Presupping the Cults ...AGAIN! w/Dr. Chris Bolt

Welcome back to another episode of Revealed Apologetics. I'm your host Eli Ayala and I'm joined tonight by Dr. Chris Bult and we're going to be covering a topic relating to the cults again. So we're kind of on a cult series sort of thing which is super interesting and important especially when we're able to kind of apply presuppositional apologetics to that particular context which a lot of people always ask, you know, hey, how do we apply a presuppositional approach to the cults?

Now this is funny, Chris. I had Matt Slick on a while ago to talk about Wicca and Satanism. I had the folks over at Cultish which is a really awesome podcast. I encourage people to subscribe to their podcast but I had them to talk about cults as well.

And just recently, just a few days ago, I was bringing my car in to get inspected and it was in the town, little town, downtown area where I live. And so I had an hour and like a half to just walk around and do nothing which I figured let me call somebody.

So I'm on the phone with someone and the entire town is like a ghost town. There's like nobody in the entire town except two women, two older women with a Jehovah's Witness little station. And I was like, oh man, I do this stuff on YouTube.

Very rare do I actually have the time. I'm not with my family to actually have a face-to-face conversation. So I sat on the town bench in between these two older women and I spoke with them for over an hour and a half and was able to do some apologetics and sharing the gospel.

And they connected me with someone else who's going to be reaching out to me and I think tomorrow I have my 45-minute drive home from work. A person is going to call me and I would imagine we're going to get right into the thick of it as the two women knew that I knew my scripture.

So I would imagine they're getting someone who they think is sufficient to talk with me and I hope we'll have a great conversation. So it's very appropriate, all of this stuff happening all at once. So I'm super excited.

Yeah, I mean I had texted you before I even I was asking about some things that kind of got dropped in my lap as well. And it's not every day that that happens. You're right. But I didn't even know about the Matt Slick episode on Wicca or that you'd had Jeremiah on.

Chris doesn't watch my show. He comes on

I try to. It is the best. It is the best apologetic program on the internet.

He's come on multiple times and then he's like, hey, let's do something on the cult. I don't even have time to watch my own show. He's three episodes late. It's totally fine though.

But no, I went and I looked and I thought, oh, that's great. I do believe that's a providential thing. I really, truly do. I hope that this kind of segues off of some of the things that the cultish guys said.

And honestly, I hope to be able, even if it's not me, to be able to take some of these issues that have been brought up and bring them into the light even on a show like Cultish. I was going to thank you, seriously, sincerely.

People don't get what you do. And they don't get what apologists do, is what I mean by that. We do a lot of work that is weird work that is seemingly meaningless work to a lot of people if they're not engaged.

Obviously, we enjoy what we do. Obviously, it's a hobby. But it can almost look like a weird obsession to people who are outside of the apologetic ranks, as it were. I do believe it's part of a calling.

It's not an office of the church, but it is a special gifting and a calling. And it's something that we have to steward well. And the thing is that there are times when it comes very much in handy, practically speaking.

But a lot of people don't want to deal with postmodern deconstructionist college students who are screaming obscenities and these sorts of things or calmly teach high school students when they hate you.

And they don't want to be there. And you're trying to teach them about worldview. And they're thinking, what does this have to do with anything?

Dude, my students love me.

I work at a really nice Christian private school. You're a lovable guy. My students love me. At least I hope they do. But I get it.

I just pay people money. That's right. That's how I get that fixed. That's awesome. Well, yeah. When I was talking to these Jehovah's Witnesses, it made me realize the vast difference between doing apologetics on YouTube and doing apologetics.

Right.

Like actually doing apologetics. But this lays a lot of groundwork, and it also gives you a platform where you're able. And I know presuppositionalists are accused a lot of times of all we talk about is theory.

Well, yeah. But let me give you a little theory, right? I teach three things that apologetics are for in my Introduction to Apologetics course. One is it is applying theology to unbelief. So you are, in fact, defending the Christian worldview along with a presentation of the gospel of Jesus Christ.

It's not like we're going to preach the gospel, and then someone says, oh, well, I don't believe in God. That's real nice, but I don't believe in God. And it's like, okay, well, have a nice day. No, no, no, no.

Let's talk about this, right? That's the first thing. But then the second thing is it's also to keep the sheep in. Now, we believe that the Lord keeps the sheep in. There's no question about that. Once you believe in Jesus Christ, you're justified, and there's nothing that can change that on your best day or your worst day.

It's through the blood of Jesus Christ, through his death, burial, resurrection. But God uses means, right? And so God uses the preaching of the gospel, and God uses the defense of the gospel to keep the sheep in.

And then there's also just the way I view it, salting the culture down. You know, a lot of the things that Jeff Durbin does, an apology at church, and they're salting the culture down. We're pushing back against the spirit of the age, as it were.

I think all of those things are crucial. I think all of those things are explicitly biblical and exemplified in Scripture as well. But people don't see that as being a practical taxonomy even until it comes time.

And then it comes in handy that you have studied these things and studied the other team's playbook.

Now, I have to say, you mentioned what they're doing over there at Apologia. When someone asks me what's the best resource to use to learn presuppositional apologetics, biblical apologetics, when dealing with the cults, their videos of how they do evangelism.

I mean, I was just watching let me see here. It was one of the gentlemen from Cultish. I think it was Andrew. I think it was Andrew and Jeremiah. So Andrew had an interaction with this Mormon couple who were interested in what he had to say.

And it was an excellent to learn how to talk to people and how to insert Scripture in the discussion. And I was just so encouraged by it. And I really highly recommend people watch what I'm doing here with my guests and the conversations, but to see what does this look like on the streets.

I think Apologia is doing an excellent job really just putting it into practice. So I very much appreciate what they do. And, of course, me having the opportunity to fly over to Arizona and do some courses with them and get to meet Jeff and hang out with Dr. White, which was super cool.

I really just had a growing appreciation for really the work that they're doing and how God is using it. So hopefully this channel coupled with a pool of other channels that are doing good apologetics, I think this is very useful, and I hope that it provides content for people to actually use on the ground, so to speak.

So without further ado, let me kind of just let folks know there's already a question coming in. If you guys have questions, please send them in. We're going to get to them a little bit later, but I want to make sure that if you have questions, we'll address it, especially as it relates to what we're going to be talking about today.

We don't even know yet what that is.

What was that? I said we don't even know yet what that is.

Yeah, we're just kind of winging it. It's all good. Oh, man, I forgot my Bonson mug. Whatever.

I have a Bonson mug, but this is my Providence, Rhode Island.

I thought you were theologically Providence.

Let's see. Providence, I think that's when I had lunch. I was at a table with Anthony Rogers, Mike Burr, Hal, and Vocab Malone, and then David Wood had his whole group. They were at the adult table, and we were at the kids' table, so not for lunch, but yeah.

Great guys.

Awesome. Very good. So let's jump in. So I entitled this Pre-Supping the Cults Again because we had another Pre-Supping the Cults episode. What is it that you wanted to share? There was something that you wanted to kind of touch on that perhaps we can kind of just dive right into this topic and see how it applies to the area of the cults.

Earthly Authorities, Family Cults, and Michael and Debbie Pearl

Yeah, I think that maybe we can take, let's see, kind of a three-pronged approach if we get that far. So I think what I want to talk about, one thing I want to talk about, and I'm not going to be able to share a screen because I'm bad when it comes to technology.

No worries. What we will do, I'll talk about earthly authorities. I think that this is a huge issue in the church today for any number of reasons, and it actually touches on some really controversial topics that we don't need to get into, but it kind of lays some groundwork for it.

So earthly authorities, but I want to take that and apply that to the issue of cults and then also one particular cult, and I am going to call it a cult. I want to talk about Michael and Debbie Pearl and some of their literature.

I've been somewhat forced to look into that issue because of some things that have arisen in relation to my ministry, and I want to be just crystal clear about what they believe and why it's not Christian at all.

It's a completely different religion, but I think it'll become more plain as we work through this.

Okay. I've never heard of the people you mentioned there. Do you mind kind of explaining who they are and why do you see this as a cult? Yeah.

Well, Michael and Debbie Pearl, they live in Tennessee. They are, I believe, sort of homesteaders. They're homeschoolers, big in the homeschooling movement, and I think that one of the reasons this is so important actually is because you and I, we kind of run in the same sort of circles, and we see these reformed guys and fundamentalist guys, and there are a lot of beliefs that we hold that could be considered fringe, right?

I mean presuppositionalism in and of itself, you're on the fringe. It's not as fringe as it used to be when I was writing on it back in 2006, but it is still pretty fringe, right? People know about it more, but that leads us, I think, sometimes into a type of, we see something that seems out of the ordinary or contrarian or radical, and we want to kind of grab onto that.

We want to kind of latch onto that. Unfortunately, when there are groups that use some of the same language that we use, even those who are within reformed or fundamentalist circles hear that language, and so they latch onto it, and so what I'm saying is that in particular, reformed and fundamentalist churches, groups, and whatnot are, I believe, fairly susceptible to this type of error creeping into their churches, especially through some of their families.

So that's kind of why I wanted to talk about that. I also think this is in the news, as it were. I don't know if you've been following this thing with Ginger, Doug, or Volo. Go ahead.

Yes. I have. There was a Cultish episode, actually, where they did an interview on this topic, and it was really good. So I am familiar with some of it, although, I mean, I watched that one episode, so I'm not really deeply familiar with it.

Yeah.

No, I heard about it, and I thought, okay, well, that's kind of on the side of the apologetic interest that I have, right? Okay. But I had some doubts, right? I was like, well, is this another deconstructionist thing?

It's not, by the way. She's actually offered fairly helpful language of disentangling or disentanglement. And then when I listen to a guy like Jeremy, and I guess it's Andrew. Is that the co-host? Yeah.

You know, they use that language, too. And I think if I picked up on it correctly, Jeremy has a background that's very similar with the Gothardite beliefs, which I'll mention here in a moment, and that sort of thing.

There's something else I was going to say there, but I forgot, so it must not have been important. But Gothard has been kind of in the news again. This man, I believe he's still alive. I think he's like 88 years old.

He was accused by over 30 women of sexual impropriety, of sexual harassment, sexual predation, and that sort of thing.

And he has a very strong authority over his people, right? Yes. So he's in a position where one could fall into those patterns. Absolutely.

Yeah, absolutely. Especially because he was childless, he was single, and his whole life was essentially spent telling families how they should live. Yes. Which is a big red flag, right? Right. So, yeah, he's coming to the spotlight again now through Ginger, Doug, or Volo.

Now what's interesting with Michael and Debbie Pearl, there have been times when Debbie Pearl, which is the wife, has spoken out against Gothard. But when the revelations came out from these women regarding him and these things he had done, she actually jumped to defend him and called the accusation satanic, which is like the worst time to try and side with someone who's a false teacher.

But anyway, that's why this is sort of a big thing right now, the deconstructionist movement, which is everywhere and really is an apologetic concern, but I'm afraid that a lot of apologists, probably because a lot of apologists are male, I know there are a lot of exceptions to that.

What exceptions? I'm thinking Mary Jo Sharp is the only woman apologetic.

Well, there's Mary Jo Sharp, there's Mama Bear Apologetics, there's Alyssa Childers, is that her name?

Now do I feel like sexist now because I didn't know any women apologists? He's like, there's more than one, Eli.

But it really is true that male voices kind of dominate the apologetic field. But even some of the things that like Ali Beth Stuckey does are things that have an apologetic edge to them, so an apologetic bent.

But the deconstruction movement in particular—. Can I interrupt you real quick?

No, please. Because deconstruction can be understood in different contexts. Are you talking about the deconstruction movement where people are deconstructing their faith, or are you talking about deconstruction as it relates to postmodernism applied to literature?

Yeah, we're not talking about—. Where every reading of a text is a misreading of a text.

Right, no, that's a helpful clarification. We're not talking about Derrida. We're not talking about deconstructionism with respect to literature and—.

So deconstructing faith, like people who are like, man, I was doing worship for years until I realized, you know, the God of the Old Testament is really me.

Those kinds of things are going to become—. That's right. Honestly, it's a new face to an old liberalism, theological liberalism. That's what it is. And it leads you right out of the faith, right? Because liberalism is—.

When I first started into apologetics, I said theological liberals are just atheists who want to play around with religion, right? So I like—.

Sometimes I say things like that. Well, Chris, I think the whole thing with the deconstruction movement I think is very interesting, is that it shows a complete and utter detachment of doctrine and apologetics to the kind of these like big churches who like you have these megachurches and these people who are in leadership and then they're like asking questions, which they should, right?

These questions of Scripture and how to understand Scripture and apparent contradictions and things like this. But people in leadership coming upon these things as though they never heard of it, which means that in these big churches or many of these churches, doctrine and apologetics is not at all a focus.

And so you have leaders who should know better asking basic questions that Christians have responses to.

You and I both know that this is a serious problem in the church. This is why apologetics are so needed right now because frankly people are biblically illiterate in general. But more than that, they haven't studied basic theology and you get challenged on these things and you don't have an answer for them.

And now with the younger generation, you think of the older generation, most of them are not college educated and there's nothing wrong with that. But the younger generations become college educated. They have access to the internet 24 seven.

They've got it in their pockets, right? So there's never any closing off from the world as it were. The world is always right there. And so you have access to all of these other beliefs that are out there that are not what your grandma had, right?

And so that's just the fact of the matter and why we need to be so focused on theological education apologetics within the church because most churches are not trained for this whatsoever. And it's just a dearth of apologetic thought.

But I do think that especially when there's... So we can talk about spiritual abuse, which I think Jeremy uses that language too on Cultish, but spiritual abuse, I just want to call it false teaching, right?

Cultish beliefs, something like a selfish attempt to control others when it's selfishly motivated to control others, that's a type of abuse, right? And you can do that in a spiritual way. People, when they want to cite God or his word and then twist it to make someone else believe things falsely, not only is that a problem for us as Christian evangelists, because we want people to know the truth and we want people to come to Jesus Christ through the gospel, but theology matters, right?

Dr. Weitz taught us theology matters. And as Cultish says, bad theology hurts people. Yeah, that's right. There's a vertical problem. That is the most important thing. But there's a horizontal problem as well.

One of my friends, Keith Darrell, the campus preacher, he mentions that a lot of the people he interacts with on college campuses, the reasons they have for objecting to the Christian faith, these are often moral, right?

Ethics have become this first philosophy. And so when you look at the church from a cultural standpoint and we're told that the church is racist and now we see these alleged abuse issues like, well, Rachel Den Hollander is one person who's called a lot of attention to these things, and I'm not faulting her for that.

But in the evangelical world, you've got a mega church like Willow Creek, you've got the Southern Baptist Convention, of which I'm a part, have been my whole life. You've got the Sovereign Grace Churches.

There are accusations out there with all of these, and not just in so-called patriarchal or complementarian groups, but also within egalitarian groups. There was somebody with CBE International, and I don't recall the name right now because I'm not familiar with those circles that much, but he was accused as well.

You have younger people who already have a distrust in institutions and authority who have wide open access to a constant flow of information, and then they're seeing these things, and many of them, one in four young women, the statistics say, and one in six young men is what you always hear cited, they have themselves dealt with that.

And now they have something that they believe is a bitter root that keeps them from God and keeps them from Christianity, and that puts a personal face on our apologetic endeavor, my friend. Sure, sure.

And that's a risk that happens within the church, and those are features of cultic movements as well. Yes. This idea of spiritual abuse and kind of lording over people. There is also an implicit discouragement to think critically and to test what's happening, right?

So how do we address that? You used a specific example that you used at the beginning with the Duggars, and I don't remember what the person's name was. What was the person's name again?

So the Duggars, but the Duggars are following Bill Gothard. Bill Gothard, yes. He was in circles that I grew up in. Sure, sure. I mean, his literature is out there. Yeah. Let's talk about his teaching for a moment, right?

So he has this umbrella scheme where you've got the authority of Christ. This really upsets me because I'm big on union with Christ. I don't take a Lutheran read of the Scriptures and justification by faith.

I take Calvin's view with union with Christ, and so all of the blessings that are in Christ are ours in our mystical union with him. So repentance and faith are gifts of God that are in Jesus Christ.

A lot of people don't know that, Chris. They'll be like, well, we have to repent. That's true, but 2 Timothy 2 .24, right? It's granted to us, right? Philippians 4 .29, faith is granted. Ephesians 2 .5 -8, for by grace you may save through faith.

These are things that are gifts of God that have been purchased for us by Christ, and this is the reason why salvation is grace, right? These are things that we need to be theologically sensitive to because it affects how we interact with people who don't hold to those perspectives.

We want to make sure we understand them in their proper biblical context. I'm glad you brought that out because that's right. It is a gift of God for sure.

I mean, we are justified. The reason we're justified through faith in Jesus is because Jesus Christ is justified. He's the justified one. He's the vindicated one. He's the righteous one. So in union with him, we're justified.

He's sanctified, so we're sanctified. He's going to be glorified, so we're going to be glorified. All of those blessings are ours in Him. The covenant curses fell upon Christ on the cross. Curse is everyone who's hanged on a tree.

Well, Jesus was hanged on a tree. He bore the penalty of sin for us, right? And so the penalty for our sin for us, and so we're in union with Him. There's no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus.

We're counted righteous in God's sight through faith in Him. We're given the covenant blessings through Christ. That's Ephesians 1. That's Romans 8. If he didn't spare his own son, how much more is he going to give us all these other things?

So we have all spiritual blessings in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus.

That's a beautiful dimension, Chris, because one of the ways to avoid spiritual abuse is to be familiar with those biblical realities so as to not fall prey to manipulation and authority kind of exerting itself over you.

It's like you have this biblical truth that you can use as a standard to judge, right? You can't have someone make you feel guilty if you know who you are in Christ and you know what Christ has purchased for you, right?

Amen, bro. Good theology. What was that? I said gospel, gospel, gospel. That's right, and it's as simple. I mean, it really is as simple as that.

Nobody else has this, you know? And you look at every world religion, every cult, this is where they go wrong, right? We'll get to that in a moment. So real quick, what I want to say is even the offices of Christ, so we've got Old Testament prophets, priests, and kings, but some of those, well, they all fail, right?

Jesus is the perfect prophet, priest, and king. And so in union with Christ, guess what? No longer shall everyone, you know, teach his neighbor saying, know the Lord, for they shall all know me from the least of them to the greatest, right?

So that's the prophetic promise that's given to us in Christ, right? Or we're a royal priesthood, right? According to the apostle Peter under inspiration of the Holy Spirit. So there is what's called the priesthood of believers.

Now, theological liberals historically have taken that and said there's the priesthood of the believer. No, no, it's the priesthood of the believers. We're not all coming to Scripture and getting our personal interpretations and thinking that's the truth per se, right?

We're saying there is a church here too, right? There is a covenant community of believers. But we, well, I don't want to offend the Presbyterians, but anyway, there is a covenant community. We'll leave it at that.

But anyway, we, the point is that we have direct access to God. And this is just traditional historic reform for DNA. I'm not talking about Calvinism. I'm just simply talking about what Christians have believed.

And so Bill Gothard totally twists this, but uses the same language because you have this umbrella. So I talk about union with Christ as an umbrella and everything that's in Christ is ours, okay? Bill Gothard takes this and talks about an umbrella and there's the authority of Christ.

And underneath that authority is the authority of the father. And the father is the priest of the home. And Michael Pearl says the same thing. And as the priest of the home, that means then that the wife is in submission to him.

But this means that if she comes out from under the father's protection, now she's outside of the protection of Christ. And this means that if there's a wayward thought that she has, guess what? She has to confess that to her husband.

Now take it down a notch, underneath the father and the mother are the children and the children are the managers of the home, which means they do all the work.

And so then with They're the slaves of, I mean, the managers.

That's right, slaves is a good word, yeah. So that means then that they don't have the right to any personal or private thoughts. They have to confess everything up to their father. He is responsible for their sins.

If they leave out from underneath his protection, they're outside of the protection of God. And so anyway, we can get into this a little bit more in a moment with how this works out in terms of cults, but essentially where I'm driving this thing, I wanna talk about earthly authorities and why this is wrong from a methodological stance and presuppositional view.

But where I'm driving this is family cults, cults that circle around the family, even though initially they may seem like a fringe issue that we're not that interested in, like Ginger Duggarvolo, we're like, okay, that's neat.

But is she deconstructing? Is she disentangling? What does this have to do with apologetics ministry? I wanna emphasize that this actually puts a very personal face on the things that you and I deal with on a daily basis.

Sure.

Excellent. Well, I wanna get into that, but real quick, I wanna do things a little different here. I feel bad when people send in questions, they have to wait all the way at the end. Do you mind if we can kind of take

Bring them on. We need a break. That's good. Okay. So I'll take a question and I'll give you a question if that's okay. We can do it. Since I just spoke with the Jehovah's Witnesses, Denine Otero says, what are the scriptures you point to when speaking to Jehovah's Witness?

Responding to Jehovah's Witnesses with Colossians 1 and Isaiah 44

Well, first you need to know a little bit about the Jehovah's Witness, a key thing that you're gonna wanna talk about and the key thing you don't wanna talk about with the Jehovah's Witnesses. You don't wanna waste your time debating birthdays and holidays with them, right?

Right. You wanna go straight to the jugular, talk about who Christ is, right? This was the nature of my discussion with the Jehovah's Witnesses that I was speaking with. That we were talking about the deity of Christ.

And so you want to be able to defend the deity of Christ biblically and you wanna be aware that the Bible that the Jehovah's Witnesses uses, the New World Translation, has altered certain things. So when you hear someone deny Christ and a Bible verse pops in your head, chances are in their Bible, there's gonna be a slight difference, right?

Or a big difference. So I'll give you an example. A good place to go is Colossians 1, verses 16 through 17. In the Jehovah's Witness Bible, there are words added in that passage which is going to make the verse seem like it's supporting what they're saying.

So I'm gonna read here from the New World Translation. This is Colossians 1, verses 16 through 17. Because by means of him, that's Christ, all, and this is where there's an inserted word here in their translation that's not in the original Greek manuscripts.

Because by means of him, all other things were created in the heavens and upon the earth. And the things visible and the things invisible no matter whether they are thrones or lordships or governments or authorities, all other things have been created through him and for him.

Also, he is before all other things and by means of him, all other things were made to exist. Now, why do they insert the word other there? Well, if you know anything about Jehovah's Witness theology, they believe that Jesus is a created being, okay?

Jehovah creates Jesus and Jesus creates everything else. And so in him, all other things, except for himself, he created, okay? Now, there's a problem with this. You don't need to be a Greek scholar. I definitely am not.

But in the Greek, there are two words for the word other. There is the word alas and there's the word heteros. And alas means other of the same kind and heteros means other of a different kind. And so Paul could have used any of those two words if he wanted to.

Neither of those words are found in the original Greek. I think a good point when you're talking to Jehovah's Witnesses, is why is this word other inserted in the biblical text five times? And it actually changes the meaning of the passage.

So what you wanna do is you wanna use Colossians 1, 16 through 17 in their Bible to highlight the other. And then you're gonna bring up Isaiah 44, 24. Now, Isaiah 44, 24, it says here that thus says the Lord, thy Redeemer, and he that formed thee from the womb, I am the Lord that maketh all things that stretcheth forth the heavens.

Here's the key word, alone, that spreadeth abroad the earth by myself. Okay, now this is interesting. So Jehovah says, I create everything by myself in Isaiah 44, 24. But then the Jehovah's Witness theology says that Jehovah creates Jesus and Jesus creates all other things.

So which is it? Did Jesus create everything or did the Father spread out the heavens alone by himself? And so that's a good way to use two passages, Colossians 1, 16 through 17 in their Bible and Isaiah 44, 24 to show attention in their theology.

And then you just kinda see where the conversation goes from there. So I think that's one useful set of scripture, two sets of scriptures you might want to use when you're engaging Jehovah's Witness. I hope that that's helpful.

Here's a question for Chris here. I'll throw this one at you if you're able to answer it. This is from Melissa Scott. Question, I have a friend that is in the Church of Christ and no matter what I say, he seems to get frustrated with me, baptism being necessary for salvation.

Where do I go? Where does someone go when they speak about baptism being necessary for salvation?

Baptism, Justification, and the Church of Christ

You need to go back and listen to Church of Christ round two with the apologetic dog on Revealed Apologetics. Yeah. That episode too set up for this one because the things we're talking about tonight it's very similar to the Church of Christ.

Now I'm in an area that is surrounded by Church of Christers. And when I say Church of Christers, I mean legit Church of Christers. They're the real deal and they follow the five patterns of worship and all of that sort of thing.

But I was not that conversant with their theology prior to moving to this area. Apparently their theology started in this area and that's the historic reason for that. But I would go back and watch that episode with, I think it's Jeremiah, it's his name too, right?

Jeremiah, yeah. The apologetic dog. And by the way, I think I told him the other night on his channel. I said, I'm going to start calling myself the apologetic cat. So I don't have as cool of an aesthetic.

Yeah, no. Nobody likes cats, right? Who likes cats these days? I've got my messy shelf back there. That's what I have.

Don't even, don't look at it. You look like the disgruntled scholar. It's actually in right now.

Yeah. I mean, that's it, man. That's it. And, but anyway, no, I would go back and watch that and I would watch the first one as well, which I've not actually watched. But I would go, when people tell me that salvation is necessary, is that what the question says?

Necessary for salvation? I say, yeah, that's what the Bible teaches. Now you're not going to like that, Eli. But that is what the Bible teaches. The Bible says, and hang with me.

Okay. I'm about to kick you off the show, but it's okay.

I know, I know. I'm about to get booted from the chat channel here. No, I would go straight to the scripture is what I'm saying. You go to Acts chapter two and what does the apostle Peter say? He says, repent and be baptized.

Every one of you for the forgiveness of sins. Right. And you go over to the apostle Peter and his explanation of baptism. And what does he say? He says, baptism now saves you. But then he clarifies right away.

Not as the removal of dirt from the bottom. Right. So actually, I probably wouldn't say necessary for salvation. What I would actually ask is, what do you mean by salvation? Let's talk about this, right?

Because then I want to make this abundantly clear. The ground of justification is faith alone in Jesus Christ alone, by the grace of God alone, to the glory of God alone, according to scripture alone.

That's the truth. Okay. And I've actually driven by COC churches that have on their marquees out there. Salvation or justification is not by faith alone. I'm like, that's heresy. That will send you to hell.

And you get this literature from church of Christ, or you get visits from them or whatever. And the things they teach are good things. They're like, oh, we sing psalms, and we have plurality of elders, and we celebrate the Lord's Supper every Sunday, and we practice church discipline.