Smile. #Coronavirus Special

Non -rockabotas must stop. I don't want to rock the boat. I want to sink it!

Are you gonna bark all day, little doggie? Or are you gonna bite? We're being delusional. Delusional?

Delusional's okay in your world view. I'm an animal. You don't chastise chickens for being delusional. You don't chastise pigs for being delusional.

So you calling me delusional using your world view is perfectly okay. It doesn't really hurt. Is he hung up on me?

What? What? Desperate times call for faithful men and not for careful men.

The careful men come later and write the biographies of the faithful men, lauding them for their courage.

Go into all the world and make disciples. Not go into the world and make buddies. Not to make brosives. Right. Don't go into the world and make homies.

Right. Disciples. I got a bit of a jiggle neck. That's a joke, pastor.

When we have the real message of truth, we cannot let somebody say they're speaking truth when they're not.

All right. Welcome everybody. Welcome back to Apologia Radio. This is the gospel heard around the world.

Philippians 4 .4. Rejoice in the Lord always. Again, I will say rejoice. Let your gentleness, reasonableness be known to everyone.

The Lord is at hand. Do not be anxious about anything.

But in everything, by prayer and supplication, with thanksgiving, let your requests be made known to God.

And the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus.

That's what we need to hear right now, right? Yes. All right, guys. So if you guys want more, go to ApologiaStudios .com.

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I'm telling you, it is just a treasure trove of episodes and radio shows.

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All kinds of stuff. Let's get started. I'm Jeff. The Calm of the Ninja. That's Luke the Bear right there. What up? If you guys are just hopping on, you saw the title of the episode was

Smile. Smile. It's the coronavirus special. People are like, well, how can you smile about coronavirus?

Well, rejoice in the Lord always. Again, I will say rejoice. I know that right now, well, we thought your feeds right now are inundated with news articles and all the stuff about the

CDC and all the stuff about coronavirus. Good stuff happening in terms of the malaria treatment that's actually shown to be very effective against coronavirus.

They tested that in France and some other places. So good news on that front. But also you're seeing the other things about shutdowns.

You're seeing things about martial law. M -A -R -T -I -A -L, not Marshall. Hey, dude,

Marshall, what's happening? Martial law. You're seeing things about businesses being closed down now permanently.

They're shuttering their doors because they're not gonna be able to make it through this. You're seeing now struggles with people losing their jobs.

We're already seeing an apology at church. We've got families have lost their jobs. No promise of it ever coming back.

I've got family members that have just got a call this week, lost his job.

It's done. And fired a bunch of them, or not fired, laid off a bunch of employees. So the effects of coronavirus at the moment seem to be most devastating to the

American people in terms of the economy itself. And so you're seeing all of that. And I'm seeing it.

And I saw a funny meme the other day. Pastor James would know this.

Who's the Star Trek captain with the bald head? Picard? Picard, I'm guessing.

I think. I don't know. I know nothing about Star Trek. And he's sitting there and shares, like, every morning when I wake up, it's always damage report, right?

Let's see what's happened the last couple of days. I'm not a Trekkie. No. So please understand that.

Don't get angry with us. I'm guessing. Well, at any rate, what Pastor Luke and I, what the bear and I would like to do for this episode is we wanted to do some serious stuff.

We're going to try to engage with some of Rhett and Link's commentary over their apostasy.

It's sad because Good Mythical Morning is, like— That was your jam. It's, like, yeah, my jam. I love

Good Mythical Morning. And for me, it wasn't even so much that, like, I knew these guys were, like, professing

Christians. I learned later, like, after I had been watching Good Mythical Morning for a long time, I learned much later that they did stuff for VeggieTales.

And I didn't even know. All I thought was they were great. I thought they were great. And I heard they were Christians. Like, oh, that's cool. That's great.

Wonderful. They did good content. And they've both recently, I guess fairly recently, apostatized or fallen into apostasy.

And now they're coming out and making sure that everyone knows why. And it's interesting how people will often do that.

And so we're going to try to engage them with some of that. Hopefully, we do it in a meaningful way and a helpful way.

But we also want to have fun today because your feeds are filled. Lighten it up. Yeah, your feeds are filled with, you know, the world's going to end.

By the way, no. And no, the plans for the kingdom of God and Scripture are much bigger, and they are vast.

And we've got a long way to go. I'm not saying that there can't be plagues and things to wipe out populations and all the rest.

But if you are quoting Matthew 24, Luke 21, Mark 13 related to coronavirus, your exegesis is off.

And if you want me to answer that, go through our feed here and go through our study in our series on the

Great Tribulation, Matthew 24. And I think that is demonstrated very clearly from the text of Scripture.

And historically, that is not the case. So let's not apply Matthew 24 and the Great Tribulation passages to what's happening today.

Or you're going to find yourself in the same situation as Christians throughout history that have tried to do that with every pandemic, every plague that occurred.

They were like, this is the end. We're over. Jesus is returning at any moment. And then all of a sudden, it passes away.

And then you look foolish for putting words in Jesus's mouth. And so let's not do that. God's in full control.

Be anxious about nothing. Let's have some fun. But before, do you want to just maybe just start with this? Kick off?

Should we kick off with the, what should we do first? We have so much to do. We have some funny stuff to play for you guys. Should we start off since we did

Corona? Should we talk? Would you go through Doug's thing real fast? Yeah, let's do that. Okay, we're going to play. We're going to play for everybody.

Our friend, Pastor Douglas Wilson, speaking on coronavirus outbreak. At least just sort of lay down some, take a breath.

Think with wisdom. Approach it in a godly, thoughtful manner. Let's not behave like the world in terms of panic and fear and not being wise and being thoughtful through it.

We're going to do an episode next week. Lord willing, that's the plan. Next week, we're going to do an episode where we try to really dig into the coronavirus from a biblical perspective.

Talking about quarantine, biblical quarantine laws, that those are actually justified at times.

How do we apply those? And in terms of how should the church respond to it? Do we shut down worship? Is it right to just simply yield to the government whenever they say?

By decree, we say this is a pandemic and now close the churches and destroy the economy. Does the church have any authoritative way to speak to that?

And a way to speak to that with godly wisdom and with biblical principles all hanging in the balance.

So, we're going to do that next week. Yeah. But today, we want to at least start this off with, I think, some biblical form of sanity from Doug.

And let's do that first. I think that's probably the wisest choice. And then we'll get into some fun stuff today.

So, let's go ahead and do that. So, this is Pastor Doug talking about coronavirus. Seattle was trending this morning.

How should Christians be responding to the coronavirus? They should go wash their hands right now. More Purell?

More Purell. Wash their hands. Basically, I would sum it up as keep calm and wash your hands.

So, you have kind of a no big deal approach to it or? No, I think it's a big deal.

But I think that our lives are surrounded all the time by big deals.

So, 25 ,000 Americans, let's say. I've not looked this up recently.

But let's say 25 ,000 Americans die annually in car wrecks.

Okay. Well, that's a big deal, right? But that probably didn't even occur to you when you hopped in your car this morning.

There are a number of things about this. And this is hard to navigate because we're having to deal with the coronavirus at the same time that there's been a marked breakdown of trust in our public institutions.

Okay. And some of that breakdown of trust is richly deserved, right?

So, the CDC is a public health organization.

Their job is to equip us for situations just like this, right?

But how many Americans die of the regular flu every year, right?

And so, in order to answer that question, we have to go to the CDC for statistics.

And if there's a breakdown of trust, then that opens the door wide for conspiracy theorists of the

Russian collusion didn't work, release the virus. Right. Okay. Okay.

So, you've got that kind of thing. And sometimes the

CDC reacts to infectious diseases like a hen with one chick.

That's their whole reason for existence. And so, they pounce on it. They hover over it.

And it's their job to make it a big deal. Okay. Fine. That's all right.

But what's actually going on? Let's say this whole thing passes, right?

And two months from now, we're trying to remember what the coronavirus scare was. It's quite possible that any number of Americans had the coronavirus, thought that they had the flu or thought that they had a bad cold and never went to the doctor.

Right. And because they never went to the doctor, they never had coronavirus diagnosed. Yeah. Well, how many times has that happened in the past where something didn't get tagged?

Now, I'm not making assertions here. I'm just saying, look, I don't see reason for panicking.

I do think that it's shutting down travel from certain hard -hit areas is a prudent thing to do.

What about church on Sunday? Would you shut down church? Yes, I would.

If there were, let's say, multiple cases of diagnosed coronavirus here in Moscow, I would, in principle, be willing to cancel church for a week or two.

Would it? Okay. In principle. In principle. So there you go.

I think that's good. That's a good start to the conversation. And as you guys are just joining us again, we are today very much wanting to have a time of smiling and relaxing.

Of course, we know your feeds are just absolutely inundated with information from the news, from the

CDC, from friends, from people in outright panics to people saying, shut up.

It's no big deal. That sort of a thing. And so we wanted today to have some fun. But I think that that's some wise counsel there.

From Doug. And if I could just at least lay this down to prepare everybody for next week.

In principle, there is biblical law related to quarantine. And so it is an issue of biblical law and standards of justice and what is right.

However, just because there is a biblical law for quarantine doesn't mean it's always appropriate for the government to wield it.

And we have to weigh a lot of things in the balance here. And I think it's important to recognize that elders of churches have to all make decisions before the

Lord that they'll answer for and have to do them to the glory of God. And I think one thing we need to make sure we're not doing is cutting each other's throats as Christians during this time.

If elders of one church make one decision and they're doing it before the Lord as an act of worship towards him and to protect their people and to love

God and love neighbor, then we need to rejoice and say, praise God. I may disagree with how you're handling that, but I'm not going to cut your throat or disrespect you.

And in terms of if you have another instance where elders say, you know what, I agree that quarantine is biblical, and there could be a biblical reasoning and just reasoning behind quarantine.

However, I recognize also that we are not living under a Christian or godly state at the moment, and that our state may not be making decisions in a wise or biblical fashion.

They may not even be making decisions in a rational fashion, and they may be totally inconsistent.

And you might have pastors that say, look, I believe the worship of God gathering together on Sunday is of vital importance.

It's a command of God, and we can't just, whenever the government says so, close down worship because the government says so, or alter it all because the government says so.

Because they say, you know, we've got 10 cases here, 20 cases here, so therefore all churches across the state need to stop meeting.

Pastors may say, well, I think you need to also consider love for neighbor as a biblical law and mandate.

And we need to ask the question, if we close down businesses and industry, we are destroying an economy and families.

These are real people, real faces, real children, who are not going to be able to feed their kids or put diapers on their babies or buy formula as a result of people overreacting to something.

I'm not saying that there is an appropriate time for reaction and quarantine, those sorts of things, but just because the government says it doesn't mean it's so.

And the church does have authority to be able to look to the government and say, you know what, that's right, that's a wise and biblical law and handling of the law, and so we'll submit to that because we think it's very, very wise, and you're thinking rationally and rightly.

And there's other times that the government might say, yeah, I don't really think we should destroy, say, Arizona's economy completely and put these families out on the street and potential evictions down the road, and businesses closing their doors permanently because of two months with no business.

I don't think it's really wise to destroy our neighbors completely at this point. You know what

I'm saying? So pastors have to weigh all those things in the balance, and pastors, I want to say this, don't have the luxury of being reactionary.

Pastors do not have the luxury of being reactionary. Pastors are not allowed to simply see a media dump of panic, panic, panic, panic, panic, and pastors go,

I guess I have to respond like them. Pastors have to actually think about things biblically. Pastors have to think about things in a patient manner.

Pastors have to examine biblical principles and say, how am I supposed to handle this? And pastors shouldn't be the kinds of leaders that simply say, oh, what's that?

Where's the stream headed? Let me jump in. And that's where we should go, because you've got to think about consistency here, and I want you to maybe add to this too.

I think you've got to think about consistency here. If pastors are going to say peanut butter, spread, Romans 13, baby, obey your governing authorities.

I want to say, you don't really believe that. You don't believe that in every circumstance Romans 13 is an appropriate response.

And someone says, no, no, not always appropriate. I say, fine, so we're all in agreement that Romans 13 doesn't mean universal authority of the state.

It means the state is God's deacon. Don't forget that. God's deacon. Who's deacon? God's deacon.

Not the deacon of some other God, not the servant of some other God, the servant of God, which means that the role of the state is to actually handle the issue of punishing the evildoers and protecting the righteous.

But what is the state, who is the state under? Under God, according to Romans 13. Which God? The true God. So who should they be obeying?

The true God. And so what we recognize is that there are instances in Scripture where you have clearly, clearly, clearly, the people of God rejecting the authority of the state when the state is not acting wisely or submissively to the king.

And so, of course, you can go about with Daniel, bow, just bow, just bow. Or, sorry, Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego.

Just bow, just bow. No. You could have issues like, say, in Acts, where, of course, you've got the apostles being told by the authorities, stop preaching in Jesus' name, and they say very clearly, we must obey

God rather than men. It's not to say that there may not be a time, completely, where pastors would say, no, biblical quarantine is appropriate here, it's right here, it's just here, we need to manage this.

Absolutely. It's just to say that we can't peanut butter slather Romans 13 over every instance.

When the government says, you do, we don't necessarily say as the authorities in the church, absolutely, we obey.

Yes, Caesar. The church has the right to say, are you serving the king right now? Are you being wise?

Are you loving neighbor right now? Is the decision you're making right now, as the authoritative government, is it something that's going to destroy and hate my neighbors?

That's also a thing that has to be held as a principle. So, what I'm saying is, is the right balanced perspective, pastorally speaking, biblically speaking, as communities, is to hang together, in the balance, biblical laws regarding quarantine, biblical laws of the preservation of life, biblical laws about the subordinate authority of the state, very important, biblical laws about, again, loving neighbor, caring for neighbor.

We need to uphold that and say, as pastors, do we find it wise that we plunge the economy into a depression as a result of something that, at the moment, we're looking at the numbers and we can say, you know, we've got things like this that face us on an annual basis, and if we're going to be consistent here and just say, yes, we're going to close down worship and just decimate the economy as a result of a viral threat, then are you prepared to do it the next three times this year when influenza is a thing, the next strain of the influenza actually is wiping out a lot of the population?

Are we going to close down services? Are we going to close down businesses? I'm not saying there's never a time to do that.

I already acknowledge that biblical quarantine is a thing and it can be just. I'm saying that pastors have to do this patiently.

They have to do it with wisdom, and they have to do it with the knowledge of a lot of biblical principles sort of stacked up together, and you have to think through those things very thoughtfully rather than, as I said, just jumping into the stream of the population and the media who says, panic, everybody, kill the economy, destroy families, destroy businesses, it doesn't matter.

Well, how many cases do you have in your area right now? Two? And it's like, so decimate the finances of all of the people in your state because at the moment you have that many, you might want to think about that.

You might want to reconsider that and think about there are maybe other ways to handle this in the short term rather than overreacting and decimating families.

So that's just a start, getting you ready for next week. We're going to do a more expanded version of this, getting into the text.

We'll have a guest on. We're going to address some of these things hopefully in a more helpful way, but we're going to have fun. Go ahead. Yeah, so I thought that Doug, I thought

Doug Goose did a good job. He said the smile, right?

So Doug, Doug Wilson, he hit the nail on the head when he was talking about principles, and that's been our whole conversation is we're trying to make decisions based upon principles.

So the principle is that God has ordained different spheres of government, self, family, church, civil, and it's an overreach for the civil government to tell the church government how to do things.

So we're saying it should be up to each local church government on how to handle their flock individually.

And so that's the principle. That's where we're coming from in this conversation. And I mean, as of right now, our flock's in no real danger.

We have quarantined. Yes. We have done quarantine ourselves. Yes. To specific families that may be at risk.

Yes. We did it out of love for everybody. Exactly. You quarantine right now until we know everything's all right. But look, that's coming from the church.

Exactly. Yeah. Yeah, and ultimately, people keep saying, well, it's the church's responsibility, the pastor's responsibility to love neighbor.

And like you said, there's a lot that goes into that. It's not just health, and it's also economically.

And believe me, we know when people are hurting, guess who's dealing with that?

When people need money, guess who's dealing with that? The pastors. Exactly. And nobody thinks about that. And so it's our duty to make sure our flock's taken care of as well.

And I say that the whole love your neighbor thing should start with individual government. So if you're feeling sick and you're not feeling well, you should take that upon yourself to say,

I'm going to self -quarantine. And I think the problem is everybody's so used to the state being the savior and the messiah.

And so we're expecting the state to make these decisions for the good of the people. And then they drop it down to the pastors.

It's like, well, actually, it should start with the individual. That's where love for neighbor should start with right there.

And so there was something else I was going to say. I lost it. No, that was excellent. That was very clear. Oh, I know.

I want to make sure that we're clear. We're not sitting here saying, because I've heard this from people.

We're not saying, well, we're being singled out as a church. The point is that this is an actual ordained sphere of government from God.

And there's an overstep in those spheres. But again, if we're at a spot where we're like, you know what?

Our flock is in serious danger. We're going to be wise. We're not being careless. We're not being cavalier.

We're trying to look to the good of everyone and weigh, like you said, weigh those factors. It's really important.

And let's end it on this, because we'll do the whole show on this. But it's really important. Like Pastor Luke says, you've got to weigh all these things in the balance and think about them with godly wisdom.

If the government says, hey, we want to love our neighbors, and you go, hey, I like that.

I like that. Love for neighbor, that's the second greatest commandment. Everything hangs on that. Love God, love neighbor.

And they go, we want you all to love your neighbors. And we go, fantastic. I'm on board. Sign up. What's the legislation? And they go, we're going to close down all these businesses for the next two or three months.

And yeah. And we go, excuse me, hold on. I thought we said we were loving our neighbors here.

And they go, no, we are, from the potential threat of this disease. And you go, okay, good.

You're thinking wisely. You need to take all those things into consideration. How many cases do we have right now? And they go, oh, right now we have about 20 cases right now.

In the whole state. Yeah. And so you're going to shut down numerous cities and close down numerous family businesses, and you're going to put people out of work and lay off families and all these different things.

And then that's going to become now a tax burden for the entire state. So now everyone else is going to get their taxes increased, more taken away from them because of what you're choosing to do.

So now we have, I thought we were trying to love our neighbors here. Are we loving our neighbors or not?

Because what I see is now my neighbor being decimated by your decision. What you said was to love your neighbor.

And so what we have to do is try to think about that in the most godly and wise way.

How do we best love our neighbor in cases like this? And so what we're doing as pastors is we're looking across the landscape.

And what we're doing is we're saying, okay, guys, take special care. Take steps to do this. Make sure you're loving one another.

If you feel ill or sick or whatever, do not come to church. Do not come to worship. Try to stay away from everybody. And we're also saying to people who may potentially be, who are in the medical field, we're saying if you have any kind of contact, then you right now need to quarantine yourself from the body.

And that's appropriate, wise, godly decision -making, but it's coming from a local church context. And guess what we didn't do?

We didn't decimate an entire city's finances through doing that. And so I think what you just said was beautiful.

You just said that people today see government as our Savior and as our Messiah. So there's a difficulty in the community.

What's the first thing they do? They go, save us. Save us. And that's part of the problem.

Because a lot of times when the state Messiah comes to save you, it comes with a lot of pain, a lot of removal of freedoms, and it comes with a lot of new controls.

I saw Nancy Pelosi, that dirty old lady. Did you see what she did? She tried to squeeze in some abortion funding into the coronavirus thing.

It's like, you dirty old hag. So it just shows the wickedness.

And that's my point. The state's the Messiah. Okay, great. So we'll save you, and then all the while they're saving you.

They're destroying other people, and you're adding things like that in there. So, yeah. All right. And just quickly, I was going to say, even at Apology of Church, we now at this point have more people that have lost their jobs than we do people that have even come in contact or the need to be contacted.

Well, that's a good point. And let's definitely put a pin in that to say that's a key thing, is that Monday morning you and I are waking up to phone calls from our church body saying,

I was laid off. I don't have a job. My hours are cut down to 15 hours. And as pastors, that's what we're seeing.

So when we talk about we need to love our neighbors, I'm looking at the neighbors who are being decimated right now going, but do you?

Right. But do you love them? Exactly. How about them? Do they get love too? Hold that in the balance at all times.

As you give it the wise, godly decision that doesn't just peanut butter slather Romans 13 or love your neighbors as you love yourself.

Because I'm going to say, I believe in those completely. And we need to hold those things together with godly wisdom. Okay. So we got to go recently.

We're going to get to, you know what? Let's do this. Let's do something fun first. And then let's go into playing a clip of William Wallace.

We're going to tell you what happened in Scotland and what God did. So let's, this is a fun one. The video is a little fuzzy on this one, but you just need to see it anyways, guys.

This is really good. Jim Brewer talking about why mothers need their sleep. I saw Jim Brewer live.

He actually is married. She's a Christian now. His wife's a Christian now. And she's obviously having some great influence on him and his more modern stuff.

I went to his comedy thing at the improv and I was, my stomach hurt so bad from laughing.

It was one of the best comedy things I've ever seen. And all his jokes were like, they were all

Christian worldview kind of jokes. He was totally dissing porn and all his jokes were like,

I was like, this is like a Christian comedy show and people were dying and there was no foul language or anything like that at all.

It was actually pretty amazing. So here's Jim Brewer on why mothers need their sleep.

The best is, I'm going to help every man in here because again, they don't teach you about fatherhood, like real fatherhood.

The best thing you could do as a father is make sure your wife and mother of your children get as much rest as possible.

Because sleep deprivation in a mother leads to murder.

You see it on the news, like another woman drowned her kids and she just needed a nap. That was it.

And it's true, my wife's a beautiful woman and she installs faith in life. She's like, you know, the kids, make sure you thank

God for a wonderful day and just thank Him for everything we have and just, we're blessed.

But if she don't nap, if she don't sleep, the devil goes, I'll take over from here.

And there is nothing worse than waking up as a man in the middle of the night, like five in the morning and your wife's just sitting on the edge of the bed.

Just staring at you. Baby, what are you doing?

Why are you not, what are you doing up so early? Up so early? I haven't been to bed yet.

I haven't had any sleep whatsoever. Well, we came to bed together at 10 and we went to bed.

No, no. No, no. No, you fell asleep at 10.

I was up and who can fall asleep when you fall asleep because you pant down, your mouth is always facing my way and it smells like someone defecating your mouth and your breath is disgusting.

It's disgusting. You need to go to a doctor. I have no eyebrows left because of your breath blowing on my face.

And I kick you and I shove you and you don't even move. Would you even, you wouldn't even wake up if we were attacked in the middle of the night.

You would hear nothing. Why don't you go to sleep?

I wish I could, I wish I could. And then just when I was ready to fall asleep, the three year old came walking in, woke me up.

She was filled with pee. She peed in her bed again. She wet her whole bed and then

I have to change her clothes and then now she's mad and she throws a fit and then I throw a fit and we're running around,

I'm doing the clothes and I have to change the covers and do you know why she wet the bed? Because you gave her water before bedtime.

And I tell you, don't give the children any liquid before bedtime or they'll wet the bed but you don't listen.

You want to be the good guy all the time. By the way,

I killed the cats. Moms need their sleep.

It's funny with Augustine, my newly adopted son or the son

I'm in the process of adopting. I'm learning now, before when I was 25, 29, 30 years old,

I could go off two hours of sleep, no big deal. Not now. No, I'm learning as I'm 42 years old.

My wife too, we're learning. We used to be able to handle no sleep, no problem but man, it's different now.

It's so different as you get older and not sleeping all night. He's like a butterball right now because he's getting so big and he eats so much but he's like on a newborn schedule right now.

Every three hours, we're still up with him. We've got to make the bottle, heat it, warm it. He's taking like 30 minutes to drink it. Then he wants to laugh and he wants to play and I'm like, no, please go to sleep.

Please go to sleep. But yeah, we all need our sleep. Let's talk about what happened in Scotland and Ireland but as we do, let's make sure we play what has to be played anytime we talk about Scotland and Ireland is this.

Scotland, I am William Wallace. William Wallace is seven feet tall.

Yes, I've heard. Kills men by the hundred. And if he were here, he'd consume the

English with fireballs from his eyes and bolts of lightning from his arse. I am

William Wallace and I see a whole army of my countrymen here in defiance of tyranny.

You've come to fight as three men and three men you are.

What will you do without freedom? Will you fight?

And you may die.

Run and you'll live at least a while. And dying in your beds many years from now.

Would you be willing to trade all the days from this day to that for one chance, just one chance to come back here and tell our enemies that they may take our lives but they'll never take our freedom.

Never ever gets old.

No, it's one of my favorites. Under any circumstance. So as we start this discussion I will say we have very, very close friends and brothers and sisters in Christ in Northern Ireland, the

Republic of Ireland and Scotland and especially Jono and Rakela. Jono is Irish and Rakela is from Scotland.

And it was so amazing. My favorite part, I have little memories that I'll never lose was when we left

Ireland, Rakela wanted to come with us to make sure she guided us and our homeland and everything else.

It was so wonderful because she has such a deep Scottish accent and she loves Scotland and she loves the fact that she's

Scottish. But it was amazing because in Ireland, you know, you can hear the nuances, the differences in like her, her, her...

Dial. Accent. Her accent, there you go, her accent. But it's, you know, Irish and Scotland sound kind of to the

American ear, kind of similar, but you can definitely hear that's Scottish. But man, when we got into Scotland, we had to take two separate cabs because we had so much luggage and stuff.

And we're going into Edinburgh and man, we had this Scottish driver with this thick, thick accent and it was instant.

Hers turned on, on. I couldn't understand what they were both were saying. And then for the first time I heard,

I heard Rakela saying, aye, aye, aye. Like it was like so many, aye, aye, aye, aye.

Like it was, it was awesome. So. I was gonna say that clip you played, there was much more easy to understand than Glasgow.

Glasgow. Glasgow. Even Rakela was like, what?

Remember our cab drivers in Glasgow? They were, how do I? They were thick. Hold on. It says our stream was, our stream was suspended.

How do you start it again? Oh no, cause you played Braveheart. We're allowed to, it's commentary.

That means somebody's watching. Okay, hold on. Carmen. Carmen, how do we start it up again? The stream?

Yeah. I'm gonna be honest with you. I have no idea. Oh my goodness gracious.

Are you allowed to dispute it and start it again? Well, the problem is they just changed it.

So now it's AI. Is the whole show lost?

Well, I have a recording that we can get up. Okay. We're back.

Are we back on? Yes, sir. So we're back live again? They just decided to win.

Somebody's watching. Yeah. Okay. Oh, we're back. Hello everybody. So we've been in the background going, what happened to our stream?

It's strange. So YouTube has weird policies. Like you're allowed, fair use is you're allowed to take things and make commentary and those sorts of things.

But for some odd reason, YouTube doesn't have a good system to figure out what is fair use.

They'll just kick your stream. And so it looks like we are still on. Are we still going? Okay, we're back.

All right, everybody. So hello everyone. Welcome back. Sorry about that weird situation there. We played a clip from Braveheart.

And apparently that means that we are bad people and they ought to shut us down. So we're back.

So what were we doing? You were saying? Oh, I was just saying that the Scottish in Braveheart is way easier to understand than Glaske.

Yeah. Glaske. It's intense. Even Raquel was like, what are you saying right now? We saw a fight breakout on Glaske.

We did. Yeah. And we got the whole experience. We got the whole experience. And knives and everything. Knives and everything. Yeah. The little

Scottish girl was like, you better run or you're going to get shanked. Yeah. Get out of here or you're going to get shanked. So let's talk about it.

Everyone, I want to encourage you guys with this. Many of you guys have been with us, watching us for years, praying with us, praying for us.

Many of you gave to end abortion now over the years and you continue to give.

And we want to thank you so, so much for that. Let me just bring you into it because it's such a great story. I guess we already had a break.

The stream thing was the break, right? I mean, is that kind of how we're going to do this? We'll just go with it.

What do you think? Yes? Carmen can always throw the commercials in at the end. He can, yes. All right. I want to tell you guys a story because it really is amazing, especially if you guys have given towards the ministry of end abortion now.

I think this will really bless your life in a big way to hear what God has done with it. Providentially, outside of our control, it's something that he was just doing.

So I'll give you the summary. Years ago, I got asked by a very hardcore, solid, historic

Presbyterian denomination in Ireland to come out to be the main speaker for their family conference that they do annually where all of them come together.

Now, I want you to know, these are covenanters. These are the descendants of the covenanters. These are like hardcore, pipette and true

Presbyterians. They are the no king but Christ and for Christ's crown and covenant

Presbyterians. So these people are legit, solid, and amazing godly Christians.

But they asked me, a Reformed Baptist pastor, to be the head speaker for their family conference where they all gather together, which

I thought was like, were you guys unaware that I'm Reformed Baptist and you're

Presbyterian? We've had some issues in the past. And they were like, absolutely. And so I was like,

I'm honored. But this conference had nothing to do with abortion per se. And so I was like, yes.

And so I went out to Ireland and I had the time of my life with these believers in fellowship and in worship.

But I got to actually do sort of like a teaching circuit tour. I went to their seminary. I went to just all over these different churches all over Ireland.

It was really an amazing experience, very humbling experience. But as we were there, mind you, Northern Ireland at the time and the

Republic of Ireland, abortion was still a criminal offense. Abortion was still seen as a criminal offense, as a crime.

However, they were getting nearer and nearer to people trying to have them overturn that. They've been trying for a very long time, but they still had it as a criminal.

So the pastors and I would just have these conversations and they would bring it up and I would say, what are you guys doing? What are you guys doing to fight against it as the church, as with the gospel?

And the answer I was getting, of course, was they were disappointed even in themselves. They were like, well, not much. We're writing some letters here and there, but you know, in the public square, what are you doing?

Well, you know, nothing. We need to do more. And so what happened was as I came home, it became very clear that God was allowing our church to have a very special voice in the

Irish church's fight against the issue of abortion, because mind you, the pro -life movement now is already starting to come over from the

United States and setting up roots in Ireland, in the Republic specifically, because they were closest, and already starting to sort of have them change the narrative in terms of the pro -life narrative as, don't call it murder, the woman's a victim, all those sorts of things.

So devastating to the issue of the fight against abortion. So at any rate, Luke and I and I go out there and now we're trying to equip the churches to hold back the slaughter of these innocent children in the

North and in the Republic. And so we were there when they were at the edge there, when the vote was taking place, where the pro -choicers were doing their massive march and the pro -lifers held their rally.

You want to talk about that and what you saw? Oh yeah. So these were two different trips.

The first one was the, you mentioned the pro -choice rally, repeal the eighth is what they were doing.

And then we came back. So that was like in the fall. And then we came back in March the following year.

So that was what, 2016. I just lost my mic, I think. Yeah, there you go.

And so anyways, when we came back then for the pro -life thing, we noticed immediately they're done because of the language they were using.

They were following the same rhetoric that the pro -life movement's using here. But what was amazing though was even within that, the pro -life rally was way larger than the pro -choice.

Like there was way more people. And we started to, everyone we were talking to, even like cab drivers, everyone was like, no, we don't want abortion here.

And we're like, well, maybe they have a chance to win this vote because it seemed overwhelmingly that no one wanted it.

But then no one came out to vote. And it was a landslide victory. They repealed the eighth and now it's legal in the

South. And it was just because Christians were like, I'm not, I think they just assumed that people would come out and vote against it.

And it didn't happen. So then the North, it was still illegal.

It was still seen as a crime. Now I'm going to stress that. Abortion was seen not as distasteful as simply or saying, my preference is no thanks.

It was seen as crime in the North and in the Republic. Crime, not just a sin, a crime, not just something that was ugly, but a crime.

And then it's released in the Republic. And in the North, it was still illegal. But this is really important.

Pastor Luke and I are part of a conversation. We had no idea what God was doing. This is really what I hope blesses those of you guys who have been praying for us and you've been giving towards end abortion now for years or even this last year.

We were there to support the churches there. And the one thing we noticed is there wasn't a

Christian church -based movement against the issue of abortion that was gospel -centered, from the church, local elder -led kind of a thing, fighting against the issue of abortion in the public square with the gospel, with the truth of God's word.

So now we are in this private meeting. This private meeting is scheduled with Pastor Luke and I and a bunch of other pastors and leaders from all over Ireland and even from the

Republic. And so we're in this private meeting. I know for sure Luke and I did not fully grasp what

God was doing in that moment. We truly didn't. We didn't know what God was doing. But we are now connected to this

Covenanter denomination. And they are coming to us and they're saying, what should we do?

And I didn't realize that in that meeting, that meeting, God used that meeting to challenge, to rebuke.

They said rebuke. The brothers and sisters there that kicked them into action, and you're wearing the shirt, it's perfect, to actually start

Let Them Live. And Let Them Live is from the church, with the word of God, using the gospel, the church's fight against the issue of abortion.

It was legalized recently in Northern Ireland, not by vote. By force. By force. The whole

Brexit situation created some governmental issues that essentially forced the issue of abortion in the north.

Which is unconstitutional. Unconstitutional from their perspective for sure. But we didn't know that what

God was doing in this private meeting with these leaders and pastors from all over Ireland, was

God was creating the movement of the church against the issue of abortion. Not the typical pro -life lobby or pro -life industry approach, but the church's response with the gospel to the issue of abortion, calling it murder.

Using the word of God and demanding immediate justice. We didn't know that God was doing that. We were there to support them, to encourage them, to hold it back.

We were challenging them as Christians, and then God created this. And so we just went back, and I was hoping to God and praying that he would not allow

Ireland to fall in this way to the slaughter of the innocent children, of these innocent children.

And that we would never have to go back to train them to do abortion ministry and all the rest. But unfortunately, we did.

We just recently went back, and now the context, we did three conferences. One in the north, one in the republic, and one in Scotland.

And the conferences were built upon calling Christians to gather together to use the word of God, to actually go to where they're slaughtering children, and to save their lives and preach the gospel, and to demand immediate justice from their legislature, and to do it as Christians.

Not as neutral parties, like the pro -life movement says, we're not Christian, we're doing this scientific based, we're neutral, we're not using

Jesus language and Bible language. We're not doing that. This is Christians approaching the issue of abortion.

Now here's what I want you to be encouraged by. We didn't know. We didn't know.

And all that God was doing to set all these parts and pieces together, and to get us in motion to do this, we didn't know how significant it was that we were going there to encourage the church, and to point the church to the truth, and where the errors are, in terms of how the pro -life industry typically approaches this.

We didn't know. And what we saw when we got to get back there this last time, as we were equipping the churches there to save lives, we saw that God had created a movement now of Christian churches that now are all gathered together because of what he was doing through our ministry there with them.

So I wanted you all to hear that in Scotland right now, Northern Ireland, and in the Republic, the church is mobilizing through local churches and pastors to face the issue of abortion in the

North, in the Republic, and in Scotland, to do it with the gospel, to demand immediate justice, and here's the thing you need to know.

Of course, God didn't need us. He can do whatever he wants without us. He doesn't need me. I am the worst choice, if you ask me, in terms of anything like this.

But God, through your work together with us, your prayers and your giving, created this. So lives are going to be saved in Ireland now.

The gospel is going to be preached against the issue of abortion because of the efforts over these past couple of years, because of the conferences, because of the labor, because of the private meetings and all the challenging and all the rest.

God has raised something up where the church is going to save lives. The church is going to stand up on the word of God and preach the gospel in this context.

And he did it through our effort together. If you gave towards End Abortion Now, if you've given anything, you need to know that that's happening in Ireland right now and in Scotland because of what you did.

And you may not want any credit for that, and of course God gets all the glory for it, but you have to know in terms of the means that God uses to create something, he used his people to do it.

And End Abortion Now and Apology of Church and your efforts and giving created that in God's providence.

And so praise God. Yeah, and even along those lines, we even now have been given an opportunity to help possibly affect legislation in Northern Ireland.

We've been given a copy of the bill that they're working on to try to fight against abortion, reinforce on them.

And of course the pro -life industry from the United States is already ahead of us in trying to affect this legislation in a very awful way.

So we're praying for that, but it's amazing. We're having a hard time being able to influence legislation in states here in the

U .S., and now right away we have an opportunity to possibly affect it in Northern Ireland. Yeah, and so I came back from—

I came back, we came back from this last trip out there, this last mission out there, and the thing that I just kept saying, and I'll continue to say it, it was like, how was the trip?

It was very humbling, and it was very sobering. Humbling to see God use people like us to be a part of this, but also sobering because what

I got to hear them talk about when they were sharing with the other churches that were showing— Christians were coming, by the way, not just Covenanters, not just Presbyterians.

They were coming from other churches and saying, this is the only Christian movement here in Ireland to fight against abortion, and that was a sobering thing.

I was like, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, what? What? Like, yeah, we can't find any other churches that are doing what you guys are saying needs to be done, that are addressing this in the way that it needs to be addressed, and they're doing it in the public square.

This is the central point, and it was sobering because we didn't know.

We just wanted to be faithful and to encourage our brothers and sisters and to try to save lives. We didn't know that this little private meeting we were having together, where we're sitting together with other leaders and Christians in this little tiny room, squeezed into John Owen Raquel's house, that God was going to do something to create a movement of churches to save lives.

We didn't know. So, I want to encourage you with this. Don't despise a day of small beginnings.

Everything that you do for the glory of God, to be faithful to Him, to be obedient to Him, every seed that you plant in that vein is worth everything, because God blesses that faithfulness, and you don't see it.

Here's the thing. I don't know how many people are going to be saved as a result of this. I don't know what God's going to do with this. God can do what

He pleases. He does as He pleases. But here's the thing. Maybe nobody will ever really know the story. Maybe it just will never really be known that there was a church in the desert in Phoenix that went across the ocean and met in a private room with a bunch of Christians in Ireland this one day, squeezed together, packed together like sardines in a room, and this conversation and this challenge and this even rebuke, they said, that blessed them, created all of this.

You know what I'm saying? Don't forget to trust

God in the midst of circumstances where you see this doesn't seem like it's a big deal. This doesn't seem very effective.

There's only a handful of people here. What can God do with a handful of people? Well, in our context, what can

God do with a handful of people like a church like Apologia Church? Maybe create almost 500 churches now across the country saving lives.

Maybe saving thousands of children from death as a result of the ministry that occurred just through this small group of believers right here.

Maybe God can change the course of Irish history as a result of a small meeting that took place in a room.

In Ireland, that's what God does. He changes the world through mustard seeds that become trees.

Amen. And our good buddy Benji's on there right now. Oh, is he? Hey, brother. If you're on the live feed and I see people that are in Ireland or Scotland asking questions, you can contact

Benji there as well. Yeah, Benji is your man. A faithful, amazing brother in the

Lord, that's for sure. And Benji was there, and just for fun, just for kicks and giggles, Benji was there to pick us up, to get us to our hotel.

It seems like it's just the thing, like the flight from the East Coast to Ireland, we always have to do this.

Basically, Ireland is like six or seven hours ahead of us in our time. And so when we fly from Phoenix, we all like fly to like New York or Philly or D .C.

to go from there to Dublin. And what happens is that flight usually leaves around like 6 or 8 p .m.

Eastern time, but we're already three hours behind that. It's like 3 p .m. our time, or something like that.

And so by the time we're landing, it's like a six -hour flight. By the time we're landing from the East Coast to Dublin, it's already like 8 a .m.

or 7 a .m. their time, but we haven't even really slept yet. Right? So the first day we are out of our minds, exhausted, because we're trying to catch up with their time, so we just don't sleep.

So we usually land in Dublin, and then we just kind of just, we try to check in our hotel, and we just try to say, stay awake, stay awake, stay awake, stay awake.

And so we just go and we walk around, we drink tons of coffee, we eat meals, and we just try to push through till like what, 5 or 5 .30

that night? Yeah, as late as we can. And Benji got to witness it this time. Yeah. And it was hilarious for him.

Yeah, I felt bad for him. Yeah. He probably enjoyed it. He probably lost a lot of respect for us. Yeah, that's what I was afraid of. Like, when we went to that cafe, we couldn't even make it.

I was falling asleep. Two in the afternoon, Luke is falling asleep, I'm like, wake up. Benji saw us at our absolute worst.

We were like hallucinating, no sleep, and we were like cackling laughing over things that were clearly not funny because Benji's just staring at us like, that wasn't even funny, guys.

That's how I know he's a good brother though because he didn't judge us. That's right. At least not out loud. He hasn't gone to like the online

Christian tabloids and say, I got some information for you guys. You should see how these guys are. He could have been recording video footage and like placing that online.

Yeah, he could have. He could have been. But we love Benji, and if you guys see him in there in the thread, make sure you guys get in contact with him.

If you're in Northern Ireland, the Republic, or in Scotland, he'll hook you up. Let's have some more fun. I told you this, this is called

Smile Coronavirus Special. If you guys are just getting with us, go back when this is fully dropped and check out the conversation we had at the beginning.

We are gonna do a coronavirus special to go more in depth about biblical laws of quarantine, the authoritative position of the church, biblical wisdom, loving neighbor.

We're gonna do that next week with a guest. I think Tuesday at noon is when we are scheduled to do it, I said specific time,

Pacific time. But let's have some more fun here, guys. Let's create some smiles here. This is

Jim Gaffigan on holiday traditions. Big holiday tradition, fruitcake.

I love our holiday traditions, like the Christmas tree where we go out and we chop down a tree and we put it in our living room.

Kind of sounds like the behavior of a drunk man, really. Some woman wakes up, honey, why is there a a pine tree in our living room?

I like it. We're gonna, we're gonna, we're gonna decorate it for Jesus.

And then I'm gonna hang my socks over the fireplace. Fill them with candy.

Maybe I'll tie some leaves to the ceiling and see if I can get some action. He's, he's, he is a funny, he's a funny guy.

I love Gaffigan. Yeah, yeah. And it's generally clean comedy, which is, which is nice. You don't get assaulted with a lot of garbage.

Yeah. All right. Let's end this with just a quick touch on Rhett and Link just for a minute.

So as we announced before, Rhett and Link from Good Mythical Morning, Ear Biscuits, and all the rest have announced that they have officially abandoned faith in Jesus Christ.

And that's, is creating a lot of conversation. And I'd like to actually spend time just really dissecting their conversion experience, conversion away from the faith to agnosticism and all the rest.

I'd like to dissect all their arguments. Maybe we'll find time to do that, or I'll just do it by myself and we'll just kick it out at some point so you guys can at least hear some explanations to their critiques of Christianity, those sorts of things.

But for now, let's go ahead and do this. Let's play. This is from Are We Scared of Hell? This is from Ear Biscuits.

That's the channel, Ear Biscuits. And the question is, Are We Scared of Hell? That's the title of the video. This was from that episode.

I thought this was, this is one of the starting questions. And by the way, is it Rhett or Link? I forget. Rhett. Rhett.

Link. I forget. No, it's Rhett. Rhett's beard and hair looks fantastic.

But this is from the beginning of that episode. It's about seven minutes in or so, about eight minutes in.

And I think it's a good place to start this conversation. And here it goes. You asked yourself, what if I'm wrong?

I said that during my story. There was a point at which when I was a

Christian and I had experienced a bunch of doubts, I said, what if I'm wrong? Do you ask yourself that question now?

What if you're wrong now? That's the question. Yeah, because it seems like,

I mean, our belief on the inside, it was like a hedging your bets,

Occam's razor kind of what if. Okay, so let's address that. This is really, really critical. So first and foremost,

I want to acknowledge, I want us all to acknowledge that these two men have not been able to shake their

Christianity loose yet. They're still talking about truth as though that were something that we ought to pursue.

They're still assuming a lot of things about the world, about the mind, about their experience that only ultimately can be coherent, can make sense in, can only be valid with a biblical perspective of the world.

So these men are the beneficiaries of God's truth in the biblical worldview, the message of Jesus, human beings as image bearers of God, truth as absolute, as necessary, we want to hold to as human beings, as mattering at all.

They are the beneficiaries of that. They're raised in the context of the Christian community and worldview. It was around them.

They weren't truly believers. John says they went out from us in order to show they were never really of us.

They were never really saved. They had a false profession of faith. Jesus talks about that. You have seeds scattered across different kinds of grounds.

You have some that doesn't make it into the soil. You've got some that are picked up by the birds. You've got some that are choked out.

You've got some that make it on good ground, ground that was prepared ahead of time and it bears fruits, 30, 60, 100 fold, whatever the case may be.

So the point is is that we have to recognize as Christians that apostasy is a real thing. False believers, false professions of faith is a real thing.

We're not talking about people who are truly regenerate, have experienced eternal life, that have truly turned to Christ, who were truly put into good ground.

We're talking about people who never really were of us. Now, even if you were a never really of us kind of person, you still were around Christian community and you still got to taste of all these good things.

You still got to have your mind shaped by the Christian worldview. And so Rhett and Link haven't been able to shake their

Christianity loose. You know, because the question he wants to answer is, well, guys, well, what if you're wrong now?

You were wrong before. What if you're wrong now? And Rhett and Link are going to try to respond to this.

They're really going to try to answer this. Like, hey, that does matter, right? Like, what if we're wrong now? No, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait.

When you abandon Jesus and the foundation of God's word and like Jesus as the source and reference points, you gave up any meaning to the question about being wrong.

Being wrong? Does that matter? Does it matter for an agnostic?

Agnosis without knowledge? I don't know. We can't know. Does it matter to someone who says there is no ultimate knowledge?

We don't know. Does it matter that I know whether I'm wrong? Is it in accord with agnosticism that I ought to be, look for what's true and right, that there are oughts and there's a right standard of truth that I need to appeal to?

Why does it matter now? Rhett and Link, you gave up the source of truth.

Jesus says, I am the way, the truth, and the life. No man comes to the Father but by me. And you say no to the source of all truth, no to the foundation of all wisdom and all knowledge, no to the creator of all things, and you say now you still care whether you're wrong?

You gave it up, gentlemen. You gave it up. And I love Good Mythical Morning. Their old stuff was fantastic.

I used to love to watch it. I enjoyed it. My family loved to watch it. We had a good time because it was good, happy, clean fun.

It wasn't obscene. It was great. I love these guys, but I just would want to say to them, guys, you gave it up.

You already gave it up. You gave up wrongness being wrong. It doesn't matter.

And so it's interesting because if you, let me play that again here, what they say in response. Wrong. Like worst case, you know, worst case on the outside, you're risking eternal punishment, separation from God, right?

I think you're talking about Pascal's Wager. Pascal's Wager. Not Occam's Razor. That's what I, Occam's Razor, I can't even say it now.

It's the simplest solution. The simplest solution. But Pascal's Wager is essentially,

Blaise Pascal, famous mathematician and thinker from a long time ago who was a

Christian, basically said, what do I have to lose by living a Christian life? Because I get to.

You have a lot to gain. You have a lot to gain. You have a lot to lose by going to the dark side. Which I'm going to talk a little bit about hell in a second related to Pascal's Wager and why

I don't find it compelling. So here's what I want to address in terms of them talking about Pascal's Wager.

By the way, there's a whole conversation we can have about Pascal's Wager. And the whole thing, this is often put out there like, hey, think about the consequences.

If Jesus is who he says he is, you put your faith in him, you have eternal life. But if you're wrong about that, then you have maybe eternal death and separation from God.

Or if you're wrong, you just go in the dirt anyway. So what's the best choice? Let's consider what's the best option.

And it's almost like a risk versus reward kind of scenario. And it sounds to me like that's kind of where they were.

Like they were more on the kind of Pascal's Wager, like, well, I'm just hedging my bets here. Like it's risk versus reward, baby.

I don't really know what I want to do in terms of like, do I really believe this? Is it actually true?

The way Rhett and Link talk, and by the way, jump in anytime here, Pastor Luke. The way Rhett and Link talk, and I said this to you at the beginning here,

I was asking the question, what church did these guys go to? Like what kind of Christian community were they a part of?

Because they really sound like they were part of a Christian community that didn't allow for deep questions, or you're fearful for asking them.

Interesting. They almost paint a picture of the Christian community and Christian faith as don't ask questions, don't ask the hard questions, and if you struggle with doubt, you're going to sort of suppress that sort of stuff.

And it's interesting because it's the Christian worldview and the Christian faith and the word of God that gives a grounding to be looking for ultimates and to really handle questions that are complicated questions, that are challenges.

Like for example, if you look at, say, okay, let's just take this experience. In the book of Acts, the book of Acts details for us the historical narrative of what took place when the

Holy Spirit of God was poured out at Pentecost and the church explodes over the empire, and you see the original disciples of Jesus.

These are the apostles. These are the ones that knew Jesus. They walked with the resurrected Savior. They know Him well.

You see them, and their methodology is they're going into the public square, and they're actually willing to have riots break out and all the rest, and be punished and whipped and all those different things for their faith in Jesus.

But beyond that, you also see this. They're constantly in conflict with error and other worldviews.

These are the OG disciples of Jesus, right? And they're the ones that are going in.

And what happens? You got Paul, Acts 9, famous scene. He first converts to Jesus, turns to Christ, has faith in Jesus.

He immediately goes to Damascus, and what does he do? He just goes hide to sort of keep his doubts to himself and all the rest.

No. He goes where? To the synagogue to reason with them to prove that Jesus is the

Messiah. And what does it do? It creates some conflict. They actually have people who want Him dead for it.

But the church actually explodes as a result of what? Paul debating with people about Jesus, proving that Jesus is in fact the

Messiah, that this is the truth, this is the only way. And then you have all the examples throughout the book of Acts where...

I'll give you another one. Acts 17, yeah, where the apostle

Paul is at the Areopagus. It is the place in history. It's the famous place of the

Epicureans. It's the place of Socrates. It's the place where everybody's... This is philosophy central.

And you've got Paul there at Mars Hill at the Areopagus. And what's he doing? He's arguing.

He's reasoning. He's not reasoning from a place. He's not doing Pascal's Wager. He's not.

He's not doing Pascal's Wager. He's actually going deeper, doing a more transcendental argument and saying this, you guys already know the

God that I'm talking about. He's the very grounding of all of this. Look, you've even got these idols set up to Him in case you missed one, to the unknown

God because you already know the one I'm talking about. And what Paul is doing there, he's not doing a Pascal's Wager scenario saying risk versus reward.

What do you guys say? Why don't you just throw your lot in with us? Give it a shot. He's actually arguing from a place of absolutes.

God has raised him from the dead and you better repent in a hurry. And that's our position of absolute truth, but Rhett and Link don't have that anymore.

And I really have to say that I get it. I mean, apostasy is always stupid.

Rejecting God as creator and the knowledge of God is always dumb. It's always foolish. But on a practical level,

I get it. I get why these guys apostatized because the version of Christianity that they had in the first place wasn't

Christianity, wasn't the biblical expression of Christianity. The version that they had experienced or at least adopted or lived in wasn't ultimately the biblical gospel, the biblical faith because I don't recognize any of this stuff.

When they talk about not wrestling with their doubts and being afraid to bring it up in group settings and sort of having the private meeting with the pastor but being afraid to even say it to him,

I'm like, where are you? Where are you at? Because, and it's not just Apologia, but when you go to a solid biblical church, your pastor's dealing with those hard issues from the pulpit where you're holding classes on engaging with the difficult subjects.

At Apologia, you've got elders who were involved in public debate in the public square. Our pastor,

Dr. James White, is what's like 200 international public debates with the world's best critics.

You were finding the strongest critic against our faith in every area and trying to engage them and making sure that people are equipped, that they know their faith.

So this is a modern evangelism these guys were a part of. I also feel like that's like the go -to response when you see someone, especially someone that has any sort of fame, when they, so I'm no longer a

Christian, they almost immediately go, well, it's because of the other

Christians. They always blame, well, it's because of my pastor or it's because the

Christians were mean to me or whatever. It's always the Christian's fault that that's why they decided they were no longer a

Christian. Yeah. And so, just for - No, you're right. That is a part of it at times, the hypocrisy of other

Christians. And what I wanna say is you have a problem with hypocrisy and they're like, yes. And I'm like, well, you've got a friend in Jesus because he did too.

And because you've abandoned him, your position is hypocrisy at this point. Plus how do you objectively justify hypocrisy now that you -

As a problem? Yeah. How do you account for hypocrisy being hypocritical? Right, exactly. How does hypocrisy matter now in an agnostic worldview?

What standard are you gonna use now to say hypocrisy is a no -no? Is it your preference?

Like, is it all a personally relative moral position or is it societal relativity?

Like, we determine as a society these particular rules here. Hypocrisy is not allowed in our society. And if that's your standard, then societal relativity works for the group over here that says we love hypocrisy and we're going with it because it's really, really what we're passionate about.

You really have no complaint against them. So you can't do shows complaining about hypocrisy or things like that because it's societal relativity.

Like, it's based upon them or if it's personally relative, well, then it only matters to you.

And if it's based off your emotion and it's based off of your emotional energy of the moment or how you feel at that moment, it doesn't matter at all.

But it does matter if Jesus is who he says he is and being a fake and being a hypocrite is a sin because it's essentially lying.

It's not telling the truth and God cannot lie. You see, from a Christian perspective, all law, all justice, all morality, all oughts are ultimately reflections of God and his character.

So it's not as though God is saying, here's my law, here are these things. And you say, well, why

God? And he goes, well, because this reason. Because then that reason becomes the ultimate standard.

It's out there above God. God's appealing to it because it's above him. From a Christian perspective, justice,

God is the God of justice. All law, all morality, all of it finds itself in God's own character.

He's the center and the reference point. So it's a very important thing. If we talk about even like the issue of hypocrisy, people complain about, they'll leave the church or they'll say,

I'm not going to the church because there's hypocrites there. You say, that's why Jesus came, to save sinners.

And Jesus also hates hypocrisy. So you've got a friend in Jesus, but the moment you say no to Jesus and now you abandon him, you can't complain about hypocrisy anymore because lying isn't a problem without Jesus.

Lying isn't an ultimate problem without the God of the Bible. And someone says, no, atheists, they say lying is wrong.

Yeah, because they're made in the image of God and they can't help being what God made them to be. This is the world that God made and that they live in.

And while the atheist says, you shall not lie, son, he'll turn around and teach his son about evolution.

It says, you're the descendant of fish, son. And you're the descendant of bacteria, son. And there's no moral ought, son, but don't you dare lie.

At certain point, you think the little boy goes, dad, that makes no sense. There's no moral oughts, nothing ultimately matters.

All of us are cosmic accidents and you're telling me I shouldn't lie to my sister or steal something from my brother?

At a certain point, it all starts to break down, doesn't it? It seems like a simple thing, right? The emotional appeal of hypocrisy is bad, hypocrisy is bad.

And I'm sitting there looking over at the Bible going, man, that is what that book says.

It says hypocrisy is bad. And the person goes, so I don't want to go to the church. And then you go, wait, wait, wait, what's happening here?

So at any point, it's the start of a conversation. We are going to do more on this. I do want to sort of unpack what

Rhett and Link say because I think it's an important cultural conversation. And I'm sad because I love these guys.

I really do. I love their show. I've had so much fun watching them over the years.

And so I do want to examine it and I hope they get a chance to see it. So stay with us, guys.

Next week, we are going to be back next week with a show specifically dedicated to answering some deeper questions on the coronavirus issue.

We want to answer the biblical laws regarding quarantine. We want to answer sort of the panic, the fear, the hysteria, all that.

We want to do that next week. Noon on Tuesday is the plan, Lord willing. That's if we're allowed out of our houses.

If we're allowed to get closer than six feet. So be in prayer for our nation.

Be in prayer for your neighbors. Many of them are hurting right now financially as a result of a lot of these decisions. Be in prayer for the sick.

Be anxious for nothing. Rejoice always. And everything give thanks. And go to ApologiaStudios .com

to get more. Go to EndAbortionNow .com to get your church signed up so you get free training, get free resources.

Lots of stuff coming soon with EndAbortionNow .com. Be on the lookout and please join us.

Share the content. That's Luke DeBear. Peace out. I'm Jeff Aninja. We'll catch you next time right here on Apologia Radio.