Calvinism and Open Q&A

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00:06

It's fascinating to me how easily someone in one religion can find the fallacies and biases in another religion.

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I think that what's fascinating... You're razor sharp on your criticism of Islam here.

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Yeah, but what I find fascinating, Jeff, is that you recognize that with other religions, but you don't do it with your own.

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That may be the case. And there's that confirmation bias coming up again.

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This is Apologetics Live! Answering your questions, your host, from the strife for eternity ministries,

00:42

Andrew Rappaport! We are live at Apologetics Live, here to answer your questions, challenges, anything that you have for us tonight.

01:00

Pastor Justin, you're saying there's something with my audio. What's up with it? I don't know. Maybe it's me.

01:09

Okay, John, are you hearing my audio okay? John, you in there? I can hear you, but you're sounding like a robotic.

01:22

Okay, he'll be right back, guys. Sorry about that. He's going to jump in and out and get himself fixed up.

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Sounded kind of like a robot. You're sounding pretty good. I sound amazing. I mean, I can't help it, guys.

01:36

Yeah, the audio was a little weird going on. Andrew will get it fixed in a minute. So, I just want to welcome everybody.

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Are you there, Andrew? Can't hear me yet. Yeah, we're good. I can hear you now.

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We'll cut that in post. Yeah, we'll fix that. I'll make it professional. Can you hear me now?

02:00

Yep. All right. Well, that's great. We could start that over. Had to reboot the roadcaster for some reason.

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It's really strange, but the roadcaster, as soon as I hit record, it was fine the whole pre -show, but as soon as I hit record, it acts up.

02:19

Kind of important. All right. Let's start recording again and see if it happens. All right. Let's do it. All right. Well, welcome to another

02:25

Apologetics Live. We are here to answer any question you have about God and the Bible because we can answer any question that you have about God and the

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Bible. Well, for a very simple reason. I say that I don't know is a perfectly good answer. All right.

02:39

So, well, welcome, Pastor Justin and John. How are you guys doing this evening? Doing good.

02:47

Fantastic. All right. I was just wondering if John was going to say anything. All right. So, we are at Anthony Free.

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Something. We are Anthony Free tonight because he is down in Dallas. He is speaking there with the guys at ICR.

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And so, that is a good opportunity for him. So, he may or may not pop in.

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And so, we'll see who else may. We got some folks that are popping in backstage. And so, what we wanted to start off with briefly was to discuss the debate from last week.

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Kind of a quick post -debate. And then we see some folks that are coming in. And maybe we get some questions.

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If you have any questions, want to join in the discussion, just go to ApologeticsLive .com.

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We're here Thursday nights. You go to ApologeticsLive .com. That is where you can get all the information to watch, to join.

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You will be able to, from there, click on the duck icon for the StreamYard. And that will get you in to being able to join us as others have and are already backstage.

04:00

So, are you sleeping there, John? No, I'm doing a duck sound. Just stick to your chickens, all right?

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Okay, all right, all right. So, you know, John, you were here for the whole debate.

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Now, Pastor Justin couldn't take it. He could not take it. He watched half the debate and said,

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I can't take this guy. But there were a couple of things I do think are helpful for folks to pay attention to with the debate.

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Just to notice, and this is just to help people in their apologetics. One of the things that we saw was when we talked about Calvinism, early on and later on, he made the argument that he understands

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Calvinism. And do you remember what he said? He said he read Calvin's Institutes.

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Now, I chose not to pick that apart. I mentioned to him he might want to read some books that actually deal with this subject.

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Because when people speak of Calvinism, they're not actually teaching the five points that Calvin taught.

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And I don't think Seth understood that. One of the things we have to understand is that when we talk of Calvinism or doctrines of grace, and you have someone who says, well,

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I read Calvin. Okay, historically, you have the

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Calvinists. And after Calvin, there were Calvinists that went to what we might call hyper -Calvinists into determinism.

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And then you had this guy, James Arminius. James Arminius, and very few understand this.

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Actually, R .C. Sproul wrote a book, and he understood this and pointed this out. James Arminius was actually a

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Calvinist. In other words, the followers of Calvin went so far afield that he was trying to bring them back in.

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But the problem is his followers went so far afield that they kept going too far.

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Just like Calvin's followers went too far one way, Arminius' followers went too far the other way.

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Calvin and Arminius may have had more agreement than their followers. And so the followers of Arminius came up with five points of Arminianism.

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And the response to that was what is known as the five points of Calvinism. Now, it was interesting because when

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I was asking him about the five points of Calvinism, he said he understood it because he read

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John Calvin, which immediately told me he doesn't understand because Calvin never had the five points of Calvinism.

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I was just going to ask you that, was it Calvin who responded with the five points, or was it other people from churches that responded with the five points?

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Yeah, Calvin was long dead. Okay, yeah, that's what I thought. After Calvin died is when his followers started continuing on a path getting more and more deterministic.

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Arminius comes along and tries to pull them back in, but his followers go too far. So Calvin wasn't even alive to respond to the five points of Arminianism.

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So just to make clear that when you read Calvin's Institutes or anything from Calvin, you're not going to find the five points of Calvinism.

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You'll see the teachings of how it developed into the five points, but you're not going to find the five points added in there.

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Correct. And Melissa's asking me, do I happen to know the name of the

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R .C. Sproul book? And I want to say that it's chosen to believe. Yeah, that's what it is.

07:52

Okay. So it's one of his later chapters. So one of the things, though, that I want you guys to see if you're ever because this show, the purpose of this show, one of the purposes is to educate you guys on how to do apologetics so you could be a better apologist, a better defender of the

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Christian faith. Well, let me just finish. So you'll see people that will do this. They will say, well,

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I know about a subject because I've read one thing or you'll hear a lot of times.

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Well, I know a lot about Christianity because I grew up Christian. None of us really understood

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Christianity because we grew up Christian. We understand Christianity if we start studying it, but being raised going to church doesn't necessarily give you a degree in Christianity.

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And that's the argument many will make. And it's the same argument Seth was making that, well, I read Calvin. Well, that's fine.

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That's nothing of what we're talking about. We're discussing Calvinism, which is something that was way after Calvin died.

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Well, you know, the one thing that I want to encourage everybody with is that it is, well,

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I put it up online here. I want to pull this up. If you read Proverbs 18, verse 13, it says,

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He who gives an answer before he hears, it is folly and shame to him. And see, the danger is when you're talking past people and you're not listening, you don't actually hear the arguments and the comments that they're making.

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What I heard was a lot of, you know, just trying to win an argument and being contentious rather than listening to grow.

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I mean, just because I may not agree with Andrew's position doesn't mean I can't be respectful and listen and consider what he's saying and why he's saying it.

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And in apologetics, you have to be quiet enough to hear the other person's argument and respectful enough.

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I mean, we're talking to Christians, you know, even if you're not, but we're talking to Christians back and forth.

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We need to be respectful and say, you know, I don't agree with your position, but let me hear it and let's sit down and answer it with respect and with grace.

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And that's not what I heard last week. It was just, you know, what about this verse, this verse, this verse? Well, you know what, this one, this, and it just, it was, it got to the point where to hear it for me was like on a scratching on a board, you know, it was just, would you stop for a minute and listen to what's being said?

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Yeah, and that was one of the things I brought out at the end, which you couldn't listen to.

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But I pointed that out that it was interesting because he didn't understand.

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I mean, over and over and over throughout the debate, he's telling me, you believe that God forces someone to believe over and over and over.

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I kept saying, no, I don't believe that. I never said that. Now he claims afterwards, he told me, he gave me a minute.

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Mark said, you said this. And I told him, well, if I said that I misspoke. But if I, if it's, but he wouldn't let that go.

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He kept saying that I talked about, you know, when I talked about the suffering is inevitable.

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He said that I was saying that, that God, that the belief is inevitable.

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And his whole thing is, you know, God, like God can offer salvation, but we don't actually believe it.

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We have a choice to believe it or not. So that was, you know, that was a thing where he wasn't listening to what

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I was actually saying. So that was, that was one thing

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I picked up that I wanted to point out. Another thing that I wanted to point out that you saw in that is, and you already mentioned this,

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Justin, is the fact of listening to your opponent, arguing what they actually believe.

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It shocked him when he realized that I don't claim to be a Calvinist. And he was like, wait, well, how are you defending

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Calvinism? Because a good debater can defend something they don't believe. I can defend

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Islam. That's not a problem. But I don't have to believe in Islam. But I can make an argument for it.

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And that's the thing that I think that a lot of people kind of don't understand that we have to be able to understand the opponent's argument well enough to be able to debate their side of an argument.

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And when you can, then you understand the issue that they're raising. But if you're doing as Seth was, he was debating something that I didn't hold to, and yet continued arguing it.

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And it makes someone that does that look bad.

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Well, when you argue just from emotion, and your whole entire argument is based on I don't like this doctrine or I don't like this thing, and you get emotional about it.

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I mean, we all have a tendency. We can do that, and we have to check ourselves. Because I'm just going to tell you, before I was a

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Christian, I didn't like anything about the Bible. I didn't like anything the Bible said that I'm condemned from the womb to the tomb.

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I'm condemned already. I'm a sinner in the sight of a holy God. I don't like that. Well, when

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I get saved, there's all kinds of stuff I don't like that I need to submit to and learn from, and then learn the graciousness of God in it.

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That's part of the sanctification process of a believer. And one of the things that you see, if you watch that debate, the saddest part,

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John, I think you might agree with me, the saddest part in that debate was when there was a point, early on he mentioned that God would never give us a command that we don't have the ability to do.

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Now, one of the things you'll often watch with me as I do debates and things like this is I will try to get things established early on because debates, even a discussion, early on you tend to have more agreement than later.

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So get the commitment up front. So I ask lots of questions up front. And when he said that he believes that God cannot give a command that we aren't able to do,

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I said, okay, that's going to come up much later. I knew I was going to bring that up later. And so when

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I did bring that up, I asked him again, does he believe that? He said, yes. And so I gave him the command that's given over and over in Leviticus, be holy as I am holy.

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And I said, can you be holy as God is holy? And he said, no, which was good.

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Unfortunately, and this is the problem some people have, when their system of theology is more important than the scripture, what do they do?

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They give up scripture and start reading into scripture, something it doesn't say to hold on to their theology.

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And that's what he did when he goes, well, maybe for a second I can. And I said, can you be holy as God is holy?

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And he said, yes, for a second. I said, that's blasphemy. And that's where exactly is the problem with a lot of non -Calvinists is that they don't realize their unrighteousness.

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They don't get it. They don't understand just how wicked and sinful they are compared to a holy and righteous and perfect God.

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So yeah, it's crazy. Irresistible truth puts on the comments.

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Just what we were talking about earlier, get some of the, you know, some of the things that they don't realize that Calvinism wouldn't have been a formal five point had it not been for the five points of the remonstra, the

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Arminians five points. That's where the five, the tulip that we call the tulip, that's where it's a response to them.

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And so the other thing that I saw with it is, you know, when he, for example, we saw the thing where he had the opportunity to realize, okay, there was something wrong with my beliefs.

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The underlying argument that God would never give a command that we're not capable of doing.

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He should have at that point said, okay, there's something wrong with my view and at least consider it.

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But instead, and this is sometimes people can have pride and that pride could be where they will struggle with this.

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And to win an argument, they end up saying things that could be blasphemy.

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And this is how people end up falling into heresy. It's not that they turn into heresy overnight. It's usually because they're arguing a position with someone and they argue too far.

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Kind of like be righteous, you know, go ahead and spend the rest of your days being righteous.

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Well, the scripture says that you must be righteous as Christ, as God is righteous. Like you said, be holy.

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Both of those things are emphatic. They're a command and a demand that you cannot see

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God unless you want to see him under judgment and wrath. Unless you're holy as God is holy and unless you're righteous.

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And if you can't do that, you've got a problem. You've got a major problem.

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Well, the problem is, is the thing is, is none of us can, because none are good.

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Not even one. We're dead in trespass and sin. It doesn't mean that we're physically dead. It means that we are spiritually dead.

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You know, Ephesians tells us that Ephesians two, one, we're dead in trespass. We walk after the course of this world.

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So we actively walk in a spiritual dead nature. And then of course, what he said was something along the lines of, um,

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I can choose to choose God or some, I can choose to choose Christ. And I'm like, but wait a minute.

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And you brought it out. You said, wait a minute, but you're dead. And he was, yes, but I can choose. And then of course, that's where you, where you misunderstand the, the doctrine of, you know, soteriology, the, the, the

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Ordo salutis. That's where you misunderstand that. God has to take that dead man and make him alive.

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That's why Ephesians two says, you know, who you are that you walk in the world and then, but God, those two greatest words in the

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Bible, you know? Yeah. So one of the things that, you know,

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I, you'll see me do in a debate like this, and this is helpful to do. You notice that I didn't go to a ton of scripture versus, and some people were like thinking of the scripture versus, you know,

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Justin, you said John six, why didn't you go there? Yeah. There's a, there's a reason for that.

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There are people who try to overwhelm someone with the, you know, just rattling off scripture versus one.

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That seems impressive, more important though, in a debate, my opinion is to not just mention a whole lot of scripture versus, but to dig into them and explain them.

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And in that case, there's only a few that you need. Oh yeah. And so why did

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I go to the Philippians one 29? Well, Philippians one 29 says for to you, it has been granted for Christ's sake, not only to believe in him, but to also to suffer for his sake.

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Now, Seth was arguing that we believe first and then we have faith.

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And so, you know, when we are doing that, he's putting in a chronological ordering to it.

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Now I said, I don't think there is a chronological ordering on either side. I can understand a logical ordering, but that usually leads to chronological.

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I think they're simultaneous. It is not as monogistic, but this verse here makes it clear that God grants us to believe.

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Okay. Which means God does something first. Now, why does that become important?

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He, there was one thing he saw in the debate that he did. He turned and says, well, I can get a grant at school and refuse it.

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Now that right there is a fallacy because he's trying to take a grant.

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In that word, in that meeting has no comparison to a grant you get at school for college, like a scholarship.

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And so there was, that's called a fallacy of equivocation. Just because the word is used grant in both ways, doesn't mean it has the same meaning.

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In fact, and I didn't get into this in the debate, but the word for grant in Philippians one 29 is to pardon or forgive just as, as it has been pardoned for Christ's sake, not only to believe.

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So the pardon is coming before the belief in that sense. So that's, that's why

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I bring that verse up. Was that his argument? Really? I mean, I, I know he kept saying he kept using that word grant, but I, that's what

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I thought. I was like, he, he's not applying the same word. Correct. It's who, what,

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I mean, what we're trying to say is like, God grants you the repentance and the faith. But yeah, he kept saying, no,

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I can, I can get a grant. Yeah, I know. And, and that's where he's doing the falsification. He was using grant two different ways.

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And, and so you want to look for fallacies like that. Now, do you have to always point them out? No, you don't have to, you remember in a debate, you don't have to point out everything they say that's wrong.

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Yeah. It's actually sometimes better not to focus on the majors.

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Right. And, you know, with, with focusing on the majors, we want to make sure that we're not getting lost in the weeds.

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Cause that's what sometimes happens when we have discussions. And if you watched the debate last week, you saw that.

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What did I keep doing? I kept bringing it back to a few verses. I kept bringing it back to Philippians one 29, because this was a major thing he struggled with.

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I didn't have to keep going all over the Bible. Just keep going back to a couple of passages, stick to a couple of passages.

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And until, until they're understood, the problem is we, he never got to a point of understanding the passage because he kept reading something in.

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And this is something you saw me do over and over again. I literally, for example, read for, it has been grant for, for to you.

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It has been granted for Christ's sake, not only to believe, but also to suffer for his sake. And he said, well, see, that means that's only for believers because it's in him.

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Now, the irony there is I said, so that those that it's been granted to are only for believers.

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And he said, yes, I said, welcome to Calvinism. And he didn't even pick up on that. Cause he's actually arguing

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Calvinism. He was actually arguing, you know, and didn't even pick up on that.

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One thing to point to though, is in this passage, it's not just saying that it's granted for Christ's sake for you to believe, but the granting is that you believe.

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And, but it says, but also, yes, but also to suffer for his sake.

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So the argument that, that is, is being made to the Philippian church is that God in his kind grace is allowing you to be saved and allowing you to suffer for Christ's sake for his name.

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Yeah. And, and I brought that up because that's, that's the, the focus of the book of Philippians is on suffering.

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Exactly. The whole point is just as God has, has given you the suffering, has pardoned you for suffering.

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He's pardoned you for belief. And, you know, what's amazing about that. Are they going to, is he, is he actually going to sit there and say, well, you know, he could say, um, that, that here, here,

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Philippians, um, God's granting you an offering you, um, the, the, the chance to suffer.

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And you can just say, ah, no thanks. Nah, nah, nah. I really don't want to, I mean, the suffering.

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Yeah, exactly. And, and, and I think what he doesn't notice is what that ends up doing is putting a, uh, it raises man's belief to a heart.

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I mean, he said point blank, he's synergistic. He believes God works with man to, to save a man.

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For sure. I mean, that's Catholicism. Yeah. Well, but, but think that's where that comes from.

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You know, that's where that, you know, the, the, um, Arminius, you, you have, well, in all honesty, you have, you have a lot of, a lot of history that comes out of the, the

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Roman Catholic church that fought against the Roman Catholic church. But a lot of it that was perfectly aligned with it, you know?

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And when you think about it, you're, you're, you're Pelagius Arminius argument is staunchly

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Roman Catholic. You know, and you know, I know people get mad about saying that, but it's true. Well, you, it becomes a question of what's the difference there.

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And, you know, one of the things, cause we have some people in the backstage. I know one that's going to take a little bit longer, uh, probably go to Matthew first since he's going to stay on topic.

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Um, but no, no, just cause we, we have a, the way everlasting, who's going to be, it's going to be a totally different topic.

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Uh, so I'll stick, we'll stick to this topic and he's going to be a little bit longer. I said,

25:57

Sue say here, she, cause I don't know. Um, can't tell by the, by the name. So, um, but before we do, you know,

26:05

I do want to, for folks who are a regular here, I should, I should mention, um, and he's saying the way everlasting saying he's a, he, so that's good.

26:15

He identifies as a, he, at least, um, we're not doing that. We're not doing that.

26:21

No, no, no folks who are regular know that we have a regular commenter. Uh, uh, uh, that would do super chats for us.

26:31

And if folks want to do a super chat, if you're watching on, you know, on YouTube, you can, instead of putting a comment, you put the comment with the dollar sign there that donates to striving for eternity.

26:42

And in, so we guarantee we will read, uh, that comment. So, uh, because, well, you supported the ministry and we're going to make sure that that's a red, well, full belly bear is one who's done that very often.

26:54

And I was talking with him this week and he has a new fallacy for us. I, we always like to give, teach you guys on some different fallacies when we can.

27:02

And there's a fallacy he came up with. And when I thought about this, I think, I think it is a legitimate fallacy that we see very often, especially with like politicians, but he called it, we called it the fallacy of amnesia, the fallacy of amnesia.

27:20

And I, I don't, I, in, in my study of logic, I have not come across this. So he, he may have an original, the fallacy of an amnesia is when you, when you avoid an argument by saying,

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I don't remember. You think about, you know, Bill Clinton with the

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Monica Lewinsky thing. How often could he not remember anything? I mean, his memory was just shot during that thing, right?

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Everything was, I can't remember. Were you, were you ever alone? I can't remember, right?

27:52

So it's a, it was a thing where what you're looking for is a yes, no answer. You're at, you're asking questions that people should know the answer to.

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And their response is, I can't remember, or I don't know. I give that response all the time to my kids.

28:07

Yeah. Now, if it's, if it's Biden, we understand it's, it's not actually a fallacy.

28:14

It is amnesia. Former vice president Biden says it all the time.

28:22

Yeah. No, I mean, but that is one of the things now, this is different than saying, I don't know to avoid.

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This is to the claim of, this is a case when you have something that you should know, something that happens to you, something that is, you know, it's on you experienced, but you say,

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I don't know to avoid answering. Typically, I think people are going to do that because, well, you know, to say yes or no, gets them in trouble, right?

28:49

So, so the, our new fallacy for this week is the fallacy of amnesia. Thanks to full belly bear.

28:55

I don't see commenting. Otherwise we, you know, he'd probably be saying, yep, that was me. So before we, before we put

29:04

John in, in the, in the backstage, John, typically you, you tend to get in your relaxed position before, you know, when we see, we get to see you,

29:15

Pastor Justin and I, when you're backstage and we usually see you get into your relaxed position. You're doing usually one of two things.

29:21

Oh, full belly. There he is. You say his name three times and he appears.

29:27

I refuse to do a super chat, but he gives a $5 super chat. I think that's called a contradiction.

29:36

He's great. He is a sharp, sharp guy. You got to be on your toes with him, but he's a, he's always thinking.

29:45

So, so John, the thing we always notice with you is you're in a very relaxed state. Usually we see you with you leaning back in your chair and your eyes are closed and you look like you're comfortable.

29:56

Whenever we bring you up on, on camera, you, you seem to wake up very quickly, which leads me to believe that it's possible that you're just not getting a good enough sleep during the show.

30:08

And I think the reason why I could be wrong, I think the reason why is because you need to get yourself a, my pillow.

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What I think you need to do is take advantage of the sale that they're running right now. Uh, they're running a sale right now to get a queen size premium.

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My pillow for only 2998, that's $40 off. So I really think you should consider getting one so that you can sleep through the whole show next time.

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And I'm going to tell you how you do it, John, what you do is call one 800. 8 7 3 0 1 7 6.

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And when you call them, use promo code SFE for striving for return. Not only John, will you get a great night's sleep during the show, but you'll be supporting striving for attorney at the same time.

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Now, another option you have, if you don't want to call one 800 8 7 3 0 1 7 6, you can go to my pillow .com,

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John, maybe when you're out there with your chickens, you can get yourself a nice robe, you know, or you can get their pillow top.

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Who is sponsoring this show sponsors, both the Paul Jack's live and my rap report show.

31:30

And you can get discounts there using promo code SFE. The numbers there on the screen, one 800 8 7 3 0 1 7 6.

31:41

So if you want to help support us and get a better night's sleep, call them. And as folks watching can see,

31:48

John is already out for the night. So we're going to put him backstage. I was going to say, the other thing he's usually doing is reading my, what do they believe book, which he seems to read a lot.

31:58

I'm going to bring Matthew in because he said he wanted to talk a little bit more with the topic we were on.

32:04

With Calvinism. So Matthew, welcome to apologetics live.

32:10

Thanks for bringing me in. Can you hear me? Yes, we think this is your first time coming in. Well, I've, I've been on before, but not necessarily with all the fancy equipment for a bit of background.

32:23

I, on Twitter, I saw some different posts from a specific user talking about free, freewill theology and whatnot.

32:35

And I heard James and James White of the dividing line interacted with him.

32:41

I heard a couple of shows, which James White discussed it discussing a debate between this gentleman,

32:51

Warren McGrew and Matt slick from at the end of last year. I listened to that, listen to that.

32:57

And I thought that it was a very, very interesting debate considering Warren McGrew's position.

33:04

And then I recently listened to a very recent interview from of Warren McGrew, in which he was discussing the history of Augustine and plagianism and Calvinism in general.

33:23

And according to his whole, his whole idea is getting back to a pre Augustinian orthodoxies was what he called it.

33:31

A big emphasis on free will, which I take to mean libertarian free will based on his descriptions.

33:39

But anyway, what he suggested is that Augustine even, even at becoming a, after becoming a

33:45

Christian was still extremely it inspired by his

33:55

Platonism. I should have forgot what the other things Augustine was, was into before he became a

34:01

Christian. I'm sorry. With all these things when, yeah. And when he started writing his works and Warren's argument was that plagius was the orthodox general was the orthodox

34:14

Christian coming to refute Augustine in his claims. And he tried, and he's argues historically the way things went down.

34:25

It wasn't the church sided with Pelagius according, according to what he was, what he was saying in this interview.

34:31

And then eventually it was one of the, one of the political leaders that declared Augustine the winner of the argument because he got tired of all the drama.

34:40

Therefore, Augustinianism is false and anything that followed thereafter. Well, there's some, there's some validity to the fact that Augustine in his early writings is not the same

34:53

Augustine in his later writings. In fact, one of the things Augustine did, uh, later in his life was to rewrite all his older works and edit all his older works because he couldn't stand the thought of having, uh, his bad teaching out there.

35:11

So, so there was some of that with Augustine. However, the, the fact of trying to say that, you know, when you look at the, what they were debating and you compare it to scripture,

35:26

Pelagius, you know, this is why people, most people that would be not holding to Calvinism are semi

35:32

Pelagians because Pelagius was one of these guys, like I was talking about earlier, who, who took an argument and just went too far trying to defend an, an argument.

35:44

And what, what happens, let me explain the history of, of heresy, how people become heretics because, because it's helpful to know what, what happens in, you'll see this in a whole lot of different things.

35:54

You'll see it with a, a guy, maybe like Pelagius, or you're going to see it with people that believe in flat earth. you know, you, you see it in, in a whole lot of different doctrines where someone grabs onto one thing.

36:07

And what ends up happening is that they start to defend it, whatever, whatever it is.

36:15

And it's, it might be a light defense at first, but when, when debating, if someone's pride is getting in the way, what happens with the pride is we are going to be right till the last thing we do.

36:28

When people start arguing at a pride, they start to make arguments that even if they're invalid, they don't care.

36:35

Even if it's unbiblical, they don't care. They will justify it. Now, every system, every system,

36:41

I don't care what system you look at Jehovah witnesses, Islam, Mormonism, Catholicism, any system, they are going to have answers to the questions.

36:51

They're going to be a well -argued system. And so the reason

36:57

I point that out is people think like, well, if you, if they don't hold to this, they're going to be just crazy. And no, it's, it might, you know, flat earth might seem crazy to us, but to them, it makes sense to them.

37:10

It's a well -organized system. And that becomes the thing that is kind of, uh, you know, where people start to see that, well, there here's answers here.

37:23

And the more they study to, to debate someone on a topic, the more they get grounded in, well, this, this, this has answers.

37:31

This has answers. Let me give you a, for instance, I had a Jewish person who contacted the ministry, knew that I was from a

37:38

Jewish background, wanted to try to convert me back to Judaism. His argument was that only the rabbis have answers.

37:45

Okay. Whoa. And the, the thing that we ended up seeing, um, is that he argued that the rabbis have the only answer to how to King David.

37:57

Now, the argument with King David that they made was that King David is, uh, was, uh, actually, he couldn't have committed adultery because he was this, you know, godly man.

38:11

He was a man after God's own heart. And so how can you have this man after God's own heart, commit adultery and murder that can't have happened.

38:21

Now we would say, yes, it can because he's a human being. Okay. Not very hard to understand what they, with the rabbis will come up with, with a system to answer this is that, well, what

38:34

David did when he had Uriah and Uriah, when Uriah left to go to war, he gave his wife a temporary divorce, not a permanent divorce, but, or he, or most of the men would give a temporary divorce saying,

38:45

Hey, if I don't come back, if you don't hear from me, you're free to marry. But what Uriah did was a permanent divorce.

38:51

And that's why Uriah wouldn't go back to his house. And so, you know, this was, you know, so she was a free woman to marry.

39:00

David just married her and you go, well, why did he have him killed? Oh, because he called him a

39:05

Lord. That was blasphemy. Well, that wasn't the same Lord in the old Testament that we would use for blasphemy.

39:13

Right? So you, you see that they, they get a system and they have, they, they develop a problem. They work a solution and it looks like they got a great answer.

39:21

And this Jewish guy was thoroughly convinced. There were no other answers. And to me, the easy answer was

39:27

David. It was a sinner, right? You know? So, so we do have to understand that.

39:33

Now, this is the thing that I, I'm pointing out just so we understand that there are these issues.

39:40

When we look at, you know, Pelagius, Pelagius ended up denying what we call the doctrine of, of, you know, the sin nature.

39:51

Okay. Romans 5, 12 and following makes that clear. But he just, he just went so far in trying to defend human will that what ended up happening to, to the point where he denied that we even, we have a sin nature and that becomes an essential thing.

40:12

And so once you start giving up major doctrines, you're, you can't, you can't be Orthodox, you know?

40:20

So we would say that I would say at least, you know, Augustine had changed his views on many things, but in the end, he was more orthodox than when he started.

40:33

You also got to think about the fact that Augustine agreed with the fourfold interpretation and he was, he was allegorical and he held to allegory in the context of the scripture.

40:51

And so how is it that, that he can affirm David or some of the others?

40:57

Well, they take, you know, you take the allegory and you say that doesn't actually mean that it means something else.

41:03

You have to apply that. And then you take the literal interpretation. It says this, and you take, you take the,

41:13

I can't remember what the grammatical interpretation. And you go from there and you say, well, let's break it down to mean something else.

41:21

Well, see, Augustine did something that was new in, in, in the

41:26

Christianity from Christ to Augustine. From Christ to Augustine, you have, you had the

41:31

Christocentric, you had the Christological argument and you had, you had the, the, the hermeneutic where Christ broke out the scripture and taught what the

41:41

Bible actually means and says, you know, have you not read or have you not heard? You see that throughout, you know,

41:48

Christ as he's arguing. And then you see it through Paul and Peter and, and John, as they start saying, you know, this means this.

41:56

And they, they properly apply typology allegory and all these other steps.

42:01

Well, when Augustine came in you know, of course this is after this is after the the

42:09

Antioch school, you know, they kind of went down the Nestorian controversy. They went to Arius and they, they started messing around with that and, and it became controversial because they started looking at the nature of Christ and saying that can't be right from a literal interpretation.

42:25

So they didn't, they didn't recognize the balance, the interpretive balance.

42:31

In hermeneutics. And, and I know this is, I'm not trying to get too deep, but, but if you think about it for everybody that's hearing this, they didn't recognize the balance.

42:41

Well, Augustine comes along and he's, he's literal in his interpretation and his fourfold he's allegorical.

42:50

But when it came to theology and to doctrine, he was, he held to the literal grammatical historical hermeneutic.

42:57

But when it came to his application and other things like that, he went to a lot of allegory so that he can defend it.

43:03

Well, what happened out of that was the Roman Catholic church, as it was building up, it held to his allegory and really abandoned his, you know, his grammatical historical hermeneutic.

43:15

And they ran to tradition. They ran straight towards tradition and say, we've got the magisterium, we've got history, the

43:22

Popes, we have the Cardinals. And, and by the way, Augustine is a powerhouse. So you don't argue with a powerhouse.

43:30

So he did a lot of really good and did a lot of really bad. And unfortunately it's all the way up to today.

43:37

I mean, the Roman Catholic church and a lot of reformed teaching, a lot of things like that, that people get ahold of, even in our churches today come from that allegorical tradition that comes, you know, the

43:50

Roman Catholic church perverted and twisted. Yeah. Yeah. Thanks for answering that guys.

43:56

Cause I've heard these songs before, but the historicity between Augustine and Plagius is kind of threw me off cause

44:04

I hadn't heard that one before. Cause what I'm finding is a lot of these guys, no, the end up, sorry, my camera's.

44:14

Anyway, a lot of these guys, and when they're arguing, when they're arguing the free will, libertarian free will,

44:22

God's choice or trying to argue against, um, total depravity or original sin.

44:29

What I find that they're doing instead of demonstrating from the scripture, no, their, their point, they spend more time arguing against what

44:39

Calvinism or reform theology is as opposed to actually trying to prove their position.

44:45

Yeah. Yeah. I mean, one of the things when it comes to Augustine, you just have to keep in mind, there's a reason the

44:51

Catholics hold to him. There's a reason the reformers hold to him. They just, you know, the, the

44:56

Catholics will hold to his older writings before he edited them. Right. And the reformers, I mean, the reformers in the reformation went back to, you know,

45:05

Augustine and we're like, Oh, look at what, what he's saying here. And they, they were seeing that he was said this centuries before.

45:14

And, but they were looking at the edited work after he cleaned things up. So there is that distinction with him that everyone kind of points back to Augustine.

45:24

It's a funny thing that I always talk about when it comes to Augustine. All millennials point to Augustine.

45:32

Premillennialists can point to Augustine and you go, wait, wait, how can you have both? Because Augustine believed he believed in a literal 1000 year kingdom.

45:42

It's thought he was in it. Yep. And, and that was held until about a thousand AD under Pope Innocence, the second,

45:49

I think it was. And so what you have is you end up having the case where, because theology is progressive.

45:59

In other words, over time, as we deal with conflict, right. Early centuries, what was the big thing?

46:04

The nature of Christ. Yeah. Right. And as you had false teaching come up about the nature of Christ, Aaron has said,

46:13

Aaron says, he's just a man. He wasn't God. Well, that has to be defended against.

46:18

And so you have this battle and, and every couple of generations, you have new issues that have to be battled because there's new heresies that end up going and, and coming up with it.

46:31

And so a lot of what you see is the answering of, you know, a heresy that starts forming its head.

46:37

And that's where solid theology comes from, which is hard for us to, to think about that.

46:43

It comes out of heresy. Yeah. It does. And so Augustine was responding to Pelagius. Calvin was, was responding to, you know, or actually

46:53

Luther was responding to, you know, guys like Erasmus, you had people who there's always two of each side that are fighting with it and trying to clarify.

47:04

So the theology we have today is going to be sharper and more precise than Augustine's day.

47:11

Yeah. That makes sense. Yeah. That helpful for you? Yeah, that's very helpful.

47:17

Very helpful. I appreciate it. Thank you very much. All right. I'm going to put you backstage. If you have more questions, just pop on in. Brad had to drop out, but he gave a super chat to make sure we would get to his question, which we were going to get to anyway, but it would have been better for Brad to be here, but he gave a $10 super chat says,

47:33

Hey brothers, can you help me with an understanding of the meaning of Deuteronomy 25, 11 to 12?

47:41

I can't seem to make sense of it. God bless y 'all. So let me read that and then

47:46

I'm going to, then I'll back up and read it in context. Okay. One of the first, one of the things you should always do is read in what's the word context.

47:57

Yes. Thank you. You're taking a class. So I expect you to have that. All right, let's take a look at this. So Deuteronomy 25 verses 11 and 12.

48:08

And what I could do, I will, I will do this. Why don't we just read it together by me sharing it on screen?

48:17

If I get the right window, because you guys don't want the, where it's so small, you can't read it.

48:23

Okay. All right. So, all right. So here we go. It says here, if we look in verse one, scroll down.

48:34

If there is, well, actually, sorry, we want to look at verse 11 and 12 first. So verses 11, 12, say if two, if two men, a man and his countrymen are struggling together and the wife of one comes to deliver her husband from the hand of the one who is striking him and puts out her hand and seizes his genitals, then you shall cut off her hand.

49:01

You shall not show pity. Okay. So let's back up and read context. It's amazing how sometimes just reading context is helpful, but Deuteronomy 25, starting in verse one, if there is a dispute between a man and they go to court and the judge decides their case, they are justified and the righteous and can, sorry, the judge, the judges,

49:28

I'm going to just start over with that. If there is a dispute between men and they go to court and the judges decide their case, they are justified, the righteous and condemned, the wicked, then it shall be if the wicked man deserves to be beaten, the judge shall make him lie down and be beaten in his presence with the number of stripes according to his guilt.

50:03

He may beat him 40 times, but no more so that he does not beat him with many more stripes than these and your brothers are not degraded in your eyes.

50:17

You shall not muzzle an ox when he's threshing. When brothers live together and one of them dies and has a son, the wife of the deceased shall not marry outside of the family to a strange man.

50:35

Her husband, her husband's brother shall go to her and take her to himself as wife and perform the duties of a husband as a husband's brother to her.

50:47

Then, sorry, it shall be that the firstborn whom she bears shall assume the name of the dead brother so that his name will not be blotted out from Israel.

51:02

But if the man does not desire to take his brother's wife, then his brother's wife shall go to the gate to the elders and say, my husband's brother refuses to establish a name for his brother in Israel.

51:18

He he is not to perform the duty. He's not willing to perform the duty of a husband's brother to me.

51:25

Then the elder will the elders of the city will summon and speak to him. And if he persists and says,

51:34

I do not desire to take her, then the brother's wife shall come to him in the sight of the elders and put his sandal on and pull his sandal off his foot and spit in his face.

51:48

And he and she shall declare. She shall declare this.

51:54

Thus, it has been done to the man who does not build his brother's house.

52:01

In Israel, his name shall be called the house of him whose sandal is removed.

52:06

If two men, a man of his countrymen, and they are struggling together.

52:12

And the wife of the one comes to comes near to deliver her husband from the hand of the one who is, who is striking him and puts her hand out to and seizes his genitals.

52:28

Then you should cut off her hand. You shall not show pity. Verse 13, you shall not have your bag with different weights, differing weights, a large and a small.

52:42

You shall not have in your house, differing measures, a large and a small. You shall give a full and just weight.

52:50

You shall have the full and just measure that your days may be prolonged in the land of the

52:55

Lord that God gives you. So what you see here, I'm reading the context here. This is a set of laws, specifically the law in verses 11 and 12.

53:04

You see that a lot of these laws are dealing with the issues of, that's dealing with husbands, wives.

53:12

Okay. You have a case with two men who would be, they would go before a judge and a judge is going to hear the case.

53:18

You have a case where the wife has a husband who dies and this is the kinsman redeemer.

53:24

The lover at marriage. Correct. Now in this verses, I want you to notice what is going on.

53:30

This sounds like it is very abrupt and wrong. So you have your wife, your husband is being attacked by somebody and in that attacking, what ends up happening is the person is going to come and the wife is going to come and basically grab the person in the groin.

53:52

Okay. Grabs the guy there to get him to get away. Now we all understand that is going to be a sensitive area for men.

54:00

And so would that be an effective way to get someone off of her husband?

54:07

In one sense, yes, it would be effective, but it would be indecent.

54:14

Yeah. It would be inappropriate. And so what it's saying is that even in self -defense, there were limits.

54:23

There's limits to what a woman can do in defending her own husband. And she could push him from the shoulder.

54:31

She could grab him from the neck. She could do different things, but touching in that area would be off limits.

54:41

Okay. It's one of many laws that we have, you know, dealing with those areas of our body that are to be handled differently.

54:51

And so the idea here is that if a woman is going to come, her husband is being attacked. She can pull him off.

54:57

She could try to push him off. She could try to fight him off, but she is not to touch his sexual organs with her hand.

55:05

There's a consequence to that. It's dealing with modesty, even in self -defense, like you said, that's the idea.

55:14

John McArthur points out that this is the, I believe he says this is the only place where, you know, that type of punishment is made for this type of immodesty.

55:25

And it's because you think about it, who's this talking to? He's talking to the Israelite people who have been set apart by God.

55:33

And God is establishing rules and authority from his law about how they are to live separately from the world.

55:42

You know, not as barbarians, but as, you know, holy people unto

55:47

God. And that's how they're supposed to live. So, but I hope that answer your question.

55:53

I know you had to drop out. We have another question before we get to our, the last guest that's at least in here right now.

55:59

Another super chat is Evan Event Horizon gave a $5 super chat and said, what are your thoughts on Eastern Orthodoxy?

56:08

They condemn Pelagius as a person, but Theos and their idea of grace smack of Pelagianism.

56:18

So, you know, Jess, I don't know how much you are up on Eastern Orthodoxy. Eastern Orthodoxy is very mystic.

56:26

It's one of the things. So they are very, very heavily on the allegorical approach to things.

56:33

That's where they get the mysticism. I would say I don't know enough about Eastern Orthodoxy to compare it to Pelagianism.

56:43

However, one of the things that you will often see, in fact, what you'll see with, with every manmade religion is the fact that every manmade religion, will smack of Pelagianism.

56:55

It will say that we are, it will either say we have no sin nature. We're born able to do things that would please

57:03

God because every manmade religion always will, will put up that they are able to, to work their way to heaven.

57:15

So they could do things to earn that righteousness. And so part of that means you can't have a sin nature.

57:21

If you have a sin nature, and this was the problem with Seth last week is he denies the sin nature.

57:26

This is where it ends up being. If you deny the sin nature, then you can work your way to heaven. And that's what every false religion has to have.

57:35

Now, before we get to our next guest, let's just show again, why John needs a, my pillow, because as you can see here, he has his, he has his, he's in a sleeping mode right there very nicely and comfortably.

57:48

And he's got his copy of what do we, what do they believe in his, in his, but if, if he would have called 1 -800 -873 -0176 and use promo code

57:59

SFE, he could be resting on a nice, my pillow right now. Oh, sleeping Biden, but I'm convinced that he does that just so that he, we are showing my camera.

58:16

Oh man. Oh, all right. So I want to get to our next guest. I'm going to have to ask him how to pronounce his name.

58:23

He, his, his handle here is the way everlasting. Welcome to the show. Hey, thank you for having me brothers.

58:32

Thank you for having me. My name is pronounced a Mecca and Mecca. Okay. I didn't want to,

58:38

I didn't want to mispronounce it when we saw it. So, so welcome. So I know that you, you, you and I had some exchange because you were having an exchange in,

58:47

I may have been our Christian apologetics, Facebook group. Yes. There was some discussion and someone tagged me and I just said, well, you know, why don't you come on to this show and let's talk about it.

58:59

And so I, I'm going to first off give kudos because as I said last week, there's, there's many people that say they'll come in and they're up for a challenge.

59:07

And then we do a show and it's like, Hey, anyone see that guy? Yeah. There were three guys that were going to come in and debate

59:15

Calvinism. We only had one. So kudos to you right off the bat, because you did show it and you did say you didn't know where, where to show up.

59:22

And I forget who, who was encouraging you to show up, but I'm, I'm hope he's watching. So why don't you introduce yourself real quick and just let us know a little bit about your background and then the topic that you wanted to talk about.

59:34

Okay. Yeah. So once again, my name is a Mecca. My YouTube channel is the way everlasting.

59:40

And that's where I break down scripture and just reveal the things that I'm seeing and things that I've been coming across in scripture, some teachings

59:50

I'll do. I cover kind of a wide range of things. And so, yeah,

59:57

I've been, I've been in my walk for about three years now. Very interesting, very mostly say spiritual, you know, awakening.

01:00:10

And I've just began to search things, you know, I've always been the type of individual to question things, you know,

01:00:16

I'm not just the type you can just throw something out at me and I'll just believe it. You know,

01:00:21

I may, I may lean to it, but I always question things in the back of my mind.

01:00:27

And so along my path, I've just continued to question, seek truth from the scriptures and just allow the scriptures to guide me, allow the father to guide me.

01:00:37

And what I, you know, what I see in scripture, what I believe that way I can formulate, you know, through the wisdom that he gives.

01:00:44

I can formulate an understanding. I can formulate a belief versus just going off simply what others tell me.

01:00:51

So that's kind of where I'm at now. I'm just, you know, I continue to search scripture. And right now in my stance, you know,

01:00:59

I'm not a Christian. I am what they would call a old

01:01:04

Testament only or to knock only believer. Um, and so that is actually, uh, leading up to the topic.

01:01:16

That's actually what I wanted to address was some of the, uh, issues that I have had with, um, the new

01:01:23

Testament and bring out some of the things that I find to be, um, errors or, or red flags,

01:01:30

I would say. Okay. Well, yeah, let's, let's get into the topic. So you,

01:01:35

I know you had a video that, that you had posted and that was what caused was the discussion was over.

01:01:41

Why don't you just give, you know, a brief explanation of that, you know, because obviously, you know, that was a series of videos you did and they were each like, like an hour or so long.

01:01:51

We're not going to, we don't have an hour left. You can't go through everything. Okay. Yeah. No worries.

01:01:56

Yeah. So what I did was, um, somebody actually, I should probably, I think a nice background with how, how did

01:02:01

I get there, uh, would be good. and then I'll explain the video. So somebody came to me one day and I was, this was when

01:02:07

I was a Christian, dedicated Christian, all about, you know, new Testament, you know, studied it.

01:02:12

I studied the old as well. Wasn't as well versed, um, you know, and I'm getting better and better versed at the old

01:02:18

Testament as well. But they came up to me one day, somebody who was actually a Christian for over 50 years.

01:02:24

And they said, Hey, you know, is it possible that this Messiah, you know, might be, you know, um, not my, might not be legit.

01:02:34

And at that time period, I was like, yo, I don't even get away from me with that. Like, just like I'm sure many other, other people out there would say, yo, hold up.

01:02:42

What? No, uh, you're talking about the Messiah not being legit. I don't want to hear none of that, you know?

01:02:48

And that's exactly what my initial mentality was like, no, that's not only that, but that's going to bring division.

01:02:54

And I'm trying to help bring unity. And this is only going to be, you know, creating more doctrines and divisions.

01:03:00

So they asked me that. And I was like, you know, I'm not going to, I'm going to leave it alone. But something in me was like, you know what, father, if this is true, you'll bring it to my attention.

01:03:10

You know, you'll bring it, you'll bring it out. And so I began to read, um, Isaiah chapter 11.

01:03:17

And as I was reading Isaiah chapter 11, doing some studying, there were some things I saw in there and I was like, hold on, this something is not lining up here.

01:03:26

So I did further research into Isaiah. And then, um, pretty much, you know,

01:03:32

I got led to a video or two that I checked out and it started telling me just within me was like, start researching the prophecy, start researching the prophecies.

01:03:40

So the first thing I did and now coming into the videos was I began to research the New Testament prophecies.

01:03:46

I said, okay, what New Testament prophecies did they use to validate the Messiah? Right. What, what were all the prophecies they said he fulfilled?

01:03:55

You know? And so I went in and I said, okay, let me, this is where I'm going to have to base it. Because when we look at validating the

01:04:01

Messiah, he's validated in the, as the Messiah, he's validated by the fulfillment of these prophecies.

01:04:09

So I said, okay, let's let me look at these prophecies. So I started going in, you know, from the beginning from Matthew, just started going through the books, did some research and looked up, you know, a list of prophecies, um, uh, through the scriptures.

01:04:23

So I started saying, okay, where did these prophecies came from? All right. So I went back into the old Testament and to what you said, mentioned earlier, you know, that special word context, right?

01:04:33

That special word context, context is key. So I said, okay, let me, let's, for instance, let me look at Matthew, you know,

01:04:40

I'm sorry. Uh, yeah, the prophecies that comes from Matthew chapter one, I think it's like verse 23 regarding the virgin birth.

01:04:46

So I went to Isaiah seven and I said, okay, Isaiah seven, 14, I read Isaiah seven, 14 through 16.

01:04:53

And then I said, you know what? Let's read for context. So I started at the beginning. Once I started at the beginning,

01:04:59

I started to see, oh, hold on. The context of this prophecy is different than what we see it, how we see it just in the new

01:05:09

Testament. We see just this one verse being applied and saying, oh, here's the, this is who fulfilled it.

01:05:18

But then when you read the entire context for, uh, of Isaiah seven, you'll see that, you know, for instance, that the virgin birth or the baby that was born, some people debate.

01:05:30

Let's, let's deal with, let's deal with that one. Okay. Right. Let's deal with that one off the bat. So your argument, right.

01:05:36

Would be that this was dealing with a child at the time. Correct? Yes. Because, um, when we look at, yeah, yeah.

01:05:46

When we look at King, for instance, reading, um, well, here, here's the question I have for you.

01:05:52

Do you know that very few Christians would disagree with that? Oh, yeah.

01:05:57

Like, well, I wouldn't, I don't know if I would say few, cause I've talked to, I've talked to quite a, quite a bit and they, they do end up disagreeing and they, they throw out, you know,

01:06:08

I would say well -studied, um, Christians who understand context wouldn't disagree because I've talked to messianics who don't disagree at all with that.

01:06:17

And then some actually do. Yeah. I mean, one of the things that you see throughout scripture, even in old

01:06:23

Testament scripture, which is fulfilled in old Testament times, is that you'll almost always see a near and long -term fulfillment.

01:06:33

When you have, I mean, you think about it. If, if you are a prophet, you're giving prophecy, you're saying you're, you're saying you speak for God and you're going to give a prophecy.

01:06:43

It's not going to happen for 700 years. How would the people during that span of 700 years know that that specific prophecy was going to come to pass unless you had a prophecy that was near term that came to pass, right?

01:07:00

So they would always have the, not always, but almost always a near term and a long term.

01:07:06

So you'd have a future prophecy, but it would be, it would be tied with one that's, that's near term.

01:07:13

So when it comes to that, right? The first thing is that we don't see anywhere within the

01:07:22

Old Testament, right? Where that is taught, that mentality of, of a double for what they will call a double fulfillment of prophecy, right?

01:07:30

Or a prophecy that has two fulfillments, a near and a long term. What we see in the

01:07:36

Old Testament is we usually see that the father, the almighty would lay down a time period for the prophecy, right?

01:07:45

So for instance, when we talk about Isaiah chapter seven, right? He gives a time period for that specific prophecy.

01:07:52

He says, okay, this is what you're going to see. It has behold, you know, this, this sign is for you and it's regarding these two kings that are coming to these two nations that are coming against you.

01:08:04

Right? So you're going to see this virgin birth. And by time, this virgin gives birth, his name is the child's name is going to be called

01:08:12

Emmanuel. He starts giving them the signs to look for. The child's name is going to be called Emmanuel, right? Butter and honey shall the child eat.

01:08:20

And before he knows to refuse the evil and choose the good, he shall, he shall refuse the evil before he knows to choose evil or good.

01:08:30

He shall refuse the evil, choose the good. And then he says, and before the two kings,

01:08:36

I'm sorry. Before, I'm sorry. He shall know to choose evil. I'm sorry.

01:08:42

Forgive me. Yeah, I said to pull it up. I think I actually have it. Let me see if I can just pull it up.

01:08:49

So while you pull it up, you know, all right. Think about since we're in Isaiah, Isaiah 14,

01:08:56

Isaiah 14 speaks about a king, but it speaks about a king that can't possibly be a king that lived on earth.

01:09:03

And so in Isaiah 14, you have, you know, you have what you said.

01:09:08

Scripture doesn't talk about. Most people would say that Isaiah 14 speaks about Satan because of the way it's laid out here.

01:09:18

Okay. Okay. I know. I know what you're. Yeah, I know what you're talking about. I know what you're talking about. Yet it's, it's supposedly describing a king of earth.

01:09:28

Yeah. King of Babylon. Right. And, and yet the king of Babylon never saw creation, you know, never said,

01:09:36

I'll send to heaven. I'll rise to the throne of the stars of God. You look at the way that it's, that this is described.

01:09:43

This is describing Satan. And yet it says the king of Babylon. So there would be a case where, yes, you do have this, what you say doesn't occur, but it's, it's a, it is a dual in that sense.

01:09:59

But the, the other thing with this is that there was never a time that we have a virgin giving birth.

01:10:07

Right. Yeah. Yeah, I definitely. So when it comes to the virgin, and I know this is, this is somewhat where people get controversy.

01:10:14

The word virgin, when you go to the Hebrew is, you know, Alma broken down as maiden or young woman.

01:10:22

Right. And so when we look at that, that word virgin, okay, necessarily mean the, the, the understanding that we mostly have today of that word virgin.

01:10:36

However, there, there's something we have to think about with this. Okay. Because when the

01:10:43

Jewish rabbis got together and translated the, the Hebrew Bible into Greek, which is a more precise language.

01:10:53

I, I, I'm forgetting how many, I think there's like, I think it's 20 times number of words in Greek to Hebrew.

01:11:02

I mean, Hebrew is a very limited set of words. It's an older language and as languages, newer languages have more precision.

01:11:11

Greek is more precise when they translated this into Greek, the rabbis translated that as virgin, not maiden.

01:11:21

So we do have an understanding in, in, in, you know, when we look at this, which is the, the

01:11:27

Greek translation, the rabbis understood the meaning to be virgin, not an unmarried woman.

01:11:35

And so where the Hebrew doesn't have that precision, the Greek does. And so that helps us to have an understanding before the time of Christ.

01:11:44

Because remember this, this was before Christ. This is the, the, this would have been the Bible that, that Christ would have used the

01:11:52

Greek translation of this. The Hebrew, this was written before he was born.

01:11:58

So before he was born, the rabbi's understanding of that word is virgin.

01:12:04

Okay. We'll see. And now the, the, the interesting thing about that, which

01:12:09

I'm going to read those, the verses so that I could, so that I can make sure it comes out clear.

01:12:17

I'm going to read pretty much. I'm going to read 14. What you just mentioned, 14 through 16.

01:12:23

Of Isaiah seven. All right. So it says, therefore, the Lord himself shall give you a sign.

01:12:30

Behold, a virgin shall conceive in the womb and shall bring forth a son. And thou shall call his name.

01:12:36

Emmanuel butter and honey. Shall he eat before he knows either to prefer evil or choose the good.

01:12:44

And then it says in verse 16, and this is a very key verse. It says for before the child shall know good or evil.

01:12:50

He refuses evil to choose the good and the land shall be forsaken, which thou are afraid of because of the two

01:12:59

Kings. So all this is connected. And verse 16 cannot be separated from verse 14 and 15.

01:13:07

All this is one prophecy together. So when we're looking at the fulfillment of, of what's happening first, people have to have an understanding of the context.

01:13:15

So the two Kings that are coming against. Well, the two Kings that are being spoken of are these two

01:13:22

Kings that are coming against King Ahaz. And how do we know the most high is, is sending this sign to Ahaz is because in verse 10, it says, and the

01:13:31

Lord again spoke to Ahaz saying, ask for thyself a sign of the

01:13:37

Lord, thy God in the depth or in the height. And Ahaz said, I will not ask neither will

01:13:42

I tempt the Lord. And he said here now, Oh, house of David, which Ahaz was from the lineage of David.

01:13:49

And it says, is it a little thing for you to contend with men? And how do you contend against the

01:13:55

Lord? Then going into 14, therefore the Lord himself shall give you a sign. So this sign was specifically for Ahaz.

01:14:03

And then going into verse 16, it was specifically dealing with these two Kings.

01:14:09

So that's what the, that's what this child, the, the sign of this child was for. And you actually see the fulfillment of this.

01:14:17

When you go over into, into chapter eight, I'll just read these verses real quick.

01:14:23

Starting at verse one, I'm going to read verses one through four. And then I'm going to find these ones that speak on what we will say, speak on the name

01:14:30

Emmanuel, right? It says in verse one, it says, and the Lord said to me, take to thyself a volume of a great new book and write it with a man's pen concerning the making of a rapid plunder of spoils.

01:14:44

For it is near at hand and make me witnesses of faithful men, Uriah and Zacharias, the son of Brock.

01:14:50

Yes. And I went into the prophetess and she conceived and bore a son.

01:14:56

And the Lord said to me, call his name, spoil quickly, plunder speedily for the, for before the child shall know how to call his father or his mother.

01:15:05

One shall take the power of Damascus and the spoils of Samaria before the king of the

01:15:11

Assyrians. Now, if you read from verse one of chapter seven, you're going to see that the king of Damascus or the king of Aram and the king of Israel were coming to war against Ahaz.

01:15:23

So these are literally the two Kings that he's saying in verse four with this child being born.

01:15:30

He's saying for before the child shall know to call his father or his mother. One shall take the power of Damascus and the spoils of Samaria before the king of the

01:15:39

Assyrians. So you can see that this child being born is a fulfillment of the child from verse verses 14 through 16.

01:15:48

And you can see that verses 16 of chapter seven and verses and verse four of chapter eight are almost dealing identically with the same issue.

01:15:59

Right. So you see that there are there's a curriculum for this prophetic fulfillment.

01:16:06

And now when you take just verse 14 and you say, OK, verse 14 applies to Yeshua.

01:16:14

Just verse 14 by itself. Verse 14 applies to Yeshua or Jesus. You say just for verse 14.

01:16:21

Well, you have to say, hold on. What about everything else that was there? There was no two kings coming against Israel.

01:16:28

There was no. You know, we didn't see that happen. There was no even to say any two nations at all coming against Israel in the

01:16:34

New Testament period. When he was a child, we know only Herod was the one who came against him and he fleed into Egypt.

01:16:40

And that was the end of that. So let me ask you this. Turn to Genesis chapter three and verse 14.

01:16:50

OK, but do you at least understand? You kind of understand. Yes, I understand what you're saying. And I have no problem with it.

01:16:56

The reason I have no problem with it is because I understand the principle that God can use, can take something.

01:17:06

And now this is where I would be different than like we were talking earlier with Pelagius and Augustine and these others.

01:17:14

You have some people, what they do is they interpret the Bible by allegory. So they start looking for things that the

01:17:21

Bible, oh, this word can mean this. And so you could say, you know, they'll take like, for example, they'll take baptism and say, well, baptism, you know, is the circumcision of the

01:17:31

Old Testament. Therefore, you know, we should baptize children at eight days old. That's where they start trying to find allegories throughout and make the

01:17:39

Bible say so. It doesn't. If God's word says something and God has said that there's a dual meaning, then

01:17:46

I believe there is a dual meaning because God has said so. So I'm really cautious with saying things like that.

01:17:53

But in Genesis 3, 14, I want to I want to just go through this as an example with you.

01:18:00

OK, it says the Lord said to the serpent. Now, who who's this saying that speaking to? I would say this, the serpent, the serpent.

01:18:09

OK, I would agree because you've done this. Cursed are you. You are cursed.

01:18:15

Are you more than all cattle? Right. So and all and more than every beast of the field.

01:18:22

So it seems like it's speaking to an animal, correct? Absolutely. OK, he's speaking to an animal on your belly.

01:18:27

You will go and the dust will you will eat all the days of your life. And I will put enmity between you and the woman and between your seed and her seed.

01:18:37

And he shall bruise you on the head and you will bruise him on the heel. Now, what is that last part referring to?

01:18:44

OK, well, if you notice, we I mean, we all know snakes crawl on the ground, right?

01:18:50

So more than likely, if a snake is going to bite you, where is he going to bite you? It's going to be somewhere on your leg.

01:18:56

It's going to be somewhere near your heel. May the back of the leg could be, you know, your calf. It's going to be somewhere near your leg.

01:19:02

And what's the first reaction if a snake is going to try to bite you? You know, lift your leg and stomp on its head. So that that to me is very clear that, you know, this is talking about.

01:19:14

And of course, you see exactly in verse 14, which you mentioned, he said that are cursed above all cattle and all groups of the earth.

01:19:21

So he's clearly speaking to the snake, which we know slithers on his belly. OK. And yet throughout both

01:19:29

Old and New Testament, this serpent is referred to as the devil. That's right. So so you have a physical serpent, it seems right.

01:19:39

That's being cursed. And yet scripture will refer to this serpent as the devil.

01:19:48

And so is there another reference that you have where the serpent. But the devil is referred to as a serpent in the

01:19:57

Old Testament. Let's pull some up. Well, he just he just read to you Isaiah 14 for for the context of Satan.

01:20:05

And it's actually the same exact thing is there's one thing being being reused and replace emplacement of another.

01:20:14

And you have to think about it, too. The the context of of Genesis three that he's just talking about is the the one that would bruise the snake would be the one that would be the redeemer, according to that passage.

01:20:30

And the redeemer is not Adam. It's not that the snake is biting

01:20:37

Adam and Adam's kicking him in the head. But the redeemer is the one that's going to come later. He's going to be stomping the that one in the head.

01:20:46

And the Bible tells us that is the redeemer that is to come. You have to think about what progressive revelation is.

01:20:55

Jesus or God did not give them the full context of everything that he was going to tell them about the

01:21:03

Messiah in Genesis. And he didn't give him the full context in Isaiah six, Isaiah seven, either.

01:21:10

He gave them little little snippets throughout the the the the

01:21:16

Old Testament. What they had is the Bible. At the time, he gave them snippets so that when the

01:21:22

Messiah did come, there was absolute evidence from the Old Testament.

01:21:28

And it wasn't just one thing or two things. It would be the totality of his life and everything he did that spoke volumes about who he would be.

01:21:37

That's why that's why Paul, the apostle who hated Christ, fell down on his face and said that he is my

01:21:46

Lord, my Lord and my God, because of all the things he said, all the things he did and the totality of the

01:21:53

Old Testament teaching that was that was fulfilled in Christ at the at his resurrection after his death.

01:22:01

Now, I completely I completely understand. I completely understand where you're coming from. You know, and my my issue with kind of what you said as far as, you know, saying like our heavenly father was only showing snippets.

01:22:17

That's not when we look when we read just for the context, when we read just to understand not because what

01:22:26

I find often is that people kind of like a brother. I think is

01:22:32

Andrew. Andrew was Andrew was saying earlier, people take things and they'll twist them into other things.

01:22:40

Right. And I honestly feel that's what's been done with the New Testament to validate the

01:22:45

New Testament Messiah. I believe there were snippets taken out from here, snippets taken out from there, snippets taken out from there.

01:22:52

And I know it may seem harsh for somebody for me, you know, for somebody to say that. But when you honestly look at the context of what's being spoken and what's being said, especially going back to the prophecies, you know, even for me,

01:23:05

Genesis three, that's not really a strong argument. Isaiah seven, looking at the context of Isaiah seven.

01:23:12

That's not a strong argument to say this is a snippet, a glance of the Messiah because of the requirements of the prophetic fulfillment.

01:23:21

Well, hold on, hold on. Let me ask you a question. How many people do you know have been born of a virgin?

01:23:29

I'm not I don't even agree with the virgin birth. I don't care if you agree with it. I'm asking you a question.

01:23:35

How many people do you know that have been? Zero. Well, we know we know according to this passage that at least one.

01:23:41

According to the scripture. Hold on. Because I understand what you're doing. There's there's the eisegetical.

01:23:47

I believe I think I want it to say this. I don't like it saying that. So I want

01:23:54

I don't want to agree. It's not it's not it's not me just like not liking it saying that it's me going back to the

01:23:59

Hebrew. Right. Looking at what the Hebrew understanding of the word virgin and seeing that it means maiden or young woman.

01:24:05

Right. Not only that, but when we go to Isaiah specifically and we're looking at that.

01:24:15

Remember, the virgin that gave birth. Remember, it wasn't just a virgin giving birth. There were other requirements that were tied to that same child.

01:24:24

So you can't take out those other requirements and say, OK, because because this is what we would have to do. This is what we would have to do.

01:24:30

We would have to say, OK, it has to be a virgin. But not only does it have to be a virgin. Guess what? All of these other requirements need to be fulfilled in the

01:24:38

Messiah, which means that before he's a certain age, two kings that are coming against the way. Wait, wait, wait.

01:24:44

Hold on. I mean, you're jumping so fast that you're not paying attention to the context.

01:24:50

And I don't mean to be disrespectful. I hope I'm not. I'm not trying to be to the context of Isaiah. OK, to the context of what we're talking about, what we're talking about is the totality of the the

01:25:02

Old Testament scriptures, because every single word is not prophetic. OK, but those prophecies about the

01:25:10

Messiah are what we're dealing with. So it builds. OK, but in Genesis, you have a little, as I said, a snippet.

01:25:18

You have that first proto evangelion. It's the very first gospel.

01:25:25

It's the promise of the redeemer. Now, now, listen, once you start there, it could be anybody.

01:25:31

OK, it could be literally anybody that would be a male born, you know, born of the seed and this, that and the other.

01:25:39

And so you start going through and you the whole point behind the progression of revelation about the

01:25:45

Messiah is to isolate it. Down from from anybody to absolutely could be only one.

01:25:53

OK, so I understand. In other words, if all of these prophecies, as you just said, are not fulfilled, are not proclaimed, then it could be

01:26:04

Andrew as the Messiah. Right. It could be me. Right. Not not necessarily. Well, if it's just Genesis one, it could be.

01:26:11

Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. OK, you see what I'm saying? But when you start adding those prophecies about the

01:26:17

Messiah, Isaiah 53 and and all these multiple passages talking about the Messiah and you start adding those, you get down to the fact that there can be only one.

01:26:28

So that's why I asked you, how many people do you know of who were born of a virgin?

01:26:33

And let's break it down even further. How many men or boys do you know of that were born of a virgin?

01:26:40

Now, before you say I don't agree that it was a virgin. OK, I wasn't even going to say that. I wasn't even going to say that.

01:26:46

Well, you did. You did a minute ago. Well, yeah, yeah. I wasn't going to. I wasn't going to say this time what I was going to say.

01:26:52

But I was going to say, OK, I'll let you finish that. OK, but what I want to get at is this.

01:26:59

The born of a virgin. You don't understand the context of what it meant to be a virgin during that time.

01:27:05

If you had sex outside of marriage and Israel culture and the Jewish culture, if you had sex outside of marriage under the the the

01:27:14

Mosaic law, you were stoned to death. OK, so you said that you could not you could not be.

01:27:20

No, no, no. You could. I just want to correct you because the sex with the sex part is if somebody had sex, that would require them to go get married to that individual.

01:27:31

After other than that, like then a woman, if if the father, you know, if they didn't consummate that and the woman was found to not be a virgin.

01:27:40

Yes, it was trouble. And OK, it's a point. Let me ask you again, because I don't want to mispronounce it.

01:27:46

It's it's a Mecca, a Mecca. Yes. OK, so a Mecca just just for the way we try to do the show is try not to talk over each other.

01:27:54

OK, yeah, no problem. Sorry about that. Yeah, just just it helps with everyone, everyone being able to hear you.

01:28:01

No, absolutely. So so let me let me take it a different way. Is that OK? No, go ahead.

01:28:07

I want to ask you a question. So you you're now there was a question that was asked in the in the chat.

01:28:14

Someone had asked whether you would be a black Hebrew Israelite. So I just want to know that.

01:28:21

Well, my dad's Igbo, he's from the Igbo tribe of Nigeria. So that's what I that's kind of that's kind of what I identify as.

01:28:26

Some identify them as Hebrews, you know, in certain things and Jews as certain, you know.

01:28:32

And so but I don't I don't like to get into much of that just because I know all the dilemma and drama behind it.

01:28:37

And I don't like I don't even like I don't like if somebody asks me, you know, there are times when

01:28:44

I say, yeah, you know, I I'm a Hebrew Israelite. But I know the doctrine, the several different doctrines behind that.

01:28:50

And so I don't agree with everything, you know, certain Hebrew Israelites camps teaches a lot. I don't agree with.

01:28:56

So. OK. Yes. So let me ask you a question. You you're believing and I'm asking this for clarity.

01:29:03

So you're believing in the Old Testament that it is it's inspired.

01:29:09

Correct. OK. So and you you're understanding it, that we take it in its in its normal reading, correct?

01:29:17

Yes. OK. Do you believe that the the Jewish Messiah has come and put an end to sin yet?

01:29:29

Well, what I would say is there is a when we talk about the

01:29:34

Messiah, right, the word Messiah means anointed one. Right. We have had several messiahs come.

01:29:42

Like King Saul was was the first Messiah. Right. He was the first anointed one. We have

01:29:48

King David. Well, and I know I know I kind of know your point, but I just want to give a basis. Like we had we've had

01:29:53

King Saul, who was a messiah. We've had King David, who was a messiah. And all these messiahs that were coming were their job was to deliver

01:30:00

Israel out of the hands of their enemies and to establish righteousness.

01:30:06

Right. And so what we see is we see that throughout the times of the

01:30:11

Old Testament, you know, you look in the Book of Kings, you'll see, you know, even though there were some that were corrupt, you'll see that there were special ones, that there were always like certain special ones that the most highest hand was on.

01:30:23

And he was with that individual. Right. Even King Hezekiah was another messiah who delivered them out of the hands of the

01:30:30

Assyrians, out of the Assyrian captivity. And he was actually deemed, according to Scripture, that there was no greater king before him or after him.

01:30:39

So he surpassed Solomon. He surpassed King David. He surpassed everybody. So when we're looking at the messiahs and we look at messianic prophecies.

01:30:48

Right. It's very important to identify the aspects of those messianic prophecies.

01:30:55

Right. For instance, Micah 5 2. Micah 5 2. Well, hold on, because I just don't want to go off on a lot of different tangents.

01:31:03

OK. OK. You asked me. Yeah. Yeah. OK. Let me let me get you. Let me hit your question so that way you can you can you can follow up with another one.

01:31:12

Do I believe that the last like the last messiah has come? No, I do not.

01:31:18

I do believe that there is going to be somebody else that that, you know, the heavenly father chooses to deliver his people.

01:31:25

And ultimately, the world will submit under what we would say is the Torah, according to Isaiah chapter two.

01:31:32

OK, so now I want to I want to. So you said some things.

01:31:38

Let me just give you. I don't we have judges. They they would have been rulers.

01:31:44

They would have been people that came to offer deliverance for Israel. Then we have kings. Those were never called messiahs.

01:31:52

Right. And we do have prophecies that there'd be one from David. Right. That there was going to be an eternal kingdom that'll be set up from from the branch of David, from the line of David.

01:32:04

But in the Old Testament, we actually have an exact timetable for the messiah that will come and offer an end to sin.

01:32:14

OK, and this is in Daniel chapter nine. Starting in verse twenty four,

01:32:20

I'll give you a chance to get there. But Daniel chapter nine and verse twenty four, I'll I'll read there because I just I want to give, you know, you you seem like a gentleman.

01:32:32

It's a Mecca, right? A Mecca. Yes. OK. It takes me a bit to get a name right, but I try not to mispronounce.

01:32:40

So you seem like someone that that genuinely wants to to learn and to to study and to understand.

01:32:48

Right. And so we look at this. Here we have an exact timetable.

01:32:55

Right. It says twenty twenty seven or sorry, seventy sevens.

01:33:00

Now in Hebrew, it says sevens in English. It says weeks in in the the in the

01:33:06

Hebrew. You have you can have seven, seven days, but they also judged the calendar was a seven year calendar.

01:33:17

OK, for those who may not know, you know, a Mecca, maybe you're familiar with this, but others may not. We have a leap year every four years.

01:33:26

Well, in Israel, they have a leap month. OK, a whole month that gets added in.

01:33:33

OK, I know what you're talking about. So it's a it's 30 days in every month, but then you have a whole nother month that gets added in.

01:33:41

And that is a seven year cycle. And so you have the seventh year, what we'd call leap year.

01:33:49

We kind of consider that their leap year, but you add a whole month, not a day. So what you have is that in in Israel, they would refer to that as sevens as well.

01:34:00

So sevens in seven day cycles or seven year cycle. So when we look at this and we could do the math on this, we can calculate that this is a seven year cycle.

01:34:10

So it's 77 years. OK, but 70 weeks or 77 have been decreed for your people and your holy city to finish the transgression, to make an end to sin, to make atonement for your iniquity, to bring in everlasting righteousness, to seal up divisions and prophecy and to anoint the most holy place.

01:34:34

So there's right there, six things that are going to happen that are being decreed at the end of the 70th week.

01:34:41

OK, absolutely. So verse 25. So, you know and discern that from the issuing of the decree to restore and rebuild

01:34:54

Jerusalem until Messiah, the prince, there will be seven weeks and 62 weeks.

01:35:05

So right there we have an exact time frame. We know when the decree to rebuild the temple was that that was, you know, back with, you know, when they were came out of the captivity of Babylon.

01:35:15

So the Persians had done so as prophesied in scripture.

01:35:23

The decree goes out to rebuild. And so here we have 40 out of the 79.

01:35:31

It's seven plus 62 is 69 seven year periods. Right.

01:35:37

And so we have we have an exact understanding of, you know, it's going to be 483 years from decree.

01:35:49

Well, that puts us at the time of Christ. Now, here here's here would be the question for you,

01:35:56

Emeka, that I asked the rabbi when my parents, you may not know my background. I grew up Jewish.

01:36:02

So when when my parents found out I was Christian, they sent me back to the rabbi to try to convince me to return to Judaism.

01:36:10

This was the thing that I brought up to the rabbi. And I asked him, is is this true?

01:36:16

And he said, yes. So I'll ask you the same. Is this true? On the math concerning, you know, doing the seven years

01:36:26

I'm doing the the seven years for one week, that's something

01:36:32

I'm still looking into. But I would like to say, though, a lot of people aren't aware of this because we're putting the the them coming out of the

01:36:41

Persian captivity somewhere around the fourth, fifth century. Right. Yeah. OK. So actually, when you when you do the math properly, one

01:36:50

B .C. is actually equal to six months time. So you literally you can you can research this and understand that.

01:37:00

What do you mean? One B .C. months. Yes. So one B .C. period is not equal to what we think a full year is one

01:37:07

B .C. period. You can look this up and research it. One B .C. period is only equal to six months.

01:37:13

So it takes two B .C.'s to equal one for a year. What we would call what we would call one three.

01:37:20

There is when you had the Gregorian calendar, they did have a they did have one month that they had to fix.

01:37:29

And and it's not I forget what the year is, but it's you know, it's after a thousand A .D. where you and you know, you can go and look at the

01:37:37

Gregorian calendar. And there's one one month that has only two, I think, two weeks in it. It's missing like two weeks to sync things up.

01:37:45

And that was a change between the two calendar, the two calendars. But the Hebrew calendar hasn't changed.

01:37:52

Yeah, I understand. That's what I'm saying is that's the Hebrew calendar. The Hebrew calendar is not what you're using to place.

01:38:00

Yeah. Yeah. You're using you're using the Hebrew calendar. Correct. Yes. Yeah. So. So. So you would have to tell me then specifically because, you know, the

01:38:11

Hebrew calendar, they've been counting. They've been counting from the thousand. So you'd have to tell me like the thousand.

01:38:17

Like what point? How many thousands? Like two thousand, three thousand something.

01:38:22

But even that's how they track. They don't track the way we track going back. Well, let's let's just go with let's just go with today.

01:38:29

Right. You believe that that this Messiah, the prince hasn't arrived yet. Correct. The. Well, it's

01:38:38

OK. Let me ask this question. When we say the Messiah, which one are you referring to? Because this this is being clear.

01:38:44

It's the Messiah, the prince. Yeah. So it's so it's not the one the one here in Daniel.

01:38:50

The one that's spoken of in the Bible is going to bring about these six different things. Eventually, it's going to bring a decree for your people, a decree for your holy city.

01:39:00

And then they're sorry, the six I got those wrong. So starting here, it's these six things to finish transgression, to put an end to sin, to make atonement for iniquity, to bring everlasting righteousness, to seal up vision and prophecy and to anoint the most holy place.

01:39:17

So those are the six things that this Messiah, the prince will eventually do. Yes. So this one specifically here in Daniel, I believe this one is is you can find him in the book of Zechariah.

01:39:30

This is Joshua who's spoken with Joshua, who who who actually if you read

01:39:36

Daniel chapter three, I'm sorry, Zechariah chapter three and Zechariah chapter six. You'll see that he's brought before the most high in a vision that that Zechariah has.

01:39:46

Joshua, the son of the high priest, is brought before the most high. And Zechariah in chapter six anoints him and he's given the command to rebuild the temple.

01:40:00

There's only one problem with that that I could think of. Zechariah is like 400

01:40:05

BC. He's still too early. So here's the question. No, no, no, no. Because that's where it goes back to how you're breaking down these weeks.

01:40:14

If you're breaking down the seven, if you're breaking down these weeks by years and saying, OK, these weeks are seven years, then definitely.

01:40:22

But if you're not breaking them down like that and you're saying these weeks are literal weeks. No, no, no.

01:40:27

And I'm breaking it down. I'm breaking down by the Hebrew calendar. That is a seven year period, which includes the leap, the leap year.

01:40:37

OK, but you're turning each you're turning each week into seven years. Right. So because that is so it's seven sevens.

01:40:45

It's the word week is the English. Right. The Hebrew is 77. What is seven?

01:40:51

It would be seven Sabbaths. Right. And that would be seven weeks, not necessarily seven years.

01:40:57

So it would be seven Sabbaths is what they would be saying. I'm just going to double check the word real quick, but I don't think that it is

01:41:06

Sabbath. Give me one second. We want to be accurate. No, it's

01:41:13

Sabu, which is is seven consecutive days, which is a week or seven.

01:41:20

It just means it's a period of seven. So it doesn't it doesn't have to be. It can count for a year.

01:41:26

Remember, you're dealing with a of the ways that the Hebrews would refer to this is a.

01:41:33

Remember, like we we do a really our calendar is a four year calendar cycle.

01:41:40

OK, the Gregorian calendar, because we have a leap day that we add in the

01:41:46

Hebrew calendar is 12, 30 day period months. So you have 12 months, 30 days each gives us 360.

01:41:54

Right. We're a couple days short. And so what do they do every seventh year?

01:41:59

They add in another month and that syncs it up. And so this was the

01:42:04

Hebrew calendar that's been around for over 5000 years. OK, hasn't changed.

01:42:10

And so we're going off of the way we would see this is the year. Now, here's the thing, whether it's weeks or whether it's years, whether you want to count it by days and count it as a week or you want to count it as years.

01:42:24

If you say the Messiah hasn't come. Right. And this prophecy is roughly twenty five hundred years ago.

01:42:33

The question I'd have for you is the question I had for the rabbi. Where's the Messiah? Because he's he's 2000 years overdue.

01:42:41

Yeah, I wouldn't say that. And that's that's what the question is. Kind of going back to what I was saying earlier, because you have to understand that there were those that were anointed and selected by the most high were considered messiahs.

01:42:56

So this individual who I'm speaking about, Joshua, was considered a messiah because he was anointed by the most high

01:43:03

King David himself was considered a messiah. If you deny that, then that's.

01:43:09

Yeah, I do do that. I do. And so what I want to do, what I want to do is ask you to support that argument.

01:43:15

Now, I would agree that they were they were special leaders. But I would challenge you to give me the verse that refers to them as messiah.

01:43:29

OK, I may take time and you may not be able to get it done during this show with 15 minutes left. And I totally understand.

01:43:36

You can always come back. Yeah, I might be able to find it. Just give me a second here. You got anything else you guys want to bring?

01:43:42

Yeah, I just pulled up the almost 40 verses that refer to Messiah in the

01:43:48

Hebrew. OK, so I could go through them kind of rapidly. But there's in Leviticus four, three, if the anointed priest.

01:43:58

So that's where it's just referring to an anointed, not as a the anointed one. OK, hold on.

01:44:03

But see that anointed there, that that word is Messiah, correct? It the yeah, the word would be

01:44:11

Messiah. But that's different than it's it's no different than in the New Testament.

01:44:16

We would have Antichrists and the Antichrist. OK, you have people who are acting as as an

01:44:24

Antichrist, but that doesn't refer to the. So there's a when when it's speaking in this passage in Daniel, it's speaking of a specific.

01:44:35

No, absolutely. I agree. And the final Messiah, the prince. I wouldn't say

01:44:40

I couldn't say I can't agree with the final. The reason why the reason why. But it identifies who the

01:44:46

Messiah is. Here's the reason why I say would be the final. This Messiah is going to finish transgression, make an end to sin, make atonement for iniquity, to bring an everlasting righteousness, to seal up vision and prophecy and to anoint the holy place.

01:45:03

If he does those six things, there's nothing left for any future Messiah to do. Yeah. Well, this this talks about and that's why a time frame is important, because when we look at the time period that those weeks, the way you're counting the weeks and the way

01:45:18

I'm counting, the week is very crucial because for you, those 70 was 70 weeks.

01:45:24

Right. They would fall in line with your time period. Right. Of where you would say right around. Look, how are you seeing it?

01:45:31

What do you see? The sevens that. So I'm seeing them as seven, 70 literal weeks.

01:45:38

Right. OK, so you. So that's fine. So let's let's do the math on that. So you see them as 70 days, right?

01:45:48

Seventy seven times seven, 70 weeks, weeks. So you're talking weeks.

01:45:54

So we divide that by talking about nine years. OK, so you believe it's nine years.

01:46:01

Hold on. Hold on. How did you get nine years? I took 69. Times right, 69 weeks, which is 69.

01:46:12

You would divide by you divided by 400, you took. Oh, OK, you're right.

01:46:19

We could divide 70 weeks by 52 and we got one year, a little over one year.

01:46:25

Yes. OK, so now we have some timelines here. Verse 26, then we're sorry.

01:46:32

First, 25. So that, you know, and discern that from the issuing of the decree to restore and rebuild the

01:46:40

Jerusalem until Messiah, there are there will be seven weeks and 62 weeks and it will and it will be built again.

01:46:49

The plaza, the moat and even the distress. So you're saying that what we have recorded in Scripture as taking.

01:46:59

Because we have the seven to forty nine years. That it took to to restore

01:47:07

Jerusalem. You're saying that actually happened in a week. They were building now there was a command to there was a command to build

01:47:18

Jerusalem. And then it took time for it to be built. It didn't that didn't happen in just one.

01:47:24

How long was it? Because it says here that at the end of the the at the end of this period, it's built again.

01:47:32

So even if you say the 69 weeks, you're saying that the that the entire city of Jerusalem was rebuilt in in a year, because we actually have historical evidence that it was longer than a year and we have biblical evidence.

01:47:47

But OK, so so let me let me let me look at something because because you're talking about that he would bring in everlasting righteousness.

01:47:57

Right. And bring an end to sin. Right. Two things that hasn't happened yet.

01:48:03

Correct. And that's that's because there's what you end up seeing is when we look at this, you can see that it says in verse 25.

01:48:11

Right. He mentions this. There will be seven weeks and 62 weeks. So those two are tied together for the rebuilding of the city to the time of the

01:48:21

Messiah. OK, so I would say that the seven weeks, the seven sevens is the restoring of the of Jerusalem.

01:48:29

Then there's 62 sevens until Messiah. And then it says then after the 62 weeks, the

01:48:35

Messiah will be cut off. Yeah. And have nothing to do and have nothing.

01:48:42

And the people of the prince who is to come will destroy the city and the sanctuary. And and his end will come with a flood even to the end.

01:48:51

And there will be war and desolations. And he will make a firm covenant with them for one seven.

01:48:58

So what you see here is that he's saying it's cut off. There's a gap there. That gap is what we call the church.

01:49:05

So there is another seven year period that's yet to occur. And at the end of that, we're going to end up seeing that's when all these six things that we see will be will happen.

01:49:17

Now, if I can, if I can add one thing, we got just a couple minutes. I just want to throw something in because I want you to I want you to have context and an understanding here of the 70 weeks.

01:49:27

OK, the reason he's saying 490 years and this is important. Second Chronicles, chapter 36, chapter 36, verse 21 and Leviticus 25, one through seven.

01:49:41

You need to look at those. OK, you can go back and look at these anytime you want to. The the the

01:49:48

Lord explains, if you go to Daniel one, Daniel thought that after 70 years, this was over with the the desolation of Israel is over with and everything.

01:49:57

He starts praying. OK, but then you go back to Chronicles. We find out that these are not just 70 weeks.

01:50:08

These are 70 Sabbath year weeks. So in other words, every one of them is a

01:50:13

Sabbath that they have not let the land rest for. And the punishment would be 70

01:50:21

Sabbath Sabbath's that they didn't let the land rest.

01:50:26

And the punishment would be a grand total of of of a Sabbath week or Sabbath year.

01:50:33

So what you're looking at is a four hundred and ninety, not just not just not just days, but 490 years of punishment that that would go against the people of Israel so that the land would rest because they did not honor the

01:50:50

Sabbath that we see in Second Chronicles 36, 21. And we also see that that was

01:50:58

Jubilee year was commanded in Leviticus 25 and they did not honor that.

01:51:05

And one thing you look at, Dr. John MacArthur points that out really well and breaks down.

01:51:11

Go ahead, Andrew. Yeah, let me just because we are going to get the end of the show. And so what

01:51:17

I want to do, I mean, you're welcome to come back. You know, we could we could finish it up. I mean, I know you want to try to I'd like to get from you to let me know where you see the

01:51:26

Messiah referring to David or these others. And I know we got to we want to bring

01:51:32

Dr. Silvestro and who's in the in the backstage. The context of Daniel, you look at this and just remember, and I'll just I'll wrap this discussion up with this.

01:51:43

Is the fact that this is Daniel is writing, having read the prophecies of Jeremiah, what was

01:51:54

Jeremiah? There were 77 year periods where they didn't let the land rest.

01:52:00

That was why they were being punished for 70 years for the 70th

01:52:06

Sabbath year that they didn't let the land rest. So 77 year periods, they didn't let the 490 years, they didn't let the land rest.

01:52:14

That's why they were in captivity for 70 years. If you read the beginning of Daniel chapter nine, that's what he's talking about.

01:52:21

He's praying about this because he's realizing, hey, Jeremiah said 70 years and the 70 years are coming due and what's going on.

01:52:27

That's the context. So I just want to give you that. We're going to end up having a wrap up, so I'm going to put you backstage.

01:52:35

But you're welcome to come on next week. But I'm going to I want to give you a quick second to give any last last words before we put you backstage.

01:52:44

OK, you know, actually, I appreciate the time. It's definitely been a good conversation. My apologies if I if I seem to cut you guys off at any times.

01:52:54

But no, you know, I would say, you know, the most important thing for me when

01:53:00

I look at these is is what you mentioned earlier is to keep things in context. Right. Because that's that's when people start taking things out of context.

01:53:09

That's where we get we can get misled, you know, and we can follow start falling under any kind of doctrine, you know.

01:53:15

And so what I'm going to do is I'm going to go and get some of those passages, because I really think that understanding the messianic roles that like like I was saying earlier,

01:53:27

King David and others have played is very important. We you know, and it's we can't just look and say, oh, no, those were just kings.

01:53:35

That was just they were just kings. That's all they were, because that's not you know, we mentioned the word anointed, you know, is

01:53:42

Messiah. That's what the word anointed is. And so looking at these prophecies is key and understanding the prophecies in context, you know, because if anybody is going to pull anything over our eyes, it's going to be when they take things out of context.

01:53:56

So what I'm going to do is I'm going to go ahead and look at some of those. Let me give you some encouragement.

01:54:03

I do want you to look them. But but here's the thing. Remember what I said about like flat earthers and and people like that, that they become heretics.

01:54:10

They don't plan to write when I was talking about the Calvinism. If you were listening,

01:54:15

I know you were in the backstage, but if you were listening back then, here's the thing I want you to do. Don't don't look to defend.

01:54:24

You know, to prove that you're right as much as see if what we're saying is right.

01:54:30

And the reason I'm saying that is if you're just trying to prove if you're trying to like and I'm not saying you're doing this, but if you're trying to just win a debate, what you're going to be likely to do is you're going to try to find something to answer the question.

01:54:44

I guarantee you will do that. I guarantee you something that answers the question.

01:54:49

Yeah, no, absolutely. It's a two sided thing. It's kind of a two sided thing. And that's where I myself

01:54:55

I came in from a Christian mentality coming into this.

01:55:02

Right. And so they're they're telling me somebody saying like, yo, this is this is possibly true.

01:55:07

So so what I did was kind of what you just did. I was like, yo, are they right? Because I know my

01:55:12

Christian stance. I know where I'm I know what I'm founded. Trust me, bro. I can go through the Old Testament, pull out everything that looks messianic and say this is

01:55:21

Yeshua. This was him. Yeah. I am down. I can do that. You know what I'm saying? I understand that.

01:55:26

And this is the way people get into heresies because they they they are trying to defend against something.

01:55:31

They start studying it and they go, oh, this makes sense. This actually has some answers. And and because a system has answers doesn't make it right because every system has answers.

01:55:42

So the reason I bring up things like the Daniel nine or the Genesis three, the reason

01:55:48

I bring that up is because like in the Genesis three, even the rabbis will say that that's

01:55:54

Satan. Oh, everybody. I'm going to say almost everyone because you you wouldn't hold to that.

01:55:59

But almost everyone's going to say that that is a reference to Satan. And so there is a double meaning.

01:56:05

OK, so I just I want you to think about that because here's the thing, you know, and I'll end this with you before we bring in Dr.

01:56:15

Svestro. But the thing I want to send with you is is this. Here's why this would be important for me to share with you.

01:56:23

You know, I know you're saying you came in from a Christian perspective. If you if you understand the

01:56:29

New Testament, you understand First John one nineteen, which would say that if you went out from among us, then you were never of us.

01:56:37

And the fact that you went out from us exposes you were you were never a Christian. And I have no problem if people want to believe that.

01:56:45

But the thing about it is one thing. I'm not a person to where I look at truth.

01:56:52

Right. There's no fear of losing salvation when you're seeking the truth, period. That's how

01:56:58

I approach. That's how I approach it. So that's that's my stand. Like no amount of fear.

01:57:05

I don't fear from the New Testament about losing salvation. Fear from the Old Testament. No amount of fear is going to prevent is going to prevent me from losing salvation because the heavenly father is the judge.

01:57:15

And he knows my heart at the end of the day. Yeah, but he doesn't know our heart. It's wicked is the problem.

01:57:21

But here's here's the thing. The reason it concerns me is. If if we either one of us are going to reject

01:57:31

Jesus Christ as God. Then we have no hope for salvation.

01:57:38

See, that's an opinion. That's not that I would say that scripture. That's what the

01:57:44

Bible says. But see, what you call scripture is not what I call scripture.

01:57:49

Exactly. Exactly. And that's why I just want you to hear me out. Okay. I just want you to hear me out.

01:57:55

I know that you disagree with this. Okay. Now, remember, I came to I came to the scriptures believing that Jesus Christ is

01:58:04

Hitler's God. That's how I was raised. I wanted nothing to do with them. However, mathematically, it's impossible to fulfill all of the prophecies of the

01:58:15

Old Testament with the new in. And one of the greatest, I think, is the Daniel nine, because it gives us an exact time frame.

01:58:22

And so the thing is, the reason I bring this to you,

01:58:28

America, is if you're wrong. Okay. And this is my fear.

01:58:34

If you're wrong, then you would spend eternity in a lake of fire. And I do not want that for you.

01:58:40

So I know that I know you disagree with me. I know I don't want it for myself.

01:58:46

Okay. But I just you may have heard this before, but I just want to take a couple minutes to share with you what

01:58:54

I believe. Would you spare me this? Absolutely. Okay. America, here's the thing.

01:59:01

You could be a far more moral person than I. And I'll take for granted that you probably are, because I know me.

01:59:09

Okay. Pastor Justin here knows me, and he probably would agree you're a more moral person than me. Right.

01:59:15

But being more moral doesn't get us righteousness with God. Okay. Every one of us break

01:59:22

God's law. You and I both. We've lied. You know, we've stolen.

01:59:28

We've done things to break God's law. God would rightly see us as criminals in his sight.

01:59:34

We would both, whether we like it or not, we'd be guilty and we would rightly deserve eternity in a lake of fire.

01:59:41

Why? Because God is infinitely holy. We can't even comprehend that. I know

01:59:47

Seth, who's been chatting in the, you know, in the YouTube this whole night from last week's debate, thinks he could be as holy as God.

01:59:56

None of us could be that holy. God is infinitely holy. Because he's infinitely holy and he's infinitely just, he requires an infinite consequence when we sin against him.

02:00:09

If you were to threaten my life, the police would tell you to stay away from me. If you threaten

02:00:15

President Biden's life, they're going to throw you in jail. At least for 48 hours until they can find other charges.

02:00:22

Right. What's the difference? It's nothing about he's not somehow a superior human being.

02:00:27

No. It's his position. Well, God is an infinite position. And because that has an infinite consequence,

02:00:34

I don't want to see you suffer that consequence. And so the good news of the gospel is the fact that God himself became a man.

02:00:43

He suffered a death only he could do. And here's what makes it unique. When we think of the different religions, they will say that there is a

02:00:51

God who's both just and merciful. But you can't have that. It's actually impossible because those two things are mutually exclusive.

02:01:00

Let's think about it this way. If there was a law that said that if you hit me, I must hit you back.

02:01:06

That's justice. OK, I don't think you'd hit me, but say you did. I have one or two choices.

02:01:12

I could smack you back. That's justice. I could not smack you. And that's mercy.

02:01:18

But if I just tap you lightly, guess what? It's not justice or mercy. Right. So the only way we can have a

02:01:26

God that's both just and merciful is that he himself pays the fine. The full weight of the punishment.

02:01:33

He got fully smacked. The full weight was paid upon him. Why on him?

02:01:39

Because if it was anyone else, any temporal human being, we would have to be perfect to not have to pay for our own sins.

02:01:47

But if we're perfect as a temporal human being, we can only pay for one person. He being an eternal being can pay for all people everywhere in all times.

02:01:58

He can be sufficient for everybody because he's eternal because of who he is. But being a man, he could pay that fine for men.

02:02:06

So he takes the full weight of the punishment. That's justice. Now that he did that, he can offer mercy.

02:02:13

And that's what makes Christianity unique from every world religion. It's what makes biblical

02:02:20

Judaism separate from rabbinical Judaism that's practiced today. It's the fact that we look to that God would pay the fine for us, that God would actually do what we could not do, that he would show mercy only after he pays the justice.

02:02:36

And the thing is that it relies on someone that is both God and man. It's the only way that that could be.

02:02:43

And so that's what makes Christ unique. So my thing for you, you may have heard this growing up, but my plea to you, and I welcome you to come back next week to finish the discussion.

02:02:53

We can keep going. But my plea to you is that you would not trust your good works, not trust your good nature, not trust what you think is true, but in the sense of saying, in your studies of just the

02:03:11

Old Testament, but you have to look at what Christ did and trust in Christ as the only payment for sin to have eternal life.

02:03:20

Would you at least consider that this week? I will have to do some deep thinking, but I can tell you, for me, there's a few problematic things in what you said.

02:03:35

I'm sure there is. And I know you want to get off so you can go to the next person. But we can talk about it next week.

02:03:43

I just want you to consider that. Would you do me that favor? Would I consider it?

02:03:49

I got to be truthful at the time. It's not it's not into considering until I research further.

02:03:55

So as as I do more research and I come across more things because I want to be truthful. You know,

02:04:00

I'm not the type to, you know, as I research and examine the scriptures, examine the word.

02:04:06

You know, if there are things that lead me in that direction, then absolutely I will consider. All right. We'll definitely be praying for you.

02:04:12

Thanks for coming on. I hope to see you again. All right. I will do. Appreciate the time.

02:04:18

Thank you, fellas. I thought I think I'm out too soon. Sorry. Dr. Sylvester, before you come as you come in, before we get to their clergy talk, our super chat that I gave

02:04:28

Justin, you put this one up long ago, but we had to wait to actually know. I know. I just didn't want to miss it.

02:04:34

Yeah, I know. I had my I had it up the whole time. But clergy talk, which, by the way, if you if you listen to clergy talk podcast,

02:04:41

I've been on there again. Recently, I was on there dealing with the topic of slavery.

02:04:47

So I'll probably put that on my podcast sometime soon. That already came out of his. But he asked the question, if Jesus was not the

02:04:54

Christ, then why did all the apostles choose death rather than deny him?

02:05:00

And so that's an argument that a good argument to be made, because who would die for a lie?

02:05:06

So as as Phil is saying, here we go, Anthony time and Anthony shows up to make sure we go over time.

02:05:14

All right. That's right. How are things down there in Dallas? Oh, we're good. We just got down here today and we got to check out.

02:05:22

So, you know, I see our Institute for Creation Research just opened their new museum shortly before COVID.

02:05:29

And they had to close the museum. Yeah. Brand new museum. And it's been closed ever since.

02:05:35

They don't open till May. So what's nice is that, you know, so Mike Riddle and I are down here to teach a basic training course.

02:05:45

And so for those of you who are who are who get the acts and facts in the mail, which is

02:05:52

ICR's monthly magazine, Mike and I are actually featured in there as as a teaching and what they love about the ministry and how we teach.

02:06:02

And I know, you know, Justin, Andrew, you both have been at trainings for it. And we hope to get you more involved in all this as well.

02:06:09

But we're really excited about bringing our our teaching style down to ICR.

02:06:15

We've we're going to be packing out the auditorium this Saturday, teaching the basic training course for creation.

02:06:21

And then we'll be back down in June as well. I'm doing a three and a half day teacher training course at ICR.

02:06:28

So we're real excited about that. And they are opening the museum just for us this Saturday. So anybody attending the course gets into the museum.

02:06:37

So. Oh, you tell me this now. Thanks. Sorry. Yeah. Well, you have an opportunity to come down in June as well.

02:06:43

So we get to walk through it real quick today. We'll get to see more of it on Saturday. See their facility. It is just gorgeous.

02:06:50

So we're really excited about being down here for this. And it's nice weather.

02:06:56

Yeah, it is. It is. So I know you didn't you you came in late at the end there, but we had a good discussion tonight going over some of the debate stuff, talking

02:07:05

Calvinism. And then the last one was quite interesting. Someone who is believes in only the

02:07:11

Hebrew scriptures. And so I do hope that everyone is praying for a

02:07:17

Mecca. He he clearly needs it. That was heartbreaking.

02:07:23

He seems like a sincere young man. Well, you know what?

02:07:28

I think what's terrifying about it is he's holding to a belief in the Old Testament scripture.

02:07:34

But the question is, is is he following all the the restrictions and the laws and and the sacrifices and all those things that are required?

02:07:43

Because I mean, without with without, you know, obedience to God, all he is is a rebel looking at the

02:07:50

Bible. You know, that's a good question to ask. How does how's he keeping this? How's he getting atonement for sin without the sacrifices at the temple?

02:07:58

And that's where I was. I was we didn't have time to. I mean, this is this is going to be a multiple discussion.

02:08:06

But to to to try to open that up, you know, all the all the people he's talking about, they all held to the

02:08:16

Old Testament sacrificial system. They looked to the Messiah to come, but they held that Old Testament sacrificial system, which he's not holding to.

02:08:25

Yeah. So let me let me close up with, you know, Anthony, you got a trip coming up this year.

02:08:33

And, you know, we want to want to let folks know about this and invite them. And you're going to Israel.

02:08:39

Actually, all three of us are going to be going to Israel. And, you know, it was really cool. So this past weekend,

02:08:47

I was down in Kentucky for the for a couple different things. My wife's medical treatment and whatnot.

02:08:52

But we also made a stop off at the Ancestry Genesis Women's Conference. And so,

02:08:58

Julian, because you you you'd feel comfortable there as a woman. I felt very comfortable there, not as a woman.

02:09:06

But what was great is I got to hang out with Justin Peters and Phil Johnson all weekend. So I had lots of time with them, which was which was awesome.

02:09:15

We also met. They find it awesome. That's the question. Yeah. They appreciate that time. I think they did.

02:09:22

That's all that matters. Right. So my truth. So I did want to give a shout out to Linda Yost, who watches most of our shows.

02:09:33

I got a chance to meet her in person. That was really cool. She goes to Chrissy Whitehead's church.

02:09:39

Yes. And that's how she found out about our podcast. So that was really cool to get a chance to talk to her a little bit.

02:09:46

And and I also met there's three there. I told you this, Andrew, there are three females that came up to the table.

02:09:52

And they said they were talking to Justin as I was sitting there helping solve some of his books. Yeah, there's

02:09:58

Linda. Thank you. Good. Great to meet you, too, Linda. And these three ladies talk about Justin, how they're really excited about going on the

02:10:05

Israel trip with him. I perked up. I go, which Israel trip are you talking about? I said, well,

02:10:11

I'm going to be on it, too. So I got to meet other people who who knew our names, Andrew, but hadn't met us yet.

02:10:16

So. So that was really cool. Yeah. Ran into another female. I don't know how this happens, but she came up to me.

02:10:24

She was working another booth for for another speaker. And she said, I know you from somewhere.

02:10:29

I can't I can't figure out where. And so she talks to my wife a little bit and she leaves.

02:10:35

She comes back. She goes, you're an American gospel. I cannot. I am amazed how people see that little old me who has, you know, 45 second part in the first one and maybe a 20 second part in the second one.

02:10:49

For the record, the reason is, is because while the cameras were there, you were hogging the box.

02:10:55

And once the cameras left, that's when I got up and we actually had some good dialogue.

02:11:00

You know, what can I say? Right place, right time, I guess. No, actually, you're just a box hog and I didn't want to be on camera.

02:11:08

So but but the thing is, if folks want to join us, the time is running out. End of this month.

02:11:14

For those who are watching this live, this is the end of March. The price goes up. So, you know, the it will go up by one hundred dollars.

02:11:25

So my encouragement is to do it now. Go to Israel tour 2021 dot com

02:11:33

Israel tour 2021 dot com to join us in Israel. There's only a few seats left.

02:11:39

You may end up having to just meet us in Israel at this point. I don't know. I think there may be two slots left to join us flying out of Newark.

02:11:47

Phil here says that Anthony was the best part of the American gospel movie.

02:11:54

I'll take that. Oh, yeah. So, you know, the thing is, this this is going to be

02:12:02

Israel's going to be it's going to be a unique experience. And folks, the guy who who runs the trip with us, he he's told us that he expects that the prices in Israel after COVID is going to go up tremendously.

02:12:16

He's already seeing that happen. He's booking some trips for for 2022 and the prices are going up.

02:12:23

So I know a lot of people are saying this is expensive. Yes, but it may be really cheap compared to what it's going to be in the future.

02:12:29

They're going to have to make up for the lack of travel for a year and that tourism. And so this this could be the last chance to get to go to Israel.

02:12:39

So I'd encourage you to go to IsraelTour2021 .com and join us.

02:12:45

Dr. Silvestro, Pastor Justin, myself, Justin Peters, David Cunningham will be doing the devotions along with Pastor Casey from Florida.

02:12:56

And it's going to be a good time of learning your your Bible in the land where it happened.

02:13:04

Which we should also announce, Andrew, that we have a conference coming up with Justin Peters at Pastor Casey Butner's church down in Winter Garden, Florida.

02:13:19

It's at Beulah Baptist Church just north of Orlando. So this is this is May 7th, 8th, 9th and 10th, actually, and, you know, into Monday.

02:13:31

And so it's a Friday night to Monday night. And we're going to do our

02:13:37

Snatch Them From the Flames conference where it's a discernment conference if you want to learn discernment. And we're going to do some special things, some things that haven't been done before.

02:13:46

Justin is going to do a session on Monday night on pragmatism in the church, something he has not done before.

02:13:52

So that's going to be a new talk. If you think you've heard everything Justin has to say, well, then you want to come down for this.

02:14:00

If you look for Beulah Baptist Church in Winter Garden, you can get the number there to sign up and register.

02:14:09

And that's going to be that is in May 7th to 10th. Now, Anthony, you and I will also be in Indianapolis for Cruciform Conference.

02:14:19

Yes. And that is going to be June 3rd to the 6th or to the 5th,

02:14:27

I think. So the first week of June, go to Cruciform Conference. I think it's cruciformconference .com.

02:14:34

But just search for Cruciform Conference and you can find that. I don't know where exactly it's at yet, but Dr.

02:14:42

Silvestro is going to be doing, I believe, two pre -conference sessions on presuppositional apologetics.

02:14:48

So you won't want to miss that. You'll want to come early for the pre -conference to get that. And then we're talking on standing firm.

02:14:56

So that's what the conference will be about. I may have a surprise, we're hoping.

02:15:02

I'm trying to pull this off, but I can't reveal what it is yet. But if I can pull this off,

02:15:08

I can just say this. We will have a very special message that I will be delivering with a special guest.

02:15:17

I'll just put it that way. We'll see if that happens. But I'm trying to work on something really special for that conference.

02:15:24

So those are some events that we have coming up. And I'll say one other thing, too, is

02:15:31

I haven't told you this yet, Andrew, but I'm going to be doing a special apologetics live show in the coming weeks.

02:15:38

He always does this. At the end of the show, he pops in and announces these special shows that he doesn't run by us,

02:15:43

Justin. You notice that? He doesn't want to be a part of it. Yeah, he just comes in like,

02:15:49

I'm just going to do this. Actually, I'll let you guys be a part of this. What we're going to do is, my old church in Cleveland, Ohio is an emergent church.

02:16:00

They went emergent years ago. That's why we left years ago. And they have become a big, big focus in the

02:16:08

Cleveland area for social justice. And the pastor of this church is the second in charge of this

02:16:16

Christian Missionary Alliance, which is the largest denomination in the world. And word is that they are moving the headquarters from Colorado Springs to Cleveland right now so he can become president.

02:16:32

So this church has not only been emergent for years, Rick Warren style, but now they've brought in social justice.

02:16:39

They've gotten big into mysticism, especially contemplative prayer. And so we're going to do a special show on this with video clips because they've been going wild lately on some of this stuff.

02:16:49

And it'll be a great learning opportunity for people to see what's been going on around the country with these churches.

02:16:58

All right. And so with that, we'll end just reminding you guys, if you want to help support this podcast, a couple ways you could do it.

02:17:05

You can always subscribe to our YouTube channel. There are subscriptions there. You can always give us Super Chats, which some have done tonight, and we thank all of those who have.

02:17:14

But you can also go to strivingforeturning .org slash support and support us monthly. That is a great help because, well, we have monthly bills.

02:17:22

So that is another way. The last thing that I'll mention is you can go to mypillow .com,

02:17:29

click on the radio listeners square and buy products there with promo code

02:17:34

SFE, which stands for striving for eternity. And when you do that, that will support us as well.

02:17:40

Or you can call 1 -800 -873 -0176 and use promo code

02:17:45

SFE to get some great pillows, great other products. I'm going to be ordering some of their other products since they have so much and hopefully get those in.

02:17:56

That's a way you can help striving for eternity as well as get a better night's sleep, which, you know, if Dr.

02:18:02

Silvestro got a better night's sleep, he probably wouldn't have lost all that hair. I'm just saying. Until next week, remember to strive to make today an eternal day for the glory of God.