholics, which means that Catholics are not brothers and sisters in Christ because it takes you being actually born again to become a child of God.

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So it'd become a brother and sister. Let's be more precise, right? It's, they cannot believe in official

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Roman Catholic doctrine and be brothers and sisters in Christ, right? I mean, you can have, you can have someone that attends a

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Catholic church and they're saved apart from the Catholic church, but they would probably leave that as a believer.

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But, but they can, they can be saved and sitting there not knowing any better, but, but they're going to do it not because of Roman Catholic doctrine, but in spite of it.

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Well, that's right. But the danger we run into when we say something like this, right, is how is that any different than from Mormons, Jehovah's witnesses?

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You know, they, I mean, yes, they have other parts of their beliefs that are wrong too, but what's to say somebody doesn't get saved in one of those churches.

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So I, I really, they can, I would say, I'd say they can, but, but I think someone that's in dual with the

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Holy Spirit is going to come out of that. I don't see someone staying in the Mormon church, hearing that they could become

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God and say, yeah, I'll stay here. Right. Which is why, if we're going to be careful in how we speak, it's when we say

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Roman Catholicism, it is very fair for us to assume that it is, it's people who line up with the official teaching of the

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Roman Catholic church. We don't assume that they're ignorant. We assume that they believe what the Catholics teach.

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So, okay. I say all this because I have very much benefited from Doug Wilson over the last several years, as much as I really enjoy engaging culture and social issues and have spent a lot of time with, with making sure words are said just right.

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He is a wordsmith. He's amazing at it. He's very good with his words. He's precise, does a great job explaining things as simply as possible.

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And so when you listen to Doug Wilson, this is what you expect to get. The problem is, is when we, when we see

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Doug Wilson and what he talks about with Roman Catholics, he's imprecise.

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And that's, what's really troubling for me about it is because you can, you, you can do all the wordsmithing you want and talk about, well, you know, one of the articles

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I had pulled up about Doug Wilson, these, and actually I just lost it now, but there's a different article

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I had up. So he's quoted as talking about what, what you just said there, Andrew, in regards to, you know, somebody could be sitting in the

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Roman Church, not necessarily believe what the Roman Catholic official teaching or official doctrine is, and they could be saved ignorantly within the church.

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Okay. That's, that's, I would agree with this. The problem is, is when you start mixing that in with Roman Catholicism in general, you're now, you're now starting to have some issues, right?

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And that's, that's the problem I have is, is that he is so precise everywhere. Why is he not precise regarding faith alone and regarding Roman Catholicism?

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Yeah. Um, for me, it's, for me, it's troubling. There are times in the past that he has called Roman Catholics, brothers and sisters, not only called them, but you know, one of the things that, that I did see was he did a debate with James White on this issue.

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The topic of the debate was, are Roman Catholics are brothers and sisters in Christ.

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So it wasn't just, has he said some things on this? He actually debated

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James White on this. Now, those are two people that are, that are very good with words, very precise.

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They do a lot of debates. They understand the rigor of debate. They, they do get along.

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So that's always good for a debate. But the fact that he wanted to debate that topic, that was concerning.

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And I did watch that debate. It was a while ago and hearing him try to argue in a debate that, you know, this, so what

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I'm trying to say is when you do a debate, it's not something you just have kind of offhanded. You think through it, you plan on it.

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And he, he asked for that, from what I understand, that debate topic. So I will admit it's kind of confusing to me,

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James White, who has criticized Leighton Flowers and others for being

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Roman Catholic. They make arguments like that. And here he's debating someone who's arguing that Roman Catholics are brothers and sisters in Christ.

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I don't know if it's his friendship that keeps him from kind of calling him out, but that is, it was very troubling to me.

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Yeah. It's, it's, it's weird. So, so having said that,

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I, I don't know that I'm, I'm willing to call Doug Wilson a heretic, but something, something is up.

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He must have friends at Roman Catholic. I mean, there's something, there's something there as to why he's not being precise because it is really not hard to be precise about Roman Catholics and Roman Catholic doctrine.

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You have to be precise when it comes to the message of the gospel. I mean, what defines conversion is a very important thing to be precise about.

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Yeah. Especially if you're in a debate and if, when you're debating the issue, you, precision matters.

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I mean, okay, granted, we, we've all seen, we've seen here in Apologetics Live, people that come in and do debates and clearly they're not prepared, right?

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We wonder what were they thinking before they came in, but that's not Doug Wilson. That's not

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James White. They're not guys that are going to rush into a debate without thinking through things.

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So that kind of tells me that there was, uh, it's something he really is holding to.

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And yet I'm, I'm confused with, with why I, I, I don't get, you know,

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I don't get that, especially from a Presbyterian. Uh, it, it just confuses me.

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Yeah. Now you brought up a different issue and it's his language. And, and I think that's even broader than just the way he speaks of women because, and you said, that's what

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Chuck brought up. One of the things, I mean, there has been an accusation. Now, I don't know,

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I don't have enough details of this to know, but there was an accusation where someone,

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I guess in his church, the accusation from a woman is that the husband raped her.

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And supposedly the claim was that, you know, that Doug made was that, you know, a, a wife, a husband can't rape his wife.

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Um, I, I disagree with that. I think that that can happen. Um, you know, but that, that was, that would be concerning if true.

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Um, the other thing that I, that is, is kind of concerning, and this is true in a broader sense.

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And I forget who someone above had mentioned it. Uh, I think it was drew that mentioned in the comments about the broader group that he's, he hangs around with, with crude language.

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Um, the, uh, just always trying to push the envelope.

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I guess he's, he wrote a book. Now I haven't read the book. Um, and, and I have,

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I have friends that have are very on very opposite ends. And even though they're both good friends, one read the book and said, it's fine.

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The other won't read the book because he said it's pornography. I would have to read the book, but it's something it, from what

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I understand has something to do with, uh, someone having sexual relations with a sex bot, which in one sense, depending how he's doing, he's doing it supposedly as a novel.

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Uh, and I think they're trying to make it into a movie. I don't know if that's the issue.

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Like, I don't know if I'd want to be writing a novel and putting a movie out on that. However, I do think that as Christians, we need to be prepared to have that argument because before COVID, uh,

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I had, I had predicted, and I actually thought COVID would escalate it, but it changed it.

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Uh, I thought that we would have to deal with the issue of the question of is sex with a sex bot adultery, because it's not with a human being.

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Um, and, and I had said to you and, you know, back before COVID, we, we need to start having answers for people on this.

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And I do have an answer. I mean, I still think, especially when they're making these sex bots supposedly look like people of someone's choice, then yes, you're lusting.

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I don't care if it's a robot. What if it's a dog? Is that lasting? Yeah, no, it's just bestiality, which, which is coming, but you may, you may laugh folks, but, uh, that is what the is bestiality.

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And they're starting to teach that in school as well. So unfortunately, so I do think there's concerns with, uh, like you're saying the language, the pushing of the envelope and things like that.

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Yeah. And, and, you know, Chris Hough wrote this, there's too much of a hold on carnality with that whole crew.

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And that was going to be the last point I brought up is, is that issue? Look, I don't care if a

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Christian goes out and has, and has a drink in private with, with people who, with people who they are sure don't have an alcohol problem or a previous alcohol problem.

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Like the Bible doesn't forbid drinking. We've talked about this before. It's, it's about drunkenness.

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So, so I'm not a legalist. It's about drunkenness, but there's also do not cause your brother to stumble. That's right.

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That's the other part of it. And so that's the issue I have is, is the flaunting of, of this stuff, which they seem to do a lot of, they do a lot of, yeah.

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I mean, I jokingly called those, uh, those conferences, fight, laugh, feast that were going around the country.

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People asked me about, I'm like, Oh, the drinking conference, that one. And it was, I mean, it's tongue in cheek, of course, but you know, but they,

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I mean, I mean, it's tongue in cheek because it's kegs and cigars on Friday night in a social hour.

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Yeah. Now I'm like, I wasn't saved when I was in college. And guess what fraternity night was on Friday and Saturday nights, a bunch of guys and girls hanging around having kegs of beer with cigars.

23:53

Yeah. Right. I mean, it, it, people could walk into there and look no different than an actual fraternity, except the guys were all 20 years older.

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So, okay. So what, what do you think about someone that's planting a church in a, uh, a drinking establishment with where they're preaching and all the bottles of alcohol are behind them?

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I think it would be just like preaching in a strip club with all the women behind them. It's probably not so good.

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Probably not a good idea. We'll see if we get a response from that. So, uh, all right.

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I don't even know who's doing that. So, but if you're doing that, don't, whoever's doing that, please don't do that.

24:30

That is, that is not wise whatsoever. Um, you know, Andrew, maybe this is the time you should share.

24:36

You should share your story because this is one that I use for people often when it comes to,

24:42

I have zero problem with somebody having a drink, zero problem with it. Right. And, but again,

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I believe it needs to be in private with other Christians who are, who don't have an issue with this and can sit down and enjoy one drink.

24:56

Okay. Having said that you have a story that happened regarding a refrigerator and a move. He's gotten me nervous there for a bit, you know,

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I, for the bit there, I was going to stories. There's something I don't know about, uh, no, no, you know, the story about the pastor.

25:12

And this is really important for everyone to listen to as a, as an, to understand why, um, we have to be so guarded in terms of some of these issues.

25:20

Yeah. So my first pastor, um, basically what happened was when he moved,

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I helped him move. We're we're did it over a couple of weeks and we, it was rushed. And so when we moved all of his, his food from the refrigerator, we packed it into, you know, cartons drove over and just shoved it in the back of the refrigerator.

25:41

And what we didn't realize was that when he bought the house, the people who he bought it from as a gesture, left a bottle of champagne in the refrigerator for him.

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And it just got pushed to the back of the refrigerator and it stayed there for like two years, just in the back, out of sight, out of mind.

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And we were having a Bible study at the house. And one of the guys goes in the refrigerator to get some milk and he sees the bottle of champagne.

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Well, shortly after that, the pastor had called me up because he had to go down and pick that guy up from the police station.

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The guy was, uh, had gotten intoxicated and well, basically he was chasing a train naked.

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I don't know why, but what happened was, is that he told the pastor and the pastor asked him, what were you doing?

26:31

And he said, well, it's okay for you to drink. I figured it's okay for me. And the pastor was like, why did you think it's okay for me to drink?

26:39

I don't drink. And he said, well, I saw the alcohol in your refrigerator. And my pastor didn't even know what he was like, what are you talking about?

26:46

He actually went to his refrigerator, saw the bottle of champagne in the back. He ended up realizing how much it could be a stumbling block for somebody.

26:56

And he impressed upon me. He says, we have to do everything we can to not cause others to stumble.

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If we are trying not to, and if people are looking to stumble, they're going to stumble. Did this pastor do anything wrong?

27:09

No, it just, he, he didn't even think about the fact that this was in the back of the refrigerator, but what he did was he emptied that bottle in the sink.

27:18

He put it in a brown paper bag. He didn't even want it in his garbage can. He drove it to the dump so that he wouldn't cause a stumbling block to anybody.

27:26

And it impressed upon me, the importance that we have to be careful in how we behave and what we do, both in public and private that others might, you know, that we may not cause someone to stumble.

27:40

Yep. That's right. So I guess, you know, I, I haven't done a ton of research on Doug Wilson, right? I take him for what he is.

27:46

I listened to, it's kind of like my almost convinced you to be post mill, right? I think you're getting close.

27:53

You're getting the more, the more people talk about on mill and post mill and the more they try to justify their positions, the more foolish

27:59

I realize those positions are. I mean, I'm just being honest. It's it really, if you read, if you read

28:04

Genesis at the same way that you read revelation, the same way you Genesis and some of the other books that go to end times.

28:11

Right. I mean, it's, it's, as you always say, it's about the hermeneutics. If you're being honest with the text, you can't come to any other position.

28:19

I don't know how else to look at it. I mean, unneeded. Did you hear that? It's just not, it's just not an honest position.

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So I mean, look, I, you can be saved and believe in those other things. I'm not, I'm just, I'm just saying it's not an honest position.

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So having, having said all that, we have a bunch of other stars right now.

28:37

Just go to the start. Oh, that's right. Yeah. You're more fancy than I am. Okay. So, uh, this is a good one.

28:43

Which one do you want? Well, let's go top down. Yeah. So parachurchism is very evident in the, in evangelism.

28:50

Is it healthy for the church? My question, my suspicion, what, what this Facebook user means is that parachurchism that parachurches are the ones coming into churches that are, that are running, um, evangelism conferences.

29:03

And you've got a lot of ministries of people running around doing street evangelism that maybe some are churched and some are unchurched.

29:11

Yeah. I mean, I could see it being, cause there is a problem I think with people who do evangelism as part of a parachurch ministry, but don't go to church.

29:21

Or if the church doesn't support their parachurch evangelism ministry, I got to go find a new church, you know, cause

29:28

I look, you and I do a lot of work with living waters. This happens a lot with people who get into evangelism with living waters.

29:36

And what ends up happening is they start to go off. The church isn't doing evangelism way of the master way.

29:42

They're not a church. I got to go find another church. And they put the parachurch organization above the church, which you and I both know the guys at living waters would be a gasp at that because they are very firmly about the local church.

29:58

And they spoke to that even in this last ambassadors academy a few weeks ago that we were at.

30:04

Right. So, um, and, and the pastor of Mark Spence and Emile's Wayne is Philip DeCourcy, who also spoke about the importance of local church.

30:11

Um, having said all that, I mean, let's also be honest, right? And on one hand you have parachurches, our parachurch ministries that are, that are outside of the guise of a local church.

30:21

And that can be problematic. Certainly you've got a lot of, uh, opener preachers and evangelists that are outside the guise of a local church.

30:29

Some call that nomadism nomadism. Yep. Yep. Um, but then we won't get into him tonight.

30:35

I hope not anyway, but on the other, but on the other side of things, we also have what's, uh, what, uh, one of our friends calls the great omission.

30:44

Um, what another one of our friends, uh, calls the great it's treated as the great suggestion, um, rather than church is doing what they're called to do, which is fulfill the great commission.

30:56

And so look, you and I've talked about this in the past. If churches were doing all the functions they were supposed to do, according to the

31:05

Bible, there would be no such thing as parachurch ministry. It wouldn't be a need for much of the parachurch ministry of churches. I mean, yeah, we wouldn't even have seminaries.

31:11

Yeah. And living waters has made it clear. They wished that there wasn't a need for living waters to do parachurch ministry because the whole church would be doing evangelism and training within the church to do evangelism.

31:23

Yep. That's right. And so the problem is, is that when you look at the, when you look at different disciplines that should be happening within the local church walls and that aren't happening, evangelism is probably the top of the list.

31:37

And, and so that's the issue I have is, is on one hand. Yeah. I wish every parachurch ministry was submitting to a local church.

31:46

On the other hand, a lot of local churches just don't care of a lot of these things.

31:52

They just, they just do their own thing. They think they're doing good. Even good churches that are preaching the word accurately every

31:59

Sunday morning are non -existent in evangelism, discipleship, and in other areas that really are the main functions of the church.

32:09

Yeah. So, so, so that's, you know, I, I, maybe we didn't really answer your question on that, but, uh, but, but the issue,

32:16

I, I guess, just to say is parachurch ministry is needed today because local churches aren't doing the job. Correct. Having said all that,

32:22

I do hope that, that, that, um, parachurch ministries have a pastor to answer to, have a local church that they are part of, um, that they're at least gaining counsel and support from in some way, not necessarily financially, but spiritually.

32:39

Okay. So, uh, Kofi put a comment up here. Kofi is, uh, saying, Anthony, what do you really think about Amill and Postmill?

32:50

Did I not answer that clearly? Yeah. Well, I mean, it seems that Drew is, Drew is saying, uh, asking, uh, for Kofi and Chris not to encourage us, but, uh,

33:00

I, I think it's because, you know, Drew, Drew just, you know, we're sorry. We're sorry, Drew. Yeah.

33:06

I mean, you will be right in heaven. Don't worry. Um, yeah, that's, that's right.

33:11

Uh, probably when you're caught up midair is when you're going to find out, but, uh, yeah. Hey, you know, I meant to mention this at the beginning of the show.

33:17

I don't know if he's, if he's watching, I haven't seen him comment yet, but, uh, this week, I think I told you,

33:22

I got to, to meet with one of our listeners, had breakfast with, uh, Ethan. Ethan Tanner is a regular here, uh, who folks, you guys who are regulars, you see him commenting.

33:33

Um, but what I didn't know, uh, and I told him he should come in sometime and talk about, share about this.

33:38

Cause we've seen him comment a lot of times and he asks a lot of questions, but what I didn't know is that he actually got saved through apologetics live.

33:46

God used apologetics live to, to bring him to Christ. So he said that he, he was actually came upon apologetics live because his brother was involved in a cult and he was trying to learn more about it.

33:59

Apologetics to get his brother out of the cult. Wow. But he himself wasn't saved.

34:05

Oh, Oh, look at that. I'm here. There you go. All right. So yeah, so he had, he had a gun, you know, wanted to study.

34:13

And so good news is his brother is out of a cult. He's not in a cult. And, uh, so Ethan and I were able to get together, have breakfast, which was great.

34:20

He's a student over at Cedarville university, looking to be a missionary. And, uh, he, uh, we, we had a great breakfast and then he was, you know, it was kind of funny because you, you meet someone and you know, it's like,

34:34

I, I didn't know the history. Like I knew some of the questions he asked and things, but I didn't know all the, like I had forgotten about the questions he asked about his brother until he said something, you know?

34:45

And so it's just neat to see how, how God could use a couple of knuckleheads like us, uh, behind the camera, um, in people's lives.

34:54

So we're, we're just, we're really appreciative of, you know, of, of Ethan and, and whatnot.

35:00

And, you know, people who are watching. That's why we do what we do. Right. So it's really cool.

35:05

Um, just to follow up before my pastor does expository, but we don't have evangelism training. This is whoever respecting the word is.

35:12

Yeah. I don't know if respecting the word is the same person that asked the question from Facebook, but, um, yeah.

35:17

So when we talk about expository preaching, um, that's going verse by verse through scripture, taking the meaning out of the text, but understand something.

35:31

Your pastor has the same fear and evangelism that the rest of us do. But the difference is for many pastors, we can hide in a

35:40

Christian bubble because especially if you have a pastor, it's not bivocational.

35:46

They're not having to go to an office. What ends up happening is there, when they go to the office, their office is filled with Christians.

35:55

They go to church on Sunday with Christians. They go to Bible study on Wednesday night with Chris, you know, they can surround themselves around believers and, and not evangelize.

36:06

And I mean, look, many of us, in fact, probably most of us have a fear of evangelism and your pastor does too.

36:16

It takes work to get out of the, that comfort zone and put yourselves in that position.

36:21

Now I know the secret person who is, uh, who is respecting the word. Okay. So I don't know why he doesn't want to give his real name, but, uh, but now

36:30

I know who it is. So I, I agree with your boy. I'll give you that, that half.

36:35

It's, it's a, he was born a male, still identifies as a male. Well, that's good because he's going to be a male either way.

36:42

That's right. Um, you know, we should, we, we were going to bring up also, if we get to some more questions, um, is you could take that one down since we're, but the, the, we were going to talk about something you had

36:55

Jim Osmond on some time ago. You could just go to the starred ones, Anthony.

37:01

It takes them a while to learn how to, they have this thing where all he's got to do is hit the tab for starred when he stars them.

37:08

And now we're switched. I have to my left hand on the mouse. I could, but then my computers,

37:13

Oh, Oh wait. Oh, we, we, you know, I found this button, grab that button. I found this button on your desk.

37:20

This is great. I haven't even used it. I've had it here for two years, but I find it and it's the speak like a snowflake.

37:27

It's fun. Like we never know what's going to come out of it. I find that highly offensive.

37:33

Sure you did. Yes, I don't think so.

37:39

So this is the fun little button. Yeah, I've just been playing with that. It is good.

37:47

So you and I were talking, you had Jim Osmond on a sometime ago, Jim and Justin Peters doing an open

37:54

Q and a, and the question of gambling came up and yeah, I did. I did talk to Jim and I think he's going to come on maybe a time.

38:02

He couldn't come on tonight. And I would like to talk about this more with him, but I'm just going to throw this out here. Have you guys think about this?

38:10

Because this was the discussion that Anthony and I started to have. We started talking about is gambling wrong and what makes gambling wrong.

38:18

And by the way, we don't gamble. So just let's be really clear about that. You still owe me the $20 for that basketball game that I won one.

38:25

You owe me 40 for the billiards games. Well, actually the thing was that it should be like me winning at basketball is the joke, especially against you.

38:37

But the thing is we were talking about what is it that makes gambling wrong.

38:44

Now, we've talked about people, you have someone who makes say $100 ,000 and they go and spend $20 on blackjack or $20 at a movie.

39:00

Now, $20 if they're making $100 ,000 is not that much. If their view of the blackjack is entertainment, we discussed that.

39:10

That is different than someone that's taking their rent money and playing the blackjack tables to try to get because they want to get rent money plus food money.

39:22

And that's the issue with gambling. It's when people use money they need in the hopes of getting more.

39:31

Really the issue with gambling, I think that's the problem, is it's the love of money. When people are thinking like, oh,

39:39

I'm going to play the lotto because then I'll do this. And they're planning it out and they have the dream where they're constantly like my grandmother, she played the lotto every single week, played the same numbers for years.

39:55

I actually calculated once then she kept saying, oh, I can't wait. When I win, I'm going to give all you kids money.

40:01

And she planned out everything she was going to do with it and she was living for that.

40:06

And yet she was wasting a ton of money. Irony, the one time that her number did come up, it was when we were in Virginia for a week and she couldn't play.

40:22

But now in her case, she's on a limited income. Is that the wisest thing to do with money?

40:30

Yeah. I think there's a couple of things we have to talk about. Number one is stewardship of everything we're given we're responsible for.

40:40

And then number two is, as you talked about, there is an idea of entertainment.

40:47

Are we spending what we would spend in entertainment for a night, going to movies, buying a popcorn, whatever, and instead going and pulling a couple of handles on a slot machine.

40:59

So you can tell I'm not very well versed in that stuff. I mean, those are just two of the issues we have to think about.

41:06

The other issue we have to think about is, is somebody addicted to this or have the potential to be addicted to this, where this can be the starting point into a whole lot more.

41:19

There are some people who, let's go back to the alcohol example, right? There are some people who can have a beer every single day of their life, they'll never get addicted.

41:27

From a medical perspective, psychological perspective, it'll never happen. That's because it tastes horrible.

41:33

Why would anyone? Even when I wasn't saved, I didn't understand why people like that. I didn't like it either when I wasn't saved either.

41:39

But the point is, and then there's other people who when they have one every day, eventually it becomes two, eventually becomes three.

41:48

So gambling, I would say you have to be, no, Jim made the argument and we're going to have him back on.

41:53

He's going to go through this in much more detail, but he made the argument that what's the difference if I'm going to go spend $50 or $100 tonight on a nice dinner with my wife, or we decide to go play a few games of blackjack instead.

42:07

Each one takes a couple of hours. We enjoyed ourselves. We had good time. We had good, good time. There's no desire.

42:14

There's no like feeling like I have to have more. There's no coveting the money.

42:20

Then it changes it, I think. Yeah. I can't call that a sin in any way whatsoever. So that's where I would stand on that position.

42:29

But when we get Jim on, I think we'll be able to go over that in much more detail. But it's something for everyone to think about as we get prepared for whatever that show is.

42:37

Yeah. Now here was the thing that you and I talked about that I started to think about. And this is the thing

42:43

I want you to think about. What is it that I'm saying makes gambling wrong?

42:49

Is the coveting, the desire for money? Now here's the thing.

42:55

And I have a feeling the guys at Matter of Theology are going to have some comments on this. But when we think of gambling and what makes it wrong, is giving money to word of faith preachers like Kenneth Copeland and the ilk like that, is that gambling?

43:18

Think about it because as we started discussing what is the problem with gambling,

43:24

I started to realize this is exactly what word of faith does. They say, oh, you sow a seed, give some money and you're going to get more.

43:32

And what are people doing? They're taking their rent money. They're taking money they need to get money they hope to have.

43:40

That's the problem with gambling. It's that coveting of money, that love for money, that you just want the money, you want what it could do for you or whatever, but you're trying to get more.

43:51

And that is the thing that I think ends up being, and here comes Chris. And so I think that ends up being a thing where I actually, and I asked this of Jim, I said, okay, what do you think about this in discussion?

44:05

Do you think that gambling is equivalent to what people do when they give money to word of faith preachers?

44:13

He said, no, it's worse. And in a sense, because it's done under the guise of Jesus Christ.

44:24

And so, but I think that it would be fair to say, in my opinion, I think it's fair to say that if you give money to a word of faith preacher in the hopes that you're going to get something back, especially more money back, that is gambling.

44:41

That's my opinion. Yeah. I would completely agree. I don't know if you want to bring...

44:46

Now the question is, did we bring Chris in? Yeah. I mean, we have a few more questions, don't we, to answer first?

44:55

We do. We just mark that one at least. Let's bring Chris in for a few minutes.

45:01

I do love Chris, so it'll be good. Well, I mean, being as you and I share the same eschatological position, so we're good there.

45:12

Keep the integration, we're good there. Yes, yes, absolutely. No, I texted

45:18

Andrew a link to a sermon that Phil Johnson gave at the Grace Life Pulpit, and where he masterfully, as Phil Johnson does, the title of the sermon is, is gambling okay?

45:31

Don't bet on it! And for all the reasons that you guys said, it's coveting, it's denying the sovereignty of God, and allowing sinful fear and anxiety to take over.

45:47

That is in and of itself a sin. You're taking from others.

45:53

Phil makes the case in there that it is a legalized form of theft, and does a phenomenal job, and I could not agree more.

46:01

Then Andrew, what you were stating about prosperity preachers, I know you saw me doing like this in the background.

46:09

Jim Osman is absolutely correct. I mean, 110 % correct, because these prosperity preachers, they prey upon these heartbreaking situations of life in a fallen world, and or reap the principle of reaping and sowing.

46:28

If you've made poor choices, then you're going to end up reaping the consequences of that.

46:34

But these prosperity preachers prey upon that, and take advantage of people.

46:40

But yes, absolutely, it's gambling. It's presuming upon the grace of God. It's worse than gambling. It's worse than going to a casino, because it is invoking the name of Christ.

46:49

It's taking the Lord's name in vain. It's denying the promises of scripture, therefore denying the promises of God himself.

46:57

So I could not agree more. It's absolutely, absolutely not okay. Because what you see, and we should put

47:03

Jody's comment on the bottom. You know, the... Right there.

47:12

Let's see. You don't have to start. You could just, but no, it was the one right up top there. It's a very top of the screen. Oh, I see.

47:18

There it is. So Jody had said, I can't believe you went there, Andrew, LOL. Yeah, I did.

47:23

I did go there because, you know, Chris, with what you're saying, what is it they do? I have heard these folks say to take your rent money and give it in, and you'll get three times back, five times back, 15 times back.

47:39

Yeah, I know. And so it's, they're, you know, unlike the, the, you go down to the casino, they're not asking for your rent money.

47:49

They're not asking for the money that you have allocated for needs with a promise that you're going to get it back.

47:56

Right. When you go to the casino, you know, they're going to take your money. And unless you're...

48:02

Well, and it will, they don't come right out and say, Hey, spend your mortgage money, your rent money, your fewer money.

48:11

They promise you, you're going to get that back. Right. It's, it's, you know, you're taking, you're taking a chance, but I mean, there's also the principle of, of, you know, of, of being wise.

48:20

Right. Right. Being shrewd and, and, um, being, being careful, Anthony, you said it a few minutes ago, uh, being, being, you know, being a good steward with the time, the talent, the treasure that the

48:30

Lord has given you. And this spills over into a whole host of other conversations when it comes to hard work, when it comes to, um, how you steward your time, how you steward your treasure, how you steward your talent.

48:42

Um, because the Lord has given you those things to, to take care of for his glory.

48:48

And if you're, if you're doing it in ways that directly contradict his word, um, and expect him to bless that, that is that, that, that flies in the face of multiple prescriptive commands of scripture.

49:02

Yep. Yeah. Amen. All right. So we've got some more questions to get through. Those are the, we were like, what, halfway through the show and we, we just.

49:10

Already. Wow. Yeah. Well, this time is flying. We're going Anthony time for sure tonight. That's great.

49:19

Chris, you want to hang out? You want to hit it? Yeah. I'll hang out. Okay. Well, he hates hanging out with us. I can tell. I love, I love you guys.

49:25

Okay. So Anthony, I'll go to the easy one. Anthony, are you still doing keto? Yes. With intermittent fasting and, uh,

49:34

I've lost almost 30 pounds and I feel absolutely great doing it. And so, um, I've got about 10 more to go, uh, that I think

49:41

I need to do, but, um, I, I love it and it's easy. I have a question in regards to this kind of topic.

49:48

We were just talking about stewardship, right? Yeah. Throw it out there.

49:56

And he's my gosh. Okay. Yeah. You know what, you know what, you know where I'm going with this. Don't you actually, I was going to bring it up with another topic we're going to bring up.

50:03

So just go ahead and jump. Okay. So, so my question is, my question is, uh, and this goes for all of us, right?

50:09

Um, I, at one point, uh, it was back in 2012, 2013. Uh, I, myself,

50:14

I, I, I let myself go a little bit. I got up to around 250 pounds. Really?

50:20

Uh, I, yeah. And, um, you guys know me and follow me now and know that I'm, I love exercise.

50:25

I it's a, it's a therapy, it's a prayer time for me. It's time with the Lord. It's time to think it's time to process all that stuff.

50:32

But most importantly, it's, it's, it's being a steward of the, the body that the Lord has given me to shepherd.

50:37

And so a question to ask, and I actually heard a pastor in Texas last year, talk about this, um, about the body and pastors and shepherds specifically who are called to be above reproach, are they unqualified for a season?

50:58

If they are unable to control what would appear to be a weight issue, if they're unable to manage that.

51:07

Um, and then what, again, what does that say about the believer? And I'm not here. Don't, don't, don't read more into what

51:13

I am saying. Uh, and, and don't read, don't read into what I'm not saying. I'm posing the question, um, because again, time, talent, and treasure, we have been given a life temporarily that is a vapor on this side of eternity.

51:29

We, and, and what we do with our body does matter according to scripture.

51:35

So how does that play out for the pastor? How does that play out for the believer? You know, okay.

51:43

So let's, let's just, let's just throw it all on the table now. Okay. Let's not, let's not just talk about weight.

51:50

Let's talk about high stress. Oh, absolutely. Right. Okay. So one of the things that for people who know my wife and I, even, even just a little bit, um, or have seen us at conferences, you will, you will see that I am dressed very well for my wife's eyes.

52:04

My wife dresses very well for my eyes. Absolutely. Not, not doing it flauntingly, um, you know, or sinfully, but, but dressing with, with really nice clothes.

52:13

Why? Um, because there's one, you, you're, as, as some crude

52:19

Christian comedians have talked about in the past, right? They, and so not, yes, I'm going to go here too. Um, as, as one guy talked about in the past, he said, you know, so many issues happen in marriage because when you, when you're dating, you're on your best behavior, you are dressing as well as you possibly can.

52:38

You're, I mean, everything is you're hitting on all cylinders. And then after you get married, honeymoon's over the things, other things start to creep in, right?

52:47

You spend as much time, you get a little more harsh. You don't dress quite as well. Maybe you don't quite put makeup on it before you know it.

52:54

Females are putting their makeup on to go to work and putting nice clothes to go to work and then coming home and then putting on sweatpants.

53:02

Husbands doing the same thing, right? Work dress nice coming home like they don't shave. She lets me every so often, not shave for a few days.

53:12

Yes. Let's. My wife likes it. It was, it was a little long. And so yesterday she was like, you're looking kind of caveman -ish.

53:19

I was like, you want me to shave it? She was like, just trim it up. I said, you got it. Yeah, exactly. See, that's what it is. When she comes to me and says,

53:25

Hey, you know, uh, I think it's about time to shave. Okay, hon, I'm going to shave right now. But, but, but, you know, you think about this and how we're to, we're to be representing ourselves to God, to our spouse.

53:40

Um, if we're a pastor to, to the congregation, if we are in ministry to the people we're ministering to,

53:47

I mean, all this is a reflection of, of how we, how we think of ourselves. My wife gets mad when

53:52

I shave. Yeah. That's what Aaron says. That's what happens when you have ugly faces. I'll take it.

54:00

I'll take it. Just kidding. Just kidding. Actually, it's okay.

54:05

Somebody posted a picture on Facebook. Somebody posted a picture on Facebook that had this great

54:11

Presbyterian beard, right? And then it was the same guy with his beard shaved and he had this like withdrawn face that she was completely hidden by the beard.

54:20

So it was just kind of kind of funny, but no, but in all seriousness, I mean, I think this is a really important topic that doesn't, that doesn't get talked about at all.

54:28

And so not only between husbands and wives, but also yes, from a pastoral or ministry perspective, if we're supposed to be good stewards of, of God's word, we're supposed to be good stewards of other things

54:40

God has given us. Well, why wouldn't be, why wouldn't we be good stewards of the temple of the Holy spirit, our bodies?

54:48

Yeah. Well, I, and, and Anthony, you bring up a good point. Why don't we talk about this?

54:54

Right. Why don't we have this conversation? I mean, amongst brothers as well, you know,

55:01

I mean, like I've got a couple of guys that I, that I would consider like my battle brothers, you know, like drew is one of them.

55:07

My brother, Alex Rodriguez of the men's muster. He's one of them, you know, and we're, we're in constant communication.

55:12

Like I would want my brothers to be like, if they saw a picture of me and, and, and I was starting to look, you know, like unkept in any way, shape or form, whether it's what

55:22

I'm wearing, what I'm, you know, anything like that, just be like, Hey man, remember when you, you represent Christ, you represent

55:29

Jesus Christ. Now that, now that's not saying again, that's not saying that we're, we're, we have to go out because we're going to earn favor, anything, anything like that.

55:38

But it's a stewardship issue. It's a, it's a, it's a, how you carry yourself issue.

55:43

It's a, I would personally think, I mean, if we're supposed to follow our shepherds and shepherds aren't doing that.

55:52

And, and Anthony, here's another good point. Here's another something else, right? Pastors in the pulpit, right?

55:58

What do you, what, what would you wear? Our current president excluded, maybe. What would you wear if you were going to meet the president of the

56:05

United States? Drew has asked this question. I like this same question. Yeah. Drew's asked this question a bunch.

56:11

Like if you were going to meet the president of the United States, like you would, you'd put on a suit. Yeah. I've been,

56:17

I've been to two churches in the last couple of weeks where I was the only one in a suit and I had a pastor come up and go,

56:24

Oh, you didn't get the memo how we dress here. I said, I don't care if the rest of you dress in shorts and a t -shirt,

56:30

I'm going to dress as best as I can for my Lord. I'm not dressing for them. Right.

56:35

Amen. Now let's just say, I mean, here, here's some comments that I was seeing. Bill says you can't be a true

56:41

Calvinist with no facial hair, probably 4 .999 Calvinism. Probably an unmarried

56:48

Calvinist. Bill, let's just, let's just set the record straight. Clearly. Uh, Anthony and I have facial hair.

56:55

It's just short. Yeah. So just, I can grow a full beard in like five days.

57:00

It comes fast. Yeah. Um, and so let's, so first off respecting the word says that I need keto and I'm sorry, but, um,

57:11

I, I lost the weight without the keto. He did. He just ran like 30 miles a day. I'm like,

57:18

I'm going to run like to eat much better. Yeah. So, so let, let's deal with this.

57:24

Uh, and no, because I do want to address this. Okay. Yeah. Uh, I just,

57:31

I just heard Chris say, uh, I heard Chris say Spurgeon was disqualified cause he was fat.

57:37

So let me, let me address this, but there is something I I've always said that I can just from hearing,

57:44

I can usually tell the E something about the preacher in how he handles one text of scripture.

57:52

First Timothy four, eight. Okay. I'll read, start in verse seven, but I could tell if the guy exercises or not, by the way, he handles this.

58:03

And it says, starting in verse seven, have nothing to do with irreverent, silly myths, rather train yourself for godliness for while bodily training is of some value.

58:15

Godliness is of value in every way, as it holds the promise for the present life and also for the life to come.

58:23

And it, so many guys that are overweight will, will preach this saying, well, see, you know, bodily training is, is a very little value, you know, but godliness is everything.

58:34

And that's not what the text says, and so guys that are either honest with the text, but a lot of guys that are overweight are not honest with this one text.

58:44

It's amazing, but they, they preach it that way. And yet the reality is, it's saying, you know, exercise is of good value.

58:52

It's a lot of value, correct? It's nothing compared to godliness. That's right. Correct. Guys that are usually exercising, they, they, they handle that text, right?

59:01

Right. But why is that? Because I think there's, um, I think it's Jerry Bridges.

59:07

I forget that has the book, um, uh, respectable sins. Hmm. Yes.

59:13

I think at the heart of this is that there's certain sins that because they're so prevalent, like gossip, right?

59:21

Like, you know, gluttony. And, and I'm going to say this as, as someone who has, is openly admitted,

59:27

I am a glutton. Okay. I've had that problem. Um, you know, and so, you know, that is an issue that's, that's probably my biggest issue.

59:37

And, and I used to, I mean, I used to run 60 miles a week, so that I could, and I said, I run so I can eat like a pig and it doesn't show, but I was actually covering up my true gluttony.

59:45

So I had a sin issue and I used exercise to mask a sin issue. So I had to deal with sin issue, which actually kind of ruined my running for many years, but the thing is, is that we can't sit there and say that just because someone is, is thin, that they don't have an issue with gluttony.

01:00:06

Right. Let's say someone that's overweight has a problem with gluttony. Correct. Because there are people who have medical conditions.

01:00:13

I was just about to say that. Yeah. And so very rarely, very rarely, but it is a thing where we also, some of these things where people get into a point where it's very hard to now taper back.

01:00:27

It's hard to, you know, once they've, they've gone this for a long time and now they start to realize they got to do something, but it is very difficult.

01:00:35

It takes a lot of self -discipline, a lot of diligence to be able to, you know, especially if you've gone for many, many years.

01:00:44

I mean, like, I mean, I know guys 30, 40, 50 years, and now they're realizing they got to do something about getting in shape and it's, it's really hard for them.

01:00:53

Oh, it is. And so, and keto is not the answer to everything, but because it is for a lot of it.

01:00:59

Well, it's, it's diet and exercise. It's both. That's it. That's it. But the older it's stewardship, but the older you get, the more the diet is important than the exercise.

01:01:10

Right. So you can, you can burn it off a lot easier when you're younger than when you can, when you're forties or fifties. So you have to, you have to do the diet.

01:01:17

Let's, let's throw another thing out there in, in regards to being overweight. Can we provide for our households, for our wives and our children as well?

01:01:27

And let's not leave the wives out of it, right? A lot of wives have left themselves go massively.

01:01:33

Um, can you, can you handle what you're called to do as a Proverbs 31 woman in, in handling the house, which is your primary responsibility and handle the kids?

01:01:42

Can you do that when you're not in shape either? So, so like the weight goes far beyond even what we've just talked about here.

01:01:49

If we're, if we're stewards of God's word and we are out there preaching, can we handle the same workload?

01:01:55

So to speak, if we are 40 pounds, 50 pounds overweight versus if we are in shape. Yeah. Well, it ultimately, you know, it could like,

01:02:03

I want to, I want to jump on something Andrew just said a second ago. He, he, you know, we, we talk about sometimes these like we, these, these big sins are, are, you know, these great sins or, uh, as Thomas Brooks would call them, these, we, we don't talk about and we don't address, um, and in his book, uh, precious remedies against Satan's devices, the little sins.

01:02:23

Right. Um, and listen to what he says about the little sins here. Um, that sometimes we try to cover up.

01:02:29

He says, greater sins do sooner startle the soul and awaken and rouse up the soul to repentance than lesser sins.

01:02:37

Little sins often slide into the soul and breed and work secretly and undiscernibly in the soul till they come up to be so strong as to trample upon the soul and to cut the throat of the soul.

01:02:53

And, and so when it comes to like, when it comes to this, I think, you know, we we've got to, we've got to die to self.

01:02:59

We've got to mortify this sin in our lives, whether that's, whether it's anger, whether it's lust, whether it's gluttony, it doesn't matter what it is.

01:03:07

You got to kill that. And I think one of the reasons that we don't address stuff like this in the church, which we should, but we don't because honestly,

01:03:18

I, over sentimentalism and pragmatism, we're, we're, we're afraid and, and it's a fear of man issue.

01:03:25

We're afraid of going to our brothers and sisters and saying, Hey, like I, you know, I've, I've noticed this.

01:03:31

And number one, I just want to make sure, just check on you, make sure you're okay. And then, and then to, to, you know, show them in scripture where,

01:03:38

Hey, this is not, this is not how we're supposed to treat whatever we're stewarding our time, talent, treasure, our bodies, period paragraph.

01:03:46

Like we're, we're afraid to do that because we're afraid to offend. The truth is going to offend. We don't need to be offensive in how we say it.

01:03:54

No, I am not a member of the tone police and anybody who's listened to matter of theology knows that, but, but we also, we don't need to be afraid of having these conversations with each other that because we're family, like we should be able to, we are adopted brothers and sisters in Christ.

01:04:12

And we should be able to talk to each other about some of this stuff. And we're going to be able to help each other as, as we struggle.

01:04:19

Absolutely. I mean, look, Anthony, wasn't this strong about dieting and stuff just about six months ago, you know, actually, actually, actually it was,

01:04:28

I just wasn't as focused as I really should have been sinfully, right. I sinfully have not been as focused on it as I, as I should have been.

01:04:35

And so, um, you know, I asked, I asked my wife to help me and in terms of, Hey, these are the foods are in a house now, this is what

01:04:42

I'm going to start doing and let's do all this together. And you've been good. I mean, you've for years, you knew what you needed to do.

01:04:49

Um, but you seeing that payoff and you're starting to,

01:04:57

I think consistency. Yeah. I think it helps with the consistency because you're seeing, you're losing the weight, you're feeling better.

01:05:03

You want to keep that off. You want to drop the rest of it. And, and, and there is something where like, you know,

01:05:08

I'm, I'm seeing a guy that's on Facebook, you know, obviously not going to give his name, but he's, he's very large, 450 pounds trying to drop weight.

01:05:18

And I'm trying to encourage that, you know, yeah, you lose 30 pounds quickly at that weight.

01:05:24

30 pounds can go drop in a week, but you're going to plateau. And when you plateau, it's, it's a lot harder, you know, get discouraged.

01:05:33

Well, and most of the time though, again, like, I mean, I think if we're honest with ourselves and this is it for me, like, okay,

01:05:39

I'll prime example. Right. Um, I, I love cookies and cream ice cream. Like I'm serious.

01:05:46

It's a crutch. I will man, give me a court. I will polish that thing off in no time at all.

01:05:53

Don't get him any, no, no, no, don't do it. Don't please don't. Um, you know, but, but it's, it's cutting that out.

01:05:59

Um, when you look at, look at the stuff that's in our food and in the stuff that we drink, uh, sodas, for example, um, the chemicals, you cut soft drinks out of your life.

01:06:11

You'd be surprised. I had, I had a friend who was struggling. He drank about 13

01:06:16

Mountain Dews a day, diet Mountain Dew. And all he did was cut that out of his diet and he lost 15 to 20 pounds.

01:06:26

And that was the only thing he did. He didn't change anything else, exercise or diet. He just cut out the diet soda and he lost 15, 20 pounds like in a week.

01:06:37

So our friend, uh, Chuck O 'Neill, um, texted me. So no one knew he was listening, not commenting.

01:06:44

Well, okay. Here's the funny thing is Chuck, did you hear all the times we complimented you earlier in the show in regards to Doug Wilson?

01:06:51

If not, you have to go back and listen to it. But, uh, here's, here's his text to me, fat shaming, smiley face.

01:06:57

And then it quotes a lot of lives and let themselves go massively dash Anthony Sylvester. This might be the next

01:07:05

Facebook. Hence we, hence we are, as we were saying with Chuck, he's, he's usually right on well -documented.

01:07:13

He's got that pretty much. All right. Let's, let's get to some of the other questions that you got.

01:07:18

I know we have someone in the backstage that asked the question. Yeah. Let's, let's bring him in. He was in, he's been in a couple of times now.

01:07:24

Cole, how are you tonight? And, and Cole, I got to meet, I preached at his church this past weekend.

01:07:30

So I got to meet him face to face. It was good to meet him. Yeah. Thanks for coming down. That was awesome.

01:07:36

Yeah. So I'm going to, I'm going to put your question up here, Cole. So, you know, I emailed you because I said,

01:07:42

Hey, we're probably going to get to social justice tonight. Now I'm looking and like, I'm not so sure we're gonna get social justice.

01:07:47

We've got a whole lot of questions, but we'll see. We'll talk about other things. So here's, here's your question at Striving Fraternity.

01:07:54

What about tattoos? We had a church summer pool gathering recently, and some of us got to tell, telling, got to telling stories and some tattoos are actually dedicated to the

01:08:02

Lord. Any thoughts? So I'm going to give you my opinion first. And, and I have to say opinion because I don't believe this is a scriptural thing.

01:08:13

I'm against tattoos. Like I, I'm against the idea of, of permanently putting ink on skin.

01:08:22

Having said that, like, it's not a steadfast, like, I don't believe it's scriptural, right? I believe that if I would tell people it's a sin, it's, it's legalism.

01:08:29

So I, I don't, I don't believe it's a sin. Personally, I wouldn't have a tattoo.

01:08:35

Like I, I, for me, I wouldn't want to ruin it in a, in a sense, ruin my skin doing that.

01:08:42

But I don't think it's a sin. And I know other people do them and they like them and, and that's fine. So, so, okay.

01:08:48

Let's deal with the only verse in the Bible that mentions tattoos. It's the old Testament. It's, it's in Leviticus verse 28 of chapter 19 says, you shall not make any cuts on your body for, uh, for the dead or tattoo yourselves.

01:09:06

I am the Lord. Now we read that and people go, Oh, see tattoos are wrong.

01:09:11

God says you're not to cut yourself or to have tattoos. That's it. Not to do it.

01:09:17

Context, right? So let's back up just a few verses. Let's start in verse 26.

01:09:23

You shall not eat any flesh with blood in it. You should not interpret any omens or tell or tell futures.

01:09:32

You shall not round off your hair on your templates or mar the edges of your beard.

01:09:38

You shall not have any cuts on your body or, uh, for the dead or tattoos of themselves for I am the

01:09:44

Lord. So what are all those things that he ends up describing there? He's describing, you know, eating, eating blood, eating flesh with blood in it.

01:09:54

That's having things that are not kosher. That's something that Gentiles would do. Uh, you, you have the idea of interpreting omens and telling fortunes that is in the fortune telling.

01:10:05

This is something that you'd see in the pagan rituals. You have the idea of rounding off your hair on your temples, marring the edge of your beard.

01:10:14

This has to do with the, the basically the foreign religious practices for their, for their priests and how to dress and whatnot.

01:10:23

And you have the same, uh, where he's saying about the cuts on your body and the tattoos.

01:10:29

So what you end up seeing there is, I think this is in the context, um, of having, um, you know, having a, a practice or doing something to identify yourself with a false religion.

01:10:46

So I do not think that anyone who is having tattoos today is doing so as part of a, uh, priesthood of some religious system.

01:10:59

And so when people do use the one verse that deals with it in Leviticus, I don't think it fits with the context that people try to use today.

01:11:08

Therefore there is no, I don't think any biblical argument that you can make against tattoos or for tattoos.

01:11:19

So it, it does come down to personal preference. Uh, you, you say anything that not to mar your skin, um, where others see it as an art form and it has become, it has changed.

01:11:32

I would actually argue this even from my generation to today, tattoos have changed tattoos in my generation.

01:11:41

When, when I was growing up was a sign of rebellion. And therefore, uh, when

01:11:46

I was in seminary tattoos were a, no, we're no, we're no, no, uh, they weren't allowed to have them because it represented a rebellious behavior from the sixties.

01:11:59

They also didn't allow facial hair for the same reason in my seminary. And when

01:12:05

I challenged it to just say, well, why don't you allow facial hair? They realized facial hair in the eighties and nineties did not have the same connotation.

01:12:14

And I would say that tattoos in, in this century, uh, in, in the 2020s doesn't have the same connotation as it did even in the eighties, the seventies and eighties.

01:12:25

So I think there's some of it becomes personal preference and some of it is, there is an aspect that's cultural, but I think that culture has shifted and we may, people may not have the same reason.

01:12:37

Yeah. So, so maybe we can say that there's a heart, there's a heart issue behind it, right? Are you doing, are you doing this in a rebellious state?

01:12:44

Cause there are people who do that out of rebellion still today. And there's other, the others that do it as Cole said, right?

01:12:49

Some, some people get saved and like, Hey, I want to Jesus tattoo on her cross.

01:12:55

Right? So there are some people I know Cole that use it as evangelism, that they have tattoos on their arms.

01:13:03

You know, I, I knew one guy that had heaven and hell, one guy that, that had forgiven, you know, so there are things like that where people can, they, they do it as a means of, of starting the gospel, you know, because a tattoo is a permanent statement.

01:13:21

You know, you, you put that right. You put that on and, and it's okay.

01:13:26

So I'm going to teach you Anthony had to do sensor, but you want to do in higher current comment. Yeah. You, there we go. What you want to do is uncomment it and then unstart.

01:13:34

Cause once you unstart it, it goes, it disappears from your list. Gotcha. Okay. So what other questions do we get back?

01:13:42

Well, we'll do a, we'll do a quick one here. Question for Andrew, why does it bother you so much when

01:13:48

I make an extra lap or two in the roundabout before pulling out? Now that I know that that bothers

01:13:57

Andrew, guess what I'm doing the next time I'm driving and we're at a roundabout. Well, I'm trying to figure out what he's got there because I mean,

01:14:05

I'm, I know Aaron and I don't think I've ever seen him do a lap in the first place, but I mean, if you want to run,

01:14:11

I'm happy if you do an extra lap. He's talking about a car and a roundabout. Well, I don't, I don't know.

01:14:17

There's one about three blocks from the church. So next time you're, you guys are in town together, you know, then

01:14:25

I could do it. I think end of November is coming back in. So here's a more serious one from Jody.

01:14:32

How are you doing Andrew Rappaport? Are you sleeping better? Yeah. And someone else had asked earlier how

01:14:37

I was doing. So I'm actually doing good. This is a, I think I'm three days with no, no heat, no ice feeling good sleeping in a bed.

01:14:45

Uh, actually ever since, since I got here was the first that in your house I started, I I've been, so I, for folks who don't know,

01:14:51

I was in an ATV accident, broke a rib, punctured a lung. Uh, so I haven't been able to sleep in a bed until this week.

01:14:59

So this is a, we're going on five weeks, I think now. So yeah, which you should be getting better pretty soon now.

01:15:06

Right. So yeah, they said four to six weeks and it's, it's, it's there and I'm feeling good. Yeah. But, but here, here we got, we got one,

01:15:13

I guess maybe this is time you, you didn't see this one, but Ethan is saying my pillow. So I guess he's, he's trying to, to say that, uh,

01:15:20

I need better sleep and what I need to get is my pillow. And so that would be a good time for us to, to mention our sponsor, uh, my pillow, which by the way, you, you told me you saw the video.

01:15:32

I didn't see the video, but I read about this, but Mike Lindell, uh, was, was just going to, okay.

01:15:38

We're talking about gluttony and eating. And he was at a, a fast food place.

01:15:43

I forget which one he went to get some fast food. Was it hardies? Maybe I think it was a heart may have been a hardies.

01:15:49

It could be, but he, he was, he was getting fast food and he said that, uh, he's pulling out and a, a police car pulls in front of, or actually it was an unmarked car pulls in front of him.

01:16:00

Another car pulls alongside him. Another car blocks him in the back and they identify themselves as FBI. Give me your phone.

01:16:07

And they wouldn't let him call his lawyer. It was like an hour and 45 minutes.

01:16:13

I think is what I read. They said his food was cold. His ice cream melted, but they wouldn't, they just demanded his phone.

01:16:20

And they said they had a subpoena, but they didn't want to show him the subpoena. They didn't want to let him call his lawyer.

01:16:26

They just wanted his phone. Um, you know, and so, uh, this is what's, what we see going on because he, he's,

01:16:34

I guess, doesn't have the freedom of speech anymore to say what every Democrat has said, because every time a

01:16:41

Republican wins, the Democrats all say he cheated, he stole it. He's not legitimate.

01:16:46

It's, you know, it's Russia collusion, whatever. For years we heard actually for four years, we heard

01:16:53

Russia collusion. And now somehow, if you question the Democrats winning, uh, you, we, we need to throw you in jail, take your phone.

01:17:01

You know, you are an extremist. You're an extremist. So, so, you know, this is, this is Michael Adele has, has stood up for what he believes in and has paid a price.

01:17:10

One of the prices is that, uh, you know, a lot of retail stores won't have his good products. I love his products.

01:17:16

I do have, I did bring out here in Anthony's house, my, my pillow. Uh, I travel with it, but if you want to get a great night of sleep, get some great products.

01:17:24

They actually have coffee now. What? Yeah. I haven't tried it yet, but I said,

01:17:29

I, someone told me this and they told me it was actually really good coffee. So I'm going to have to order some and try it so I can let you guys know if that's good too.

01:17:37

But so far every product they have, I've loved, I love their, their slippers. I absolutely love their mattress topper.

01:17:44

Have you gotten the mattress topper yet? You should get that. We have a 14 inch memory foam mattress. We're stocked on that.

01:17:52

You know, so, so the, uh, the, my pillow last week, well, you didn't see, cause I ran the show last week.

01:17:58

I opened my new package from my pillow. It just got delivered that day. And so, um, per your recommendation,

01:18:03

I tried the new bath towels and, uh, and to my horror, by the way, when, um, when you guys were about to come over on Sunday, right?

01:18:11

I'm like, Julie, um, where's my new, where's my new towels at? She goes, I put them up in the guest bath for Andrea. I'm like,

01:18:17

Oh no, you didn't. I went upstairs. I took them out of my bathroom. Yeah.

01:18:25

Oh, well now that I know that I'll go, I'll, I'll ask Julie where they are. So I'm like,

01:18:31

I'm using my towels, but no, they're actually, they're wonderful. They're really absorbent. I was surprised because usually to get that much absorbency, they're heavy.

01:18:41

And these are, they're heavier than, I mean, they're not like a super light towel, they're an absorbent towel.

01:18:47

Yeah. I I'm really impressed with them. So, uh, and soft. Yeah. Yeah. So go to, go to my pillow .com

01:18:53

use promo code S F E. That stands for striving for eternity. Uh, use that code every time you order that lets them know that you heard about us or heard about them here and that keeps them supporting us.

01:19:04

So go to my pillow .com use promo code S F E. We appreciate when you do that. And regard it, by the way, regardless of whatever promo code you find on the internet for, for them at the

01:19:15

SFE one is in the highest category. We get the highest promo discounts. Um, well,

01:19:20

I think most of the, most of the codes all have the same discount. Not all of them. Yeah. Not, not all, but we, we are in the, in a, in a category where I think we do get the highest, the highest rebate on everything.

01:19:32

Yep. Yeah. That's right. That's such a perfect ad campaign. I can't go to sleep without my pillow and I can't get up without my coffee.

01:19:39

Oh, that is good. Wow. You better patent that really fast and then send it over to him.

01:19:45

Yeah, that's so good. So, uh, some guy, Chris said this, uh, was it

01:19:50

Piper that said once missions exist because true worship doesn't. Yeah. Yep.

01:19:56

But, but that same Piper also said that if someone broke into his house, um, you know, he wouldn't protect his wife.

01:20:03

So I'm just saying, I hear that's a real, real problem.

01:20:10

Yeah. So Andrew, we have, uh, I'm going to keep going through these stars. You probably should go through the other 177 untracked messages.

01:20:18

I've been adding to them. Wow. So this is, this is great. We're gonna be going until midnight tonight. Our wives are going to be, uh, whatever.

01:20:25

So, okay, here's the next one. Jason cave. How do we witness to cultural Christians such as people saying

01:20:32

I grew up in the church and my granddaddy was a preacher. Wait, wait, wait, wait. It wasn't my granddaddy.

01:20:38

I think that we heard last night, but my dad was the most spiritual man. I know we heard that last night, right?

01:20:45

That's right. We did hear that. Yep. And so, um, so yeah, I mean, that's the same, that's the very thing we dealt with last night when we were evangelizing with someone who grew up in the and believed he was a believer said he got saved at a young 14 years old.

01:21:04

Okay. And, and, but he admitted he wasn't walking, but he's been backslidden. Yeah. And he, he said, he used the term back for the last 30 years.

01:21:11

And, and, you know, one of the things is I, I just challenged him a bit and said, you know, were you really saved?

01:21:20

Uh, you know, and I think he, I think he, you know, he'd said he wants to keep talking to me, took my number, uh, wants to, wants to talk more.

01:21:26

And I think that's, it's because I think most people want to say when they deal with a cultural Christian, they want to accept that.

01:21:33

Yes, you, you are a believer. Um, but you're just, you got to live more. So what the answer, most people say is you got to start going to church.

01:21:40

You got to start doing the things Christians should do. And, and I say, if you're not acting in basically, as I said to this gentleman, if you're not living the life, if you're not showing the fruit, why would

01:21:53

I think you're a believer? The issue is you may not be one you, you, you, cause he was saying, you know,

01:22:00

I really, I miss that. You know, I want to have back what I had when I first got saved and I'm going, you probably didn't have anything but an emotional feeling.

01:22:09

Right. That's the effects of mysticism. Yeah. Uh, on the, on the, on the whole of American evangelicalism,

01:22:16

I would say that, I mean, you, for any cultural Christian, you would do the exact same thing you would do this for someone who doesn't profess to be a believer and that's share the gospel with them.

01:22:24

We all need the gospel. All of us, all of us constantly. Um, whether you just profess or whether you possess faith in the

01:22:31

Lord Jesus Christ, it's that Paul Washer so famously said that it's the initial look at the gospel that the Holy Spirit uses to save us.

01:22:37

And it's a ongoing look at the, look at the gospel that the Lord uses to sanctify us. And so it's, it's continuing to share, continuing to share the gospel.

01:22:48

And just like Andrew did, you, you're, you're asking questions. If there's no biblical, if there's no biblical fruit, there's no root, right?

01:22:55

There's, if there is a solid root of faith in the Lord Jesus Christ, it's been granted unto you, then there's going to be fruit.

01:23:01

You're going to be able to see that. Um, uh, so yeah,

01:23:06

I mean, it's, it's, it's in, in a more way.

01:23:12

I mean, what would you guys say? Um, do you find it easier or harder to evangelize, um, to, to those who would profess faith in Christ, but don't possess faith in Christ?

01:23:23

You know, I have a story about the, about a guy that's kind of fits this profile. That's one of the guys

01:23:29

I work with and I witnessed him today. And he texted me after work saying, he thanking me about the talk we had and to kind of tack on into what you're saying is, uh,

01:23:38

I did the Todd Friel method on him. We were, we were talking about something, just stuff going on and catching up and whatever.

01:23:45

And then it turns out he was in the hospital with bilateral pneumonia, both lungs full in 2020 before they had

01:23:53

COVID tests. And why that's significant is because before they had

01:23:59

COVID tests, they were just doing whatever they could to save you. They couldn't tell, they didn't have a policy that said, you can't have this stuff.

01:24:06

You have to have this stuff, right? I know another guy that died, who was a brother in Christ, and he had the same condition, except he tested positive for COVID.

01:24:17

And because of all of the things and that they were doing in the hospitals with COVID patient,

01:24:23

COVID positive patients, so put it that way, um, he passed away. So I was talking to my coworker about this and I, at one point

01:24:33

I got to the conversation and it became very apparent that, you know, he said that, um, you know, he was very spiritual or religious.

01:24:41

And I just kind of asked him little bits of questions like Todd Friel, and I was like, what do you mean by that? Let him talk, let him say things.

01:24:47

And it turned out he was, uh, he's like one of those guys that had grew up knowing scripture and knowing enough to know that he was going to, that if he had died in that hospital bed, because I posed the hypothetical, what if you were my buddy?

01:25:04

What if you didn't make it out? Where would you go? He admitted it. He's like, I'd be in hell. And I asked him why.

01:25:13

We got talking a little more and he said, uh, I said, what do you need to do to not have that happen?

01:25:20

He's like, I just need to be consistent. I was like, what's that mean? Like, how can you be consistent?

01:25:26

So down the road I ended up, because you know, we're at work and we get interrupted and things. I keep these tracts that they have at my church, bad news, good news.

01:25:38

And he really, he was re you could just see it hanging on him, the condemnation of his sin and not having, he had the bad news down.

01:25:49

He had the sin and condemnation down, and it was just dragging on him. And he hadn't, he thought he had to work for it.

01:25:57

You know, I do come in with the good news. That's all it needed. And Cole is trying to be all serious and we're all laughing because there's a penguin on his shoulder.

01:26:06

I know it's so cute. It's this, it's this where you disappeared. Now she's going to hide.

01:26:13

Oh, all right. So let's get, let's get to some more of the questions. Yeah. So, so I do want to say this cause

01:26:20

I've been flipping through the messages as you've been talking Cole. And there's a lot of people commenting about diet and all kinds of different areas.

01:26:27

Some people can't believe we went there and you know what? Oh yeah. But you, you know, let's be honest.

01:26:33

We, the reason why you can't believe we we've gone there is because pastors aren't doing it.

01:26:39

Others aren't doing it. You know, if we were selling, they justify it.

01:26:44

Well, it works right. They justify it. It's just, this is the culture. It's, you know, it's, there, there is an aspect of it, you know, and I guess the question came of, you know, what, you know, that someone asked,

01:26:57

I forget who that just Chris think that Spurgeon's disqualified or something, you know, but, but the issue is,

01:27:03

I think there, there is somewhere, you know, there could be a legitimate case made for guys who are behind the pulpit that are lazy or lack diligence.

01:27:16

Now I'm not saying it's true for all, right? I mean, there is an aspect where, look, being a pastor is busy.

01:27:22

It's, it's a lot of work, hard work. It takes a lot of the day. And so do you have time to exercise?

01:27:28

Are you just eating whatever you can? Because, you know, so some of it is work time management, not being lazy or being a glutton, right?

01:27:38

Some of it is. And the reality is it, this is, this is one of those things that creep up on people.

01:27:44

Oh, it does. One pound here. Sure. Sure. Sure. Sure. I mean, you used to say this yourself. I mean, what, one of the things that motivated you to start dieting was you'd see pictures of yourself out doing open air and you'd hate to see those pictures.

01:27:56

I know for me, people would come by and they want to take a picture and I'm like trying to suck my gut in. And I still have the picture.

01:28:04

I still have the picture. There was a picture on our refrigerator of myself, my wife, her sister and her brother.

01:28:09

And I was like, and I I'll just be honest. This is exactly what I said. When that picture got put up, I was like, who is that very fluffy gentleman?

01:28:17

Uh, right there in that picture. I don't recognize that person. Um, so it's, it, it, that, that was a wake -up call for me and it didn't happen overnight and it is hard and it is consistent and it is dying to self.

01:28:29

It is denying self, uh, desires and, and, and, and things that you would normally have.

01:28:34

But, but listen, listen to the qualifications. So if we're talking about pastors in particular, the qualifications of a pastor, an overseer then must be above reproach.

01:28:45

The husband of one wife, temperate. Yeah, there it is.

01:28:51

Yeah. That's the second one, right? I mean, temperate self -controlled other translations say

01:28:59

I'm reading from the LSB. Um, but it's, yeah, no, that's right. And let's go a step further on this too.

01:29:05

Um, we might end the rest of the show on this one topic, but okay. How many of us does it drive crazy when the pro abort or as, as my brother says, the pro, uh, he, he said it was the, they're, they're not pro choice.

01:29:20

They're pro. Um, Oh no, I know. I just, I just blanked on it too. Irresponsibility.

01:29:26

Irresponsibility. Yeah. Okay. So, so it, it irks us when they, when they want to use that, that one isolated case to justify their position, right?

01:29:34

Such as, well, what about that person that was raped? What about the person, right? And so they, they use a really, really small thing.

01:29:41

Um, it happens. We get it. Um, doesn't change the life and the fact that it's a life, but, but they try to use, they try to use the less than 1 % thing to make a general rule.

01:29:51

Right? Okay. So we know how, how, how problematic that is now I'm flipping through comments and, and I've heard all these same things.

01:29:59

Well, some people, it's their medications, some people it's, it's, um, health issues.

01:30:05

Um, let me tell you, it is less than 1%. I could have used that excuse, right?

01:30:10

I mean, we all could have used it. Blood sugar issues running my family. I have it. Yeah. Right. So, so what you do then is knowing we live in a fallen world, we have bodies that are, that are, that are not perfect.

01:30:23

Correct. You have to figure out what it's, what it's going to take for our bodies to get healthy. And look, I have to be the thing

01:30:29

I've learned over the years in losing weight. And then especially in the last three to four months, there are certain things

01:30:36

I can't have bottom line. I can't have dairy products. My asthma that I got rid of 14 years ago by getting rid of dairy products was a major, um, was a major sacrifice, so to speak hard to go out to eat anywhere.

01:30:50

You can't have dairy products. Why is it that you eat crab Ragoon? Yeah, that was a whole different story one day that got me.

01:30:57

Chris, don't, I mean, we can talk about that later. It is a good, it is a funny story.

01:31:04

I mean, I, I do want, we should bring it up. I'm just saying not right now, but I think, but I think here, here's something too.

01:31:11

Right. And here, here's, let me, let me clarify something. Here's what I'm not saying. Okay. I'm not saying you have to look like Dwayne Johnson.

01:31:17

All right. That that's not it. That's not what I'm not. I'm, I am not saying that at all. Right. What, what

01:31:23

I, what I'm saying is there, unfortunately, is a trend. There's a trend that, um, that, that we're seeing inside of, of the professing evangelical church specifically in reformed them, those who would profess to be reformed, where you have people and pastors who are morbidly obese.

01:31:47

Let me just go there. Okay. Morbidly and morbidly 50, 60 pounds or more, right?

01:31:54

Correct. Correct. I am not saying I like, I am not in the shape that I want to be.

01:31:59

I'm nowhere near right. But, but, but that's what I'm talking about. The, those who are unable, not unable, unwilling, unwilling, unwilling to die to that portion of self that, that the unwillingness to, to mortify that sin and to, to seek accountability and to do so, to honor the

01:32:20

Lord and to be obedient to his word and to, I mean, really it's one of those things. Again, I talked about the principle of reaping and sowing earlier.

01:32:27

It's like, I mean, if you, if that's the case for you and you're a husband and a father, you know, what are you like?

01:32:34

I mean, you're setting your family up to not have you on this side of eternity. I mean, how responsible is that when it comes to stewarding your family and shepherding him?

01:32:45

That's right. Or even if you live a long life, but to, to be slower, to not have as much energy for your family, all those things.

01:32:52

Yeah. Yeah. So, yeah. So, so that's, that's why I make, I, I, I think it's a great topic and I will say this,

01:32:58

I mean, if we move on from this or not, that's fine. No, no. I'm excited for you to start, you know, exercising and running and, you know, so you have the energy for your family.

01:33:07

I've got plenty of energy right now. Yeah. But okay. So, so in, in saying all this one of the things that, that we have done, so, you know, not a lot of people know this out there in, in the world, but my wife was diagnosed with leukemia about two years ago, a little over two years, two and a half years ago now.

01:33:25

And you know, we had practiced holistically in our dental practice for years. And so we had talked about,

01:33:31

Hey, what if one of us ever got cancer? What would we do? Right? No chemo, no radiation. Like we already knew that we knew we would go the naturopathic route.

01:33:39

And that's just kind of where we're at. So when she was diagnosed in the middle of COVID 2020 with leukemia, that's exactly what we did.

01:33:46

We went through medical system to get the accurate diagnosis. And then we went to a naturopathic doctor and that's, that's a different story for a different time on how we found this specific doctor, but.

01:33:55

Yep. But diet supplements and this light frequency technology cured her of her cancer in six and a half months.

01:34:03

Well, my wife, we had, we had a friend, uh, she was diagnosed with an,

01:34:08

I forget my bride could, could remind me what type of cancer I think it was, uh, pancreatic cancer, but stage four, said six months.

01:34:18

And if she did the chemo, maybe she could get another two, maybe three months of life. So she starts doing the chemo, but the chemo has taken a lot out of her, but she found a, you know, this

01:34:28

Chinese doctor that had just, all he did was he saw he cured cancer with food and all she did was radically change her diet and she's cancer -free like going to probably like seven or eight years now.

01:34:42

And so all she did was change her diet. And I think this is the thing, like a lot of people don't know how much diet plays into our overall health.

01:34:53

And the fact is that, and I think Chris, you might've mentioned this, it's the food we get, we're, we're really limited because the government forces all this junk in the world.

01:35:05

GMOs and almost every grant. Yeah. All the sugars that are not regular, not, not the natural sugar, but the artificial natural sugars, not good for you either, but high fructose corn syrup is a major issue.

01:35:18

And that's like in everything. And so just trying to take those things out of your diet is really difficult, but so it's, so I'm saying we understand that this is not an easy thing to do.

01:35:32

Right? No, no, not at all. Goodness gracious. Not at all. And my wife was a healthy eater.

01:35:37

I mean, overall, she ate tons of salads and vegetables. She, I mean, she's really skinny. She works out all the time. I mean, but yet she got cancer and had to change her diet as well for this.

01:35:45

And, you know, the rest of the family, my son and I, um, or our son and I, we did the, we did the exact same thing, but I say all this because, you know,

01:35:52

I, I've learned a lot over the years in holistics. I've learned a lot, um, especially in the last two years, two and a half years going through some of this stuff.

01:35:58

And then some of my own journey with, um, getting rid of my asthma and acid reflux years ago by cutting casein protein or dairy out of the diet, um, losing weight now, uh, having settled that if anybody wants to reach out to me by, by private message, if you've got questions, you want to, want to be saying the right direction.

01:36:17

I mean, contact us, right. Contact Chris. I mean, he's obviously, you know, in, in shape to, I mean, there's contact people who can do these things and can point you in the right direction to, and to encourage you to help you, um, those types of things.

01:36:30

I will also say that as a dentist, I have a number of doctor accounts for, um, for supplements.

01:36:37

So the best supplement companies in the world, the cleanest, as well as the most supplements out there.

01:36:44

And, uh, in one company in particular, um, we can, once I have a conversation with you and talk about supplements,

01:36:51

I can give you a coupon codes for, uh, for this company. And you can get these, uh, supplements so cheap that you're getting top supplements for cheaper than going and getting the junkie

01:37:01

Walmart brands. So if you want to get supplements, um, I can, I can help you with that.

01:37:07

It's a code you deal with the company yourself. I don't see any of the transactions or anything. Um, but, but, but the products are out there.

01:37:14

So I've kind of made it a mission in recent years to really try to figure out, um, how to help

01:37:20

Christian save money in doing this thing. Right. Whether you decide to do just keto or you're doing intermittent, intermittent fasting and keto, or you're trying to do, um, supplements with it and atomic apologetics,

01:37:31

I feel bad. I just ate a big bowl of nachos center. A lot of nachos. There is no purgatory by the way.

01:37:39

I just want you to understand that you need to repent. You will not be able to work that sin off. Um, man,

01:37:45

I like me a fried peanut butter and jelly sandwich. Yeah. Peanut butter and bananas. No, I know.

01:37:53

It's bad news bears, man. I'm telling you. All right. So, so I think,

01:37:59

I think we've beaten this one down pretty, pretty good. Like 10 comments, slew of other questions we got to get to.

01:38:04

Yep. So, so there was one, let me, they put up a, that, that, uh, let's see the, there was the one.

01:38:13

Oh, here, here. So Melissa asks this question. I'm going to share this. She, um, she's saying, why don't you read the question while I share?

01:38:23

Okay. Yeah, I'll read it. So Bonsai said, Oh, I see a, my pillow, children's pillow that has the animals all out of the arc.

01:38:32

I don't think Anthony would dig that. So there's, this is the, um, so let me, uh, so, so they actually, it is kind of interesting because I was looking at this and, uh, so I'll let you, this is the one on the arc, my pillow with the arc.

01:38:46

Uh, but there's actually, when I was looking through this, there's a number they have, they have Jonah and the whale and you can see here on the back,

01:38:54

Daniel and the lion's den. They do not look like scary lions. Yeah. Those do not look like scary lions and he looks pretty young.

01:39:01

Um, so, you know, grant, I mean, they have creation. So it is kind of interesting.

01:39:07

They're trying to, for children, um, children that were, you know, they have, we're going to have to call your buddy

01:39:15

Mike Lindell because, you know, okay. So when, when I'm going around the country, teaching on creation, one of my big pet peeves in regards to teaching children is that why do you, why do you children have some children have such a hard time believing the

01:39:28

Bible? Because we have pictures like that, that don't depict the story accurately whatsoever.

01:39:34

Yeah. I mean, it's that, that type of stuff is, is horrific and I get it. It's a pretty, it's a fun cartoon. It's, it's neat.

01:39:40

It's colorful, all that kind of stuff, but it's, it's woefully inaccurate. Well, you know, Chris Townholds had said earlier that he thinks he needs to get himself a pillow.

01:39:50

And, uh, well, our friend here respecting the word has an idea for Chris Hanholds. Hey, Chris, tell

01:39:56

Andrew to have a contest and you can win a pillow because we all know that if Chris Hanholds enters a contest, he wins.

01:40:04

And, and if Chris would come onto the show in his Captain America outfit, I will buy him on my pillow and ship it to him.

01:40:11

Well, he's got to fit into that costume. Okay. Then here's the key to get a diet at first.

01:40:18

And then you come on the show with a Captain America uniform. And, and, and if you, if you do the diet and get into the outfit,

01:40:28

Anthony will not only buy you and your wife on my pillow, but the mattress top or two. See, I'm acting like a

01:40:37

Democrat. I think that's worth it. I'm acting like a Democrat offering up his money. Yeah.

01:40:42

Yeah. Socialist. All right. Let's get some of these questions that we have here. Yeah. Well, okay.

01:40:48

So Cole, let's go in the same vein real quick. How does a man tells wife she needs to work on her health asking for a friend?

01:40:54

You know, I have actually dealt with this recently with a, with a couple of friends and, um, okay.

01:41:00

Let me, let me use the example myself. Right. Is, uh, is your, well, your wife did come to me some time ago asking me this for her husband.

01:41:09

I'm just saying, no, that's good. I mean, then again, your, your wife does work out way more than you do.

01:41:14

And that's, she is an unbelievably strong workout queen. It's a, it's amazing. I like to say she just worked to become one.

01:41:21

So her workouts are my workouts. Yes. She works out for two hours. You talk on the phone on the treadmill wall, go into the, that's how strong my lungs are, is that I can do that for an hour.

01:41:33

Um, and then I go relax and massage last hour while she's continuing to work out. That is true.

01:41:39

Um, makes my back feel better. But, uh, you know, how, how do we do that? Okay. So let me say this from a husband's perspective, we have to be loving and kind to our wives, but we also need to know how to tell the truth and, and to help them through this.

01:41:57

Like we would, I mean, let's call it a sin, right? Like we would any other sin. If she's got a sin in some other area of life, wouldn't we call her to repentance and, and, uh, and talk through that and tell her how, ask her how we can help and work through those things.

01:42:13

Um, you're not fat in my eyes are just messed up by captain black Eagle ingenious.

01:42:19

Um, that, that, that would be what you do. And, and, and look, so my wife who, who has always eaten pretty well and worked out well had had leukemia.

01:42:29

And, and so when, when we went to the, when we've spent the money we did to go to the specific naturopath and buy the equipment for the house and all that kind of stuff,

01:42:36

I said, Julie, I go, there's certain things on this list. You're going to do really well. And there's certain things on this list that you're not going to like.

01:42:43

And it's my job as your husband to make sure that we stick to this. Why did you have to throw out the popcorn that I was eating?

01:42:50

Yeah. Yeah. So that's a different story for today too.

01:42:57

So, uh, but, uh, you know, so we, we, we have to, we have to, as, as husbands do this in a loving way, the way we would handle really anything else and wives, you can do this to your husbands as well.

01:43:11

Um, and calling some repentance and, and helping out and, and, and, and working through these things together, having a, having a plan together is what

01:43:19

I was going to capitalize on. Because one of the things is there are some people who will be like, they don't like the way their, their spouse looks.

01:43:28

Uh, they want their spouse to get healthy, but they are not doing anything to get themselves healthy.

01:43:33

They, they not be, you know, overweight or, or things like that, but they're, you know, they're not taking care of themselves in other ways or, or even, you know,

01:43:45

I mean, I exercise a lot, like I run a lot, you know, but if I'm sitting there and saying, well, my bride doesn't run, therefore she's got to run.

01:43:53

Well, the, the thing is, what do I do? We walk together, we do things together. And so some of it is you, you do it with your spouse, you know, and if you're in better shape and then you do it with her, you know,

01:44:06

I know I counseled someone many years ago who was frustrated because he would run marathons, but his wife didn't, you know, she was upset that he would take so much time running and she was upset with it and she didn't, she didn't appreciate it.

01:44:20

And now they do half marathons together. And so he, instead of doing marathons, he's cut down to half marathons so that they could do them together.

01:44:28

So he's not doing the marathons anymore, but they're running five Ks and half marathons together.

01:44:35

And so now when they're running, they're spending that time together when now she's, she's now running, but they're spending that time together.

01:44:43

They're running and talking and it's building their marriage while they're out. So, so that's something that, you know, you could do with your spouse instead of just saying, this is what you need to work on.

01:44:55

You do it as let's work on this together. There you go. That's right. You do it together.

01:45:00

That's good. So, so that great question, Cole. Okay. Next one here.

01:45:07

Misrepresenting the gospel is a sin, right? Yes. Next question.

01:45:13

Well, misrepresenting the gospel on purpose is a sin. Okay. So there could be people who, because they've been poorly taught and they're not, they're not aware, they're just ignorant.

01:45:31

They don't realize they're doing it because they've been in a bad church. I'm going to say that,

01:45:37

I don't know if I'm going to say that's a sin, at least not in the same way as someone who knows the gospel and knowingly is misrepresenting it.

01:45:47

I, you know, I, I'm, if they're knowingly misrepresented, clearly, yes, it's a sin. If someone's just ignorant of things and not aware of it, maybe not.

01:45:57

So let me give an example. When I became a Christian, I never was taught about the Trinity.

01:46:03

I didn't understand anything about that. I knew Jesus was God, but I didn't understand the distinction between the

01:46:10

Father and the Son. So, you know, would I have been misrepresenting the

01:46:16

Godhead by not understanding the Trinity? Well, technically, yeah, because I didn't make a distinction between Father, Son, and Spirit.

01:46:25

I just said, God, Jesus is God. I still, I didn't deny that Jesus was

01:46:31

God, but I didn't understand all the precision that understanding the doctrine of Trinity offers.

01:46:37

So if you have someone that doesn't understand the precision of what happens when someone is regenerate, but they, they understand that they, you know, there is regeneration, but maybe they're, they're, they're not, they weren't taught well.

01:46:51

I think there might be a distinction there that we would, we can make. Yeah. I would just want to know when you say misrepresenting, what, what, what, what do you mean?

01:47:00

Do you mean the, the, the, the key points, the life, death, burial, and resurrection, the Lord Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of sins, you know, or, or, or Andrew, like your example, is it, is it a, a deeper tenant of something, you know, from a theological standpoint, um, that pragmatic one, what about that?

01:47:18

Pragmatically do that. Right. Right. Right. Yeah. And so, so the ones that know the gospel and purposely misrepresented, yes, it's a sin.

01:47:27

The others we might have to dig in deeper. Wouldn't the intentional misrepresentation be technically blaspheming?

01:47:33

Yes. Could be, could be, uh, okay. Aaron said, uh, John Brown, Anthony has vowed to grow a beard in five days.

01:47:40

And Chris said, Spurgeon isn't saved because he was fat. Not quite.

01:47:46

I'll just let that one ride. Does this person work for the corporate press? That was good.

01:47:54

Um, I've seen two people so far who've put comments, uh, Facebook message me or, or text me if you have my phone number and send me your email address.

01:48:03

And then I will send you the supplements company code. And if they need just, uh, contact us at info at striving free that's why

01:48:11

I do it too. So that might be easier. Okay. Melissa says, what would you gentlemen say to people that claim queen

01:48:19

Elizabeth was saved? Correct me if I'm wrong, but I thought she supported both abortion and the LGBTQ community.

01:48:25

I gotta be honest with you. I had no clue that queen Elizabeth identified as being a

01:48:31

Christian. Maybe it's just cause I don't really care about the British royalty and have kind of ignored them over the years anyway.

01:48:37

Right. Right. Um, but I never heard this until she died. Well, no, there was, there was actually a good, because yeah, she actually fought with, because when, uh,

01:48:47

Billy Graham came to England, she actually fought because she wanted to meet him. She wanted to talk with him.

01:48:53

And I guess people didn't like, you know, he, he meets with presidents, but there was like a, you know, different standards with the queen.

01:49:02

And, uh, she, it was, it was one of the times she actually fought supposedly to get to be with Billy Graham because she wanted to talk to him about the gospel.

01:49:12

So there is that history. Now, I don't know about her being supportive of abortion or LGBT because she was very much against, from what

01:49:20

I saw, um, against LGBT because of Christian values.

01:49:25

So she, she did claim to be a Christian. Uh, now in England, she was the head of the

01:49:32

Anglican church by definition, by her position. Uh, now King Charles is, which he's not a

01:49:40

Christian. So just being in that position doesn't make you a Christian, but there seems to be evidence.

01:49:47

There's a lot of people that seem to think that she actually was a believer. Um, you know, but it's hard to know because we don't really get to know the queen because she's so it's her, that part of her so private, you see what they present.

01:50:05

And so it, it is hard to tell, but you know, she made a lot of claims to be

01:50:11

Christian. Um, but we, I don't think we could tell. I've heard a number of people now say that she supported abortion and LGBTQ in recent years, but I've not seen any articles or anything.

01:50:25

John is, John is saying here, there's footage of the queen of her presenting the gospel clearly. So I, you know, so maybe there is, yeah, maybe.

01:50:35

So good question. Thank you. And here KT is saying that she gave Bibles out, you know, which she did do.

01:50:43

Um, Kenneth Copeland does that too. Yeah. I do know when I was over in England preaching, um, for the

01:50:49

Olympics that when she knew people were coming in for the Olympics that she ordered Bibles to be given.

01:50:55

Oh, that is really cool. Yeah. So people that attended the Olympics that at that opening were, were given

01:51:01

Bibles. Yeah. That's cool. The only other question is, were they King James and did they have the Apocrypha in them?

01:51:07

That's a good question. Um, they were King James without the Apocrypha. Okay. Uh, deep dive discipleship says

01:51:14

I got offered to go on an ATV a few weeks ago and Andrew's face flashed before, before me, needless to say,

01:51:20

I declines. Well, Kofi, I understand why you declined, but you missed a lot of fun.

01:51:26

Yeah. Two broken ribs. Well, other than that, I'll be back on one. Okay.

01:51:31

This is a fun one. Uh, are our minions preaching the true gospel?

01:51:38

Okay. Um, Sean, you, you'd need to first define our minion. Yeah. Most people that Calvinists call our minions are actually

01:51:47

Calvinist with the wrong understanding of Calvinist. Right, right, right, right, right.

01:51:53

And people think it's, it's either you're Calvinist or our minion as if there's no other option.

01:51:59

Right. Right. And that's a fallacy of the excluded middle. Uh, there, there, there are other views that you can end up having.

01:52:07

Isn't that called cognitive dissonance where you believe two things that are in opposition to each other?

01:52:15

Yeah. I mean, I would say yes.

01:52:21

Um, you know, look at John Wesley. Um, although I, I, I, I kind of believe that, that John Wesley is one of those who was truly

01:52:31

Calvinistic in his soteriology, whether he realized it or not. Um, so, but I'll say this it's when you, especially when you look at Ephesians one,

01:52:41

I was listening to Martin Lloyd Jones today, um, uh, preach a sermon called chosen by God. And he's talking about the doctrine of regeneration.

01:52:49

And once you understand the doctrine of our, like total depravity and, and, and our nature, you understand that we can't regenerate ourselves.

01:52:59

Um, so to truly understand the doctrine of regeneration, um, opens the door to wholeheartedly believing in, um, you know,

01:53:08

Calvinist theology, if that's, that's the label you want to put on it. I like to say the doctrines of grace. Um, but, um, so yeah, that, that, that's a loaded question that we would need to ask more open -ended questions about.

01:53:20

Yeah. But I would say this, if you have someone that understands the issues and is arguing that their choice saved them, not

01:53:32

God, right, right, right. Then yeah, I'm going to have a hard, if they're going to say that it is, it was my choice to believe that saved me, not

01:53:43

God. Nope. Then I'm going to have an issue. Yep. Why don't we, uh, why don't we go to that question?

01:53:48

That was a comment from Kofi here. Yeah. Kofi, since we were just with this Kofi said being from the

01:53:54

UK, her stance is back to the queen. Uh, her stance on issues are complex due to her role as head of state.

01:54:02

And that's sort of what I was getting to there a bit. And he's, he is one of those guys that speaks in that weird language there that they speak over there in Britain.

01:54:12

Yeah, it is weird. Okay. Beth Tanner. So I'm guessing she's related,

01:54:17

Ethan. I don't know. I don't know. Cause she, she said congrats or something earlier. So I was wondering.

01:54:23

Okay. So we are in the Bible belt in South Carolina. We struggle to find a church with a mission -based budget that will take a stand on heretical music and making discipleship.

01:54:34

Hmm. Well, that's not just in the Bible belt, Beth. I mean, that is the struggle in a lot of places.

01:54:43

Um, it, it is, it is an interesting what she's put together a mission -based budget.

01:54:49

Okay. Being that they support missionaries, uh, taking a stand against heretical music and making disciple three elements.

01:54:58

I, I do find it interesting. Those three, because when you look at a lot of churches, there's a lot of churches that they have a strong missions budget because they don't do this.

01:55:09

The, the mission themselves, they're paying others. Like we, we feel more spiritual because we're paying people to do

01:55:15

God's work. Yep. And then, and that's what we do. We, we, we give the money as if that's a substitute.

01:55:23

Um, so putting that with disciple making is very interesting as a combination because, uh, you know, there in a lot of churches, it's, it's kind of one or the other and, uh, you know, taking a stand on heretical music, uh,

01:55:39

Chris, you, you don't have any strong views on that, right? You don't just a little, just, just, just a few.

01:55:44

Uh, I mean, I would say they're most likely, there are a lot of, uh, a lot of churches out there that spend more on their lighting, um, than, than they do on, on investing in, uh, fulfilling the great commission, uh, investing in training, investing,

01:56:00

I mean, fill in the blank, um, this 80 ,000 light of the 80 ,000 watt light of mine. Oh, that's right.

01:56:06

I mean, these moving lights and, and all the everything else, I mean, gosh, you should go look up how much one of one of those costs one.

01:56:14

Um, you know, not to mention the, the, the money that, that they're, they're paying these false teachers and, uh, songwriters to write songs based on a heretical

01:56:24

Jesus and not the Jesus of scripture. Anyway. Um, it is difficult, uh, Beth, I agree.

01:56:29

It's, it's very, very difficult to find one, but it's just in the Bible belt. I mean, that's, Oh no, it's everywhere.

01:56:34

It's everywhere. It's worse in other places. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I find it hard to find a church that's focuses on discipleship period.

01:56:43

And that's the great commission is to make disciples. It's the thing that every church should be doing.

01:56:50

In fact, if every church was doing it, there wouldn't be a need for striving fraternity. We, we wouldn't need to exist, which is what we would prefer.

01:56:58

Right. But churches are not doing that. That's the number one thing that we should be doing is every

01:57:04

Christian should be making disciples, not, not just the pastor or someone like that.

01:57:10

Every Christian. That's right. That's right. So Kofi says weird accent. You're from Jersey.

01:57:16

And I think what he meant to say is you're from Jewish Jersey. Um, what's the Jewish part? Cause that's, cause that's even a different accent than regular

01:57:23

Jersey. Not at all. You're thinking of the, those from Brooklyn, but see, Oh, maybe the Brooklyn people that claim to be speaking.

01:57:29

Oh, okay. I got it. New Jersey is always dissed because of ever those New Yorkers. Okay. Just so, so, you know, here, here's some, you know, respecting, uh, the word says

01:57:40

I do my missions. It's tough by myself with the homeless. You know, I, I'm just going to point out,

01:57:45

I, you know, I heard rumor, I heard rumor that, uh, respecting the word is just blown me off and ignoring me.

01:57:51

I, I heard he's, he's avoiding seeing me. That's, that's what I heard. Is that true? Who's respecting the one that texted you?

01:58:00

Oh yeah. Yeah. I think, I think he's, I think he's trying to, he's at, that's my theory. I'm sticking with it. Yeah.

01:58:05

Yeah. Okay. Oh, wait, wait. Hold on. Hold on. We got somebody else.

01:58:11

We have to take the banners off because someone else likes to play games with his name. Uh, not John Wilkinson is here.

01:58:18

Hello. Not John Wilkinson. Which means we're not going to see chickens. Good. Hey, I'm not, I'm not the clock commander.

01:58:23

That's what it is. How's it going guys? Good. How are you? Good evening. You've got a break from your schoolwork, huh?

01:58:33

Yeah. Um, I, I didn't know what to do with myself. I had a little bit of extra time. I sent you an email.

01:58:39

I was like, Hey, let me come in on the computer so I could get ahold of you. That's all right.

01:58:45

I've been, I've been crazy busy. Yeah. So maybe we'll let you answer some these, these more difficult ones that we saved for last.

01:58:52

So you, you took your extra minutes to spend with us. That is so, that is so nice to let us know.

01:58:59

Yeah. All right. So, so, uh, while you're here, here's, here's, uh, some questions actually we should, we should, uh, we should put this one up from John Wilkinson since you're not

01:59:10

John Wilkinson. We'll put his up first and I don't have an answer for this cause I don't know what he's talking about. He said, did any one of you watch the interview with Chris True and Joe Wow.

01:59:29

Anyone know what he's, I have no clue what that is. She's, she's a,

01:59:35

I would say she's false teacher. She's a believes in women pastors. She's all about the me too movements and everything else.

01:59:43

And I saw on Twitter now I know, yeah,

01:59:48

I saw a small clip on Twitter and you know, my, my, my response was, you know,

01:59:54

I said, I, you know, like two thoughts, one, she should get dressed and two, I dare her to come on to apologize live and try to defend that women should be pastors.

02:00:03

She's now, she's now demanding that and Chris is a faithful brother. Good dude. Um, uh, you know, she agreed to the public dialogue.

02:00:13

He's posted clips of the dialogue and then now she's retracting her permission for that to be shown.

02:00:21

And she, he needs to take it all too bad for that. Yeah. Too bad for that. Sorry. You're going to come on the show.

02:00:28

You're going to come on any show. You, you give permission passively to, to have the conversation. You're going to start running your mouth and having, having your expression of your opinion.

02:00:39

That's fine. But you know, you gotta be able to, uh, that's what freedom of speech is about, you know,

02:00:44

I'm sorry, but, uh, I tell you what, Michael and Dale, I heard you guys talking about earlier, Michael Dale, he, he's learning that we have a government that doesn't believe in freedom of speech.

02:00:53

So we're probably going to end up having, uh, most of society get rid of that idea too. Well, uh,

02:00:59

I will say this, that our next guest is, uh, all Justin's fault, but here he is.

02:01:06

Chicken man, chicken man is here. What's going on guys.

02:01:15

Good evening. We have chicken man. Yeah. Not, not, uh,

02:01:22

John Wilkinson. So John Wilkinson and not John Wilkinson are both here. So the question becomes, is that a logical, you know, fallacy?

02:01:32

I mean, can you have a, you know, a John Wilkinson and not a John Wilkinson in the same way at the same time?

02:01:41

Well, we, we, we just, there's a lot of the logic Yeah. This was the last question that we, uh, at least we had in the backstage.

02:01:52

Um, and that the question was, um, whoop, what happened to the question? Sorry about that.

02:01:59

There, put it back up. I totally agree. Unusual for sure. Has anyone found ER of the

02:02:04

Cal D's? Um, and this is one I, I'm the, I actually don't know.

02:02:12

So, um, well, I actually have been studying about this. So in our, uh, in our, um,

02:02:20

Old Testament Hebrew classes, we've been studying about the, um, the fertile Crescent, which is where, uh, which is the land bridge that comes from Israel all the way over to Babylon.

02:02:31

And, um, it's speculated that ER of the Cal D's was actually more towards the

02:02:36

Nineveh area, but nobody knows exactly where it's at, but it was more speculated to be more towards the

02:02:43

Nineveh area. So there you go. I learned something. There you go. You learned something in school.

02:02:49

That is good. All right. So, so the final, the final comment that I have here that I see, uh, is someone,

02:02:56

Melissa says chicken man is ushered in Anthony time. Yay. And, and KT is saying

02:03:02

Anthony time is here, right? We made it. And by the way, everybody be praying for KT.

02:03:09

So, uh, KT, she, she puts stuff out. That's, you know, fun and whatnot, but you know,

02:03:14

I get messages from her. She lives about, uh, I don't know, 40 miles from me.

02:03:20

And, um, I wish I could come, come down and take her to church with us She's just pray for her and her family, her dad, um, just her whole family.

02:03:28

So please do that. All right.

02:03:34

And, and so with, with that, Jason says, Anthony time, and that's a good place for us to end for the evening.

02:03:43

Yeah. We made it into three minutes of Anthony time. Yeah. We got two more start things though.

02:03:50

All right. So, uh, I got to answer him Facebook user. He's looking, he's Anthony is looking,

02:03:55

I'm searching hard for new ones. He's that's what he's been doing. He's been searching for questions. He can.

02:04:01

So, okay. So our, yeah. So our church is a hundred miles from our home.

02:04:07

It's difficult to be a part of the local body of believers. Is it okay to go to other churches throughout the week to be a part of Bible studies in hopes of finding another believer of a sound mind and discernment?

02:04:18

No, I'm not sure. I may actually know. I mean, this is Facebook user.

02:04:24

And I, and I do know that, uh, there was someone commenting. I don't know if they were on YouTube that I saw earlier, their comments.

02:04:31

Um, cause I do know someone that I've been, that I was talking with earlier that, uh, that is in that situation.

02:04:39

Uh, and, and I, I have a friend out in Idaho. He used to live in Montana and he had, um, he was, um, going to church,

02:04:51

I think like an hour and a half, one way, three times a week. And so he made that commitment.

02:04:57

Uh, he eventually moved to be toward to the church. And so, you know, it's a question of how important is a good church.

02:05:09

And I think that if you're going a hundred miles a week, you're, you're not really going to have church.

02:05:16

You really can't call that church because it's, it's, you're, you're in a situation there where, um, you know, you're not going to be getting together with people during the week that often, unless you're going to make a serious commitment.

02:05:31

And if you're going to make that as a serious commitment, then good, you should. Um, because you know, we should be making church and the, and the fellowship within church a serious commitment.

02:05:43

Um, I know, you know, uh, Justin Peter's wife before he had married her, she, she used to drive, she and her, her first husband who would, who had passed away, um, they would drive an hour and a half to church because signing a good church was that important.

02:06:01

So, uh, but the question is if, if your church is that far, is it okay to go to another church that, you know, isn't so sound?

02:06:09

Well, I'd, I'd find it a sound church. That's as close as you can get and then go there as often as you can.

02:06:16

And if not, maybe move. And I have done that. And pray about it, pray about it because the way we found our church and our home all came together in a way only

02:06:28

God could have put together. It was just private, which is funny because the name of the church is

02:06:33

Providence. So yeah. So this Facebook user went back to say it's a hundred miles away, the nearest sound church.

02:06:43

Yeah. And so that's where you say, can you move? That's, you know, can you start your own church?

02:06:51

Can you move? And if not, you know, and if you, if you can't, you know, how can you situate your life to where you can be there as much as you can?

02:07:01

Um, you know, that's one thing I'll tell you. We're 35 minutes away from, from our church and we're there just about, well,

02:07:15

I mean, within, we're within a mile of that place every day. And I try to get in contact with the pastor and with everybody

02:07:23

I can every day. There's five pastors, including myself there. Um, we are constantly busy, constantly doing things and, you know, to be in a faithful fellowship is hard.

02:07:38

You know, um, you have to be with like like -minded brothers and sisters who abide in Christ.

02:07:44

You know, John 8 32 tells us that if you are going to be his disciple, you must abide in the word.

02:07:51

But that also tells us abiding in the word means we're abiding in one another. We're being in fellowship with one another in obedience to Christ.

02:08:00

We're, we're trusting in the word of God. We're listening to it. We're studying to show ourselves approved. And a lot of times when you get in today's, today's, um, uh, church market, the way things have changed is you have a society that because of the lockdowns, because of all the mandates, you know, the pushback to where everybody's not at church.

02:08:23

Now you have people that just don't want to be at church, but you also have, because of that, the, uh, it becomes, it becomes with people trying to be together, there becomes some type of a hardship, you know?

02:08:39

So like, like Andrew was saying, either, either you're going to need to reevaluate and move, uh, closer to your church or can you work it out to where if you can't move, say, for example, that you're able to stay there and stay faithful in that church.

02:08:57

Uh, it might be hard, but you know, that is the season we're in. You know, I think every single one of us here,

02:09:03

I mean, I know Andrew, he's moved all over the place trying to help out different churches. He's, I mean, he's, he's, he moves and moves constantly trying to help out different churches and, you know, there's this problem or that problem, that situation, whatever else.

02:09:18

And, you know, I think there's a lot of us that we get in those situations, but that's like you said, brother, it's in God's providence.

02:09:26

It's not a waste of time. You know, what, what are you able to do while you're there?

02:09:32

And can you make it easier for yourself? If not deal with what you got, you know? Yeah.

02:09:40

So, uh, I think that, that Melissa meant this as a, as a fun slam against Andrew, uh, when he was commenting about shutting down the show, she said, what?

02:09:51

Come on, gramps. He actually is a grandpa now. That is true. We can't even make fun of him for calling him old.

02:09:58

Um, I, have you announced that yet? Or did I just kind of, Oh no, no, no, no.

02:10:04

I remember he said that one back. You call me grandpa, but you know, your son earlier,

02:10:09

I don't know if we could get that picture up. Your, your son, your son called me fat today. He paid a price for that, didn't he?

02:10:16

He did. I don't know how to do that. Yeah. Within, you know, my son is 15.

02:10:21

He's skinny. Like my wife, he's taller than me now. He actually just passed me a couple, a couple of weeks ago.

02:10:27

And, uh, and that's not hard to do, which is not at five, eight on a good day.

02:10:34

But, uh, yeah, he came up and called it. I mean, well, you guys have been really rough housing, right?

02:10:40

The last couple of days. Well, no, not the last couple of days. Cause I've got a broken rib, but anywhere near like we use usually that's true.

02:10:47

Yeah. But he usually, he usually tries to see, he usually, your son will usually poke the bear and then run and then run.

02:10:53

That's right. Yeah. But you caught him this time. Well, he was like, he goes, okay,

02:10:59

I know I deserve this. And he just came over and let me hip toss them. And then I did, all I did was say, just let him feel the, what

02:11:06

I, you know, a heavy man would feel like. Yeah. That's right. Yeah. I just, I know how to use my weight.

02:11:12

That's right. And he's still skinny little punk. So I didn't live who, who I am praying for tremendously to get saved.

02:11:18

Yeah. I mean, unlike, unlike me, I suffered it with, there's a certain choke, not really a choke, but it's a, it's basically where you use the weight and Frank Mullis did this to me where you use your weight to just basically burn out someone's lungs so that he can't breathe.

02:11:36

So it's a, I was doing that to him, but I got, I got off him before he felt that burning sensation that Frank let me feel first time

02:11:47

I rolled the Frank. So last question. Okay. Until I find a few more. So Jason Cave says, aren't we as a church to fulfill the great commission in Matthew 28.

02:11:58

Yes. Yeah. And I think we said that earlier. Yeah. And, and we actually did a show on this.

02:12:05

I want to say in the last six to eight months, um, I had pastor Chuck O 'Neill on and pastor

02:12:11

Casey Butner on, uh, to talk about great commission, talk about church's responsibility and fulfilling it.

02:12:18

Uh, and talking about how, when a church is evangelizing, it's, it's almost always because the pastor is not, is not talking about it from the pulpit.

02:12:28

He's, he's not placing importance on evangelism. So you kind of talked about that at our church.

02:12:36

The context of that comment was probably because we had talked about evangelism earlier in the show.

02:12:43

Don't, don't, don't come in late in the show here and then expect us to go over two hours of material here,

02:12:49

Mr. Not. Well, I mean, you should, you should be going over back over it. Cause you know, I mean, you should just listen to the podcast, you know, well,

02:12:59

I can't, you haven't posted it yet. So, so Melissa is clarifying.

02:13:04

Um, it was a compliment. Andrew is awesome. And, uh, that was hard for you to read. It was,

02:13:10

I think, I think she misspelled awesome for something else, but he's going to be a wonderful grandfather that I do believe.

02:13:18

I think that's spelled absolutely right. Yeah. You know, and that's the one thing about the principle of the great commission command is when we look at that passage,

02:13:31

Matthew 28, Jesus said, all authority is given unto me and heaven and earth.

02:13:38

Now people will take that and say, well, since he has authority, he's giving us authority. We need to dominate the earth.

02:13:44

We need to take over the dominion, all that stuff. And they'll use the next verse, go therefore and make disciples of all the nations.

02:13:54

Okay. The context of that is that the nations, if you, if you look in the

02:14:00

Greek, you look in Hebrew, that nation's discussion is talking about the peoples. It's all the peoples of the world.

02:14:09

Now a nation is made up of people. Um, but it says baptized them in the name of the father, son, and Holy spirit, teaching them.

02:14:16

It's talking about individual people. It's not talking about talking about taking dominion or fighting them or anything like that.

02:14:22

It's actually talking about bringing the gospel to baptize them into the, into the, after they've come to know the truth, then made disciples to baptize them in the name of the father, son,

02:14:34

Holy spirit in obedience, to teach them in obedience, to observe in obedience. It's just like we talked about.

02:14:40

Those people are abiding individuals. So, so yeah, it's, it's all about the gospel and going out into commission man for every single

02:14:50

Christian. And just say, so I can say it. The reason I'm going to say this to you is because last night we actually had a gentleman in our, um, in a class

02:15:00

I'm taking who tried to make an argument that the, uh, the church isn't today being called to go out and do that.

02:15:10

And if you think about it, what does Bill Bright say? What did he say? Less than 2 % of believers actually share the gospel.

02:15:18

So even if a person would sit here and wholeheartedly agree and say, no, we need to be sharing the gospel.

02:15:25

The evidence is most people aren't doing it. Um, and they're not being solved. Yeah, no, you're right.

02:15:33

You're right. Yeah. So, so drew asked this question and maybe we can talk about this succinctly.

02:15:38

I am planning on having, um, uh, Chuck, pastor Chuck O 'Neill and Dr. Casey Butner back on again.

02:15:45

And hopefully you'll be around for that show too, to talk about your experiences. But I want to talk about evangelism again and really dive into this question a little bit, a lot more, a lot more than what we can do tonight.

02:15:57

But Drew asks, what are the effects of fulfilling great commission? So on one hand there is, there is the, the straight up command to go out and into the world and preach the gospel, make disciples, right?

02:16:09

Straight up command for us to, to go do this straight up command to the church. And, uh, the church is failing miserably, but then on top of that, when the church is doing evangelism, it's not just about that command and going out and sharing the gospel.

02:16:22

It is also about the effects that happen when within the church as a result of sharing the gospel.

02:16:28

Right? So, so what are, what are some of those? Well, first of all, great commission is, is more than sharing the gospel.

02:16:34

That's the starting point. It's about making disciples and things you're going to have is you're going to have a, you're going to have holy living because when your testimony is on the line, when you're out sharing the gospel and you're discipling someone and someone's looking into your life, you are, you're going to want to clean up things in your life naturally because that is your, your, you're asking someone to imitate you.

02:17:03

And when you're doing that, you're, you recognize the things that you're not doing right.

02:17:09

And you start to work on your sanctification. So one thing is that you start to see personal holiness.

02:17:15

You start to see more when you're doing more evangelism and discipleship, your need to defend the faith.

02:17:22

You start to see that you're, you are now having to work on knowing the scriptures, knowing how to interpret the scriptures, having a ready answer.

02:17:32

These are some of the things that end up happening. What is the effect then on the church as a whole?

02:17:38

Well, one of the things is you start to see the church doing the one anothering that it should be. There's 31 one another passages in the scriptures, and we start to see people love one another, bear one another sins, forgiving one another.

02:17:51

All of these things start to become what the church does because it is discipling one another.

02:18:00

And in that process, we start living as a family, as a church family.

02:18:05

So I would say those are some of the effects of a great commission being properly practiced.

02:18:12

Another thing too on that, just to kind of springboard from where you're at. What are you using for a microphone?

02:18:20

Because it's horrible. I'm using an iPhone. I'm using an iPhone because you didn't tell me about that code.

02:18:29

Sounds like your Wi -Fi is not letting your signal come through very well.

02:18:34

Either that or your finger is over the microphone while you're holding it. What I was going to say.

02:18:43

I'm going to say if you can't get a better mic, we're not going to hear what you're going to say anyway. No, it's really bad.

02:18:52

I'm sorry. I don't know. It's on my iPhone. So if it doesn't work, it doesn't work.

02:18:58

It's all right. Yeah. It's horrible. It's horrible? Let me try one thing and see if this works.

02:19:08

It's the connection. It's a connection. Yeah, it's a connection issue. Turn your video off.

02:19:16

It might save on the sound. So Drew asked a follow -up question here.

02:19:22

Does it have any effect in society or the community? So does evangelism, the fulfilling of the

02:19:30

Great Commission, have any effect on society or the community? It's just a theonomy question. Something's from the

02:19:37

Post Mill guy. Yeah, I was going to say as a Post Mill, he's going to say yes. I would say that the answer to that is that it will have an effect on society or the community as a byproduct, the same way pre -millennialism is a byproduct of rightly interpreting the scripture.

02:19:55

Correct. When you rightly interpret the scriptures and you have a proper hermeneutic, i .e.

02:20:02

dispensationalism, pre -millennialism is a byproduct. It's the natural result.

02:20:09

And so will it have an effect on society? Yeah, I think it would if the church was properly doing that.

02:20:14

And if the church wasn't trying to be like the world, then yeah, we would stand out apart from the world.

02:20:21

Mm hmm. That's right. Good, good answer. Anyone else want to add into that?

02:20:27

You're just trying to extend it. You know, our wives would like to see us. They saw us all day. Except for when they were shopping together.

02:20:38

Yeah, except for like the whole day. Yeah, like the whole day. I'm sure they want to see us. I got to go.

02:20:45

Anyways, take care, guys. Good evening. Well, next week, I don't know what we have planned for next week.

02:20:53

I don't think we have any guests. Actually, let's see. I thought you had a guest.

02:21:00

Next week, we are going to have Missionary Gamer coming in. And actually, that's what I was referring to earlier, who was driving an hour and a half one way three times a week.

02:21:11

And so we'll have him on. Now, the interesting thing with him is when people say they do missions in gaming, they really do gaming and justify it as missions.

02:21:25

Right. This guy actually is a full time missionary in the gaming world. So I've sat in on some of his live streams.

02:21:34

And actually, I was on his live stream. I was watching his live stream the one night when you and him had met together or something.

02:21:42

You had something with him that one night. Where I evangelized nobody because there was no one in the in the virtual world that night.

02:21:49

But yeah, but he literally does eight hours of evangelism in the gaming world.

02:21:55

So he's also a developer and they have their own platform that they've developed specifically for teaching and stuff because the gaming industry is very, very secular.

02:22:05

And it's very hard to expose yourself to games. Just it's kind of like I'm a musician.

02:22:11

It's hard for me to go back into bars, you know, and evangelize. It's like opening the coffin of mortified sins.

02:22:17

Can't do it. But like this guy is able to do some of that. And it's awesome.

02:22:23

Yep. Yeah, that's cool. And so that'll be next week. And so I hope that everyone enjoyed it.

02:22:31

And until next week, strive to remember to make today an eternal day for the glory of God. See you then.