Open Q&A

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

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

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

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

All right, we're live, not on location. And we had a loop.

I didn't realize what was happening there. The intro was twice. So I guess it was so good you had to hear it again.

So we are live. I am not still traveling, so not home yet.

I'm actually out in Florida at my dad's house and still wanted to make sure that we did a show for you guys and not to miss an episode if we couldn't do it.

So we wanted to make sure we did that. So welcome to Apologetics Live! We will answer any questions tonight.

This is an open Q &A, so any questions you have about God and the Bible, we can answer.

Just remember, I don't know is a perfectly good answer.

I'm hoping we're going to have a guest come in, and we're going to have some fun if he does, having some chats.

First off, let me correct this. Kyle says, greetings, Dr. Andrew. I'm not

Dr. Andrew. Pastor Andrew, maybe. But that's Dr. Anthony. You can call him

Dr. I think we have to find an honorary doctorate for you. Some online school.

I'm going to buy it for you, and we can start calling you Dr. Andrew. I mean, it's so different than Dr. Ravi Zacharias. We did an episode on that about how folks, if you go back and search the episode we did on Ravi Zacharias, one of the criticisms

I had about Ravi, this is way back, was the fact that he claimed he had a doctorate from a university that denies that he ever attended classes.

Oops. Okay, so Bill is asking this right off the bat. Andrew, did I miss the memo on the head shaving?

He got the Sylvester disease. No, no, let's be honest. Let me, can we say what the reason is?

I don't care. It doesn't bother me. I can say what my reason is. The same reason. So Anthony and I are both, well, okay, we're both, well,

I'm getting older, maybe not him. But we're working on a thing that, and Anthony can tell you the things to do with the rosemary and whatnot to help hair growth.

And so part of the thing is you got to kind of shave your head to get the whatever it is you put on.

You have to cut your hair really short so you can get access to the scalp really well. And yeah.

Actually, we're just trying to look like Drew Vanita. That's really what it is, right?

Yeah. Here's Drew saying, that was not true. Drew, what is Drew saying? He's saying he can, he can do,

I could do a school divinity class in, his in -laws did it.

They got a doctorate and all you had to do is fill out the blanks in a notebook. Wow.

Okay. So yeah, that's not really a doctorate. All right.

So tonight is an open Q &A. We want to encourage folks to go to apologeticslive .com,

apologeticslive .com. Go there. And when you go there, you will see a link that will, it's a, it's the duck icon is what it is, but that is the

StreamYard icon to, to be able to join us. We'd like you to join us so that we can hear what your questions are.

And so I'll keep an eye out here if there's any questions in the chat, but one of the things

I do want to do, so Anthony, let's just talk about something to get started. And I may, we didn't prep for this.

We're going to do a different show, but we'll, you were on Iron Sharpens Iron today with Chris Arnzen talking about, well, you talked a whole lot of issues.

I mean, we were talking masks, COVID, government shutdowns, vaccines, a whole lot of things.

We do plan to do a show at some point. I sent you an article, The Dilemma of the

Unvaccinated. It's, you can see it on Epoch Times, folks, if you want to go check that out. But basically it was basically like, here's the summarization of that article that we'll do, we'll do a whole show on this at some point and dissect it.

But the whole article basically is those that force people to get vaccinated are saying, okay, vaccines don't work, get over it.

Yeah, we took your livelihood. We took your freedoms. We took everything we could because you didn't obey us.

And the science doesn't support us. Just get over it. And that would - We've jacked you up with a bunch of poisons that you can never get rid of completely out of your system.

Yeah. It's unbelievable. And I don't know how to pronounce this,

Jeffy, maybe. I don't know if I see his pronouncement. It says, God gives natural immunity.

Yeah, that's the point of it. Just do what, you know,

Anthony explained, if you go and listen to that show of Iron Sharpens Iron Radio, you'll hear

Anthony give a whole list of things like, here's what you could do naturally. So -

Yeah, that's right. And there's actually science behind what you can do naturally, unlike all the treatments that the medical profession was doing and the vaccines.

So, and kind of on that thread I saw earlier, somebody just took a

COVID test. I'm trying to find it now. Oh, Bond Servant for Jesus. Says, I'm doing a

COVID test. Pray for it to be negative. Well, we'll pray for it to be negative. If it isn't, let me tell you what to do.

What should they do? Yes, what should they do? We talked about this on Iron Sharpens Iron Radio today.

And it is 100 ,000 IUs of vitamin D. And you're going to split it up twice.

You know, morning and night, 50 ,000 morning, 50 ,000 night. It seems like it's a lot and it's a ton, but you need to do that.

There's a thousand milligrams of vitamin C every hour. You need to do zinc, 50 milligrams morning, 50 milligrams night.

And then quercetin, depending on the study, either 250 or 500, I believe 500 is better, 500 milligrams of quercetin in the morning and night at the same time that the zinc is taken, because it's what helps drive the zinc into the cells.

And that is a minimum of what you should do vitamin wise. There's also articles you can read out there on nebulizers and how you use either peroxide and saline or iodine and saline or peroxide and iodine and saline in your nebulizer and start breathing that in through your nose and through your mouth, deep in your lungs to kill off any virus that's in there.

So please do that and get yourself out of being sick. Someone's asking a question. What about ivermectin?

Isn't that horse medicine? Yeah. Yeah. It's horse dewormer. What do you want that for? I mean, you know,

I'll tell you one of the dumbest now, okay. There's, there's a lot of dumb things we've heard in three, in the last three years, right.

That is really mind numbing. And one of them is when they were calling ivermectin a horse dewormer.

So does that mean that every prescription medication we give to an animal is all of a sudden evil for humans?

Oh, guess what? These were all used in humans first and then given to animals. Amoxicillin.

Is amoxicillin a horse antibiotic or a dog antibiotic? Cause you know, we use it on animals too.

It's, it's, it is really, really dumb. Ivermectin has been used for, oh, I don't know, 70 or 80 years, something like that.

Maybe a little less than that on human beings. Yes. If you can get your hands on an ivermectin prescription, do it.

It is, it is worth it. But you got to talk to a doctor, make sure you have the correct dosage for your body weight.

And it's actually advised now not to take ivermectin the moment you get sick. You're to take vitamins first.

If you can take hydroxychloroquine, if you get a prescription for that, that's what you take in the first couple of days. You don't have to take ivermectin until day four or day five.

They've shown it to be much more effective later on after you've put a ton of vitamins in your system first.

So, and I know for us, we keep ivermectin on hand, just in case, even though we've each had

COVID twice, my wife, son, and I, it wasn't bad the first time. It was even less the second time.

And because we have not had the jab, chances are for us,

COVID's kind of burned out and, and I'm not really worried about any future iterations of it.

Yeah. I, so, so here's some, some comments we have coming in. Facebook user says, if I do the natural thing, am

I going to go bald like you guys? Actually, if I would've done the natural thing earlier, I probably wouldn't be bald.

Yeah. In line with that, D says,

God knows every hair on your head, so no worries. So, so what you're saying is he knows us less than other people in a full head of hair.

Well, he, there's, there's less for him to know with us, but, but yeah, and so let me correct this.

So, so and this threw me off because it's a new last name,

Lorraine. This is, this is someone who interviewed me for the radio when I was out in the Philippines, but she recently got married.

Congratulations. And so the last name threw me off, but she says, hello, pastors. Greetings from the

Philippines. Good to see you both on another live convo. Hope, hope have not been around to tune in lately.

Well, yeah, you just got married. That's why you're not around, but, but now I get to correct. He's not a pastor.

He's a doctor. So let's get these titles right. I don't, I don't get the pastor title.

Yeah. I don't even play one on TV. All right. So we, we have a question in the, do you want to say anything more about the topic we were just on?

No, I mean, that's essentially it right now. You know, I know we talked for, for the entirety of the two hour show.

We, we covered a lot of the bases on this stuff, but that's pretty, that's pretty the basic stuff for if you have

COVID or if you're worried about COVID or if you want to prevent COVID. Yeah. And so, so we have someone let's see,

Cody is saying dentists are not doctors. We're not medical doctors.

That is true. You know, the thing is, is that you don't have to be a medical doctor in all seriousness, right?

You don't need to be a medical doctor to, to know what other naturopaths and other doctors are saying in regards to COVID.

Very similar to, you don't need to be a biologist to know what a woman is. Although, although they should know what a woman is, right?

I mean, God has made it natural for us to know what a woman and a man is pretty, pretty easily.

Biology certainly helps that stuff, but yeah. Yeah. So let me, my son -in -law actually just sent me a text and I was going to mention this and now probably be a good time since I remembered it.

For those of you who support Striving Fraternity by using smile .amazon .com that for years, we, we got a lot of money through that people who would just buy things on Amazon using a smile .amazon

.com and they would choose Striving Fraternity as their organization. And we would get half a percent of whatever they, they bought.

Amazon sent us an email today, letting us know they're cutting us off along with many other nonprofits.

They're changing the way they're doing now. When you read what they say, it's quite interesting because they say that they've realized they're more effective in focusing their efforts on specific nonprofits, those that are building homes in third world countries or, or doing things by the way that things they chose were all in the political realm, helping to push the political agenda.

But the thing that they're cutting out is many of those that are like us for religious purposes.

So if you do use smile to support us, just know that they're cutting us off soon.

I will, they're going to be cutting that out. And we will be losing that form of income, which does help us as a ministry.

So just want to make that known to you. I guess I should say, if you, if you want to support us, a better way to support us is to go to strivingfraternity .org

support. That's actually the best way to, to support us. So that, that goes right to us and and whatnot.

So let's get to the question we have from Bill here. Bill asks the question, does the doctrine of divine, divine decree eliminate human will?

Well, this is like right in your wheelhouse, Andrew. This is like the doctrine that you teach and seems like nobody else really talks about and they need to learn it.

So why don't explain that to us again? This, this was actually what I was doing down at Bula Baptist church,

January 1st, a great way to start the new year is to talk theology in a church service.

And so this is the, the two terms, the two things that people think, right.

The divine decree versus human will as if they are two mutually exclusive ideas, they are not.

And this is why if you listen to my rap report podcast, I did a few weeks ago, a bonus episode on the doctrine called super intending a very important doctrine to,

I actually called it super, the doctrine of super intending, solving the Calvinism, Arminianism debate.

And, and Anthony, you, you were not there January 1st at Bula Baptist church because you were preaching somewhere else last minute.

Someone had called up pastor Casey and said, Hey, can, can you, you get someone that could fill in?

And, and pastor Casey said, yeah, sacrificial lamb. Here's Anthony. I think more, he wanted to make sure, you know, he's like,

I, I'm going to make sure I hear what Andrew has to say, but I know

I, I really, I've, I have not heard you preach. Even though I've read your book on this, I've heard you talk about it as, as Drew says every week, not quite, but sometimes it seems like it.

I mean, I know the doctrine, but I still, I really wanted to watch live your sermon.

Well, I think Drew's referring to the rap report podcast because as we're going through the doctrine of regeneration and election, we have been hitting it over and over again because there's so essential in that.

And, and so Cody is saying that it's an ambitious title. And I started off Sunday at, at Bula Baptist church saying, if I do my job well, and I didn't use terms of Calvinism or Minionism, I use the terms

God's sovereignty and human responsibility. And I said out right from the beginning, if I do my job well,

I will solve the dilemma people have between God's sovereignty and human responsibility.

I was pleased to see that many people said that it was very helpful and that it really clarified things. So let me, let me give this as a nutshell and, and take a step back as we look at this.

When we look at the doctrine of inspiration, we can look at that doctrine.

And as we do, there are certain things that we see in the doctrine of inspiration that we could say, who wrote the book of Romans?

Well, we could say Paul. However, is that really the author? No, the real author is

God. So even though Paul chose to write the words, he, I mean, Paul's style is different than Peter, than Moses's, than John's, they have different styles.

And even though they have different styles and they're writing their own words and, and Paul can say,

Hey, bring, bring my cloak. It's going to be cold this winter or bring my books, personal things, their, their own choices.

And yet we say it's God's word. How? Well, it's God's word because every word, and we would say, even down to the letter, because Paul will make arguments about seed versus seeds, a plural, things like that down to the letter, down to the, to the, what's called the dot and tittle.

The, the idea is that every mark is exactly as God intended it to be.

So, so when we say that we, we hold in our hands of scripture is God's word, it's because God worked through the human authors.

So even though they chose of their own volition to write what they wrote, every letter was exactly as God intended it to be.

Now, I don't find many people that debate me on that. They agree with that, at least within conservative

Christian circles that believe in the doctrine of superintending for scripture. However, we also see this in another area.

Anthony, do you do good works as a Christian? Uh, yes.

But do you do them? Well, I don't,

I don't generate them. Correct. So when we do good works as a Christian, it's the same doctrine.

God works through us. So the very things we choose to do are exactly as God intended them to be.

And that's the doctrine of superintending. And so when we look at that, we end up seeing that this doctrine applies in scripture.

We see it in apply in our sanctification. So the, the issue I would say is

I just extend that out to the doctrine of regeneration. And we have now solved the dilemma of God's decrees and human volition.

So even though I chose God, I didn't choose him completely in and of myself.

God worked through me so that the very choices that I made were exactly as God intended them to be in such a way where God gets all the credit.

So I can't take credit for the choice yet. It was my choice.

And you go, well, how can you resolve those, those two? Well, see, that's the whole thing is that we, we don't resolve them by saying it's either or.

So Heffy, I think he said the pronunciation is Heffy. So do, we don't have free will.

Let me qualify that. We have a will that Romans makes very clear is enslaved to sin.

Anthony's watching fireworks, I think over there. I'm trying to, I hear them. I'm trying to find where they are.

I mean, I would show it to everybody. I just don't know where they're at. Oh, I see where they're at. They're sadly, they're around the corner.

So there's Epcot, right? See, I'm way in the way in the background. There you go. Yeah. Yeah.

I had the better angle to see the fireworks when we were staying down there with you, but I love fireworks.

So, you know, so Heffy is saying, did Adam and Eve have a free will? Now that's the point.

Adam and Eve before the fall had a free will. They had a will that was not enslaved to sin.

So they could freely choose, but after they chose to sin, we have a will that's enslaved to sin and being enslaved to sin.

It's no longer free. We have a will. We do make choices, but it is not free from sin.

And that's the difference. Now as believers, now we do have a free will.

We have a will that we can choose to do. Right. I see Anthony the third there behind you.

Does he know he was in camera? I don't think he knows he was in camera, but there he's looking for fireworks, good fireworks.

Yeah. So, so what we see is when we look at in the passages

I preached in, in there and Bula was Romans chapter nine and Romans chapter 10, they're both together.

So you should let your wife know that she's on camera too. I don't think

I'll tell Julie she's on camera right now. Hi Julie.

With her big fuzzy coat on, even though it's like, I don't know, 70 degrees out. Yeah. She's not like my bride who, who literally ducks under the camera to avoid, she'll crawl on the ground to avoid it.

Even when we're recording where the video won't be used. Yeah. So, so the question that we end up having here is

Heffy asks, if Calvinism is true, God's elect people to hell, not true

Bible is all choice. I'm not sure I understand that fully. So Heffy, if you could, if you could retype that question, maybe, maybe

I can understand that better. So, and I know there's a delay, so we'll wait.

Oh, Hey, here, here's Carol saying hi, Julie and Anthony three. So there you go.

Hey, Julie. And Carol says, hi. So, Heffy is asking why is the warning in the

Bible if we don't have free will? So the issue is this is the misnomer.

Don't assume that it's one or the other. It's not that it's God's sovereignty or human responsibility.

It's both. Okay. We do have a choice in the matter, and yet it's not our choice alone.

God works through us such that the choice we make is exactly as He intended it to be.

And so, and if this is new for you, Heffy, I'll encourage you to go listen to my rap report on superintending, that podcast on Andrew Rapport's rap report.

Also look for Beulah Baptist Church. Maybe Anthony can do a search right now, find the link to that video,

Beulah Baptist Church, YouTube, and we could post that link in there. But if you search Beulah Baptist Church, Winter Garden, Florida, and on YouTube, you'll be able to find it,

I'm sure. But Heffy, the thing you have to understand is that it's not an either or.

And part of this that we have to wrap our heads around is, Heffy, you and I, we are limited creatures.

We're finite creatures. So, what that means is that you and I struggle with the fact that we don't know everything.

We learn things. We observe things. And so, what we see is

God is all -knowing. There's nothing He doesn't know.

So, the other thing is that God's eternal. So, everything's like an eternal now to Him, and you and I can't figure that out.

Okay? And so, Heffy had said here, where was his...

He said something about leaving out Scripture, but I can't... Oh, here it is. He said, so we leave out

Scripture. No, we don't leave Scripture out, Heffy. And Heffy, if you want to join, that'd be better, because it'd be easier to have the dialogue, because then we can really make sure we answer your questions.

But when we're quoting Scripture, that's why I say Romans chapter 9, Romans chapter 10, they're right next to each other.

In Romans chapter 9, it makes it really clear that God chose us.

So, theologically, God chose us, and then you see that in Romans chapter 10, if you confess with your mouth and believe in your heart, you will be saved.

So, he's asking, should I join? Yes, please, please join. Let me... Drew is backstage.

I'll bring Drew in. Drew is one half of Matter of Theology. He's got his beautiful bald head covered.

I don't know why. We're trying to look at him, and he's covering it. Sorry, I didn't want to be another one of the bald guys.

So, how are you? Would it make you feel better if I took my hat off? No, no, that's fine. I mean, because it's hard to be bald and beautiful, and so,

I covered it up. I was going to say the more that you cover up, the better. As I said to Chris Arnzen today,

I told Chris Arnzen that he may have a face for radio, but I have the face for a horror movie.

That's true. Yeah. No one disagrees with me on that either. Yeah, no. So, Drew, what do you got for us tonight?

Well, no. I mean, you guys were... all the questions were about Calvinism, and you were talking about Calvinism.

So, that's a topic that we cover a lot of all the time, and I get in discussions about.

So, let's be clear. You cover a lot of the time on... Matter of Theology.

There you go. So, we cover a lot of Reformed Theology topics, one being the idea of predestination and free will.

And I'm trying to look. There was a comment. I missed a comment here that before little

Anthony walks away. Big Anthony, if you see little Anthony, you have to tell him there's someone that said he looks like he's six foot seven inches tall from the angle.

So... From the angle. He actually is taller than me now, which I guess is not hard to be, but he's about an inch taller now.

Yeah, but he's not taller than me yet. Well, it's crazy because last time I saw him in person was in Indiana for the

Cruciform Conference, and he was shorter than me. So, now... That's right. A year and a half ago. That means he's probably taller than me.

He shot up. He's at that age, 15 years old, where they just suddenly shoot up.

They get real tall, real thin, the boys and... See, I never experienced that because I've been the same height since eighth grade.

So, I never experienced that. So, I entered freshman year of high school five foot tall.

I entered sophomore year 5 '10", and by the end of sophomore year,

I was six foot. So, yeah, I had a large growth spurt freshman year.

So, Melissa says, my husband said that bald guys are the coolest. That is absolutely true. Well, you're not bald yet,

Anthony. So, I guess you're going to have to... Anthony, he's also better looking.

Good. Find him a good looking Christian wife then. So, Drew, what...

You guys cover the topic of... And we're hoping that Hefei will come in and be able to...

Hefei, Hefei. Hefei. Okay. Thank you. So, what are some of the views that you guys cover on matter of theology dealing with these topics?

Yeah. Excuse me. So, in covering the idea of predestination and free will, what we do a lot of times is...

Or how the view takes place is people read into scripture, their idea of free will.

It's something that's always been taught as though it's a true thing. And so, I've had people tell me, well, we know two things are true.

God is sovereign and man has free will. And I'm like, well, wait a minute. We know one of those things is true.

We know the other one is man is enslaved to his will. Because all throughout scripture you see man is in bondage to his will or to his sin.

And what he needs is a will set free. And the will set free only comes from God's sovereign decree.

And so, there was a comment in the chat about predestination.

I'm trying to find it. Predestination being God looking through time or something like that.

Oh, I hear the question. Predestination is God's foresight of what we do with our free will.

So, that's basically God looking through the corridors of time. So, people will say, we have free will. Again, reading it into the

Bible. Because they read it into the Bible because they go, well, I make choices. People make choices.

People in the Bible make choices about everything. Therefore, free will must exist. First of all, that's not the free will argument.

The free will argument, it has to do with salvation. It's a salvific topic. Can dead, fallen man choose in his own will with his stony heart, can he choose to follow a holy

God? The answer is no. Because as R .C. Sproul says, if I can choose God with my old heart,

I have no need for a new one. So, this idea of God looking through the corridors of time and seeing what man will do based upon man's free will, no, that's not true.

Because if God looks through the corridors of time and sees who will choose him and predestines them according to that, well,

God's taking in knowledge and he's learning something. And then he's making a decision based off of something he's learned.

Now, what you've done is you've taken away God's omniscience. So, now he's not all -knowing. Also, if God looks through time, sees who won't choose him, and predestines them according to them not choosing him, well, now you're saying he doesn't have the power to bring them to himself, to draw them to himself.

So, now you've taken away his omnipotence. So, with one statement, one idea, you've taken away two vital characteristics of God that make

God, God. And this, what you're bringing out, Drew, is a very important point that anyone who's taken our

Striving for Eternity courses on systematic theology has heard me say this over and over again is that when you do theology, it has to be rooted in the nature of God.

If you have any kind of theology that starts messing with the attributes of God, you have a different God than the

God of the Bible. So, once you say God has to look down the tunnels of time to see who'd be saved, well, you have a

God that has to learn. He's not omniscient. And by the way, if he's looking down the tunnels of time, he's also not eternal.

Now, all of a sudden, you have yourself a dilemma because you now have someone who's not from, you know, the

God of the Bible. So, and help me, Drew, how's his name pronounced again? Hefe. Hefe.

All right. So, let me welcome him. And Hefe, I was told, I was told here, I'm getting an echo from you.

Oh, I'm sorry. Give me one second. One second. Okay. And I was told that Hefe means, from Captain Black Eagle here, he said,

Hefe means chief or boss. Now, I like that. I like that. I'm going to tell you why.

There were many evangelists, open air evangelists that used to call me boss for a very silly reason.

One of the things I would do when handing out gospel tracts is I would hand out a tract and I would say to any guy,

I would say, did you get one of these boss? And it's amazing.

Just calling a guy boss, he's more likely to take a gospel tract. And I had a friend who thought that was the stupidest thing ever.

And I'm sitting there in New York and I have my tract out and I said, hey, did you get one of these? And the guy's got his hand up like, no, thank you.

And on the word boss, he literally turned behind him, put his hand behind him to take the tract. And my friend is like,

I'm calling everyone boss. Yeah. It does respect. It lifts them up.

I'm a huge tract guy. So that, thank you so much. I appreciate that. Yeah. Then I'll give you the secret.

I'll give you the secret I learned for women. If you want to hand a tract to a woman, you hand it to them and say, when you hand it, this is just for you.

Now, I don't know why they think if it's just for them, they're more likely to take it. Cause I'm going to say it's just for them for the next woman.

But if for some reason, if a woman thinks she's the only one getting it, she wants it. Awesome.

Very good. Thank you so much. I appreciate that. That's a gem right there. And pastor Darren is saying, dude, this guy is bald too.

Yeah. Yes, sir. That's great. You know, we're going to have to make this, you know, maybe that's why, that's why

KT is saying Justin P better come back before this guy takes over referring to Drew, but it may be that when he comes back, he's going to have to be bald.

That's the new, that's the new requirement. There he goes. Yeah. So if you want to be a host on striving on Apologetics Live, striving for eternity question, are you bald?

Otherwise you don't pass. You don't make it. So, so this will be a lot easier now to have, have the discussion.

So, so far, have you, you understood what I was saying with the doctrine of superintending? Um, a little bit.

I heard bits and pieces of it. You said that, uh, go ahead. Can you repeat that one more time? Yeah. Let me, let me work it through with you.

Let me start with the doctrine of inspiration. Who, who wrote, I was going to say, who wrote the book of Hebrews just to throw you off, but I understand that.

Yeah. I see that. But who wrote Romans? Holy Spirit.

Holy Spirit. You're right. But, but yet we would say Paul, Paul chose the words, right?

Correct. So even though Paul chose the words and he would say he chose the words, what he experienced was him choosing the words.

And yet we would say that God chose those words because he intended it. Now people go, well, how could they both be in play?

Cause God could work through them in such a way that the very things that he chose to write were exactly as God intended it.

And so I see the same in regeneration. So if people say, did I choose God? I'll say experientially, yes,

I experientially chose God, but theologically God chose me. Sure.

Yeah. God chose you, uh, and you were willing to be obedient. Uh, it wasn't like God uses a disobedient vessel to do his will.

So therefore, uh, you know, if it was a 99 % God or 1 % as we always give him the glory, we understand that.

He gets all the glory. He gets all the glory. Correct. We understand that, but that's why he gives us rewards because he wants us to do good.

And that's why the Bible says we were created for good works. And that's why the

Bible says, don't be like the sluggard because the sluggard and the lazy Christian, you know, uh,

Bible warns us don't be like that person. Correct. Would you say, would you agree with that?

Yeah. Okay. Hold on. We got to back up for a moment because you said something that I have to make sure

I have to make sure what you said is, is correct. Did you, because maybe you didn't intend on saying this.

Are you saying that somebody has to have, has to do good things in order to be chosen by God?

Or I'm saying God created us for good works, which is what the Bible says. Correct.

I agree. So the moment somebody is saved, they have good works that he's prepared ahead. They've prepared already ahead of time.

According to Ephesians 2 verse 10. That's not what I'm asking though, with, with what you said earlier, does, does he take the vilest of sinners who aren't doing good and all of a sudden changes them in a, in a moment's time and saves them, gives them a new will, new desires.

And now they're saved unto good works. Because see, I, I just want to clarify what you said earlier.

Yeah. I guess the question I think they're asking is when does the good works, the good works, do good works save us or regenerate us?

Or do the good works come after we're regenerated? No, good works don't save us. Only Jesus save us.

But if you're a lazy Christian, is that something that God, uh, is that what

God warns us about? You're already a Christian. Correct.

Over and over again, the Bible says be like the ant and look at the ant. You know what

I mean? Bible warns about the, uh, the, the guy, uh, one who, uh, hit his talent. You know what

I mean? He don't do, don't be like that guy. So Heffy, let me, let me, I just want to make sure we're speaking to this because I think we're, we're talking two different subjects and this is, this happens a lot with folks.

We don't want to mix up regeneration and sanctification. Correct.

Okay. Yep. So when, one of the things that, that happens is, and I dealt with this on my rap before podcast, as we're going through the doctrine of salvation, the word salvation is a very general term that more specifically can refer to three different things.

Regeneration, sanctification, and glorification. All three are called salvation.

And so when we look at this, we want to be a little bit more precise with this. What we're talking about here is regeneration.

So we don't want to mix up the works of sanctification with regeneration. So you're saying,

I don't know, are you saying when you do good for Christ, it's regeneration, correct?

No, no, no. I'm saying that we can't do good until after we're regenerated. So regeneration comes first, after we're regenerate, now we could do good works because we're now justified with God.

And so we can't do good works, good being defined by God, apart from that regeneration work first happening.

So all the works you're talking about, we would agree with as part of sanctification. So I just don't want to make sure,

I want to make sure we're not talking past each other. Well, I mean, if you're saying we can't do good works, that goes on to election.

So if you're saying that God elects only certain people, then that's a problem because over and over again,

God tells us that God desires all men to be saved and to come to the knowledge of Jesus Christ.

And the Bible says that He desires no man to perish. So He doesn't elect people to go to hell.

So we choose to go to hell. So what does He desire in John 3, 16?

Over and over in the Bible, we can't leave out scripture though. Yeah. Okay. So let me ask you a question.

Drew, hold on one second. I just want to ask one quick question and then I'll let you go. So what do you do with the fact where He specifically speaks about election and says that Jacob, He has chosen, that's the word for election and Esau I have hated.

So He has chosen one that's in the definition of election. Sure. He chooses the whole world to be saved.

That's not what it says. Well, the hell is only for the devil and his angels, not for people.

That's what I'm saying. We cannot leave out scripture. If scripture says it, then we understand that He chose him.

He chooses everyone and He desires nobody to be saved. And He does not elect people to go to hell.

Everyone be saved. I want to understand something. Are you saying that every human being goes to heaven? Excuse me?

Are you saying that every human being goes to heaven? I'm saying everybody can, if they confess

Jesus Christ, the Lord and Savior can go to heaven. Correct? That's what the Bible says, John 3, 16.

But you said hell wasn't for people. That no man should perish. But you said hell wasn't for people.

So that was confusing. That's what the Bible says. Hell wasn't made for people. It was made for the devil and his angels.

But people go there for what? For denying Jesus Christ. But yet in Romans 9, it makes it really clear that God to display

His wrath prepared people for destruction. That's right. Sure.

Yeah. I mean, you don't want to reject that scripture, do you? Because of their sin, correct? It's before they had an ability to sin because it was before they even existed.

Which is why Paul brings in the objector. If you're saying that babies are born with sin, they do not inherit sin because babies cannot inherit sin because they're innocent.

They have not sinned. That's impossible. That's not what Romans 5 says. So everyone is born a sinner.

When you're talking about babies being born innocent, they're born innocent in the sense that they haven't sinned experientially as you and I go out and sin.

They're ignorant of their sin. But that doesn't mean they're not born sinners. We choose to sin.

That's where it says all have fallen away. We could walk the walk as a young person.

We're going to have sin. We choose sin. We're not going to sin if you're a baby.

So when I've got two babies in there right now, I can tell you how. They're knowingly sinning.

My two, my three -year -old, yes. So you're saying they have no. So every time I say no and he does it anyway, he knows.

There's no age of accountability. No, there's nowhere in scripture where it talks about an age of accountability.

We'll disagree on that one. OK, so let me let me ask you this. I believe so. Hefei, do you still sin,

Hefei? I sin, yeah, correct. OK, OK. You don't sin, do you sin?

Yes, I still sin. OK, so when it comes when it comes to justification, how is it that somebody gets saved?

Through Jesus Christ. Yeah. And is it you believe it's solely the person's choice?

Well, I guess I don't think God will force me to serve him. I really don't, because I've walked away from God countless times.

And Hefei, this is this sort of thing. And this is where I think Anthony's trying to go. Let me let me zone in on see if this is helpful.

Yeah, go ahead. Because the language you're using, God doesn't force you. That's why

I'm trying to explain this doctrine of superintending. Paul, God didn't force Paul to write what he wrote in Romans.

He chose to write what he wrote in Romans. But that was God intended.

God worked through Paul to write that so that God gets all the credit. Paul made the choice, but that choice was not his own.

It was God working through him, even though was his choice. When you understand that concept, you'd see that it's not that anyone's forced to believe in God.

But yet they can't take any credit saying I chose it. We won't go to hell because we didn't choose

God. We go to hell because we sin. Every person deserves to go to hell because they're born with a sin nature, according to Romans 5, 12 and following.

And let me just read a passage of scripture for you. This is Romans chapter 9, where he says, this is

Romans 9. I'll start in verse 13. Just as it is written, Jacob I have loved and Esau I have hated.

Correct. What shall you say then? There is no injustice with God, is there?

May it never be. For he says to Moses, I shall have mercy on whom

I shall have mercy, and I will have compassion on whom I have compassion. Correct.

Okay. So then does it not depend on the man who wills or who runs, but God who has mercy?

For the scripture says to Pharaoh for this very purpose, I raised you up to demonstrate my power in you that, and that my name might be proclaimed throughout the whole earth.

So then he has mercy on whom he desires and he hardens whom he desires.

You will say to me then, why does he still find fault for who could resist the will of God?

Now that's the exact question you asked. So you're tracking with Paul perfectly, but here's

Paul's answer, which is different than yours. He says, on the contrary, who are you, oh man, who answers back to God?

The thing molded will not say to the molder, why did you make me this way? Or does the potter have the right over the clay to make from the same lump, one vessel of honorable use and another for common use?

And this becomes the important part for what if God willing to demonstrate his wrath and make known his power endured much patience with vessels of wrath prepared for destruction.

And he did so to make known the riches of his glory upon vessels of mercy, which he prepared beforehand for glory.

So it says that before these people ever existed, he prepared them for destruction.

He prepared them for destruction, correct? Yeah, he knows who's going to serve him, correct? I think we know who

God... Okay, how does he know? How does he know? He has foreknowledge. He knows everything.

He knew us before the time. The Bible says he knew us before we were born. Right. Therefore, he knows every choice we're going to make, and who's not going to serve him.

Jeffrey, let me see if I can answer what Drew's trying to say, because I think you may have missed it.

No, I understand exactly what he's saying. Okay, if you did, you wouldn't have answered that way. So let me see if I could...

Okay, hold on. Give me one second. Go ahead and ask that question one more time. So you said...

So Andrew asked you, does God know who's going to serve him? And you said, yes, he does.

And I asked, how does God know who is going to serve him? Let's ask it this way. How does

God know who will be saved? God knows everything. Would you agree with that?

But how does he know? How does he know? God has foreknowledge. God knows the future.

He knows the past. What is foreknowledge as laid out in Scripture?

Because you have to distinguish between God's foreknowledge and God's omniscience, or God's foreknowledge and God predestining.

They're not the same. Foreknowledge is no one ahead of time, correct?

No, not in this sense. So foreknowledge, because especially you see it in Romans 8 with the golden chain of redemption.

Foreknowledge and predestining in the same sentence. God's foreknowledge is a relational term.

Fore, beforehand. Knowledge, as we would see intimacy in relationship, knowing one another.

So God's foreknowledge is God in eternity past entering into a relationship with us before he created us in such a way that ensures that the hater of God, that the rebel, becomes a friend.

That is God's foreknowledge. And let me add on to that, Hefi. Hold on, give me one second, give me one second.

That foreknowledge is different in different places, correct? Because we know that revelations is a foreknowledge of what is going to happen.

Yeah, but Hefi, let's take a step back. You can't say foreknowledge is just one thing in one place.

But Hefi, let's take a step back. Think about what we said earlier in the show, if you heard it. When we have a theological system, we have to be in a right line with the attributes of God.

Now, do you agree that God is all -knowing, omniscient? That's what I said, foreknowledge, all -knowing.

Hold on, hold on. I want to work through this with you point by point. Is that okay? Sure. Okay, if He's all -knowing, does

He learn anything? Does He observe things and learn them? Or does He just know everything?

God knows everything. Okay. There's nothing God doesn't know. If God knows everything, then what

He knows is not based on what we do, correct? What He knows is, but He doesn't give us the choice to do right or wrong.

That's it. You're not answering the question. Okay, repeat the question. If God knows everything, is it because He saw what we were going to do and then

He learned it? Or does He just know everything? In other words, if He knows everything,

He knows it regardless what we choose. God knows what we're going to do.

That's just the point. He gives us the, but He gives us the opportunity to do good. That's why

He tests us. But we can do the opposite. That's why He puts us to the test. Could Judas have done the opposite of what he did of betray

Christ? Could Judas have not betrayed Christ? Judas could have not come himself.

That's for sure. That's not the question. Okay, but have Judas have not betrayed Christ? I think that God knew

He was going to do it. That's not the question. Okay, so hold on, Drew. Let me just switch on out for the audience,

Drew. That's His choice. He had a free will to do that. God didn't force

Him to do that. He chose to do that. So part of what we do here in Apologetics Live, folks, right?

We do apologetics, but we also teach to help you guys. I want you to notice on it, and Heffy, I'm not saying this behind your back.

You're right here. I want folks to notice what Heffy has done a couple of times now is when asked a very specific direct question, he's answering something else.

Oh, no, no, no, no. That's what you've done. You can go back and re -watch it. Well, give me an example of what

I did. I just did it. You just did it. I said the choice. He had a choice. My question was, could

Judas have not betrayed Christ? And you said he could have not hung himself.

That wasn't my question. And he could have not betrayed Him. God knew He was going to betray

Him. Correct. Are you saying that God forced Him to do that? No, I'm saying

He was the son of perdition. What does son of perdition mean? Son of perdition, son of the devil.

No, son of perdition means one who is destined for destruction. Okay, sure. Okay, so if He's the son of perdition, as Jesus Himself said, destined for destruction, then could

Judas have done otherwise? No. You can't say that He didn't have a free will.

I can say He was the son of perdition, as Jesus said. Okay, so you're saying He didn't have a free will,

He had to do it. It was decreed that Judas would betray Christ. Christ knew

He was going to do it. He knew it. It wasn't, you know, who else could have betrayed

Him, you know what I mean? Judas was a disciple, correct? But that's not the issue.

That's not the issue. Did Jesus choose Judas to be a disciple?

Yeah. And what is a disciple? A student. A student of Jesus Christ.

No. Judas was one of the what? Judas was one of the 12 that Jesus chose.

So Jesus chose him to follow Him, and He chose to betray Jesus. Wait, but why did

Jesus choose Him? Because Jesus knew that Judas would betray

Him. I agree. Before Judas knew He was going to betray Him. I agree. And that's what, Andrew, to fulfill prophecy.

Yeah, and so I think, let me ask you a question, Effie. Have you done a lot of study on the

Calvinism or Meninism issue? Sure, I have, yeah. Okay, and I'm getting that because one of the things

I find is that people who have really done a lot of study on one side or the other have difficulty understanding the doctrine of superintending and how it applies here.

And the reason I bring that up is because your struggle that you're having with it, you think you're answering, it seems,

I put it that way. It seems like you think you're answering questions you expect someone on a

Calvinistic side to have, and you're trying to answer that, and that's not the questions we're asking. And so you're missing the point because you're so quick to try to answer something we're not actually asking.

All right, well, let me know what you're asking then. That's a good point. Just let me know what you're asking. That's a lot of blanks.

All right. So the thing we're trying to ask, because you, let me ask it this way, actually, let me just ask you, do you think that we believe that we don't choose

God? That you don't choose God? Or let me ask it this way, do you think we believe that we do choose

God? Put it, so it's not the double negative. I know what I'm going to say, but I'm pretty sure.

Well, I'm asking what you think we believe. I don't want to. So you just said that I don't answer the questions that you ask, but go ahead and answer that and then

I'll answer your question. So I can't answer what you think. That'd be impossible for me.

I'm asking what you think. Okay. I think that you think that God forces himself on you and that you have no choice.

That's what I think. So I'm going to speak for myself now and I'm going to let the others each answer quickly. The answer to that is no,

I don't believe that. Drew? Yeah. God doesn't force himself. Anthony?

No comment. No comment. So, no, no, he's muted. Hold on. Let me see if I can unmute him.

No. I said, I have a headache right now. I like debating.

Okay. No, look, I, yeah.

Okay. I'm sorry. Go on. No, go ahead, Anthony. Nope. I know there's a lot of wind here, so I'll let you go.

So the point that I'm trying to say with it, Hefe, is you're arguing something that none of us here believe.

And when we're trying to talk to you, you're arguing with an imaginary figure who's not here.

Okay. Right? And I'm trying to say this as lovingly as I can.

I think what happens in these kinds of discussions is when you do that, you're not actually listening to what we are saying, because you're trying to debate what you think we're saying and none of us believe.

I'm just answering the questions you asked me. That's all I'm asking. Well, you're answering different questions than we're asking.

And you're answering ones opposite to, like, you're arguing as if we believe something none of us here hold to.

All right. Well, give me an example then. Well, we could give several, but... Okay, hold on. No, no, no, no.

Give me an example. I need that example, but you can't just make big statements and then not give an example what you're talking about.

So help me to learn and understand what you're talking about so I don't make that mistake I'll go back to the example

Drew gave you. Drew asked you whether Judas could not have betrayed

Jesus, and your answer is he could have not hung himself. That wasn't answering the direct question he asked you.

I agree, I agree. Okay, so when we talk foreknowledge, we can't talk foreknowledge as if God knew before we had a choice, before we were born, because there is no before with God.

He's eternal. Once you put a timeline in there, you no longer have the

God of the Bible. The God of the Bible is outside of time. There is no before with God.

When he speaks in this language, when he says he elected before the foundation of the worlds, it's not that there was a time order.

It's that you and I, Heffy, we can't understand omniscience and we can't understand eternal.

That's beyond our human ability to understand. And so what he does is he speaks in a language to basically...

The way I always talk about it, it's like baby talk. It's, he's talking down to us.

Like if you have a child, Drew has a three -year -old. Drew's not going to turn to his three -year -old when the three -year -old is sticking a fork into the outlet and start explaining electricity.

What he's going to do to the three -year -old is just say, no, bad, smack the hand so the child knows this is bad.

That's baby talk. We can't understand omniscience. So what's God going to do? He's going to talk down to us at a level we can understand.

When he says in Ephesians 1 that he elected before the foundation of the world, he's basically trying to say we had nothing to do with our salvation, right?

Because he's saying it's for us that are bound by time. It's before us. So I do have a question for Heffy.

When all in Romans 9, and we can also look at John 1, 13, because it says almost the same thing,

I think it's John the Baptist speaking in John 1, when they say that it is not of man's will, what do you say to John or Paul?

Can you quote the whole scripture? You've got Romans 9, 16. Andrew read it for you beginning at verse 13.

That it does not depend on man's will or the one who works, or you could say one who runs or one who has exertion, but on God who has mercy.

So salvation depends not on man's will. And then in John 1, 13, you have

John the Baptist who is talking about those who receive salvation.

I don't have it right in front of me, but they receive it. John 1, 13.

PASTOR MIKE I'll read it. It says, I'll actually start in verse 12. So we have the context. John 1, 12 and 13 says, but as many as received

Him, to them He gave the right to become a child of God, even to those who believe in His name, who were not born of blood.

That means genealogy, nor born of the will of the flesh. That means just a desire, thinking they're a good person, nor the will, or sorry, the will of flesh is works, nor the will of man, which is just being thinking they're a good person, but of God.

Right. So I mean, what do you say to John and Paul? PASTOR JOHN Oh, I agree 100%. Yeah.

It's God. He's saving us. But you know, there, Paul says, he said,

I beat my flesh into submission. Least I become disqualified because he said that he hasn't, he didn't obtain, you know, the word he was supposed to be.

But that's sanctification. PASTOR JOHN No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. He said, no, that's not sanctified.

He said, least I become disqualified. So that's not the sanctification.

PASTOR MIKE That just means unfit for ministry. That's not talking about, that's not talking about. PASTOR JOHN Give me one second.

Give me one second. Over and over again, the Bible says to beware at least any of you in Romans 3, 12.

It says, watch out, brothers and sisters, so that there won't be any of you an evil, unbelieving heart.

The New Testament is written. PASTOR MIKE Wait, wait, wait, hold it. Read it. There was

Romans 3, 12. PASTOR JOHN No, that was Hebrews 3, 12. It says, watch out.

Oh, that's a warning passage. PASTOR JOHN Correct. It's a, at least any of you have any unbelieving heart and turn away from the living

God. So therefore he says, don't, don't have, beware because you can have an unbelieving heart and you can turn away from God.

So that's scripture right there. But if you're saying, if you're saying that we have nothing to do with it, we have a choice to do good or evil.

PASTOR MIKE But I didn't say it. Paul and John said it. Yeah. PASTOR JOHN We don't leave out scripture, but we don't.

PASTOR MIKE But you're trying to pit scripture against itself. PASTOR JOHN No, no, no, no, no. I'm trying to read. I'm trying to go by the whole word of the

Bible, not just parts of the Bible. PASTOR MIKE Because Drew, we got, we got someone backstage I want to bring in that I was going to bring in top of the hour.

But Hefi, I want to, just before I bring Jeff in real quick, I want to, because you're struggling, you're bringing up, as we said earlier, you're mixing passages of regeneration with sanctification.

But let me ask you this. I'm just, I want to get some grounding questions first.

Do you believe people can lose their salvation? PASTOR JEFF I believe that the Bible teaches this, that talks about being grafted in.

Be careful, at least, you know, because of the, because the Bible says that the old branch was cut off and that we were grafted in.

It says, you know, specifically warns you that you too can be cut off. PASTOR MIKE Hefi, Hefi, I just asked you a question and you didn't answer.

PASTOR JEFF Over and over again. PASTOR MIKE What do we do when we have someone that does this, where you ask a question, they answer something else?

PASTOR JEFF No, no, no, I answered that question. I answered that specific, that was the word of God. PASTOR MIKE You didn't, you didn't.

You quoted something that had nothing to do with the answer. So I'll ask it again. PASTOR JEFF That was my proof. That was my proof.

PASTOR MIKE Do you believe that someone who is regenerate can lose their salvation? It's a yes or no.

PASTOR JEFF I believe that you have the choice to walk away from God and God doesn't force you to serve Him, correct.

So when do you believe our sins were paid for? And how many sins were paid?

PASTOR JEFF Your sins are paid for when you repent, when you repent. That's why the Bible says to repent.

PASTOR MIKE No, that's good. Okay. PASTOR JEFF Over and over it says to repent. PASTOR MIKE Could you please turn to Colossians chapter two and verse 13 for me?

You have a Bible there? PASTOR JEFF Yes, sir. PASTOR MIKE Okay. I just want to, if you could, I'd like you to read uh, verse 13.

This is Colossians chapter two and verse 13. PASTOR JEFF Uh, let me see.

Go ahead and read it for me. Go ahead. PASTOR JEFF Okay. Yeah. I was just going to say for the audio, for the people on audio podcast, you're returning to it.

So we don't have that error, but okay. So this is, so Colossians 2 13 says this, when you were dead in your trespasses and uncircumcised of your flesh, he made you alive together with him, having forgiven us all our transgressions.

Now, how many of the transgressions would that include? PASTOR MIKE All transgressions. Okay. Now verse 14, having canceled out the certificate of debt, consisting of decrees against us, which was hostile to us.

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

According to Paul, all of our sin, and you admit it was all, all of our sin was paid at the cross.

PASTOR MIKE So it's not when we repent. So can you name any sin that you've done that's before the cross?

PASTOR JEFF That's before the cross? That I, that's unrepented? PASTOR MIKE Yeah. PASTOR JEFF So you're saying that if I go out and sin today, and I'm unrepented,

I go and do what the Bible says not to do, that that sin is okay?

Is that what you're saying? PASTOR MIKE Notice I asked a simple question. The simple answer is, are you, are you 2000 years old?

Is there any sin you've ever committed that's before the time of Christ dying on the cross? PASTOR JEFF Sure.

PASTOR MIKE Really? You're 2000 years old? PASTOR JEFF I'm not, I'm not 2000 years ago. I understand that.

PASTOR MIKE Every, every sin we've ever done is post -cross. So if all of our sin was paid at the cross, all of it, okay, then all of it's paid.

So the, the, the verses you're turning to, there's, there are passages that, here's a simple thing for you to realize.

Many people will talk about the fact that Jesus spoke more about hell than heaven, and that's true. PASTOR JEFF Right. PASTOR MIKE They'll talk about the fact that he spoke about money more than heaven and hell combined.

That's true. What most people don't talk about is the fact that he talked about hypocrisy more than heaven, hell, and money combined.

It's the number one thing that we see in the New Testament is the discussion on hypocrisy, people who think they're saved and they're not.

You're taking those passages written to hypocrites, people who claim to be saved and are not, and then applying them to people who are regenerate.

That's, that becomes a mistake. Okay? So, uh, and, and so I know,

I know we got to get, we, we have someone, I'm not going to boot you out because we might have time to come back to you.

And I do want to, PASTOR MIKE I encourage you to, I encourage you to read, uh, Revelations 2 and 3, where he, uh, continually warns the church to repent, you know.

And, and what is he warning against? Hypocrisy. People who claim to be saved. PASTOR JEFF A lot of things, a lot of things.

He's, he's, he, he told, uh, Jezebel to repent of her sins and he gave her an opportunity, but she would not repent.

So she lived in sin and over and over these churches, he said, I wanted to come in to you, but you wouldn't let me in.

Over and over again, the Bible says to repent, you know, so we can't live like the devil and expect to be saved.

No, if someone's, if someone's living, there's a passage of scripture for that. Okay. And that would be 1

John 2, 19. Okay. And this makes it very clear. They went out from us, but they were not really of us for, for if they had been of us, they would have remained with us, but they went out so that it would be shown that they were not of us.

So when you see someone who starts, who claims to have been a Christian and denies the faith or living like the world, all they're doing is exposing.

They were never of us. They were never of us. You've also got Romans or not

Romans, but John 6, where Jesus says that he loses none that the father did.

He, he doesn't lose none, but you can walk away. Correct. And that's the only thing scripture doesn't say that.

Scripture says that you have a free will over and over again. No, no, no, no.

There's no passage. Let me say one thing. Just because you say,

Lord, Lord, you know, doesn't mean you're saved. Correct. Correct. Correct. So there's people who are, who are hypocrites that say

Lord, and Jesus said, why do you call me Lord, Lord? And you do not want,

I say. So therefore, if you're not obedient to Christ, What does the

Bible say? You are not my disciple. You have no obedience. Yeah, let me say a couple of things.

It is a requirement. We had Josiah write in, is this, oh, this is an

OSAS. So one state audited channel. I would say, no, the type of channel this is is one that believes the

Bible, Ephesians one, starting verse 11. In him, we've obtained an inheritance having been predestined according to the purpose of him who works all things according to the counsel of his will.

So that we who are the first hope in Christ might be to the praise of his glory. In him, you also, when you heard the word of truth, the gospel of your salvation and believed in him, were sealed with the promise of the

Holy Spirit who is the guarantee of our inheritance until we acquire possession of it through the praise of his glories.

If you continue to the end. If you continue to the end. You're adding that to the scripture first.

That's the Bible, that's the word of God. If you continue to the end, you will be my disciple.

I just read that. You can't stop serving God. Effie, and Effie, hold on.

And I'm gonna say one other thing too, because we do need to get to Jeff. That is scheduled. God bless you guys, we appreciate you.

And I'm gonna bow out in a moment, but I do wanna say, because this is an apologetics show, and Andrew and I, and I know

Drew, I'm sure you run into this as well, but I've never heard a story from you about this. But when you're an experienced evangelist and apologist, you learn to listen to people carefully and you'll pick up something, right?

It's just, something doesn't sound right, which is why I started going into those questions earlier, because of something that I heard

Effie say. And of course, now we've seen the last half hour blossom into a major discussion about all the points in doctrine that he's wrong in.

And it was picked up. And we'll see, we will see one day. One day we'll see. Hey, if Calvinist is true, then he predestines people to hell.

So, and we know that's not true. We know that rabies are a born sin. Heffy, hold on.

If Calvinism is true. I'm muting you, Heffy, just so you realize, because you're talking over and it's really hard for the audience to hear.

Okay, so I'm just gonna say this. What you just said proves that you haven't listened to a single one of us here, because you just said that that's what

Calvinism teaches. And yet three Calvinists are saying that we don't hold to that. Stay down.

Oops, sorry, hold on. I muted you when you unmuted. Oh, so go ahead. Hey, well, you know, do your study and we'll see,

I mean. Okay, so I'm gonna go to Jeff, but before I do, here's my, I'm not gonna remove you.

So you can come back in later if we have time. I do wanna encourage you to come back and here's your homework assignment.

I would like to find the verse, if you could find the verse that where God says, we have a free will.

Not a will, a free will. It gives you warnings. It gives you warnings over and over again.

You said the Bible says we have a free will. I said, we have a will that's enslaved to sin. So I'm asking you for the passage that says we have a free will.

Les, Jefe, I wanna throw something out for you to consider as well. If, because throughout scripture, we see that it's

God's will for man to be saved. It's God's will that Jesus lose none.

There you go. That are given to him. If this is God's will and man is strong enough to walk away and oppose

God's will. And that means man is stronger than God. And so why should I serve that God that you're presenting that's not strong enough to accomplish his will.

Especially when Paul says in Romans eight that nothing can separate us from the Lord. And you are correct.

That is the gist of the Bible. God will keep you if you wanna be saved. Correct? No, no, no. If you don't wanna be.

No, no, no, no, no. You can't, you can't, you can't leave out scripture. The whole thing. You can't do it over and over again.

Anthony read scripture. Is that silly God warned you not to stay away from sin if you can't fall away from God?

Yeah, because you have people. Why would the Bible warn you don't do this and don't do that if you can't fall away?

I can, I'll answer that for you. And I already did. Because there's people that go to church that claim to be a

Christian that are not Christian. Well, they're elected though, right? No, that's, they're not elected. That's what

John, 1 John 2 says. So you're not listening to what we're saying. I mean, Anthony read scripture.

You had to add something in that wasn't there. No, no, I read the whole Bible. I don't add anything yet.

The Bible says that you can be cut off. Like the branch, you can be grafted in and you can be taken out.

Okay. That's just not what that means. Don't have an unbelieving heart. The Bible warned you stay away from, it says, stay away from a person that calls himself a brother.

Why? Because good morals corrupt, bad morals corrupt good character, correct?

So you, okay. If we're elected, let me let me let me let you ask if it wouldn't matter. If you were gonna go, we're gonna, we're gonna go,

Jeff, I'm gonna leave you with one parting thing, okay? Just, I really, I strongly encourage, and I'm even gonna make an offer to you.

We have at Striving for Eternity, you can go to strivingforeternity .org. We have a free course on biblical harmonics, how to interpret the

Bible. Has nothing to do with theology, just how to interpret the Bible. Okay. That's a free course.

The syllabus that we get printed, it costs money. You contact me. I will send you a free syllabus if you promise to take the course.

It's 20, 20 lessons, okay? Just info at strivingforeternity .com.

That's info at strivingforeternity .com. I'll send you a free syllabus because I think it would help you in learning how to read things in context.

Sure, sure. Hey, and just look at Adam and Eve. They had a free will. Just look at the

Israel. That's before the fall. God gave them the free will over and over again. He told them to come back and serve me.

So check out Estratology 101. I think you guys would love it. Okay. So I'm not gonna, you know, people come in to promote, but let me just, some of the questions that came up.

Someone, John asked this question. Just joined, is this guy a sinless perfectionist? No, he was not.

He did drop out. So I guess we can't. So I want to highlight that we have a new member on YouTube.

Sean became a new YouTube member. You can go, if you're watching on YouTube, there is a way to join there.

That is a way that they support us. The best way though, truthfully, the best way to support us is to go to strivingforturning .org

slash support. Because well, as we learned a few weeks ago, Amazon decided they were going to remove that support that they were giving us.

And then we had to fight to get it back. So we've got some questions that came in during that. I hope

Heffy does come back, but I've been anxious. I want to bring in Pastor Jeffrey Rice.

Brother, how are you? I'm doing well, man. How are you? Good. Good to see you. And how are you doing? I've been,

I was over here like, tag me in, tag me in. I got the answers.

Oh, I know. And I thought, you know, I had said to Anthony that he said, hey, who's coming on?

I said, well, I invited Jeff on so we could talk about the conference you're doing. And the fact that you and I disagree on so many different topics,

I thought we could have, it'd be a good show just on our disagreements. And when you and I talk on the phone, man, we have so many disagreements and we get along so well.

But we ended up having someone else come in. But, oh, wait, wait, here,

Darren Steed says this. Darren Steed says, finally, a guy with some hair. Well, it's falling out.

But I have this unique ability to where I can disagree with someone and still remain friends.

Like I know a lot of people don't have that ability. Yeah. I can even scroll through Facebook and read a comment that I totally disagree with and not comment.

That might be a spiritual gift, right? Yeah, I mean, it's something where I think a lot of people,

I mean, if you look at the guys I'm close to, I disagree theologically with most of the people that I am friendly with.

Melissa is saying, I think Heffy stresses out Andrew and that's why he left.

He didn't stress me out. I just wanted to make sure I got to Jeff because we did wanna talk.

So first before we, actually, something I should have started with, okay? And I know

Anthony bowed out, so he's probably not listening and he'll laugh at this. I should have started off the show with an announcement.

Okay? Most who follow me on social media probably already know this announcement, but shortly after the show ended, within an hour of the show ending last week, my grandson was born.

And so while I was doing the show, I was gonna say, if I get distracted, I was actually watching because we were looking for updates throughout the show last week because we knew that my daughter went into labor and any moment we would hear the news.

And so my grandson, James, was born last Thursday night and I was thrilled with that.

And so I could put up a picture, but I'm not gonna be that guy.

Wait, no. Yeah, so while you're working, Drew, while you're working on your children,

I'm working on my grandchildren. Wait, that's not, no. The whole purpose of grandparents is to spoil the grandchild.

And that's the struggle we have because we're trying to teach our children not to be materialistic.

And what do the grandparents do for Christmas and birthdays? It's just nothing but gifts. And then we're gonna teach them to eat right.

And they're, what do you want? Candy? Yeah, have all the candy you want. And so we got to deal with the sugar highs.

Yeah. Yeah, no, my thing is I just wanna be able to play with them and when they cry, I can go, here you go.

Here you go. Or when the diaper's gotta be changed. Yeah.

So, Jeff, let's talk about the conference that you're doing. All right, anything specific you wanna talk about it?

Yeah, tell folks what the conference is. It's coming up soon. Yeah, the conference is coming up soon.

It's February the 16th through the 18th. It's in Tallahoma, Tennessee.

And the theme of the conference is from shadow to substance. And so I'm gonna talk about that. So what we wanna do is we wanna look in the

Old Testament and find the type, the shadow, and we want to connect it with the intertype, the substance, which is

Jesus Christ. And we're also gonna have a debate, right?

We got James White coming, and he's debating a guy by the name of Thomas Ross. And Thomas Ross is a

King James only -ist. But unlike most King James only -ists, again, that James has debated, this guy is a worthy opponent.

This guy is very, very intelligent. He teaches the original languages. He's a professor.

I mean, just, you know, good guy. I talk to him over the phone. We text back and forth. Really good guy.

I look forward to meeting him. And so basically, the debate is basically gonna be the

LSB translation versus the KJV translation. Which one is superior?

And as far as the speakers, so we're gonna have,

I think, 10 or 11 speakers. I can't really, I know I had one drop out. So it might be -

It seems like the lineup keeps growing. Yeah, yeah. Well, it's gonna be really good. And I got my other two friends.

That's a part of my YouTube channel. Brayden Patterson and Haps Addison, they're gonna be with me.

So we're basically co -promoting it through our YouTube channel.

But also it's gonna be hosted by our church. And so Brayden was a

Mormon for 19 years of his life. He came to faith in Jesus Christ and now he's a

Reformed Baptist pastor. Pastor Haps Addison runs a mentally challenged home.

It's a ministry that he, it's basically a parachurch ministry. So he trains them there for,

I guess you could say, big church, which he's an elder at.

And so, and then of course, I got Andrew coming. I got just tons of guys, like a lot of the guys that I listen to preach, no one knows, right?

I mean, of course. And that's the thing I love about the conference is, unfortunately, a lot of conferences, it's like they wanna go hear the big name guys.

And yet there's a lot of guys that are better than the big name guys that no one knows. And they better listen to. Yeah, I mean,

I told my congregation, the guys that I got coming could preach me under the pulpit, right?

But of course, I'm not a jealous type person, right? I do what

I can do and that's all I can do. But I made sure to have a good lineup, yeah. If folks want to get tickets for this, the best place

I believe is if you go to Eventbrite, search for Open Air Theology Conference, and that's where you get your tickets.

This is, I think this is gonna be a great conference. Melissa is saying this sounds like a great conference.

I think it's gonna be. Yes, so James White's gonna do two messages and he'll also preach that Lord's Day at my church.

Yeah, you gave me a topic of the Abrahamic covenant, right?

We had to find something that you could work with. Abraham's offering of Isaac, I mean. And so I said,

I was on Chris Arnzen's program and he asked me what my topic was gonna be at your conference.

And so I told him it was the Abraham's offering of Isaac. As a dispensationalist,

I may say something that, James White may, I may have the next debate with James White with whatever I say, who knows?

You gotta be careful. If he did, we'll host it, so. Yeah. Okay, so Bill is asking who has more hair, me or my grandson?

Actually, right now it's probably my grandson. He's got a nice set of hair on him.

Okay, so Melissa is asking you, Jeff, what your shirt says.

It's a credo over pedo, pedo. So basically

Baptist, Chino, Presbyterians. Yeah, and Drew says strange fire shirt.

Yeah, yeah. I got a member of my congregation that does church,

I mean, that does shirts. And so I'll draw up a picture, send it to her, make me a shirt that looks like this, and she does.

You started making hats too, right? Yep, sure did. I saw some on Facebook and they look really good.

So here's the real question. So for folks who may not know, one of the things, Jeff, you do, right, is

Bible rebinding. And it'd be good to talk about that as well. By the way, before you get into that, so I posted about how

I had this Bible that the cover just tore off, and Jeff suggested a glue to put on it.

And this thing is holding up, man, it's holding up. Okay, so there's a guy that's not looking just to make money, because if he was trying to make money, he'd say, send it to him.

Right. And $300 later, you get yourself a nicer Bible. Yeah, but I mean,

I am hoping, I'm glad that my wife is not joining me on this trip, because I'm hoping to see some nice leather premium

Bibles. And I told you, I need a large print, because I'm at that age,

I need a large print LSB. You know, if you could find single column, then we're talking.

Just starting to look forward. Yeah, so I plan to have a few there, but I'll also be giving away a

LSB Bible at the conference. Right here. Yeah, so I'm gonna probably have about five or so to sell.

I mean, for those that don't know, I pastor a church, and so the rebinding and small leather goods is basically my tent making business, right?

And so our church is fairly small. I think they just voted this past week for me to get 200 a month.

Woo -hoo. And so, you know, it's a step. And so I pay my bills, feed my family and everything through rebinding

Bibles, so. Okay, well, I think we're in trouble, because I see someone coming backstage.

Now, Kofi was backstage earlier when we had a Heffy on, but I see,

Drew, your partner in crime. I'm gonna move you over here so that you guys are. Oh, there it is.

Yeah, so. This guy. And actually before you do, Jeff, let me give you, you know, give a shout out.

We had Drew give a shout out for the podcast that he and Chris do, Matter of Theology. You do a podcast as well.

Yeah, Open Air Theology. Open Air Theology, which is a podcasting. It's kind of basically like this one.

We just go, usually on Thursday nights, or, you know, but we just go live, and whatever happens, happens.

And sometimes we get on there and debate. Sometimes we debate one another. We bring other people in, or we just, you know, have a topic, and we just go at it.

And you and I talked about maybe just joining those two so we could just have a free -for -all and see what that looks like. I mean,

I grew up as a, I'm an ex -gangbanger, right? I mean, I've been shot at twice, and like,

I'm not scared of keyboard warriors or people that say bad things about me. Yeah, I mean, and I will encourage folks, you know,

I had you on my Rap Report podcast. So if you go back in my Rap Report, go to rapreport .org

and just do a search for Jeffrey Rice. You have an amazing testimony, your background.

I was sharing that with my bride this evening, just all that you went through and what

Christ has done in your life. And it's such a huge testimony to Christ, what he's done.

So I don't know if you want to give just a 30 -second high level of it. You already mentioned you're a gangbanger and been shot at a couple, but there's more than that.

Just, you know, I had a pretty, you know, very poor childhood. We moved, you know, there's, you know, one year

I'd switch schools six different times. I mean, we just moved around. So I never really had any, you know, a good stable place.

Kidnapped and molested when I was eight. 14, got robbed at gunpoint, beat up pretty bad, joined a gang.

Within a year or so, I was leading it. And, you know, again, you know, gun playing, shooting at people, people shooting at me.

2001, a plane hits the towers. That was the day I picked up a Bible, started reading it.

And then my salvation, I heard Ray Comfort open air preaching, saw myself naked before the

Lord and threw myself on his mercy. Amen, brother. Yeah. So backstage, some of the chat going backstage.

I don't know if you're seeing this, but they're all commenting. But Ethan said, he's backstage.

He said, it was a great episode. I heard it five times. But then Drew is saying,

Ethan, it would have been funny if Jeff told Andrew to teach on the 70 weeks fulfilled in Christ.

I know where to put Andrew, okay? I mean,

I'd be happy to talk about the 70 weeks, but I just don't think it's gonna be the same conclusion you have. Yeah, it's gonna be a little different.

I am a partial preterist and I'm probably the most preterist all male there is to date, so.

That's awesome. Jeff, I just, yeah. And for everybody listening, if you guys aren't familiar with Jeff and his work,

Jeff's the real deal. Name of the game as far as rebinders right now. And Jeff will always be sacrificial and help you out before he's concerned about sorted game.

We'll just put it that way. That's the reputation he has within the Bible community. So Jeff, I love you, man.

And I'm thankful for you, brother, and thankful for what you do, man. Thank you. One of our other podcasters at the

Christian Podcast Community, Stephen Dew, is saying, Drew, Vanita, starting trouble?

Usually. You know, and I almost wonder with both your podcasts, Doctrine Matters, Matter of Theology, do one of you guys like try to copy off the other?

I don't know. We didn't anyway. Go ahead.

Let me get to some of the questions that came up throughout the show earlier. There's some that might have some interesting.

So this is the first one that came up. Mr. Justin Peters Ministries asked the question, will that cure cerebral palsy?

Asking for a friend. This was earlier in the discussion. So yeah,

I think he's asking for a friend. That friend might be Ed Romine. That's it. That's his friend that he's asking for.

And actually, let me give this. I know I didn't get a chance to talk to him personally yet today, but I will ask you all to lift up brother

Ed Romine. He's a pastor out in Utah. He's been on this show actually on, you know,

I think a week or two, two weeks ago, but his mother just passed away today. So be praying for his family.

Pray that, I don't know the state of his mother, whether she was saved or not, but just be praying for the family that he would be a strong testimony.

So a couple of questions that came in for Drew. I guess, Drew, you really sparked this guy who goes by brother

John Elving. So I don't know if you know who that is. No clue.

Okay. So he says, Drew Vonita question. And I -

Hashtag Drew Vonita question. Yeah, hashtag Drew Vonita question. Because he did that each time. Hashtag Drew Vonita.

And so I'm going to try to do this for the audio because they can't read what it says, but it's for knowledge, but it's for knowledge awareness, but it's four dash

N -O, sorry, K -N -O -W -L dash.

And then knowledge awareness. So I'm not sure why the, but for knowledge awareness of something before it happens or exists.

In the dictionary, however your definition of foreknowledge is different.

Yeah, so actually my definition of foreknowledge is wrapped into, or that definition of foreknowledge is wrapped into my definition of foreknowledge.

But what I said about foreknowledge didn't originate with me. That goes all the way back to the

Puritans and then before that, when you're speaking about God in relational terms and how people like the

Puritans draw that out. That's not something I invented or created. So, because otherwise you have, and that's why

I use the golden chain of redemption as an example, because you have foreknowledge and predestining in the same sentence.

So what is the basis of predestining? It's foreknowledge, but you're also, if you don't distinguish foreknowledge from say omniscience, well, then you run the risk of saying the same thing in like multiple times right after another.

Well, it's because of God's foreknowledge and omniscience and his all knowingness. Well, you're just, now you're trying to say the same thing.

It doesn't work. So either it is the same word or it's a different word in our misunderstanding and we're misunderstanding what's meant by foreknowledge.

But that definition, the dictionary definition is wrapped into the relational definition that I gave, because there has to be a foreseeing of something that God, a foreknowledge of God that he's doing in that.

And it's the relational first that moves into the action of what

God does or his awareness of what he's doing. Right. I guess I see here, he then, it looks like he,

I know, sorry, it looks like I clicked the wrong one here. It looks like, there we go.

Heffy is saying context in scripture is everything. Too bad he didn't use it. Yeah, and then he, before that he said, foreknowledge is different in the context of scripture.

And that's the whole point that you're making, is that, you know, like when we talk about foreknowledge with God, it cannot mean the same thing as foreknowledge means with human beings, because we are finite, we're bound by time and we learn things.

We're not all knowing. So if you have a God that has to be bound by a definition that works for humans, he's either not using it in the same way, or he has a different meaning.

So it's either, it is one of two. He's either using this in a relational sense that he has a pre -relationship, where again, he's trying to say, he being a being outside of time and all knowing that he can know us personally, relationally, that's one option.

Or another option is this, that he's saying that he knew us before we existed to say, we had nothing to do with our salvation, which is exactly what he is saying when he talks about predestination, talks about being elect before the foundation of the world.

All of these are God's baby talk to you and I, because we are not infinite in our knowledge like him.

But John does give another hashtag for you, Drew. Hashtag, I don't know if this is a new hashtag, maybe we can make this a trend,

Chris. Hashtag Drew Vanita. Your definition of foreknowledge makes

God fake. Foreknowledge takes away from God's omniscience, omnipotence, omnipresence.

No, how, how? It doesn't. I wish John would come in because I'm going on different terms.

Explain to me using scripture, explain to me using scripture, how God's foreknowledge and biblically prognosos, right?

That that's what it is in the Bible. Pre -arrangement, his sovereign pre -arrangement of all things, but especially salvation.

Show me biblically where that makes God fake and takes any of God's attributes away from him.

That's, come on. Okay, so maybe you need to break it down in a layman's term. You know, big words can run people off.

You know, how is it that God has knowledge? Like that's, I mean, that's the question.

How is it that God knows what he knows? Right? That was the question that Drew asked Jefe. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

And so I would say it's the same way when it comes to a book. So like, so here's a little

New Testament that I'm going to rebound, rebound for when I do street, I mean, door knocking, keep my back pocket.

But let's say it's a, it's a book and you, and there's three ways to know what's in this book.

I can read it word for word, page for page. All right? Or I can begin to read it, get frustrated.

And then I skip to the back of the book to see how it's going to end. And then I can start back at the beginning and my frustration is released.

And then I can breeze my way through the book knowing what's going to happen as I'm reading it. Or I can be the author of the book.

Right? And what I just described is open theism, Arminianism and Calvinism. Yes, sir.

And we're saying that God knows what's going to happen because he is the author of eternity.

It's what's going to happen. How does he know what's going to happen? Because he wrote the book. He has preordained all things that come to pass.

He does not read word for word to see what's like, you know, he doesn't know what's going to happen until it happens, open theism.

He doesn't get frustrated because he doesn't know and looks in the tunnels of time to see how everything's going to happen.

And then with ease, govern everything after that. He wrote the book. He's the author.

To me, that's just a simple way for people that, you know, that they need it broken down. God knows what's going to happen because he wrote the book.

I like that. That's how he has the knowledge. I like that. So John had said this, so maybe this is good.

He says, he said, yes, thank you, Andrew. Very, very good.

I now understand. Drew blew me, blew off the question, thanks. I don't think Drew blew off the question.

I didn't put it up. So he might not have seen it. And this, you know, this might be a good thing to just point out, like folks may not realize, and I know,

Drew, you see what goes on, but when you're hosting a show like this, I'm seeing all the comments like that you could see,

Drew, and then there's the private chat that goes on, but we're having to like look at them as they fly past with all the comments and mark them to try to bring them up later.

So, you know, it's not that we blow off questions. We might miss them. I have done that plenty of times.

It's hard when I'm trying to speak and look into the cameras, make sure my voice is being picked up by the mic and then be looking at the questions and things going on.

Yeah, and plus he was looking for me to answer that in the chat, like I'm here.

And so I can't be like on the chat. Right, right. And certain questions. I mean, this is why we encourage people to come in.

I mean, we're here every week and we encourage you to come in because some of these questions, I mean, with like Hefe, for example, to try to answer that in chat, you know, you guys, you could see we were talking past each other.

He wasn't, he is responding to what he thinks Calvinism is and then what he's attributing to us believing when we're saying we don't believe that and then he still argues that's what we believe.

That's hard to do when you're doing in text form. Well, the thing that was really clear, especially when he put up that comment about context.

Okay, well, let's talk about context because we were talking about passages dealing with soteriology and he kept running to passages dealing with sanctification.

Yes. So they're not the same. He still is. One thing and he's saying another trying to disprove what we're saying, but they're not the same context.

That's why you don't proof text. Okay. Well, just so I'm on the same level. So I know that Andrew is not reformed theology.

Correct, Andrew? Well, depending how you define it. But to the strict sense kind of like a covenant.

Because I don't hold to a confession. Like I would say reformed theology is covenant theology. Yeah, because I wouldn't hold to a confession.

Correct. What about you two guys? Yes, yes. I hold to the 1689.

Hmm, I'm kind of in the place that Andrew is and the fact that, I mean,

I'll hold to portions of the Westminster 1689 Belgic confession. So there are confessions and creeds that I do hold to, but there isn't one in particular.

Okay. Jeff, you'll think this is funny. I was talking to Darren Stid a couple of weeks ago and we were talking about just famous pastors and stuff.

And I made the comment, I said, are you actually reformed if you don't hold to a confession?

And it was just this real funny joke between us. We got someone that wants, hold on Jeff.

We have someone that wants representation here, so. All right. Ethan wants to make sure he's represented here.

So go ahead. You want to explain the false view? I mean, the view you have. Oh, I was just saying new covenant theology is the right theology.

Oh Lord, help him. So now we've got the full gamut covered, right?

I'm a 1689 Federalist. So just to throw myself out there.

Okay. So let me put up some, so Hefe is saying this. This is kind of interesting. He's saying, it's not hard to understand

Calvinists. Then he says, Calvinists always say you don't understand our doctrine.

Okay. That's your opinion. Then he says, he said, I hold two of the five points of Calvinism.

No such thing. And then he said, how's Calvinists not believe everything

Calvin said? Well, because, no, I want to point this out.

One, he says, all Calvinists say this, but he's telling us what we believed. We told him we don't believe it.

And then later he said that that's what all Calvinists believe. The interesting thing is he says, how does a

Calvinist not believe everything Calvin said? Because no Calvinist believed tulip in the time of Calvin.

It didn't exist because it wasn't a thing that came out of Calvin. For historical, let's,

I mean, so when people say this, you realize they haven't actually done the research. So Calvin had some teachings.

His followers kind of took logical conclusions, not biblical conclusions, and went beyond and started teaching from further down the road.

You have a guy, James Arminius, who comes along and R .C. Sproul does an excellent job in his book. I think it's Free to Believe or, oh,

I forget the title of his book, but he's got a book on free will issue where he goes through each group. And he talks about the fact that James Arminius was actually in line with Calvin.

He was responding to all the people that took what Calvin taught and went too far the one way.

So he tried bringing people back to Calvin, but his followers took what he said and kept going the other way.

And so they put out five points that the five points of Calvin was responding to.

Therefore, there was nobody that would have called themselves a Calvinist in the way that Hefei is referring to it during Calvin's time, during Arminius' time, because they first had to have

Arminius' followers to put out five points to be responded to. So it displays when you make a comment like that,

Hefei, that you, I don't mean to be mean or to sound disingenuous or belittling.

It just, it means you haven't done your homework. The fact that we are trying to talk with you and explain things and you weren't listening.

And he made the point he likes to debate. And that may be the issue.

It may be that he's looking to win a debate and we're looking to teach. And maybe it's that we have two different purposes here.

There's a difference between debating and wrangling or disputing about words and not willing, not being teachable.

There's a massive difference. Calvin would not want to be called, would not want the theology he believed in to be called

Calvinism. He didn't want his own name on his tombstone for crying out loud. So, I mean, this just goes to show that the point here,

Hefe's point here is to win an argument and to wrangle about words, which

Paul said in second Timothy two is useless. So, I mean, yeah.

So Hefe has said actually Calvin took his doctrine from Augustine. That's right. And Augustine took it from Paul and Paul took it from Jesus.

So - What you're saying the closer we get back to it, right? Yeah. So John is saying this, brother

John Elving says this, I have been listening to Andrew and striving for eternity for a year, learned lots.

Most of the time I don't understand because you use big words. I'm learning the fancy words.

Thank you. See, that's why we need Jeffrey Rice on here because he just said, hey, let's make this simple guys. That's what

I'm saying. When you were talking to, I believe it was Hefe, I'm over here. He's like, tag me in. I got this guy.

Well, that's what the private chat is. He is Huckleberry. So we have someone that says, so we got the book from Sproul that I was referring to, willing to believe the controversy over free will.

So that's the one. Now, I will say that I think Sproul did an excellent job in that, except for the last chapter when he dealt with dispensationalists.

I'm not saying that because I'm a dispensationalist. And I think if you look at it, you'll go read that chapter.

You'll see in the beginning of that chapter, he says, I mean, dispensationalism is all over the map. And so he said he wasn't going to pick on the extremes in describing what dispensationalists believe, but focus in on the mainstream.

And he's gonna focus on those that were teaching it. But then what he ended up doing is you'll see when he makes his points, he ends up going to the extremes.

He would go to the people that weren't teaching dispensationalism, Billy Graham or people like that.

And they wouldn't be folks we would look to within dispensationalism to make the argument.

So that's why that was the only chapter I kind of thought was bad. And it's not because I hold to the view, but a couple of the questions we have,

I'll throw this out to each of you guys here as we start wrapping up. So Kathleen says, what is the best

Bible to read? There's so many out there. So I'll start with our resident

Bible man here, Jeffrey Rice, who gets to handle Bibles every day.

What do you think is the best translation to read? Well, I mean, there's a lot of good translations.

The ESV is a phenomenal translation. The NKJV is a phenomenal translation. But to me, the best translation is the

LSB, right? I mean, it's just hands down. I mean, like, you know, whenever I, you know, as a pastor,

I work with the original languages. I can read something in my LSB, go to the

Greek, and the word that the Greek uses, my LSB uses. I mean, it's a phenomenal translation.

Again, I don't, I love the ESV. I read the ESV for 10 years. I still have

ESVs. I have, I got every translation you can think of. And I use them, right?

There's the Complete Jewish Study Bible. Like, I love that translation. So whenever I want to go to something that's more easier to read,

I don't like the New Living Translation.

I think it's good in the New Testament, the Old Testament, not so good. But the, so if I want something easy to read to help me with my study,

I'll go to the Complete Jewish Translation. But my study, my read time right now as we speak is the

LSB. Chris, it looked like you were in agreement. Absolutely, hands down. I mean, literal word for word, you know, translated, taking the 90, the

NASB 95 was the foundation text. And the translation team said, we want to make it consistent throughout.

We want to make it as close to the original languages. And here's the key, in context with authorial intent as possible.

And they have done that and succeeded at it, in my opinion. And I love seeing all the comments,

LSB or NASB 95. Absolutely, those are my one and two in that order.

I, like Jeff, read the ESV for years and continue to reference from it.

Sometimes I will say, I'll throw a word of caution out there. May step on some toes here, but be careful with Crossway right now.

Crossway Publishing has, they have partnered with the Roman Catholic Church in India and have released the licensing to the

ESV, to the Roman Catholic Church in India, so that they could add the Apocrypha, so that they could add additional books of the

Bible and Roman Catholic literature to the Bible. And they're doing that very, very quietly.

So I will give you that information and say, you read it, but you will. Yeah, I didn't know that. Yeah, so, and they've responded.

You can reach out to them. They'll tell you that that's what they've done. If you reach out to them, they haven't made it public for obvious reasons.

So, but the ESV translation in and of itself is great. It's phenomenal. Okay, Drew. So, yeah. Yeah, so my question would be, translation best to read for what purpose?

For study or for what? Because I use several different translations. I will agree that probably the gold standard now is in terms of word for word is the

LSB, because it does have the NASB as the base text. And it cleans up some of the things that the

NASB is a little sloppy on. But as far as say like readability, if you want a good just reading

Bible readability, the ESV is phenomenal. So, in our family time, family devotional time,

I'll use the ESV because that's what my wife has. And it's easier for her to follow along.

So, the readability is really good. But in my study time, I have my NASB. I've got my

LSB. I've got a Holman Christian standard up there just so I can pull. Yeah, I forgot about that.

I said the Holman Christian. That's right. There's a difference. Yep, there's a difference. The Holman's really good.

Yeah. Yeah, I was gonna mention it. The only reason why I didn't mention it is because you can't get them any longer.

That's right. Yeah. Which is sad. Yeah. So, for study, I have several different things that I use.

But for family time, we use the ESV just for the readability of it. And then when

I preach, I'll preach because I don't have a nice premium

LSB at the moment, like Christian. I know a guy. Yeah. I know, me too. I use my preacher's handy size, which is the

NASB 95. All right, Ethan. Yeah, so I actually,

I have LSB that I just held up. That's goatskin leather, by the way. But was it rebound by, you know, by Jeffrey?

No, I'm a broke college student. I cannot afford that. Well, not to brag, but there is a difference.

There is a difference, but it's good goatskin. Yeah, so I use the ESV for the most part, but I also like the

NASB 95. I just haven't really got on board with LSB. Just, I find it very hard to read and I'm just not used to it.

I mean, when you have been reading the Bible for a while and have a bunch of verses memorized, it's hard to like switch translations because I feel like it's a worded completely different than a lot of other translations.

Yeah, well, let me, we got someone backstage that popped out and popped back in. I think he popped in for this discussion.

The one and only Kofi. I don't know about being the one and only

Kofi. A few million Ghanaians might disagree. You're the only one that can come on here or basically go anywhere in America ministry wise and everyone just knows you as Kofi.

That's because you're the one and only. Kofi, what translation do you use?

So, yeah, I'm the black BP who uses the Christian standard Bible. Hey, hey, hey, no grown up color here.

No, very funny. No, I use the CSB, but I mean, in my seven prep each week,

I'm in the original languages. That's how I do my work primarily. So for me,

I just like the CSB. It's a nice readable translation. When I've done my translation work, I've often found it to be very close, especially in the

New Testament. I've found it to be very accurate in terms of its translationist choices. So I like it.

Not everyone around me likes it necessarily. I'm surrounded mostly by ESV folks in my life, but a few

NAS folks here as well. But I like the CSB. I do like the NAS. I do reference it a lot in my study.

I do like the LSB. I just got the nice inside column reference. That's a very nice Bible.

They did a very good job on that. I like references in my Bible, so I've been kind of waiting till that came out.

And I really liked the job they did on that. I meant to throw this out, but I forgot.

This is the Net Bible as well. You like the Net Bible? Don't throw it out. Just give it to me. Yeah. I do like the

Net Bible. I like the Net Bible because Dan Wallace is the general editor on it.

And Dan Wallace is a big textual critical scholar. And so the benefit is all of the notes that are in there from textual critical scholars.

So you can get lost in the notes. Yes. So my answer to the question was, what's the best translation?

Would be the Greek and the Hebrew. But since we don't know that, or if you don't know that,

I would say this. My favorite is the Holman Christian standard, as we already said.

Because it sounded like Jeff said, when I do my own translation, when I prepare messages, the

Holman always came up with what I would end up doing when I did my own translation. It's also the only one that will translate for clarity.

That's why they ended up getting away from the Holman and making the Christian standard Bible. It was a little bit too clear by translating the word that we have for tongues as languages.

And it made it clear the word for slave was translated properly. One of the things that I pitched when

I really wanted, when the LSB was coming out, I said, hey, translate tongues as languages, translate deacons as servants, translate baptize as dip or plunge.

And we have a whole lot of theology that's solved that was created because when they were translating it, they didn't believe those things, right?

So we could solve a lot of things. So, but I think that I like the

Holman the best, but I don't preach from it because nobody really has that. When I was preaching every week at the churches that I planted,

I had a Jeffrey Rice, New American Standard Bible that I preached from, that I loved to hold in my hand as I was preaching with nice large print.

But when I usually travel and preach, I preach out of the ESV just because that's what most people have.

But, and I haven't been working with the LSB long enough to - Well, at my church, the

Pew Bibles are LSB, so. There you go. That's the whole thing is like when

I planted the churches, I was able to say, okay, everyone, like this is the

Pew Bible. This was what was preached out of, so. Okay, a quick question that looks like, oh,

I should bring this up first. As we were talking about Bibles, Hefe said, word for word,

KJV. Now granted, afterwards he said American Standard, which I was gonna ask him if he's a

KJV only, because I kind of wondered that, but KJV and American Standard are probably two of the -

Different texts and traditions. Yeah, they're really, they're not great

Greek manuscripts to be working off of. It's, you know, King James was what they had at the time.

All right, so a quick question. These are both for Jeff. We wanna try to close out the show, but I just wanna make sure we get them.

So has Jeff used the TLV? Yeah, the Tree of Life version.

It's gonna be hard to trip me off my Bible. Yeah, I really like it. So if I'm not looking for study notes or anything,

I think that's a wonderful Bible. I mean, it really helps you. It helps you with the

Hebrew, you know, to learn how to say the Ruach HaKadosh, speaking of the Holy Spirit.

And, you know, like, and it really brings out, you know, like when I read it the first time,

I realized that James and Jacob is the same name. So just - So I should have mentioned -

And then I had a cousin that named his two sons, James and Jacob. And I was like - Not realizing.

I did mean to mention, Drew, you brought up the NET. So the NET, for people that don't know, New English Translation, was actually an online translation.

You're right, it's Dan Wallace, who's got the background in textual criticism. So what he's trying to do is get back to the original as best as -

And so I love that the notes in there are very helpful because it tells you why they chose the words they chose.

That's what makes it so helpful. But it was actually debated and put out there online.

And that's why it was, you know, the NET Bible, because it was on the NET. But here's a quick question for you,

Jeff. Question for Jeff, if a binding falls apart, what kind of glue should we use and any tips on how to apply it?

Hold on one second. Okay, while he's running to get to show us something, someone is asking for pillow time, because we went a whole time without mentioning a word from our sponsor.

We're in a great time now. So this show is sponsored by MyPillow.

So if you would want to get yourself a wonderful pillow and a good, actually here,

I'll grab something here. This is a travel pillow that we just got. Now, here's the thing with this travel pillow is you can put this on top of a regular pillow, but you can roll this up really, really small and it has this nice little cover.

So this is what the MyPillow is now referring to as a roll and go pillow.

And so you tuck the pillow, let me just do this. You tuck it into here. And now, with the microphone, it becomes a really small pillow to carry with you.

So that's really cool when you're traveling. So that's my wife that she travels with.

I have the full size that I travel with, but they have a new pillowcase that I do the same thing. It just takes up more space. So if you want to get yourself a great pillow, go to MyPillow .com

and put in the promo code, the coupon code SFE to get yourself a great pillow.

Now, back to you, Jeff. Yeah, so it's basically, it's

PVA glue. But if you're looking for one that's at a good price, it's pH natural

PVA. And so that's the one that you can get off of Amazon.

And depending on how bad the rip is, like if it's a thin rip, you can just take a little bit, put it on a piece of paper, and take a toothpick, dip the toothpick in it, and run it across the edges,

I mean, in the paper. And it's what's called tabbing it in. So, you know, it doesn't take a lot.

You just run it down that crack and shut it off, and you're good to go. You can cut it up, put a book on top of it.

But if it's really bad, you can go to Hobby Lobby, get a small paintbrush, and, you know, a little goes a long way.

You don't need a whole lot. All right, well, thank you. We got one last question I gotta bring up because this is someone who's a member on YouTube.

So this is Jason Cave. He says, talking to a post -tribber earlier, he explained the black horse being the plague, the white horse being

America, red being Russia. Have you heard of this explanation?

No, I have not. And it sounds like, just stay away from that. Yeah, sorry,

Jason, I have not heard that, but it just goes to show that anyone can make anything.

I guess what they're trying to do is, oh, red is Russia. Yeah, because that's their colors. Yeah, I don't know.

Well, I remember when red was China. Yeah, red was China, it's for communism, but the reality is you're not gonna find

America in the Bible, because you know why? It ain't there, so.

Is it because those passages have already happened? No, no, there's some that haven't happened yet, and America's still not there.

So real quick, we'll end with this, is check out the Open Air Theology Conference that's coming up soon, that's gonna be in February.

Go to Eventbrite and search for Open Air Theology Conference. Make sure that you're there.

It'll probably be the only conference in America that Kofi will miss this year, because he seems to just go to every conference that's out there.

That is so not true, but okay. Yeah. Oh, does that mean that you're gonna be there?

Is that what you're saying? No, I won't be, unfortunately, but I don't go to everything either. Hey, Jeff, I tried,

I tried, you know? You know, it's just not gonna be a conference without Kofi, so. I know. Is it even a conference if Kofi doesn't go?

Yeah, it's kind of like if a tree falls in the woods and no one hears it, does it make a sound?

Well, so we need to have like a, you know, GoFundMe campaign to get

Kofi to the conference, you know, just. That's funny. The conference is gonna be good.

I'm gonna speak on two different messages. I'm gonna be talking about the two signs of the covenant, because again,

I hold a covenant theology, one being how circumcision is fulfilled in Christ, and then the other sign, the new covenant sign is baptism begins with Christ.

And then I'm also gonna be looking at how justification from the law to faith.

And again, you need to be there because the justification from the law is not salvific. And so this is where a lot of people get it twisted from the old covenant, but the only justification from the new covenant is salvific.

And so we're gonna see how Christ, how the law finds its fulfillment in Christ and how faith finds its beginning in Christ.

So it's two messages, but if they allow me two hours to speak, I could do both in one message, but.

It is your conference, right? It is, it is, but you know. If they allow you to speak, go back to that.

I mean, just listen. It's just keeping people's attention for two hours. I mean, you know. I tell people all the time, if you're looking for a church where the pastor dresses really nice and he's very, very eloquent, like this is not the church for you.

But if you're looking for a church where you don't mind the pastor twitching and stuttering, come on.

Well, hey guys, I appreciate you guys coming in. And someone asked if Kofi was gonna be at Shepherd's Conference.

Yeah, of course, he's making that one. No, I'm always at Shepherd's Conference, you know that. Well, except for one year.

I'll see you there, buddy. But we'll get to see everyone there. I hope Jeff will make it out to that.

And Ethan's gonna have to eventually make it out there. I'll be at G3, I think, this year. Okay, I don't know if I will make it out this year.

Yeah, they raised the prices up on the booth. And man, I'll tell you what, I've lost a lot of business because there's just so many rebinders now.

And I can't afford to get out there because we don't have as much work. Yeah, no,

I know, it is not cheap to get a booth. Yeah, when I started rebinding, there was like five or six people saw my popularity.

And now everyone and their mom is rebinding. So yeah, it's all over the place. Yeah, but no one does it as good as you,

Jeff. That's the thing. I challenge anyone to a bind off. That's what we need.

Yeah, just wanna see a bind off, yeah. Look, Andrew and Kofi, this is what we need. We need to get with Brandon.

And we need, instead of having a debate, a pre -conference debate for Cruciform Conference, we need to have a bind off.

I like this idea. And give away the Bibles after? Yeah, well, I was thinking that. The question is how do we, we'll figure out who gets the winning

Bible in the second runner up, but we'll figure something out. But I like that idea. Because it takes a while to bind, but we started to be -

We can make a cover in an hour and 14 minutes. Well, all right, there you go. Because if we let

Brandon preach, you'd be done before he's done preaching. Yeah, it used to take me eight hours, but I got down to a science.

Well, here's the thing. You'd have to bring all your equipment.

Now, look at this. Wait, hold it. Anthony Silvestro has the winner. He's already figured out the winner.

If we have this, he says, Chris Honholds will win them all. That's true. You know, that's right.

So we can't let Chris go. We haven't seen Chris in tonight. All right, well, thanks guys for coming in.

I hope to see everyone at the Open Air Theology Conference. And we'll be next week. So next week,

John Harris from a conversation that matter will be on. We're going to be discussing Tim Keller.

He is loved by many. And yet, well,

I'm going to get myself in trouble and say, there's some things you should be concerned about. Andrew, real quick, real quick.

Do you own a bulletproof vest? I will plead the fifth on that.

Okay, I'm just saying that for your safety. If you're going to talk about Tim Keller, you are definitely going to want to wear that bulletproof vest.

Oh, I've already - It's like Beth Moore fans, so it works. I've already experienced this. And I already have had people that have found out that this is what we're going to talk about next week, and they have already started.

And I just go, well, then just come with open ears. So we'll see.

All right, well, until next week, just remember to strive to make today an eternal day for the glory of God. And we'll see you next week.