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

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

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We are live, but not our normal time. This is again another bonus episode.

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We tried this once before, but it didn't work so well because, well, we were like at midnight in the

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Philippines. We wanted to get those in the Philippines to be able to come in and share. So that kind of makes it difficult.

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So let me invite Pastor Justin in. Welcome, sir. Good morning.

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Yes, it is morning for us here, but we did this specifically for those in the Philippines, which it's now about eight or nine o 'clock at night there,

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I think nine o 'clock. And we're trying to make it a time that they're available. We got several pastors that are in the backstage are going to come in.

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So let us bring folks up to speed with what we're doing, why we're doing it real quick. We had a debate on Apologetics Live about a week and a half ago with a gentleman by the name of R .A.

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Fuentes. I think if I pronounce it right, the guys in the Philippines will correct me, hopefully. But I've been trying to work at it because I'd like to make sure

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I pronounce names correctly. And so we did this debate with someone who clearly should not be debating.

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We'll discuss that. We'll also discuss a new article that just dropped at Striving for Eternity.

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This is a gentleman who wanted to challenge folks. Actually, anyway, he claimed that no one, no

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Calvinist pastor is capable of debating him. And so, yeah, well, that was a claim.

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You know, from my understanding, some people tagged myself and James White and a couple of others and challenged us to debate him.

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And I did. I said, I'll debate him. James White said he's not worthy of debating.

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Exactly. Let me read his exact words. Actually, James White said, R .A.

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Fuentes Apologetics, first, your thesis statement is a nonstarter. Now, keep in mind that the thesis statement that he was talking about was that Calvinism is useless and dangerous.

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This is a post that said that the God of Calvinism is the same as the God of Islam. And so you'll notice that he starts with a thesis statement and then refers to the original post.

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That becomes important because you're going to when you watch the behavior of Mr. Fuentes, he will talk about the fact that James White was referring to the original post, but he makes a distinction here.

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So he said, first, your your thesis statement is a nonstarter. If you understood scholastic debate, you would know that.

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Secondly, what qualifies you to engage in meaningful debate in this field? Further, if you came up with a statement above, notice that difference.

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If you came up with a statement above the one that the one that shows such ignorance of both our reformed theology and Islam, why should anyone waste their time?

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That was Dr. James White. Now, notice the aspects of it. First, he's saying that the claim

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Calvinism is useless and debate and dangerous is a it shows a lack of scholastic understanding.

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So right off the bat, that's what he recognized. Second, he points out that, you know, ask the question, what's what is, you know,

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Mr. Fuentes claims he's done 100 debates. We're going to question whether that's really the case. In as far as real debates.

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Then the third thing is, he says, you know, if he's agreement with the original thing, it's he shows ignorance.

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And so we got a new member, actually, I just see this popping up. So Casey Beaver, welcome to this is a new member to our

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YouTube channel. So it's a way of supporting striving for attorney, which I should have mentioned at the beginning, this who hosts this.

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So this is put on by striving for attorney, you can always join apologetics live. Typically, we do this at eight o 'clock to nine o 'clock,

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New York time, Thursday nights. So in the Philippines, that'll be Friday morning, we do a live show, you can come in and ask any question.

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And we'll leave throw this challenge out. Also, anyone that is watching that happens to know

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Mr. Fuentes, you are more than welcome to send this to him, send him the link so he could join.

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This is a difference you're going to see between his behavior and our behavior. Yeah, he'll block you.

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Well, he blocks us, he will do shows about us misrepresenting us. But what you don't see him willing to do is actually join us and discuss these things.

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That tells you a lot about someone's character. And that's something to note. So just also real quick, just for folks that are, you know, watching,

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I did put out a Christmas sale on the book, what do we believe for really, for more the, I guess the

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Americans, I mean, we guess we could ship the Philippines is really costly. We're doing a half off sale for Christmas till the end of the year, you could use

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Christmas 21 as the coupon code at strivingforeturning .org. You can get what do we believe at half off.

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Pastor Nilo has been asking me to get this going in, you know, to get it onto Amazon, so that we could print it there in the

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Philippines. I am trying to work on that. I will try to work on it this week. I do have a busy week. I'll try.

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But we are also talking about doing some trainings there, at least virtually to the

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Philippines. So Pastor Nilo was talking, we're going to try and do maybe through him, work on some doing some stuff with hermeneutics, how to interpret the

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Bible, something that Friantes would learn a lot from, because he displayed he doesn't understand that in the debate.

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Another thing to point out would be that we are working with someone who would like an evangelism training.

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So we'll try to do that online as well. So that's something that we're going to try to do to help folks out there until we can actually get there and visit.

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So with that said, let me talk about a new article that just dropped at Striving for Eternity.

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And when I mean just dropped it, we finalized it this morning. This is an article I planned to write for last week.

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I had it written. Something happened, we don't know what, and it got deleted. And so because of that, I had to rewrite it.

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And anytime you rewrite an article, it's never as good as the first one. So with that,

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I wrote this article. And if you go to strivingforeternity .org,

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the name of the article is RA Fuentes Apologetics Exposed.

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And so what this is, and I'm actually going to share the screen real quick before we bring folks in, just to share.

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Okay, so here's the article. And what this is, is this is going to explain some of what the purpose of the debate was, how it came about, some of the things that happened prior to the debate.

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And this is because Mr. Fuentes has made many claims. And those claims have been hard to prove without evidence.

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So I say in here that we don't have anything to hide. And that's why we're going to release this. So what

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I did is explain some of what was going on prior to the debate. Here's the full debate if you wanted to watch it.

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We explained some of his behavior during and after the debate. This is some things he said after the debate.

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Excuse me, I had to cough there for a second. But he's made many claims. And those claims are hard to understand.

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Now, this was a link to the post discussion that we had. Here's a link to some other articles, including why in the world are we debating

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RA Fuentes. This is an article that Pastor Justin wrote, an article that explains, walks you through the whole debate and some of the errors in his logic and what he did.

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But here is why we're doing, why we put this out. If you see here, I released all of the communications between myself and RA Fuentes.

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This is all out there. And so up top, I've explained what you're going to see in all,

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I think about 30 screenshots here. They're all there for everybody to see.

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Now, why would we do that? For a very simple reason. We have nothing to hide. This is this is how we do things.

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When you have nothing to hide, you can do this. He has made claims throughout.

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For example, he at one point, he claimed that I blocked him. And I released all the communications we had up to that point.

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So people could see he blocked me. He then proudly said that he blocked me because I asked to be blocked.

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You'll be able to see that and you'll see that he actually mentioned that he was going to block me, threatened me with it, and then did so.

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You will see that he calls me a coward and that I'm trying to get out of the bait like four or five times. He was saying that I was the one trying to get out of the debate, that I was scared of him and he understood, he understood that I couldn't handle it.

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Several times I had to tell him we were doing the debate with or without him. If you watched the debate, you saw that I put up an empty chair when he he came in and then left.

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I was ready to debate an empty chair. If he wasn't going to show, I would. I think I personally think,

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Justin, you can tell me if you think I'm wrong. I think I could have provided a better argument for the anti -Calvinist than he did.

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I could be wrong, but his argument was so bad. This isn't a dig on him.

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It's the point of the argument. It was so bad that I think that I know many people that aren't even

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Christians that could probably make a better argument than he made. Anyone that understands debate would pick up that that was, it was,

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James White said, it's a non -starter and it really was. With that said, why don't we start bringing some folks in that we have backstage here.

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We'll first bring in, in order that people came in and what we want to do with this is we wanted to hear from those in the

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Philippines. Why? Because you guys are the ones that are local and are having to deal with this man and what's going on.

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We're just being the facility, kind of the big platform that's being used in a sense to help expose this man.

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When we say the big platform, I don't think he's very happy right now. When we did the last post show, we mentioned that we were going to make sure that anyone that searches for him is going to find our articles.

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We have about four or five, actually now five or six articles out about his, from the debate, how he interprets incorrectly.

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The article that Justin wrote on why we were debating him in the first place and going through that, the article

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I just mentioned, these are starting to rank above everything that he puts out there.

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They're ranking above YouTube and Facebook. Why? Because we have content rich articles that are naming him by name and tied to a website that has a large internet presence.

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Because of that, it's topping out. Anytime people search, our goal is to make sure that when they search, these are the things that they find.

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A good way to make sure that keeps happening is continue to share, especially Justin's article on why were we debating

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R .A. Fuentes. Go to strivingforturning .org, go to under articles, find that article and share that one a lot.

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The more that one gets shared, the more people are reading it, the more that's going to stay on top. What we want to do is make sure that anybody searching for this guy, this is what they find so that they can do the research and hear the other side and go, oh wait,

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I shouldn't be listening to a guy like this. So with that, let's start with Pastor Nilo.

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He's the first one in. Welcome, Pastor. How are you? So let's see if we can unmute you.

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No, I think you have to unmute yourself. Good morning.

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Good evening and good morning. So I know we talked last week when we tried to do this and you were the only one that could come in because everyone else was sleeping.

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Yeah, we had you up to what, two in the morning? Yes, I woke up accidentally and then

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I, before I put myself to sleep by reading some articles and then the chat message showed up and I said, okay.

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Well, we're glad you're there. It was a good conversation. What he neglected to say is he was reading articles from, you know,

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Ray Fuentes. He's actually reading my sermons is really what he was reading.

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So down there in the Philippines, we got to talk to you a little bit last time.

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So I do want to try and get others in, but real quick, since then, has anything, any new developments that you've seen, any concerns you can share with folks who may not know too much about this individual?

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Well, I also, when I started to talk to him about this debate, he was always talking about Calvinism.

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I talk about Philippians 1 .29 without saying a word about Calvin or Tulip, but they always insert it.

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And so he was already giving your God is a monster like this.

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So I don't want to listen anymore. So I blocked him also. So you blocked him.

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Here's a comment that we got RA Fuentes and am I pronouncing it right?

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Fuentes, right? Yeah. Okay. RA Fuentes is simply parroting and even distorting other sources.

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That's why he's incoherent and often disconnects with what you're saying.

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It's actually very sad and pathetic. And this is a good point being made that we ended up seeing in the debate.

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I think what he's trying to do, and I think we talked about this before we went live. He's trying,

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I think, to parrot an American, Leighton Flowers. Now I've debated two followers of Leighton Flowers and neither of them, and I've talked to Leighton about this, saying, look, you got to, at least if you're going to have a thing where you're trying to disciple people, train people, do a better job because they're not understanding the issues.

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Yeah. They're trying to take what he says and what he does. And they think it's, look, Mr. Fuentes proved that in a monologue, he sounds great.

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Yeah. And that's the problem. Everyone sounds great in a monologue. Yeah, because nobody's to correct you. Yeah, correct.

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And, and what he, what he's doing is he's, he's trying to parrot what I think Leighton does.

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Leighton is an American here. Um, but yeah. And I, and I say that because I even said that during the, during the debate, because Leighton has the same habit of, and Leighton is someone

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I know personally. So it's not that, uh, we, we talk, uh, we disagree, but Leighton has a habit of, of using illustrations as if they're doctrine.

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And he tries to interpret scripture through illustration as, as you know, we saw during the debate.

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Uh, but Leighton at least understands what the arguments are.

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Yeah. And that's what we didn't see with Ray. Ray does not understand the arguments.

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And that's why the logical terms, the technical terms, uh, it's, it's not a

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Filipino, uh, uh, friendly. Well, and the thing is, is if you think about when we're having this discussion, um, there's two terms that, that I've not heard him bring up yet.

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And I didn't bring them up because I didn't want to give him the ammunition and because he's going to go look it up and try to figure it out.

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That's like when we were doing the debate at the end of it, I asked him and Andrew to define the term necessary.

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If you'll go back to that discussion, he did not want to answer it. He wanted Anthony, I'm sorry,

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Andrew to answer it first because he couldn't answer his own argument. And that's why

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I kept saying define necessary, define necessary. I didn't, I was trying not to make too big of a deal of it, but I wanted to want everybody to see it.

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He couldn't answer for that question. And when Andrew, when Andrew, uh, pulled up the dictionary, that's when

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I knew, cause he was like, he kept on saying, uh, well, we'll let, uh, pastor Andrew go first. We'll let pastor

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Andrew go first. We'll let pastor Andrew. And he, he didn't want to answer it. Now. Now the question would be, is to ask, ask this guy, you have to catch him off guard.

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Uh, you know, what are these terms mean? What is monergism? What is synergism?

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You know, can you explain the differences? Can you explain what these things are? What is, you know, the technical terms and lay them out for him?

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Well, one of the things you would see, Justin is, and you'll see it in, in the article that just was released in our communications is the fact that the first thing you do in pre -debate is define terms.

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I mean, that article will expose one. He didn't want to define terms. He actually thought defining terms meant that I was trying to get his argument out before he gives it.

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Yeah. Which was like a, no, I'm just asking you to define the terms. The second thing is he didn't even understand the difference.

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And this is why I question whether he has, as he claims over a hundred formal debates, he's had online debates, just gotten people and they have an argument back and forth.

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But when it comes to formal debates and Justin, you saw all of the comments back and forth.

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When it comes to formal debates, there's a difference between a rebuttal and a cross -examination.

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He didn't understand those two. He wanted, he wanted to start with the opening statements, cross -examination, then rebuttal.

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A rebuttal is a rebuttal to the opening statement. So you have an opening statement, you then have the opposite and rebutts your opening statement.

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And then the cross -examination is a question answer time between the two of you. Uh, he thought the questions were during the rebuttal section and he wanted to put the rebuttal section after cross -examination.

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That tells me that he really is not, uh, the, the expert debater he claims in formal debates.

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And this is now note, I understand that he's going to say this is an ad hominem attack, which by the way, exposes, he doesn't understand the term.

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He accused me of doing ad hominem attacks during the debate. Let me define that for folks who may not know.

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Now we're, I noticed we're losing some people in the back backstage, so I don't know if it's too late there and they're dropping off, but, uh,

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I hope that the, those pastors come back in. Cause we're going to get to you guys very soon. Um, the, the, the thing with an ad hominem is when you, when you take, someone makes an argument and you reject the argument, you never answer the argument by, and instead what you do is attack the person personally.

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So that's what an ad hominem is. Did I do that during the debate? Well, no, because I actually addressed his issues and we, the debate was a debate that was focused on the issues up until the last, like 10, five minutes of the, of the 10 minute closing.

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And during the last five minutes, I addressed him and why he should not be debating and exposed him.

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Now that had nothing to do with his arguments. His arguments had been answered. So I wasn't avoiding the answer, the argument by making a personal attack.

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Uh, and one thing that's kind of interesting with it is he's claimed that I've been lying and saying things that are false and I have challenged him and his followers just produced for me one thing that I said that is not true.

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Just one. I've been asking that now for the two weeks or week and a half, however long it's been since the debate. Yeah. Even one thing

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I said that's false. And we haven't had that yet. And the reason that I, um,

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I see that, hold on one second. You need this. Sorry.

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So, uh, so what you end up seeing is with a, you know, when he claims that I'm saying thing,

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I'm slandering him and things like this slander is when you say something knowingly false to damage one's reputation.

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So if I'm saying something true and my goal is not to damage his reputation, it's not slander.

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And so what we end up with is, is very simple. Uh, what I said is true. And I show that in the article, there were many people that contacted me and told me that he was not a, a pastor.

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In fact, you're someone saying this, uh, he, he is angered when someone called him a fake pastor, but the qualifications on first Timothy three will disqualify him.

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He's not worthy of being called a pastor. I would say that would be the case because he constantly wants to fight. He wants to fight with everyone and a pastor should not be a brawler.

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You know, and you think about it when you, when you portray yourself as a minister of the gospel or a pastor.

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And I, and I mean, I think we're talking to pastors, you know, in this conversation, when you say you're a pastor, your, your first go -to is not to call, you know,

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I don't agree with you on your understanding of the scripture, which is not definite and definitionally heretical.

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So since you don't say something like, um, your, your God's not the

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God of the Bible, your God's not Christian. You're not a Christian, things like that.

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You don't talk like that. There would be, I hope nobody in this conversation would be, uh, talking that way.

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That would be my desire that, that nobody in this conversation side would be saying, uh, just because you're an

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Arminian or just because you don't believe in all five points, you know, and, and that that's, that's proof of where you're at in your understanding, uh, doctrinally, theologically, and as a

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Christian. Well, in their side, it's the norm. It's the norm to call your

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God, small letter G, the God of the Calvinist or your God is like this and like that.

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And it's a blasphemous, uh, assertion. Yeah. And it is kind of funny that I'm going to try and bring some guys in backstage, uh, from the backstage.

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Um, it is kind of interesting because he was the one during debate that, that wanted to, um, he wanted to ask the question whether I thought he was unsaved.

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Yeah. He said that multiple times. Yeah. And I was not willing to say that someone just because they disagree with Calvinism is not saved.

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Yeah. Then what did he do? He then claimed I wasn't saved based on my view. I said that several times too.

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Yeah. And the irony is he said it, he said that I wasn't saved because I was a Calvinist and Justin, you know, that I don't go by that term.

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So, uh, but let's bring in brother Irwin. Uh, how are you, sir? Yes. Good evening and good morning, pastor

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Justin and pastor Andrew. Good morning. Good evening. Yes. Happy to be here.

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And, and you, you were trying to set this up for us the last time. And, and so glad that we were able to get this to work out.

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I, I know you got backstage, uh, Don, who you, you had, who's in Guam.

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Uh, he, he, he woke, he woke me up last night that we have to see. He, he called me at one in the morning, my time.

24:59

Oh, well that's good for you. Yeah. I went to bed early and he gave me a call.

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So, so you're familiar with this, this gentleman, you saw the debate. Uh, what, what are you, what are your concerns?

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What are your thoughts? Um, I just want, I'm just going to open it up to you and I see that you have your screen that you want to share.

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So, you know, it sounds like you had something you want to, you want to play as well. Yeah. Uh, yes,

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I know this guy, uh, I think, uh, one year, one year now I, I contacted him after I watched his debate, one of his debates in YouTube.

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So that's, that's how I, that's how I know this guy. And then, um, perhaps by God's grace, we, we became acquainted and we actually went together in podcast, in his podcast, dealing with the

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Seventh -day Adventist because I was a former Seventh -day Adventist. And then, uh, the, and that time he was, uh, debating the

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SDAs. That's why I, I chanced to know him. Sure.

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And I did follow him. No, then, um, before anything else, please pardon my

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English because this is not my native language. Doing well. So yeah, then, then, uh, we were together for many months.

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No, we, we've been, uh, exposing the, the, the errors of Seventh -day Adventism.

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And it's, it's in my, it's in my interest to do that. And I was,

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I was happy because, uh, I have someone like him who, uh, and I believe so that, uh, he, he, he knows the gospel and he knows the, what the new

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Testament is saying. And that's why I was happy. And then, uh, all of a sudden in the middle of our, you know, these efforts of evangelizing the

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Seventh -day Adventist, I was surprised to see his post attacking the

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Calvinism, even though he's fully, he was fully aware of that.

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I am Calvinist. In fact, we were discussing about our differences in our views during our private exchanges.

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So he, he was fully aware that I was a Calvinist. And then all of a sudden he started attacking

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Calvinism and that put me into some, you know, I was put into unbalanced situation because how, how, how would

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I handle this, this situation? We are evangelizing, uh, people who we think, who we thought that are unsaved by giving them the gospel.

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And then all of a sudden he's, he's attacking me. So I was lost.

28:14

Can I ask you a question, pastor? Um, I'm sorry. Oh, I'm sorry.

28:20

I'm sorry. Uh, brother. Well, one thing that I received a lot of information from several people, uh, uh, pastor

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Nilo, I believe even you and I talked about this, um, his, uh, uh, Mr.

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Fuentes is pastor, former pastor, um, from what I've read is a

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Calvinist and, um, uh, and believes in the doctrines of grace, uh, and that Mr.

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Fuentes was saved at a church that, that proclaims to be Calvinistic. Is that, is that as well?

28:54

Yeah, I'll give you the, the best information that I have. Pastor Gisalva of Katipunan, Dr.

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Gisalva, he's really a medical doctor. I knew him since 1979. Okay.

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So he is, he is really what we will call a freewill, whosoever will, uh, proponent, but he has no attacks or maybe he said he has written some attacks about the doctrine of grace, but he's not prepared to say, uh, that the

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Tulip people who is also his friends, who are also his friends are heretics.

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They work together from the Bible fellowship and his mentor, an

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American named Bob Hughes was a Calvinist and he's the one who responsible for teaching the pastors in the

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Philippines, the Bible Baptist pastors about Calvinism and the Bible Baptist, uh, uh, his name is

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Noel Smith. If you know him, he's the, uh, editor of Baptist Tribune.

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He's the one whom we always go. And it is confirmed that he said,

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God is the greatest failure in the universe because he tried to save all, but he failed to save all he prayed.

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He can save only some and he's compensating that. The Pope said that too, by the way.

30:27

Yeah. From this, uh, background from Bob Hughes, he chose somebody who is not really a full pledge

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Calvinist. He drove the church to, uh, free will ism. And then his son is now the pastor.

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This is the background of the Bible college where, uh, RFN test came from.

30:49

Okay. So, so, and, and so he did go to Bible college. You're saying, uh, okay.

30:56

Yeah, I can say that. No. Okay. In fact, he is just as high school graduate.

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Okay. So he has no, he has no training. Yeah. No, I couldn't, I could not say he doesn't have a training.

31:11

I cannot say that. What I'm saying is he doesn't have a degree. He doesn't have a college degree.

31:18

So he has no formal type training. Go ahead, Andrew. So Erwin, this is the thing you asked the question, how does someone kind of get here?

31:24

Right. Um, how do you go from working with Calvinist to, you know, this is something he put up recently.

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Calvinism is not only cultic, but it is also demonic, anti -Bible, anti -Christo, uh, have another gospel and attack the character of God.

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So it's like, how do you go from working with Calvinists to something like that? Right.

31:47

You know, you, you knew him from what I understand. He, he started off debating Muslims, uh, and, and people, he kind of got a name for himself.

31:56

People from what I can gather, he, people felt he was doing very good with that. Uh, you came in touch with him after he started to debate on the topic of Southern day, seven day

32:05

Adventism. And he, he gathered, got a name for that. And one of the things, and I know you said, you think he, he, he knows the gospel.

32:15

I kind of, I I'm going to have to disagree only to, in the extent of when he was asked to explain the gospel in the debate, he couldn't really do it.

32:24

It looked like he was reading something. He's like, well, I would explain this. I would explain that I would explain, I would point a point

32:30

B it's, it looked like he was reading an outline, not really explaining that you, I challenge anybody to go listen to how he shared the, he would share the gospel with people, not that aren't believers and how

32:41

I did and ask which one of us was sharing the gospel and which one of us was just making a, uh, you know, reading it, some sort of outline, but here's, here's how someone gets this way.

32:52

And, and pastor Justin, I've seen this in America a lot. You get somebody who gets, they make a name for themselves, however it is debating

33:01

Islam, people start following them. And then it kind of, they're, they're marked.

33:07

There's no one left to debate. No one's no one in those circles are paying attention to you anymore.

33:12

And so what do they do? They find someone else to go after. And so maybe seven day Adventists, if that's popular there, you get a, you get an audience again.

33:21

And those that said, Oh man, this guy was solid on, on Islam. Cause, cause there, even though you may disagree within Christian theology, you're agreeing that Islam's bad.

33:30

So what do you do? You agree with, you agree with them and think this guy's really good. Now, seven day Adventism.

33:35

Oh, well, he's really good on that. Because again, we, we agree on that. That's bad. And then he starts going with the

33:42

Calvinism. Yeah. Why does it, the people do this? Because what happens is when, when people, and I don't know if this is

33:49

Mr. Fuentes his heart, cause I can't judge that even though he judged my motives.

33:54

I don't go doing that. I'm explaining a general behavior that we see with people. And it seems that he fits that behavior.

34:02

That behavior being is when people sit there and they, they, they're trying to find someone else to go after to get attention for themselves, to, to draw attention to themselves, make a name for themselves, get clicks or likes or views on, on social media.

34:17

When they're doing things like that, they're doing it specifically because they want to get attention.

34:24

And so they keep going after other people. They're going to keep attacking, keep it. So if he doesn't get enough attention on Calvinism, that if that dies out, he'll find someone else probably.

34:33

Now, here's one thing I want to add to that for you, for, for you guys to think about this. Andrew and I've talked about this many times before, and I just want to lay this out publicly.

34:43

When we're going to debate somebody and Andrew will affirm this. You want to use the very best debaters with the very best arguments.

34:52

I don't want to use somebody that's weak -kneed, that just goes to ad hominems, that always goes to the lowest hanging fruit.

34:59

Oh, your God is this, your God is that. Now here's the thing. When you are, when, when you have somebody that's with you or in your camp that is parroting these low hanging fruit, it sounds really good.

35:13

Even with Islam, you got people saying, oh, you know, their God's a monster and their God's this and their

35:19

God's that. And, and it sounds good to you. So you're like, oh, he's a good guy. He's a good guy.

35:25

No, listen to what he actually said about Islam. I don't know, but if you go back and you listen to what he actually said about Islam, ask yourself, is this what the

35:34

Muslim believes? And is this what the scholar believes? Because if you're going to have a debate and an argument with Seventh -day

35:43

Adventist, Muslims, whoever else, Buddhist, Hindus, Christians, Calvinist, Armenians, whatever position, use the very best arguments.

35:56

Because I mean, even if, even if they're wrong and you believe they're wrong, don't go for the easy stuff.

36:02

Yeah. Go for the stuff that actually requires some thought and so that you can learn and you can defend

36:08

Christianity from the very best of the arguments, not from the way he does this.

36:14

You know, let, let me say something to that for folks that to, uh, to, to note is, you know, one of the things that I, when

36:23

I started to get into, uh, when I became a Christian and started to get into apologetics is

36:29

I had a rabbi that, uh, had, was trying to convert me back to Judaism.

36:36

And he asked me to review a bunch of cassette tapes. Yes. That tells you how long ago it was.

36:41

Some of you don't know what a cassette tape is. I understand. Just go, go, go on DuckDuckGo, do a search for cassette tape, and you'll, you'll,

36:53

I had hours and hours of cassette tapes of this guy, Ravi, uh, sorry, not Ravi Zacharias, uh, of, uh, uh, oh, now

36:59

I'm trying to, I'm trying to think of his name. Yeah. I'm trying to, uh, I'll think of his name. Uh, but, but there's a rabbi who debate, he, he basically is known for arguing against Christianity.

37:13

Okay. Tovia Singer. I knew if I stopped thinking about it, I'd remember. So Tovia, um, and I've spoken to Tovia.

37:19

He challenged me to a debate. Uh, we, he actually made a banner saying that we were going to debate and he's, he's never been willing to set that debate up.

37:28

Uh, but, uh, the, the reality is what I noticed is as someone who understands

37:35

Christianity, he speaks to an audience of Jewish people that do not know Christianity at all.

37:40

And he is seen to be an expert on Christianity. In fact, the rabbi told me when he gave me the cassettes that, you know, that this rabbi

37:51

Tovia Singer knows his, his new Testament, uh, as well as he knows his

37:56

Tanakh, the, what we call the old Testament. Right. And I listened to him and I realized he was confusing

38:02

Mormonism and Catholicism, but to his audience, they don't know any better. Yeah. The audience doesn't know

38:08

Christianity. And so his audience thinks he's brilliant. And I have said publicly that I've, and I offered the rabbi,

38:16

I will debate Tovia Singer anywhere, anytime. Now this is a guy who actually is a good debater. He, he does do debates.

38:23

And so it would be a much better debate. Uh, and he's, he accepted it and actually, you know, tried very much to get in touch with me and, uh, to do the debate.

38:34

And then I think when he found out how I debate and, you know, uh, my arguments, we've never set that up.

38:40

Uh, and so, I mean, the challenge is still out there because the reality is when we stand on truth, we don't have to worry about playing games, like, you know, misrepresenting people and things like that.

38:52

And this is the thing with, with a proper debate. And that's why, you know, I'm glad I saw some folks that were offering to Ray and his followers to come in here.

39:00

I have no fear. Why? Because I'm standing on the truth of God's word and the truth of what

39:06

I've said. When I'm accused of lying, well, we have an article out that will expose. I wasn't lying. Like it wasn't me trying to avoid him in the debate.

39:15

It's him constantly trying to avoid the debate, but make it sound like it was me. I mean, there's a big difference there.

39:21

Okay. And that's what you end up seeing what I saw with, with Mr. Fuentes. What he was doing is he was constantly trying to project what he does to others.

39:32

So he's trying to say, yo, you're being a coward. You want to get out of this debate. I'm not asking to get out of the debate.

39:38

And also, you know, I do want to point out this, please also note the way even that Pastor Justin and I refer to Mr.

39:47

Fuentes, both in articles and in, on shows. Listen to the language we use and then go look at the language he uses, because you'll end up seeing that the language he used, he suddenly, my name is not

40:00

Andrew. It's not Rappaport. It's rapper. Yeah. All right.

40:05

It's everything is derogatory. Everything is insulting. We don't do that here.

40:11

We show respect, even though we disagree. You don't see me insulting him, making fun of him, making fun of his name.

40:19

This is a difference in behavior. This is something about this goes to something.

40:25

And, you know, Ray, if you're listening, this goes to an issue of character. Yes. Yeah.

40:31

Okay. A person who has to use insults to try to that that actually is an ad hominem attack.

40:37

Every time he calls me rapper. Yeah. It's an ad hominem. What's he trying to do? He's trying to avoid the arguments

40:43

I'm making. He doesn't want to deal with the arguments by insult. That's what it is.

40:49

So, Erwin, you have your screen. I see. I don't know if you're sharing your screen on purpose because. Yeah, I just prepared it so that if I have a chance to show something.

41:01

Well, if you want it, you want it to show or later, later. Okay. But can

41:06

I just add to that derogatory thing that, you know, Pastor which is also here at the backstage.

41:16

He even called Pastor Dondasera as Calbonist. Calbo is a

41:22

Filipino term. It's a Tagalog word for no hair or bald.

41:30

That's really derogatory. Why? Because Pastor Dondasera is now undergoing dialysis.

41:41

Perhaps that's why his hair is already gone. And calling a pastor like that is really something off, you know, unworthy of being a

41:58

Christian at all. I do remember that being done in the Bible where someone made fun of a prophet for being bald.

42:06

And if I remember correctly, God judged that by sending some bears to maul those people.

42:13

So, if he's doing that, if he's making fun of Pastor Don because he's bald, you could see what camp you're in and what

42:25

God thinks of that. Facebook user said that teaching and behavior, they go hand in hand and that's very dangerous, and whoever this person is, that's exactly right.

42:38

We have to be careful. The Bible tells us that Paul the apostle told Timothy to be careful about your teaching.

42:46

He said, you know, you be careful about what it is that you believe and teach, and you teach it in such a way that it glorifies

42:54

God and it's not used in ad hominem derogatory ways. We're not trying to attack people.

43:00

You know, if you happen to not believe in all five points of Calvinism, well, so what?

43:08

I could care less. Do you know the gospel of Jesus Christ? You know, and when

43:14

Andrew was saying that, by the way, I just want to clarify this. Andrew didn't say the five, the tulip is the gospel.

43:23

He actually specifically said that the Calvinism is the gospel in essence and teaching.

43:28

If you don't understand what Calvinism is, it doesn't matter. What the point is, is that we are dead in trespass and sin.

43:35

Okay. That's the scripture. The Bible says that we are dead in trespass and sin. The Bible says in Romans three that none of us seek after God.

43:42

There's none of us. All of us, every single person alive is dead, incapable of coming to God.

43:50

We all have the venom of Asp under our lips. We are all sinful to the core. You know, when you talk about total depravity, it doesn't mean

43:59

I've heard it said this way. It doesn't mean that you're as absolutely as wicked as you could ever be because even

44:04

Adolf Hitler was nice to his mom. You know, you know, you think about it.

44:10

We are, we are not as evil as we could possibly be. But the point is, is that every bit of our life and everything that we do is tainted with sin.

44:19

So we don't have, we can't come to God and say, God, we can present this area in our lives.

44:24

That is good. You know, as the scripture says, you must be holy as God is holy.

44:30

And what, what Mr. Fuentes, I believe is, is misunderstanding is that, is that when we are proclaiming that we are dead in trespass and sin, that we are incapable of coming to God, that, that God himself must save.

44:46

We're also saying that God doesn't have to save anyone, but if he's going to, it must be him that does the work.

44:53

You know, that's the, you know, the, uh, you know, uh, total privacy, unconditional election, the limited atonement, you got irresistible grace, all of those things are that are wound up in there and, and, you know, perseverance of the saints.

45:05

But if you looked at the debate, everything that I just said, Andrew went through with the man and he did not understand it.

45:14

He affirmed them all except for irresistible grace. I think he did. He did accept that because he did say it's a response.

45:22

Oh, that's right. Yeah. You're, you're absolutely right. That's what it is. We say it's a response to God bringing repentance.

45:28

It's so the, the, the interesting thing with it is he, he, and that's why when you looked at the comments and I did save them, at least from YouTube, but you look at the kind of, everyone was saying checkmate.

45:40

And Pastor Nilo said it. He's like, checkmate. Why? Because, because everyone knew exactly what, what

45:46

I was doing that understood, everyone that knew Calvinism knew the definitions and without me using the terms knew what

45:53

I was saying. You know, and here's Mark and, and, you know,

45:58

I'd encourage Mark and, and D .A. Chan to come in because we've, we've seen them comment a lot, but Mark points this out and he, and he says that the, this, this guy, and I don't know how to properly pronounce his name, but Joel is one of the followers of Ari Fuentes.

46:13

And they're saying, you know, putting my name as Andrew Shameless Rappaport, they can't even present valid arguments.

46:20

That's why they resort to personal attacks. This actually, Andrew Shameless Rappaport is an example of an ad hominem.

46:28

Now, why do they call me shameless? Because they claim I did an ad hominem. Now, and as I pointed out to Joel, it exposes that he doesn't know what an ad hominem is.

46:39

Because as I said, it's when you, when you ignore the argument and attack the person.

46:46

I never ignored his argument. I dealt with his argument. I explained the problems with his argument.

46:53

And, and so let's, let's bring in, I'm going to bring in a little out of order. I'm gonna bring Don in because I know that Erwin, you were trying to work with him to bring him in.

47:01

So let me get rid of this banner here so we could see him a little bit. So, so welcome

47:08

Don. Thank you, Pastor. And good to have you all,

47:13

Pastors and Brother Erwin. It's an honor to be with you tonight. I think it's morning or afternoon.

47:21

Yes. So any thoughts that you have on, you know, the issues that we've been talking about, the issues from the debate or this gentleman?

47:29

Yes, I was quite listening to all your predicaments on R .A.

47:35

Actually, what R .A. did to you, he did it also to me.

47:41

And actually, I challenged him twice. And in response, a lot of insults he threw against me.

47:51

So Brother Erwin said that he called me Calvinist, not only Calvinist, hairy say.

47:58

And the spelling is hair. So he made a

48:04

Facebook account on that. So yeah, this guy is really very, very wicked,

48:12

I can say. And I have all his, I have with me all his words that is not really appropriate for a pastor.

48:24

Anyway, I found three things in his propositions, which

48:30

I find it really very interesting to repute this man who professed to be a pastor, but he's not.

48:50

And and that's why I find in this argument, first thing is that the ignorance of ministering the word.

48:59

And this gave me the red flag that this pastor was not really a pastor.

49:07

He doesn't know how to apply the word. In his argument, he said that Calvinism is myth.

49:14

And that's true. That's true. Can you read Brother Erwin, 1

49:23

Peter or 2 Peter 3 .16? Okay. And 1

49:29

Corinthians 3. He didn't know how to apply such doctrine.

49:36

He was to apply at the same time on unsaved people and new born believers.

49:45

Okay. It's an ignorance. Yeah. Okay. 1

49:50

Peter 3 .16. Yeah. I'm sorry. Okay.

49:57

Wait. 1 Peter 3 .16. 2

50:03

Peter 3 .16. Okay. As he does in all his letters, when he speaks in them of these matters, there are some things in them that are hard to understand, which the ignorant and unstable twist to their own destruction, as they do the other scripture.

50:23

Yeah. Peter was speaking about the doctrines of Paul. They're already doctrines that is suitable even for the new converts.

50:35

Now he was to apply on unsaved people. So, even in 2

50:42

Corinthians 3 .2, please read Brother Erwin. 2

50:48

Corinthians 3 .2 says, You yourselves are our letter of recommendation within our hearts to be known and read by all.

50:59

To be known and read by all. Sorry. Is that it? That's 1 Corinthians 3 .2.

51:06

Okay. 2 Corinthians. I'm sorry. 1 Corinthians 3 .2. 1

51:11

Corinthians 3 .2. Okay. It says,

51:18

I fed you with milk, not solid food, for you were not ready for it. And even now you are not yet ready.

51:27

So, just because some Calvinist people told him that Calvinism is a kind of a myth doctrine, and he take it and use it against Calvinism, that it became, since Calvinism is a myth, then it's useless to evangelism or to the gospel.

52:03

I find this a red flag. And as a pastor, you know when, where, and how to use the word of God.

52:13

Yeah, you cannot use this, the doctrine of the sovereignty of God or this churlid on the new converts, much more on the unbelievers.

52:25

If Mr. R .A. is already an old guy, claiming to be

52:31

Christian, yet he cannot understand this Calvinism, how much more for this unsaved people.

52:39

Yeah. You know, one of the things that I always find interesting, Don, with people who, you know, like R .A.,

52:45

who wants to go out and challenge people and debate people. We've seen this in America.

52:51

We have people, they call themselves discernment bloggers. They do discernment. They're going to be the ones to tell the rest of the world, the rest of Christians who you should listen to and who you shouldn't.

53:02

And they're always looking for someone to go after, always looking for someone to attack. But this is

53:08

Paul and Philippians. Let me read to you what Paul, the apostle, Paul, one of the most learned men of his day.

53:16

OK, who wrote most of the New Testament. OK, an apostle.

53:23

This is Paul. And what is here? I mean, he's got some authority to be able to debate people and argue with people.

53:29

What does he say in Philippians four? Sorry, Philippians 3, 18.

53:35

I'm going to I'm going to start with 17 just to have a little context that some that we realized R .A. doesn't believe in when it comes to interpretation.

53:43

Context matters. They're claiming and I do I have to as a side note, I do have to clearly move.

53:49

I thought it was hilarious when his buddy, Joel, was was tagging me and saying that context is kind of like the death knell of Calvinism.

53:59

I forget how he worded it. But like like calcium can't handle context. And I literally responded and said, did you watch the debate?

54:06

Because R .A. not only when he couldn't like when the context didn't support what he was saying.

54:13

Instead of going, oh, I was wrong. He doubled down and claimed, oh, well, there's standalone verses in the

54:20

Bible. What? He didn't even know that there weren't verse numbers in the Bible. Yeah, it's first written, right?

54:25

It's never meant to be written. Read as a standalone verse because there was no such thing as a verse at that time. But that's a side note here.

54:32

Here's what what Paul says. Philippians 3, 17. Brethren join in following my example.

54:40

OK, so let's stop there. What he wants, what Paul wants is for the Philippians to follow his example.

54:46

What's that example? Well, the example that he's going to say and observe those who walk according to the pattern as you have in us.

54:55

So so the one spot, what should we do? Those who are following after Paul, we should we should follow.

55:01

We should walk according to their ways. Yeah. Verse 18, for many of whom I have often told you and now told you, even weeping that they are enemies of the cross of Christ.

55:14

Now, here's the big difference that I see with with an R .A. and his followers, people that want to be discernment bloggers, things like that.

55:25

What you end up seeing is that these guys are not weeping when they when they correct people.

55:32

They're not, you know, and those of you who are here before we went live, you you can attest to the way we prayed for R .A.

55:39

before we went live. OK, we're not looking to attack him. We're not looking to to, you know, beat him up somehow.

55:47

We're concerned for him in his soul. You know, is he saved? I don't know.

55:53

OK, I don't know him well enough to to be able to say that his behavior is very concerning.

55:59

And so I've been praying for him. Now, I haven't been praying for hell and damnation to come upon him or or for God's judgment to be upon him.

56:08

I would ask whether he's been praying that way for me, if he's even been praying for me. Right. But what do you see from Paul?

56:15

Paul says that when you are when you're exposing false teachers, you should be doing it.

56:21

How weeping? Yeah. Not rejoicing in the behavior that I see from what from what

56:28

I've heard from others is he's rejoicing when he goes out. He goes after the Muslims, goes after seven events, goes after the

56:34

Calvinists. And he rejoices when he thinks he's got someone that he could go after and beat up.

56:40

And and that is not the behavior of Paul. Paul would say to follow after his example.

56:46

And what I would argue is that Mr. Fuentes is not following after Paul's example.

56:52

I don't hear him having a concern. You guys that watch the debate, you heard me that the last part of that was a concern for him.

57:00

And what did he do when I started saying concern for him and what, you know, to try to correct him?

57:05

What does he do? He pulls his earbuds out of the ear and, you know, I'm not going to listen to this.

57:11

Right. And he's and the interesting thing is he has two arguments why he did that. At first he said, well, I'm not

57:16

I wasn't going to listen to the ad hominem attacks of of Andrew and the, you know, biased moderator.

57:23

But later, because everyone said, yeah, but when their eyes were closed, why didn't you go and listen?

57:29

Because you were the one asking for the closing prayer, right? Yeah. Waited till till Justin said, amen.

57:35

And we both opened our eyes and he puts the earbuds back in. He later said he was talking to someone.

57:42

Well, here's my challenge. Please go back and watch that debate and look to see if his if his mouth is moving.

57:49

Who was he talking to? You know, if I'm typing, you can you could see me looking down at the keyboard or look.

57:56

He wasn't doing that. How was he talking? I mean, does he have the ability to, like, speak into people's minds or something?

58:03

Like, who is he talking to? Why does he give two stories? Well, I think typically what happens is people give a quick response in defense of themselves.

58:11

And then when that doesn't work, they have to come up with something that'll work better. And I think that's why he stuck with that while I was talking to someone.

58:19

Can I add to that? Yeah. Yeah. Speaking of lies, I would say that this this guy is really a terrible liar.

58:28

You know, this is not to slander him. Of course, not.

58:34

We're not here to slander, but really just to expose his behavior and the truth.

58:42

You know, he has he has the habit of lying. First of all, he lied about his title of being a pastor.

58:51

You know what? When I watch one of his debates, that's how

58:58

I got to know him. You know, he's presenting himself as a pastor. He was being introduced in the debates as a pastor, and he never corrected.

59:13

And for the next debates that... Let me speak to that real quick,

59:19

Son. Yeah. You notice in the debate, he called me doctor. If you remember that.

59:27

How quick was I to correct that? That was like one of the things I said when I spoke. I said, I'm not a doctor.

59:33

That's right. How quick were you when Pastor Justin referred you to you as pastor?

59:38

How quick were you to respond? I'm not a pastor. Right. That's the right thing to do.

59:46

We should not misrepresent. I mean, we should not bear false titles for ourselves.

59:53

And yet this guy has been allowing anybody to call him pastor.

01:00:00

And I was one of the victims, you know, because how could I... You know,

01:00:06

I have the tendency to believe that, you know. And then I gave him all the praise and all the respect that a pastor should have.

01:00:16

Supporting him, everything that I could do to help his ministry, even helping his podcast.

01:00:24

And to my surprise, you know, after we got separated because of this

01:00:31

Calvinism issue, I was actually exposed him that he is not really a pastor.

01:00:40

For you guys there in the Philippines, especially those who still believe in this guy.

01:00:48

Why don't you ask him personally? Number one, if he is ordained.

01:00:55

Number two, if he is church sent, no? And we already settled to the argument of having a theological degree.

01:01:08

You know, a degree in theology. Okay, that is not a requirement for being a pastor, at least here in the

01:01:15

Philippines. But, you know, pastor, please correct me if I'm wrong.

01:01:20

If you proclaim yourself or at least allow yourself to be called a pastor, people are thinking that you at least have a degree in theology.

01:01:34

At least some training. Yeah, training, proper training. Because from where I came from, yeah, thank you.

01:01:46

From where I came from, admittedly, as a church, before a pastor can be called a pastor, he must not only be a graduate of theology, he must be ordained.

01:01:59

He must pass through all these qualifications to be called a pastor. Yes, and yet this guy doesn't have one.

01:02:09

He is not ordained, he is not church sent. In fact, he rebelled in his mother church.

01:02:19

He's a rebellious guy. That's why he was now trying to form a church, a separate church.

01:02:29

And that's why, yeah, that's why he wants to get all this attention to acquire members to this church that he's proclaiming his church.

01:02:44

But this church is not registered, that's number one. He is not a true pastor. Of course, let's say he has the desire to be a pastor.

01:02:56

There's no question. We're not questioning that. We are questioning the qualifications.

01:03:03

First of all, is he ordained? No, he's not. Also, brother Ewin, that's a calling from God.

01:03:10

That's the most important. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. And let me say something, you know, because we've said, right?

01:03:18

So qualifications, as Don just said, according to God, a pastor should not be a man known as a liar.

01:03:26

And so if you go to the article, R .A. Fuentes Apologetics Exposures on Striving Fraternity, you're going to see that you go look at the things he's claimed.

01:03:39

We released all of the messages back for us. You could see the lies he's told. Now, here's some of the things that you end up seeing.

01:03:46

He has claimed, and I want to point this out, because what we do in Apologetics Live every week is teach how to do apologetics, how to spot things, because it's a training for folks.

01:03:58

You will find people that say things that are true, but it's not the whole truth. And that's the important thing there.

01:04:07

There's a difference between telling the truth and telling the whole truth. What you often see with people is they will say things that are true, but they leave certain things out for the purpose of deception.

01:04:21

Okay. And so what you have is this. When Brother O 'Rourke brought up the whole thing of whether he's had issues at his previous church.

01:04:31

Well, I heard that from many people, and I went to investigate that. I contacted his previous pastor and asked the pastor, can we talk?

01:04:39

The pastor was communicating with me and saying, what is it you want to talk about? Soon as I explained

01:04:44

I'm debating R .A. Fuentes, I've heard that there were issues. He was at your church, and I would like to know if there were issues there.

01:04:52

He cut off communications. Now, what is it that Mr. Fuentes is doing? He's going around telling people, well,

01:05:00

I spoke to a pastor, and I guess that fellow pastor is this guy, Joel. I spoke to a pastor who told you that my previous pastor didn't say anything.

01:05:13

Now, notice how, okay, he didn't say anything. That's right, because he cut off all communications. He didn't endorse him either.

01:05:21

Once he found out the topic, he didn't want to talk anymore. So that doesn't mean, the way that he words that is to say that somehow

01:05:29

I was slandering him because he wasn't good standing with his church because the pastor didn't say anything negative, and yet the pastor didn't say anything at all.

01:05:39

So you can't say that. Now, typically, just from experience, I know that most people, when they have something negative to say, they say nothing, and if they have some positive say, they're more than willing to say it.

01:05:51

So I'm more than likely to believe the fact that the pastor said nothing, it probably was negative, because if it was positive, if he felt highly, he would have said so.

01:06:01

And so you see the way people end up doing that. So when it comes to him being a pastor, and look,

01:06:07

I understand in the Philippines, you know, there are differences, right, where I know that it's important to have, you know, the education, the ordination, things like that.

01:06:19

You know, in America, there's people who are gifted pastors, preachers, but they're not, they didn't go to Bible college.

01:06:28

They just study the Bible. So I'm not necessarily against that. However, what

01:06:33

I am against is someone that, you know, just goes out on their own, especially if they had problems at a previous church.

01:06:39

We have that in America, too. Oh, yeah. And people that just, I knew of a guy that he would be in a church, he wouldn't submit to the authority of the church.

01:06:47

He would just go out and start his own church. And he's done this in several cities. He would move to a new city because he's going to be part of that church.

01:06:54

And then the same thing would happen. And let me explain about the mentality of being a pastor in this circle of friends.

01:07:05

The Bible Baptist mentality is that if you have a congregation, then you are the leader of that congregation.

01:07:17

Even if you are not a graduate or not yet a graduate of a seminary, then you are entitled to be addressed as a pastor.

01:07:29

That's just the basic thing. And that's why I challenged him if you have conducted a

01:07:37

Lord's Supper where you are the minister, where you are the officiating minister, because that would be the test.

01:07:48

Or you have baptized someone or you have maybe at least four or five people who is really calling you a pastor and you meet them, you are shepherding them, then you're a pastor.

01:08:01

That is, I have not yet seen from Ray. You know, and one of the things, and Leonardo says this, the whole issue of, quote, what church are you from, unquote, and, quote, are you a pastor, unquote, are very easy to answer.

01:08:18

All you need is the name of your church, the answer yes or no to second.

01:08:24

His fudging and waffling on those things tell us something about what without him saying.

01:08:29

And so here's another lie that he is told. And this is another example what I'm talking about. When someone says something that's true, but a half the truth.

01:08:37

I know that this was in the original article that got deleted, but you'll still see it in all the notes.

01:08:44

When I asked him, and I'm going to share my screen here and I'll show you, even though it might be a little bit hard to read, but the articles are there and you'll be able to see them.

01:08:57

But here is the me asking. Here is the, just before you see there's, if you read this page, there's no communication here on Wednesday at 4 .17

01:09:11

a .m. There was no communication here regarding, you know, what church he was from.

01:09:18

This is the first time, and I'm going to say this, because in the debate I mentioned that when

01:09:23

I asked him what the name of his church was, his first response was this little, and I posted the picture during the debate of this post that he put up.

01:09:37

And I'll read that in a moment. But I said, well, I do not know if you know what you are, and we're talking about whether he's

01:09:46

Calvinist or Arminian. I said, since you refuse to answer my questions, let us try something simple.

01:09:54

So now the context here, in here, up until here, this previous stuff was all asking what he believes, like what is the definition of terms?

01:10:02

He won't give me those. So I'm saying, let's try something simple. You said you are a pastor. What is the name of your church?

01:10:10

Does it have a website? Right, so what am I asking? I want to know what the name of his church is. And that little post you have there, that was his first response.

01:10:19

He has got, I said during the debate that when I asked him for the name of his church, his first response was to put a post out from some guy named

01:10:32

Armin that says malicious accusations without bias. I went to BBC with Pastor Ari Fuentes apologetics last

01:10:40

July. I was introduced to him, to the brethren, and witnessed, and then some things in Filipino language that basically were like no bad vibes.

01:10:48

Okay, and I read that during the debate. But I want you to note, what I said was his first response.

01:10:55

I never, in the debate, said that he never told me. So what he does is he says that I'm lying because he told me.

01:11:04

And you can see at the bottom of this, down toward the bottom, he says the name of his church. And so he did tell me.

01:11:10

What he does is he posts this at the 9 .01am

01:11:17

part where I said, okay, let me ask this simple question again and see if you're capable of answering a simple and direct question.

01:11:26

What is the name of your church, you pastor? Does it have a website? And then he provided the name.

01:11:33

Now, I want you to notice something. That is the part he posts. He doesn't post the top part.

01:11:38

Why? Because it doesn't support his claim. His claim is that I said that he never answered.

01:11:45

I never said that. I said his first response. From the screen, you could see here's the first time

01:11:51

I asked for the church name. And this was his very first response right here with the post.

01:11:58

Okay, he didn't know the name of the website for the church. And you'll see, actually, he doesn't provide the website for his church.

01:12:04

He provided the website for RA Fuentes Apologetics. So he didn't even provide the website of the church.

01:12:11

Okay, and so he said that they're celebrating, you know, one year anniversary.

01:12:17

He, you know, about eight years he's been teaching, right? But notice in his response, he didn't name the name of the church.

01:12:25

Okay, but I do want you to notice, because this is kind of interesting, what he does say here is, and I can sense that you would not debate me.

01:12:34

So I will not force you. Let us give the challenge to another Calvinist. What is this?

01:12:39

This is called projection. He was trying to get out of the debate again, and he wanted to make it look like it was me getting out of the debate.

01:12:47

Okay, and so as you see, he didn't provide the name of the church on the first request.

01:12:56

And as you see here, I asked, what is it? That's the second request. So here, what you end up seeing is the third request.

01:13:04

I had to ask the name of his church three times before he was willing to give me the name of the church.

01:13:10

Now, he claims, what he's been claiming is that I have been, that I am lying because he did provide the name.

01:13:19

It would be a lie if I said he never provided the name. Okay, now what he, when he posts things and puts it, and this is, folks, why we released all the communications.

01:13:32

So that you guys could read them in context. Context is important. You will see how he did not, as I said in the debate, that his first response was that post, a very defensive behavior.

01:13:49

That was his first response. Let me add Edison, and he's been in the back for a while.

01:13:55

Hello, sir. Hi, can you hear me?

01:14:01

Yes, yes. Anything you'd like to add for us? Yeah, by the way, guys, I'm sorry if there are any background noise.

01:14:08

I'm actually not in an air conditioned area, and apparently it's raining.

01:14:15

So I hope that you don't catch that. Nope, we're good. All right, so I'm actually from Cebu, and Ray Fuentes and I are neighbors.

01:14:28

Oh, wow. So we go to the same church before.

01:14:33

I was a member of Bible Baptist Katikunan from 2002 all the way up to 2007.

01:14:43

And I can confirm with Pastor there that, yeah,

01:14:50

I know. I've heard of Bob Hughes. I know how he believes in a reformed

01:14:56

Baptist context, and I know the history. And I know that, well, actually, the family D'Salvas came from a

01:15:05

UCCP background. UCCP, it stands for United Church of Christ in the

01:15:12

Philippines, but it's not Church of Christ like Campbellites. It has a

01:15:17

Protestant root. Yeah, Protestant root. I grew up as a

01:15:23

UCCP. Yes. I grew up as a UCCP. Yes. Most of them, the

01:15:31

D'Salvas were actually from a UCCP congregation before they were

01:15:37

Baptist. And that's why, yes, they are against reformed theology, but they are not prepared to say that if you're a reform or you're a

01:15:47

Calvinist, you're unsaved or you're heretic. That's correct. Now, my conversion was, there was no issue about the reformed theology.

01:15:57

I only heard reformed theology through a preacher there named Pastor June Lumagbas, who's no longer there for some issues.

01:16:05

He introduced me an author by the name of Arthur Pink, and that's the beginning of my in -depth of my study of the reformed thing.

01:16:13

And I know Ray Fuentes, not personally, because 2008,

01:16:19

I left the church for some issues with doctrinal issues.

01:16:25

They are apparently Baptist Brider, and that's another thing. Baptist Brider, meaning they believe that only the

01:16:32

Baptist Church is a true church. And they believe that if you're not a Baptist Church, I don't know, you have lesser privilege in heaven.

01:16:39

So that's the reason why I left the church. That's a new one on me. Well, it's consistent, though.

01:16:46

You know, this is the thing that, you know, and the behavior that Ray displayed, is a behavior of pride.

01:16:55

And that's not, again, that's not an ad hominem attack. It is an evaluation from both pre -debate, debate, post -debate.

01:17:03

His behavior, the way he goes attacking others rather than engaging with them. The fact that he prefers the monologue.

01:17:09

The fact that he uses insults. It is consistent with prideful behavior. And I pointed that out to him, and that's why he's blocked me again, is because he doesn't like the correction of pride.

01:17:21

And, you know, the reality is that, let me explain. When pride tells us that we're right, and when people try to correct us, we want to shut them down, we get defensive.

01:17:35

And what ends up happening is people think they have, you know, look, in America, I don't know if you guys have, if you've experienced this, what you may call it, but we refer to cage -stage

01:17:46

Calvinists. Those are guys that get into Calvinism for a time, and they just want to blast everybody. And you have that in other areas as well.

01:17:53

People that start believing in charismatic gifts, people like Ray who start believing that Calvinism is wrong, and they want to blast everybody.

01:18:03

You have people who will act as if they know the truth, and only they have the truth.

01:18:08

It's not unusual. Mormons have done it. Jehovah Witnesses have done it. You know, every group has done this.

01:18:15

They claim they're the only ones with the truth. Anytime someone says that there's a strict view of the truth outside of the

01:18:24

Bible, that's a problem. See, you know, whether I was considered him to be saved, what did

01:18:31

I say? It's based on what Scripture says, right? Someone wants to deny the deity of Christ, well, Scripture says they can't be saved.

01:18:36

I'm going to say they can't be saved. Not because of me, but because of Scripture. Go ahead.

01:18:43

Yes. If I may add, brother, I had a conversation with Ray Fuentes way back in 2014 on the

01:18:54

Facebook. We have a forum there. It's a Baptist Theological Forum.

01:19:00

And yes, I've heard even then at that time, he was very, he couldn't engage in a subject or argumentation focusing on the subject itself, but rather focusing the things that we heard about the subject.

01:19:16

So he's just apparently taking some secondary information. And since he doesn't know how to use, yes.

01:19:24

And he doesn't know how to use those information because those are not coming from him.

01:19:29

So he just repeatedly parrots them out, parrots them out. And then if you ask him a direct question, he couldn't answer it because these are secondhand information that he's using.

01:19:43

Yeah, that's right. Even in the debate, we all noticed that his references came from debates from atheists.

01:19:54

And what is the other one? From his friends, from his Calvinistic friends?

01:20:00

What kind of references is that? We've been doing podcasts against Seventh -day

01:20:06

Adventists, but I'm always presenting a solid references complete with others of the books excerpts from the books, because we cannot afford to misrepresent.

01:20:21

We do not want to misrepresent them. All of our arguments should be coming from unofficial reference or books of any group that we are discussing.

01:20:34

So this has been the problem of Ray, because I called his attention when he started attacking

01:20:41

Calvinism in his page, in his Facebook post. I always ask him, give me the reference, give me the reference of this thing that you're saying against Calvinism.

01:20:58

And he cannot give any reference, but only debates of James White or an atheist debate with a

01:21:13

Calvinist, something like that. But those are not the reference. Well, and go ahead,

01:21:19

Justin, sorry. Oh, no, that's okay. I was just going to point out, I wanted to pull this up for everybody to look at this, because dealing with being an overseer, a pastor, the

01:21:32

Bible in 1 Corinthians 3, it lays out for us some very important demands.

01:21:41

And the very first part of this, John MacArthur says, he points out really well, he says an overseer must be above reproach.

01:21:49

Everything after that is what the definition of above reproach means. Correct. In other words, you have one wife and you're dedicated to her.

01:21:58

You're not an adulterer. You're not a pornographer. By the way, I'm just going to lay this out for everybody to hear this in the

01:22:05

Philippines that listens to this. If you're looking at pornography, then you better stop today. Let's be more specific.

01:22:12

If you're claiming that you have a second wife, yeah, that's adultery.

01:22:21

If you're living with a partner and you're not married, that's adultery. It's sexual sin.

01:22:26

And you need to stop that. That's you're in sin and you need to stop immediately, get married and stop playing the worldly game.

01:22:35

Okay. So I'll just throw it out there. That's for those that may ask, is it okay to live with a partner and not be married?

01:22:42

I call it a second wife. Yeah, I call it a second wife. Okay. So temperate, prudent, respectable, hospitable, able to teach.

01:22:51

Now temperate means you're not an angry person that lashes out, wants to fight. Wants to fight.

01:22:58

That's the key is some translated brawler. It's you're looking for an argument, which if you, that's the whole point.

01:23:05

What I think you're going to hit on is what he is. He's always looking for an argument. He's always looking for a debate.

01:23:11

Anybody that's always looking for that fight, that argument and debate, there's somebody you need to worry about. Now there's a difference between wanting to hold to the word of God and defend it.

01:23:21

But all of this states that just because you want to hold the word of God and defend it, you do it in a respectable way.

01:23:29

You do it in a hospitable way. You're able to teach. Brothers and sisters, listen to me.

01:23:34

If you can't teach the word of God in its clear context and it's the way it should be taught to bring people closer to God, then you shouldn't be teaching it.

01:23:46

Okay. It says not addicted to wine, not pugnacious. That's the idea of somebody that's argumentative.

01:23:54

That's just constantly nagging and ready to be into a disagreement.

01:24:00

Pugnacious is a, it's this whole entire idea of that person that is so self -willed that they jump into every situation.

01:24:10

Gentle and peaceable. Now, gentle and peaceable means even when you're debating with someone, even with your argument with somebody, you aren't to the point that you want to wring their neck or break their neck and that you have this love for them.

01:24:25

Because brothers and sisters, listen, there's not one of you or me or anyone else that doesn't deserve hell.

01:24:32

And if you've been given grace, then you know how to give grace, even when someone's wrong.

01:24:38

You don't call somebody who happens to be a very close friend of mine. You don't call somebody rapper as an insult.

01:24:46

Guys, that's something you don't do. That's not peaceable. That's not gentle. That's a recognition of your own self -importance.

01:24:53

You're not looking at somebody saying that Andrew Rappaport, Pastor Andrew Rappaport is worthy of respect as a man created in the image of God.

01:25:03

And even if he's wrong, even if he's wrong, I still love him. See, that's the difference between gentle and peaceable and that angry, pugnacious, untemperate person.

01:25:16

I want to point something out here. It says here in verse three, free from the love of money. That's not just talking about finances.

01:25:25

That's talking about all the wealth that is accumulated from that. Now you think about it. If you're wanting to build a platform for yourself and you're wanting to get as many people as you can to support you just and you're willing to go about any way of doing it.

01:25:41

That tells me that you have a love of money. You don't just want money. You want the power that comes with it.

01:25:46

You want the position, the authority, the prestige that comes with it. And that is not someone that's above reproach.

01:25:55

If you'll look even further, if this is jump down real quick because I don't want to take all the time. But if you see here, it says this, verse six, not a new convert.

01:26:05

The reason that you can't be a new convert is if you are a new convert and somebody gives you a position of authority, you will abuse it.

01:26:14

You will puff yourself up in pride. And it says here so that you will not become conceited. That's pride and fall into the condemnation incurred by the devil.

01:26:25

The devil was beautiful and he was brought up. Lucifer was brought up into a stage of importance.

01:26:30

And in his own pride, he puffed himself up and he wasn't lifting God up. He saw himself as worthy of exaltation and he was willing to lie, deceive, and destroy to get his position.

01:26:42

None of us can do that. We have to be above reproach. So let me just, and I'm gonna need some translation here from what

01:26:49

Gabe said, because Gabe says, RAF wanted to fight with me by saying, and I don't know what that translation, what that means.

01:26:57

So I'm gonna ask some of the guys here because he says, as a pastor, it's shameful to say, can someone help me understand what Gabe? Everyone's speaking, but he's muted.

01:27:07

So I don't know if he means, are you willing to fight me by fisticups?

01:27:13

Oh, are you willing to accept the fight? That's it. Yeah. No, it's more about fists.

01:27:20

Yeah. Cause, cause I actually, that's interesting that he said, because I did have, he and Joel, the guy Joel was posting things.

01:27:27

Edison's got his fists up, you know? Wow. The thing that is interesting with that being the case is both he and Joel made comments about that, like a physical fight.

01:27:40

And I think my response was, cause I think Joel said that, you know,

01:27:45

I couldn't handle a fight with him. And speaking of a physical fight, and I said, well, you know, you might want to check out who

01:27:54

I am a little bit more before you challenge me to a physical fight, because I practice MMA, mixed martial arts.

01:28:00

I don't have a problem getting into a, you know, a match and rolling with somebody.

01:28:06

And I actually kind of enjoy not the fighting, not the hurting someone part, but the betterment of my skills.

01:28:14

So I actually find enjoyment out of improving my skills. I have no problem getting on a mat. And that was the last time that he gave that, but he was giving like a threat.

01:28:24

His buddy Joel was kind of giving a threat, like he was going to beat me up. So if that, if it, maybe that's a consistent behavior and that, that would kind of make your point there.

01:28:34

Well, brothers and sisters, we just don't act that way guys, you know, and see, that's what I'm hoping that everybody hears this.

01:28:40

You know, I'm going to tell you, I've known Andrew for a long time. Okay. And he is somebody,

01:28:46

I mean, I was a police officer for years and I was trained in tactical defense and he's somebody that, that can hold his own, you know, and, and I'll just say that's one of those things where you, you know, even if, even if that's not the case, even if he's the, you know, a feather, it doesn't matter.

01:29:03

Okay. That's not the point. The point is, is if Andrew, I'm sorry, if, if RA Fuentes or, let's say

01:29:11

Andrew, Pastor Nilo or Pastor Don down here, anyone else, it doesn't matter if you're a pastor or not.

01:29:16

If you're a godly person, you don't make threats like that. You don't want to attack people and try to, oh, let's just fire.

01:29:24

You want to be a godly man that says, hey, let's, let's see if we are in alignment as brothers and sisters in Christ, even if we disagree.

01:29:33

And if we're in alignment in some degree, let's go out and share the gospel with others and love others.

01:29:39

Cause guys, how many people in the Philippines need Christ? Yeah. So many.

01:29:45

Yeah. Yeah. Catholicism is up north.

01:29:51

I found that Catholicism when I was in Manila, uh, Catholicism was very big. Cebu, you know, and it was a lot of Catholicism as well.

01:30:00

Not as much as I saw in Manila. I didn't get a chance. I wanted to go to Davos. We were supposed to go down to Davos.

01:30:06

Uh, it was, we were trying to plan that last minute. And so it couldn't work out with the, with the schedules. That's more

01:30:12

Muslim. It's very, very Muslim down there. Oh, sorry. Thank you.

01:30:18

Thank you for the correction. So, um, you know, so we do have, uh, and, and I get,

01:30:23

I should say, you know, because we were talking about, you know, I have, I have never once used, uh, my martial arts background to defend myself.

01:30:32

Um, I have used it to defend others when I was on the streets evangelizing and, and fights would break out in front of me.

01:30:38

I, I have protected other people, but you know, I've never, never used it to protect myself.

01:30:46

Yeah. Uh, so just now we have someone, I want to add someone else in. I'm going to, uh, and if you guys, if you guys, uh, need to go, feel free to drop off.

01:30:56

cause we're going to end up filling the screen up, but, and we want with this many guys, not to talk over each other. And I don't know how to pronounce

01:31:02

Joe. You can unmute yourself, but Joe, Joe, Joe, uh, now maybe, Janelle, Janelle, if you want to unmute yourself.

01:31:11

Um, and I don't want to mispronounce the name. So if you want to unmute yourself and then, uh, you could, you could then share with us.

01:31:22

We're waiting for him to unmute there. if you need to unmute, if you go down, oh, you're on a phone.

01:31:27

It looks like, I think from the phone, it should be a thing at the bottom where it has a mute button. Unfortunately, I can't unmute you.

01:31:35

I can only ask you to unmute. So there should be on the bottom, there's a little,

01:31:47

I think he can't hear you. Like, I think, Oh, because when we mentioned his name, he looked up.

01:31:54

So I'm going to, I'm going to, I will leave you. Oh, there we go.

01:32:00

There you are. Hello, sir. Hi, we got some music in the background there.

01:32:10

Could you turn the music off in the background, please? Okay. He may not be able to, uh, okay.

01:32:19

I'm going to leave, I'm going to leave him in here. So that if he can, if you, Janelle, if you can, uh, you know, get to a quiet place and unmute, come on in.

01:32:29

I'm going to, I'm going to go to, uh, Cole. Who's also here. Uh, Cole looks like he's more of an

01:32:35

American and not a, from the Philippines. I could be wrong there. I'm quite, I'm quite local to you.

01:32:40

I've, I've, I attended church that Anthony visits on the regular down in Mansfield.

01:32:47

Okay. So which church do you attend? Providence. Okay. Where's that at?

01:32:53

It's, uh, in Mansfield. I'd say in the Madison area of Mansfield, Ohio. Ohio. Okay. All right.

01:32:58

Well, good. Welcome Cole. What, what questions do you, or comments? Did you, did you see the debate or were you more, cause

01:33:05

I saw you, you had a thing on backstage more about Calvinism itself. So I didn't know if you, I did the debate or the, or Calvinism.

01:33:13

I did. I did get to listen to the debate. And I thought it was really interesting. Um, cause right before the debate,

01:33:21

I actually, I was started listening to things like the Rittenhouse trial and things and get, and when you start talking about doing, you know, cross exams and things,

01:33:27

I thought it was really interesting. Let me join in a lot for, for our Filipino friends. Let me explain the

01:33:33

Carl Rittenhouse, uh, uh, what, what that was. Cause they, they may not follow American news and, and I did see a comment you made, which

01:33:42

I, I did want to put up because it was, it was very fitting. Uh, but, but you have to understand

01:33:47

Carl Rittenhouse. So for the folks in the Philippines, we had a, a gentleman, we had protests with what they were called protests, um, by the media, we would call them riots and insurrection, um, where we had people in the streets, uh, throughout the, uh, fake pandemic where they were trying to, the government was trying to close things down and take control.

01:34:07

Um, and so during that time we had people known as black lives matter. And what they were doing was rioting and looting every day.

01:34:14

Uh, in the, in the cities and some businesses were, I mean, businesses are being devastated.

01:34:20

People are coming in, destroying the business, stealing all the stuff. And the next day they got to kind of rebuild. And then the next night it's, it's torn again, torn down again.

01:34:28

And so some businesses tried to, to hire people to just be some protection. And so there was a business that did that.

01:34:35

And this guy, Kyle Rittenhouse, a young man, he was six, 17 years old. He had gone, huh? 17.

01:34:41

Yeah. 17. Yeah. 17 years old. He went and he and friends, uh, were, were armed and to stand on, on the property just to be a deterrent.

01:34:50

Uh, he, he lied about being an EMT. Um, but he did try to give, provide medical help to people.

01:34:57

Uh, we do know that, uh, there, what ended up happening was he ended up being chased by a couple of people.

01:35:04

Uh, one person that said that he, they wanted to kill him. Uh, he was being chased.

01:35:09

He was, uh, then hit in the head with a skateboard. He had lost his footing. And even with all that, even being armed, he did not use his weapon and pointed at anybody until one person took out a gun and put it in his face.

01:35:25

And Kyle Rittenhouse his face at that moment, Kyle took out, he took his weapon and shot the guy.

01:35:30

He ended up killing three white men, which is kind of weird because everyone's saying he's a racist for killing three black men. And he killed three white men, but that's the way the media works.

01:35:38

And the media in this case is very much like we're saying with Ari Fuentes, because he gave, they said some things that were true, just not the full truth.

01:35:47

They said that he came from out, from out of state. Well, his father lives in that city. And so he was with his father.

01:35:53

They said he pulled it, brought a gun across state lines. Well, another gun was there at, you know, at, in, within that state.

01:36:00

Um, so they made a lot of claims that were, there were false outright false, but they, they said things that were true.

01:36:06

He did shoot people. Uh, but they didn't give the whole truth. They didn't explain that he was, uh, that, that he didn't attack in any way until he was attacked.

01:36:17

Uh, and, and in the courtroom, and this was where, uh, and this may get Kyle to your comment, at least to the one you made online, uh, in the court during cross -examination, the, the, the person that, that, you know, the prosecutor who is trying the case turns and says to Kyle Rittenhouse, as he's on the stand, uh, or sorry to a guy who shot, who was shot.

01:36:39

And survived by Kyle Rittenhouse asked him, did, did Kyle pull out the gun before you pulled out your weapon?

01:36:48

And he said, no. So, so he didn't aim until you, until you pulled out your weapon.

01:36:53

It's like, yes. Right. So they were trying to, so the whole argument was self -defense. Well, if a guy pulls a gun on you and you have a gun that right, there's a definition of self -defense.

01:37:03

So it's like, show me self -defense without saying self -defense. Yeah. Yeah. So that's some background to, to what you were saying.

01:37:10

So Kyle, go ahead. Oh yeah. That was, that was kind of how I saw with your, when you just started cross -examining and just asking him the questions about Calvinism.

01:37:19

And it kind of goes into my, my question a little bit. And backstage, I put the comment down. It's like,

01:37:24

I had a friend, he could warn me about Calvinism after some of his friends had come into his business.

01:37:30

I came in, I frequent his business and I told, I was telling him about, you know, where I've been at, what's been going on, updating him like you do when your brother's in Christ.

01:37:38

And I'm going to a reform type church. And he started warning me about Calvinism and all these things.

01:37:44

And I've, and honestly, I don't know. I couldn't describe Calvinism to you other than what you guys say

01:37:51

Calvinism is, or any more than Armenianism. But my thing is like, anytime

01:37:56

I get in a conversation with either side and I go to scripture, I'm like, okay, I see it there. I get it. That, that makes sense to me because I believe in free will and determinism.

01:38:05

Only God could create both things that seem in conflict to me. Correct me if I'm wrong.

01:38:11

I'm, I'm a lay guy. You know, like my, my, my, my more profound question was why is it that so many of us are trying to save each other from doctrines and dogma instead of sin and death?

01:38:22

Yeah, good point. Well, yeah, let me, let me, I do want to correct because, because we wouldn't believe in determinism.

01:38:30

Okay. The way that many define that. So it doesn't mean that God forces us to behavior.

01:38:39

So when people think determinism, what they think is God, God determines it. And that forces, we don't have a, we don't have a choice.

01:38:45

We don't have a will. Okay. So we wouldn't, I wouldn't use the word determinism.

01:38:52

People will say predestinate, predestinated. And again, that some people have that same thinking in that,

01:38:59

I wouldn't use the term free will. We, I would say that before we're saved, we have a will that wills just enslaved to sin.

01:39:06

And that'd be how I'd explain that. We have a free will after we're in Christ. Now the predestination, the reason it confuses people, and I explained this in the debate, and unfortunately,

01:39:17

Mr. Fuentes didn't listen to this because had he listened, he would have had the solution. I think to the whole

01:39:22

Calvinism or Meninism issue. And it's the doctrine of superintending. We see it in inspiration.

01:39:28

We see it in, sanctification that God works through the human being, that the choices that we make is exactly what

01:39:35

God intended it to be in such a way where God gets a hundred percent of the credit. That is what we mean when we say, you know, we speak about, you know, predestination, things like this.

01:39:49

God elected us because he's outside of time and he's omniscient. He has an eternal thinking.

01:39:54

Everything's eternal now to him. He knows all things. He doesn't have to wait till we do things to see it happen, to then make a decision.

01:40:02

He knows everything. So he knew exactly who he was going to bring to repentance.

01:40:09

And so what we end up - Pastor, predestination is very clear in the

01:40:18

Bible. Yes. We can find it. Let me just give one verse, 2

01:40:25

Thessalonians 2, 13, Acts 48, verse 13.

01:40:32

It's very clear there. Those who were ordained believe.

01:40:39

Correct. But the point I'm making though is when God, if you look at the passages in Ephesians 1 about we're elected for the foundation time, you look in Romans where it talks about predestination.

01:40:51

What is the context of all those? That you and I, every one of us who are believers, had nothing to do with our salvation.

01:41:00

What's the best way for coming to this place? We have free will. Say again,

01:41:07

Pastor. Okay. That's why we have free will, but you can never find in the

01:41:12

Bible that free will was useful in our conversion.

01:41:20

In services, yes, but in our conversion, it's never to be found in the Bible that free will is useful to God.

01:41:29

Yeah. What Andrew's trying to explain is from the understanding of what predestination actually means.

01:41:39

I mean, the word is there. Yeah, we wouldn't deny that. Matter of fact, we'd actually affirm it. But what he's trying to say is what does the word mean?

01:41:46

Well, in the context of understanding other passages that tell us about who God is, we understand that God is omnipresent, that he is immutable, that he has all knowledge and understanding and wisdom.

01:41:58

He doesn't have to look down at something to learn something. He knows it. And what

01:42:04

Pastor Andrew is explaining is that when God predestines, it's not because he looked and saw what would happen in the future, because God is already at every moment present, right?

01:42:16

We all agree with that, that God is omnipresent, not just in place, but in time.

01:42:22

Because he lives outside of time. He exists outside of time. He created all of that.

01:42:28

And so what we're trying to explain is so that maybe an Arminian or maybe somebody who thinks of a free will definition, when you're trying to explain what does predestination mean, we don't have to have a conflict in the understanding.

01:42:42

As long as we understand that God has not determined beforehand based on what he foresaw, foreseen faith, he determines everything based on his own providential will because he knows everything in that moment in time.

01:43:01

So think about it this way. If you and I are sitting at a football game and you're the quarterback, what do you see?

01:43:11

You see everybody around you in the field. You only see the play being made. However, if you're up at the top of the stands, you see the entire game and all the events going around and everybody around it that the quarterback wouldn't see.

01:43:24

I know that's not a perfect analogy. You're explaining a sport that they probably don't understand. Oh, well, but everybody knows what football is, right?

01:43:32

Everybody knows football. No, I don't know what football is. Not so much here in the Philippines. Yeah, thank you.

01:43:38

What is it? These Americans that think everything revolves around America, you know? Do you have a sport that's got a ball in it?

01:43:45

Basketball, yes, basketball. Well, somebody's got the basketball then, right? When they think of football, they're talking what you would refer to as soccer anyway.

01:43:55

Somebody's still got a ball. So we're all on the same field. The point being is, the point

01:44:01

I always make is when we look at the verses that speak about predestination, things like that, and this is what we do when we do harmonetics, how to interpret the

01:44:10

Bible. We look at what the meaning is. We don't pick on one word and then try to read something into that.

01:44:17

Thank you. What we end up seeing, you're saying, you've got to stop doing that. You have a habit of doing that. You put a comment up, you don't read it.

01:44:25

CBC Ministries online PH says we understand football. Thank you.

01:44:30

Everybody knows football. Thank you, too. You know, people that listen to the podcast, and we have far more people that listen to the podcast, don't pick that up,

01:44:38

Pastor Justin. So what we end up seeing is that God is often saying, when he speaks of predestination, that we can't know.

01:44:46

Like, it's not based on what we did. God made this choice before there was time.

01:44:52

Now, what does that mean? He's outside of it. And so he has an understanding we cannot comprehend.

01:44:58

We're just not capable of comprehending. And so he speaks in that kind of language. And so what

01:45:03

I would say is God works through us, just as he did with Paul and Peter and Moses, went to write scripture that the very words they chose to write, they didn't choose those.

01:45:14

God chose those. God worked through them. So everything they wrote in their own choice was exactly as God intended it to be.

01:45:21

And that solves the problems. Now, had he listened in the debate, he might have heard that. And that would have saved him.

01:45:27

Because when he got to the questions, he was asking me things that revealed he didn't listen.

01:45:33

And this is another thing. This is why he should not be debating. He is looking for a monologue, from what it seems.

01:45:39

He is looking to tell people what he thinks, but he's not engaging in listening to people.

01:45:47

I can make his argument. Okay, and here would be a challenge. I'll make this challenge.

01:45:54

I will challenge R .A. Fuentes to another debate where he will argue my position and I will argue his position.

01:46:04

And I'll even put it this way. With a thing saying that if he can't accurately argue my point, he would have to get off of online, stop claiming to be a pastor.

01:46:15

And if I can't argue his point, I'll do the same. You know why? Because the reality is,

01:46:21

I understand his argument. I don't agree with it. His argument is a confusion of Calvinism and TULIP.

01:46:27

He defines Calvinism, when he says Calvinism, he defines it as TULIP. So what he says is, it is useless because in his mind, what he ends up saying is when we share the gospel, then we are at that point, we don't need to teach someone the points of Calvinism, meaning

01:46:50

TULIP in his mind. So when he's arguing that it's useless, he's being very specific to when we share the gospel, you don't need to teach

01:47:01

TULIP. And I agreed with that because I don't teach TULIP. But as I said in the debate, the concept, the meaning of Calvinism is necessary to the gospel, and so I do teach that.

01:47:16

And so that's where I disagree. But what he's saying is what makes it useless. Now, did

01:47:21

I understand his argument? Yes, and I engaged with his argument. I said, when I share the gospel, I don't teach the doctrine of the

01:47:28

Trinity. I don't teach the rapture. There's many things I do not teach. Does it make those doctrines useless?

01:47:34

What am I able to do? Take his argument, apply his argument to a different theology, a different point, and see if it still works.

01:47:43

Now, he says it's dangerous. His argument for the danger was several points, and I found it interesting because the several points all were based on what atheists were saying, that he quoted some atheists and said that some atheists said that they believed in Calvinism and that in Calvinism, being

01:48:04

Calvinist, they deny that they had assurance of salvation or they doubted their beliefs, and therefore, because they're atheists, that shows that Calvinism is dangerous because it could bring a person to doubt.

01:48:17

Those are the arguments he made. Now, I disagree with those arguments, but I can make the arguments that he made.

01:48:25

He, even after the debate has proven he cannot make my arguments, for in fact, if you look at the article that we posted,

01:48:31

I posted something he put after the debate. Let me put it up here and share it real quick.

01:48:39

He put this up, and I may have shared this earlier, I don't know, but he said this.

01:48:47

For many years now, as a Christian, I have never heard someone telling this, someone like this telling me the meaning of TULIP is the gospel.

01:49:00

And he says, for those who don't understand, here's what TULIP is. Now, the reality is that, did

01:49:07

I say TULIP is the gospel? No. Did I say the meaning of TULIP was the gospel? No.

01:49:13

I said the meaning of Calvinism was the gospel. And so, here we got a little monster on screen.

01:49:19

Hi there. Hello there. Hi. Hi. How are you?

01:49:26

She can't hear you. I got my headphones on. I have a question, Brother Andrew. Yes. Do you teach the same about determinism or like R .C.

01:49:43

Sproul or John Carter or Lawson? Do you have the same things?

01:49:51

Well, I never got a chance. I mean, so let me answer the question this way. I, R .C.

01:49:57

Sproul does agree with me now. I don't know if he did on earth. I've always wanted to use that line.

01:50:06

Thank you for that. I'll say this. I haven't had an opportunity.

01:50:12

I mean, I couldn't talk to R .C. I've never, you know, I had only one conversation with R .C. Sproul. It was a very, it was a brief one.

01:50:20

I have had a conversation with Steve Lawson again, briefly. I have spoken briefly with John MacArthur, but not on these issues where I would be able to understand it.

01:50:31

I know what they've written. All I could say is this, is that my book, What Do We Believe?

01:50:37

explains my view. I do have a section on, you know, how we got saved and what salvation is within Christianity.

01:50:46

Phil Johnson did write the forward to that. And I asked Phil specifically whether he or John had issues with my view in that chapter.

01:50:56

And he said, so I can only go based off what he said. So he had told me that both he and John, that my view is exactly what he and John believe.

01:51:05

So I can't, I mean, other than that is all I would have to go off of, you know.

01:51:12

Now, if we sat down and talk more detail, maybe John MacArthur would have more questions for me on it.

01:51:24

I just want to bring to the attention of everyone to the issues on 10 .3

01:51:34

.16, where you and Arif have a very hot arguments and a disagreement. And I think it was not settled as clearly as everyone must know.

01:51:48

Can we brought that out again? Okay. There's 10 .3

01:51:55

.16, which R .A. was asking if this love that is prescribed in 10 .3

01:52:04

.16, does it include a non -elect? In the world term there, does it include a non -elect?

01:52:11

And I think you have a hot arguments on that matter. Well, my argument on that was to read the next two verses, which he didn't want to do.

01:52:19

He didn't want to look at verses 17 and 18, which defines it. For God did not send his son into the world to judge the world, but that the world might be saved through him.

01:52:33

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

01:52:44

So he focuses that God so loved the world, and he wants to focus the world as every human being. And yet verse 17 uses the word world three more times, giving us some context and saying, but the world might be saved through him.

01:53:01

And then the verse 18 goes on to say, not everyone say we're already under judgment. We're already condemned. Yeah.

01:53:09

You know, and if you think about it, what does this have? What is this saying? You know,

01:53:14

John 3, 16 is, for God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten son.

01:53:20

Now, if you want to just look at it in the Greek is the word cosmos. Okay.

01:53:26

So do we want to say world as in the planet itself, or do we want to deal with context and what it's saying and what it's meaning?

01:53:35

Now, I'm going to argue that the way it's written here, for God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten son.

01:53:42

If you go look at the actual context here, it says for God so loved. It's actually nations.

01:53:49

It's actually talking about the peoples. Okay. It's actually talking about the peoples because the context here is that, is that God, the son is explaining to a

01:54:01

Hebrew man that God loved, not just the Jewish people, but the nations, the peoples.

01:54:08

Okay. And in specific, he's saying that it's for all the believing ones.

01:54:15

Okay. So it says here, so that whosoever shall believe.

01:54:21

Okay. That whoever believes. It's actually the context says it's all the believing ones.

01:54:27

And if we want to go here, we could look at, we could look at the passage. Let me pull this up.

01:54:34

So we got. Yeah, I brought this up because. Go ahead.

01:54:41

Go ahead, brother. Okay. I brought up this issue because mostly this chapter 16 is being used in soul winning, in evangelism.

01:54:55

But I make a comment before in my account that chapter 16 is not an issue about to ask anyone or as a condition for anyone to believe or not.

01:55:13

Otherwise, we will put their whosoever will. So for me, chapter 16 is a declaration.

01:55:22

It's like a warranty or a warranty that like you purchase some kind of product.

01:55:33

Then they will give you a warranty. So chapter 16 is a warranty or guarantee of our eternal security.

01:55:41

So it's just that the term love and the term world.

01:55:50

It's they don't understand what they see. Well, and if you look at the context, and if you look at the context here, and it's actually telling us that this is for the believers, because just read it over and over again.

01:56:04

Yeah, it's for the believers. Look what it says. Verse 15. He's telling

01:56:10

Nicodemus so that whoever what, what's that next word? Believes will have eternal life.

01:56:17

So who has eternal life? Is it the whole world? So it's not the whole world.

01:56:23

Everybody understands it's the believers. For God so loved the world. In other words, his intention was for the nations.

01:56:30

It's not for the planet, but for the nations to save a people for himself.

01:56:38

OK, so we have to understand the context of who he's talking to, what he's talking about.

01:56:43

He's telling him that salvation is of the Lord, that it comes in a way that this

01:56:50

Jewish man is not understanding. It's not just for the

01:56:55

Sanhedrin. It's not just for the Pharisees and the Sadducees. I mean, because they actually believe that every other

01:57:03

Hebrew person that was a sinner was going to hell, and they were the exclusive ones, unless they followed them exclusively.

01:57:10

And he's destroying all of that. Yeah, he's destroying all that. And he's saying, no, this is for the world of believers, the whole world.

01:57:20

And he says, for God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten son. The whole point is that whoever believes it's for the who?

01:57:29

Verse 15 says it's for the believers. And what will they have? Pointing out, that's the non -elite, it includes to that love and to that world being mentioned in John 3, 16.

01:57:46

That's his whole point. And that's where he has a problem. That's where he has a problem with not understanding the word love.

01:57:54

Because what he's got going on... In the context. Oh, go ahead. Yeah, in the context. I mean, that's... And that was the whole thing is that, you know, he did the same thing in the

01:58:03

Romans 5 passages to ignore the context of the next two verses. I do want to go,

01:58:10

I want to make sure we answered Kyle's question because we've kind of gone off. And it looks like he's trying to say something. So Kyle, did you have more?

01:58:17

It's cold, but he confused me with Kyle Rittenhouse. I saw in the chat,

01:58:24

Janelle has posted a question asking, is the meaning of the word there in 3, 16, not universal, but particular?

01:58:31

Like having a narrow... Well, even the context has that. The context says that.

01:58:37

Yeah, it's not just the word. The whole context defines it in verse 15. But we need to clear out the question, does it include the elects or not?

01:58:51

Because for me, I want to answer that at blank point, no, the non -elect is not included in the love and word term in Gen 3, 16.

01:59:06

But what does the love mean here? It means salvation because he says here in verse 15, that whoever believes will have eternal life.

01:59:15

And what was the mechanism for God to display his love and giving eternal life?

01:59:21

It was by giving his only begotten son. Yeah, so let me wrap this up. What he's trying to point out, who is the object of love?

01:59:32

Okay, so what we want to do, because we are up to the two hour mark, and it is starting to get late there in the Philippines, so we're going to try to wrap it up.

01:59:39

So here's the thing. The context of the question that I was asked during the debate was, does God love everyone?

01:59:46

Okay. And then he went to John 3, 16. So there's a couple aspects.

01:59:51

When asked that question, I gave the answer that, yes, God does love everybody, but not in the same way.

01:59:58

We know that because in Acts, it says that God brings rain on the just and the unjust. That's an act of his love.

02:00:05

Now, that doesn't mean, and I think I used as an example, that I'm going to love my bride much more than I will

02:00:13

Mr. Fuentes, right? Why? Because I have a special relationship with her.

02:00:18

And I would expect that he would do the same with his family, that he'd put his family before he would me. Okay, why?

02:00:25

Because he has a special love for them. Now, that doesn't mean he doesn't love me or anyone else.

02:00:31

It means that he has a special love for them. That's a difference that we end up seeing.

02:00:37

And so what we see is, does God love everyone?

02:00:45

Well, yes. Does he love everyone in a salvific way? No. He has a special love.

02:00:50

And John 3 .16 is actually making that argument. That was the whole thing that I was trying to convey to him, is that if he reads the context,

02:00:58

John 3 .16 teaches the very opposite to what he's trying to say it says. He's trying to say that John 3 .16

02:01:04

teaches that God loves everyone, and therefore in a saving way.

02:01:10

But yet he denies universalism. He believes that there's people in hell. So that's a contradiction. So when

02:01:16

I said to people, you're contradicting yourself, that becomes the thing, is he contradicted himself several times.

02:01:24

That was an example. Because the context there, he knows that it doesn't mean universalism, and yet he's arguing as if it does.

02:01:33

If he's saying that God's love means that he saves people and that it's the world meaning every person, then no one would be in hell.

02:01:41

And he doesn't believe that. Rightly doesn't believe that. And so, but he wants to argue that way when he argues against Calvinists because he thinks that somehow this is going to blow us up.

02:01:53

We can't answer this. And the reality is, all I had to do, and folks, when it comes to these debates, all you have to do most of the time is read context.

02:02:02

All I did was read 17 and 18. And 17 and 18 says very clearly, the world is already condemned and God is saving the world.

02:02:11

Well, unless God is saving every single human being, right, it says, but the world might be saved through him.

02:02:17

If the world there means every single human being, then that would teach universalism.

02:02:23

And yet he didn't. Precisely, that's universalism. Yeah. So the reality is, it's very clearly teaching that God loves some people differently.

02:02:34

Andrew. A special love. And let me, because we are up on time, but someone just joined in.

02:02:42

So, Justin, if you want to stop sharing, I'm going to add in, this is, oh, I'm not going to be able to pronounce the last name.

02:02:49

Wilson Azuelo. Azuelo. Hello, brother Wilson Azuelo. Yes, can you hear me?

02:02:56

Yes, we can hear you. Yeah. For now, I'll just listen to you guys. Okay.

02:03:04

All right, then I'll put you back in the back. Andrew, I'd like to get one point only.

02:03:14

Okay. The R .A. Puentes and all the team that he has is always, when, whatever you say, whatever

02:03:25

I say to them, they will see it's Calvinism. Even if you are exposing or exegeting a verse, they will say that's

02:03:36

Calvinism. That's Calvinism. That's why automatically we're blocked from getting a point ahead.

02:03:45

That's the problem. And so let me address that because, yeah, we have seen that, but here's what that is called.

02:03:51

That's a logical fallacy called poisoning the well. Okay. So anything you say is just poison because you're a

02:03:58

Calvinist. Calvinism is wrong. So I would go through the debate, folks, especially if you study logic and you'll see,

02:04:08

I mean, I had to point out fallacies of equivocation, fallacies of straw man argument, fallacies of poisoning the well, fallacies of generalization.

02:04:19

I mean, he had so many fallacies over and over again that it was hard for me.

02:04:24

I was actually planning to count them and I gave up. Yeah. There was a lot.

02:04:30

There was actually a lot there. This is a delayed topic.

02:04:44

Actually, I was about to comment on brother Andrew's reaction with Ray Fuentes' point of view on Calvinism, which is a very poor point of view because he was trying to equate

02:04:56

Calvinism exclusively to the five points, when supposedly that's not really true.

02:05:05

And then because Calvinism or rather Reformed theology existed before the five points, the five points were merely, it's not even a summary.

02:05:16

You know, it really pissed me. I'm so sorry for that term.

02:05:22

Wouldn't they say that five points is a summary of Calvinism, which is not. It was never meant to be a summary.

02:05:28

It was just a, unfortunately, a response with regards to the

02:05:35

Romance trance, which is the Romance trance, which is not even Arminius, because Arminius already died during the

02:05:43

Romance trance. But the Romance trance were complaining or challenging the existing teachings of Reformed theology.

02:05:52

And those five points are just response. They were never meant to be a standalone, whatever that is.

02:06:01

And then, so if you're going to argue Calvinism exclusively with the five points, then

02:06:06

I have to say that's a very poor understanding. And then secondly, before I end, he said that it cannot be used for evangelism.

02:06:17

That's wrong. I do street preaching. I do door -to -door evangelism here in Cebu.

02:06:23

In fact, I even evangelize to our law enforcement through the MRP program here in the

02:06:29

Philippines. And you cannot do evangelism without the doctrine of, or without the total depravity of man.

02:06:39

You have to explain to the man or to whoever you're sharing the gospel to that you are sinful, that you have a sinful nature, and there is nothing in you that can earn salvation.

02:06:51

And that's, what is that? That is total depravity. And without that, you cannot share the gospel. And that's exactly what

02:06:58

I explained to him too in the debate. And yet he didn't hear that. You know, if you think about the one thing

02:07:06

I was going to bring out last time we talked is 1 Corinthians 15, one through four, as he was saying, he asked the question, do you believe that's the entire gospel?

02:07:14

And if you read the context of this, 1 Corinthians 15, Paul the apostle said that he had given his gospel.

02:07:24

And yet in multiple passages throughout the scripture, he talks about his gospel.

02:07:32

And it's never the exact same wording and phraseology that's used in 1

02:07:37

Corinthians 15, one through four. Now, what he says to you, I delivered to you the first importance what

02:07:43

I received that Christ died for our sins, according to the scripture that he was buried and that he was raised on the third day, according to scripture.

02:07:49

If that is the gospel, then that is the only thing that can be proclaimed throughout all of the scriptures, everywhere that the word gospel is used or explanation of the gospel is used.

02:08:00

And that's not what's said. All he was doing was giving a general explanation, a layout of what he uses as a topic.

02:08:13

In other words, Christ died for our sins. What does that mean? And he goes through those things. And that's what any good teacher would do, would be able to lay out a diagram of what it is we teach.

02:08:24

And that's just an outline form. Now, when he says that, he said that so many times and he's on Facebook and we're demanding that that's the only gospel.

02:08:34

Brothers and sisters, that is why we need to understand the word of God so that when somebody says something silly like that, you can just say, sir, can you show me where that exact thing is stated in every other passage where the gospel is proclaimed?

02:08:51

Well, let me see how people use an argument like that. So let's take it out of in case there's any of, you know,

02:08:57

Mr. Fuentes' followers still here or he's still listening. He supposedly debates

02:09:03

Muslims. I'm sure he probably heard this if he has. Muslims will often say to me in informal debates that Jesus never claimed to be

02:09:10

God. Jesus never said, I am God, worship me. In my debate with Joshua Evans, I agreed with that.

02:09:18

There's nowhere in the Bible it says that exact wording. But you know what? Nowhere in the Quran does it say,

02:09:24

I am Muhammad. I follow after Jesus. You know, I'm the last prophet.

02:09:31

Therefore, he wasn't that, right? I can put the same thing where I can put a wording that doesn't exist.

02:09:37

But does the Bible teach that Jesus is deity? Yes. He just doesn't do it in that exact wording.

02:09:46

And this is a tactic that you see people do that makes it sound like they have the answer because you have to admit, no, it doesn't say it that exact way.

02:09:57

And they go, see, he's admitted. And you heard that throughout the debate where he kept trying to argue that I was agreeing with him to things.

02:10:03

I'm glad Andrew agrees with me. No, I didn't agree with you. You're twisting my words, right? And even after the debate, he's still claiming that I said

02:10:11

Tulip is the gospel. I never said that, right? I said the teachings of Calvinism, the understanding of Calvinism.

02:10:18

So the thing though that you see is that people will do that to make it look like you're agreeing with them.

02:10:24

They've won. They've got it. End of discussion. And really what you see is that Muslims will do that and say, well,

02:10:31

Jesus never claimed to be God. And when I debated Joshua Evans, I said, he did claim to be

02:10:37

God because he said before Abraham was, I am. He said, the father and I are one.

02:10:44

And how do we know that those were claims of deity? Because they picked up stones to stone him.

02:10:49

And Jesus even asks, for what good works do you stone me? And they said very clearly, not for any good works do we stone you, but you being a man claim to be

02:10:59

God. Those in that generation understood what he meant by that language. And so we have to understand what words meant at that time.

02:11:08

And so when we, it's very much like, you know, brother Edison here has had said, you know, you don't sit there and say, oh,

02:11:15

Calvinism is tulip. When, you know, people believed in Calvinism long before there was a tulip.

02:11:22

Okay, you just don't. I mean, I think even in debate, I had said that, you know, where did Paul get it? You know, where did

02:11:27

Calvin get it from? Augustine, you know, where did Augustine get it from? From Paul. Where did

02:11:32

Paul get it from? From God. You know, I remember a guy who told me that I was a Calvinist because my doctoral statement quotes

02:11:38

Ephesians one that says that we are elect before the foundation of time. And he's like, just quoting that made me a

02:11:46

Calvinist. And I said to him, well, I guess since God wrote that he's a Calvinist. You know, the reality is that none of us, and let's get this out there.

02:11:58

None of us worship Calvin. It's called Calvinism and Arminianism because the followers of Calvin who started going too far to the wrong side with double predestination and determinism and Jacob Arminius was trying to reform them back to what

02:12:17

Calvin actually taught. And his followers went too far the other way, ignoring God's sovereignty and believing that man has a free will to choose, that it's not influenced by sin and that man in and of himself can choose

02:12:29

God. And so both went extreme, but Arminianism and like Jacob Arminius and John Calvin actually were not too far off.

02:12:39

This is the thing most people don't understand. It's their followers that went to the extremes. And so I was really glad when even

02:12:45

R .C. Sproul had written that and wrote a great article in a book that he had written about that where he makes that point very well.

02:12:52

But that's the thing. And that's why I was asking, I was asking, you know, R .A.

02:12:58

Fuentes in our pre -debate, whether he believed in what Jacob Arminius has taught. Because I wanted to see if he even understood the history.

02:13:06

I wanted to see if he understood what it was that Jacob Arminius was teaching and to see whether he understood that.

02:13:13

Because if he said, well, he's an Arminian, you know, or if he said he believed what Jacob Arminius believed, then I would say, okay, you do realize he was a

02:13:19

Calvinist. I never got to get that far. But the reality is that we have to understand what things mean in their context, both historical context as well.

02:13:29

And so let me do this as a, I want to do a quick round table so we can wrap up.

02:13:35

I want to encourage people, go to strivingforeturning .org. Go get the article,

02:13:40

Why in the World Are We Debating R .A. Fuentes? Please read that and share that everywhere.

02:13:47

You could share this on YouTube. This will be on the YouTube link because that's easier to find than a Facebook one to share.

02:13:54

If you go to Striving for Turning's YouTube channel, you'll see this video. This will be called the

02:14:01

More Post -Debate Discussion. So there's post -debate discussion and more post -debate discussion. So you could see those. And so I encourage you guys to be sharing that.

02:14:10

We're doing this because here's a guy who wants to make a name for himself as far as we could tell, okay?

02:14:17

But as we've gone through this, he's a man that's a habitual liar, a man who doesn't use logic correctly.

02:14:27

He makes arguments that are logically invalid. He says things that disqualify him as a pastor.

02:14:34

And so the thing is, Scripture makes it very clear we are to expose false teachers.

02:14:40

When he teaches that people who believe in Jesus Christ and trust in what

02:14:46

Jesus Christ did as a payment for their sin, and that alone, and he calls them cults and unbelievers, then he is teaching error.

02:14:57

And it is that reason he must be exposed. And for that reason, we do this. It's the reason we want these things shared so that that way, that becomes the first thing that people see when they go searching for him, that they should see the truth about his character.

02:15:12

There are people who have contacted me, people who know him personally, who have told me things about his character, that nothing that we have said, now, why do

02:15:21

I not share those things? Because those were said in private. They're not things that were publicly, when people put things publicly on social media, it's public.

02:15:30

But people have shared with me privately things that have nothing we have said. Nothing we've said has been supposedly out of character with his character.

02:15:39

He is, from what I could tell, our assessment from his public behavior is how he behaves in private.

02:15:46

And that needs to be exposed. He is a danger. He should not be debating and he should not be a pastor.

02:15:52

I explained that when he said that you don't use context to read the

02:15:58

Bible, that exposed that he should never, ever, ever be teaching the

02:16:03

Bible. And that is nothing toward R .A. Fuentes. That is to anybody, anybody who makes that claim should not be teaching the

02:16:12

Bible, okay? Not just him, anybody. So let me do a quick round table and let each of us get a word in as closing comments.

02:16:24

Let me start with Brother Irwin, since you kind of were the one that approached me about doing the post -discussion.

02:16:33

Any comments you want to wrap up with? Yes, thank you. First of all,

02:16:38

I'd like to thank you, Pastor Andrew, for your effort, especially in putting up this podcast to discuss these things.

02:16:49

We are really concerned here in the Philippines because so many brethren in the reform circles are disturbed by this kind of misrepresentations and blatant attacks and baseless attacks to Calvinism.

02:17:15

So we really appreciate these things that you put up. And as for my final remarks, maybe

02:17:28

Reian will attack me again saying things like I hate him or I am full of hate.

02:17:39

These are the things that he's always throwing at me. But you know what?

02:17:46

In my heart, yes, I am angered by his comments, by his tirades against my personality and everything.

02:17:56

But deep inside my heart, I do not hate him to the level that he hates me.

02:18:02

That he hates me. He even said to me that mamatay ka sa ingit.

02:18:10

Yeah, that is a Tagalog term. That is a cursing. Die in envy.

02:18:17

Die in envy. Die in envy. Oh, wow. Yeah, I can even show to you that chat, but I guess it's no longer...

02:18:32

But you know, he cursed me like that. And every time

02:18:37

I ask him about his ordination, just say yes, that you are ordained, and I will stop.

02:18:47

That's how I said it to him. But you know what?

02:18:53

He cannot admit that he is ordained. He cannot tell which church sent him.

02:19:02

So those are the things that are truly important before one can be called a pastor.

02:19:09

And I am too concerned with the people that believes in his claim or his posturing of a pastor.

02:19:18

You know what? Because there's money involved here. Maybe some people don't realize, but even myself contributed for him.

02:19:27

Because I believe that time that he was really doing service to God as a pastor.

02:19:35

And we Christians are commanded to help each other out, to carry the burdens.

02:19:43

That's why I did it. But when these things appears that he's not really a pastor, this is a lie.

02:19:54

This is a blatant deceit. And it must be stopped. It must be stopped.

02:19:59

And people must realize that they are calling this so -called pastor, but they are being deceived.

02:20:10

And they are being extorted with money. So again, my call to this fake pastor,

02:20:17

R .A. Fuentes. You know what, brother? Repent. This sin is forgivable.

02:20:25

I'm ready to forgive you. All people will be ready to forgive you if you will just humble yourself and stop with your lies, okay?

02:20:35

We're not doing this to attack you, but we are just standing firm to the truth because we want the truth.

02:20:44

For the sake of the innocent people that, you know, believe you, but that you are a pastor, but you are really not.

02:20:52

So this is really what I would like to expose tonight for this podcast.

02:20:59

And I hope that this podcast was able to help many people about the true character and the true personality of this

02:21:13

R .A. Fuentes. And I'd like to thank you, Pastor Andrew and Pastor Justin for your efforts.

02:21:20

Well, thank you. Okay, before we go to Don, someone asked this question, is R .A. Fuentes deserves

02:21:27

God's amazing grace? There's a question, I guess, like does he? The reality of that is none of us deserve

02:21:32

God's amazing grace. So no, no, he doesn't deserve it. Neither do I.

02:21:37

Neither do you. Neither does anyone. The fact that we get it is the part that makes it amazing. Do we pray for God's amazing grace in his life?

02:21:46

Yes, we do. Let me go to Don here from Guam. Thank you, Pastor Andrew, Pastor Justin for this great opportunity for us to be with you.

02:21:57

And yeah, let me just give you, everyone, the last two observations

02:22:06

I have concerning R .A. Fuentes' propositions.

02:22:12

The second thing that I observed is that the ignorance to self -preservation is concerned about his mental condition.

02:22:24

Yeah, his proposition was invalid, illogical, what is unsound.

02:22:33

So if he thinks that he gains any good impression to what he's doing, he's wrong.

02:22:47

He made a self -damage to himself. It reveals how his mind or his mentality, his behavior, very unsound.

02:23:05

And I'm telling this for him to know so that there's still time for him to, as Brother Erwin said, there's always time to repent for our mistakes, to correct everything.

02:23:24

So imagine, just because that day that Calvinist can do whatever the

02:23:35

Calvinist does. So for him, the Calvinism is already useless.

02:23:43

It's a very illogical kind of reasoning.

02:23:52

So the third one is his ignorance on the truth. He doesn't know about Calvinism.

02:23:59

He doesn't even know what is the sovereignty of God, even though he say he believe, but even the devil believe.

02:24:10

So let me just point out in a very simple definition of Calvinism, what

02:24:16

Calvinism is. Calvinism is just a theological position.

02:24:23

That God is sovereign. That's what the Bible says in Isaiah 46, 10.

02:24:31

That is sovereign. So his attack is not actually against Calvinism or against Calvinist.

02:24:37

He's attacking God at the end of his discourse. He's questioning God and trying to be a lawyer for the unelected.

02:24:47

And trying to break what God had decreed to man and to all his creation.

02:24:59

Who is he? Who he is to question God and accuse

02:25:04

God of being evil. And his previous post, sarcastic.

02:25:14

So actually he's after God. Questioning the sovereignty of God.

02:25:22

So regarding evangelism, Calvinism is always there. What our pastor writing said, he was right.

02:25:32

Because when you say Calvinism, it speak about the sovereignty of God. So the other synonymous term for those who doesn't use

02:25:41

Calvinist, they use sovereign grace. So when we say

02:25:49

Calvinism, we speak about the sovereignty of God. It covers everything.

02:25:58

In heaven, under heaven and earth and all his creation. Much more in evangelism, the sovereignty of God is always there.

02:26:07

When you, before you go there, before you go to Sardinia, you pray first.

02:26:16

And that's already you're acknowledging the sovereignty of God. When one got saved, that's under the power or the sovereignty of God.

02:26:27

So everything is under the sovereignty of God, which is Calvinism in theology.

02:26:35

So that's, this real point is so ignorant,

02:26:43

I will say. He doesn't know what he's saying. He doesn't know what he's doing.

02:26:50

I think he's doing only for profit. And it's not only for profit.

02:26:58

No more, no less. Yeah, it seems that way. Now, maybe you guys could help me.

02:27:03

Let me put this up here because someone's going to need to translate that. So people mentioned me, but in a language

02:27:10

I don't understand. So let me ask if one of you guys could translate that.

02:27:18

Yeah, I think I will do that. There was a group chat wherein this brother

02:27:24

Gab Vanessa and this Ray Fuentes were arguing about Calvinism.

02:27:30

And all this Ray Fuentes said was that he was challenging

02:27:38

Gab for a debate. And that's where the term kakasakaba, which means, are you going to accept the challenge, started out.

02:27:50

So that's it. And for that reason, I challenged Ray Fuentes twice. First, the first podcast they made where they maligned and misrepresented the

02:28:03

Calvinists and use Ephesians chapter one. And I challenged four of them to face me on a face -off and none of them.

02:28:17

Well, Don, here's what we end up seeing with someone who is prideful is once they meet their match, they avoid.

02:28:25

And that's why he's blocked me. He's not going to block me because he knows that he's been exposed.

02:28:35

He said he was going to do something. So Brother Wilson, you're up next.

02:28:42

Okay. So speaking of blocking, yes, he argued and blocked

02:28:50

Pastor Andrew. And he lied to me that he said to me in a comment section that he didn't block

02:28:58

Pastor Andrew, which is not true because there are so many witnesses like his sister.

02:29:09

He actually posted the evidence. If you actually look,

02:29:17

Ray actually posted the evidence that he blocked me because he actually provided a screenshot where he was trying to prove something and it says unblock

02:29:31

Andrew. So he actually proved it himself.

02:29:37

You don't have to go to any other source. Go ahead.

02:29:49

By the way, he already blocked me. And before he blocked me, he called me a heretic.

02:29:56

I just sent him a Bible verse from Romans chapter nine.

02:30:03

Well, anybody that comments on Romans is not a heretic. And you'll see that.

02:30:14

You'll see that a lot if you use a Bible. I'm already blocking their pages. Yeah, Justin, hold up.

02:30:20

Because we want to get a round table and wrap up. Yeah, go ahead, Wilson. Wilson, do you have anything more or no?

02:30:34

Another one is, this is my question to them. Yes, one more.

02:30:46

They really hate the tulip or the five points of Canaan's third.

02:30:53

As you can see in every comment section, posts, their live posts, they called us

02:31:01

Calvinists. They use the term Calvinist. And yet, they don't want them to be called

02:31:08

Armenians. Why? They hate the tulip. Tulip is derived from the

02:31:15

Canaan's third, which is a five point response to the five points of the remonstrance.

02:31:26

So, they don't want to be called Armenian. And yet, they hate the five points of the

02:31:34

Canaan's third. That means, somehow, they are affirming that they are an

02:31:43

Armenian. But they are using the same theological position as the

02:31:48

Armenian. Does that make sense? No, let's just let Brother Wilson finish up.

02:31:56

Is it, you have anything else? Okay, so then let me move on.

02:32:04

Just because we're getting some background noise from Brother Wilson, I'm going to put you backstage. Let's see, next would be, we'll go with Edison.

02:32:16

If you have any closing comments. Yes, sir. First of all, sir, I would like to thank you for having us here today in your place and tonight in our place in the

02:32:27

Philippines. And I just wanted to say that I'm so blessed with your community, with your group.

02:32:33

I'm talking about when group, I'm referring, including Matt Slick, including Elias. I have been blessed with his podcast as well.

02:32:42

So much resources are available in terms of Reformed theology. I may not agree with everything with them.

02:32:50

I have here, somebody bought me this. It's a Reformation Study Bible by R .C.

02:32:56

Sproul. And I've learned a lot. And I don't agree with all of his points, of course, because I'm a dispensational guy.

02:33:05

I'm a John MacArthur guy, but I've learned a lot. And I also have Joel Beeky's Reformation Study Bible, which is good.

02:33:15

Now, and it's been very, a wonderful wealth of resources in the body of Christ.

02:33:22

We might not agree in all things, but we have a common view, which is the high view of God, and which is a low view of man being a recipient of God's grace only.

02:33:35

And then to end the comment, is that having a debate is very important because debate is supposed to be, by its proper definition, a formal exchange of opposite views.

02:33:54

A formal exchange of opposite views. There's no need for personal attacks, for hatred and all those unnecessary comments.

02:34:04

But I don't see that with my neighbor. I don't see that.

02:34:10

Even from the very beginning, I've chatted with him very vulgar and very nasty and sarcastic.

02:34:17

And he has a lot of, I don't know where the hatred is coming from. He's not that hateful with Muslims.

02:34:25

With Catholics and with other religions. But he's very aggressive with Reformed theology, and I don't know why.

02:34:33

So this kind of guy, whatever, he's more on the hate instead of the facts.

02:34:42

I was expecting some facts that will be displayed on the debate. I don't see it.

02:34:48

I don't hear a quote from, he should have quoted people like W .A. Tozer, or Arthur Pink, or Sproul.

02:34:57

But no, no, he didn't make those quotations because he can't. He doesn't do the research. As I've said earlier, it's just a secondary source that he's using.

02:35:06

And he don't know how to use those sources. That's why he doesn't like definitions. He doesn't like to define because he don't know the definitions of those sources.

02:35:15

Because it was not his personal research. It was a secondary resource.

02:35:20

So anyway, I am blessed and so glad to hear from you guys. Looking forward for another discussion, not just on Calvinism, but other biblical views.

02:35:31

I'm a subscriber to Andrew Rapp Reports and also with the apologetics lives as well in the audio podcast.

02:35:40

So thank you and God bless. Well, thanks for that. And yeah, I mean, I could tell you why the anger is, because this is a common behavior.

02:35:49

It's a pride thing, right? People get angry because they're upset with someone that exposed them.

02:35:57

And why maybe more with the Calvinism than Muslim is because now he's getting it from within.

02:36:05

Before all the Christians were united and now he's going after a Christian group and there's a bunch of Christians giving resistance.

02:36:11

And so what happens is instead, and this is the sad thing some people will do, instead of submitting to correction, they double down on error.

02:36:20

And when they do that, they go further and further. So my guess is unless he repents, you're gonna see in the next year or two that he's gonna be so off the rails that he may be teaching things that he may start denying things he agreed to in the debate.

02:36:35

He may deny sin nature. I mean, to defend one thing, he'll go to extremes.

02:36:42

And you see that often, unfortunately. When you talk about the, and thank you for following the podcast, my rap report that's wrapped with two

02:36:51

Bs, by the way, folks, Rap Report and Apologetics Live podcast. You can go to christianpodcastcommunity .org

02:36:56

and see all of our 45 plus podcasts that we have. But I do like five of them.

02:37:03

But the thing though is that you talk about disagreements. You mentioned Matt Slick. Matt Slick and I have debated each other more than any other person for either of us.

02:37:12

And we're really good friends, right? And yet we disagree on a lot of, we've debated infant baptism.

02:37:20

We've debated covenant theology versus dispensationalism. We've debated the spiritual gifts.

02:37:27

And we've debated these things multiple times. I've always won. Matt figured that out in heaven.

02:37:35

And you were talking about R .C. Sproul. R .C. Sproul, I don't know if you heard, R .C. Sproul is a dispensationalist now. So yeah, ever since he passed into heaven, he became a dispensationalist.

02:37:46

So that was corrected now. So let me go, before going to Cole, there's a brother,

02:37:52

Jay, who came in. Let me add him to the stream. Because he's new here and didn't get a chance to talk.

02:37:59

It says he's added, but I just see a black screen. I don't know if it's frozen.

02:38:07

We had that problem with Mr. Fuentes. So Jay, if you may, because your camera looks frozen, you may need to drop out and drop back in.

02:38:19

So you do that, and we're going to go to Cole. Not Kyle, Cole. Yeah, don't drink

02:38:25

Monster either. Thanks for coming on, Kyle. No, thanks, guys.

02:38:31

I've been binging your content for the last week or so. I do 12 -hour shifts.

02:38:37

And so put an earbud in and just watch a product come off the line. But it's been really informative.

02:38:43

It's been really good for me. Thanks for allowing a pleb like me to come on and ask a question and be a part of the live stream.

02:38:52

But I'd like to leave you with... This whole forum reminds me of Paul's defense of his ministry in 2

02:39:00

Corinthians 10, where he's talking about, for though we walk in flesh, we're not waging war according to the flesh, because the weapons of our warfare are not of the flesh, but have divine power to destroy strongholds.

02:39:12

We destroy arguments of every lofty opinion raised against the knowledge of God. That kind of thing.

02:39:18

This is what it looks like, because you're not attacking... There's no ad hominems here. There's no personal attacks on people.

02:39:24

It's objective. Who said what, when, at what time, in what context, or in lack thereof.

02:39:31

And I appreciate that. And honestly, as somebody that's been through some churches where...

02:39:38

One was a church that was started by somebody who was ousted from whatever their church previous had been and started their own.

02:39:48

And it was very culty and charismania and things.

02:39:54

And after hearing what his dishonesty and when you were just...

02:40:00

Hey, here's these things outside of the labels of what this is.

02:40:05

And that cross -examination was just one shot after the other in the bullseye.

02:40:12

And it's sad to see somebody that doesn't have the ability to see their own missteps in that and where their blind spots are.

02:40:21

And I really hope he comes around to it, because I struggle with that on a daily basis in a lot of areas as a guy who's trying to be a dad and a husband and those things, and walking in an infancy of my faith.

02:40:34

So, I would like to see that for anyone else as much as I need it for myself. But thank you guys for doing what you do here.

02:40:43

Well, thank you for that. And yeah, thanks for... Just keep in mind, I mean, Apologetics Live for you

02:40:49

Thursday nights, 8 to 10. That's what we do. You can come in and ask it. We encourage people to come in.

02:40:55

Even if we have a topic and you have a question off -topic, that's perfectly fine. So, feel free to come on in.

02:41:02

So, I brought Brother Jay back in. We still see a black screen, although I did see movement backstage.

02:41:08

So, there we go. There we go. So, Brother Jay, do you have anything you wanted to add? I don't know if there's a reason.

02:41:19

Oh, yeah. It's a great privilege for me to... Maybe turn your video off, because it's getting a little choppy.

02:41:28

And so, if it's just audio, it's a little hard to hear.

02:41:35

So, maybe turn your video off. Yeah, if you do this audio only. So, what

02:41:43

I have... I don't know if you can hear us, because we're having a hard time hearing you.

02:41:53

But if you could turn your video off. Stop the... There we go. Now it's better. Good. Go for it. So, can anyone hear me?

02:42:00

Yes. Yes. Hear you better now. We hear you fine.

02:42:06

Go ahead. All right. I think that's not good.

02:42:23

I'm going to put you backstage. Here's what I'm going to do. I'm going to put you backstage,

02:42:30

Jay, if you don't mind just typing it out in the private chat, and then we'll read it.

02:42:36

That's kind of bad audio. I'm going to add Pastor Josiah, who just came in.

02:42:43

Pastor Josiah, you know... Am I right? No, Pastor Josiah wrote three of the articles on striving fraternity.

02:42:49

His background and focus is on hermeneutics and how we interpret things.

02:42:55

So, he took a look at several of the passages that were argued during the debate and looked at them in the context and provided some context.

02:43:05

So, if you want to see some of the articles he wrote, he wrote one on, you know, does

02:43:10

God grant belief? Dealing with Philippians 1. He wrote one on John 3 .16

02:43:15

and one on 1 Corinthians 15. So, those are three articles from him. So, Josiah, what do you...

02:43:21

anything you want to add? It just...

02:43:26

all of his arguments, it seemed like he wasn't really trying to deal with the passage, which gives me the idea that he really doesn't want to...

02:43:36

he really doesn't want to be right, or he just wants to win.

02:43:43

Yeah. He doesn't want to... I tried to talk... He wants to win. He wants to be right in a debate, in a sense.

02:43:52

He doesn't want the truth, I think is what you mean. Right, yeah. All he wants to do is win a debate.

02:43:59

I tried talking with him. I asked him if he had... if he's been trained in hermeneutics, and he said he was, but he didn't understand context.

02:44:10

He didn't understand... He thought these verses were either

02:44:15

Arminian verses or Calvinistic verses that people would try to use against each other.

02:44:21

He didn't understand that there's such a thing as semantic range words.

02:44:28

You're using big words now. And I offered him my book, but he didn't want to...

02:44:40

he didn't want anything to do with this. He didn't want to read the articles that I sent him.

02:44:50

It's... he's really sad. Didn't you send the articles and he blocked you, was his response? He sent the articles, and he asked me what my view on Philippians 129 was.

02:45:03

Yeah, and then blocked you. Yeah. Well, actually, he... Actually, he asked me how

02:45:10

I thought Andrew Handum handled himself during the debate. And he said, I said that he showed you a lot of patience.

02:45:17

And then he said, you're blind. And he blocked me. Well, yeah. And that was the number one thing that people had said was that I was very patient with him.

02:45:27

So, okay. Thank you for that. Let's see. Who else do we have here? I think Pastor Nilo, you're last, or next to last.

02:45:34

Justin will be last. Okay. Now, I just want to say we need really good lessons on hermeneutics.

02:45:46

That's the way that we can protect our flock and all the people who are following R .A.

02:45:53

Fuentes or think that he's stating the truth and all the other people with him, like Joel.

02:46:02

And if we are equipped, if we know the

02:46:08

Bible and we know how to understand the Bible, then we can easily block the ideas that they are presenting as unbiblical.

02:46:22

And that's just what I want to say. Please help us to spread the word that there is a better way of learning the

02:46:33

Bible. And if you can do that through your podcast and through the books and through the manuals, whatever you can do, that would be appreciated.

02:46:46

Thank you very much. Okay. So, let me put this up from Gabe. He was talking to somebody.

02:46:55

I'm not sure who was the comment to, but he just, because he says, yeah, me too. I don't know who the, yeah, me too, what the me too is referring to.

02:47:01

But he says, ever since the debate, I've been checking out Striving for Eternity content. Thanks to R .A.

02:47:07

Fuentes. He introduced me unknowingly, introduced me to Pastor Andrew Rappaport.

02:47:12

Looking forward to meet you when I get to the States. I'm personally blessed by your ministry. And so, I will say on behalf of Striving for Eternity, you know, we don't do these things to try to gain some audience or, you know, we appreciate if the stuff we're doing, our attitude is this.

02:47:31

We'll have haters, but if we are producing good content, people will come.

02:47:37

And so, that's our attitude. We're just going to, as we have people that hate us and talk bad about us, our goal is to just keep producing good content and move forward.

02:47:46

And so, that's kind of what our attitude has always been. And if, you know,

02:47:53

I don't worry. Well, I don't have to worry about Twitter because, well, they've blocked me. I'm not worrying so much about Facebook because they've been starting to do the same thing.

02:48:02

They're doing the same shadow banning thing. So, that's why we go to Striving for Eternity. I encourage you to, you know, go check out strivingforeternity .org.

02:48:11

There should be a way you can sign up for our newsletter and stay in touch that way as well. Because as social media gets rid of us all, you know, we're moving over to using

02:48:21

Odyssey and things like that. We'll probably set up a locals account so that people can find ways to get in touch with us.

02:48:29

But we're glad if we at Striving for Eternity could be of any benefit. We have right here three of the people who do some of the work for Striving for Eternity, Pastor Justin and Pastor Josiah write articles.

02:48:42

Justin and I do this show Thursday nights. You know, the reality is none of us are trying to do this to make a living.

02:48:51

In fact, so people understand at Striving for Eternity, none of our speakers make a living off of the ministry.

02:49:00

Okay, we all have, you know, side work that we do so that the money that we get that's raised goes into the ministry.

02:49:09

And so, the reality is that's different for many. Okay, our goal is as a ministry is actually to reach into small churches or to go places where people can't afford to send us.

02:49:24

That's how people support us. So we can go into small churches that are hurting or go like when we came to the

02:49:29

Philippines for two weeks, both Justin Peters and myself. And we came without any expectation that any of our expenses would be repaid.

02:49:42

They, we were told that they covered the hotel, but we went there knowing that we had flights, we had time that we were going to be speaking, and we had no expectation that be paid.

02:49:54

We were okay with that. That's how we do things at Striving for Eternity. We want the money to go to helping churches that need help and those churches usually can't afford it.

02:50:04

And so if you want to help support us, we'd love that. You could go to strivingforeternity .org support. It's a way of helping that.

02:50:13

I know the claim has been that Mr. Fuentes doesn't work and that he's doing this to make a living.

02:50:19

I can't verify that. I can verify that at Striving for Eternity, we don't do that.

02:50:25

So Justin, let me let you go next. I'll give you the, well, not the final word, but the next to final word.

02:50:31

Oh, I get the final word. Hey, make sure Andrew, before you do that, make sure that you tell them about the new, what is that thing called?

02:50:39

The new audio thing that you just started last weekend. Oh, yeah, you're right. I should talk about that.

02:50:45

So folks, there is a new app that I used. And so after we did our live show

02:50:51

Thursday night, I said, hey, we have this new app. We're going to try it out. It's called

02:50:57

Wisdom. And so it has a little person, a side view of a person in purple with headphones on their head.

02:51:05

And the headphones are kind of the gray. So it matches in with the background. That's the app. So it's Wisdom.

02:51:10

It's kind of an audio social media app. Here's why I'm going to tell you guys to check it out.

02:51:17

Download this. I think it may only be on Apple phones because Apple phones are better. I'm just looking in the background to see if there's any of the guys that start like cringing.

02:51:25

Okay. I mean, look, some people debate Calvinism or Minism. I used to be an

02:51:30

Apple hater. I'm now an Apple lover. I'm sorry. But here's the thing. So, Justin, you just put the thing.

02:51:39

If you go to joinwisdomapp .com. Now, here's why

02:51:45

I'm going to tell you to do this. This was really neat. We went and did a show. We said, okay, we have a lot of people that when we do

02:51:51

Apologetics Live, they leave comments, but they don't come in on video. And so we did this figure.

02:51:57

Maybe we get some people that just will do audio. And we did. We got some people that are regular listeners to Apologetics Live that never come in, always type questions in, and now they came in.

02:52:07

But what really was neat is that afterwards, we had a couple people come in and then some guy that's just randomly going through.

02:52:15

We had about 70 people listening, 60 to 70 people. I think our max was 68 that were listening.

02:52:22

And I just went on there for about an hour or so. And all of a sudden, someone just popped in. And anybody can come in as a guest, just like on Apologetics Live, but here they don't have to do video.

02:52:31

And they're just listening, and this guy pops in. Well, this guy pops in, and I got 30 minutes to share the gospel with him.

02:52:38

Not only that, but he's asked whether I will come on his podcast and talk to his audience.

02:52:44

And he's going to come on to Apologetics Live, and we're going to continue a gospel conversation. I think that this app is a new way.

02:52:53

And Edison, you said you do open air. So this is what I believe is a new way to do open air evangelism from your home.

02:53:02

With all of people being restricted, you can't go to public areas, you get social distancing, all the nonsense they're doing to try to control us.

02:53:10

All the governments want to control us in this way. This app, you just get on it, and you could do 30 minutes.

02:53:17

You could do however much time you want. You get on there, and you can now just get and start presenting the gospel.

02:53:23

If someone joins, they join. But you can watch people watching you. And so, to me, this is a way

02:53:30

I can do open air evangelism from my home without leaving my house, not have to worry about someone yelling at me because I'm not wearing a mask when

02:53:39

I'm doing open air. Yes, that has happened. And I always find the people that do that want to get within six feet.

02:53:46

Like, hey, are you concerned about COVID? Yes. Back up six feet. Get out of my face.

02:53:52

I don't have a mask on. In fact, because I'm on a stand, maybe you should do 13 feet to get twice the distance because I'm a little bit taller now.

02:54:03

It's funny. You really aren't concerned about COVID if you're getting right in my face and I'm not wearing a mask.

02:54:11

But I found this to be a great way to do open air where you don't have to raise your voice. And people come in, and you have a conversation.

02:54:18

It's designed for people to join as a guest so that you come in, join, add them, and start sharing the gospel.

02:54:24

It was a great, great fun. I'm going to be doing it more. So thanks for that, Justin. I forgot to mention that.

02:54:31

Absolutely. I just wanted to close by pulling up the most important conversation that we're going to have in this entire discussion that I keep on trying to bring up.

02:54:44

I want everybody to realize that we are ambassadors for Christ. Paul tells the

02:54:49

Corinthian church. Therefore, 2 Corinthians 5, 20 and 21.

02:54:55

Therefore, we are ambassadors for Christ as though God were making an appeal through us.

02:55:02

Listen to this statement. We beg you on behalf of Christ, be reconciled to God.

02:55:10

Okay. You can sit there and claim that the Calvinist has no part in the gospel.

02:55:18

But the word of God tells us that we need to be reconciled to God because we are dead in trespass and sin.

02:55:27

We are sinners in the sight of a holy God, and we are hell bound. You know,

02:55:33

John 3, 17 and 18 tells us that we are dead already. We are condemned already.

02:55:40

We are already destined for hell. Every one of us are going to go to hell without Christ.

02:55:47

And it is my job, Andrew's job, Pastor Nilo's job, Brother Irwin's job, even

02:55:52

Brother Cole's job, Edison's job, on down the list. I can go down the list.

02:55:58

Josiah, Don, Brother Jay, Brother Wilson, and everyone else that has had this conversation, including

02:56:07

Brother, I'm going to say brother, I don't know, Fuentes. Your job is not to proclaim anathemas and who's a heretic because you don't like that somebody believes in a sovereign

02:56:24

God and says, we believe in God sovereignly and we hold to total depravity. We are dead in trespass and sin, according to scripture.

02:56:34

You don't like unconditional election for John 3, 16 is for God's people.

02:56:42

God savingly loves his people and brought his son into the world. The second

02:56:48

Corinthians 5, 21, 2021 tells us that we are to proclaim to the world that they can be reconciled.

02:56:55

We tell them that they are sinners, but then we display to them what it means. We tell them, have you ever told a lie?

02:57:03

How many lies have you told in your life? Well, what does that make you? If you've told lies, answer truthfully.

02:57:10

What would that make you? It'd make you a liar. Have you ever taken God's name in vain? Have you ever looked at a woman or a man inappropriately with lust?

02:57:19

Have you ever coveted what belongs to someone else? Have you ever stolen? Have you ever been greedy?

02:57:25

Have you dishonored your parents? And we go down the commandments and you can leave somebody with this one commandment that Jesus said that the greatest commandment is to love the

02:57:35

Lord, your God, with all your heart, soul, mind, and strength. And you ask the person, okay, have you loved

02:57:41

God perfectly the way they deserve to be loved? And I'll ask you, the audience, have you loved

02:57:46

God perfectly the way He deserves to be loved? And the answer for every one of us is no, because we are sinners.

02:57:53

There's not one of us alive that no man alive, excepting Jesus, has ever loved

02:58:00

God perfectly. And we are dead in sin. And this passage tells us that we need to be reconciled with God.

02:58:09

And because of that, God made Him. It says He made Him. I'm going to break it out so you understand it.

02:58:15

God the Father made God the Son who knew no sin to be sin on our behalf.

02:58:22

In this way, okay, Jesus never sinned. He was tempted at all points like us.

02:58:27

He never sinned. But for us who would believe, He paid our sin debt.

02:58:34

Colossians tells us that the certificate of our debt was nailed upon the tree, upon the cross.

02:58:41

So that when Christ died on the cross, He died paying the debt for those who would believe in the past, in the present, and in the future.

02:58:50

He paid for the debt for all who would believe. He made Him to be sin who knew no sin on our behalf.

02:58:57

So that we might become the righteousness of God. You cannot stand before God unless you're absolutely holy, unless you're absolutely sinless and absolutely righteous.

02:59:09

And none of us are except through Jesus Christ. You need to be reconciled to God.

02:59:16

And there's only one way. And that is the gospel of Christ that Jesus, the

02:59:22

God -man came down into this world, born of a virgin, born under the law. He came into this world to pay the sin debt.

02:59:29

He lived a perfect life. You and I haven't lived a perfect moment. He lived without sin.

02:59:36

You and I have never been sinless. He paid our sin debt on the cross.

02:59:42

He died for us. Three days later, He rose again. He ascended into heaven and He will return.

02:59:49

He's going to return to establish His kingdom and His rule, His reign upon this earth.

02:59:54

And by the way, yes, I'm dispensational pre -millennial. He's going to come to this earth and He's going to establish

02:59:59

His rule and His reign. He's going to work to show that Israel is His beloved,

03:00:05

His kingdom. And He is going to reconcile Israel to Himself, fulfilling the promise

03:00:12

He made to Abraham. We believe with all of our hearts that there is only one way of salvation, and that's through Jesus Christ.

03:00:21

And we want you to know Him. So the Bible tells us that in order for you to know Him, you must believe that you're a sinner in the sight of a holy

03:00:29

God. You must repent of your sin. That means that you recognize that God has the right to judge you and send you to hell for eternity.

03:00:37

And yet, in repentance, you turn away from that sin, trusting in Christ alone.

03:00:42

You confess your sin to Him and you trust that Jesus alone is the one who is the

03:00:47

Savior. Jesus alone is the one that can make you righteous before a holy

03:00:53

God in Christ. Do you know the gospel of Jesus Christ? My closing admonition here is this.

03:01:00

If you don't know Jesus as your Lord and Savior, repent today, for today is the day of salvation.

03:01:06

Believe in Jesus Christ. Pick up your Bible and be a man of God. Be a woman of God. Study the word of God.

03:01:15

Okay. And so this is a little bit longer, three hours longer than we had planned. We wanted to make sure everyone was able to come in.

03:01:22

Unfortunately, Jay was the only one that we couldn't hear and we didn't see him type anything in the private chat.

03:01:28

But folks, let me just encourage you. I mean, Justin ended where I should have just ended before Justin and then given him the final words so that—but fine, fine.

03:01:39

It doesn't matter who presents the gospel. But, you know, Facebook user says here—well, okay.

03:01:46

I'll let you post it. You want the right there. No problem. It says, thanks for the gospel presentation,

03:01:52

Justin, brother Justin. So, look, folks, I want you to understand something.

03:01:58

This three hours we spent, none of this was trying to be derogatory or attacking to Mr.

03:02:06

Fuentes, okay? I will challenge anybody. If you want to be open -minded, my challenge to you is to look at our behavior, look at his behavior, and compare and see which one is more fitting with Scripture, regardless of what we believe, regardless if you hate

03:02:24

Calvinism and you think I'm a Calvinist, if you hate anti -Calvinism and you're a Calvinist. Regardless of all that, just look at the behavior.

03:02:33

Look at the way we're conducting ourselves and see whether or not this is fitting or, as Paul said, that we're following in his example, okay?

03:02:45

I am, my heart breaks for people like Mr. Fuentes. It breaks.

03:02:52

The pride that he seems to have, the self -righteousness that he seems to have, and know what

03:02:58

I say, seems to have. Why? I don't know his heart. I don't claim like he does to know things that I can't know, okay?

03:03:08

And so we have to realize that as we look at these things, my challenge to you is to examine.

03:03:16

If there is error, it needs to be exposed, and we see error, and that's what we're doing. We're trying to expose that.

03:03:23

So I hope that this has been helpful. I hope it's been helpful at least in recognizing ways of dealing with these sort of issues, because we need to remember, as Pastor Justin said, we are ambassadors for Christ.

03:03:37

We represent Jesus Christ online as well, and so the way we behave in public, the way we behave online, which is public, we have to represent

03:03:47

Christ. Is this the way we want Christ responding? Let me ask that question.

03:03:54

James says, James 1 .5, that if we lack wisdom, that God will provide it, and it's interesting, he says he'll provide it liberally and without criticizing.

03:04:04

Now, liberally means he's going to give a lot of it, but it's without criticizing. When we lack wisdom,

03:04:10

God will give it, and he won't condemn us or mock us or make us feel bad about doing it, about giving it.

03:04:17

And so why do I say that? I say that for this reason. Folks, as we look at this, and we look at the behavior, my question is,

03:04:30

Mr. Fuentes, would you want Jesus Christ to treat you the way you treat

03:04:37

Calvinist believers? It's a simple question. Would you want God to just write you off because you don't agree with him?

03:04:44

Because the reality is all of us are wrong in our theology, myself included. Where?

03:04:50

I don't know. If I knew, I would change it. But the reality is God will correct all of us.

03:04:56

Would we want God to just reject us out of hand because we disagree with him on some point, the way that he and his followers do?

03:05:05

I would say probably not. Probably not. We're ambassadors for Christ, so we should be representing the way

03:05:13

Christ behaves. Christ would not reject people out of hand because they have a disagreement that is not one that is salvific.

03:05:22

In other words, the fact that we have the same belief in the gospel. I would challenge anyone to go back to that debate and see which one of us does a better gospel presentation.

03:05:32

He has everything. His whole argument was all about the gospel, the gospel, the gospel, and yet when he got an opportunity to share the gospel,

03:05:40

I would say it was an epic failure. I'm not saying that to be mean.

03:05:48

It was just he didn't actually—if anybody, you clip that part of him sharing the gospel and just put that on the street, is that the way someone's going to present the gospel?

03:06:00

I would hope not. And so just look at that.

03:06:06

Evaluate that. We are ambassadors for Christ. And so longer than we wanted,

03:06:11

I hope you guys will tune in on our regular show, Thursday Nights in America. Apologeticslive .com

03:06:18

is where you can go to watch, where you go to join. You just always have to click on that StreamYard icon. We do it every time.

03:06:23

We're looking for people to always come in and ask questions, offer challenges. Hey, you support

03:06:29

Mr. Fuentes. You are welcome to come on to Apologetics Live and we can have these discussions.

03:06:36

That is the behavior of someone who is not trying to hide something. I welcome the discussion.

03:06:43

That's not seeming to be the case by someone who blocks everybody who disagrees with them. And so one of the things

03:06:51

Pastor Josiah is mentioning that I should mention, if you go to strivingforeturning .org and go to the

03:06:56

Academy, we have a free course on harmoneutics. All of the videos are free.

03:07:03

You can go and watch the videos. If you want the syllabus, that's what costs. And what we have said, if you are in the

03:07:10

Philippines and you want to get the syllabus, we have a special relationship with Pastor Armand out there and we will get you in touch with him and he can reproduce print copies and get them to you.

03:07:24

You have to pay the cost of printing and all, but he can do that. And that is the only person we've ever made that kind of relationship with.

03:07:30

That's the trust we have with him. And so if you want to get the copies, we'll put you in touch with him because it'll be easier to get him there.

03:07:39

We also are going to be looking to put those out onto Kindle and to be printed on Amazon so you could get them that way.

03:07:49

But the reality is if you want to see how to interpret the Bible, this was said throughout the show, harmoneutics is important.

03:07:58

It helps us stray from error. We hope to be working with Pastor Nilo to provide some stuff down in the

03:08:03

Philippines toward that end. But if you want to just go to our course on biblical harmoneutics, it is free for everyone to watch.

03:08:16

So I encourage you guys to do that, to check that out. And with that said,

03:08:21

I just want to remind everyone to go out today and glorify God. So strive to make today an eternal day for the glory of God and we'll see you next time.