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

Revealed Apologetics

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Welcome back to another episode of Revealed Apologetics. I'm your host Eli Ayala and I'm joined tonight by Dr.

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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?

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Now this is funny, Chris. I had Matt Slick on a while ago to talk about Wicca and Satanism.

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I had the folks over at Cultish which is a really awesome podcast.

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I encourage people to subscribe to their podcast but I had them to talk about cults as well.

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And just recently, just a few days ago, I was bringing my car in to get inspected and it was in the town, the little downtown area where I live.

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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.

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There's like nobody in the entire town except two women, two older women with a

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Jehovah's Witness little station. And I was like, oh man, I do this stuff on YouTube, very rare do

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I actually have the time. I'm not with my family to actually have a face -to -face conversation.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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So it's very appropriate, all of this stuff happening all at once. So I'm super excited. Yeah, I had texted you before I even,

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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.

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But I didn't even know about the Matt Slick episode on Wicca or that you'd had

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Jeremiah on. Chris doesn't watch my show. He comes on. I try to. It is the best apologetic program on the internet.

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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.

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It's totally fine. But no, I went and I looked and I thought, oh, that's great. I do believe that's a providential thing.

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I really, truly do. I hope that this kind of segues off of some of the things that the cultish guys said.

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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.

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But, you know, I was going to thank you seriously, sincerely. People don't get what you do.

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Right. And they don't get what 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.

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Obviously, we enjoy what we do. Obviously, it's a hobby. You know, but it can almost look like a weird obsession to people who are outside of the apologetic ranks, as it were.

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And it's just it's part of a I do believe it's part of a calling. It's not an office of the church, but it is a it is a special gifting and a calling.

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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.

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

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And, you know, you're trying to teach them about worldview and they're thinking, what does this have to do with anything? My students love me.

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Christian private school. My students love me. At least

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I hope they do. But I get I get it. I just pay people money. That's right.

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That's awesome. Well, yeah, when I was talking to these Jehovah's Witness, it made me realize the vast difference between doing apologetics on YouTube and like doing apologetics.

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Right. Like, like actually doing apologetics. This lays a lot of groundwork, and it also gives you a platform where you're able.

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And I know presuppositionalists are accused a lot of times of all we talk about is theory. Well, yeah.

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But let me give you a little theory, right? I teach three things that apologetics are for in my introduction to apologetics course.

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One is it is applying theology to unbelief. So you are, in fact, defending the

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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,

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I don't believe in God. That's real nice, but I don't believe in God. And it's like, OK, well, have a nice day. No, no, no, no.

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Let's let's talk about this. Right. Right. That's the first thing. But then the second thing is it's also to keep the sheep in.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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 and Apologia Church and, you know, they're salting the culture down.

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We're pushing back against the spirit of the age, as it were. I think all of those things are crucial.

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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.

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

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

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I mean, I was just watching, let me see here. It was one of the gentlemen from cultish.

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I think it was Andrew. Andrew, I think it's Andrew and Jeremiah. So Andrew had an interaction with this

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Mormon couple who were interested in what he had to say. And it was an excellent, like, to learn how to talk to people and how to insert

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Scripture in the discussion. And I was just so encouraged by it. And I really highly recommend people watch what

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I'm doing here with my guests and the conversations. But to see, like, what does this look like on the streets, I think

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Apologia is doing an excellent job really just putting it into practice.

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So I very much appreciate, you know, 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

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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

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God is using it. So, you know, hopefully this channel coupled with, you know, a pool of other channels that are doing good apologetics,

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I think this is very useful. And I hope that it provides content for people to actually use, you know, on the ground, so to speak.

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So without further ado, let me kind of just let folks know there's already a question coming in.

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If you guys have questions, please, like, 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.

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Which 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.

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You know, it's all good. Oh, man, I forgot my Bonson mug. Whatever. I have a

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Bonson mug, but I don't – this is my Providence, Rhode Island. Providence. I thought you were theologically

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Providence. Providence, I think that's when I had lunch. I was at a table with Anthony Rogers, Mike Burr, Hal, and Vocab Malone.

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And then David Wood had his whole group. They were, like, at the adult table, and we were at the kids' table. So not for lunch, but, yeah.

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Great guys. Awesome. Very good. So let's jump in. So I entitled this Pre -Supping the

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Cults Again because we had another Pre -Supping the Cults episode. What is it that you wanted to share?

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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.

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Yeah, I think that maybe we can take, let's see, kind of a three -pronged approach if we get that far.

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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 am bad when it comes to technology.

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No worries. What we will do, I'll talk about earthly authorities.

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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.

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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.

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I want to talk about Michael and Debbie Pearl and some of their literature.

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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

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

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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?

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Yeah. Well, Michael and Debbie Pearl, they live in Tennessee. They are, I believe, sort of homesteaders.

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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?

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I mean presuppositionalism in and of itself, you're on the fringe. It's not as fringe as it used to be when

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I was writing on it back in 2006, but it is still pretty fringe, right?

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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.

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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.

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And so what I'm saying is that, in particular, reformed and fundamentalist churches, groups, and whatnot are,

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I believe, fairly susceptible to this type of error creeping into their churches, especially through some of their families.

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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.

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Go ahead. Yes, I have. There was a Cultish episode, actually, where they did an interview on this topic, and it was really good.

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So I'm familiar with some of it, although, I mean, I watched that one episode, so I'm not really familiar with it.

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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?

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Okay. But I had some doubts, right? I was like, well, is this another deconstructionist thing?

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It's not, by the way. She's actually offered fairly helpful language of disentangling or disentanglement.

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And then when I listened to a guy like Jeremy, and I guess it's Andrew. Is that the co -host? Yeah. They use that language, too.

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And I think if I picked up on it correctly, Jeremy has a background that's very similar with the

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Gothardite beliefs, which I'll mention here in a moment, and that sort of thing. There's something else

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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.

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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.

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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.

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Absolutely. Yeah, absolutely, especially because he was childless. He was single, and his whole life was essentially spent telling families how they should live.

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Yes. Which is a big red flag, right? So, yeah, he's coming to the spotlight again now through Ginger, Doug, or Volo.

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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.

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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.

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But anyway, so I just wanted to kind of just – that's why this is sort of a big thing right now, the deconstructionist movement, which is everywhere and really is an apologetic concern.

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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.

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What exceptions? I'm thinking Mary Jo Sharp is the only woman apologetic. Well, there's Mary Jo Sharp. There's Mama Bear Apologetics.

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There's Alyssa Childers. Is that her name? Now do I feel like sexist now because I didn't know any women apologists except one?

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He's like, there's more than one, Eli. But it really is true that male voices kind of dominate the apologetic field.

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Sure, sure. But even some of the things that Ali Beth Stuckey does are things that have an apologetic edge to them, right?

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So an apologetic bent. But the deconstruction movement in particular – Can I interrupt you real quick?

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Yes, 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?

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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.

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We're not talking about deconstructionism with respect to literature. So deconstructing faith, like people who are like, man,

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I was doing worship for years until I realized the God of the

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Old Testament is really me. Those kinds of things become – That's right. Honestly, it's a new face to an old liberalism, theological liberalism.

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That's what it is. And it leads you right out of the faith, right? Because liberalism is – When I first started into apologetics,

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I said theological liberals are just atheists who want to play around with religion, right? So I like –

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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 kind of these big churches who –

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You have these megachurches and these people who are in leadership and then they're asking questions, which they should, right?

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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.

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

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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.

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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.

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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.

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But the younger generations become college educated. They have access to the internet 24 -7.

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They've got it in their pockets, right? So there's never any closing off from the world, as it were.

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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?

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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.

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And it's just a dearth of apologetic thought. But I do think that, especially when there's...

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So we can talk about spiritual abuse, which I think Jeremy uses that language too on cultish. But spiritual abuse,

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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.

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That's a type of abuse, right? And you can do that in a spiritual way.

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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 that theology matters, right?

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Dr. Weitz taught us theology matters. And as cultish says, bad theology hurts people.

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Yeah, that's right. There's a vertical problem. That is the most important thing.

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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

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Christian faith, these are often moral, right? Like 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,

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Rachel Denhollander 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.

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You've got the Southern Baptist Convention, of which I'm a part, have been my whole life.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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Sure, sure. And that's a risk that happens within the church, and those are features of cultic movements as well.

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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?

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So how do we address that? I mean, you used a specific example that you used at the beginning with the

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Duggars, and I don't remember what the person's name was. What was the person's name again? So the

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Duggars, but the Duggars are following Bill Gothard. Bill Gothard, yes. He was in circles that I grew up in.

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Sure, sure. I mean, his literature is out there. Yeah. Let's talk about his teaching for a moment, right?

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So he has this umbrella scheme where you've got the authority of Christ.

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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.

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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.

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So repentance and faith are gifts of God that are in Jesus Christ. A lot of people don't know that,

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Chris. They'll be like, well, we have to repent. That's true, but 2 Timothy 2 .24, right?

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It's granted to us, right? Philippians 4 .29, faith is granted. Ephesians 2 .5 -8, for by grace you may save through faith.

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These are gifts of God that have been purchased for us by Christ.

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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.

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We want to make sure we understand them in their proper biblical context. So I'm glad you brought that out because that's right.

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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.

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He's the justified one. He's the vindicated one. He's the righteous one. So in union with him, we're justified.

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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.

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The covenant curses fell upon Christ on the cross. Curse is everyone who's hanged on a tree.

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Well, Jesus was hanged on a tree. He bore the penalty of sin for us, right?

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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.

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We're counted righteous in God's sight through faith in him. We're given the covenant blessings through Christ.

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That's Ephesians 1, right? That's Romans 8, right? If he didn't spare his own son, how much more is he going to give us all these other things?

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So we have all spiritual blessings in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus. That's a beautiful dimension,

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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.

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It's like you have this biblical truth that you can use as a standard to judge, right?

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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?

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Amen, brother. Good theology. What was that? I said gospel, gospel, gospel.

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That's right, and it's as simple. I mean, it really is as simple as that. Nobody else has this, and you look at every world religion, every cult, this is where they go wrong, right?

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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

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Old Testament prophets, priests, and kings, but some of those, well, they all fail, right?

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Jesus is the perfect prophet, priest, and king, and so in union with Christ, guess what?

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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?

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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

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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.

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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?

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We're saying there is a church here too, right? There is a covenant community of believers.

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But we, well, I don't want to offend the Presbyterians, but anyway, there is a covenant community.

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We'll leave it at that. But anyway, the point is that we have direct access to God.

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And this is just traditional historic reform for DNA. I'm not talking about Calvinism. I'm just simply talking about what

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Christians have believed. And so Bill Gothard totally twists this, but uses the same language because you have this umbrella.

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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.

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And underneath that authority is the authority of the Father. And the

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Father is the priest of the home. And Michael Pearl says the same thing.

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And as the priest of the home, that means then that the wife is in submission to him.

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But this means that if she comes out from under the Father's protection, now she's outside of the protection of Christ.

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And this means that if there's a wayward thought that she has, guess what? She has to confess that to her husband.

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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.

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And so then with the - They're the slaves of, I mean, the managers. That's right, slaves is a good word.

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Yeah. So that means then that they don't have the right to any personal or private thoughts.

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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.

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And so anyway, we can get into this a little bit more in a moment with how this works out in terms of cults.

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But essentially where I'm driving this thing, I want to talk about earthly authorities and why this is wrong from a methodological stance and presuppositional view.

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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.

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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?

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I want to emphasize that this actually puts a very personal face on the things that you and I deal with on a daily basis.

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Sure. Excellent. Well, I want to get into that. But real quick, I want to do things a little different here. I feel bad when people send in questions, they have to wait all the way at the end.

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Do you mind if we can kind of take a break? 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.

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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?

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Well, first you need to know a little bit about the Jehovah's Witness, a key thing that you're going to want to talk about and the key thing you don't want to talk about with the

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Jehovah's Witnesses. You don't want to waste your time debating birthdays and holidays with them, right? Right.

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You want to go straight to the jugular, talk about who Christ is, right? This was the nature of my discussion with the

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Jehovah's Witnesses that I was speaking with. We were talking about the deity of Christ. And so you want to be able to defend the deity of Christ biblically and you want to be aware that the

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Bible that the Jehovah's Witnesses uses, the New World Translation, has altered certain things. So when you hear someone deny

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Christ and a Bible verse pops in your head, chances are in their Bible there's going to be a slight difference, right?

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Or a big difference. So I'll give you an example. A good place to go is

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Colossians 1, verses 16 -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.

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So I'm going to read here from the New World Translation. This is Colossians 1, verses 16 -17. Because by means of him, that's

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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.

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Also, he is before all other things, and by means of him all other things were made to exist.

29:55

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.

30:04

Jehovah creates Jesus, and Jesus creates everything else. And so in him all other things, except for himself, he created.

30:13

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.

30:20

There is the word alas, and there is the word heteros. And alas means other of the same kind, and heteros means other of a different kind.

30:30

And so Paul could have used any of those two words if he wanted to. Neither of those words are found in the original

30:36

Greek. I think a good point when you're talking to Jehovah's Witnesses, why is this word other inserted in the biblical text five times?

30:44

And it actually changes the meaning of the passage. So what you want to do is you want to use Colossians 1, 16 through 17 in their

30:51

Bible to highlight the other, and then you're going to bring up Isaiah 44, 24.

30:56

Now, Isaiah 44, 24, it says here that, Thus says the

31:02

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.

31:13

Okay, now this is interesting. So Jehovah says, I created everything by myself in Isaiah 44, 24.

31:19

But then the Jehovah's Witness theology says that Jehovah creates Jesus, and Jesus creates all other things.

31:25

So which is it? Did Jesus create everything, or did the Father spread out the heavens alone by himself?

31:31

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.

31:39

And then you just kind of 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

31:47

Jehovah's Witness. I hope that's helpful. Here's a question for Chris here.

31:52

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

31:58

Church of Christ, and no matter what I say, he seems to get frustrated with me, baptism being necessary for salvation.

32:03

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

32:09

You need to go back and listen to Church of Christ round two with the apologetic dog on Revealed Apologetics.

32:17

Yeah. That episode too set up for this one because the things we're talking about tonight, it's very similar to the

32:23

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

32:30

Church of Christers. They're the real deal, and they follow the five patterns of worship and all of that sort of thing.

32:38

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.

32:48

But I would go back and watch that episode with, I think it's Jeremiah. It's his name too, right?

32:53

Jeremiah, yeah. The apologetic dog. And by the way, I think I told him the other night on his channel,

32:59

I said, I'm going to start calling myself the apologetic cat. So I don't have as cool of an aesthetic as you.

33:05

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

33:13

That's what I have. Don't look at it. You look like the disgruntled scholar. It's actually in right now.

33:19

Yeah. I mean, that's it, man. That's it. But anyway, no,

33:24

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?

33:34

Necessary for salvation? I say, yeah, that's what the Bible teaches. Now, you're not going to like that,

33:40

Eli. But that is what the Bible teaches. The Bible says, and hang with me. Okay.

33:45

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.

33:51

No, I would go straight to the scripture is what I'm saying. You go to Acts 2, and what does the apostle

33:57

Peter say? He says, repent and be baptized, every one of you, for the forgiveness of sins. Right.

34:02

And you go over to the apostle Peter and his explanation of baptism. And what does he say? He says, baptism now saves you.

34:11

But then he clarifies right away, not as the removal of dirt from the body.

34:18

Right. So actually, I probably wouldn't say necessary for salvation. What I would actually ask is, what do you mean by salvation?

34:26

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.

34:38

That's the truth. Okay. And I've actually driven by COC churches that have on their marquees out there.

34:45

Salvation or justification is not by faith alone. I'm like, that's heresy. That will send you to hell.

34:51

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.

34:56

They're like, oh, we sing psalms and we have plurality of elders and we celebrate the Lord's Supper every

35:02

Sunday and we practice church discipline. I'm like, that's great. But all of those are treated as these works that are necessary to your justification.

35:12

Right. And so they're making that fine historic error that's in every cult, in every world religion of conflating justification with sanctification.

35:24

Justification is something that we have in Jesus Christ. We have an alien righteousness, a foreign righteousness.

35:30

It's not our righteousness. It's the righteousness of Christ that's imputed to our account through faith in Him.

35:37

So I would say that baptism is necessary to salvation only in the sense of this is a public profession of faith.

35:45

It's a very important thing. And I appreciate the Church of Christ for saying what they do. I do sound more

35:51

Campbellite than most when I talk about this issue in particular. But at the end of the day, go to the

35:57

Scripture and look at what it says with Peter. He's not talking about water baptism saving.

36:03

It's not a necessity to your justification. It is absolutely needed and necessary in following and obeying the

36:13

Scriptures and following Jesus Christ and making that profession of faith public. That's never in question in the

36:19

New Testament. But it's not a work that's added in some way such as to further justify you or justify you in the first place.

36:27

And I do think baptism is a work. If you believe baptism is necessary for salvation,

36:36

I do think it's a work. It's something you do. It's a ceremony, right? You have to perform a ceremony.

36:42

If sanctification is an element of salvation, which it is, and we're being sanctified even in church attendance, then in that sense, yeah, you're being saved as you go to church.

36:54

But you've already been saved. You're justified, and that's why you do those things. Right. So I always say, so baptism is not necessary for salvation.

37:02

But I would question someone's salvation or their confession of faith if after placing their faith in Christ, you're like,

37:08

I don't want to get baptized. It's like, well, if you are following Christ, you call Christ Lord.

37:13

Like, he commanded us to be baptized. It's explicit in Scripture. But I wouldn't say that it's necessary.

37:19

I mean, Romans 4 or 5 just pops in my head. But to the one who does not work but believes, him who justifies the ungodly as faith is counted as righteousness.

37:29

But to the one who does not work, it's not a thing that we do. I don't know who it was who said this, but it's one of the beautiful quotes

37:35

I love. We bring nothing to our salvation except the sin that made it necessary. And I love that.

37:41

That reminds me every day that salvation is a free gift of God. I bring nothing to it, not baptism, not any action that I could perform.

37:49

But it's the work of Christ. Or one person said it this way. I believe that we're saved by works, his works.

37:55

That's right. And the thing is that the Church of Christ uses this. I mean, it is. I'm going to say this is going to make a lot of people angry.

38:03

It is a form of spiritual abuse because they also tie it to the local, their local church.

38:09

Baptism, like if you're baptized in the church that I pastor at, and then you go to the Church of Christ, they're not going to receive that baptism.

38:15

You know, which raises the interesting question for elders, right? When someone comes to our church and they're baptized in the

38:22

Church of Christ, are we going to receive that baptism, right? But this is, it's funny that she said that since I was pushing back a little bit on you and Jeremiah on this very thing.

38:32

But I think that's a mere semantic issue. When we're talking about it, we believe the same thing at the end of the day.

38:38

And that's what matters. But no, baptism is not necessary for salvation in the sense that you've got to do a good work to get

38:43

God's favor. That's heresy. That's right. So now let's get back to Gothard and his teachings.

38:49

How can we think about approaching a topic like this and teachings like this from a presuppositional perspective?

38:57

So if someone is in, you know, in contact with someone who follows someone like this, how might we presuppositionally approach them?

39:05

What should the Christian be thinking about as a presuppositionalist in terms of communicating with someone who is really under the lordship, so to speak, of this authoritative false teacher that's kind of impacting the way that they think and not really encouraging critical thinking?

39:20

Yeah, so you know me. I'm going to go the long way home, but make sure I get home, okay? I'm giving you that responsibility over me right now.

39:27

All righty. You know, it's been a while since I've read Greek, but in our K, in halagos, kai halagos, in prostanteon, kai theos, in halagos, right?

39:38

In the beginning, the word was with God, right? And the word was God is John 1, 1.

39:44

And what do Christians often want to do? Because you had this question a moment ago, and this is going to lead into my answer. What do

39:49

Christians often want to do with the Jehovah's Witnesses? Well, let's go to John 1, 1. The problem with that is that when they hear

39:56

John 1, 1, they hear it in their understanding of the language.

40:02

That's right. What Christians must understand, and this is going to feed right into the Gothardite issue and right into the pearls.

40:10

When we hear the words that they use as outsiders, we're hearing it in our language and understanding of those terms.

40:20

They are using it and hearing it the way that they have been taught and conditioned to believe.

40:28

That is what makes cults so dangerous. Because outsiders think they believe the same thing as us, and the insiders are able to infiltrate

40:41

Christian churches with false teaching because they use the same terms and language, but read in different meanings.

40:50

And that is a fundamentally presuppositional issue.

40:55

All right. With regard to the use of language, go ahead. This is why

41:01

I appreciated the ministry of Matt Slick, who works with the cults a lot. And so getting back to Jehovah's Witness or people who deny the

41:09

Trinity or something like that, where you're talking about they hear verses in their own context, even though you're quoting

41:15

Scripture, right? We're interpreting things differently. That's why what's helpful is to use

41:20

Scriptures that are not the common Scriptures that are typically ones that we go to. For example,

41:26

Matt Slick told me a story where he had a Jehovah's Witness read Amos 4, verse 11, which says, and this is

41:35

Jehovah speaking, I overthrew some of you as the

41:41

Lord overthrew Sodom and Gomorrah. So you have two lords in that passage. And I remember he made the

41:47

Jehovah's Witness read that, and the Jehovah's Witness said, well, what do you want me to get from this?

41:52

The Trinity? He's like, you got the Trinity from that? This idea that Jehovah rained down fire and brimstone out of the

41:59

Lord, right? When we're dealing with the cults or we're dealing with any position that they're trained to think something when they hear a passage, it's helpful to use the non -popular passages that still make the point you're trying to make.

42:13

We want to be careful not to necessarily run to John 1 with the Jehovah's Witness because they have the knee -jerk reaction to that passage, not that it's a bad passage.

42:23

If you know a little bit of the Greek, it might be useful to go into that. It's still the Word of God, but all

42:29

I'm saying is you're going to have another elder there with them or another Jehovah's Witness with them, and they're always in twos.

42:35

And that person is reinforcing the spiritual abuse, the conditioning. And they're hearing this, and they're thinking of the

42:44

Word as like this mystical force or something, this wisdom from God or something, which in a sense it is, right?

42:50

In Jewish wisdom literature, but that's Christ now. That's who we're talking about. We're talking about the second person of the

42:55

Trinity who takes on flesh in verse 14. But yeah, they have been conditioned to shut down.

43:02

It's not even a mental thing per se. It's that they have literally been brainwashed to shut down, to shut off, and to repeat the script when you go to that passage.

43:13

So what I would add to what you just said, which is all very helpful and correct, but I would say you have to force cult members to draw their own inferences.

43:24

You cannot force or coerce somebody either who's come out of a cult or who is in a cult.

43:32

You cannot force them through dogmatic assertions to change their views. The brainwashing is created to resist that.

43:41

What you must do is help them to draw their own inferences, and the words you used and Matt Slick uses are with passages they haven't even thought of, right?

43:50

So like to copy Dr. White, I'm not going to go into this in depth, but he goes to Hebrews 1, and the reason he goes to Hebrews 1 is because even in the

43:57

New World Translation of the Jehovah's Witnesses, there's a reference there back to Psalm 102, and the word is used there,

44:04

Jehovah. Well, they think Jehovah is the Father, but the text in Hebrews 1 is clearly talking about the

44:11

Son. That's right. And so now they're like, wait, the inference is that means Jehovah is the

44:16

Son here, and that blows their theology apart. That's a crack in those clouds.

44:22

That's light coming through those clouds to begin to reveal the truth to them. Same thing with John 12.

44:27

That's a favorite of mine when it's said that Isaiah saw his glory.

44:34

Speaking of Jesus, what's a reference back to Isaiah 6? And I would recommend James R. White on those things.

44:40

But Thomas Kuhn had this idea of paradigms, and nobody really knows how to define paradigm, but academics use the word paradigm to make themselves sound smart.

44:50

Once you've used that word, you've made it. But a paradigm, if you think of it as fishbowls, and so a cult, those people are going to be living in a fishbowl, and everything in that fishbowl defines their world, whereas Christ, he's objective and supreme over all of those little fishbowls.

45:13

So this sounds postmodern, and it is to an extent. We reject that. We say there is an object of reality.

45:19

There's the reality of God who is creator, and then there's the created reality, right, which reflects him and his glory.

45:27

It's a revelation of him. So there is object of truth in all those things. But what I was going to say is with language, we have to make sure that the terms we use are corresponding to the reality that's out there and not to how things are defined within that fishbowl.

45:41

And this becomes very important when you look at the pearls and when you look at the gothers. So what was the original question?

45:51

Well, I guess my original question was how do we approach these people from a presuppositional perspective?

45:59

And I like the direction you went in because this is really what Walter Martin opens up.

46:04

Walter Martin is the father of cult apologetics, the author of Kingdom of the Cults, and he has a chapter right there at the beginning,

46:09

Scaling the Language Barrier. I mean, speaking to cults, you might as well take a foreign language, right?

46:16

It's like learning Spanish, right, if you don't speak Spanish. It is, and you have to study them to see. I'm not saying the word of God is inefficient.

46:23

It's not. But you have to study those things to understand they're not saying the same thing you are. That's right.

46:28

That's right. You're going to hear cults use, you know, Trinity sometimes, salvation, justification, gospel, and they don't mean the same thing.

46:39

When I was speaking to the two Jehovah's Witnesses, one of the women said, I don't believe in doctrine. I believe just in the

46:44

Bible. I was like, well, that's not quite right. You know, you can use this language, right?

46:51

But when we say Jesus, we're not talking about the same Jesus, right? I believe Jesus is God in human flesh.

46:56

You believe Jesus is a created being. So you're right. We need to learn the language, and we need to be able to scale that language barrier to communicate in a meaningful way.

47:08

And that takes a little work. And if you're not studying the cults, you're going to have to learn how to ask questions on the spot.

47:15

You want to be a detective, right? You know, what do you mean by that? Can you define that? You're deprogramming them.

47:20

I mean, you really are. You're giving them the biblical truth and understanding through theology. And then what you're doing is ripping that alternative philosophy to shreds, which is the presuppositional method.

47:30

Sure. Sure. Yeah. And it's very presuppositional to ask questions so that they could expose their underlying worldview, in which case you're going to offer a critique.

47:41

Now, when we're doing this presuppositionally, it might look like we're just having a Bible study with them, right?

47:46

But that's presupposition. We're appealing to our common ground, the scriptures, and showing that they are operating on assumptions that don't fit with the text.

47:55

And we can show that by pointing to tensions within their own view. And we call that—and people know this as well—we call this the internal critique.

48:03

But, Chris, one of the things that I've recognized—I haven't spoken to a lot of Jehovah's Witnesses, but all of my interactions with the

48:11

Jehovah's Witness or the Mormons. I mean, we could study philosophy. We can talk about the atheists and epistemology and stuff.

48:18

99 .9 % of the time when I walk away from these conversations,

48:24

I literally felt like I just gave a crash course on basic Christian systematic theology.

48:31

So one of the ways that we're going to deal presuppositionally with the cult is to know the living daylights out of our own theology because half the conversation is going to be correcting misapprehensions of what the

48:42

Bible teaches and what we believe. And we're going to have to know how to defend the Trinity, the deity of Christ.

48:47

And it doesn't matter who, whether it's Jehovah's Witness, Mormon. I remember getting stopped by the Mother God cult where this one guy was like, well, did you know that there's

48:58

God the Father but there's also God the Mother? I'm like, oh boy. And weird as that sounds and as much as that would catch an average person off guard, what was

49:07

I talking about? The same thing. He believed that salvation was by faith plus works.

49:13

He believed baptism was necessary. You see, we went right back into the basics of the core differences between true

49:20

Christianity and the cults. And so to be presuppositional, I think we really need to operate in the soil of Scripture, in the soil of Christian theology and challenge the presuppositions of the cultists by asking questions so they could expose some of their presuppositions.

49:34

So that's how I would come at it. And as you know, it takes time. And like you say, you walk away from a conversation like that and you think all

49:42

I've done is presented the Trinity, salvation by grace through faith in Christ alone, the person of Christ, right?

49:49

His true deity and humanity in one person. And you think, why did it take an hour and a half to explain that the third person of the

49:59

Trinity is a person and not a personage? Little things like that.

50:04

And the problem is because it's so thick. But the point of application for what we're talking about here that I want to make is now imagine you were born into this.

50:14

Right. And imagine these are your family members teaching you this with physical reinforcement from the time you were a child.

50:24

That's right. You do not break that in a few days.

50:29

You do not break that in a few months. Now, I know that Jesus is sufficient to save, but there is an entirety of doctrine that must be carefully applied to the thinking of someone who's constantly had scripture turned around and twisted against them.

50:48

Because if you're taking scripture, just like the Church of Christers, I'm going to make a lot of people angry, but I don't care.

50:55

I don't care, it's not my show, it's Eli's. And twisting it like that and using it against someone to condemn someone when they're hearing

51:04

Christian preaching from the pulpit that's about God's grace. They're sitting there wondering if they have

51:10

God's grace. They're sitting there hearing those words as condemnation when it's grace.

51:16

And it's because they've not escaped that cult lens that's over them like a dark cloud.

51:23

And it's a terrible thing, and that's why this type of work is so important and increasingly so as we move forward with where we're going, especially even in the

51:32

United States. I mean, I think we're headed for a type of neo -paganism right now. It's not going to be atheism that's the problem.

51:38

I've got a lot more here to talk about in particular with regard to presuppositionalism. I know we're almost an hour in already, so you tell me what to do.

51:46

Yeah, well, we're probably going to wrap it up at the top of the hour. Only because I'm trying to keep them within an hour so that people will listen to it after it has mileage afterwards.

51:59

But that's okay. You're my friend, and I'm sure if I invite you back on, you'll come back on, right? I can guilt you to come back on.

52:05

Lord willing, I think I can do this in nine minutes. What was that? I said I think I can do this in nine minutes.

52:11

You can, but before you do, and I'm quite confident you can, and I'll give you the opportunity to do that.

52:16

I just want to put up here Denny Otero's question here. Is it true that for the most part

52:21

JWs, Jehovah's Witnesses, are not very educated? I could be wrong. What has been your experience in terms of the overall education level, at least what you can tell, in interacting with Jehovah's Witnesses, if you have any experiences with them?

52:34

Yeah, I don't know. I mean, that could be a geographical reality there or something.

52:40

I really don't know. I've got a story. There was a mentor of mine, and he was leaving seminary one day, and a

52:47

Jehovah's Witness called him, and he was in his car. He said, you know, well, I'm not going to listen to the

52:52

Bible because it's wrong. It's been translated wrong. That's what the Jehovah's Witness said. The guy had just come out of class, so he had his

52:58

Greek New Testament there, and he handed him the Greek New Testament and said, can you show me where? JW didn't have an answer to that.

53:07

A lot of people don't know this, but one of my favorite Christian philosophers, one of, he's like in the top five, is

53:13

Gordon Clark. I'm not a Clarkian, but I've learned so much from Gordon Clark and listened to lots of his lectures.

53:20

And there was a funny story he told where he was sitting in his front lawn reading the

53:28

Greek New Testament, and a Jehovah's Witness just imagined approaching Gordon Clark saying, you know, this is what the

53:35

Bible teaches, and here he has the original language right there. I don't remember exactly how the story went, but if you know the way

53:41

Gordon Clark sounds, he sounds like, oh, what do you mean?

53:47

I can just picture him completely and utterly destroy an unwitting Jehovah's Witness who probably doesn't know the original language.

53:55

But to answer Deneen's question, it really is going to depend. I think that's an overgeneralization to say that Jehovah's Witnesses are not very educated.

54:05

Listen, you have educated people in every field, every philosophical school of thought, every religion.

54:12

You're going to have super smart. I mean, the women that I spoke with just the other day seemed pretty educated to me.

54:18

I mean, they were very well spoken. They were very kind. They knew how to navigate. I was able to kind of observe not just what they were saying, but the tactic they were using in terms of communicating with a stranger from the street.

54:30

They were very intentional about how they did those things. And to be perfectly honest, they did very well. They knew how to navigate through the different topics, and they seemed quite educated.

54:40

And for the most part, at least with respect to Scripture, they seemed very well read. They knew certain texts. Now, again,

54:45

I could nitpick. I mean, they do that as part of their ministry, but I do this, so I'm purposefully aware of some of the tactics.

54:54

But I could appreciate the fact that many Jehovah's Witnesses that I've spoken to seem to be educated for whatever that's worth.

55:01

So don't assume. Don't presuppose, you know, without warrant, the education level of someone.

55:08

Listen, the Word of God doesn't come back void, and the Word of God is a weapon in the hand of the Christian, and unfortunately it is also a weapon in the hand of the unbeliever.

55:16

And so to a certain degree, when someone's twisting Scripture, it can still cut if you're not equipped. So you want to be prepared regardless of someone's education level.

55:25

So nevertheless, okay, so why don't you take the rest of our time here, Chris, and unpack some of the presuppositional stuff and some application here that you wanted to share.

55:36

Yeah. So let me do this quickly. And if there's something you want to zero back in on, we can,

55:42

Lord willing, you can one of these days invite me back on or I can go somewhere else or something. I don't know.

55:47

One of these days. We'll have you on sooner rather than later. I love when you come on. So again, these movements are superficially

55:53

Reformed or fundamentalists. That's why they appeal to us. Things like biblical patriarchy and complementarianism seem to be up front in their movements.

56:02

The homeschool movement, the homesteading movement, biblical separation against worldliness, family first ideologies.

56:09

All of that sounds good to a lot of us. And that's why this can be so damaging because they can infiltrate your church without you even knowing it.

56:18

They're not biblical. They're actually anti -biblical while claiming to be more biblical than alternative.

56:25

Self -righteousness is a frequent feature in these cults. But these things can bring about severe spiritual, mental, emotional, sometimes even physical or sexual harm.

56:40

And I know we don't like talking about that, but that's just the truth. So how do we address this? And we've already talked about language a little bit.

56:46

I want to talk a little bit about the performative aspect of language. I don't know if you're familiar with speech act theory and whatnot, but that's a philosophical lens through which we can view some of this.

56:54

A lot of these cult leaders and those who follow the cults will say things that are contradictory.

57:01

And sometimes we focus on the content of what's being said instead of what those words are meant to do.

57:06

When somebody twists the Word of God or when somebody gives contradictory commands or descriptions of things, it's because they're trying to exert control over someone else.

57:16

And so that's always the point of it, intentionally or not. You know, brainwashing, it's not intentional, but they're doing that intentionally or not to control another human being who's created in God's image for their own selfish reasons.

57:31

Anyway, so how do we look at this? I think when it comes to cults that pertain to the family in particular, we'll call it family cults.

57:40

What we need to do is look at the spheres of authority that God has set up in this world.

57:45

So something like Bill Gothard, something like Michael and Debbie Pearl, they are very anti -civil government.

57:53

They're very anti -church. Look, I'm not against the house, church, whatever.

58:00

If you want to have church in a house and there are elders and deacons and there are the sacraments there, the ordinances of baptism and the

58:06

Lord's Supper, you got a church. I don't care about the building. I don't. We have big buildings because it fits more people.

58:12

That's it. But when people are in a house church movement and that's all they ever talk about and they don't have elders and they don't have deacons and they don't have the sacraments there, that's not a church.

58:22

That's a Bible study. And a lot of times that's closely associated with some of these movements that what they're doing is they're rejecting other earthly authorities.

58:34

And in rejecting those other earthly authorities, the family is the only authority. And that's not biblical because the civil government, the church, and the family are all derivative authorities.

58:49

Those are authorities that God has ordained on earth and those authorities are to keep one another in check.

58:56

So what text of Scripture do we have for that? Well, Ephesians 5, 22 through 6, 4 talks about the family government, right?

59:04

Matthew 18, 15 through 20 talks about the church government. Romans 13, 1 through 7 talks about the civil government and those are instituted by God.

59:13

And when one of them steps outside of that sphere, guess what? The other authority steps in to take care of that, right?

59:21

To keep them in check with one another. And so that's the problem at the end of the day, just on a basic level with the

59:30

Gothards and the Pearls is that they have set up the family as the ultimate authority.

59:37

And I can get into the specific teachings of Michael and Debbie Pearl and why it's totally anti -Christian and why this is so damaging.

59:47

But anyway, I'll just kind of leave it there for the moment and let you deal with that. Yeah, that's interesting because a family is such a powerful construct, right?

59:55

And if misused within the context of a cult, I mean, that's one of the main reasons why, right?

01:00:01

That it's so difficult to leave a cult. You can be convinced intellectually that what you've been taught is wrong but then you need to now consider the emotional connection you have with the people that taught you, whether it's family, whether it's friends and things like that.

01:00:14

And it can almost seem impossible. How could I ever help someone break loose from such a tight grip?

01:00:21

And this is where we really need to trust the scriptures. I mean, Jesus says that it's harder for a rich man to enter into heaven.

01:00:28

It's easier for a camel to walk through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to get into heaven.

01:00:34

And Peter was like, well, who can be saved? Well, with man it's impossible, but with God all things are possible.

01:00:40

And so we need to think in terms of that simple faith, right? There's a difference between a childlike faith and a childish faith, right?

01:00:47

When we're doing apologetics and things can get complicated and we're making arguments and things like this, ultimately we need to trust in the providence and sovereignty of God, right?

01:00:55

That it is impossible as these things might seem to get someone out of a cult. It has happened.

01:01:02

We have evidence of it. And we should have confidence in the fact that when we speak words to people who are lost, we are equipped with not just the word of God, but the very spirit of God as well.

01:01:15

And so we never want to forget the supernatural element to our interaction.

01:01:21

Otherwise we're just so concerned with, well, was my argument good enough? Do I know enough? We need to be careful to realize that the word we speak is also accompanied by the spirit who is working things after the counsel of his will, right?

01:01:34

We trust that God is in control and we walk in obedience and sharing and defending the faith of scripture.

01:01:39

And you are, you're dealing with, we don't wrestle against flesh and blood, right? That's right. And I was thankful to hear you say that on one of the other programs.

01:01:48

I mean, there is a spiritual reality there. Yes. And you're, as they say in the cup. We forget, Chris. As they say in the cup.

01:01:54

We forget. Right? Oh yeah, no, they do. Yeah, no, this is not an intellectual exercise.

01:01:59

Right. When you start dealing with this, you're fixing, as they say in the South, you're fixing to walk into some stuff.

01:02:06

That's right. Spiritual warfare on a level that you may have never experienced before. Because the enemy does not want you untwisting

01:02:14

God's word for these people. But I'll tell you this too. If you bring out one, it's worth it.

01:02:20

It's all worth it. And that's what God commands us to do and gives

01:02:26

Christian apologists to do. The other thing with that, though, is sometimes people are tempted to think, well, it's not that bad.

01:02:34

It's not that big of a deal. They just have this little thing or that little thing twisted. Look, what does Jesus say? Matthew 7, 15 through 20, right?

01:02:42

Beware of false prophets who come to you in sheep's clothing, but inwardly are ravenous wolves.

01:02:48

You will recognize them by their fruits. I'm going to skip down. And he says, every healthy tree bears good fruit.

01:02:54

The diseased tree bears bad fruit. A healthy tree can't bear bad fruit, nor can a diseased tree bear good fruit.

01:03:01

Every tree that does not bear good fruit is cut down and thrown into the fire. Thus, you will recognize them by their fruits.

01:03:06

Well, Eli, when we're talking about things like marital corporal punishment, wife spanking, and when we're talking about things like…

01:03:15

I can't get away with that. It won't work in this house. We're talking about things like keeping your oldest daughter at home for a second wife.

01:03:25

And when you're talking about financial domination, and you're talking about even false imprisonment in some cases, or brainwashing and that sort of thing, you're talking about bad fruit, brother.

01:03:38

That's right. Because, yes, it's true that we're to honor our parents. And I think that applies even after we've left home.

01:03:46

But if you're honoring God and following His word, and if your parents brought you up in the nurture and admonition of the

01:03:55

Lord, there should be no worry in your mind that you're honoring your parents by following God.

01:04:03

And there should be no worries in their mind that they have raised you in such a way that you're following after God.

01:04:11

And if that family is objecting to that, or that group is objecting to that, that ain't

01:04:20

God's teaching. That's right. That's a cult. That's right. They're trying to emphasize control over you, right?

01:04:29

Because they know that their teaching is distinct from the word of God. There it is. Control is the main dynamic in cults.

01:04:36

It's also the main dynamic in abuse. When we see abuse, we think, oh, criminal, sexual, physical.

01:04:43

No, no, no. Abuse is mental, psychological, spiritual. It goes all the way through when you're talking about this stuff.

01:04:48

That's right. Wow. Well, this is super important stuff. I mean, I don't mind doing more shows on cultic thinking and these sorts of things and exploring different aspects of that.

01:04:59

I think it's so important. And quite frankly, and I'm not minimizing, I mean, everyone who does not know

01:05:05

Christ is an object of evangelism, right? But atheism stuff, it's kind of boring.

01:05:13

To be perfectly honest. I'm kidding. It's tongue in cheek, obviously.

01:05:19

If you have atheists that you're trying to speak to and share, of course, of course. But there are more cultists, more

01:05:26

Muslims, more people in these different groups, much more in terms of quantity. Atheists tend to get most of the airtime because you have people in the media, social media, these sorts of things, famous people.

01:05:38

But for the most part, atheism is a very small percentage, and there are a lot of people in these cults. So I think not that we stop talking to the atheists, of course.

01:05:47

We want to talk to the atheists and evangelize. But you do want to also be prepared to talk to the person you're most likely going to be coming in contact with, someone who is in a cult or a false religious system.

01:05:57

So make sure that you're equipped, you're well -rounded, so as to speak to anyone, as 1 Peter 3 .15

01:06:03

tells us, that we're to always be ready to give a reason for the hope that's within us. So Chris, I want to thank you so much.

01:06:09

I appreciate your friendship, and I appreciate your mind and the things that you share. And I definitely want to get you back on, perhaps to piggyback on this discussion or maybe cover something else as well.

01:06:20

If you don't mind, I would like to, on another – we can do it now in five minutes, or we can do it on another show.

01:06:26

Let's talk about The Pearls. Okay. Well, let's leave that for another show so you can go into more detail.

01:06:33

Because I want you to be able to do justice to the topic. And I want to research a little bit about them because I'm not really familiar.

01:06:40

There's not a lot out there. I'm going to mention Tim Challies. Okay. The review of their book,

01:06:46

To Train Up a Child. I've got the old version. They're want -to -be Amish people. But anyway, they are.

01:06:53

They're want -to -be Amish, want -to -be homesteaders, want -to -be homeschoolers, and want -to -be Christians. But anyway, and want -to -be good parents, but they're terrible if the things that they write about are true.

01:07:02

But anyway, I'm trying to get you in all sorts of trouble tonight. What was

01:07:09

I going to say with that? I'm sorry. Yeah, Tim Challies. I pointed to Tim Challies' book review of To Train Up a

01:07:15

Child and then also his book review of, I forget Debbie Pearl's book's name, but it's about a helpmeet for him or something like that.

01:07:22

Okay. Well, we can definitely do another show and go into detail on that. That would be great. Well, ladies and gentlemen, if you found this discussion or you find the discussions that I typically have on this show interesting, useful, beneficial, edifying, please do me a solid and like the videos.

01:07:37

That actually helps a lot. I know that's kind of like if you're a YouTuber, don't forget to smash the

01:07:42

Like button. But literally, don't forget to smash the Like button. That is super helpful, and it lets me know that you guys are enjoying the content and benefiting from it.

01:07:53

Also, what would be greatly appreciated, if you find it in your heart or feel led to do so, we can definitely use financial support.

01:08:02

If you think you might want to support this ministry, you can do that by going to RevealedApologetics .com.

01:08:08

There's a donate page there. You can sign up for my five -week presuppositional course, a presuppositional apologetics course.

01:08:15

That's another way to support the ministry and also get some good resources to learn the details, the ins and outs, and the theory of presuppositional apologetics and how to apply it.

01:08:23

Those are various ways that you could support Revealed Apologetics. It is greatly appreciated. It does take a lot to kind of do the back -end stuff and to pay for things and to pay the bills.

01:08:33

Greatly appreciate any support that can be given. If not financial, definitely prayers would be greatly appreciated as well.

01:08:41

Chris, is there any last thing you'd like to say before we close off the show? Just a shout -out to Samuel. I don't know how to say his last name.

01:08:47

And Jeff Downs. Good to see you guys. I wasn't watching the chat. I love Jeff. Awesome. Very cool. No, man,

01:08:54

I appreciate it greatly, Eli. Like I said, there aren't a lot of people who do this sort of work, but it's a very messy, very necessary work, and when you put faces on it, it becomes much more real.

01:09:06

But I appreciate you. I'd love to come back on and talk about Michael and Debbie Pearl, and that will give me some more time to dig in through more of their garbage.

01:09:15

We do it so you don't have to, viewers. That's awesome. Well, that's it for this episode, guys.

01:09:22

Thank you so much, and I appreciate you guys. And until next time, we're going to have a couple of shows coming up soon.

01:09:28

I'm going to try to get Jeff Waddington back on. Jeff Waddington was introduced to me by Lane Tipton, and he's become a really good friend and a really good resource,

01:09:40

Lane as well. And hopefully I want to get him and Lane on to talk some details about presuppositional stuff and things like that.

01:09:48

And I'm also having Jeremiah Short, who's known as the Black Doctor, on TikTok.

01:09:54

I want to have him interact on the topic of the hypostatic union, so the idea that Jesus is both

01:10:00

God and man. We're going to interact with some comments that were made by Tyler Vela, who was a professing

01:10:06

Christian and now no longer identifies, if I can use that terminology.

01:10:13

There were some comments he made on Facebook that I thought would be a great opportunity to talk a little bit about the dual nature of Christ and how we make sense out of that.

01:10:20

Again, basic Christian theology. So looking forward to having him on. I'll let you guys know when that is scheduled.

01:10:26

Tyler, we love you and we're praying for you. Yes, we do. And I still very much love

01:10:32

Tyler and I think he's an excellent guy and I think people should be praying for him. But that will be it for this episode, guys.