Debate: Calvinism is Useless and Dangerous

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

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

We are live, Apologetics Live, here to answer your questions, challenges, anything you have about God and the

Bible. That is what this show is for. However, this week, we're not going to be having so many people come in for participation.

We're going to be doing this as a formal debate, so this will be a little bit different. We sometimes use this platform to do formal debates.

It'll be a timed debate. I'll bring the moderator in, none other than Mr. or Pastor Justin.

So, welcome. So, what we're going to do, I'm going to bring in,

I'm going to try to pronounce his name. Why is he at a black screen? Hold on.

Oh, where'd he go? Oh boy, it dropped out. Dr. Silvestro. Dr. Silvestro is actually sitting, look, here, wait, look.

Where's his camera? There's my hand. What's that stuff on his face? He's right there.

Yes. What is that on his face? It is stuff that Julie does not like. Don't worry, my wife decided she doesn't like it either, so it's going.

Ray just disappeared. I hope that, I'll remove

Anthony here. So yeah, I don't know what happened to our, so I guess we'll have to wait till he comes back in.

Kind of hard to do a debate if he wasn't, so I don't know what happened.

So, what we try to do is we, this show, Apologetics Live is a weekly show where we are here to answer any questions you have about God and the

Bible. We usually have a topic. You can always go to apologeticslive .com to be able to see the show or to join in and participate.

You just go to the, I want a refund from Facebook users.

Facebook users going to get a refund tomorrow in the mail. You can also go to apologeticslive .com

and get the instructions on how on Facebook to share your name with StreamYard so that we can see your name show up, you know, like D .A.

Chan did where he, we can see his name. So, and we now know who, and this is the same

Facebook user, Kofi, who hasn't, you know, after so many weeks, months, he still hasn't figured it out.

But this one's not Kofi because Kofi's not in the Philippines. Says, hi, I'm watching from the Philippines. So, here's the thing.

We're waiting for Ray to get back in. We don't know what happened there, but we do try to use, have formal debates here.

I'm looking to see if he's messaging me or anything. No, Darryl, Darryl from the

Philippines. Yeah, let's put that up there. Hello, Darryl. How are you doing, brother? Okay, so the topic of debate,

I'm going to try to answer some of this stuff while we wait for Ray to get back in here. He was just in here and then his screen went blank and then he disappeared.

So, maybe his computer crashed and we're waiting for a reboot.

So, the topic of the debate is going to be Calvinism is useless and dangerous.

This was the topic that Ray had chosen. Ray is from the Philippines and was challenging.

The way this came about was that I guess he was challenging any Calvinist pastors.

I guess he was saying that there's no Calvinist pastors that could debate him. Someone tagged myself and James White, a couple other people, and James and I both responded.

I'll get to what his response was later on in the program. And so, you know, we might as well read that comment from D .A.

Chan there. Okay, let's see what we got here. So, D .A. Chan says, watching from the

Philippines, although my concern is that R .A. Futez, I don't remember how to pronounce it, will just use this debate as a pad to pad his resume and make people think he's a credible debater because he has to quote -unquote, quote -unquote debated professional debaters.

Okay, well, that is an option. You know, honesty though in the - It doesn't show up. That's true, but you know, and then, but also honesty in the details, you know, comes from video and audio tape.

So, he can say what he wants, but we have it on the video. And we don't cut out and edit videos to make ourselves look better or worse.

We're just as good or bad as we can be, right? Okay, so I see he is typing, or he was typing something on Facebook.

So, I'm waiting to see what happens. So, he is -

Fuentes. Yeah, that's why I'm going to call him

Ray. That's a good idea. He said connection. So, he contacted me on Facebook, said connection was lost.

I'm going back in. Okay. So, sorry, folks, that this is a slight delay. Someone is asking for me to watch live.

Okay. Okay. So, there. So, if you want a link to share, you can share it, the apologeticslive .com.

That's the link you can share for people to watch. From there, they can watch the YouTube version.

Now, I will say the reason to go to that site is because we are going to be moving away from YouTube soon.

We're going to be moving to Odyssey. And so, you will want to you'll want to be aware of that because we are going to eventually probably be kicked off YouTube before.

It looks like Chris Roseborough is in the house. There you go. Okay. Howdy, Chris.

We have Kofi. Well, it could be him or it could be a hijacked account.

You know, you never can trust that. You may want to just delete that and block it. Yeah. So, here's the thing that why don't you go over,

Justin, why don't you go over the way that when Ray gets back in here, how we're going to conduct the debate.

So, that way, at least we won't have to go over that again. Okay. So, we've talked about it.

Both parties have agreed that we're going to have an opening statement for each 10 minutes each. Then there'll be a rebuttal time, 15 minutes each.

And then they'll start into cross -examinations, 20 minutes each cross -examination, one -minute question and two -minute response.

And what that basically is going to detail is this. For the person asking the question, you have one minute to ask the question, not make a statement.

This isn't glory time. This is and two minutes to respond. You need to answer the question that's given any way you want to answer it.

Just make sure that it stays within the question area, the genre of the question.

And we're going to go back and forth. If you decide you don't want to answer the question and want to go somewhere else with it, we'll stop the debate.

We'll start the time back over again for the question to be asked until it is answered.

We're not going to go further and just let it be like a glory show. They're going to be the cross -examinations, two 10 -minute rounds.

And then when we get finished with that, we'll have a closing 10 minutes each. And just for everybody to know, if you have questions from the audience, type them in here as they go, and I will try to get them typed up myself.

And we'll go through those as best we can at the end. And so that's the way we're going to format this.

Okay. So Benson is saying, I probably won't go to work for this. Kidding. No, you should go to work. This is recorded.

We also have someone asking which gentleman is Andrew Rappaport? It's the one that says Andrew Rappaport right there.

But then there's the guy that's handsome and he's right here. What's his name? Justin.

Oh, that's him. Look at him. That scared him. He didn't know he was coming up on camera.

He put himself on camera when you said the handsome one, you know. Well, he's learning humility.

Okay. It comes with a beard. Yeah. So, yeah, this is where we're still waiting for him to connect.

He was here, folks. So we know that he was able to connect. We were able to hear him.

And so it's going to be hard since he is the one that's going to start the debate, since he's taking the pro position.

We kind of need him here to start the openings. So, yeah,

I should turn this on here. That way you can see my prettier face.

See? So now I'm in the light. All right. We have some people that are asking where he is.

That's a good question right now. We are prepared in case. I told him this debate was happening one way or the other.

So in case he didn't show, we are prepared with the empty chair.

And in his defense, he did show up at the beginning. Well, before the beginning. Before the beginning.

So he was here. And for folks who don't get the humor of the empty chair,

I'll give that while we wait for him to get in. I had been for a year and a half had Black Hebrew Israelites.

If you don't know what they're about, you can go to our YouTube channel, Striving Fraternity. Check out some of the shows that we've done about them.

You can actually see the two debates I did. We had some guys that actually backed out of a debate. We actually had several debates set up and they brought it all back out over a year and a half.

Well, we had three guys. It was going to be three against one. Three Black Hebrew Israelites and me.

And they blocked us so we couldn't tell them the link to join. And so what

Tom, the moderator, did was I said, hey, let's just do it anyway. We ended up doing the debate. I did the opening and I just told the moderator,

Tom, hey, just introduce, let our guest introduce himself when it comes time.

And so when it came that time, I brought up the empty chair for me to debate.

So he said, well, we'll let our guest introduce himself. And there he was, the empty chair, which did get a couple of good laughs.

But really what was good about that was it actually got someone to actually debate me.

And so we did that debate. And you know, one way of knowing that you've kind of won a debate is when everybody that agrees with that person's position, in this case,

Black Hebrew Israelites, they ended up contacting me saying that guy didn't do a good job.

I can debate you. And we're like, okay, Thursday nights, come in. And no one has come since.

So yeah. So here comes a question or maybe a statement.

D .H. Anne, again, he says, I truly hope that my dear fellow Calvinists won't stoop to the level of ad homs.

That'd be ad hominem. Andrew, what's an ad hominem? Well, an ad hominem is a logical fallacy when you discredit a person's argument by attacking the person.

So it's when you make a personal attack of someone. For example, you have someone, you're making a argument.

In this case, it would be something like, you know, that Calvinism is dangerous. If he was to say, well,

Calvinism is dangerous because it teaches that everything is determined.

I'm hoping that's not going to be his argument, but that everything is determined by God and we have no choice. If that's going to be his argument and I was to turn around and say something like, well, that's just because you're not intelligent enough to understand it.

What am I doing? I'm discrediting the argument being made by attacking the person.

And at this point, I'm going to ask him if he's coming back in. Yeah. And so DA, just so you know, we don't operate that way.

Number one, despite the Calvinist question, it's not

Christian. That's the most important issue. Would Christ want us to behave in such an unbecoming manner?

And the answer is no, we don't go out and attack people and try to disabuse them of their names and their reputation just by going after people in that context.

What we want to do is we want to use the grammar, the history. We want to use the context of the word of God.

We want to use the writings and let the authorial intent take place. When it comes to Calvinism and the debate there, it's going to be based upon the scripture.

And we will talk about the history of Calvinism and where it comes from, the Arminian side as well.

So that's just where we stand. And so I hope that settles that question. And if there's any more.

Yeah. I mean, sorry, folks, for the folks who came in at this point. The person

I was supposed to be debating Ray was here in the pre -show for about five minutes or so.

And then as soon as we went live, he disappeared.

He said his connection was lost and he's coming back in, but that was some time ago.

Just so everybody can have a real good example of an ad hominem. If I was to say something like Drew Vanita is, he's always wrong because, well, he's ugly.

That would be an ad hominem. I'm not really appealing to anything.

And I'm telling the truth, but I'm just kidding. Yeah. And Andrew was saying there that the comment you put up, you put the comment up, but you never read it.

Oh, sorry. I've never heard Andrew use an ad hominem. I use them all the time against Drew, but he's a great brother.

He's so No, I'm just kidding. Oh, so Brett's asking, where's the beef?

That's, that's, okay. So for those in the Philippines, they won't get that.

That's from a commercial in the, what, the 90s? Wendy's commercial. So, all right, why don't we do this?

Because I don't, you know, we're, we're 15 minutes in. Yeah. And so why don't

I, we'll at least give some updates on some stuff ministry -wise and projects live -wise waiting.

We'll give them a couple more minutes and then assume that we're going to do this debate without them. But the, and so some people are putting comments in Philippine, so I can't read that.

Sorry. It might be good to, for folks from the

Philippines, if you have comments to put them in English, especially if you're asking questions. So here comes someone.

Let's see if this is, Ray, is that you? No, it's me,

Pastor Andrew, Pastor Nilo from Imus Kabite.

How are you doing, Pastor? Yeah, I was monitoring your progress about the debate, but it seems,

I was contacting Ray, what's happening, and he hasn't answered yet.

Okay. Okay. So we'll wait for him. I will call him also.

I will try to get in touch with him. Okay. Thank you. Good. Thanks. And if you stay in here, since you're in here, there's a private chat.

I'll put you in backstage and you can still communicate with us through private chat if you hear anything from them. All right.

And then let's see, we have Quipping the Saints. How are you, sir? We can't hear you.

Now we hear you. Hey, Andrew, while we're waiting,

I wanted to ask you a question. I've been trying to think through. Why don't you introduce yourself for folks who don't know who you are?

I'm sorry. I'm Rob Barnhart. I am the resident confessional Lutheran that every once in a while pops in and bothers

Andrew. Well, for folks who don't know you, you've also been, we've had, usually I'm moderating the debates on this channel, not always doing them, but you,

I moderated two debates, I think, with you and Ken Cook, right? Did you do two or was it one?

It did one for me. Two other for maybe a different Lutheran guy.

I believe Evan Fisk, if I can remember correctly. So I wanted to ask you a question about predestination and election and predestination for knowledge.

I know that you would probably say that they're linked, but would you say that they're the same thing?

Theologically, no. And I see Ray coming in, but I'm going to wait until his camera comes up and we'll bring him back in.

Theologically, they're addressing kind of two different things. Some might see it as two sides of the same coin.

They do have some interplay, but I would argue, and I'll make this case when we get into the debate,

I make the argument that when we talk about things like predestination and election, those are terminology that we use, or that God uses, for things we can't comprehend.

And so God, we always have to remember God is outside of time and God is omniscient.

Being omniscient, He knows all things. It's not that He has to observe something happening to know what's going to happen.

He knows it. And because He's eternal, He's outside of time, these things are all, if we could think about it, the same eternal now for God.

And being such, I think that as we examine that, the reality is that God's going to speak in a language that we can comprehend.

Things like saying we're elect before the foundation of time, I refer to that as being of baby talk,

God speaking down to us to try to explain what we can never really comprehend. I mean, the main point of that is not to explain a chronological events, but to say you had nothing to do with your salvation.

All right, can I ask you one more question before you have your guest up? Yeah, I'm waiting for his camera to come up.

It looks like I'll have him screen, that's what we're seeing. I just wanted to ask you, if you think that the eternal decree, as the

Calvinists understand it, is necessary for God to have foreknowledge? Is the eternal decree necessary for God to have foreknowledge?

Well, foreknowledge, the way we think of foreknowledge is to know beforehand, right?

And that's a human thinking. God, in a sense, doesn't have foreknowledge the way we often think about it, right?

Because He has omniscience. He has a complete knowledge, and it's not based upon what we do.

He doesn't have to observe it, if that makes sense. Now, when it comes to His decree, we get into a whole thing there of, is

He forcing things or is it just that He knows what's going to happen? No, no, no. I'm just trying to think through our confessions on election in conjunction with the

Calvinists and trying to figure out how to separate the two and see what the distinctions are.

Yeah, why don't we try to pick that up next week on Apologetics Live? Sure. Since, Ray, is your microphone working there?

Yes, I think. Sorry for that. All right. A slight delay, about a 20 -minute delay, but we will get started.

Sure. So, no problem. And so, once you're, are you ready?

Yes, I'm ready here. Okay, so let me, we'll get the, I'll start the clock on my side and you can start the clock.

Okay, ready? Are you ready to start the clock? And Andrew, are you ready? Yes. Okay, three, two, one, start.

Ray, you start with your opening. All right, so my opening statement, right? Okay. All right.

Good morning and good night. I mean, good evening, everyone. And good morning here in the Philippines.

Thank you for the opportunity that we can discuss here in this format, strivingforeternity .org.

And thank you for inviting me and for taking up the challenge,

Dr. Rapaport, and how they pronounce it. I'm sorry if I pronounce it incorrectly.

Now, I do apologize, first of all, for the theme or the proposition that I made.

It might sound offensive, but that's the only way that I can make up the theme or the proposition for this debate tonight.

And first of all, I would like also to put some scope of limitation when

I say that Calvinism is useless and dangerous.

I'm talking about the soteriology of the reform. That would be the

TULIP, right? T stands for Total Depravity and U, Unconditional Election, Limited Atonement, Irresistible Grace, and also the

Perseverance of the Saints. So that is what I meant of Calvinism.

So the proposition here is that Calvinism is useless and dangerous.

That is my proposition for this debate. So first off, the useless side.

Now, I think if I were a Calvinist or if we are going to embrace

Calvinism, the TULIP, I think it's useless for, first of all, in the area of evangelism.

So in the area of evangelism, to the unsaved or to the unbelievers,

I think it is useless. Because as far as I know, at least from my friends,

Calvinist friends, they said to me that Calvinism is meat for unbelievers.

They cannot understand it. So they don't have to know it. First, my

Calvinist friends, they go out there doing evangelism, presenting the gospel.

You don't want to go out there and present the TULIP to the unbelievers. So I think that in that sense,

Calvinism is useless to the unbelievers. If I were a Calvinist, I think

I have to share straightly the gospel. And you're going to present the gospel to them, but they don't have to know

Calvinism or the TULIP. So in that sense, it's useless.

Now, after that, presenting the gospel to the unbelievers, and then if they are going to believe and receive that gospel, put their trust in the

Lord Jesus Christ, then they will be baptized. And after that, they will be added into the local church.

Now, after that, we're going to disciple them. If we're going to disciple them, we're going to teach them as what the

Bible says in Matthew 28, verse 19 and 20, that it says there, go ye into all the worlds, or teach all nations, baptizing them, the name of the

Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all things whatsoever I have commanded you. And lo,

I am with you always, even unto the end of the world. So the believers, I mean, the newly saved person or the newly professed believers, we're going to teach them the way of Christ and the commandments of Christ, to do giving and evangelism, do missions, and everything that you can do.

By the way, when I say we can do as believers, I'm not saying that we are doing it on ourselves.

We believe that in Philippians chapter 2, verse number 13, that it is God which worketh in us, both to will and to do of His good pleasure.

So I'm not saying, just don't misunderstand me when I say that those things that we're going to do in order for us to serve the

Lord Jesus Christ. So we have a saying that we are saved to serve. So when we are going to teach as a young pastor,

I will be teaching these newly baptized, saved and baptized believers or professed

Christians. We are going to teach them the way of Christ and the commandments of Christ and to do things that are pleasing in the sight of God.

And you don't have to know Calvinism in order for you to do this, in order for you to serve the

Lord Jesus Christ, the King of Kings, Lord of Lords, in order for you to do missions, in order for you to give everything you can give to support the ministry and to sing in the choir and everything.

All of that stuff that we're doing, you don't have to know Calvinism. So it's still useless for we as non -Calvinists.

We don't have to be a Calvinist in order for us to do these things that we are doing right now.

And I believe also that Calvinists also are doing like evangelism, do missions and everything that they're doing for the glory of God, for their service to the

Lord Jesus Christ. What you're doing now is we are also doing it on our side as a non -Calvinist.

So Calvinism really is useless to the unbelievers and also here in our camp, like the non -Calvinists in our camp.

We don't have to know it. We don't have to embrace

Calvinism in order for us to serve our Lord Jesus Christ. And we can do those things that you're doing as Calvinists are doing.

And we also as non -Calvinists, we are also doing what we can in order for us to serve better the

Lord Jesus Christ till he comes. So everything that we're doing, we can do it even as a non -Calvinist.

So that is useless in that sense. Now, let's go to the danger because that is my theme. The danger of Calvinism, if we're going to embrace

Calvinism, Calvinism, first of all, makes Christians liars in evangelism.

Why does it say, why does I say so? Calvinism makes Christians liars. Why? In Article 5 here, there's a link here on my presentation, but I cannot share it right now.

But there is a link here, Article 5, there in Canons of Dort number 2.

I have the link here if you want the link because I've taken this online.

So it says here, Article 5, the mandate to proclaim the gospel to all. Moreover, and I quote, quote, unquote,

Moreover, it is the promise of the gospel that whosoever believes in Christ crucified shall not perish but have eternal life.

This promise together with the command to repent and believe ought to be announced and declared without differentiation or discrimination to all nations and people to whom

God, in His good pleasure, sends the gospel. So they believe, Calvinism also believes, believe that the proclamation of the gospel is for all.

It says here there's no discrimination and differentiation. So in Article 8 also, the saving effectiveness of Christ's death, for it was the entirely, quote, for it was the entirely free plan and very gracious will and intention of God, the

Father, that the enlivening and saving effectiveness of His Son's costly death should work itself out in all the elect.

It says there, in order that God might grant justifying faith to them only and their lead them without fail to salvation.

So did you catch that? The evangelism is for all, no discrimination, no differentiation.

But the effectiveness of that is in all the elect, just only to the elect, and God might grant a justifying faith to them only.

So that makes Christians liars in evangelism because when you go out there, you don't know who are the elect.

You don't know who are the non -elect, and you're going to use John 3, 16 for God's who love the world.

And then maybe you are going to use, because in evangelism, I'm using, of course, I need to use how that God demonstrate

His love. So I'm going to use Romans chapter 8, verse number 5, verse number 8, that you're going to say to them that Christ died for you.

But if that is non -elect, I believe that you believe also that you've been doing evangelism, that you cannot avoid to share the gospel to the non -elect.

And you're going to say to them that God loves you and Christ died for you. But that is not so in Calvinism because God only loved the elect, and he also loved,

I mean, he will, Christ died for only that salvation is for the elect, only for the elect.

So that makes us a liar if we're going to embrace that. And also, yes, in article 9, the fulfillment of God's plan, also the call.

Okay, Ray, we've about 30 seconds over.

We will go ahead and start. Good job. Thank you. Okay. All right. So let's try to stick to our time so everybody has a fair chance to go back and forth.

It would be Andrew's time. We're going to start at 10 minutes. And let me see if I can pull this up.

I think it pulls up, doesn't it, Andrew? Well, anyway, there it is.

We'll start it, and then I'll let you have your... Are you ready, Andrew? Oh, you're muted.

I think you are. There we go. Sorry. It helps if I unmute. Here we go. You ready? Yep. All right.

So the topic today is Calvinism is useless and dangerous.

I appreciate Ray coming on. The thing about this is when we talk about something being useless or dangerous, obviously, some would say that if it's dangerous, it's therefore going to be useless.

But when we say something is useless, it means it has no use. One of the things

I believe we're going to see when we get to the cross -examination is the fact that I don't believe that Ray knows what

Calvinism is. I know he, in our exchanges that we had in pre -debate, I was trying to get definitions so we do not misrepresent each other's side so that we could not waste your time as an audience who are watching and listening.

Now, with that, I got the definition that you guys heard, which is TULIP and then what the acronym stands for.

So what is Calvinism? Well, in a high level, let's start with the fact that Calvinism is the understanding that God is the one who has saved us, that we have, for those of us who know

Christ, that God did all of the work. It was not our choosing, but God's choosing.

In other words, God did 100 % of the work. If we do any of it, if we add to any of it, the idea then is the fact that we have saved ourselves.

So at a high level, that is what Calvinism would be. It is a focus on the sovereignty of God. Now, I will tell you that I would much rather stand before God and claim that God is greater than he is than to stand before God and say that man is greater than he is.

It is a much safer position to put more trust in God's sovereignty than human sovereignty.

Therefore, to call it useless and even worse to call it dangerous is just plain wrong.

The fact is that what you will see often with people that argue strongly against Calvinism is they don't understand it.

One, they usually will give a misrepresentation of it. The other thing that we have to recognize is that what many people do is try to explain what cannot be fully comprehended by human beings.

God works through us in such a way that the choices we make are as exactly as God intended them to be.

We know that in other areas of doctrine. When we look at the doctrine of inspiration, who wrote the book of Romans?

Some of you will say, Paul. And if I ask it again, you'll realize what I'm asking and say, no, no, no, it was actually

God, right? God, the Holy Spirit, wrote scripture through the human authors in such a way that God gets 100 % of the credit.

Man can take no credit. He did actually write it. Paul chose in his style different than than John's or Peter's.

They had their own style. They chose what they wrote, but God inspired it, meaning that God gets 100 % of the credit.

Now, that's the same thing we see when we talk about sanctification. Who does good works as a believer?

Well, we can't take credit for doing good works. Those good works are something God does through us.

Even though we choose to do good works, those good works are exactly as God intended them to be.

God gets 100 % of the credit. Well, that is the same thing when we talk of what Calvinism is.

It is the belief that God works through us so that he gets 100 % of the credit.

Now, I would argue that what Calvinism teaches when we look through this is going to be, it teaches that human beings are sinful beings, that we cannot, in and of ourselves, we cannot choose

God, that we need God to do something within us.

And so God needs to do the first work. Now, he starts it before he regenerates us in convicting the unbeliever.

So we'll see that. Now, what you end up seeing in this is you see that this is what most people have the problem with.

They want to rationalize something that, in our finite minds, we cannot understand the infinite.

And so this is an issue that we're going to have to wrestle with tonight. But what you end up seeing is

Calvinism, or at least the teachings of Calvinism, that people are sinful, that we can't save ourselves, that we need

God to do the work to save us. That is the gospel. So my opponent is right.

This is really more of the rebuttal. He's right when he says, you don't need to understand Calvinism to become a

Christian. You don't need Calvinism to be able to serve God. Those things are true. And for those of you who know my background growing up Jewish, you know that I didn't understand anything about the

Trinity when I got saved. I didn't need to know the Trinity. I did need to know Jesus is

God. So I had to understand the teaching of the Trinity, even if I didn't know the definition, even if I didn't know all the details of it.

But I had to know Jesus is God in order to be saved. So what you end up seeing is when he says, if we say, well, it's something we don't need.

Well, if we don't need to know that God is sovereign, that he's the one that saves us, then we can't be saved.

So it's not useless. It's necessary. It is necessary to understand the points that Calvinism was teaching in order to be saved.

Now, does this mean you must be a Calvinist to be saved? No, I'm not saying that. Because many people who don't understand

Calvinism, it hasn't been taught. They don't have a wrong definition. But what you end up seeing is those who are regenerate understand the teachings that Calvinism is trying to teach, whether you believe in the arguments of the tulip or whatnot.

Now, one of the things that I'm hoping that we can get to is discussing what

Calvinism actually is and go through this. What we end up seeing as we look at Scripture, here's the one verse that you have to deal with.

Because the real issue is who is the one who believes? Does God choose us or do we choose

God? That is the discussion. To say that it is useless, well, if Scripture says that God chose us first, then

Calvinism would be necessary. At least the teachings of Calvinism. If you don't understand

Calvinism itself and the teachings, here's a verse for you. Philippians 1 .29. Philippians 1 .29

says this, For to you it has been granted for Christ's sake, not only to believe in him, but also to suffer for his sake.

Well, that's a real problem for someone who doesn't, who thinks that Calvinism is useless.

Because it says there that God grants us our belief. Well, if God is the one to grant us our belief, then we cannot turn around and say we don't need it.

We don't have that belief unless God first grants that to us. So when the whole discussion that we're going to end up having here,

I'm sure, will be on this issue of who believes. Now, if you were to ask me experientially, did

I believe in Christ? Yes, my experience said that I experienced me believing in Christ.

Theologically, though, as we just saw in Scripture, God granted me that belief. In other words, God worked through me so that my choice to believe was exactly as God intended it, so that God gets 100 % of the credit.

So therefore, experientially, I believed in Christ. Theologically, Christ chose me.

So you can say both chose in one sense, because God was working through us so that, yes, we did choose, but we can't claim the credit.

That is what you're going to find with Calvinism. It says God is the one who gets 100 % of the credit.

That's what salvation is. That's the belief of salvation. Therefore, my side of this debate will be much easier, and my opponent is going to have it much more difficult, because I only have to show one example of it being useful, and if it's useful, therefore, it's not dangerous.

And I just did that with one verse, just to show that God has to grant us our belief in order for us to believe.

Therefore, it cannot be useless, and it cannot be dangerous. I know I still have a minute left of my time, but that's enough.

Okay, brother. So you're taking your... The time he went over. Okay, that sounds good.

So what we're going to do now is switch to our rebuttals. We have 15 minutes. We're going to reset the clock here.

Okay, so we're going to do 15 minutes on the clock, and Ray, are you ready to argue back on that situation?

Yes, I'm ready. Okay, so we're going to start in 3, 2, 1, go. All right, thank you for that,

Mr. Moderator, and the first presentation. To say that I did not understand Calvinism is...

Also, I would like to say also that you do not understand what I'm saying earlier, Brother Rapaport, and I don't know why you have brought up these things that I also do believe.

Now, I just would like to continue with the rebuttal, and then

I'm going to, again, present my other things that I did not... I wasn't able to present because of the time.

Now, you said God is sovereign. Who of us non -Calvinists do not believe that God is sovereign?

I would like to ask you that question. Do we not also believe that God is sovereign?

Of course, we do. All right, about salvation, we are also...

I don't know if you believe that we are not saved because we're not

Calvinists. I don't think so. Because my friends Calvinists, they affirm that we are also saved by grace through faith without embracing

Calvinism. So, that's not the issue here. God gets all the credit.

God gets all the credit. We also believe in salvation, that God has all the credit, everything.

He has given us the chance to be saved, all of us. So, in salvation, without God, since He is the

Savior, Jesus Christ is the only Savior. Jesus Christ is the only...

He is the only Savior in the Church, then He must have all the credit about salvation.

So, there's no issue about that. There's no issue. I'm talking about regarding...

It's being useless because we can't believe God is sovereign without embracing

Calvinism. Maybe it's a different sovereignty as what you believe, but we believe

God is sovereign. And also, we are saved by God.

We cannot save ourselves. We also believe in that. We believe that we are sinners. We are doomed to hell and we cannot save ourselves on our own by the righteousness of the law.

We cannot save ourselves like that, but it is all to God.

But the question here is that, is there any dangers?

Is it useful? No. As of this time, I still did not hear anything that Calvinism is useless because what you believe now about what you have brought up, like that God is sovereign and about salvation and God gets all the credit, we also believe in that.

So, if we believe in that being a non -Calvinist, so how is it useful to us? How is it useful?

If I can believe these things that you brought up, and then being a non -Calvinist, the point is, why would we embrace

Calvinism? Why is there a need to embrace

Calvinism if we can't believe everything you believe now? We believe in that also.

So, I think that's still useless. So, I thank you for admitting that it's useless to the unbelievers because you don't go out there presenting

Calvinism or the tulip to the unbelievers. You go out there presenting the gospel and that's it.

So, Calvinism is useless and you already agree on that. So, we will go to our side as Christians after believing the gospel, after we get baptized.

My point is, you're going to teach your people as a pastor, you're going to teach your people to do service for God.

Everything you're going to do, missions, giving, evangelizing people out there, and everything that you can do for your service to our

Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, I mean, you don't have to be a

Calvinist. And thank you for admitting that it is useless to the unbelievers.

How about in the believing world? In the believing world, how about in us?

Is it useful? Just give me one benefit for us non -Calvinist children of God, non -Calvinist to embrace

Calvinism if that is useful. So, give me just one benefit for us because again, my point is, you can do all the service to God.

What you believe, God is sovereign and God gets all the credit. He gets all the credit.

And you said for your last statement, I heard that you said about who chose to believe.

In our perspective, that is the reason why that is the dangers of Calvinism because Calvinism believes that the belief of Calvinism is that God will regenerate the elect and then after that, give them saving faith so that they can believe.

So, that's why in article 9 that I've read, the fulfillment of God's plan, it says here, this plan arising out of God's eternal love for the elect.

That's what it says here. So, in that case, since God only loved the elect and Christ, his salvific work on Calvary, that was only for the elect.

Then if you go out there telling people that God loves you and then

Christ died for you and if those are not elect, unelect or nonelect, so you as Christians, we become liars to them because if we embrace

Calvinism, if Calvinism is true, then God does not love all.

He only loved the elect and Christ did not die for that efficiency of Christ's work is not for, was not for the elect, for the nonelect.

So, why tell them that Christ died for them? God loves them because again, you don't know who are the elect.

You don't know who are the nonelect. So, once you say that to the unbelievers, then you become a liar to them because your

God did not die for them. Christ did not die for them and Christ did not love them.

So, that's the point. Also, let me see the other dangers here that Calvinism strengthens the atheist accusation of a monstrous and an evil

God. Why? Because it therefore hinders them, I mean, that belief would hinder them from even seeking the truth or scrutinizing the

God of the Bible or even listening to us because of that false impressions about God. A Pine Creek, he has a

YouTube channel entitled, the channel is Pine Creek. This is what he said.

Everything in hell today is in hell. This is a form of a question to a

Calvinist. He says, everything is in hell today is in hell. Everyone in hell today is in hell today not because of what they didn't do but because of what

God didn't do, right? They said, and the Calvinist said, yes. So, the video entitled,

Atheist, Grails, Calvinist. I think that's the title of the video.

So, that would hinder them and that would support their accusation of a monstrous and an evil

God because if Calvinism is true, people in hell today is in hell because of what

God didn't do not because of what they didn't do. But the

Bible is clear in John chapter 3 verse number 18 that because of your unbelief, because of not believing to Christ, they are condemned already.

So, how can you condemn people for not believing to Christ when it is

God who would hold them, who would hold that faith? It is

God. In Calvinism, the God of the Calvinists is the one withholding that faith, that regeneration to them.

So, man is not responsible at all for not believing. You see the danger of that?

But here as non -Calvinists, we can also reach out to the atheists and there's no hindrance for that because we do not support their accusation that we have an evil and monstrous

God. So, if we embrace Calvinism, that's very dangerous right there.

Another point is that Calvinism is still dangerous that it would also attack the character of God and it would make

God an inconsistent God. So, in the person of Jesus Christ, he told us in Matthew chapter 5 that you love your enemy.

You love your enemy. And also in James chapter 2, he says there that we don't have respect of a person as a believer.

But yet, God himself in Calvinism, there is a respecter of person in salvation.

We don't deny that there is a respecter of persons in his plan, in his choosing for his service, for the service.

But for salvation, there is a respecter of persons. And also, he does not love his enemy because the

Bible says in John chapter 3 verse 36, he that believeth in him will have eternal life, but he that believeth not shall not see life.

But the wrath of God abiding in him. So, God does not love the non -elect and he does not love his enemy.

And also, he does not also, I mean, he has a respecter of persons in respect to salvation.

So, why is he telling us to love our enemy and do not also have a respecter of persons in that case if he is also the one that is having that kind of character?

So, that is also dangerous right there. And also, lastly, is that it is dangerous because it would kill the follow -up or the persuasion.

It's the persuasion to the gospel or to the unbelievers.

So, we're going to persuade people even if they would reject the first time that they hear the gospel. We go out there, all right, we go out there and then we persuade them, present the gospel again, and ask questions or their doubts about it, why they did not believe.

So, we persuade people, but in Calvinism, you don't have to do that. All you need to do is present the gospel and that's it.

You present the gospel and that's it. If they believe, they're elect. If they're not, they're not going to believe it, then they're not elect.

So, why bother persuading people? And also, Calvinism makes a

Christian doubt of his salvation. Why I say so? Because you don't know if you are one of the elect.

And there are people like Derek Webb, now an atheist from being a

Calvinist before, now he is an atheist, and there are people out there that would doubt their salvation.

So, thinking that you doubt your salvation, maybe you're not saved at all or you're not elect at all. So, why bother?

Just like Derek Webb, as I paraphrase what he said, he said that if I am elect, then

I'm waiting. I am six feet under the ground. I'm waiting for God to call me or to regenerate me, even if I am now an atheist, if I'm really elect.

If not, then why bother serving or why bother doing things, those things that the

Christians are doing if I am not elect? So, that's a waste of time. So, I will stay an atheist until God calls me.

To be one of the, or God would also save me.

So, that is the danger of it. So, why we are going to embrace

Calvinism in that case? You see, just give me one benefit for us non -Calvinists to embrace

Calvinism, just one benefit, that we are going to embrace

Calvinism because it is useful and it's not dangerous, then we would embrace it.

But here, there are many things, there are many dangers here to embrace Calvinism and there is no useful, there's no benefit, even one, what you're doing as a

Calvinist, we're doing it also to serve the Lord Jesus Christ, to do things, to serve our

Lord Jesus Christ. So, why embrace Calvinism? So, that is useless and it is dangerous.

I think that's all. Okay. All right, brothers.

Let's get Andrew back in here. I don't know why I'm the big guy on the screen. So, anyway, okay, that's why he came up.

Okay. So, that was a good, right at 15 minutes. So, Andrew, are you ready? I'm going to go ahead and put

RA back in the background there. Sure. Andrew, I'll jump out and let you have at it so everybody can see where we're at.

Let's try that again. I don't know how to do that. You need to. Yeah.

All right. So, go ahead and start that. All right. And we'll make me bigger.

There we go. So, first off, to Ray's opening, I am not a doctor. He referred to me as Dr.

Rappaport. I'm not a doctor. The doctor's sitting right next to me over here,

Dr. Silvestro. He's the doctor. All right. So, you heard in his opening talk about it being useless.

You just heard him in the rebuttal say, give them one example. Well, if he was paying attention,

I gave it right from scripture, Philippians 129. In order to believe, it has to be granted to you.

That is the crux of what Calvinism teaches. So, he says that it's not necessary, that it's not useful for service.

It's necessary for salvation. I'm glad he made my point in the fact that I said, and this shows that he was not paying attention.

Maybe he has a script he's working off of, prefers a monologue. But in debates, it's best if we actually dialogue, if we talk and listen to what each other's saying.

So, I made the point that to be saved, you have to understand the points that Calvinism teaches, whether you believe in Calvinism or not.

And he goes on to argue for the beliefs of Calvinism. So, we say that Calvinism is useless to an unbeliever.

You heard him say this several times. The issue is that in order for someone to become a believer, the teachings of Calvinism are from the

Bible and have to be true. See, the problem is what you have in the arguments he's making.

I'm going to point out some of the logical fallacies that he has done throughout his opening and the rebuttal.

But when you have to make a logical fallacies to make a point, your point is then invalid.

And therefore, it's wrong. And we're going to go through some of that. The argument is not whether it is useful to someone in what they do as a believer.

In other words, it doesn't matter if they understand the teachings of Calvinism for it to be useful.

His focus is on what we do, the service. What you're hearing from me is the focus on God and righteousness.

So, my focus and the focus of the Bible is on God. The focus on man -made religions is on man.

So, recognize that difference as we go through this. But when the focus is, well, it's not useful to an unbeliever.

It is absolutely useful. In fact, it's necessary for that belief to be granted by God. That's what Scripture says.

So, if the argument he has, it's not with me. It's not with Calvinism. It's with God and the Bible.

He says that based on his friends, what his friends say of what

Calvinism is. Well, many people have some differing definitions of Calvinism. That is why during the cross -examination, we're going to have to get into that.

But what we end up seeing is his friends, not theologians. Okay, what does

Calvinism properly teach? It doesn't matter what his friends believe. It doesn't matter.

His friends may not be consistent Calvinists. They may have a wrong definition. He does not understand that Calvinism, the things that Calvinism is teaching are gospel.

Therefore, it's not a question of are they useful. They're necessary. He said that we do not need to know

Calvinism to serve in church. That's true. I said that in my opening.

You don't have to understand the teachings of it and understand all the nuances of it.

But the points of Calvinism are necessary to be saved. It's not a question of is it useful or useless.

It's a question of necessity by what Scripture would say. Calvinism makes Christians liars, he said, in evangelism.

Well, Calvinism teaches that we're all sinners. That we, and you heard him say, and this is what you end up seeing is basically strawman arguments that become easy to knock down.

And if my opponent has to rely on strawmen, then you as a listener know that he cannot actually address the actual teachings of what

Calvinism would teach, which is that every one of us have sinned and violate God's law.

Because of that, only God could save us. God came to earth to die on a cross. God became a man dying on a cross, being buried, rose again three days later.

And that we are commanded by God to communicate that message to all beings, all people.

Why? Well, as my opponent said, we don't know who are the elect. But see, there's a problem when he said that.

Why? Because it is true. You and I, we don't know who are the elect. And so I'm going to share the gospel with everybody because I don't know if they're the elect.

God does. Now, this is the problem that you end up hearing, that you heard with him, is he's actually attributing what we know and attributing that to God.

God is infinite in his understanding. Yes, a non -Calvinist can believe that God is sovereign.

I said that in the opening. Why? Because that's what the Bible teaches.

But when you start to deny the teachings of Calvinism, which teach the sovereignty of God over man, because what you didn't hear him say when he addressed that is, do you believe that God brings us to salvation, or do we, in our belief, have the ability to believe apart from God?

That is the core of the difference with the Calvinist debate, that Calvinists would say you cannot believe apart from God doing the work,

God redeeming us. So we can't. So Calvinism is necessary. Now, he said a very interesting logical fallacy that you may see people that try to do things like this in debate.

You'll see amateur debaters do this. Try to claim that someone agreed with your position when they never said that.

He claimed, I never gave not a single useful point of Calvinism.

Well, I said it's necessary for salvation. It is belief, God granting us belief.

That is not only useful, it is necessary. So when he says, I never gave one, that is a logical fallacy.

When he said that I agreed with his position, that's a logical fallacy.

The fallacy claiming that someone agrees when they haven't actually agreed, what did he do?

He takes something, twists it, and says, oh, see, he agreed by saying something different.

Well, that's a straw man. So let me be very clear. I never agreed that Calvinism is useless for the unbeliever.

The teachings of Calvinism, whether you understand them or not, are what we see in scripture, that it is necessary that God brings us to belief.

That's the issue. Now, you're noticing what he hasn't done yet is he hasn't dealt with the core issue of Calvinism.

He's not dealing with the teachings of Calvinism. He's dealing with emotional arguments, what his friends say, or even worse, what atheists say.

His focus is on service and not righteousness. He says we cannot do, we could do any of the same things even if we don't agree in Calvinism.

So we cannot do any of the services for Christ without belief, right?

I'll go back to the Philippians 1 .29. I only need one verse. That one verse shows that God grants us belief.

That's the whole core issue that is at issue with Calvinism. He said that God, and I hope that you guys will go back to the 48 -minute mark.

I wrote that down because that is really interesting because he said that God regenerating a person is dangerous because that's what

Calvinism is. Calvinism is the fact that God regenerates a person, and at the 48 -minute mark, go back and listen.

He refers to Calvinism, the fact that God sovereignly regenerates a person, and he referred to that as dangerous.

He said that Calvinism teaches that God is, that God does not love all creatures, that God doesn't love all people.

Maybe he never read Psalm 7 .11, that God is angry with the wicked every day, or maybe he didn't read

Psalm 5 .5. I'll start in verse 4. For you are not a

God who takes pleasure in wickedness. No, evil dwells with you. The boastful shall not stand before your eyes.

You hate all who do iniquity. Now, if he says that the

Calvinist is saying that God doesn't love all people, well,

I would say that's what the Scripture just said. You just heard me read it. God hates all who do iniquity.

That's Scripture. So, to make the emotional arguments of, well, God is love, and God's supposed to love all, you should love your enemy.

We do not take something that is written for human beings and attribute that to God. He said that we don't know who are the elect, and that is true.

That's why we preach the gospel to everybody. God does know who the elect are. So, one of the things you end up seeing as we go through this is you saw another logical fallacy when he attributes the teaching of Calvinism to what atheists teach.

He stated that there's people that are going to hell because they didn't, because they believed in, or sorry, they're atheists because they believed in Calvinism, and that because of that, that is the proof.

Well, you don't take Christian teachings from what atheists say, nor do you do it from what your friends say.

You take it from what the Scripture says, and if you're looking at Calvinism, you take a look at what the

Calvinist theologians say. Atheists are not going to be a source for what we're going to look at to define

Calvinism or the effects thereof. Why? Because John makes it clear in 1

John 2 .19, where he says, they went out from among us, but they were not really of us.

For had they been of us, they would have remained with us, but they went out so that it would be shown that they were not of us.

He is making his arguments based on a person that never understood Calvinism because he was never saved.

So, this is where he's getting his source information from. He stated that people are in hell for what

God didn't do. This shows a core lack of understanding of Calvinism. Calvinism teaches that people are depraved.

They've broken God's law. They have a sin nature. In other words, their starting point is hell.

It's not that they're going to hell because of what God didn't do. If God did absolutely nothing, if God never came to earth, guess what?

All of us would rightly deserve hell. That's where we would go. And that would be the most loving thing

God could ever do because he's infinitely holy and infinitely just. There's nothing in his character that makes him required to have to do something for us.

And to put it where somehow if God doesn't give us the choice and make it all about us, somehow he is lacking in his character.

It submits God to man. That, I would argue, is really attacking

God's character far more than Calvinism is, which Calvinism is lifting God on high.

And the non -Calvinist position is saying that man is on high and God has to wait for man to make the choice.

Well, the scriptures, as I already said, the scriptures make it clear that we don't make the choice without God doing the granting.

And so to say that it attacks the character of God because God, we're somehow saying that God doesn't love all people.

Well, God makes it clear that he is angry with the wicked every day. God makes it clear that he hates those who do wickedness.

To say that God is a respecter of persons, that Calvinism makes God a respecter of persons.

God in his infinite knowledge knows who will be saved. We do not. This is a mistake to think that God somehow doesn't know what we cannot comprehend.

He has infinite knowledge. He knows the future things that aren't future to us.

Now, here's the thing. When he says that it's based on the idea that we had to somehow, you know, that we make

God a respecter of persons. The question has to be asked, when was sin paid for?

Well, according to Colossians 2, verse 13, when you were dead in your transgressions and uncircumcised in the flesh, he made you alive with him.

Who did it? God did that. That's the teaching Calvinism right there. Okay. He did that.

He made you alive together with him, having forgiven us of all our transgressions. When did that happen?

Well, verse 14, having canceled it out, the certificate of debt consisting the decrees against us, which were hostile to us.

And he has taken it out of the way, having nailed it to the cross.

I'm sorry, but our choice, God knew who he was paying for back at the cross.

And both of us here and all of you listening are post cross. Every sin we've ever committed is after the cross.

God knew who was going to receive him. He knew who he was going to regenerate.

That's what Calvinism actually teaches. Amen. Amen. Good job.

Okay, let's bring my brother back in, try to level this out, make it a little prettier.

Okay, so we are now at our cross examination. Let me go ahead and reset the timer.

As we said, we're going to do 20 minutes each, two 10 minute rounds.

So we'll set the timer for 10 minutes. And brother Ray, let you go ahead and get started here in just a second.

Are you ready to start with the questions? Yes, I'm ready. Okay, ready in three, two, one.

All right. Thank you. My first question, sir, is that if you're going out there for evangelization or evangelizing people out there to the unsaved, to unbelievers, are you going to tell them about the tulip, the total depravity and unconditional election, limited atonement, irresistible grace, perseverance of the saints?

Are you going to tell them or no? Well, the question that you ask is a non sequitur.

It has nothing to do with the topic of debate. So the issue is not whether I'm going to teach them everything that scripture says.

There's many things I'm not going to teach an unbeliever. I'm going to share with them the gospel. Now, the gospel is the ideas, as I presented, what

Calvinism would teach, that a man is a sinner, that he can't save himself, that God does the saving.

God does the work so that the only way he can be a Christian is to receive

Christ. But God is going to do that work through him. Now, am I going to teach him all of the details of sanctification?

No. Am I going to teach him all of the understandings of the attributes or perfections of God? No. Am I going to get into explaining the different things that we might later learn as Christians?

No. Am I going to talk about logic? No. Am I going to talk about apologetics? No. There's a whole slew of things

I'm not going to talk about. Why? Because to the unbeliever, the issue is the gospel. So am I going to teach him the acronym

TULIP? No. Am I going to explain what TULIP means? Yes, because that's the gospel.

And so your question is, unfortunately, is a non -sequitur. If you don't know what a non -sequitur is, you're asking something that has nothing to do with what we're talking about.

The issue is, is it useless and dangerous? The answer is no, it's not.

It's necessary. And the fact that if I don't talk about something when sharing the gospel has no bearing on all the...

There's lots of things I'm going to not talk about when sharing the gospel. Does it mean that all of those things are useless?

That would be a question I didn't... Maybe I'll ask you when we get to your turn. All right.

Next question is that, do you believe that there's only one gospel and that the gospel is in 1

Corinthians 15, 3 to 4? Yes or no? Let's see.

1 Corinthians 15, 3 to 4, which says,

For I deliver to you as of first importance what I also received, that Christ died for our sins according to the scriptures and that he was buried and that he rose the third day according to the scriptures.

Is that the gospel? Um, yes, we could say that's the gospel, but there's a lot more that we'd have to explain in that.

We'd have to explain that someone, when it says dead in their sins, that we have to explain that they've broken

God's law. That's the sin nature. That would be... We'd end up explaining what we'd call total depravity.

When we talk about the fact that according to the scriptures, he was buried. Well, what does it mean that he was buried?

Why would he have to be buried? Well, we'd have to explain that we rightly deserve hell because we've broken the law and that we don't deserve heaven, but God himself came to earth and died in our place and rose from the dead.

Yes. Is this the complete gospel message? No. No. In fact,

I would argue that if you want a better verse for the gospel, you could turn to 2

Corinthians 5, 21. He made him who knew no sin to be sin on our behalf, that we might become the righteousness of God in him.

Now, this verse would actually show a problem that you had in your thinking that somehow men deserve heaven,

I guess, that God somehow doesn't do something, then people go to hell. No, all of us go to hell.

We don't deserve God's righteousness. So, you mean to say that, Paul, if you're going to go to 1

Corinthians 15, Paul says there that we're overburdened, I declare unto you the gospel. So, you mean to say that 1

Corinthians 15, 1 to 4 is not the clarity of the gospel? Is that what you're saying?

This is not the clear gospel presentation? Yeah, I am saying that because you're seeing here, he says,

I deliver to you as a first importance. He does not say I deliver to you the complete gospel message.

So, for the sake of our audience, I have heard you earlier. You said about the

Calvinism is useless or it's not useful for service.

It's not necessary. This is what you said. This is not necessary for service for us

Christians. So, for the sake of our viewers, can you please again confirm that you believe that Calvinism is not necessary for service?

I'll be clear because I've said several times and maybe you're not understanding. Calvinism is necessary for salvation.

Therefore, you cannot do any service without Calvinism being true. You keep focusing on service and that's not the topic of debate.

The topic of debate is Calvinism, not what people do after they're saved.

You have to actually address the context of the debate. The debate is on Calvinism being useless and dangerous.

You're addressing something that is a red herring, not necessary. You're also doing a little game for folks to realize another logical fallacy where you're changing the terminology.

The teaching, someone understanding all the depth of Calvinism is not necessary for someone to serve

Christ. Yes, I said that. However, be very clear that it's necessary to be saved.

So, the point is it's not the teaching. We're talking about Calvinism, not the theological understanding of Calvinism.

What you're doing is you're jumping on something and you're doing a fallacy of equivocation.

You're taking two words, having two different meanings and trying to use it the same way. You could shake your head no, but that is exactly what you keep doing because the debate is on Calvinism, the teachings of it, not what someone understands of it.

Those are two different things. So, when you keep saying that I'm agreeing with you and I continuously tell you

I'm not, I'm saying Calvinism is necessary for salvation. The teachings of Calvinism are necessary for salvation and that makes it necessary in order to do any service.

You can't say it's useless when I say it's necessary. All right, sir.

I would like to ask you, we as non -Calvinists, do you think we are not saved?

Well, we'll get to that when I ask my questions to see if you're actually not a Calvinist. I typically find that most people that claim they're not a

Calvinist actually are. Most people that claim they're not Calvinists don't understand what

Calvinism actually is. Pardon me, moderator. I would like to hear the answer first and then you can explain two minutes.

Do you think that we are unsaved as non -Calvinists? Please do answer that, please.

Okay, it's an impossible question to answer because there's plenty of people who are

Calvinist and not Calvinist that are not saved and plenty of people who are Calvinist and not Calvinist would say they don't hold to Calvinism that are saved.

They're saved through the teachings of Calvinism even though they don't believe in what they think Calvinism is.

The problem is this is supposed to be a debate on Calvinism and we don't yet see you defining what

Calvinism is, which would make you unable to do this debate. But to answer the question, the answer is very simple.

You have to know the individual person. Now, can I decree anybody saved or unsaved?

Well, I don't know their heart. I can only look at what they're teaching. If someone is going to be teaching things like that we don't have a sin nature, then yeah,

I'm going to say Scripture would say you can't be saved. Someone's going to say that they don't believe Jesus is God. Scripture says they can't be saved.

So it's not me declaring that that would be Scripture declaring that. All right. So you also believe that one can be saved even if they're not

Calvinist. So it's not about it's not about the specific, but you believe that there are also non -Calvinists out there that are also saved, correct?

Okay, I'm going to try this like one more time. I know you're having a difficulty with it.

So I believe that the teachings of Calvinism, whether someone understands them or not, are necessary for salvation.

So I did not understand the concept of the Trinity. It was never explained to me when

I got saved. I did not know the Trinity. Did I need to know the definition of the Trinity to be saved?

No. Do I need to know that Jesus is God, which is the teachings of the Trinity? Yes. And therefore, when you keep doing this, you are playing a logical fallacy of a fallacy of equivocation.

You're using it two different ways. So again, it is the teachings are necessary in order to be saved, even if someone doesn't have the understanding of the theological doctrine itself.

Okay, good job, guys. We're going to stop this round, and let me clear out everything.

Sorry, give me a second. Okay, now it's time for Andrew to ask questions, and we'll be switching it around.

So if you're ready, we'll get started now. Okay, so let me ask some questions.

Why am I getting? All right. I don't know if there's something going on.

I'm getting it. Do you hear an echo? No, you're good. All right, Mr. Justin, if we could just restart the clock, if that's possible, because I'm just throwing off with that.

Okay, ready? Go. All right, so let me ask you a question, Ray. Do you believe that when

Adam and Eve sinned in the garden, when God cursed Adam and Eve and all of mankind through them, did the curse affect their thinking, their emotions, and their volition?

Did the curse? Yes, I do believe in that. I believe that when they sinned,

I also believe that we have a sinful nature because of that. So after the sin, after the fall,

I mean, the human beings like us, according to Genesis chapter six, everything,

I think regarding the teaching of Calvinism, we believe everything about the depravity of men, but we do not believe, we reject the inability of men.

And that's the only point of contention regarding that about the fall, after the fall of men.

Okay, so you do believe that man is enslaved to sin before salvation? I do believe in that.

Okay, so you believe, do you believe that a person enslaved to sin can choose

God apart from God doing anything at all? Can you repeat that question, please? Do you believe that a person who's enslaved to sin can freely choose

God to believe in God, to do something that's right in God's eyes, apart from God doing any work at all?

I would say that he can respond positively or negatively after hearing the gospel.

So that is our contention. We don't believe that man is not capable of responding positively and negatively, because if it's not, then man is not responsible for not believing.

It's very simple. If man is condemned already for not believing in the

Lord Jesus Christ, then he is responsible. Therefore, he can respond positively or negatively.

He can reject or accept the gospel. He can believe or reject the gospel presentation or that gift, because the

Bible says that eternal life is a gift. So he can respond positively or negatively.

That's what we believe. Next question, please. Okay. Do you believe that what you're saying that it is a response?

You believe it's a response? Yes. Okay, good. All right. Do you believe there's anyone in hell?

Again, there's a motorcycle passing by here. Can you repeat that? Do you believe that there is anybody in hell?

Of course. You do. Okay, good. So you believe that the work that Christ on the cross was not applied to every human being, correct?

No, if you're asking me about the application, it is applied only to those who believe, but it is for all people.

It is for all people. His death is for all people. We all have given the opportunity to believe as long as we hear the gospel.

But the application there is there is a condition that God is given if you believe.

If you do not believe, then that application is not for him, for that individual, if he's not going to believe.

So that unbelief would send him to hell in that case.

All right. Let me try asking this question again. Do you believe that God's death on the cross was applied to all people?

It's a yes or no. I think yes.

If we're talking about the availability, but by the way, this is not the question.

Everything that you're asking me right now is off topic. I don't know why the moderator is selecting this, but it's not about the presentation that I'm representing.

Just give us your let me know if you're going to have a point if your

Calvinism is useless or not dangerous. That's I think you're going to ask me what I presented earlier.

I don't know why you're asking this question. Okay, so I'm going to ask for two minutes to be added back on.

I'll ask this question a third time, fourth time, fourth time. Okay, it's a simple yes or no.

Okay. Do you believe that Christ's death on the cross was applied to all people?

Again, applied means if the yes, if applied means to me, it's available for all.

If your application is different, because I believe you don't have another dictionaries and your belief, my application there is yes, if it is available for all people.

Okay, we're going for the fifth time. I'll ask this a fifth time. So just try to answer the question that I'm actually asking, not the question you think

I'm asking. The question is for the fifth time, when Christ was on the cross and he died, was his death applied to all human beings?

Again, I'm answering it also fourth time now. You're not actually answering what

I'm asking. You keep asking, answering something else. That's why I keep asking this. It's a yes or no.

Either his death on the cross was applied to every human being or it wasn't.

So the question is his death on the cross. You've already said you believe people are in hell.

So do you believe that his death paid for people's sins who are in hell? So in its application, did the death of Christ, is it applied to every human being?

Ray, the reason I paused, hold on, I paused the screen just because I want to make sure that you understand the question that he's asking.

The reason is because it has been asked five times and I have reset it. We are at five minutes and 58 seconds on the question and answer.

But the reason I wanted to pause it was to make sure, I haven't stopped at any other time until now for either side, because you guys have been having good, clear understanding, good debate.

But the question he's asking is, and I want to make sure you're understanding it, was the death of Jesus Christ applied?

That's the word, applied to every single person. And so I'm going to start again, but I just want to make sure you understand the question.

Okay. If you're going to ask me regarding application, no, that's not applied to all, but it is offered for all.

Okay. Do you believe that somebody who had their sins paid for at the cross by Christ could lose their salvation?

No, I don't believe salvation can be lost. Okay. Once a person is saved, he is saved eternally.

Good. But we reject your perseverance of the saints. We believe that if a person is a child of God, he is saved.

And that means he has the seal of the Holy Spirit that cannot be taken out from him or that cannot be forfeited or whatever.

But I believe in once saved, always saved. And the reason some people like Ryan here are saying checkmate is because you just confirmed you're a

Calvinist. So I do thank you for that, because what I just did was give you the definitions of TULIP without the language.

And you just agree with that. You don't have to explain that. You have to ask questions.

Yeah. So you believe that it is a response, correct? I do believe that it is a response, positive response to those who believe.

Okay. Can you respond to something without an action? Without something to respond to?

It is still an action. I can respond regarding my, if we are talking about faith.

Yes, I can respond without action because action means something that you're outward, like your hand or work.

But responding by faith, you can respond without working. Okay. So can you respond to something that has no, just have a response that doesn't have something, some sort of, because the issue is, can you respond to God granting you belief?

Or can you respond without God granting you belief is the question? Sorry. Okay. That's why I'm confused with your question.

So I can respond. Yes, of course. I can respond if God would call me by the gospel,

I can respond to accept that or reject it.

Why? Because the Bible is very clear that man is condemned already for not believing.

So how can God send people to hell if he cannot respond positively or negatively?

He is not responsible if he cannot respond. It is like a paralytic man. He is not responsible if you're going to ask them or tell them, command them to run, if he cannot run.

That's so simple. So if man is not capable of believing, how is he responsible for not believing?

Next question. That's a good Calvinist response. I like that. So when we look at this, you're saying that Calvinism makes them doubt their salvation.

Can you point to me some scripture that would support that argument? Again, can you repeat that motorcycle again?

Yeah. You said that Calvinism will cause someone to doubt their salvation. Can you point me to some scripture to support that?

I cannot point out any scripture because Calvinism is not biblical. So I would not buy that question because you're telling me to have that regarding Calvinists having a doubt.

I cannot give you any biblical verse for that because again,

Calvinism is not biblical. Next question. Well, if it wasn't biblical, we should be able to find it in scripture. So when you say that Calvinism causes someone to doubt, where are you getting that information?

What are you basing that on? Okay, I'm basing that on the doctrine of election itself because the Bible says,

I mean, Calvinism says that election happened already before the foundation of the earth, before the foundation of the world.

If you cannot know that, then you can doubt if you are one of the elect or not.

That's very logical to think that you can doubt your salvation because it's also happening to Calvinists and their testimonies.

I'm referring to the testimonies of the Calvinists out there who doubt their salvation.

And there are many like that. So practical application says very strongly that Calvinists also can doubt their salvation.

And I think that is the result of that doctrine of Calvinism which is unbiblical.

My last question for this round. Can you show us how doubt has anything to do with the doctrine of election?

You just tied those two together. What I want to know is how does doubt, which is questioning something, questioning your belief in salvation, questioning that you might be saved, how is that tied to election?

Is it tied because that is the result of believing your Calvinism, the unconditional election?

Why? Because the election happened already before the foundation of the world, even before you were born, but yet you cannot know if you are one of the elect or not.

So doubt is also, I think that is the result of believing that doctrine.

Okay. Well, my time is up. That didn't really have a correlation. That was just two statements slammed together.

But maybe we can get that next round. Okay. We're going to go ahead and start back up. We have 10 minutes on the board again.

And Ray, are you ready to start again? Yes. Okay. Your time to ask questions.

Go ahead. All right. Do you believe that the non -elect are also included in the verse in John 3, 16, that God so loved the world?

The world there, does that include the non -elect? Yes or no? It says

God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, that whosoever should believe in Him should not perish but have everlasting life.

Yeah, that would include all people. Just as it includes all people where it says, for God did not send

His Son into the world to judge the world, but that the world might be saved through Him.

He who believes in Him is not judged. He who does not believe has been judged already because he has not believed in the name of the only begotten

Son. Their belief or their judgment already occurred, but the fact that God loves,

He loved as we see in Acts, He can love both the just and the unjust. He's going to have a different preferential judgment or love for His own children.

We would see that just in nature even, that you will have more of a care for your children than you would my children, who you don't know.

That doesn't mean you don't love my children, and it just means that you're going to love your children more.

So, yeah. All right. So, again, I'm asking in John 3 .16,

that love there goes on to say that because of that love, He sent

His Son, Jesus Christ, to die on the cross. That's salvific love. I'm talking about that verse specifically.

So, do you believe that in that world there means also that God also loved the non -elect?

No. So, you only want me to look at John 3 .16, not 17 and 18? I'm asking you the 16.

I'm not asking 17 and 18. Well, yeah. Then let me answer like Jesus did with Satan and say you're out of a context.

If you don't want to look at the context and the meaning of the passage, then I fully understand.

I mean, I did answer the question, but I also answered it by putting it in its context. If you can't examine the context when you look at Scripture, then you do not have

God's word. You have your word. You're twisting the Scriptures. Sir, I believe that verse 3 .16

of John has also its meaning, even if you're not talking on the context.

Actually, I believe in the context, really. But what I'm saying now, I'm asking you about the world there.

Do you believe the unbelievers were judged already? All right. Again, the world there, there's a world, there's words, scary meanings.

So, I believe that you can answer this question. The Bible says, for God so loved the world that he sent his son,

Jesus Christ. So, again, does that the world there includes the non -elect or no?

And again, if you cannot examine something in its context, then you should not be doing debates with people.

You shouldn't be claiming to be a teacher of God's word, and you definitely shouldn't be claiming to be a pastor.

He says in verse 17, for God did not send the son into the world to judge the world.

Well, you got world right there. And he goes on to say that those people are judged already.

So, you asked, do I believe that God so loved every person? Yes, I answered that, yes. Scripture makes it clear that God has love for the just and the unjust as Acts says.

Now, you're asking me what the world means here, but you don't want to see it in context. The context, this doesn't agree with what you're claiming.

Because verse 18 makes it very clear that the people of the world are judged already.

So, the fact of his love, it is a logical fallacy to try to argue that his love is somehow not having to do with his judgment.

Because the context says otherwise. All right, let me move on to another text.

The Bible says, since God loved the world, then he is not just saying that, but he demonstrated it.

In Romans chapter 5, verse number 8, Christ died for us. Christ died for us.

The us there, the word us, I mean, yes, the word us. Does that include the non -elect?

Yes or no? Well, he says in Romans 5, 8, but God demonstrates his own love for us in that while we were yet sinners, he died for us.

Much more than having been justified by his blood, we shall be saved from the wrath of God through him.

So, the context says that this is those who believe. Again, sir, my question is yes or no.

Oh, the answer is yes or no. You want to corner me, I would like to corner you also.

Oh, yeah, but I'm actually asking you again. All right, hold on.

We're going to pause this for a minute. He is answering the question in context. I'm looking along.

I'm following along. And he's actually answering it in context. And so, he is actually doing what is required of the debate to answer it in context.

So, let's keep it formal, keep it that way, not stepping over each other. And let's keep it in its context.

Okay. Yeah, context. I'm asking if the us there includes the non -elect.

Okay, I will say it again. Excuse me. In the context, the answer is no.

The us there is only believers. Because it's only believers who are justified and saved.

All right. So, believers. Okay. So, are you going to go out there in evangelism?

All right. In evangelism, do you go out there telling people, everyone, that God loved them,

John 3, 16. And then also Romans 5, 8, that Christ died for them.

Are you going to use these verses in evangelism if you go out there to the unbelievers?

I don't usually. No. I have plenty of other scriptures to turn to. I wouldn't take a scripture out of context to apply to someone in a way that fits a teaching that I want to hold rather than the teaching what the

Bible says. I'm not going to take a passage out of scripture just to make it more appealing to an unbeliever.

It's not my job to save them. I have no ability to save them. My words won't save them. All my crafty talk isn't going to save them.

So, I'm not going to take scripture out of context. You can stop your head and shake your head all you want.

But the fact is, I'm going to put scripture in its context and let the scripture define my theology, not let some theology define the scriptures.

And if I was to take the scriptures out of context, as you're doing, and then apply it to them, I would not use passages like this to try to say that God loves an unbeliever.

That's not what the passage is saying. The context in that passage, especially the

Romans 5 passage, is quite clear. But you don't want to look at the context.

Context is the very first thing you learn in hermeneutics. And if you don't understand that, again, you should not be claiming to be a pastor or teacher of God's word.

You must be in context. If you can't stay within context, then you shouldn't be teaching.

The reality is, is that, no, I don't use those verses that way because that's out of context.

All right, sir. Are you going to use, let me, let me, let me use your context thing there.

Are you going to use John chapter 3, the whole thing? Okay, the whole context. Are you going to go out there, evangelizing people?

Are you going to use John chapter 3, 1 to 36, and then Romans chapter 5, 1 to the last verse?

Yes or no? No. There you go. I don't need to.

Because I'm going to go, I'm going to go to a lot of other verses like 2 Corinthians 5, 21, that he who knew no sin became sin, that we might become the righteousness of God.

You see, it's a, it's a logical fallacy. And this is about the 7th or 8th,

I think I've pointed out now, logical fallacy you've done. There, there's no need that I have to use those passages to be able to present the gospel when there's nowhere that says those are the only good way to present the gospel.

I've given you plenty of other verses that I could use. And I don't need to use these, these ones that you have.

And I wouldn't use them the way you're doing it because it's out of context. I don't want to be like a statement in the scripture.

Maybe you do, but I don't. All right. My last question is, my last question is, do you believe that, do you believe that in your evangelism, there, there might be non -elite there listening to you or you've been talking to in evangelism?

Well, I have no idea of knowing who, who would, God is going to regenerate and who he is not.

No, I'm not asking about you. I'm asking if there'd be any non -elite there also. Yeah, I'll, I'll even say even clearer that there's going to be those who are saved and not saved in, in churches that I would preach in.

All right. Okay. Thank you. Good job. Okay. Give Andrew just a second to clear his voice.

Good. Yeah, I'm fine. Okay. So we're going to go ahead and get started with the last, last portion here.

Andrew, go ahead. And then we'll start with the rebuttals after that. All right. So let's get to the main course of this.

The main thing that has to be explained. Can you please define Calvinism?

I have already defined that in my opening statement. I believe Calvinism because I am the affirmative side.

I have put the, I have already laid down the scope of limitation. Calvinism is the tulip, the soteriology of the reform.

About the tulip, the total depravity and unconditional election, limited atonement, irresistible grace and perseverance of the saints.

That's what I'm talking about. Okay. Can you define total depravity, please?

Total depravity as on my own words, right? I'm asking for the definition.

Calvinism in my own words, the total depravity in Calvinism is as far as I have understand that a man is totally depraved.

He is not seeking God. He is doomed to sin. And he is a sinner and he cannot save himself, but he is also incapable of believing.

And that's what we are disagreeing upon. He cannot respond to God positively and negatively.

Or, I mean, he cannot respond positively because Calvinism is he can only respond negatively, rejecting the gospel, but he cannot respond positively.

That's what you teach. No, actually, it's not what I teach. And that it actually be very beneficial for you to understand.

And this is why in the pre -debate, I was trying to get definitions. And you were saying that was making excuses.

But that's the whole purpose of pre -debate is that we are clear. So can you then explain to me what it means that God has to grant us belief in Philippians 129?

I don't agree with your interpretation there in Philippians. Philippians 129 doesn't say

God grants you belief. Here's the verse here. For unto you, it is given in the behalf of Christ, not only to believe on him, but also to suffer for his sake.

I did not see anything there that says God grants belief. What does it mean that God gives belief?

It doesn't say here. You want to read it again? There's nothing in my Bible that says

God grants belief. Okay, I gave it to you in the wording in your translation.

What does it mean that God gives belief? Again, the verse doesn't say there.

Again, I would like to read it to you again. For unto you, it is given in the behalf of Christ.

It is given in the behalf of Christ, not only to believe on him, but also to suffer for his sake.

What does it mean to be given for Christ's sake to believe? It says it's been given for two things.

Not only to believe, but also to suffer. What does it mean to be given for Christ's sake to believe?

Again, there is nothing here in the verse that says what you're trying to say. I think you are reading it.

So I'll ask it again. Okay, you read it again, right? What does it mean for it to be given for Christ's sake, not only to believe, but also to suffer for his sake?

What does it mean for it to be given? Okay, the Bible says it's given in the behalf of Christ.

Given in the behalf of Christ. Do not cut the verse. The Bible says it is given in the behalf of Christ.

What is given? What is given in the behalf of Christ, not only to believe on him, but also to suffer for his sake.

So what is it? Again, what does it mean to be given for Christ's sake, not only to believe, but also to suffer?

What does it mean that he gives us? What is he giving us for Christ's sake there? It says here again, that the verse is very clear that it is given in the behalf of Christ, not only to believe on him.

So it is given in the behalf of Christ, not only to believe on him, but also to suffer for his sake.

So that means that we are not only to believe Christ, but also to suffer for his sake.

That's very normal verse. I don't see anything Calvinism there. Next question.

Okay, so does God give us belief?

Faith is, yes, everything is from God. Belief, I mean, faith, your life.

But it doesn't mean that since God has given those things to us, it doesn't mean that we cannot use it against him.

Just like the atheists, they have faith and they believe in evolution.

They use that faith against God. That is very clear. So everything is from God.

I believe in that, including faith. But it doesn't mean that you cannot use it against God.

Can you define irresistible grace? Irresistible grace is that when

God gives grace to the elect, they cannot be able to resist it. And that's, again, that's the only thing that I can say.

So would that mean that when God gives grace, they would respond? Yes, that is also the meaning, but to only to the elect.

And we don't believe in that because God gives everything. I mean, like faith.

I don't want you to use it at all. Again, I'm still answering. I'm not interrupting you when you're answering.

No, but you're not answering the question. You're running the clock. No, I'm answering the question. No, because I didn't ask you anything about the other part.

I asked you a very specific question. And then you're answering me everything you said, even if I'm not asking you the question.

So do not, do not. All right, hold on, hold on, slow down, slow down.

The point was that he's trying to make is, he asked you one question and you're rabbit trailing.

You're going off to another part. And so just stick with the one question he asked, please. Whatever his reason is for doing it, we need to honor that and not just assume and try to go for, because it is running down the clock.

He's been answering the question also, like what he did before the cross -examination.

He's answering anything that I am not asking him. No, I'm putting it in context. I'm answering in context. He just asked one question.

So let's just stick to that question so that we can carry on throughout the question. Otherwise it just, what he's trying to say is we don't want to burn the clock down.

Yeah. Okay, we want to have a good debate. If you accept the answer or not, then go ahead because I cannot answer you what you want me to answer.

Okay, so are we ready to start again? He's going to ask the question. I'll tell you what we're going to do. Let's put 30 seconds back on the board.

No, no, that's fine. No, no, okay. All right, we're good then. That's okay, hold on a second.

I can take care of that. 336. All right. Just don't tell me what to answer, you know.

I'm not telling you what to answer. No, he's just asking the one question. I'm asking you to answer the question, not go on to other topics.

I asked you whether it is a response. That's all. I keep asking yes or no questions and you're not answering.

Yeah, I already answered that. There are questions that cannot be answered yes or no, sir. You believe in that?

Yeah, but I'm asking ones that are yes or no. I did answer that already. I said yes.

Yes, in the sense that he is giving it only to the

Ilik and that's what we are contending on. We're not agreeing on that. Okay, that wasn't part of the question.

You're assuming what I'm asking the question. That's not how debates work. Okay, so let's get to the next question.

Can you define limited atonement? Limited atonement. What I understand is that the atonement, the death of Jesus Christ is only for the

Ilik and that application is only for the Ilik. And I think what

Calvinism is teaching that his death is available for all, but it's not efficient for all.

The efficacious grace, I think, is because of that death of the Lord Jesus Christ that would save only the

Ilik and that is not for the non -Ilik. Okay, can you define for us unconditional election?

Unconditional election that God elected some for salvation in eternity past or before the foundation of the world.

And that is the definition of Calvinism that God already selected few people.

That's what we call elect. And then after that, he's going to give the

Ilik regeneration or he's going to regenerate them after they hear the gospel and then give them faith so that they can be saved.

So the election is already done before the foundation of the world and that is what the Calvinist is saying.

Can you define the perseverance of the saints? Perseverance of the saints is granted to the elect so that they will be saved till the end of their life and they cannot be lost because they're already elect and they're already saved.

So God will grant them perseverance throughout their life and would glorify them after that.

Could you explain what it means in Ephesians? Ephesians 1 and verse 4 when it says just as he chose us in him before the foundation of the world that we would be holy and blameless before him.

That is so easy to explain. If you're talking about context then please read verse number one down to verse number three.

It says there that is the election that happened there that chosen done by the father chosen in him that is in Christ.

So the us there, chosen us, that is the believers.

So the saints in Ephesus, they are chosen in Christ. So if they're not in Christ, they're not part of the chosen because they were without Christ.

They were aliens in the commonwealth of Israel in Ephesians chapter two.

So the chosen there is not for salvation but for service to walk blameless and holy before him in love.

So that is not Calvinistic in there. There's no Calvinistic in there. Okay, let me just get real quick to repeat.

I want you in what you just said. You said, who is the us in verse four? The us is of course, the saints, the believers.

Okay, thank you. Okay, so we are at our last response rebuttal, right?

Or we haven't made it through all of it. I lost count. We're at the closing.

We're at the closing, that's right. That's what I said, the closing. You know what I said? Okay, so Ray, I believe you get to start with the closing, right?

Okay, go ahead. Hello, how many minutes again?

10 minutes. All right, so my... Can you start the clock there, Pastor Justin? Because I'm muted.

We can hear you. Okay. Yeah, you're good. Right. Okay, so let's start.

So it's already... We're about to end this discussion. And again, there is nothing that our opponent has given us the benefit, just one benefit.

Because again, me as an affirmative here, I have already laid down my scope of limitation.

We are only talking about Calvinism, by the way. So if it is useful or useless to us

Christians and also to the unbelievers. So glad he already accepted that, admitted that already, that it is not useful to...

It's not useful to the... You don't... You are not going out... You're going...

You don't have to go out there teaching the tulip again, the tulip, because that's what

I meant by Calvinism. So you don't go out there teaching tulip to the unbelievers.

I don't know if you're going to do out there, I mean, teach the unbelievers about the tulip.

Now, for service, since again, I have... My first presentation is already clear that we as Christians, we are told to serve the

Lord Jesus Christ. And that is also what is given there in Philippians 1, verse number 29.

The Bible did not say there that God has given us faith to believe.

No, that is wrong. It's given in the behalf of Christ, given in the behalf of Christ, not only to believe.

So that is what we can do also right there.

So I have laid down the danger side and also the useless, that it's useless.

We as non -Calvinists actually... Sir, my opponent agrees or agreed already that there are non -Calvinists that are saved also.

So it doesn't mean that you have to understand everything. Now, I'm not saying about Trinity, the rapture, everything.

No, we're talking about Calvinism or the satiriology. It's all about salvation. So if we can be saved, right?

If we can be saved without knowing this tulip, because I don't know that...

He's saying that 1 Corinthians 15 is a weak presentation of the gospel.

I don't think so. The gospel is the death, burial, and resurrection of Jesus Christ. So that's the result of Calvinism.

You cannot know that it's a clear presentation of the gospel now because you are in Calvinism. So that is one of the dangers there.

And also, I am not saying that I'm using the resources from Calvinists.

No, I did not say that. My point there using the atheist resource is that that would hinder them to scrutinizing or questioning or listening to Christians because Calvinism, they think that Christians, if we are going to embrace

Calvinism, that our God would be monstrous and evil. So that means it will hinder their listening to us if we're going to embrace

Calvinism. I'm not saying that we are getting resources from atheists.

No, there are so many straw men here. You're talking about straw men. There are so many straw men in here.

You're also guilty of that. So it's necessary to be saved. Necessary to be saved?

How is it necessary that even we, as non -Calvinists, if we can be saved? How is it necessary?

The gospel is the death, burial, resurrection of Jesus Christ. He said he is not going to use

John 3 .16 because that's out of context. What are you talking about? Out of context?

We know in hermeneutics that there are also standalone verses. The Bible says,

For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son. And you said that that's out of context for using it?

That God loves the people that because of that He sent His Son Jesus Christ? That's out of context?

And also, He's not going to use Romans 5 .8 because it's out of context. What do you mean out of context?

So when I ask you, are you going to use John 3 .1 -36? He said no.

What kind of... What kind of... You said you're going to give the context.

So why not just use everything there? So I have laid out all this useless...

Calvinism, again, is useless. You will not go out there presenting TULIP to the unbelievers because TULIP is not the gospel.

Again, TULIP is not the gospel. That is not the gospel. The gospel is the death, burial, and resurrection of Jesus Christ.

Paul said he declared unto us the gospel. He said in 1 Corinthians 15, 3 and 4, and Mr.

Rappaport said that is not the clear presentation of the gospel. My goodness. So there you go.

The dangers of Calvinism. So now, it's useless also here to us as believers because once we receive the

Lord Jesus Christ, once we believe in Him, once we are saved, we will be taught to serve the

Lord Jesus Christ. And that's what my point is. My point is in service. In getting people to be saved, you don't go out there telling

TULIP to people. And here in our side, in our camp, for us to embrace

Calvinism, why should we embrace Calvinism if we can do everything that we can to serve our

Lord Jesus Christ? If we are non -Calvinists, stay non -Calvinists. So that is useless again.

This Calvinism is useless. And the danger is you will be a liar because he admitted that you cannot know who are the elect, who are the non -elect.

Yes, that's true. And then if you're going out there evangelizing people, you're going to tell them that God loves them, for God so loved the world, and God died for them because you're going to present the gospel knowing that this person is elect, then you will be a liar to the non -elect because God does not love the non -elect in the sense of sending

Jesus Christ to die for them. That is not the teaching of Calvinism.

I don't know what Calvinism here because I believe Calvinists also, they do not agree in everything.

That's you need to believe in that because that is true.

So regarding salvation, you can be saved not knowing

TULIP because you can be saved by the gospel. The gospel is the death, burial, and resurrection of Jesus Christ, not the

TULIP. That is another gospel. These people that are preaching that the

TULIP is the gospel is a curse according to Galatians 1 .6 -9. You are a curse for twisting, perverting the gospel of the

Lord Jesus Christ. Also, it is dangerous because it supports the accusation of atheists and that would hinder them from coming to Christ because their position, their accusations can be true in Calvinism.

That's what my point is. That is also would doubt their salvation.

Christians would doubt. Why? Because you don't know. People here that are commenting, do you know that you are elect? Do you know for sure that you're one of the elect?

I don't think so. So if you're not one of the elect, then start praying now. Start praying that you are one of the elect so that you will be saved because if you're not, then you're just assuming because you cannot know if you're one of the elect or not.

And also, you cannot also pray for all people to be saved.

You cannot. And going out there, soul winning to people that are unelect that would make you a liar, a false advertiser.

Jesus says, come unto me. So again, this Calvinism is useless and dangerous doctrine.

So why we embrace it? No, we cannot embrace it. The only reason here that our opponent is saying is that Calvinism is useful for salvation.

What? Calvinism is useful for salvation? Can you save if you are going to know the tulip?

But you are also agreeing that you don't have to explain everything about the tulip because you're going to explain the gospel, just the gospel for them to be saved.

So what's the use? So I cannot find anything here useful for salvation.

That is the only reason now that is given to us. We can be saved without tulip.

This doctrine of the tulip, you can be saved because that is not the gospel. That is a perversion of the gospel.

You can be saved. If you know John 3, 16, Romans chapter 5, verse number 8, and everything out there without knowing tulip, you can be saved,

I tell you. So that is irrelevant and that is useless to the people out there.

And it is also useless for us so that we can go out there, do missions, do everything for the service of the

Lord Jesus Christ without knowing Calvinism, we can do it. So why embrace

Calvinism? Just give us one reason so that we can be also a Calvinist like you guys.

So whatever you can say there, but you cannot force that to us. That is useless and dangerous doctrine.

God bless you. Let's go ahead and restart here.

Andrew, are you ready, brother? Go for it. All right. So he said that, and this is a thing to note.

First off, he says, give me one, he wants to give me one reason. For folks who know what

Calvinism is, I hope you enjoyed this. What did you see? In the cross -examination,

Ray agreed with Calvinism, which shows us two things. One, he has no clue what

Calvinism actually is. You heard that as I asked him to define each of the five points and he gave wrong definitions over and over again.

He realizes it's a response. Yes, that's exactly what we believe. He's a

Calvinist, folks. He says it's dangerous. Well, according to him, the rapture is useless and dangerous because we don't share that when we share the gospel.

I have never once shared and nor have I seen the need to share it. Why? Because that's not what

I'm doing in sharing the gospel. So what he does is take two things that have nothing to do with each other and put them together.

He set this up to debate the topic of Calvinism and then what do you see him to do?

He's actually been debating something else throughout the whole debate. Whether you need to explain the teachings of Calvinism when explaining the gospel.

Two totally different things. When you have to do things like that, that is illogical. This is the reason that he really shouldn't be debating.

I'll explain that in a moment. He said that he keeps saying what he understands

Calvinism, what he understands Calvinism. He doesn't go to the actual sources to make the equivocation of what atheists say.

People who hate God and you're going to say that, well, we're going to trust what they're saying is going to count for how we're going to understand scripture.

No, we don't look at the reactions of those who are enemies of God and say that that's going to be the definition.

Notice he didn't engage with the actual teachings of what Calvinism is. He deals with the reaction of it.

He uses logical fallacies versus out of context and has to sit there and answer something that is not the topic of debate.

Showing that he was not prepared. He would have been prepared if he understood the definitions. Over and over again, you heard him claim that I provided, that I supposedly said that Calvinism is not useful.

I will say this again. I know from what I've already heard, the hundreds of Filipinos that have contacted me about this man's behavior, that he's going to claim he won.

He's going to claim victory. And you could see from this debate how he's going to do it. He's claiming I agreed with his proposition.

Although what do you have to do? Twist the meaning of words. That is not how you do things.

That is a logical fallacy, making it invalid. So every time you guys hear him claim that he won this debate, you know he's lying because I never once agreed with the preposition that he's claiming.

He's claiming that Calvinism is useless and dangerous. The teachings of Calvinism, which he actually agreed with, shows you how little he understands

Calvinism. But he actually agreed with the proper teachings of Calvinism. He claims

I agreed with him that it's useful. I said that the teachings of Calvinism are necessary. How could

I possibly say that they're useless? No, I'm saying that they're more than useful. I'm saying they're necessary.

You have to believe in the teachings that God grants, or as the scriptures in his translation says, gives us belief.

That's what we're responding to, folks. It's the fact of what God does in us.

That's the response. That is the gospel message. So it's necessary.

He claimed that I agreed, not only with his position, he kept saying that, and that I didn't provide a single thing useful.

Well, I don't know. What's more useful than saying it's necessary? That's the most useful thing.

The irony is I didn't have to do any of that because every one of you who knows what Calvinism teaches knows that he agreed.

That shows you how little he understands the topic because he didn't even know he was agreeing with Calvinism.

He doesn't even know what Calvinism actually teaches. Therefore, he should not be doing this debate. He says that this is going to hinder someone from believing.

An atheist who hates God is not hindered because of the teaching of Calvinism. They're hindered because of their love for self.

He argues that John 3 and Romans 5, that I won't use them. Well, he said, talk about context.

Well, take the context of the question. The context of the question was speaking of the love of God, who

God loved. That's the context. And in the context that we saw, it didn't support what he said.

Now, here's the thing. People were challenging me, why am I willing to take this debate?

Well, I took this debate for a very simple reason. I wanted to expose that Ray should not be doing debates. In our pre -debate discussion, he was asking, he didn't even understand the difference between rebuttal and a cross -examination.

James White responded. Let me read what James said when asked to debate Ray. He said,

First, your thesis statement is a non -starter. If you understood scholastic debate, you would know that.

Second, what qualifies you to engage in meaningful debate in this field? Further, if you came up with the statement above, the one that shows such ignorance of both reform theology and Islam, why should anyone waste their time?

See, James White recognized, as I exposed here, that Ray doesn't understand the topics that he's debating.

Now, from what I can gather, from what I've seen from all of the Filipinos down there, is that Ray seems to be a very dangerous person.

Several, I mean, hundreds of people contacted me asking me not to give him a platform. I asked him what church he went to.

And the response that he gave was very strange. I asked, what church?

That's a simple thing, because if we're going to do a debate, we're going to address these things. I'm going to have to say what church he claims to be a pastor of.

And here was his response. I'm giving you this so you see the post. Now, I'm going to have to read this with translation.

What church do you go to? His response is this. His response was to post a thing from somebody else.

So asking, what's the church? And what he posts is something that says, malicious accusations without basis.

I went to BBC with Pastor A .R. Futi, mispronouncing it, sorry,

Apologetics last July. I was introduced to him and to the brethren who witnessed also in front of many.

There were no negative vibes there. Pastor of good relationship to them. Accusations like these are barber stories, tall tales.

And I know not the website of his own church. So, sorry, the tall tales, it stops there.

So he didn't know the name of his website of his church, by the way, when I asked him that. That's a very defensive posture.

It makes me believe that everything I've heard about him is actually true. That there seems to be many who say he left the church in a bad way.

That he ended up just starting his own church. Not a church that started and called him, but he started it.

That would be bad if that happened. But the fact if he left the church in a bad way, that would be bad.

The fact that when asking what church he goes to, he gets defensive like that, dangerous. Now, it is kind of interesting because one of the things we had is he exposed, he admitted in our pre -debate, he admitted that he was using ad hominem attacks.

I'll put this up so you can see that as well. You can see here that he ends up saying,

I said, so you admit that you use ad hominem attacks with me. Thank you. Why? Because he said, he ends up saying that.

And what's his response? Here, yes, because we are not in a formal debate.

So he's not opposed to using ad hominem attacks. Why do I point that out? Because you saw that, you saw some of the logical fallacies he uses today.

Now, I know that many think that he's going to be using this to try to claim credibility. Well, the reality is this.

We plan to put the full exchange that we had in the exchange on our website. We will be putting up an article with a link to this debate at Striving for Eternity.

Now, something he doesn't know about Striving for Eternity, it has a very high ranking. I will be making sure that whenever he, and you people look up his name or this supposed ministry, you're going to find this debate, which exposes that here is a man who does not know the topic he is debating.

He should not be debating it. He actually agrees with the very thing that he says is useless and dangerous.

Why? Because he doesn't know what Calvinism actually is. That was exposed just by asking questions.

You saw the tactics he was using of logical fallacies, taking scripture out of context, and then having to claim that I agree with him when

I'm saying over and over again, I am not. What is he doing? He's trying to twist what I'm saying, just like he twists scripture.

This is not a man that we should be having claiming to be a pastor. This is not a man who should be doing debates.

He's not qualified, just as James White, who's done over a hundred, I think over 200 now debates, formal debates, recognized.

So folks, this is a man to avoid. Scripture is quite clear that when you have someone who misrepresents people as he has done throughout this debate, you are to mark a contentious man as he is.

You mark them and avoid them. And my challenge would be that that's what should be done with him.

He should be marked and avoided because he is dangerous to the body of Christ as many of the Filipinos have recognized.

And I hope that any of you that may be thinking to follow him would avoid this because he cannot follow scripture.

And that is my final comment. Okay, I'll let you put yourself in.

Yes, I will do it. There you go. That'll work. Okay, let's go ahead and bring Ray back in.

Let's see. So what we have - Hold up, I'm in there. Okay. Okay.

When I put up your own words and your own posts and I will put up all of them actually is the plan.

Yeah, actually. And so that is the issue. Hold on. Please don't just start talking right over everybody.

We had a good debate. We had a good discussion. We used the information and we had some questions that came in and I tried to write down as many as I could.

I got about 15 questions and I did throw in one of my own.

So I have a question. Where is Tulip in the Bible?

So I'll let Ray, you can answer quick and then Andrew, I'll let you say it quickly.

The random questions have popped up. So go ahead. So I will be answering it first.

Yes, go ahead. I'll be answering it first, right? Yeah, go ahead. Where is Tulip in the Bible? There's no even shadow of Tulip in the

Bible. Not even a shadow, okay. There's nothing in the Bible. Tulip is an invention of a

Catholic lawyer, John Calvin. And, but formalized by the

Senate of Dort. So that is not even biblical. You think it is, but it's not biblical.

And the dangers of it, you see it right there. Claiming to be a reputation, a lot of reputation there and then a very strong argument and everything and seeming lies because he doesn't know me.

He is just listening to the other side, one -sided. So that's the, that is the danger of it because that's not biblical.

Hold on, hold on, hold on. Just try to stick to the question so we can, we got 15 questions.

And if we do this, we can do this for a minute an hour. By the way, how many minutes should we answer? Well, we're done with the, we're done with the debate, but I'm just trying to, let's just carry on and get the questions out of the way.

Yes, I'm answering it. It's not in the Bible. Okay, it's not in the Bible. Okay. Andrew, would you have a response on that?

Yeah, sure. I guess my response would be, again, showing the ignorance. John Calvin wasn't

Catholic and Calvinism was based from Augustine, who got it from Paul.

So total depravity, you can see that in Romans 5, 12 and following. Okay, you could see the irresistible grace that even

Ray agreed to is a response to what? Well, Philippians 1, 29, that God gives to us, not only belief, but also suffering.

So God gives us that. How do we respond to that belief? We respond to that by response.

That is what that is. Whether you can lose your salvation, I would go to the

Colossians 2 passage that all of our sins were at the cross, limited atonement.

I would just go to the fact that there's someone in hell. So it's clearly not applied to everybody.

Any passage that talks about hell and unconditional election. Well, we read the scriptures of Ephesians that even

Ray agreed that he chose us. The us is believers. So, I mean, there's tons of passages.

You can go to, I don't know if he has it on karm .org, but you can go to Calvinist Corner and see

Matt Slick has a whole list of scriptures. That you can see that support the teachings of Calvinism.

Now, let me say, what is it he's doing? Again, notice the play of words.

He's talking about a theology system that was developed much, much later and saying, well, that's not in scripture.

Well, the rapture is not in scripture either by his own way of thinking. There's no verse that says, that defines the rapture.

It talks about twinkling in the eye, but you see, it doesn't talk about it the way that we have developed.

You know, if he's talking to rapture, I'm gonna assume premillennialism, but premillennialism is not defined in the scriptures.

Oh, you can see the teachings of it. Now, notice that difference because that's the difference of this whole debate.

The difference is I've been talking about the teachings and he's talking about something that was developed thousands of years later.

That is a logical fallacy, okay? Because it has no bearing on the actual topic.

It may make sense, good to be able to say, well, see, he agrees with me. No, I don't agree with it because the teachings, the teachings, the actual, what

Calvinism actually teaches, that's the question, not what someone develops later. Okay, so, you know, one side says it's not, it's in the

Bible, other side says it's not. Another question that came up, RA, a question came up from Siegfried Diaz, I don't know his middle name.

He said, do you believe that Calvinists are Christians? Again, there's a motorcycle passing by, please, can you repeat?

Okay, Siegfried asked the question, do you believe that Calvinists are Christians?

I believe that some Calvinists are Christians, but not all. There are so many

Calvinists out there that they're not saved. That is my own perspective because as they do with the scriptures, they cannot understand simple scriptures and they are rejecting the

Bible. I say there in Ephesians 1, verse number 4, that God the

Father chosen us in Him. There's an in Him there, that's the very important phrase, where you're not chosen to be saved, but it's chosen in Him to walk holy and that is sanctification right there.

So it's not talking about chosen to salvation. So I believe there are Calvinists out there that there are most of them, if not all, most of them are not

Christians, they are not saved, they still need the gospel. But there are,

I believe, there are Calvinists right there in the camp that are also saved.

But I cannot point out who or who's not. What I'm saying is there are many

Calvinists out there that are unsaved. And let's go ahead and let's go ahead and put that question straight to, well, hold on, let's put this question to Andrew as well.

Andrew, do you believe that the Arminian is a Christian? Yeah, I already answered it earlier, but yeah,

I would agree with him that there are some who hold to the teachings of Calvinism that are not saved.

I think there's those who would teach, they would hold to the teachings of Arminianism that are not saved, having no bearing on the teachings themselves.

Notice the difference. I think what Ray would have to do is show how Calvinism, the teaching of Calvinism, leads someone to not be saved.

That's dangerous to claim that something taught in the Bible leads people to not be saved, especially when he believes in all five points of Calvinism.

So the point that I guess I would say is, yes, there's people who, of all walks of life, who claim to be

Christian and are not. That's clear from 1 John 2 .19. Okay, so let's go ahead and keep on.

This is going good. Chris Kirby asked the question. R .A., if you want to answer it first, that's fine.

Do you believe that the non -elect are saved as well? First of all, if I'm going to answer it first.

Yeah, go ahead. All right. First of all, we believe that only those who believe will be saved and we don't believe there is.

The question itself is a complex question, or I should say that's illogical because we don't believe there's elect or non -elect.

Okay, so let's ask that question. Do you believe that election is biblical?

Let's ask that. Okay. Yes, I believe election is biblical, but election is for service, not election for salvation.

Please take note of that. I believe election, there are so many people like Jesus Christ is elect.

The Israelites, they are elect. There are election in the Bible, but not the election of the unconditional election of Calvinism.

That is wrong and that is not biblical. I am not agreeing with any of the

Tulip Doctrine as supposed by Mr. Andrew right now.

He's not me. I'm rejecting everything the Tulip there, but election, biblical election is true because we as Christians, we are elected for service and we are also elected to walk a holy life.

So that's election in the Bible, but unconditional election, election for salvation, that is not biblical. There's no one verse.

There is no other. There is no verse to support that, at least in context.

Okay. So Andrew, would you go ahead and tell us about election and maybe talk about the non -elect.

Are they saved as well as well? Yeah, I guess I would say that as Ray had said, when we looked at Ephesians chapter one, he chose us.

That's the word elect. That's where we get that word from. He chose us. The us as he agreed is believers, not service.

It doesn't say he chose us for service, but what he says, he predestined us to adoption. That's salvation.

Okay. According to God's will, not ours. So what you see in there is that that passage, which he agreed is the us is believers, that yes, election is in the

Bible because well, the word is there. It's right there in Ephesians one, four. And so this is the thing.

I mean, when he says he disagrees with all the five points of Calvinism, let's be clear. He disagrees with a straw man argument of what

Calvinism believes. I disagree with his straw man argument of what Calvinism believes, but he and I both agree with what

Calvinism actually teaches, which he doesn't understand, which is why he shouldn't do debates. But is it biblical?

Yes, it's biblical because we have that. And he actually agreed when we asked the questions that the us is believers, that God chose believers in him before the foundation of the world.

It is good to note if you guys go back and rewind that question, Justin, when you asked him the question before you asked him specifically about election, he disagreed with it.

And then you asked him about election and he agreed with it. So you probably picked that up. But folks go back and rewatch that.

Why? Because it shows you that he doesn't understand what he's discussing. These topics are unfortunately above him in he's not understanding the theological points.

He's not understanding the logical points. He's not understanding this whole thing. And so if he presents himself as a good debater and from the experience tonight,

I'd have to say, sir, that you're an amateur at best. Unfortunately, it's not an ad hominem. It's an accurate view of how you've been handling yourself.

Yeah, me too. You're an amateur to me. OK, but before we start in the ad hominem, so let's go ahead.

Question number seven. Number seven says this is for both of you.

What does it mean that something is necessary? What does the word necessary mean? I mean, we need to deal with definitions.

So, you know, what is it? Thank you. I need to answer first,

Mr. Andrew. Well, he was having you answer. Yeah, I'll let you answer,

Ray, and then Andrew can go. It doesn't matter to me how we want to do it, but that's fine. I think you go first,

Mr. Andrew, because you're rebutting what I'm saying. And I cannot rebut. So no, no, no. This is a completely different question.

What does the word necessary mean? What do you understand it to mean? It's a completely different question. You go first,

Brother Andrew. OK, sure. Yeah, I'm going to I'm just going to quickly look it up in a dictionary here to see.

Give you a dictionary definition. Necessary means that as I'm, you know, something that you can't have without.

And so when I'm saying that it's necessary, the teachings, not the not the system, but the teachings, when you say something is you need it to be saved.

So the word for necessary, the dictionary definition, being essential, indispensable.

Let's see. Well, there's some logical reasons, but essentially that's that's the real key for the way we're using it.

Being essential or indispensable. And so I'm saying that since the teachings that we have in presenting the gospel message are necessary, they're essential to what it means to be saved.

When we present the gospel, we are going to say that someone, that as Ray agreed, that our volition was affected by sin.

So we believe that people are sinners. That is going to that right there is going to then be from there.

We go to the fact that we can't save ourself. The fact is, if we claim that that we can do anything, then we belittle

Christ. Anything we say we could add to what Christ did on the cross. When that's when our sin was paid for, if we think we could add to that, even in a response.

But the reality is a response has to have an action. Again, necessity. That's the gospel.

And so necessity means it's essential. And therefore, if it's essential, it cannot be useless.

Ray, do you have a response to that? Or you want to answer it? Just just say, you know, what do you what do you believe?

What is necessary mean to you? Yeah, necessary is absolutely needed or much or required.

So Calvinism, the tulip is not necessary. It's not required. It's not needed for someone to be saved.

And also for Christians to live a Christian life. It's really useless. It's unnecessary.

It's the other way around. So when you are saying that it is necessary, that means that is a perverted gospel.

The gospel is. OK, so I'm going to ask you about that. I want to ask a question. So when you say that it's that's it's not necessary, are you talking about the theological system that was developed years, centuries later that you are calling

Calvinism? Or are you talking about the teachings that Calvinism believes in? That tulip, the systematic soteriology tulip is the one

I'm talking about. I'm saying that in my opening statement already. That is the useless that is not needed, that is not required because that is not the gospel.

No, no, it's not needed. It's not needed because you can explain the gospel without using the language of tulip, correct?

Even the teaching, not only the language, but the teaching that man is incapable of believing God already chosen.

So that's something to be said. Everything we believe in the teaching itself. That people are sinners.

Is that is that sinners? That is my position, even if I am not a Calvinist. OK, well, you actually are a

Calvinist. We've already established that you just what Calvinism teaches. So the belief that men are sinners.

Is that essential? That's biblical. That is not Calvinism. The fact that we that we have to respond to God.

Is that is that? Is that useless? We have to respond to God.

That is not Calvinism. It's not Calvinism. That is in the Bible, but Calvinism.

OK, so I'm talking about the specific tulip. OK, so you're saying the word you're saying the word tulip is not in the

Bible. Yeah, not the word. I'm not basing on the word, but the the doctrine itself.

OK, so so the next question is this. Do you believe that men are dead and trespasses and sin?

Of course it's in the Bible. It's not tulip. OK, Andrew right there.

So that you will not I know you will not misrepresent me. Again, I believe man is sinner.

He cannot save himself. He's doomed to hell because of the after the fall.

And then he cannot save himself. That is not only the tulip. The tulip is there is there should be.

There must be regeneration. Regeneration precedes faith. And then man is not capable of believing unless God would regenerate him.

That is, do you do you deny that? Yeah, I deny that definition. Yep, I don't believe.

That regeneration precedes faith in Calvinism. You deny that, correct? Yeah, you're again.

You're exposing this. You really should have been instead of being so ready to attack me, you should have been listening to what

I was actually saying. And then maybe you would have had a better debate and you wouldn't have looked so embarrassing.

But the reality is I made that very clear in the opening. When I said that that God were this doctrine of superintending

God works through people so that the very things they choose are exactly as God intended them to be. So that's it, sir.

I, I am misrepresenting you. If I mean, I am not debating you tonight.

If you deny regeneration precedes faith in Calvinism doctrine.

So I'm sorry, you're not the one that I'm debating right now because I'm debating other side of Calvinism.

Ah, so you're not. There are Calvinists who believe regeneration precedes faith, like R .C.

Sproul, like James White. They believe regeneration precedes faith.

Logically or chronologically? Logically, everything that I'm saying right now.

They, they believe regeneration precedes faith. If you want me to say it, then yes, again,

I'm sorry if I misrepresent you because. No, no, no, no, you, you actually, no, you, you actually, it's, it's good.

I'm glad that you said that because you disagreed with them because you had said that you believe that it is a response.

Yeah, that's exactly what they believe. It's what I, what I'm saying in response is the faith that I responded to the gospel.

That's my response. It's not you. We have a breakdown here. If you are claiming that it's your response, that's it.

But I respond to make this stuff. OK, all right, we're doing good.

Let's just try to keep it on focus here. So question KT and Jesus, a wonderful sister who's been constantly responding and talking in the chat and everything.

She asked the question, do you believe that you keep yourself saved or are you trusting in God to keep you saved?

No, I, I believe that the salvation is already there. I don't have to maintain my salvation because salvation means to be born again in the family of God.

And that cannot be taken away from me. And owning also receiving eternal life.

God has promised. I don't have to retain it myself. I don't have to work for it. It's already there because God gave it and he will not he will not take it back.

And also salvation is a sealing of the Holy Spirit. And that cannot be taken away from me.

So after I am saved, I have to do the things that I have to serve my savior, do the things that are pleasing in sight.

So that's the only thing that I need to work out for. And that is for my rewards.

And that is not to retain salvation. OK, so just just so we're clear, you believe you believe that that you believe in salvation, that if you are saved, you are eternally secure, right?

Of course. Yeah, he he said that earlier. I just I just wanted to clarify what was the question. The question came up.

So is God a monster if he does not save everyone? No, God is a monster if he will only save the other sinners and not even given a chance to other sinners.

He would be a monster and evil God for that. Can I ask? Can I ask you a question? Why does God have to give us a chance?

It is because he is giving a given chance to the elect. Why God will not give a chance to everybody.

That's it. That's that's that's that's good. Why is giving chance to the elect?

And why not give a chance to all that would be make that would make God injustice if he's not going to give chance to everybody.

Can you give some scripture that says that God gives a chance to everybody? Of course, the

Bible says he is not about he's not a respecter of persons. That's the verse. That's out of context.

That has nothing to do with it. I don't know if if you will disagree with that.

That's OK. OK, I can agree to disagree. Next question is, can you point out the standalone verses that you talked about?

So many standalone verses point out standalone verses. Genesis. So let's go back to Genesis chapter six.

There is a standalone verse there. Um, it's not really out of context, but it's if you think that is that would be out of context.

Also, in that sense, because this is this is not under context here, like Genesis chapter six, verse number.

There were giants on the Earth, it says there. I don't know where is the verse here.

Like verse four, there were giants in the Earth in those days. So that's not that's not a context.

Context is all about man, about their their their wickedness, and God is going to judge them.

But there's standalone verse there. It says there is a giant that is out of context in the sense, but it is there.

That means that there's an introduction for the giants that we believe that there are giants because of that verse.

But we can believe that verse without even taking everything in the context. We can believe in that standalone verse there.

I'm not explaining. I'm not following you. I'm not following. I don't understand what you're saying. No disrespect meant there.

I just I don't understand it. The Bible says the context of Genesis chapter six is all about man having.

Let's see. It says here that the corruption on the Earth and then God is going to judge the people through the flood and through Noah.

But in verse number four, there's a standalone verse there that says there were giants in the

Earth. So what has what is, I mean, the giants in there, what they don't have to do there.

I mean, God does not. It's not in the context itself. So it's already mentioned there that there were giants, but it's not about the context.

The context is about the Earth. The context, the context is that they were the offspring of the sons of God and daughters of men.

No, that is not. I also disagree with that. We can have the debate about that.

But just read the chapter. Yeah, I read the chapter is there that man getting married to so many people.

But it says there there were also giants on the Earth. So that is not the context in there.

But not to mention, also in Proverbs in the book of Psalms. Hold on, hold on, stop, stop, stop.

By the way, do you hold on? Hold on. Hold on. Wait, wait, wait. If you if you keep if you keep arguing over me,

I'll just mute you. Listen, don't do that. OK, we're trying to stick with the context, OK?

The issue is you're saying that there are standalone verses and several people had asked for you to demonstrate standalone verses.

That does not demonstrate a standalone verse. What that means is you don't understand what the passage is saying.

And I've I've done a very good job of saying anything else. Hold on, hold on.

Please stop me. I need to answer and you. So anyway, I just muted you because I told you

I'm not going to have you just screaming over me. OK, hold on. This is talking about a passage and I'm asking you to show what the people are asking you to is to show how any of these verses are standalone.

Now, I'll let you go ahead and do that. But I'm just asking, can you make it clear? Because your answer was not clear at all.

All right. Again, if I'm going to answer you, you don't have to agree with me. No, no.

I'm asking you to answer the question. So my my my verse there, why

I'm saying I'm giving that verse as a standalone verse is that it's not on the context.

Giants has nothing have nothing to do with about God destroying the.

There are some notion about that. That's that's what Mr. Andrew said that that is the descendants.

I disagree on that. So giants there is just mentioned by God to let us know that there are giants.

It's about to introduce the Anakins. So the giants there has nothing to do with the context of people being corrupt and God is going to judge them by flood.

There's nothing to do. It's not the giants has nothing to do with that in that sense. But God has given us that understanding that we can understand that verse alone that there are giants on the earth without without.

Can you please show me in all of the verses that points out about the giants, even about who are they?

You cannot. But the Goliath was a giant. OK, so again, you can disagree with me and we can have a

Bible disagrees with you, sir. Sorry, Andrew, do you want to add to that or do you want me to just go for the next one?

I didn't even understand what he was attempting to say. It was. Just tell me that you will deny in the

Bible that there are standalone verses. Just tell me. Yeah, I disagree with that. The Bible. You know why? Because there weren't there were no verses in the

Bible for like 800 years. There were no verse numbers. What's not to ask?

Nothing to what? What has to do with the verses? I'm not talking about the verses, but the context. Yeah, what you're doing is what's called taking something out of context.

And if you have to do that to make an argument, your argument is wrong. No, I'm not. I'm not saying that.

The issue there is, is there any standalone verse in the Bible? So you you disagree.

I mean, you you do not believe that there are. No, every verse. Every part of the

Bible has a context. So in Proverbs, everything is in context, correct?

Yeah, there's a context there. And those are individual Proverbs that fit into a context.

You can't, you can't. What are you saying? Well, if you'd stop talking over me, you'd find that out.

Let's move on. OK, so the next question is, let's see, would you use

Isaiah chapter 19 to witness to an unbeliever? And if not, why not? No, that's too much.

We're going to use the Roman Road, John 3, 16, Romans 5, 8, Revelations 21,

Revelations 20. So that's too much to use Isaiah for that.

So all I have to do, I will have to use is even the book of Romans itself.

Would you use the entire book of Romans? Let's go and switch it over there. Just one or two like.

Well, the reason I'm asking, and this is my question, by the way. Yeah, I'm guessing this is your question. Not the entire book of Romans.

You just have to, for example, Romans chapter 10, verse 9 and 10 and 13.

OK, and the reason I'm asking the question is, let me respond because I think I want to just see if I'm right.

OK, go ahead. And by that, if we don't use Isaiah 19, then Isaiah 19 is useless and dangerous because it's not needed.

No, I'm not saying that. Hold on, let me finish.

If you're talking over people, nobody can understand what's being said. Your whole argument has been that it's useless and dangerous if it isn't used when we're sharing the gospel.

Yeah, it's only the gospel that's been your argument. You can't say no now. That has been your argument for the last hour.

Let me respond. Yes, please respond. You misunderstand me because I'm saying that Calvinism is useless if you are going out there in a soul winning area.

I'm not telling here that it's useless if I'm not going to use the verse.

OK, so then is Isaiah 19 useless in presenting the gospel?

Because what I'm saying, Calvinism is useless to the unbelievers.

You don't want to go out there telling them about Calvinism or the tulip in soul winning area.

Sir, I'm just going to have to say every single word of God is profitable. Of course.

No, no, no. You keep saying that this is useless. That is useless. Every word of God is profitable.

It's not the word of God. OK, so here's the thing. They say the word of God is useless. Hold on,

Ray. Here's the thing I said to you earlier. OK, and I want you to see either either. I'm not.

I'm really not sure right now if you whether you are so tied to winning a debate that you're not even trying to listen to what's being said or communicated.

And yes, you sir. OK, you could. You could do that. It'd be a fallacy, but. That can be accused to you, sir.

Except I haven't misrepresented you. So here's the thing. You're misrepresenting me all the time. You you you just haven't presented any examples like I did.

So here's the thing. So so making a claim without support is just a baseless claim.

So here's the thing. When you keep saying that it's it's what's useful for presenting the gospel, what he's doing with the

Isaiah 19, what I did with the rapture, it's the same thing. All we did was replace a different teaching or different passage of Scripture.

No, that's all we did. All right, you you said me. You said earlier, can I that you are not going to use

John 3, 16? Can I finish Romans 5, 8? I guess I can also make you that also use against you as useless.

Hold on. And that was the reason I asked that question was just so it's clear.

If he doesn't use John 3, 16 or he doesn't use all of John 3, 16, the entire thing that it's then he's he's an error.

And that's why I asked if you use all of Romans 9, all of Isaiah 19.

You see, my argument for this is this. I can use any section of the Scripture at all.

And it's all profitable. I don't have to. But but your your straw man here is to say, but your straw man is to say that if he doesn't use the passages, you're demanding, then he's having problems.

Mike Weavey actually asked the question. Did you say that Andrew is anathema and is in danger of perverting the gospel?

Because he heard you say it. Actually, I heard the same thing. So that was the next question. Did you say that?

And would you say he's he's anathema for perverting the gospel? I would say yes.

If he say that Calvinism is the gospel that that's anathematized. Charles Burgeon is anathema as well, too.

I just want to make sure. But see, but hold on. Here's the thing. Again, we get back to definitions, which he doesn't like.

Right. See, I'm defining Calvinism by the by the teachings, not tulip.

Yeah. OK, I'm not saying it's I'm going to go on the street and say you have to believe T stands for total depravity.

That's what you're saying. And so what folks, what I hope you do is watch what he's done. Go back and rewatch this or re listen to this.

And take notes to see how many times Ray has contradicted himself. That shows you how little he understands what is being said and what the issues are.

OK, the fact is that when we look at this, you're saying

I'm anathema, not for anything that the Bible doesn't teach. Show me one thing that I've said that I haven't that I can't they can't be supported with Scripture, because the reality is you, whether you realize it or not, when

I in the cross examination agreed with Calvinism, you just don't understand what Calvinism is.

You agree with my position. So guess what? If I'm anathema based on my belief, so are you.

No, I'm not. I'm not agreeing you. It's just your assumption. Well, go back and re listen, because I asked you the yes, no questions.

That's why I wanted yes, no questions. Ask you very specific questions that were very specifically defining how

Calvinism is defined. And you agreed with each five points. You just don't know what the five points actually are.

You just know, given what I understand. And then I did not say that that's what

I believe. I you made me. You made me define what Calvinism is on my own words.

So I gave you about. I agreed with those

Calvinism that is useless and dangerous. And that is great. Do you know why I did everything?

Do you know why I did that? It's a very specific reason, right? The first thing I did was I I used.

I asked you whether you believed and I went through all the five. Hold on.

Hold on. We're not. Are we going to be here more? If you want to be done, we can be we can end it and I'll just drop you out.

I mean, we can go ahead and have a show without you in it. I mean, that's fine. But I was trying to actually let you guys talk about the questions and talk about it respectfully.

Everything that I'm saying here is everything is I'm hearing right now is all of assumption.

And I think we are going to end the debate.

If you want to end it, you can leave any time. We'll keep talking about you because we're going to keep exposing what you did and you can sign up.

You're welcome to do that. But are we not going to pray to end our discussion? Well, we're we will.

But, you know, I know that allow me to point this out to you.

And I understand. I understand. So what I did with in the cross examination rate was I defined

Calvinism without using the labels. And you agreed with all five points. Then I asked you for the definition.

And what that exposed is this. You agree with what Calvinism actually teaches and you don't know what it actually teaches.

If I agree a little of it doesn't mean that I agree all. OK, the fact you keep talking over me.

So so let me let me let me do this. I want to I want to point one thing out real quick. Ray, just so we know, you have complete permission to use this in its entire context, but not to rip it apart and do things like that.

This is the intellectual property of striving for eternity. And so you're welcome to use this as is without chopping it up, but not to just slaughter it.

OK, so just to make sure you understand that. So I want to define something for the audience. And this is something that I wanted to expose that this is what you saw tonight.

It's called the Dunning -Kruger effect. Let me define it. The Dunning -Kruger effect is a is a an argument that's made when someone overstates their own ability and has a high view of of what they're able to do and underestimate their own ability.

Or so, in other words, they claim they know something that they're actually ignorant of. Now, what you what you heard tonight was

Ray agreeing with when I define Calvinism. He actually agreed with what Calvinism actually teaches.

A small part of it. And and then when he got when he got to defining each of the five points, he misrepresented all five points.

And so that is a great example of the Dunning -Kruger effect, because Ray actually claims he could teach

Calvinism. Now, he could teach it incorrectly. OK, the reality is most of you in my audience here know that I do not claim to be a

Calvinist. I don't use that label, but I can still teach what Calvinism. I don't have to be a Muslim. I could argue, make arguments for Islam.

Why? Because I understand what they teach. One of the things that I'm known for, you know, my book,

What Do They Believe? I go around the world. I can debate with Muslims. And one thing they've always said,

I don't misrepresent what they say. Same thing with Mormons. Same thing. Well, Jehovah Witnesses don't debate.

But, you know, when I go around and speak with Jehovah Witnesses or any of those groups, one of the things is they say

I don't misrepresent them. Why? Because I actually try to understand the positions that people hold.

That is not what you saw here from Ray tonight. He didn't even understand what my positions were. Now, I will admit that I had the disadvantage because I tried listening to his debates and they weren't in English.

So he has the advantage that there's plenty of stuff he could read on me, plenty of teaching out there from Striving for Eternity, from our courses that are out there.

He had the ample opportunity to see what I actually believe. I've taught on these things plenty of times.

Instead, as you see, that didn't happen. This is a perfect example of the Dunning -Kruger effect, folks, is when someone overemphasizes their own ability, that they think they have a high ability for something that when it's given to the task, they're not up to it.

And that's the reason James White didn't want to do this debate. This is the reason that so many said that I shouldn't do the debate.

Can I respond to that about James White? Yeah, hopefully what you guys see is that this is the impression that everyone seems to have that from the hundreds of people that contacted me, is this is a man who thinks highly of himself and wants to get publicity.

If that's the case, it's not going to work in his favor. But what we did see is someone who doesn't understand the issues that he's debating.

About James White, because James White, that's the response of James White. Why?

Because he thought that I was the one posting about Islam.

You can talk to James White for this. But if you read what James said, he said the thesis statement is a non -starter, right?

Yes, because the post there is about Islam, Calvinist.

If you read what he says, context matters. He says further, if you came up with the statement above.

So you're saying he did think that you came up with the statement above. Obviously, he's not because he's asking the question if you came up with the statement above.

It's the point that he's saying he doesn't believe, he doesn't know if you came up with it. So what you just said... Yeah, that's why

James White would not debate me because of that. He thought that I was the one making the statement above.

But I was saying if you did. He said if you did. So he doesn't know if you did.

So Ari, I'd like to suggest real quick that if you want to debate

Dr. White, call him up and set up a schedule to debate him.

He's not in here right now, but we are here to have a discussion with you. That's why we brought in Pastor Nilo.

Brother Andrew, you want to introduce Pastor Nilo for a moment real quick? Or I can let him introduce himself.

But Pastor Nilo is a pastor down in the Philippines. I can't remember, Pastor, did we meet when

I was out there preaching in the Philippines? Maybe I attended one of the...

with you and Dr. Lawson, maybe? No, I wasn't with Lawson. I was there with Justin Peters.

Ah, yeah, yeah. I was there in North SM. Okay.

Yes. So I wanted to bring you in. You had some questions. Yeah, I have a question.

Because, Brother Ari, Philippians 1 .29,

it's very clear. I can understand it. God gave two things to us believers.

One is belief, and the other one is suffering. And I think when you explained it, it is not...

I think you did not do justice to explaining it.

God gave us two things. It is not only belief. It means

He gave us belief, but not only belief, but also to suffer. Do you believe that?

Do you agree with me? In the sense that God gave everything, not only us.

God also is giving suffering to other people, if that's your understanding of the verse.

But it says there, it is given in the behalf of Christ. It's not about your

Calvinism, you know. You're taking, again, this verse out of context because the context is for believers, we are given in the behalf of Christ, not only to believe, it is given on the behalf of Christ.

Not only to believe on Him, but also to suffer. The Bible did not say that you are given the faith to believe.

No, that is... In the sense that everything is given by God, according, I mean, even your life.

Let's say faith. Yes, I believe also that faith is a gift from God, but it's not given unilaterally to each,

I mean, to selected people. No, just like God giving life to atheists, is giving faith to atheists, but it doesn't mean, again, that you cannot use it against God.

Ricky from G220 Ministries asks it this way. So do you believe that unbelievers suffer on behalf of Christ?

You said that unbelievers suffer from that verse. No, what I'm saying is also unbelievers, since they are suffering, that is also given by God.

It's not about the verse. The verse is all about the same. The verse is all about the church.

So if it is all about the church, it doesn't mean that you don't have the capacity to believe or you cannot respond to believe.

No, that is not biblical. Man can respond positively and negatively because he is responsible for not believing to Christ.

If he is not responsible, that means he is incapable. So Calvinism is wrong to think that man,

I mean, man is, or the elect has given faith so that they can believe me.

So that is injustice, giving faith to some people, not to everyone.

When God says that he's willing to save all, not willing that any should perish, so that is not biblical.

Then you can debate about that or you can disagree with me about that issue. Thank you, brethren, for taking me in.

I think I will have a personal debate with Brother Ari in the future.

Yeah, but just be warned that he claims you'll agree with him when you don't. No, I know how to handle it.

Thank you, thank you. Again, if you're going to debate with me regarding,

I am still open for that, but the same topic, I will not be debating any letter

T, letter U, like that, based on time. So the same topic, I am still challenging because as of this time,

I have never seen useful about Calvinism if we are going to embrace it.

Again, I disagree. Listen to what he just said, folks. You just got it. I don't believe in Calvinism.

That is a lie. Folks, listen to what he just said. He's never seen what we've spent a whole three hours discussing.

He's never seen it. No one's ever presented it to him. The fact is that what he's doing is a fallacy of equivocation.

When he says the word Calvinism, he uses it two different ways for however he wants to use it to win the debate.

Folks, a man who's focused on winning a debate rather than truth is not a man to follow.

Okay? That is your assumption. And that you're entitled to - No, no, no. That's a fact. That's a fact. It doesn't matter who it is.

You don't know my heart. You're right. I do see the logical fallacies.

I do see the logical fallacies that you've been doing. I do see the fact that you aren't listening.

You haven't listened at all. Excuse me? What logical fallacies specifically?

Well, I've shown the strongman. I've shown, I just mentioned one if you were listening. This is part of the thing. You're not listening. I just explained the fallacy of equivocation, which you've done throughout this entire three hours, where you use the word

Calvinism two different ways. So when it's convenient for you, use it one way.

When it's not, use it a different way. That is a logical fallacy. It's when you use one word, two different meanings.

This is why I asked you for definitions. Because this is the thing that people do.

Use the strawman over and over and over again. Now, here's the thing. When I say these things and you go back and listen,

I support them with examples. You did not. You just make claims. This is the sign of someone, and I'm sorry, you're right.

I don't know you. But this is the sign that people have of a prideful person. Someone who just wants to win and see themselves.

Are we going to end this because we can accuse back and forth? Well, the thing is,

I'm trying to help you. Are you trying to help me or I have to leave?

I'm trying to help you right now. Because if you leave automatically, because we're accusing back and forth, and I don't have all day to accuse you guys.

Oh, no, I rest assured that you can do that in a monologue afterwards. I can also use it against you.

Can I close this up by asking you a question, R .A.? I do want to ask you. Okay, hold on.

Just wait. Hold on. Let's breathe for a minute. And I want to ask a question. Can you tell us the gospel of Jesus Christ and tell those that are in the audience, what must they do to be saved?

Yeah, right. So as the Apostle Paul says, believe in the Lord Jesus Christ and also be saved.

That's the simple answer of the Apostle Paul. But if you're going to ask me to explain it to the unbelievers, maybe there are unbelievers.

Calvinists are right there, are right here listening. So I would like to explain to them the gospel that we are all sinners.

And Romans chapter 5, verse number 12, by one man, sin entered into the world.

I'm going to use it. And then also going to Romans chapter 3, verse number 10. As it is written, there's no righteous, no not one, to 12.

And then also I'm going to use Romans 3, 23. We all have sinned and come short of the glory of God.

So I'm going to use it. And Romans 6, 23, that the wages of sin is death.

And there are two kinds of death, a physical and a spiritual death. And I'm going to explain Revelation chapter 21, verse number 8, the second death and in the lake of fire.

And that is the ultimate destination of man because of sin. And after that,

I'm going to explain to him the heart of the Bible, John 3, 16. God doesn't want you to go to hell.

He loves you very much that he sent his son, Jesus Christ, to die on your stead and paid your sins.

And after that, I'm going to read again Romans 6, 23.

But for the wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord. No, you cannot save yourself because you're doomed to hell.

So you need to trust the Savior and Lord Jesus Christ in your heart. Romans chapter 10, verse number 9 and 10.

And then I would ask him to, this is what you're going to do. Letter A, admit that you're a sinner and repent.

And then letter B, believe the Lord Jesus Christ. That's the answer of the Apostle Paul. Believe that he is

God and he can save you. It's not you. Believe means trust, trust him that he died for your sins, buried and rose again the third day according to the scriptures.

Then trust him that his work in the cross can save you. That's it. That's the gospel.

So, Justin, let me try and take a shot at this because the gospel. I would take the questions from the moderator now.

Justin, the gospel is not a presentation. Let me take a shot at sharing the gospel because if I was unsaved, I don't know that I'd follow any of that.

Basically, it's simply this. Every single one of us have broken God's law. We've lied, we've sinned, we've stolen things, we've coveted.

We can look at God's law and know that we're guilty before infinitely holy, infinitely just God.

And because of that, there is an infinite consequence that comes with it. Because God is so holy that he has a consequence for those who break his law.

And that consequence is called the lake of fire with burning and brimstone forever and ever.

You and I cannot save ourselves. There's no good works we could do. We're not going to be a good person, and our genealogy doesn't save us.

What saves us is what Christ did 2 ,000 years ago on the cross. Being truly

God, he is an eternal being. Being an eternal being, he could pay an eternal fine for more than one person.

He could pay it for all people. And his death on that cross is the payment of sin. Being a man, being truly man, he can pay a fine for human beings.

He is a perfect sacrifice because he never broke the law. So being God, he can pay the eternal fine.

Being a man, he could pay the fine for human beings. So that's what makes Jesus Christ unique.

Once he died on that cross, the payment was made. Now is the offer of grace or mercy.

Because the fact is that the justice, and this is why only within Christianity do you have a

God that is both just and merciful. Because in his justice, he punished fully the full weight of sin.

He took it upon himself. And now that it's been paid, he can offer mercy to those who do not deserve it.

And so we receive Christ. We have to respond. True. We respond. We respond to what

God is doing in us. Because God starts with the Holy Spirit convicting us of sin, helping us to understand the guilt of our sin.

And then he works through us so that we will respond exactly as he intended us to respond.

God gets 100 % of the credit. We take none because we are wretched sinners who are undeserving of his grace and mercy.

And so the reality is that if we believe that Jesus is

God and turn from our sin, not sins, sin, singular, we're turning from pride.

We're turning from trusting self and what we could do and turn to Christ. Then we could have eternal life.

But just saying a prayer doesn't do it. Just sitting there and wishing that you can have eternal life in heaven.

Not good enough. Why? Because that's still self. It's giving up of self, realizing there is nothing but Christ.

Christ is all. That's the gospel message. And so if there's any listening, and if you're listening and you don't know

Christ, I would plead with you to turn to Christ and live. And note that unlike Ray, I'm not going to anathematize people that the

Bible doesn't anathematize. That's dangerous to do, to be calling people unsaved.

That's to put yourself in a position where only God is. In fact, James speaks of that, the danger of that.

When he says, when we judge one, we judge our brother, we're putting ourselves in the position of being

God. That's dangerous. No, we cannot do such things.

Now note throughout this, I did not anathematize Ray, nor are people that don't hold to Calvinism.

But he did. He did say that based on the beliefs, I'm not saved.

Interesting. I would challenge anyone to listen to that gospel presentation, tell me what's wrong with it from Scripture.

Because the reality is, the gospel, it's not the hearing of the gospel that saves us.

It's Christ. It's the teaching. It's what Christ actually did that saves us.

So I hope that some, those that, if there's any who don't know

Christ, that you will repent, turn to Christ and live. Those who do know,

I hope that this debate has been helpful in teaching. One of the things we do on this show, the whole part of this is to teach apologetics.

And so why would we take the debate? For a very simple reason. We want to show you guys how to properly do debates and how not to, to expose error.

But, you know, hopefully for Ray that he would take some time. And this is my heartfelt thing for you,

Ray, is that you would humble yourself, re -look at this and ask yourself, are there things that you should have listened to before responding?

If you think that you had made no errors in this debate, if you really believe that,

I'm not saying you do, then that would be pride. Because we pointed out many to you. And what you've done is instead of heeding that counsel, heeding that correction, you went on to attack me.

That again would be evidence of pride. Is it pride? I don't know. I can only look at the behavior and say it looks like evidence of it.

And so I would challenge you. Because you know what, Ray? You don't answer to me. You don't answer to Pastor Justin.

You will answer to God. So will I. So will Justin. And so if you think you're so right,

I don't think I'm so right. I know there's areas in my theology that God's going to correct me when

I stand on judgment day. But if you think that you're so right, you can anathematize people, you're in a dangerous place, my friend.

And so I really want you to consider that. I want you to consider that because you're going to stand before God.

You're not accountable to me. But I'll tell you this also. If your response to this debate is to go and claim you won and claim that I agreed with you, and I don't know if he pulled his ear pieces out so that he doesn't have to hear, but if you claim...

I'm not sure. He might be a listening speaker. But if you're going to claim that you won and claim that I agreed with you after countless times of me saying that's not true, then that would expose some pride and some error.

So I really want you to think about that. Okay? It's something you really need to be careful of.

You know, you don't seem to have a very good reputation from what I can see down in the Philippines.

A lot of people have a very negative view of you. That should concern you. The fact that so many people are concerned about it if you're not concerned about that, that's a dangerous place to be.

So someone is saying his body language speaks for itself, and that's true. Yeah, you know, it'd be good.

I wish I could get all the comments that have been flying by. I know that, you know, the comments are...

Unfortunately, I don't think you can save them. It'd be great to save these and put this into a...

I'm going to try to see if I can get here and do it. But the comments here would be great for you to go back and read.

Ray, go and read the comments. See the response of what people are saying, just looking at how you're handling yourself.

I'm going to try to do the same to see, you know, because there's so many comments, to see if there's things where I need to evaluate myself.

So Justin, you want to close this out in prayer? Yeah, let's pray, guys. Dear Heavenly Father, we just want to come before you and pray,

God, that anyone that's heard this message today didn't hear the debate and argument over just Tulip or this or that position, but they heard the heart of the gospel of Jesus Christ, Lord, that your word has resonated within the hearts of those that are lost,

Lord God. God in heaven, we want to take a time and ask God that you would save out of this message.

And Lord, you know that debates can become hard and people can give it solid in one position or the other.

But the point is the gospel of Jesus Christ. Lord, we are dead and trespassing sin.

We are completely incapable of coming to you on our own. We need you for even our very breath.

But not only that, Lord, we need you to save our wicked souls because none of us will come after you, as your word says.

Lord, we are ones that love our sin. And we do need you to regenerate our dead hearts.

And God, we would ask, Lord, that you would do that for someone tonight, that they may hear this message in the

Philippines, Lord, that they may hear the message that they haven't maybe heard. Maybe in Uganda or maybe in Russia or maybe here in America or maybe my family, maybe

Andrew's family, maybe Ray or his family would hear this message and they would come to repentance.

They would come to Christ because you're worthy. Lord, you're worthy of all the glory and praise. And we thank you for the opportunity to lift you up and to represent you.

Lord, all the errors that we've made, where we've been argumentative or whatever, where we have been ungracious,

Lord, we ask you to forgive us. During this time, Lord, we ask you to let that not light on the ears of the people that hear this message,

Lord, that they will hear the humble hearts of those that want to glorify you. And may your name be praised in Jesus name.

Amen. Amen. So, like I said, I'm going to put this out. I'll put out an article on Striving for Eternity with the link to this debate and all the exchange that we had.

One of the reasons I'm going to do that, folks, is so that you can see in the exchange, you'll see how you can just see the character of Ray, where he kept saying that I was making excuses as if I was trying to get out of the debate.

You'll see where I said over and over again, I'm doing it, we're doing this debate with or without him. We, you know,

I'm not trying, he called me a coward. Okay. A coward is the one trying to get out of the debate.

He blocked me when I asked him to define Calvinism. Those are things that you're going to be able to see and you're going to see in his own words.

He can claim it. Oh, you're misrepresenting me, folks. You're going to read it for yourself and you can see the behavior.

And this is why someone like this should not be debating. He shouldn't be teaching. And he definitely should not be claiming to be a pastor.

Again, those accusations can be thrown to you, man. That can be thrown to you.

You know, the thing is, I'm going to pull the context out. I thank you very much for your kind attention, but you're being accusing here back and forth.

So there's no reason to stay. Thank you guys for having me here. And I think

I'm going to leave now because I hope that you would learn something good that just came out from your mouth right now.

Yeah, the things that are coming out are truth that people will see for themselves. And that's the thing, you know, you're going to see for yourself, right?

That's the thing, folks, someone that just makes claims because this is what everyone's warned me he will do. And we're going to see if he does, that he's going to be making these claims.

But we're going to put out the evidence so people will see. You'll be able to read it for yourself. You know, it's really interesting because people make a claim, but then when they make a claim, you can't support it with evidence.

It's a bad thing. Right. I've been shocked. I'm going to be honest. I thought it would be a much better debate on his end.

I was hoping for that. Guys, he affirmed Calvinism.

I mean, he affirmed Tulip. He didn't realize it.

That's why I kept what you, I mean, I'll be honest with you. I want to raise, I want to raise. I didn't say hardly anything.

And you know me, I can't believe I didn't say anything. He over here laughing at that one.

Anthony, do I not deserve a raise for that? I mean, come on. I didn't say hardly anything. You got to come in here.

I deserve a raise. You got to admit, man, I didn't say anything and you know me better than this. You deserve a raise.

Guys, guys, in all honesty, I don't, Andrew never questioned his salvation guys.

He never tried to accuse him of not being saved. And I think I counted probably, you know, 15 times or better where the, even at the last moment where he said, you know, we're going to be praying for you

Calvinists, you know, and it's like, he kept on trying to poke that in there. And that blew me away because it was like, okay, you don't have to believe in Calvinism.

I don't care. What's interesting about that. What was the question he asked me? He asked me that question.

As if, if I said that he wasn't saved because of his teachings, right? That would be wrong.

Yeah. And that's, that's one of the things you see with this, with this gentleman is,

I mean, I would challenge you guys, go back, rewatch this, relisten to this and just listen carefully.

And you're going to see there were count, there were a number of times that he misrepresent, he contradicted himself.

So he's going to say, I misrepresented him. Well, if I misrepresented him, it's because, you know, he didn't, he kept saying, he kept speaking out of both sides of his mouth.

Oh yeah. And it floored me because, because every time you pointed out the, the, the doctrines, not the, you know, tulip, but the actual doctrines of scripture.

And he's like, yeah, I firm this, I firm that, I firm, you know, I firm limited atonement, but I don't believe in it. I don't,

I firm, you know, total depravity, but I don't believe in it. I affirm, you know, eternal security, which, you know, we don't, you know,

I don't believe in it. It was like, okay, come on. Yeah. I mean, he didn't even see what I was doing with that.

And that's why when I, you know, if he realized that he does, maybe that's why he didn't want me to discuss it toward the end. I'm going to,

I won't say who this is because it was sent to me privately, but this is so funny. Someone just texted me. Thank you for clarifying why

I will never do debates. I got a sore throat and I'm yelling at my screen.

You're a wiser and more patient man than me. Oh, wow.

You know, the sad part that broke my heart and I'm going to be out of all of it was him taking out the ear pieces.

I'm not trying to accuse him, but all I saw was that the gospel was not as important as the debate.

Yeah. I mean, that's a heartbreak guys. I mean, if somebody asked me, what verses are you going to use?

Well, hold on. Let me be fair with it because he took it out. He, you know, I'm trying to remember if he took it out when

I was explaining the gospel. I think he did. I thought he, you know what, you might be right.

I'm trying to remember when he took it out. I don't know if it was at that or when I was trying to communicate to him some things that he just didn't want to hear.

And folks, listen, for all of us, all of us, we should never be in a position where we turn away, we turn a deaf ear when people say hard things to us.

You know, Justin, maybe not so much with you. Anthony's right here. Anthony, would it be fair to say that you and I have said hard things to one another over the years we've known each other?

I think we're picking each other's microphone up. Yeah, absolutely we have. And we have to be humble enough to be able to hear that and listen first before we start to respond.

And he obviously couldn't do that tonight. I was actually really disappointed. I was actually scared for him walking into this debate against you in the first place, let alone, you're out.

And in all these hours, what? Yeah, and that's actually the thing.

After three hours, people are still confused on his point. That's that's not a good debater.

And he kind of positions himself as a debater. Yeah, well, you know, guys, if you think about it, it doesn't have to be, you know,

I know everything about Calvinism perfectly. It can be it can be, hey,

I disagree at this point, that point with respect. But what I noticed is there was very little respect, you know, in that and in his tone and character, you know.

So anyway. I don't know if you guys have anything else or not. Anthony, you've been sitting here.

Yeah, well, I would say that usually when people argue against Calvinism, they're emotional arguments and there's not much substance to them.

And we saw that tonight. It was it was pretty classic what he did. I just the thing I couldn't understand is why he kept going back to the evangelism piece.

You kept trying to dispel that issue. He kept going back to it. It seems like that was his only real point he was trying to make throughout the entire time.

And he went back to it. I think he went back to it six or seven times before I kind of turned to him. Like, why evangelism again?

Like, I just wanted to beat my head against the desk. Well, because I think what it was, was that was his his only way of trying to use the fallacy of equivocation to use it two different ways.

And that's why I brought up the point of saying, OK, then then by his definition, the rapture is useless and dangerous because I don't share that in the gospel.

There's a whole lot of doctrines I don't share when I'm presenting the gospel that doesn't make it useless and dangerous.

I really liked and and Pastor Justin, I'm going to ask you, you know, was I right in where you were going with that Isaiah 19?

Yeah, because that was my point is he was saying John 3, 16, if you wouldn't use that.

And then he said all of John 3, you know, if you wouldn't use that entire thing. That's why I asked the question.

Go to Isaiah 19. Would you use that? Now, I'm going to tell you, I'll use every single verse in the

Bible. You're not going to tell me that, that I can't use a verse in the Bible. But his his argument was completely off.

You know, you have to use this. You have to use this. And why didn't you use it this way in evangelism?

Well, I can use any verse. But no, normally I'm not going to use just one verse to make you happy.

I'm, you know, I'm going to many different passages. And of course, you know, my favorite one would be a second

Corinthians 521. You know, yeah, when I that's that's one of my go to is as you did,

I mean, you you hit it right out of the park. I'm just like, man, go for it, brother. So I removed the banner so we could see the name because I know you giggled when

John came in here in the back. Yeah, I'm about died laughing. You were laughing at his so you put his for his name as he came in.

John, the Calvinist heretic. So, John, welcome.

Hey, guys. That was a fascinating debate. I want to bring out one point and ask him a question about when he brought up John 316 and you wanted

Andrew to expound on that and actually use, you know, some actual verses that for context, he he kind of condemned you for it and said,

Oh, no, I just want you to just focus on John 316. But later on, when

I think he was trying or when you mentioned something about Ephesians or Philippians, I can't remember.

And then he wanted to go ahead and actually continue on with other verses with that particular verse.

And it turned out that he wanted to use something in context. But I didn't get that.

I mean, it's like, well, that is just being completely hypocritical, you know, as far as he goes.

I mean, he condemned you for wanting to use context with John 316.

But when it came to you wanting to use a particular verse.

Anyways. Well, I think it was consistent. It was consistent in the sense that you saw him doing that throughout where he's using different words.

However, it seemed like he was more about trying to win a debate than actually teach anything or get to the truth or understand the position, because what was exposed is that he doesn't know

Calvinism. No, he really doesn't understand the teachings of it. He doesn't know how to he can't define it.

He can't explain it. And then you get to the point that he's going to say he's a teacher.

He could teach this stuff. You could teach it incorrectly, but you can't teach it. I mean, we really have a problem now.

Let me do one thing real quick, because I knew we weren't going to do this during the debate, but we do have to give a shout out to our sponsors.

So you thought that I wouldn't. You thought I'd forget there, Justin. No, I didn't. Actually, I thought you were about halfway through because you noticed

I was about to fall asleep at that. So the show is sponsored by MyPillow. They support us here, keeping us going.

So if you want to get yourself a great American -made pillow products there, just go to MyPillow .com.

Use promo code SFE. Those are regular listeners. You know I love my pillows.

I love all the products I've tried so far. I love their mattress topper, their towels. I got their slippers.

They got a lot of products, and all of them are really, really well made. If you go to MyPillow .com,

use promo code SFE, you can get their pillows, lowest price ever, $40 off for their premium pillow.

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So MyPillow is one of the supporters. If you want to support us directly, you can go to strivingforeturning .org

support. Monthly gifts would be very much welcomed. You know, regular gifts because we have regular bills.

Just to remind you that if you want to have us come and speak at your church, you can just go to, you can just email us at speaker at strivingforeternity .org,

speaker at strivingforeturning .org. And this is a show we do weekly. So we want to encourage you all, come back next week.

I don't know that we have a set topic, but I do know somebody who was prepared. Do you have a set topic?

You do. You have the Mormon guy. Oh, that's right. That's right. Next week. Yeah, no, no, he's got to come in.

I've been reading the book. Bill McKeever from Mormon Research Ministry will be here. We're going to discuss evangelizing to Mormons.

The week after, what I think may happen is, because we weren't sure if Ray was going to show up, there is someone that wanted to discuss

Calvinism. So we're going to see if he'll come in in two weeks, and maybe we'll pick this up.

But we're here each Thursday night. For many of you who are in the Philippines watching, maybe for the first time, we're on the same time every week.

So it'll be, I guess, nine o 'clock your time in the morning, Friday morning. So if you want to come in, ask any questions about any topic, we are here to answer those as best we can.

We'll look into the scripture in context. Crazy idea. But we're going to look at context and answer them.

I know it's a crazy thing. It is weird, isn't it? I will say that, did you see that he was actually surprised,

Justin, when we said that there weren't any verses for like 700, 800 years? Like they weren't added in and he was, well, what does that have to do with anything?

Yeah. Now, he made a good point in the sense of saying, look at the Proverbs, because the book of Proverbs is a series of generalisms.

Okay. But each one of them have a context within itself.

And it's granted that there's one and then another, then another, then another. Okay. That is true.

But again, that's missing the point of what we're saying, right? They each have a content. That book has a context that here are general.

All of Proverbs is not that way. Okay. It's only chapters 10 through 29.

It's not the first nine chapters. It's not the last two chapters. So, in those you have totally different.

So, when it comes to hermeneutics, we do have to interpret them differently. And so, I think

Rob, who came in early with a question, hopefully he'll come in in two weeks and we can get into that discussion as well, that he had with God's decrees, if I didn't answer him well enough, because we really didn't get into that.

So, any other things we have for tonight? I know we've gone way into Anthony time. Yeah, we hit it out of the park, man.

It's what, three hours and 40 minutes? I think that, hey, look, I'll say this, and I think it was this guy over here, Anthony, that probably posted it.

I saw someone from Striving Fraternity, which is one of the three of us that said that Ray was just stalling so we could get into Anthony time.

Like two hours ago. Thanks, Ray.

It's nice to keep it all night. I was going to say, I knew we were going to hit that as soon as we started getting almost to the end, and we didn't get to the questions yet.

We're like, oh yeah, we're going. It says Andrew and Anthony are going to have a pillow fight at their sleepover.

Somebody had posted there was over 2 ,000 comments. I don't know how you see that, but somebody saw it.

That would be just from Facebook. Oh, is it? Because he was looking at Facebook. There are comments here.

I don't know if I'm going to be able to grab. I think I could grab. Yeah, I can grab the

YouTube comments. So that's good. I wish we could get them all, because there was a lot of really good comments and good discussions.

There were. It was Pastor Aaron Stogner who brought that up. By the way, today is his birthday.

Hold the mic to you. He's what? Aaron Stogner's birthday. He's like 13 or 14 now, right? So what we're going to do.

Happy birthday. Since Aaron Stogner's birthday is today and Anthony's birthday, we're going to listen to Dr.

Anthony Silvestro sing a solo. A happy birthday. Yeah, it's a solo.

Nobody can hear it. I'm still on mute. All right, folks.

I hope this has been helpful to y 'all. I hope that if this maybe not learning so much about Calvinism, but at least learning how not to debate.

You know, someone's saying I need a beer, too. I love my wife. She doesn't like beers.

You just look tomorrow. His beer is going to be gone. So happy birthday to Aaron.

Thanks all for checking this out. I hope it's been helpful to you. And we'll see you next week.