Can Women be Pastors and a Great Conversation with a Muslim | Apologetics Live 0020

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We had a question on the on the little questionnaire that you your people sent me. It said, do you feel like you might be offending

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Democrats with some of the things you say? And my response to that is, look, my goal is to offend everyone.

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That is my initial goal. Tell you that you are without God in the world, that there's only one

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Savior, the Lord Jesus Christ, that you're in sin, that sin is sin brings death and punishment.

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But the good news is Jesus Christ is the Savior who has provided a way for you to be forgiven by bearing your sins in his body on the tree so that God's justice is satisfied and his love can be extended to you by putting your trust in Christ.

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This is Apologetics Live with Matt Slick and Andrew Rappaport, part of the

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Christian Podcast Community. All right, we are live,

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Apologetics Live. We are here every Thursday night, 8 o 'clock

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Eastern Time to answer your Apologetics questions. We are glad you have joined us again.

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And folks, the encouragement I always have is to get in early. We always get the people that want to come in at the end of the show and then they kind of complain they don't have enough time to ask their question or challenge.

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So best way to get in is get in early. How do you get in? Go to ApologeticsLive .com.

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It will bring you to a page where you will see the link to join. That link is always there just, well, just before eight o 'clock.

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We have to put that up just before that. So with that, we would like to invite in, we got

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Matt Slick here. And Matt, I don't know if you know who that voice was that in the intro there.

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Nope. That was that was John MacArthur being interviewed by Ben Stein.

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Ben Stein. Sorry. Wow. I just drew a blank on his name, Ben Shapiro. Ben Stein's a different Jew, but he was on Ben Shapiro's show.

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And basically that was the question he was they asked him whether he was upset that he might be offending

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Democrats. And he said, no, my goal is to offend everybody with the gospel. And though we're not looking to be offensive here,

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Matt, we are looking to share the gospel and the gospel is an offense to sinners who don't want to admit that.

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Yikes. You got that right. Yeah, so so I created some a firestorm this week,

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Matt, on Twitter. I thought it was pretty innocent, but. I've gotten what, like,

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I don't know, a couple thousand responses by now, but I post

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I just put this out, a church with a female pastor is not a church and she's not a pastor.

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Good. I agree, because it'd be a false church. Well, you know, you could defining church there, but she's definitely out of the will of God in that.

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Yeah, and that's that's basically, you know, everyone's challenging me with it, but I don't see a lot of scripture in context with that.

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Of course not. They're wacko liberals who take their finger put up in the air to see which way the doctrinal window's blowing and they go that way.

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And who cares? So let me the passage I've been challenging them with is 1st

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Timothy, chapter two, verses 12 to 14. So what I figured would be good, Matt, let's start off.

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I'd like you to tell us why that passage is so essential on this topic and what it actually teaches about women's role in the church.

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It's essential because it's Paul and what it says is they're not to be an authority. Next. Oh, you want me to expound on a little bit more than that?

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So you ask me these questions, I'm slick and quick. I'm going to I'm going to answer it. And then we go on to the next topic.

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You know, I mean, she and I like doing that to you. So it's a lot of fun. All right.

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You ready? Go for it. No. All right. All right. Paul, Paul, the apostle, if you go to Roman, excuse me,

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Acts 915, Paul is called by Jesus to be an apostle and et cetera, et cetera.

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And Paul says, I do not allow a woman to teach or exercise authority over a man, but remain quiet.

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For it was Adam who was first created and then Eve. So what Paul is doing is saying that it is not based on cultural norms.

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It is based on the created order of God before the fall. Adam was created first and Eve.

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So what he's tying it in is to how God wants things done. Now, a lot of people will complain and whine and go,

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I don't like it. And that's fine. They can do that all they want. But with this, but Paul says in the next chapter, but in case

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I'm delayed, I write so that you will know how one ought to conduct himself in the household of God. What he's doing is giving instructions on how you're to behave in the household of God.

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So when I talk to people about this, I say, that's what it says right there. So a woman is not to teach or exercise authority over a man, but remain silent or quiet for Adam was first created and Eve.

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And I just, you know, what are they going to do? Are they going to believe God's word or not? And then they try and set scripture against scripture.

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Well, look at Phoebe. Look at Deborah. Look at. Wait a minute. Are you saying you understand what this text says and then you're trying to contradict it with something else in the word of God?

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What are you? Are you a Christian? Do you believe God's word contradicts itself? Deal with what the verse actually says instead of going someplace else to try and set scripture against scripture.

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And then they don't like that. But, you know, they're going to do that. That's just that's what that verse is talking about right there.

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OK. OK, so first Timothy. I'm getting an echo to 12 and 13, that's because your mouth is going to hit the first first Timothy to 12 to 14 has two reasons for this.

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Now, the question I have for you. Well, you like you include 14. OK, well, is the woman was was deceived?

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Yeah. Yeah. So is this are these two reasons that he gives? Are they cultural or are they something else?

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Not cultural. And what from the context would tell us that? It's I told you,

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Adam and Eve before the fall. Well, and so it's it's he bases it in creation, right?

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The creation order before and after the fall, because 13 is before the fall and 14 is after the fall.

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It was not Adam who was deceived, but it was one being deceived found a transgression. So what he does is he states it before and after the fall right there in verses 13 and 14.

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But some people, what they'll do is they say, oh, that was before the fall. And so it doesn't apply now.

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What? You know, I seriously get all kinds of stuff from people. Why do you think it is that this issue really gets people going?

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I mean, people get really upset when you deal with the issue of women with one area.

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There's just one thing they can't do in the church. Right. There's restrictions for them being having authority over over men so they can do all these other ministries.

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Why is it that everyone focuses on that one issue, like as if that's the most important thing for a woman to do?

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Because they're liberals, they're not listening to the word of God. That's why. Why do you think?

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Because you've dealt with this before. I know that you've dealt with this before with the violence that comes out with some people, because you actually were in a church where you had to back out of a church in your

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Krav Maga stance, worried because how upset they were. Why do you think people get upset over this issue?

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Because I believe that they get loyal to an idolatrous position that they put above Scripture and their lives, their identity are tied up into it.

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And if someone comes in and challenges that, they're going to react very negatively. And so they should recognize that.

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As you mentioned, five, six years ago, I was passing out literature at a church about the women pastors and elders.

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And the reason I did was because I went to talk to them and they said they would talk to me, then they went back on their word.

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So then I said, OK, well, I'm going to go to the body of Christ. I'm trying to be biblical, talk to you first and ask you to give me a reason for the faith that lies within you about this particular issue.

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They said they would. Then they went back on their word. I said, OK, I'm going to go out to the body. And they said, are you threatening us?

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It was ridiculous, you know, these Christians. And so I and some friends of mine and I went out during the snowfall and we stood out there on public property and we passed out literature about this woman issue, just asking, why are you doing this?

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You know, just here's what the Bible says. Why do you have this in your church? They called the police on us and the police came and they were very polite.

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The police were. And so we're out there in the cold while it's snowing and nobody came out to see how we were doing.

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Nobody came out to to bless us, you know, bless those who persecute you. Nobody came out to make sure we were

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OK or warm. Nobody did, but they called the cops on us. This is a big local church here that happened.

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And so, like I said, the police came. We talked. They said everything was fine. Everything no big deal.

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Continue to pass out literature for another couple of hours. People took it. I know they took it into the church. I know it caused a problem.

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And I was told that there were lawyers in the church and that I need to be careful. So it was just ridiculous.

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So on the way home, I stopped by another church down the street from me and they had a meeting and I walked in and we got talking.

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They're very friendly until I said, why do you why do you have women pastors and elders? And just to be clear, what happened was

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I ended up in my Krav Maga stance, which is really kind of standing with your hands up open one foot back.

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And you can move that way and you're ready for whatever. But it's but also the hands are up. It just means, you know, not only problem, but you can also put your hands and do some things.

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And so I had my hands open like this and I would literally skipping details, but I literally was ending up backing up out of the parking lot towards my car while the pastor had his arm on one guy holding him back who wanted to attack me because the pastor had said what happened was

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I was outside the church. I thought he asked me to leave from asking the question and pastor was angry at me.

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And so I was outside and another guy, one of their flunkies guys started coming towards me and I put my hands up like this and the pastor was already walking back into the church with my hands up.

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There's about eight or 10 feet of distance between us and between this guy and I and he the guy stops and then yells out, yells out loud.

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He shoved me and I even touched him. And it's about eight feet difference. The pastor turns around and yells out, did you shove him?

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And everybody starts looking at me. And I'm like, oh, my goodness. Right there,

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I knew this was dangerous. And so I had to start defending myself verbally and I started yelling out, no,

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I didn't. I said he lied. I did. I never touched him. I'm back here. And he started approaching me.

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And so I put my hands up and I'm yelling this out and he comes back. The pastor's next to the same guy.

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And I said, you got to tell him, you know, because he flat out lied. And the guy looked at him and made that masculine gesture.

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You put your shoulders forward and you take a step forward. That's a very aggressive. I put my hands up at this point, you know,

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I was I was ready. And the pastor stopped him and said to me, none of that here. So this guy was ready to physically assault me.

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And I just got out of it. I got out of there. This is what happened in Christian church twice the same day.

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So I was threatened with physical harm. I was accused falsely, lied about and the cops called on me just because I asked them, can you defend the idea of women, pastors and elders from the

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Bible? Well, I've noticed that people get real upset over this.

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I also noticed another trend. I think you've noticed this. There seems to be a trend that when you first.

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Put allow for female pastors, something the Bible doesn't support. That's so when we start to see other things start to go.

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Yeah. Do you see this as like kind of that first issue that that watershed issue that kind of is the first of many falls theologically?

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Yeah, I did a lot of research on this and 80 percent in my research. Well, let me explain what I did first. I went through and took me to roughly two weeks.

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I went through and. Looked at denominational websites and research women, pastors, elders, we researched their dates when they came on through history, whatever it was, took me a while to find this stuff out, different denominations researched if and when homosexuality became an acceptable issue.

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And then I wrote it up on Karm someplace. And basically my my findings were that within one to two, it was a variation, one to two generations of adopting women, pastors and elders, 80 percent of the church sort of nominations are affirming the issue of homosexuality as an alternative lifestyle is not that serious a deal.

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And so, you know, apostasy comes first. Let me tell you something. The word of God says what it says. If you don't like it, then

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I suggest you either take your Bible and put it up on a shelf because it might offend you someplace else, or you can take the

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Ronco exacto knife and you can cut out those verses of scripture that offend you personally, and then you can make it say what you want to say.

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You can do that or you can submit to the will of God. Now, a lot of people don't understand is that men are the ones who are supposed to do this because men are the ones who are supposed to be an authority.

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Masculinity is under attack in our culture, heavily under attack. I just talked to somebody recently who

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I won't give too many any details. I'll only be very, very generic. He, to no fault of his own, due to a family issue, went to counseling with all the family members and it turned into a male bashing time.

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And I go, oh, yeah, you know, that's, that's what happens. When I was, you know, early in my marriage, my wife and I had some problems and we went to some counselors and I learned very quickly, it's just male bashing.

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If my wife were to say to me today, let me go to counseling, I would say, first thing in my mind would be, oh, because you want to see, you know, your husband get bashed.

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That's to me, that's all it is. And so I don't put any trust in the counselors now, hardly at all because of that and they,

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Christians and non -Christians alike, are ready to start jumping on the Anglo -Saxon, white Protestant, American male type guy.

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I believe it's well entrenched in their culture. And so I also believe that there's a deception going on within Christian families, within Christian churches in varying degrees.

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But as far as this goes, that too many people are listening to the lies of the world and want total equality and everything, transgender this and don't, you know, you're a sexist, you're this, whatever, it's ridiculous stuff.

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And so it bleeds over into the church. And those people who are not dedicated to the word of God, who do not believe the word of God, who do not trust the word of God, but open their mouths, drag their knuckles, their eyelids are at half mast, and they go to a church that tells them what they want to hear and their ears are tickled and they like it.

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And then they go out to a restaurant and get served. And this is their Christianity. These kinds of people are the ones that need to be driven out of the church.

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And what I tell pastors is that what they've got to do is they've got to start preaching to thin the church out, start calling people to task and start calling them to the cost of discipleship because it's not being preached, it's not being taught.

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The pastor is supposed to preach and teach to the Christians, supposed to equip the Christians for the work of ministry, Ephesians 4, 11 through 12.

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He's supposed to be doing that work, not babysitting the unbelievers. Let the unbelievers come in. They're welcome to come in and hear that gospel message.

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But the pastor is not supposed to preach in order to make people feel comfortable because if he does, he's compromising the word of God.

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So when men start feeling comfortable, they become atrophied. They don't do anything. They get spiritual potbellies. They become weak and they don't know what to stand up for.

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And so in our society where the male is under attack and the female is the one who's always in charge and the female is the one who's made to look intelligent and capable, the man's a doofus.

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Well, then all the more for the men to sit on their hands, to do nothing, to be weak, to not obey the scriptures, be strong, be men, 1

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Corinthians 16, 13. And what they do is allow women pastors and elders to get into the church. And it is a shame upon them that this occurs and they need to have the spiritual guts in order to stand up for righteousness and say, no, we don't allow this, but they don't do it because they're wimps.

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They don't believe the word of God to gather teachers to tickle their own ears and quell the discomfort of their own hearts so that they might feel better about themselves, about their wives and et cetera.

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They're not willing to lead the way they're supposed to lead. I don't care if the world doesn't like what I'm saying. I don't give a flying frigging rip if they like it or not.

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Who cares? I got to answer to God. That's what the word of God says. And that's what I'm going to stand for. So there you go. Okay.

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And I do want to ask you another question, but first I just want to give a call out to a guy by the name of Reformed Calvinist.

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If there's anyone who knows who Reformed Calvinist is, invite him into this hangout. He said, why do you, speaking to you

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Matt, why do you represent, why do you not represent true Calvinism? You're a fraud.

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I invited him in and he vanished on us. So anyone who knows who Reformed Calvinist is, invite him in to actually defend his claims.

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We'll see if he would actually come in and be more than just a keyboard warrior. Notice a lot of keyboard warriors out there.

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So, so Matt, here's the arguments that were given to me with, with that tweet. And it is, but you're putting

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God in a box. So Matt, are you putting God in a box by saying that women can't be a pastor?

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No. Why not? Well, I would ask the person that said that,

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I'd say, okay, show me the box. Well, they're going to turn to Deborah.

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Uh, was Deborah an elder or a pastor in a church? Oh, she was a leader.

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She was a judge. And she was a judge to the shame of men. But then I'll ask, was she a, um, a, uh, a pastor and elder?

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No. Was it a church context? No. Okay. I'd say next.

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Yeah. So who is it that puts that, that limit there? Is it, is it, uh,

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It's they who are doing this. They're the ones who have put God in a box and say, God can't operate this way.

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Even though the word of God says what it says, what we're going to do is tell you how God's really going to be. And we need to have equality because the world is looking at us.

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We have to please the world, the secularists, the antichrist, the people who trample the word of God under their feet, we're going to join with them.

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And what we're going to do is we're going to say women can be pastors and elders. When the Bible speaks against it, that's what's happening. All right.

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And, and I think that the reason this is such an important issue, as we said, I mean, this is often the first step in the spiral downward, and this goes completely against our culture, but the fact is culture does not define the interpretation of scripture and we don't submit to culture.

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We submit to God and the people who want to make this argument and say, well, this is what

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God wants. God is love. He's going to love everyone. Well, God has the right to decide what, how he wants his creation to be.

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As the creator, he actually has that right. So, you know,

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I think that it's God who has set this up. All we're trying to do is say to submit to him and his word.

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And I think that becomes the real issue. It's, it's that it's the fact that people do not like God's standard and they want

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God to submit to their standard versus them submitting to God's standard. Right. That's what it is.

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Interesting. Yeah. So, you know, the Bible goes on and tells us in 1

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Timothy 3, 12, it says that the elders to be the, actually it's Andromeda, a man of one woman, a husband of one wife.

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And so that's what he's supposed to be doing. The elder is supposed to be a man who holds to having one wife. Now in the culture, men were married very quickly.

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You just were, just everybody was married. And the elder Presbutoros is to be the husband of one woman.

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A woman can't do that. So, you know, it's just a real simple thing.

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And also, let me, let me say that this is an authority issue. I've had some people tell me that it's not an authority issue.

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It's a, it's a cultural issue, which we've already addressed. And some people will say, no, men don't have authority over women, that they're equal before God.

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And what they're doing is they're misrepresenting categories. Yes, they're equal before God, Galatians 3 .24,

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but they're not equal in their positioning. And just as a man in a marriage relationship is the head of his wife, if they're equal before God, how can they, he'd be the head of his wife?

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That's what the Bible says, but yet they're still equal. The equality is in a different sense. And so what they do is they very often misrepresent the word of God and then try and set the word of God against the word of God.

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So what they don't realize that they're doing is they're actually aiding and abetting the enemy of the gospel when they do this kind of a thing.

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Titus 1 .6 also says that the elder is to be a husband of one wife. Yes, good night, Casoner. And so the

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Bible clearly tells us that, and this is the position that Paul, the apostle has stated in the church. And finally,

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I've had people tell me, well, that was just his opinion. I'm serious. I've had people say, well, that's just Paul's opinion. We don't want to go with it.

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And I say, well, he's giving instruction to the church. So you're just saying that your opinion is as good as Paul, the apostle.

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And I've had people say, yeah, and they're serious. And, you know, that's what I tell them. Okay. Could you take your right hand and put it in front of your face?

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You know, look to your left. Now slap yourself upside the head because this idiocy is present. So what men need to do in the church, what men need to do everywhere is study the word of God and get in groups with men and start studying the word.

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Men with men, women with women, men need to start studying and study these issues and what's the man's responsibility in the church is to lead and to guide as well as sacrifice and to serve.

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And so he's supposed to do that. And if a woman pastor or elder is there, he's failed to do his job. And we're talking about, normatively speaking, we're talking about stuff in the

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United States, Western cultures and things like that, and this is a shame to men.

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So when I see women pastors and elders on TV and I've seen some stuff on channels and I see men around them,

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I always look at the men and I'm like, what's wrong with you guys? What's wrong with you that you don't have the guts to stand up for righteousness that you don't have the guts to stand on God's word.

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What's wrong with you? And I blame it and I blame the men. When Adam and Eve were in the garden, she sinned first.

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She gave the fruit to Adam and then he sinned by eating it. But when they both were hiding, the pre -incarnate

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Christ said to the man, where are you? It didn't say to them, Adam and Eve, where are you?

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It didn't say to her, what have you done? He said to the man, where are you? So the pre -incarnate Christ addressed the man.

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He was the one responsible. This is how it is. So I tell men this, men need to submit to this because it's what the

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Bible says. Women need to submit to it because it's what the Bible says. Both need to repent if they don't agree with what this teaching is.

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They need to repent and they need to come into harmony with the word of God and do not look at culture as a determiner for biblical truth.

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Okay. So, you know, I was teaching a Bible study through Genesis chapter three.

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Interesting thing that I noticed that I think applies to this. And you went back to the fall,

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Genesis chapter three. When we look at what happened with Eve and the serpent, you see the serpent come and he says to Eve, he says to the woman, did

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God actually say you shall not eat of any tree in the garden?

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Now, this is what I find so interesting about that, Matt, is that Adam was told he could eat of any tree he wanted in the garden except one.

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Right. There's only one that couldn't be. And yet what we end up seeing is that's the only one that the serpent focused on is if if you can't have one, then it means you can't have any.

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Right. I see the exact thing here. These people who try to say if you can't have a woman as a pastor, then she can't do anything in church.

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You're restricting her, you're sexist, you're you're telling her she can't do anything and she's meaningless in the church because she can't do one thing.

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She could do a thousand other things. There's one thing God said she can't do. It's the same thing as with the tree. There's one tree they can't eat of.

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And the serpent acts as if, oh, then you can't do anything if you can't do that one.

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And it's the same thing over and over again. You got company over? Right now, no.

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I'm hearing somebody. I don't know what's going on. I'm hearing stuff. Is anybody else hearing it?

27:04

Yeah, we think it might be Keith. I'm going to bring Keith in and turn his volume ups. His volume was down.

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I'm not hearing anything, but Keith, you're you're in here. You have any questions from that?

27:16

Yes, I am here. And there is a good chance that sound could be coming from here. OK, let me see if I can step out of door here.

27:26

All right. Yeah, I did have a question. It's dark over there.

27:32

Yeah, well, I'm outside right now. We see a black screen. Well, here's a clue.

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I'm a blind guy, so I don't do well with screens. Ah, all right.

27:47

So so what question do you have for Matt? Are you there?

27:55

Oh, wait. Something happening went mute on us. Let's see if we can unmute. You can unmute yourself,

28:01

Keith. If you can hear us, you have to unmute yourself.

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I can't seem to do it. There we go. There we go.

28:15

Here you go. I totally agree with you about women and pastorship.

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But I heard it put this way once before is if you have the woman pastor, you have to ask, are there not any men in the church?

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And assuming that there are no men, knock yourself out. And assuming if there are men in that church, pardon the language, they should grow up there and stand up and preach.

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And if you're not in that church and it offends you, hey, there's a mission field, go and become their pastor.

28:53

Easier said than done, I know, for what Matt had said earlier. Yeah. Then we have this very, very, very unusual situation.

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And then you can say, I know she's validly a pastor. And then when she also in this situation, she's a pastor over there.

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She can be a pastor. Now, if you're on a planet with only women, OK, the necessity would bring that in. Now, just to be fair,

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I talked to a woman in Pakistan who was a pastor, and she told me that if the men had stepped up to do the job, they'd have been killed.

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What do you do? Well, I told her, well, then teach them, do what you got to do. And that situation is very, very strange.

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But God does allow things that are aberrant to occur and he uses them. But what we understand is supposed to be is women are not to be in that place of authority.

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They should never use a justification. It was mentioned earlier, too, by Deborah. And I will say that is an exception and not the rule.

29:44

And so, yeah, I can see exceptions, but for the rule, I would not agree. But here's here's the thing,

29:51

Keith, with Deborah. If you actually read the book of Judges, Deborah says to Barak that her being a judge is a judgment on him.

30:00

She knows what she's doing is wrong, but because he won't stop, she says she. For a general, he was kind of wussy because he says,

30:07

I'll go and fight if you go with me. Yeah. And she said that that's a that's a condemnation on him.

30:13

So she wouldn't agree with the people that used her as the excuse. She knew she wasn't supposed to be in that place, didn't want to be in that place.

30:22

And the men were failing. That's why I say women, pastors and elders are a testament to the failure of men in the church.

30:30

To step off of that topic, the question I have and I just heard this today. I didn't hear the full context, but the question was, if you.

30:42

Say you don't believe in hell, does that make you not a Christian? No. And I think as well as questions like, do you still beat your wife?

30:53

No. Or the atheist is trying to catch you to say yes or no, and they can pounce on you.

30:59

No, the issue of hell's existence is not a biblically declared necessity for salvation.

31:06

Right. And, you know, the deity of Christ is his physical resurrection is also.

31:13

And so we don't know. You know, it's yeah. Now, my response to that would have been in Revelation against twenty fourteen.

31:24

It says the Hades was cast in like a fire.

31:30

And so if hell is no longer in existence at some point, then clearly we can still be

31:38

Christians and still be believers without having hell slash Hades. Are you?

31:43

Yes. Are you an annihilationist? I'm not sure what that means.

31:49

That you believe that people don't suffer in hell forever, that they are annihilated. Well, the scripture teaches that there is a eternal.

32:01

Place called hell, and I will leave it there. Yeah, but is the hell non -existence to you?

32:09

Well, you know, I'm just saying in that scripture that talks about the. I understand. The death and hell will be cast in like a fire.

32:16

You know, all the souls emptied out. They'll be judged, you know, those who are judged are also cast in like a fire.

32:22

Yeah. And so what I'm saying, though, is is the question was, if you say there's no hell, are you a

32:28

Christian? Someday there won't be a hell because there won't be a need for it. So there will be there will eternally be a hell.

32:38

OK, and there is going to be eternally a judgment upon people and hell will not cease.

32:45

Their eternal torment will not cease. Well, let's be specific with the verses bringing up because there may be confusion with it.

32:52

So Hades, which is often referred to as hell, is thrown into the lake of fire. So technically the eternal place, the eternal resting place of the verses talking revelation is lake of fire.

33:04

Now, some people refer to the lake of fire as hell. Some refer to it as Hades.

33:10

So I guess they may guess Matt's question a little bit differently for you, Keith. Do you believe that there is an eternal lake of fire where people will spend eternity in punishment for their sin?

33:22

Yeah. And that's that's a key thing to answer the question is, how do you define what hell is?

33:31

Right. Because if someone says, oh, hell is, you know, she'll the grave. Well, that will come to an end.

33:38

But the lake of fire will still be there. So it depends on how a person defines what hell is.

33:47

And, yeah, I agree with you, there is an eternal place because the Bible says there's an eternal place and I'm not going to go against that for you.

33:56

All right. But I just heard this question. It's like I didn't catch the whole context of it.

34:02

And it just kind of struck a chord on my mind. I thought it'd be a good thing to ask you about tonight.

34:07

Sure. Well, I'm glad you did. Yeah, and I take the position that there, you know, hell or Hades and how you look at that will will be cast into the lake of fire.

34:17

That's the eternal resting place. And it's like there that will have an eternal. You're also going to see a new heaven and new earth.

34:25

God will have a final resting place there as well. So. So any any other questions you have,

34:34

Keith? No, I was going to say, though, in case it tripped me up,

34:39

I hear my wife calling me. Yeah. Anyway, reference to past shows. Yeah.

34:47

You want to make sure your wife is you don't want to be what was it? Everyone called him an angry, bald

34:52

John. Right. I think I think that was it. Yeah. So you don't want to be like him where Matt gets you on the on the you know, you're getting challenged.

35:01

And then all of a sudden you got your wife's calling. You got to go. Yeah, well, that's why I had to step outside because I was trying to make it all a noise.

35:09

All right. Well, if you mute your phone, you could you could hang out here in case you have a question until the room fills up.

35:15

And I think Kat was next, although we're standing by. Yeah. So just mute yourself so we don't hear the

35:22

TV there. And I guess Kat left. So I will see,

35:29

John, I don't know if you had any questions, but you can unmute yourself if you have a question.

35:36

Well, going back to the whole Hades in hell thing, I heard also recently James White kind of mentioned about this in a debate that he had with David Silverman, where he kind of mentioned about that, where he says he doesn't believe that there's a hell right now, but Hades exists.

35:55

But then later it'll be almost like a transfer, I guess, or there'll be people.

36:01

Well, he said there's nobody in hell right now because they're kind of like in. In stasis or something like that, or is it?

36:10

Boy, I don't know. Yeah, there's different views on hell and exactly what it is. And it's not as easy as some might think because hell is cast in.

36:19

But then people are in and they're in hell is how much is hell similar to Hades or Hades to hell? And then

36:25

Tarshish and some other things that it gets it gets complicated. But.

36:32

And it comes down to how you're defining hell, because like I said, some people will say hell is just Hades.

36:38

Some people will say hell is the lake of fire. Some will say it's general for both. And that's why it's kind of safer to use the terminology

36:46

Hades and lake of fire. When I share the gospel, I don't say you're going to spend eternity in hell.

36:53

I'll say you're going to spend eternity in a lake of fire just to be a little bit more precise about it. And that's a bit more descriptive and scary.

37:01

It is. That is. That's pretty intimidating. Actually, if you want, you want scary, you know, a scarier picture of hell, you read the

37:10

Koran. That actually has a much scarier view. And maybe if this Mohammed guy who's chatting away in chat was old enough, he could come in here and we could talk about that.

37:20

But I guess he's he's only he and reformed Calvinist, I guess.

37:27

I guess they're just what would be the word, Matt, for people who feel bold when they don't actually have to be seen or.

37:35

Called keyboard keyboard warriors. Yeah. They hide behind nicknames.

37:41

They don't risk anything. You use your real name. I use my real name. Our reputations are out there.

37:47

And then they boldly go behind keyboards and the safety of their Internet's behind nicknames.

37:53

And then what they do is they challenge and make accusations. They call you a joke. That's what reformed

38:00

Calvinist says. You're a joke. No one invites you to reformed conferences because you're a joke.

38:06

You're not really Calvinist. You're a fraud. But yet I did like you asking for specifics and he couldn't name any.

38:13

Well, it is a good question, though. I've I've often wondered why is it I'm not invited to speak at reformed groups?

38:19

What do you think? I think I know. I know why. Why have you not looked in the mirror? I mean, they will hand.

38:28

Well, that's a good point. I got to grant you that one. That is a good point. Look at her. I believe it's because I believe in the continuation of the gifts.

38:35

You know, I don't think it's that. I'll tell you why. A lot of folks don't know that about you that much.

38:41

I mean, it's become more of a thing more recently, but. I don't know that's been that big of a thing.

38:46

I think next in John, you have anything else? I'll take your silence as a native.

38:52

No. All right. I'm going to add our friend from down under, Andrew, and. I guess

39:00

I do see a note that Cat said she needed to pop out. Well, if Cat comes back in, we'll we'll add her back.

39:05

But Andrew, do you have any questions for Matt tonight? Well, I'm just here to hang out and learn, as per usual, as always.

39:15

I guess the question would be, if women can't fill the pastoral roles, what roles can they fill?

39:23

Anything except pastoral teaching, preaching. OK, because at the moment,

39:31

Square Baptist, where I'm going, has a woman who doesn't speak every time and she's more responsible for the counseling side.

39:40

Yeah, I could see that. No problem with counseling. We don't speak every time. What was that?

39:46

What did that mean? She preaches every now and again. So that's a violation of the word.

39:54

OK, OK, because she is a former missionary, too. Yeah. And she's violating the word.

39:59

If she gets up and she preaches on a Sunday, the word of God, a sermon, she's in a position of teaching authority.

40:10

Yeah. OK, so it's not her position. And, you know, if I were at a church, say, you know, whatever,

40:17

I'm down. I don't know everything about the church. All of a sudden, some Sunday morning, some woman comes up.

40:23

She's a missionary from so -and -so. She's going to be delivering the word to us this morning. I would have to make a decision right there.

40:29

Yeah, I'd make a decision right there to either leave or stay, stay there in order to get notes in order to confront the eldership, because I most definitely would.

40:39

OK, OK, real badly. Let me hold on to the eldership.

40:45

I want to challenge my eldership here. It's just testimony. So you sit on a Sunday. Let me first ask this.

40:52

Johnny Erickson Tata, she is speaks at conferences, right? She gets up and gives her testimony.

40:59

Would would you have a problem with someone like Johnny Erickson Tata giving her testimony? Not at all. Just not on a

41:05

Sunday. I don't know. OK, how about if she is in her testimony, sharing scripture and explaining it?

41:13

No problem. Now doing the same thing on a Sunday. Now she's in the place of teaching authority in the church.

41:21

OK, so you you make a you making a distinction. Andrew, I'm sorry, I just wanted to I wanted to know that's OK on this.

41:27

So you make the distinction of it being Sunday during a worship service. Well, see, that's the place of authority.

41:35

See, and it says she can't be an elder or teaching authority over men. He's giving instruction in the church.

41:40

So what do you do when a woman's out on a street corner preaching the gospel? Hey, folks, you need to believe in Jesus Christ or to be saved.

41:46

I'm not going to stop her. It's not in a church that she's doing that. She's not in a position of teaching authority over men in the church context.

41:54

She's out there evangelizing. No problem. Do that. But if she's doing it at a church, like a church conference.

42:02

And she's doing it. She's still at that pulpit, is she not? Well, it depends is that this is where some of the gray areas come in and it gets more difficult to really weave through some of these pitfalls, these problems, because.

42:17

We want to see how close we can get to the the line of sin without getting there.

42:23

And so let's say I was a pastor of a church and we had some missionary woman who's done some incredibly great stuff by God's power, by God's grace.

42:32

And would I let her come into the pulpit on Sunday under certain circumstances to to to expound on the glories of God that he's done?

42:42

I'd say briefly, I'd say I would tell her you're not to be in a teaching authority position here.

42:48

You can't expound and authoritatively declare to anyone what they're obligated to do. You can do is just say what

42:55

God has done through your life and how he's worked. And that's it. And then you can invite him to meet you in a

43:01

Sunday school class afterwards and you can give more details. And that's fine. And if she said,

43:07

I don't like that, I'd say. Take it up with God. OK, so more or less, you're saying

43:14

I should move on. I mean, there's a Presbyterian church closer to me, and it means I don't have to jump on a bus.

43:21

Yeah, you know, I think that it's OK in the scriptures that if you're inconvenienced, it's

43:27

OK to support a church that violates the word. I think that's OK. Yeah, no, it's but to get to the

43:34

Baptist church. No, I have to jump on two buses, which is utterly painful, but I've liked it.

43:40

And I read beyond that. I really like the church because the eldership thing actually is only a fairly recent change.

43:49

Up to that point, it was only men who were elders. So now they have women elders.

43:55

Now I have women elders. They do work. They do now.

44:01

OK, so then why don't you go to the scriptures? Go to go to CARM because I've done the research right there.

44:06

Go check it up and print up some stuff, get some stuff and go to them and say, why are you doing this? OK, OK, it's either that or I'm just going to the closer church.

44:17

Yeah, me, I'd be taking the word of God to them. Excuse me. I was just wondering if you could deal with the word of God, please.

44:26

Why are you doing this when the scripture says this and this? Well, you see, whenever I hear someone, well, you see, blah, blah, blah.

44:34

I know it's going to go bad. I don't know. Yeah. And Andrew, what you do is you go as far as you have to to get a good biblical church.

44:43

I was up in northern Idaho. There's a family that I met that they drive an hour and a half one way to go to church, church three times a week.

44:54

So they do a three hour round trip. They spend nine hours in the car just so they could be at church.

45:01

They go to church midweek and then I think they do things. And then on Sunday, so my wife, my wife did a mission in Togo and she said people would often walk six hours one way to get to church on a

45:17

Sunday. Oh, yeah, I know of that. There were people that used to go from the Gold Coast to Springwood, but there was a highway between so it didn't take that long.

45:26

But I know of people in rural Australia who live on properties and acres, you know, 100, 100 acres, hectares even.

45:39

And they're separated by that. And they'll drive hours to get to churches or meet together as a family on the farms if they are

45:49

Christian. Sort of thing, I guess the Presbyterian church here also has a

45:56

Presbyterian inland missionary service, which they go around the churches in the city, but they have four wheel drives and trucks and all sorts of things.

46:07

And they travel around in the city, in the rural areas. And they help farmers build fences, repair fences, you know, that sort of thing.

46:17

Upkeep of houses. Basically just doing anything that needs to be done.

46:25

Right. And they're very interesting and harrowing people, actually. I've met two couples that do that.

46:33

It's a lot of isolation for the couples. But, yeah, they do a very good mission, missionary role that way.

46:43

Right. But since I switched to Ashgrove because I used to go to a

46:48

Presbyterian church on the north side here, then I had to stop. Then I had seizures come back for the epilepsy and I had to stop driving.

46:56

Full stop. End of sentence. No GP is going to let me drive again. And I pull myself off the road myself anyway, which

47:05

I probably should have done many years ago. I guess

47:10

I guess what I'm trying to do is justify staying or leaving. And I guess

47:16

I've got to try other churches out first. I would try and go to them and say, here's what the word of God says.

47:22

Why are you violating the word of God? Mm hmm. Yeah, I think they'd give me that.

47:29

They'd get they'd definitely have their reasons for it for them. And that's the problem. And I don't think I'm here for reasons and see what they say.

47:38

Yeah. I mean, we put it through and it was put through a vote. There were some who didn't go, of course, with Pastor Tim's exit, a lot of people have exited to.

47:52

Just because they go, go, go, go, get the information, get together, go talk to them.

47:59

Mm hmm. Yeah, gotcha. Yeah, I'm I'm I'm getting it.

48:04

Sorry. Asperger's must be kicking in. Yeah. So this is getting interesting. So Matt, Reformed Calvinist says, you're a joke.

48:12

I'm a joke. But John is the true is true ministry. Unlike these clowns.

48:18

OK, I guess he doesn't realize that my ministry is a joke. My doctrine is exactly pretty much almost exactly in line with John MacArthur.

48:25

So how could I be a joke for what I believe? And yet MacArthur is not. We believe the same thing.

48:31

Hmm. The truth. I guess he's too much of a coward to come in here. So can

48:37

I say to extend that? I, I had a thought just to extend that if he thinks he's that great.

48:47

What about R .C. Sproul? He had a very different view. Ravi Zacharias doesn't even believe in Calvinism and refutes it on a regular basis.

48:58

I can think of John Lennox who doesn't support Calvinism, yet they don't deny the existence of God.

49:04

Well, well, this guy is saying that, I guess, well, at least Matt is not a real Calvinist.

49:09

So what are you doing? So so maybe maybe he'll come in. Maybe Mohammed will come in.

49:15

We're asking Mohammed says that we're not letting him in. But that's not true. I have not blocked him.

49:20

I haven't timed him out. So well, if you need me, if you need me to go, I can go back to YouTube just as easily.

49:26

Now we're in the room is not full yet. And we're going to next before we go. Yeah, we have two two more folks in here with questions.

49:34

But before we go, Andrew, if you just want to mute, I'll mute you for now.

49:41

So before we get to the next person who we think is going to be, it says, I think

49:46

I can't read it so well, something, Jonathan Tatiana, maybe just my eyes are not so good before we get to to them.

49:58

I just want to give a plug for a conference coming up March 15th and 16th.

50:05

Justin Peters from Justin Peters Ministries, Pastor Frank Mullis from Striving for Eternity Ministries.

50:13

Joe Suazo, those two guys I mentioned are the keynote speakers. We have

50:18

Pastor Joe Suazo from Emanuel Bible Church and Colleen Sharp from Theology Gals. We'll all be speaking at a conference.

50:25

I will note Colleen Sharp will be doing a breakout session to women only since we were just talking about that.

50:32

But this conference is going to be on the topic of suffering, something that if you were listening to this show for any length of time, you know,

50:42

Matt understands quite a bit about this recently with what his wife physically is going through. So she understands physical suffering.

50:49

But that also puts a strain on Matt, where Matt deals with the suffering of having to support someone in that way.

50:55

Maybe you suffer with depression or anxiety. You suffer with physical issues. You suffer with being married to someone who's unsaved or having children who are rebellious.

51:07

Whatever the issue is, everyone has areas where they suffer. Most of us don't want to really get that be known.

51:15

This conference is called the Sanctification Through Suffering Conference.

51:21

It's going to be held in Freehold, New Jersey, a Chinese American Bible church. And the thing with this conference is we want to see people learn how

51:29

God can use your suffering for your sanctification.

51:36

And if you want to get the details, if you just go to strivingforeternity .org right on the homepage is a link to the conference.

51:44

And so you'd be able to get the details there. And the thing that we're trying to do is help folks in an area most people don't want to talk about.

51:54

No one likes to talk about suffering. I don't know of any other conference that focuses on it and addresses it.

52:00

And we may end up doing this where if this conference goes well, we're going to take it on the road and do it in other places.

52:07

So if you're interested in having it, your church, contact us at strivingforeternity .org. But the thing that we want to do with this conference is to be able to have something that is a resource for folks to be able to learn how

52:23

God can use your suffering that you have in your life for your sanctification to grow you more like Christ.

52:30

So if you're interested in attending. Now, we have if you go and register, the cost is $40.

52:36

That is to cover the flights for the speakers. We're not striving fraternity isn't making money off this.

52:42

The speakers will get the money. The issue that we want to do, though, is some people cannot afford because they're struggling with things, financial struggles and also a struggle.

52:52

So we're doing this. If you can't afford it, there is a link that says can't you having trouble paying?

52:58

Then you come to you just come to the conference at the door. We're going to do a love offering. You pay what you can at the door.

53:05

If you can't pay anything, that's fine. There's others who can. Some people I know that have already paid and they're not attending.

53:11

You can also go to striving for eternity. Slat dot org slash donate. And you could say that you want to put something in for conferences and we'll direct that for this conference.

53:21

So that's a resource we want to make available to you. And with that, I'm going to bring in and I think it was

53:28

I'm going to let you give your name because I think it's a Tatiana, but I couldn't read it.

53:34

Yeah, you can call me J .R. J .R. OK. Well, that's easier. So, J .R., welcome.

53:40

I think is the first time here. It is. Yeah. All right. Well, welcome. You have a question for Matt.

53:46

Yes, sir. So I have I'm a believer. I have a question about numbers 511 to 31.

53:53

And I've I've looked this up in in three commentaries and they don't really address the apologetics concerns.

53:59

This is one of those passages atheists love to bring up. So I thought I'd just come in and ask you about it.

54:05

And then since you're on the topic of women, I I have a secondary hypothetical about an argument for women as elders.

54:13

But that's more of a intellectual exercise. OK, so you have a question on what?

54:22

The reason I came in here was numbers five, 11 through 31. The it seems to describe a situation in which a ritual is performed in order to discern whether or not a woman has a wife has committed adultery.

54:39

And the punishment seems to be miscarriage at best. Atheists would describe this as God condoning abortion as punishment, which wouldn't make sense if you're punishing the unborn child for the abortion in there or anything like it.

54:55

What verse? Yeah, so it talks about their their depending on what translation you have up, it might say thigh.

55:03

It's one of those issue ones where they it's translated. Yeah, I'm sorry. I'm looking it up right now.

55:11

Twenty five through twenty eight. And then there's one one mentioned prior to that. Yeah, drink the water.

55:20

Abandon or swell and her thigh will waste away. The woman will become a curse among the people. I don't see where it says that the.

55:30

Where the child's to be lost. Yeah, you you got it.

55:42

So twenty one, twenty two and then twenty five through the woman swears an oath.

55:50

Yeah, twenty seven. Adam will waste away. I don't even know what that means, really. And water brings a curse.

55:56

She'll go to your stomach, your Adam and swell your thigh, waste away. OK, yes, the the thigh waste away, if you look that up in the

56:03

Hebrew and a number of translations, at least footnote it as miscarriage.

56:09

Yeah, not now. The translations are thighs, side, hip, base, his own, the descendants and who are his descendants.

56:21

Right, right. But there's a Dr. Josh Bowen, he's an he's an agnostic.

56:28

But and three of the four commentaries I checked identified it as likely miscarriage.

56:34

So it's a apologetic answer is that it's not. Well, then that's a language problem that's above my pay grade.

56:42

I can't figure that out. But you know, you got to say

56:47

I've not studied it in light of that particular issue. I have to go do some research to see. Sure.

56:52

But I, you know, and that's worth looking at and examining in numbers five.

56:59

Maybe I've written on it before and it's been so long, I just don't remember. I'll check. But what are the atheists raising this for?

57:07

What's the reason? The reason would be that this would be potentially God condoning abortion as a punishment.

57:15

It would be their argument. Well, it let's just say hypothetically, let's work with that.

57:21

Let's say they said that God is letting the child die or whatever. I'd say, is that bad or good or right or wrong?

57:30

Because if God's doing this, there's a reason for it. And he has the right to execute all people since all people by nature are children of wrath of Asians to three.

57:39

So how do you know he's not taking the child home so that he'll be with him in heaven instead of being raised in a situation where his reputation would be very negative and he might have a very guilty suffering kind of a life socially because of it?

57:57

I'd say, you don't know all the details, but I'd say, Mr. Atheist, so what? Are you against abortion? And they say, well, we are for it.

58:06

But you in the Bible said it's not. Well, show me where it is that in the case. And even if you're going to argue from inside the

58:12

Christian perspective, well, then you have to understand that God has ordained this as a means of test in that Old Testament context that would have worked out just as God desired.

58:21

So what's the problem? So they don't really have anything to stand on, if you know. Okay, to kind of devil's advocate a little bit.

58:32

So the atheist I was talking to actually was pro -life, and he would say it's inconsistent in the

58:38

Christian worldview. But so would you say. How would he know it's inconsistent in the Christian worldview? He would say, one, it says that they're not going to punish the children for the sins of the father.

58:55

So the effect of sin can pass down.

59:06

So that's a different concept there. Well, yeah, I would agree. The effect of sin, it seems like a punishment for adultery being killing the child does seem like punishing the child for the parent's sin, though.

59:22

It seems like that. And with David, he lost his son due to the sin. So we would have another instance of that.

59:29

In fact, I have written on that. Yeah, he brought that up. Yeah, there's a consequence to our actions that affect others.

59:36

And what does it mean to be punished for another person's sin? Well, if I rob a bank, you can't go to jail for that.

59:44

You can't be punished for my sin. But if you're in the bank, and I go in, and I shoot people, and you're shot in the process, let's say you don't die, well, then you are now affected by my sin in that context.

01:00:01

And there seems to be a spiritual kind of a consequence of people's sin that affects others.

01:00:09

And if they're going to say, like in David's case, that the child's punished, well, in all seriousness, who says it's a punishment on the child?

01:00:18

It's a punishment on the father, on David, that he would lose the son. It's not a punishment on the child.

01:00:26

Yeah, you would have to intrinsically believe life is good. And that's not necessary.

01:00:31

Yeah, so within the Christian worldview, that makes sense. Another question from a devil's advocate perspective.

01:00:38

Would you consider this a good law today? Are you an atheist in disguise?

01:00:45

No, I am not. No, I'm actually in full -time ministry. Okay. A good law for today?

01:00:54

No, I'm not a theonomist. Right. Okay. I'm not either.

01:01:02

Well, let me, because, I mean, you're saying the question is, I guess the reason

01:01:07

I have issues with the question is you said, is this a good law for today? And we never discussed what the law is. Yeah, that's true.

01:01:14

And some reform folks take it differently. Yeah, let me just do one thing real quick.

01:01:19

And that's this, your friend who said that this refers to abortion.

01:01:26

I've gone through now, I looked at the English standard version, the Holman, the new American standard, the new

01:01:32

English translation, the new King James, the King James, new international, the complete

01:01:38

Jewish Bible. Sorry, not that one. The new American standard 95 version looked at the new revised standard, looked at the new living translation, looked at the new

01:01:51

Jerusalem Bible. Just going through all the Bibles that I've looked through the American version, the

01:01:57

Amplified version, the Good News Bible, the Message, the 1890

01:02:03

Darby Bible, none of them say that the closest these come is that they say your abdomen swells.

01:02:11

That would be the opposite of an abortion. If your abdomen is swelling, that would more seem like you're getting pregnant.

01:02:18

So not that it's an abortion, just looking at the way that translations do that.

01:02:25

I just looked at a dozen plus translations. Sure, false pregnancy was one of the things the commentary said, but some of the translations do footnote miscarriage.

01:02:36

I didn't do as thorough a survey as you did. Well, I didn't do it.

01:02:41

I just went through each translation to look at it to see if any of them did say that. I didn't see any of it.

01:02:48

Yeah, which troubled me because truthfully, it seems like the thigh translating thigh seems deliberately ambiguous, but I'm not a

01:02:59

Hebrew scholar, so I can't know for sure. But yeah, you were going to go talk about specifically what is the law, and I'm just trying to get inside the head of the atheist.

01:03:12

Actually, if somebody you guys know, Skyler Fiction brings up some of this stuff.

01:03:22

Well, there you go. Consider it. Yeah, you keep in mind that his source is not a

01:03:30

Christian scholar, right? Well, yeah, I looked it up in evangelical commentaries, though, and three out of four said miscarriage was likely.

01:03:42

They didn't put it in terms of abortion, but. Well, actually, it is funny because this was a passage

01:03:48

I got asked today if I would respond to on my rap report podcast, so I may end up dealing with this because when we get emails with requests to do interpretations of passages,

01:04:00

I tend to do that. So yeah, that would be great to do some study on this. And, you know, Matt, maybe

01:04:06

I'll do an article on it. Yeah, it seems like I may have to do something like that. All right.

01:04:13

So JR, is it? Yes, sir. I just just trying to test my memory. So where you're you said you're in ministry, what church, what ministry?

01:04:22

Yeah, I actually can't talk about it too much on the Internet. That's so I'm actually

01:04:28

I've been in the same place for nine years, and now

01:04:34

I'm about to launch to another place where I have to keep a lower profile.

01:04:40

OK, so I was actually the reason this was on my mind is I had scholar fiction brought this up, and then

01:04:48

I was taking a biblical interpretation class, a grad class, and it this passage actually showed up as an example of how why it's difficult to interpret

01:05:01

Old Testament law in the textbook. But then they didn't necessarily put put something forth.

01:05:07

So that's why it was on my mind. What denomination would you be or would be closest to?

01:05:14

I'm not a nominee. You don't really have to ask me specific theological questions. I probably

01:05:20

I'm not a nominational charismatic, probably Lutheran in my soteriology.

01:05:27

OK, so not not reformed enough. Well, it seems

01:05:34

Matt's not even reformed enough for. Right. Yeah, right. So I would say

01:05:42

I'm not reformed because I hold the charismatic gifts. That's how you're not a true. I don't know why he said that, because he won't come in.

01:05:51

It's all right. All right. Would you just meet yourself?

01:05:56

You have another question. Just let us know in the side chat. Yeah, I did. I did have a second hypothetical since you were on women.

01:06:03

But if it's if I need to wait in line, that's fine. No, no, no. Go for it. Go for it. Yeah. So this this is

01:06:09

I'm just interested in the response. So the this one is Roman 16 says Phoebe is a deacon.

01:06:16

Now that Greek word can be interpreted multiple ways. But if she's a deacon, then the language prohibiting a theme that says husband of one wife in the deacon passage in Timothy then does not prohibit women from being in that office.

01:06:32

So why does the language prohibit women being in the office of elder? That's the. Well, since we know that the

01:06:37

Bible doesn't contradict itself, we know that she can't be a deacon in the authoritative sense in the church context.

01:06:43

That'd be very simple. And the word diakonos means servant. So she's a servant of the

01:06:51

Lord. And you can have servants who are male, female in the church in ecclesiastical structure or not.

01:06:58

And so it's just used in different different sense. That's all that's going on. And if you take a look at that passage in first Timothy three, what you end up seeing is it's going to say first, it talks about the role of the pastor.

01:07:14

OK, verse one, this is a trustworthy saying anyone who inspires the office of an overseer, overseer, bishop, pastor, same same position, different ways of explaining the same office.

01:07:26

So it starts off with that. Then in verse eight, likewise, deacons. OK, and as Matt said, this is a servant.

01:07:32

This isn't a leadership position. This is a servant position. And you see that he goes through and then it says, likewise, women.

01:07:40

Now, the word there for wives in many translations can also be woman. It's more often actually translated woman, but it is translate can be translated wives if there is a husband referenced.

01:07:55

OK, so some people argue that the deacon is the husband that's referenced. But in this case, there is no specific husband that's mentioned.

01:08:03

The fact that it says likewise is the same connector that we have in verse eight. So when you see the first, you see things where it is specific to male deacons.

01:08:13

Then you get a reference to the female deacons. OK, then in verse twelve, it goes back to male deacons.

01:08:21

And now it's specific to things that only male deacons can have. What you have is rules for a pastor just like that.

01:08:29

Here's the rules for the deacon. The first set in verse eight and nine are true for both female and male deacons.

01:08:37

And then you have it going back to things that are only true of a male deacon, like being the husband of one wife.

01:08:44

OK, so do you believe women can be deacons or not? Does it seem like Matt is suggesting they cannot?

01:08:51

Well, it can be an ecclesiastical structure. If a deacon is defined as someone in authority over anybody in the church, then no.

01:08:59

Because there are different ways of defining the office. If it's an ecclesiastical structure, no. But if they're just helping out and they're kind of called that,

01:09:06

I don't like that idea. I don't think it's a good idea. But that seems to be one of the ways of defining it that way.

01:09:13

So the thing is why I say this is a word that got transliterated into English because people created the role of a deacon no longer as a servant, but as a leadership position.

01:09:27

And therefore, they actually created a new English word to satisfy their ecclesiastical government.

01:09:34

So I would translate this as servants. Likewise, servants. Now you don't have that problem because they're not a leadership role.

01:09:41

And that's why I wouldn't have a problem with it, like Matt said, if they're in the proper functioning, as this text says.

01:09:49

Okay. Yeah. And that was my view of deacons as well. But then it seems like if you'd go that route, then that the previous argument based on language still works.

01:09:59

You have to go to other texts to say women can't be elders. Yeah. Well, there's, you don't see, you know, the interesting thing is that you don't see any reference to, if you want to say that's a wife, you don't see anything in reference to the pastor's wife and whose wife would need to have the qualifications.

01:10:15

I mean, the pastor, right? If there's going to be qualifications for a wife, if that's what that's saying, then you'd think the pastor's wife would need qualifications too.

01:10:24

And you don't see that there. So if this is, here's the role of pastor, who's the overseer, and that's the idea there.

01:10:32

And then you have these servants. Well, you have male servants and female servants. So does that answer your question?

01:10:43

Yeah. I mean, I could go on because it doesn't seem that, but I don't know.

01:10:48

This is a hypothetical for me. So I don't know if it's necessarily is worth the time, but it seems like the logic of that argument would then get us into the, well, what about the whole single men thing, if that makes sense?

01:11:05

So it just seems to me, you better go to a different text.

01:11:11

So, well, no, actually what you see there, when it says the husband of one wife, it actually is literally a one woman man.

01:11:18

Right. This is not talking about the number of wives he has. It's not talking about divorce and remarriage. It's talking about basically the way he looks at his wife.

01:11:27

If he doesn't, as long as he doesn't have wandering eyes, it's talking about a character issue. So you can be a single man and not have wandering eyes.

01:11:34

You could be a married man and have wandering eyes. So it's not about the singleness.

01:11:40

It's not about the number of wives. It's about the devotion to the wife you have, or the fact that you wouldn't be having a wandering eye that you're staring after people.

01:11:51

So. Okay. But if it's a single man, then the qualifications for wife are irrelevant.

01:11:59

And I just, again, I'm devil's advocating. So maybe we should move on. That's okay.

01:12:05

I appreciate the time. Yeah. If you have more questions, if you don't mind muting yourself.

01:12:11

Actually, I can mute for now. And before we go to the next, the next would be

01:12:18

Melissa. She's got a question for you, Matt. I just have to say, I like this reformed Calvinist guy. He tells you that you need to remove your

01:12:25

T -shirt from saying truth. He's against truth.

01:12:31

Lying. No, he says you're a liar. But for what? I don't know.

01:12:37

I was just going to say, I don't see any specifics. He says you're a joke. I'm a joke. You're a liar.

01:12:45

Well, he's half true. We all know you're a coward to come in here.

01:12:52

You're too much. I mean, at least Muhammad came in. Muhammad's more of a man than he is, I guess.

01:12:59

Well, Justin's in there and he's slinging mud and stuff like that. And I said, well, come on in the room.

01:13:04

He can't. I've got company. So he's in here talking, but he can't come in the room and talk while he's got company.

01:13:11

His wife is calling. All right. So I just added. Oh, yeah.

01:13:17

My wife's calling. There we go again. I like the person earlier who was like, yeah, my wife's calling.

01:13:24

All right. So Melissa, unmute yourself and ask your question. Hello. Can you hear me?

01:13:32

Yeah, we hear you. How are you doing? I was in your the radio chat room about three days ago and someone said like kick

01:13:42

A .S .S. graphics and something should have that kind of graphics on your website. And I was like,

01:13:47

I was saying that you had to say that was like not good to say bad words.

01:13:52

And then you asked me what bad words it was. But I don't think you got to see it. And she said

01:13:59

I was being sensitive. I'm not following you. Sorry.

01:14:05

She seemed to be saying something about that went on in your radio show chat room, which I don't think you get to follow too much when you're on the radio.

01:14:13

Yeah, because they said they said kick A .S .S. graphics. And I was saying that's a bad word.

01:14:18

You shouldn't say that as a Christian. And then she said I was being sensitive. So is your question that you shouldn't say that as a

01:14:27

Christian? You know, because I think the Bible says that we don't want to be legalistic.

01:14:33

And stuff. But, you know, I would just ask, do you think it's appropriate language?

01:14:40

I just, you know, just bring it up. And, you know. Yeah, she was in the chat room.

01:14:47

And you were asked. I said massive would agree with me. And then you asked me and then

01:14:53

I don't think you got to see afterwards. I was saying. Yeah, I wouldn't say that.

01:15:00

I wouldn't use that terminology. OK, so so do you agree that Christians can curse if they want to?

01:15:11

Well, we take can are they physically able to? Yes, if they want to. They're able to.

01:15:17

Is it a morally right thing to do? Generally, I would say the Bible tells us to remove abusive foul language from our mouths.

01:15:24

So I would say leave that up to between the person and God and see what

01:15:30

God says. And. OK. Conviction before the Lord. Yeah, because I know because words could be different for some people, like some people in other countries, something could be different to.

01:15:44

Because I know they use I think it's in like Denmark or something like that.

01:15:51

They use the F word, but it means like to breed in their language. Right. And I had a seminary professor who had a

01:15:57

Dutch background and he used. Yeah, I think it was Dutch. S H, you know, the word and I was like, what?

01:16:05

And I understood after a bit ago. That's right. From his where he came from. It just means stuff.

01:16:12

You know, there's no negative connotation. So, you know, it's that's what it is. Well, that's all

01:16:18

I want to know. So thanks. Sure. OK. Well, right before we get to Mohammed, it'd be a good time for us to talk about our sponsor,

01:16:29

MyPillow, because, well, if you take a look at Matt, you realize he needs a good night's sleep.

01:16:35

He needs that for his beauty rest. I need lots of sleep. Obviously, he's not getting enough beauty sleep.

01:16:42

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We're not saying that just because they're our sponsor. We're saying it because we've been using them long before they were our sponsor.

01:17:21

Yeah. In fact, you know what? My back, because I'm getting older and stuff like that, is starting to give out on me.

01:17:29

I want to get a MyPillow topper. Yes, they just got that.

01:17:34

Yeah. Because they haven't sent me one. They may talk about doing that kind of thing. But they sent me one.

01:17:40

I'm going to try it. Because every morning, not every morning, but like this morning, I'd use a cane to get around.

01:17:47

Because my back is starting to really act up. I have a fourth lumbar vertebra that's deformed.

01:17:53

I was born with this problem. So as you get older, things get weaker. But I'm interested in trying that.

01:18:00

Can I get a video of you walking around with a cane? That would be fun. Yeah, well,

01:18:05

I'm in pain in the meantime. Some of you'd like that. But yeah, it's bad.

01:18:12

Well, I mean, just the idea of being able to bust on you. I mean, you are what, like 62? 62.

01:18:18

I'm 62. It wasn't for that slight issue. You know, no problems.

01:18:24

The gym, martial arts, everything. It's just this darn thing. I've got to strengthen it. So anyway, I want to try that thing.

01:18:30

I want to try it. You're old enough to get Social Security now, huh? That's true. That is so true.

01:18:36

Thank you for reminding me. You're like a true citizen. I have to be nice to you. I've been a senior citizen for a long time.

01:18:45

Heck yeah. Yeah, you probably have like an AARP card, huh? I know.

01:18:51

You know, I supposed to, but I don't. Oh, yeah. I can get discounts and some stuff.

01:18:57

But you know, people don't think I'm over 655. Most people don't. You're yawning there.

01:19:04

This is, is it too late for you? Do you? Oh, no. I'll be up till midnight, 1, 2 o 'clock in the morning. Talking about my pillow.

01:19:10

You want to go put your head down on your pillow? I'm good, man. I'm good.

01:19:15

You can handle that. Well, I just added in Mohamed, who was chatting away.

01:19:21

We finally got him to come in. Unlike reformed Calvinists, who, yeah, well, he's probably just too scared to come in.

01:19:28

But Mohamed was willing to come in. So, Mohamed, you can unmute yourself. Let's see.

01:19:34

I might be, oh, no, there you go. And let me pull your volume up. There you go. I'm from the

01:19:44

UK. Matt, I have a question for, how can

01:19:52

Christ be God when he said in John 20, I go to your God and my God. So can

01:19:57

God have a God? It's a pretty typical question asked by atheists,

01:20:04

I mean, atheists, Muslims. And they fail to study biblical theology and understand what the issues are.

01:20:12

So when he says, how can you be God, when he says he has a God, that's a demonstration of the failure to understand the difference in the terms.

01:20:21

When we say he is God, we're saying he has the divine nature. When we say he has a

01:20:28

God, then we're not talking about just that divine nature, but about the person, in this case, of the Father.

01:20:34

So there's a difference between the terms and how they're used. We've got to be careful for the issue of equivocation, which is what you fell into without knowing that.

01:20:45

That's one thing. The other thing is that Jesus was made under the law, Galatians 4, 4, made for a while, little order than the angels,

01:20:52

Hebrews 2, 9. Being under the law, he was required to pray to God, required to serve

01:21:03

God, to obey. And so he's in reference to God the Father, we would call him his

01:21:09

God, but not as though he's a God and then Jesus is another God, which is what

01:21:14

Muslims sometimes mistakenly accuse us of, which is not our position. Okay.

01:21:20

You said I did a false equivocation. I disagree. When you said Jesus Christ, it was his human nature.

01:21:28

You said my God, right? And you said he was a human person. I thought in Christian theology,

01:21:34

Christ is a divine person. And when you said he was lower than the angels, I'm sure that's a kenosis heresy, right?

01:21:43

Okay. So I commend you for trying to study, but you've misapplied them.

01:21:49

You need to understand what the kenosis heresy is. And let me ask you, do you know where it's spoken of? Where the kenosis theory and heresy comes from?

01:21:55

Yes. In Philippines 2, 11, when you said he was lower than the angels, so he left his divine attributes.

01:22:02

No, oh, well, well, no, I didn't quote Philippians 2 for that. He was made for a little while lower than the angels.

01:22:07

That was Hebrews 2, 9. And where in that does it say he abandoned his divine attributes?

01:22:13

No, no, I'm saying the kenosis heresy is when, obviously, when someone says, oh, he isn't fully

01:22:20

God, and so he didn't have this, the full knowledge, right? When people say

01:22:26

Christ didn't know the hour or day, and then people say it was because he was human. That would be a kenosis heresy, right?

01:22:33

Not necessarily, but depends on how it's carried out. So here's the thing. When you say

01:22:40

Jesus is God, what you mean, what we mean by that is he is divine. That's why I say to people,

01:22:46

Jesus is divine, and he serves God the Father. And God as a trinity,

01:22:53

Father, Son, Holy Spirit, each of the persons are divine by nature. The word became flesh and dwelt among us.

01:22:59

So therefore, we have the person of Christ with two distinct natures, the divine nature and the human nature.

01:23:04

But he's not Christ. You wouldn't say Christ is an addition formula. He's not human nature plus divine nature equals person

01:23:11

Jesus. Jesus' person is the logos. He is the eternal divine person. So his person is incarnate.

01:23:18

It's not correct. How is that not correct? Jesus is not the eternal divine word.

01:23:25

He's not? You don't hear what you're saying. No, he is. The personhood is his logos.

01:23:32

He added human nature. He isn't an additional formula. Okay, you ready? Let's get more precise.

01:23:38

The word is eternal. The person of Jesus began 2 ,000 years ago.

01:23:44

Is Jesus a human person or a divine person? Let me finish. The person. Can you answer that, please?

01:23:51

Because then I understand. I do not like it when Muslims tell me how to answer the questions I want to answer.

01:23:57

I just want to just want to yes or no. Is he a divine person or human person? I do not like it when

01:24:03

Muslims tell me how they want me to answer a question. Mohammed, he is trying to answer your question. You're cutting him off.

01:24:09

So either you're going to listen to the answer or you're not going to get the answer.

01:24:14

But he's answering you. But you're asking of an invalid question. Okay, I'm trying to show you what the answer is.

01:24:24

And you interrupt me and tell me how to answer. I'm showing you that you're doing historianism.

01:24:32

Okay, maybe. I just want to ask you, is he a human person or a divine person? Okay, maybe what you might want to consider is to be patient.

01:24:44

Instead of demanding how I'm to answer. Why don't you show some humility and let me answer the way

01:24:50

I choose to answer. Go for it. Yes, sir.

01:24:55

Go on. That's polite of you. It shouldn't be that I have to get on a Muslim because doesn't

01:25:01

Surah 2, where was that? 53 to 43, tell you to be humble before people?

01:25:07

Because you're not doing it. You're breaking the Quranic requirement. You don't have to deflect much.

01:25:12

You can carry on. Deflect? See, I battle

01:25:17

Muslims and you're typical of a Muslim. You want to dominate and control. I'm not going to...

01:25:23

No, I'm asking you a question. I'm not controlling. You can have the platform. There you go. Speak. Don't tell me to speak.

01:25:31

I'm not going to play by your rules. I want to answer the way I want to answer. That's how it is.

01:25:37

You answer the way you want to answer. I just... Okay, all I want... Okay, that would have been a no. I'm just going to... I'm bringing his volume down until you're done answering and then we'll bring him back up.

01:25:45

So go ahead and answer. Well, now what I'm trying to tell him is that the word...

01:25:50

He wasn't listening. He doesn't want to listen, apparently. This is how Muslims... This is instructional for a lot of people.

01:25:56

You got to understand, this is what Muslims do. This is how Muslims are. They don't have humility. They have arrogance and they want to tell you how to answer, when to answer.

01:26:05

And if you don't answer the way they want you to answer, they interrupt you and tell you you're wrong. They don't listen. And I am so tired of that kind of attitude mentality with Muslims.

01:26:14

So I'm just calling him on the carpet on this. Now, here's what we have to understand as Christians.

01:26:21

Jesus began 2 ,000 years ago. What we mean by that is that Jesus, who has two distinct natures, a divine nature and a human nature.

01:26:30

This union began 2 ,000 years ago. The word, which is the second person of the

01:26:37

Trinity, is eternal. Jesus, the human aspect of Christ, the human aspect of Christ, had a beginning 2 ,000 years ago because humanity is by definition not eternal in the past.

01:26:49

So when we have the hypostatic union that in the one person of Jesus are two distinct natures, that hypostatic union began 2 ,000 years ago.

01:26:59

Now, what he did was accuse me of teaching Nestorianism, which tells me he doesn't understand what he's saying.

01:27:06

Nestorianism is that there's two persons in the body of Christ. That's the basic view of Nestorianism.

01:27:12

That's not what I was teaching. So, excuse me, to get to the point again, to reiterate, the man

01:27:20

Jesus, the human Jesus began, this part of Jesus, I don't like to use the word part, but the human aspect of Jesus began 2 ,000 years ago.

01:27:30

The union occurred 2 ,000 years ago. That's the hypostatic union.

01:27:36

So when people say, technically, they say Jesus is eternal, well, in one sense, they're correct.

01:27:41

In another sense, they're not. They're correct in the sense that the attributes of eternality are ascribed to a single person.

01:27:47

That's called the communicatio idiomatum. But they're not accurate in the sense that the human nature of Christ is not eternal.

01:27:55

So these are the issues I try and get more precise with people so they can understand what they're talking about. Okay, now.

01:28:02

Can I answer now? Just be polite. Okay. I just want to say, you keep saying a human person.

01:28:10

So you believe Christ is a divine person or a human person? Did I say human person?

01:28:17

You did, yes. Okay. So Jesus is one person with two distinct natures, the divine and the human.

01:28:25

Right, but he's not an additional formula, right? He added human nature to his divine personhood.

01:28:32

Yeah, that's fine. And he has one person with two distinct natures. That's the hypostatic union. Yes, I know the doctrine.

01:28:41

I'm saying because Christ is a divine person and he did not lose any attributes, because like I said, that would be kenosis.

01:28:48

When he said to the father, what do you say? The father, we don't say father, okay? But when you guys say father,

01:28:53

I'll try and do it so you can understand. When he said father, okay, he said, my

01:29:00

God. So that is his God because he is a divine person. So God does have a

01:29:06

God. Okay. There's your equivocation. Okay. How is that equivocation?

01:29:12

Okay. A God is by definition, a being. So when we say that Jesus Christ is God, we're saying that he is divine by nature.

01:29:18

We're not saying he's a God. We're saying his quality in essence is of divinity. There are different categories, different senses.

01:29:26

Do you understand? Yeah, I think I understand what you're saying. So you're saying Christ isn't a God. Christ is not a

01:29:33

God. When we describe a God, you mean a separate entity and being by himself.

01:29:40

We're not polytheists. Okay. I'll come back to you on that then.

01:29:48

Muslim. I've debated Muslims. I've dealt with them. I don't want to create a storm, man. That's why

01:29:53

I don't understand it. So I'll go back to you on that. As I was saying, I've debated many

01:29:59

Muslims and they very frequently make the same mistake you're making. Okay.

01:30:08

So, okay. So let's move on. Okay. So 17, John 17, 3, when Christ says the only true

01:30:15

God is the Father. So how can Christ be God when he said the only true God is the Father? First of all,

01:30:21

Jesus was made Lord in the angels, Hebrews 2, 9, made under the law Galatians 4, 4.

01:30:26

And so he would serve under the law requirements someone he would call God. He would call

01:30:32

God the Father, his God, in the sense because of his lowered position, Philippians 2, 5 -8, what we would call that emptying, that is not kenosis.

01:30:41

And you're right. Kenosis is a heresy. It's God minus something with hypostatic union is God plus something.

01:30:46

You could look at it overly simplified like that. And what we would see within Judaistic circles is they would often say things in an exaggerated sense.

01:30:55

He's my God, your God, the only God. He's just giving the glory to who the Father is. When we know that this kind of a thing is taught because you go to Jude 4, where it says

01:31:04

Jesus is our only Lord and master. And so Jude is a brother of Jesus would write this that we have to ask, is he as a good

01:31:12

Jew saying that Jesus, who's the only Lord and master means that God the Father is not their

01:31:17

Lord and master? We would say, of course not. What we're seeing in the Judaistic ideology and the methodology of speaking is often singularly saying the only one, the only pure, the only this one is not technically true, but it's often an appellation of glory, adoration, et cetera, et cetera, to the one.

01:31:35

This is what Jesus is doing in John 17, 3. Yeah, but he says because he was under the law, which made him lower, you would say in rank or?

01:31:47

My wife is in subjection to me, according to the biblical revelation. I'm the head of the family, but it does not mean that I'm better than her or different than her in nature.

01:31:58

And who was made under the law and subject to the father that has no bearing on his nature and his essence.

01:32:06

Okay, but I still don't understand how Christ can be a divine person and then yet say that only got the father is the true

01:32:13

God. Okay. Did you hear what I said about that? Yeah, I know you're saying because he was under the law and he was, he was lower than the angels and.

01:32:23

Repeat it. Repeat the answer about that. Yeah, because he was lower than the angels, right?

01:32:29

Okay. So you didn't listen to what I said. Okay, but he's a divine, if he's a divine person, right?

01:32:37

I don't understand how, how him saying the father is the true God doesn't make, doesn't make him less.

01:32:43

Okay. So, um, you did not listen to what I said. Were you looking something else up?

01:32:49

Were you doing something else in the meantime? No, no, I'm listening. Okay. Did you hear me mention the book of Jude?

01:32:56

Yes. About the Jewish, the old Testament, but I didn't really understand it. Okay. So, um, as I gave you an explanation for Jude, excuse me, for John 17, three, he's saying that in reference to his position being lower in status under the law, he would have someone he would call his

01:33:16

God and in the proper aspect of worship, Jesus said the only true

01:33:21

God and notice what he says. That's true. Salvation is to know him and Jesus.

01:33:26

It's like in the Quran, Allah and Muhammad. You have to know them both. This is what

01:33:32

Muhammad does, but he said he's, he's divine where Jesus does claim that divinity elsewhere in the same scriptures.

01:33:40

The reason I went to Jude four was to show you that in the Jewish mindset and Jesus was certainly in that culture,

01:33:47

Jude chapter four, Jude four was the brother of Jesus. Jude calls

01:33:53

Jesus our only Lord and master. If we're to take it strictly literally for what it means, then we would have to say that God, the father is not our

01:34:03

Lord and nor would he be our master. And that of course, can't be true. Why would

01:34:09

Jude as an example of this kind of thought, why would Jude raise this issue up and say, he's our only

01:34:15

Lord and master when technically it's not correct because in the mindset,

01:34:21

I'll say this again, what they would often do is say really exalting things about someone and particularly in reference to God and call them the only this, the only that, the only this, and there was, they were more in a worshipful stance than a doctrinal precise statement.

01:34:43

And this is what's going on in Jude and John 17 three, and we can see the Jewish mindset because Jude says,

01:34:50

Jesus is our only Lord and master. So if it's true, what Jesus said in John 17 three, in a strictly literal sense is that that means only

01:34:59

God, the father's God, then also it would mean that Jesus is only our Lord, only Jesus, excuse me, is our

01:35:04

Lord and our master. And then I would say, well, how are we going to reconcile these? And obviously we don't do it by going that strictly literal.

01:35:10

That's your problem. Okay. I'll come back to that. Okay. So another question. Um, if, uh, okay, if Christ is

01:35:19

God, right, he's fully God, um, and he's fully man, but if he's a divine person, how can

01:35:25

Christ know the, uh, not know the hour or day and only the father knows? And like I said, that would be, if you, if he said, because he's human, then that would be a divine attribute lost, which would be then kenosis.

01:35:38

Not many people understand this cultural context. You might be able to understand it a little bit more from a

01:35:43

Jew, from a Muslim context, but the Jews and the Muslims have different, uh, cultural norms, but nevertheless, when it was time for a young man to be married, uh, usually to arrange marriages, the father of the house instructed the son to build an additional room onto their home.

01:36:09

And so the son would start building. And Jesus says, many mansions I'm building for you.

01:36:14

We're called the bride of Christ. And the son would have to wait until the father, this is the culture.

01:36:20

Okay. The son would have to wait until the father said, go get your bride, but they had to have a, um, a wedding feast because that's what the

01:36:31

Jews did at wedding feast. You know, it's a pretty big party. So what they would do is they would arrange the party on a certain day.

01:36:39

And because you had to get the fatted calf, you had to get the wine, people had to come in. They didn't just hop the freeway in their cars and be there in 20 minutes.

01:36:47

So it was a big deal. So the extended family and the community related to that family would know what day and the basic hour of when the wedding would occur.

01:36:58

And the son in the meantime was officially building on an additional room on the house because when the father said, go get your bride, then he would go, it was in the trumpeters out.

01:37:12

They would, that would be a warning to the bride in a good sense, warning, you know, announcing here comes the, the groom is coming to get the bride at the trumpeters.

01:37:20

And so it was all the ceremony. So the people would say to the son, so when's the father going to tell you, go get the bride.

01:37:28

And he, his response was only the father knows. The son does not know. And what that was, was an idiomatic phrase dealing with the wedding feast and the wedding ceremony.

01:37:40

Now I was in Texas a year and a half ago talking about this with someone, and there was this guy who is

01:37:46

Jewish to the core, is a Christian. And he was amazed that I knew this cultural context.

01:37:53

He says, nobody's ever heard of this. Nobody knows it. And I've known about it. I know that Andrew knows about it and others know about it.

01:38:00

So when Jesus was speaking, no man knows the hour, the father alone, he wasn't speaking about his omniscience or limitation.

01:38:06

He was simply referring to the Jewish culture of that phraseology dealing with the issue of the wedding feast, that's future coming to Christ.

01:38:14

And the people then would have understood exactly what he meant. It was not a declaration that he didn't know everything.

01:38:21

Okay. Again, I'll come back to you. I want to go into a bit more of a deeper question. You're a

01:38:26

Calvinist, right? And I'm sure the Protestantism, right? And you believe the penal substitutionary atonement, right?

01:38:33

From Calvin. Of course. Okay. I'm going to ask you this again.

01:38:39

Do you believe Christ is a divine person? Well, I'm suspicious about what you mean by it without clarification.

01:38:47

I don't want you to - The incarnation, right? It was the Logos that was born and then added a human nature onto that Logos.

01:38:54

And so, as I was saying, I don't want you to take a definition that I'm giving and then twist it and use it against me later.

01:39:00

No, no, I won't. If I'm doing that, tell me. In an attempt to try and discredit me because that's what

01:39:07

Muslims often do. So I'm aware - That's a generic fallacy and I won't do that. It's my experience.

01:39:15

Well, your experience doesn't apply to all. That's my experience and I have the right to learn from my experience.

01:39:23

So, Jesus is a divine person. He's a divine person. He's also a human person in the sense that the person has attributes of both humanity and divinity ascribed to him.

01:39:34

It's called the Communicatio Idiomatum. Yeah, that means that's the confession where he died in the flesh, right?

01:39:42

What I'm saying is that I'm sure that's the creed where it says

01:39:47

God, the Word, died in the flesh. No, maybe I'm misunderstanding you, but the

01:39:53

Communicatio Idiomatum is what I said. And you said that's referring to that and then you misspoke what it is.

01:40:00

Let me teach you - Okay, hold on, let me, because you've had quite a long talk and I want to talk as well. When you say that Christ is a divine person and a human person, how is that not in the story?

01:40:10

Oh, okay. Thank you for clarifying. That would, of course, if you take my phrase like that literally,

01:40:16

I should say it better. In the one person of Christ are both the divine and human natures.

01:40:23

Yeah, yeah. So if you were to say he's a divine person, that's true.

01:40:29

If you were to say he's a human person, that's true. There's a doctrine called the

01:40:35

Communicatio Idiomatum. So let me explain it because this is now relevant to the issue.

01:40:41

So you understand the hypostatic union in the Christian context. One person with two distinct natures.

01:40:48

Okay, the Communicatio Idiomatum is simply a Latin phrase that means the communication of the properties. And what that means is there's human properties and there are divine properties.

01:40:58

Human properties, Jesus says, I'm thirsty, I'm hungry, I'm tired, I need to go to sleep. The divine properties,

01:41:04

Jesus says, I will be with you always, even the end of the earth. Father, glorify me with the glory I had with you before the foundation of the world.

01:41:11

So the one person claims the attributes of both divinity as well as humanity.

01:41:17

Yeah, I understand, but his incarnation, right? He added on flesh from the

01:41:24

Theotokos, what you guys say, I think it's the Theotokos or something. Muhammad, Muhammad, listen. You're consistently doing this.

01:41:32

Listen, he's trying to answer. You're asking a question and he's trying to be very specific with you because you keep twisting what he's saying.

01:41:45

So you asked for us to point it out. When you're doing it, you're doing it. Let him answer and then address what he actually says.

01:41:54

I think what you're doing is you're in such a rush to try to trap him that you're not even listening to what he's saying.

01:42:00

So practice some patience, listen to what he's saying, and then actually respond to what he says, not what you think he says.

01:42:07

And don't be in such a rush to ask your next thing because you think you're trapping him because you're actually, no offense, you're making yourself look foolish.

01:42:16

Because you're not even addressing what he's saying. You're showing that you're not even listening. Okay, so try listening and then address what he says.

01:42:23

Okay? Yeah, sure. I've already called you on the carpet on this. He's called you on the carpet.

01:42:29

You keep doing it. But I've lost my train of thought. So nevertheless, go ahead and ask your question.

01:42:35

I was saying because when people say human person, I see a lot of people who say this is that's what

01:42:40

Nestorius proposed, right? He isn't a divine person. He's a human person. Yeah, but yes, two separate persons in the one body.

01:42:51

Yeah, he also said that. He also said two persons, I understand. And he also said his natures were distinct and his wills were just, he had one will.

01:43:00

But what I'm saying is that - No, that's wrong. No, Nestorius said one will.

01:43:06

Well, that'd be monophysitism. Right, but I'm pretty sure he did say it was one will.

01:43:13

Well, Nestorius could not say that consistently since there would be a... Do you know what dithylatism is?

01:43:22

Okay, it's okay if you don't, it's all right. Nestorianism is a teaching that in one body, the body of Christ is a person, a divine person, and another human person.

01:43:33

Therefore, by logical necessity, each person would have to have a will. And so there'd be two wills, two persons in the one body.

01:43:40

That's basically a brutal way of looking at Nestorianism, and that's heresy.

01:43:48

Right. But I understand, but I am pretty sure he said he was a human person, not a divine person.

01:43:54

And that's what I'm thinking, that's what you're trying to say. Oh, you're, okay. No, this is why

01:44:00

I will correctly say this again. Jesus is one person with two distinct natures, a divine and a human, and the attributes of both natures are ascribed to that single person.

01:44:10

Yeah, but does that mean the natures then make person Jesus, like an additional formula?

01:44:18

No, it's one person with two natures. Yeah, exactly. So that person, that personhood was prior incarnation, right?

01:44:28

And in the incarnation, Mary placed on him flesh. No, we don't understand how it works, because we just know that Jesus is one person with two natures.

01:44:37

Yeah, I'm not trying to defeat that. I'm trying to say that person, even though he has a human nature and a divine nature, he is a divine person.

01:44:49

Well, it's almost like it's approaching equivocation here, because it's like saying, if he's a human person, then is he also a human or divine person?

01:44:58

If he's a divine person, is he also a human person? Yes. Well, that's two persons. No, no,

01:45:04

I'm not saying he doesn't have a human nature. I understand he has a human nature and a divine nature, the hypostatic union.

01:45:10

And I'm saying that prior to the incarnation, what Mary, that's why she's called

01:45:15

Theotokos, right? Mother of God, because she birthed the divine Logos, the personhood of the divine

01:45:21

Logos, and then added him on flesh, his human nature. Correct? She did not add the flesh.

01:45:28

She didn't add the flesh. No, she wasn't active in adding it. It was God's work in the inception of activating the egg.

01:45:35

And he is one who worked that together. I was reading Cyril of Alexandria, and that's what he said.

01:45:41

Okay, whatever. Okay, anyways, anyway, I want to go back to my question.

01:45:47

That was just a starting point, because I wanted to get into it more in depth. So would you agree then Christ is a divine person or not?

01:45:54

I don't know what you mean by a divine person. This is what Cyril of Alexandria said.

01:46:00

I don't care about Cyril of Alexandria, I don't care about him. You don't care about the early church?

01:46:06

I didn't. Did I say I don't care about the early church? Well, he's pretty important for Council of Chalcedon, right?

01:46:12

Okay, did I say I don't care about the early church? Okay, I'm pretty sure that would be like me not saying

01:46:17

I like Ibn Hisham. Like, you're not liking Cyril of Alexandria? Okay, the issue is that I don't care about Cyril in the context of you quoting him for whatever.

01:46:30

I really don't care. I'm interested in what the scripture says. Oh, okay, you're a

01:46:36

Protestant, right? Yeah, I believe in the inspiration of scripture, not of history. No, you have the presupposition of Calvin, and that's...

01:46:44

No, I have the presupposition of the scriptures being true.

01:46:49

And I believe what the scriptures say. And I can defend Calvinism very well from the scriptures. But you wanted to get to penal substitution, right?

01:46:57

Yeah, exactly. That's what I just wanted to get into anyway. Okay, go ahead. So, okay, so God the

01:47:03

Father, right? He eternally damned God the Son on the cross to replace yourself. That's Calvin's replacement affair, right?

01:47:10

He eternally what? Damned him? That's what I heard, but I don't think it's what you said. Yeah, damned. For your replacement.

01:47:18

Father damned him? Yeah, God the Father damned God the Son in your replacement because you deserve it, right?

01:47:25

No. Okay. He didn't damn him. We've never used that terminology.

01:47:32

Okay, maybe you can explain something. Like on the cross, was he forsaken?

01:47:38

Yes. Okay, okay, okay, that's okay. So even though I believe, I know you guys say the

01:47:44

Trinity is distinct in persons, but undivided in essence and in will, right?

01:47:54

So how can God the Father go against God the

01:47:59

Son when that would mean God the Father's will is against God the Son? I'm not laughing at you.

01:48:06

It's a good question because I hear that in different ways, different times. Luke 22, 42, Jesus says, not my will be done.

01:48:13

He didn't want to go through the crucifixion. How is it possible? Because he had the attributes of both humanity and divinity.

01:48:19

He didn't want to go through what he had to go through. That's what happened. Hold on,

01:48:24

Matt, because he may not. Muhammad may not be aware of something.

01:48:31

Muhammad, do you know when Psalm 22 got the number 22 added to it?

01:48:38

No. Okay. Do you think it was before or after the time of Christ?

01:48:48

Well, if it's Psalm, I'm just going to educational guess. I don't know. So maybe before. It was about like the 400s, 500s.

01:48:55

So here's the thing. Do you know how a Jewish person prior to numbering the

01:49:01

Psalms would refer to a Psalm? Yeah, like I know what you guys say.

01:49:08

Well, like he said on the cross, right? Like Eliyahu, Eliyahu, Tzabachi, right? So that was a red herring.

01:49:16

You didn't actually answer the question. Do you know? No, no, no, I don't. I actually don't know. So if you could explain. The way that if Jesus wanted to refer to Psalm 22, what a

01:49:27

Jewish person would do is to recite the first line. The first line of Psalm 22 says, my

01:49:33

God, my God, why have you forsaken me? If you read the rest of Psalm 22, it defines the crucifixion.

01:49:40

It is prophetic of the crucifixion. So what Christ was doing on the cross was reveal was bringing everyone back to that passage that they would know that describes the crucifixion.

01:49:51

So that they see exactly what was being fulfilled in scripture. Right. I understand.

01:49:57

So you said you guys say it was like a prophecy, right? But what I'm saying is, is that they can't be undivided, right?

01:50:03

Even though they're distinct persons, they're undivided in their nature and in their religion. So go ahead and ask your question.

01:50:10

So my question would be then when God was against the son, right? When he was, when he, when the son, when he forsook his son, then he divided with the son.

01:50:21

But how could that be possible? It also breaks the hernosis union as well, which was made by seal of Alexandria.

01:50:27

But I know you don't care. You have a problem with understanding basic logic and you equivocate.

01:50:42

The essence of the Trinity cannot be divided. It's just, that's just it. So when he's forsaken, it does not mean the essence is divided.

01:50:54

So the father damned. Don't say the word damned. I know, I know what it is. It's the per, per, per chinosis or something.

01:51:02

Just use the biblical language here in this and what it does. Jesus says, my God, my God, why have you forsaken me?

01:51:07

Quoting Psalm 21, excuse me, Psalm 22 verse one, pointing to himself in the prophecy of the crucifixion.

01:51:15

He was quoting the verse to bring attention to the Psalm. Yeah, because you guys believe,

01:51:21

I obviously don't believe in the scripture, but if you believed in the scripture, I could see why, why it says that because he was, he was, you know, um, nailed and stuff like that.

01:51:31

So he's trying to bring this prophecy. I understand what you guys are trying to say. Okay. But when, when he forsake him, then he had to be either, uh, got the father, right?

01:51:42

Like who underwent that penalty? Right. Um, was it like a human person? Was it like a human person?

01:51:48

Or did like one divine person damn another? Because if one person... Stop using the word damn.

01:51:54

Stop using the word damn. It's a judgment for sin to eternal hell. That's not what happened with Christ.

01:52:01

So you, look, I got to commend you seriously, uh, for knowing more than the average, um,

01:52:08

Muslim in this regard, seriously. But, um, you keep filtering it through a negative mindset, which

01:52:17

I understand why, but you don't understand. He wasn't damned.

01:52:24

And when people say he was forsaken, I have a radio show people can call up. What does it mean when Jesus was forsaken?

01:52:30

And here's my answer. I don't know. See, I don't know what it means. Well, yeah,

01:52:36

I don't like just saying, I don't know. It's a mystery, but you know what? There's sometimes you just say, I don't know what it is because to forsake him, well, does it mean

01:52:44

God turned his, the father turned his back on him? Let's say that was the case. I'm not saying it is. Let's just say that. But what does that mean?

01:52:51

What does it mean to be forsaken? Does it mean that under the condition of the punishment that Jesus, um, uh, was allowed by the father to go through this torturous event and he called that being forsaken perhaps, but it had, if that was the case, it would have no bearing on the nature and the essence of the

01:53:10

Trinity would not be disrupted at all. Yeah. The thing is, would you say maybe not damned, but maybe cut off would be a better phraseology?

01:53:20

I don't know. And I'm being serious. I'm not, I'm not against you as a Muslim now. I'm just saying to you,

01:53:25

I don't know, because I don't know what that means. And I don't know how that can work. And I don't know what the phraseology would mean in that context.

01:53:32

I have no problem admitting to people, no, I don't know what that means. It's like people, Christians, Christians will say, well,

01:53:38

God's outside of time. I say, well, I don't know what that means. I'm not going to say that. I don't understand it. Hold on.

01:53:45

Do you believe that God is greater than your ability to understand him?

01:53:53

Yes. You do? Nothing is unlike another, yeah. Do you understand the Trinity?

01:54:00

Um, I'm still educated myself, but I can, I think I understand it a little bit. A little bit.

01:54:06

So when, when Matt and I say that we cannot comprehend something about the, the intricacies of the

01:54:13

Trinity, it's because God is greater than our ability to understand him. That's how, you know, the

01:54:19

God of the Bible is the true, the true God, the God of the Quran can be understood. That's not a

01:54:25

God beyond our ability to understand him. No, no, no. I wouldn't say you'd be able to understand him. Yeah.

01:54:31

There's some subjectivity in there. So go ahead and ask your, your penal substitution question.

01:54:37

Yeah. I just want to ask maybe if cut off, because I just don't understand this in my study, and maybe you can correct me.

01:54:43

But if, if, if you guys say that Christ was cut off from the father, right? Wouldn't that be like completely impossible without being openly anti -Trinitarian, like Aryan or Nestorianism?

01:54:54

Because then people would be like, he was, he was cut off, but like only his human nature was cut off or you understand what

01:55:01

I'm saying? Or he just became non -divine altogether, which would be Aryan, right? Right.

01:55:07

And so you're seeing, you're seeing those under those conditions, those would be problems, but we would never say as Trinitarians that he stopped being divine.

01:55:16

So we don't know what it means when, when there's forsaking. We know that Jesus became sin, 1 Corinthians 5 .21.

01:55:22

We know that, but what does it mean he became sin? That's a whole nother thing. We talked about the penal substitution, but what does it mean?

01:55:28

So God's eyes are too pure to look upon evil. Hebrews 1, or Habakkuk 1 .13. So when

01:55:33

Jesus was imputed with the sin of his people, what happened? Did God the father look away?

01:55:40

Let's say he looked away, whatever that might mean, because what does that mean? You know, does it mean that the divine nature stopped being

01:55:46

Trinitarian? Of course not. You would have to say that in this ambiguous phraseology, that somehow it necessitates a disruption in the very ontos of the

01:55:57

Trinitarian being. And nothing in it requires that. So what I'm just trying to help you in that you're going down a road that doesn't necessitate your conclusion.

01:56:07

It doesn't necessitate that because we don't understand what these phrases mean in their spiritual sense.

01:56:13

Now, a Muslim would typically say to me, well, see, forsake him. That means he's not God. It doesn't mean that.

01:56:18

If I forsake my wife because I'm mad at her, does it mean she's not a human being anymore?

01:56:24

Of course not. It doesn't mean our marriage is dissolved because of it either.

01:56:29

See, the problem rests in the ambiguity of what the phrase means. That's the problem.

01:56:35

We don't know what it means exactly. I'm not just popping out. We just don't know what it means. OK, I can understand that, but I don't.

01:56:43

I'm guessing you obviously do. You're more educated than me. You're a Christian yourself. So have you ever heard of the doctrine called peritonosis,

01:56:50

I think it's called? I think it's where the divine indwelling fully indwells in all the persons.

01:57:00

Well, the divine, each person is fully divine. The essence of divinity is within and that's what it is.

01:57:08

But all the persons fully dwell within each other. I think it's in John 14.

01:57:16

Yeah, well, it's called the ontological trinity and the economic trinity. They have different functions, but yet they all share the same divine attributes.

01:57:23

Oh, I know ontological, that's being and then economic is role. I don't mean that. I mean saying like the peritonosis is where the doctrine where God, the

01:57:35

Trinity, all the persons fully dwell within each other. So if you get one person, you de facto, you get the other two.

01:57:47

Yes, there are certain doctrines and things like that, that theologians talk about.

01:57:54

And I don't... Actually, I think Calvin teaches it actually. Okay. I think it's in the institutes.

01:58:02

And I don't go down those roads because I try not to exceed what's written in scripture. Okay, but I think the scripture you could use is

01:58:11

John 14, 9, 10. Yeah, but, you know... And I'm sure

01:58:22

Calvin teaches it as well. Yeah, it's not so simple, you know, to have seen me as seen the father.

01:58:29

Jesus is the exact representation of the nature of the father in Hebrews 1, 3. And you're getting into areas,

01:58:36

I'm not complaining or whining, I'm not trying to backtrack or make excuses. But you're getting into areas where I've thought about these things for years.

01:58:43

We don't have good answers in this area. Nobody does. You see, this is why... Sorry if I cut you off.

01:58:50

I thought I'd show you. Go ahead, go ahead. See, this is where me, and you might think this is some enlightenment thought.

01:58:58

I would agree in some part that we need to rationalize everything. But that to me just doesn't give me satisfaction.

01:59:04

How you say it's this mystery, this whole, we don't know and that... Well, now we're back to a

01:59:11

God that's greater than our ability to understand. If you can fully understand God, then he's not God. And so that's why

01:59:18

I keep coming back to that. Your God is your ability to reason. That's your God. And if it doesn't make sense to you, you're saying, well, then it can't be true.

01:59:27

I don't know if he's... Tell you what, why don't we go to the after show and continue this? Because I know you got to go.

01:59:33

Okay. You want to do that? Whatever your name is. His name's Muhammad. So John's going to...

01:59:40

The link is if he... Yes, I can do it for a little while. Yeah. Okay. It's actually three o 'clock in the morning here, so...

01:59:49

Oh, well, sorry. There's a question that Jason Manning wanted to ask.

01:59:55

And so I do want to ask this of you, Muhammad, on his behalf. I'm just trying to find it.

02:00:01

So his question is... And so you would believe that Allah is greater than Muhammad, correct?

02:00:09

Yes, of course. Okay. Who is it that Allah prays to? You're using the word, it's prayer, it's not, it's blessing.

02:00:23

I know David would debate that as well. It's not prayer, it's blessing. Well, yeah,

02:00:29

I'm looking at an English version of the Quran, and it is saying prayer. Verily, God and his angels pray for the prophet.

02:00:38

So you're saying it's not prayer, it's... What's the Arabic word there? Is that the

02:00:44

Sahih International? Let's see. The one I'm looking at right now.

02:00:51

Give me a sec to look it up. Because if so, that would be like the NIV for you. It's quite liberal.

02:00:59

Let's see from Max Muller. If you can use like Monsan Khan or Yusuf Ali.

02:01:09

Is that what you prefer, Yusuf Ali? Yeah. What is that, 33?

02:01:15

Sorry, 33, what is it? 356. Okay. And I mean,

02:01:23

I do see it saying bless and others. Let's see,

02:01:31

Allah showers blessings in another translation. Yeah, see.

02:01:37

Do you, Muhammad, do you like the Kali? The Khan, excuse me, the Khan version? Yeah, he's okay.

02:01:45

Okay, let me read the Khan really fast. 56, Allah sends his graces on us, his

02:01:53

Salat on the Prophet. Yeah, Salat. And also his angels, right? And then Yusuf Ali, it says,

02:02:01

Allah sends his blessings. Okay, so that's how they've translated it. I know you guys probably got that from David Wood.

02:02:08

It's not prayer, it's blessing. It's Salat, it's Salam. Well, this is someone that was in the chat.

02:02:15

So my question, what's the Arabic for that? Oh, it's Salah. I just don't,

02:02:32

I don't, we're at the end of the show. I was going to go take my study Quran out. All right.

02:02:38

Well, I've got the, we'll pick it up next week. I have this Quran. I'm going to look at it right now with what they say, just to see.

02:02:46

I mean, you know, it says send blessings to the Prophet. Sorry, I'm going to give my eyesight away, my age and everything.

02:02:54

Hold on, two glasses. Sorry, I'm embarrassed, but that's what it is. Three, seven, six, two, one.

02:03:00

Allah and his angels honor and bless the Holy Prophet as the greatest of men. He sinned and Jesus never sinned.

02:03:07

And yet he's the greatest of men. It's what the commentary in this says. Okay, this is, I got this from Saudi Arabia, apparently.

02:03:14

We are asked to honor and bless him all the more because he took it upon himself to suffer the sorrows and afflictions of this life in order to guide us to Allah's mercy.

02:03:24

Wow, sorry, I could rip into that. Yeah, so it's

02:03:35

Salah, it's blessing. I know David would use that against Muhammad. Anyway, I want to get to your penal substitutionary question.

02:03:45

I think he has to go, though we can go to the other room if John will put in the link. We can go a little bit longer.

02:03:50

I mean, we can go, you know, when John gives me a link, but if we want to go a bit longer. Sure, I can shut the room down too, you know.

02:03:59

Yeah, so what's your, okay, see if you can get your question, Muhammad. Okay, so, okay, so the, when

02:04:12

I, where was I? Let me see, because I've got out my book. I've been writing myself. That's why, okay, okay, so you guys said you don't know what it means by being forsaken or cut off.

02:04:27

Okay, so do you know how to spell percheronosis?

02:04:33

Maybe I'm saying it wrong. Maybe if you type it and then you probably know what it is. I can, I've got it right here in front of me, so I can tell you how to spell it.

02:04:40

Okay, go ahead. I think it's Greek, P -E -R -I -C -H -O -R -E -S -I -S.

02:04:58

I'm sure all Trinitarians would hold to this. I'm sure Calvin does as well. I actually have a quote from Calvin because I've been reading the

02:05:04

Institutes myself. Okay, the co -indwelling, co -inhering mutual interpenetration, all right.

02:05:16

Yeah, that's what they, the essence of the ontological trinity, yeah. So, so my question then would be, let me a second.

02:05:31

I've got to try and find my book. Let me be one minute because I think I wrote this part somewhere else. Just give me a minute, please.

02:05:39

Sure. Now, while you're looking that up, I just, two quick things.

02:05:45

One is Reform Calvinist Matt is now saying that it's embarrassing that we have to be taught, we have to be educated from a

02:05:51

Muslim on Christianity. And the reason he didn't come in is because he would get an education on Christianity by people he says, that's why he's not here.

02:06:01

He's just a troll. He's a troll. Yeah, and I just want to give a shout out and a thanks to Jason Manning, who went out to the

02:06:09

Striving for Eternity Patreon page and became a Patreon. So let me, while he's looking that up, let me let you guys know that you can, you can support both

02:06:18

Matt and I on Patreon. You can look for Striving for Eternity and support us. And you can go to Matt's Live and support

02:06:24

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02:06:32

If you go to Striving for Eternity, what we're doing is we will give you for, if you donate as little as $2 a month, you'll get a free copy of What Do We Believe?

02:06:42

And if you give $5 a month, you get What Do We Believe? And What Do They Believe? If you give $10 a month, you'll get the two

02:06:49

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02:06:57

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02:07:03

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02:07:10

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02:07:19

So Muhammad, did you get to your question? Yes. Okay.

02:07:26

Um, so because of the perichoresis, sorry,

02:07:32

I don't know, Greg, I don't know if I'm using that word. Perichoresis. Okay, yeah. That would mean there is no division in the single will of the father and son, right?

02:07:48

I don't know that we could go that far with it. It has to do with the, I don't think we go that far with it.

02:07:55

Because three persons, this is a question I want to ask some Christian theologians. I've not heard this asked when

02:08:01

I was in seminary. I want to know, there's something I want to deal with and extrapolate. And that is, if there's three persons, doesn't that imply three wills?

02:08:09

But yet God is said to be one and yet three. And how can he have three wills and one will?

02:08:14

And how does that work? And perichoresis tends to, I think, address that issue. And along the ontological trinity, there's some relationship, inter -Trinitarian relationship that just, well, just naturally beyond us.

02:08:26

And we can only get glimpses of it through scripture. This is one of the problems I have with going down these kinds of roads is because, and I've said this publicly before, is that when we don't have enough information to be very, very clear,

02:08:38

I think we ought to be careful how far we go down into a theoretical area, what it might mean, particularly dealing with the very nature, the essence of God being himself.

02:08:48

Yeah, that's fair. When I said it earlier about cutting off or rejecting,

02:08:56

God the Father's rejecting or cutting off God the Son, I don't think that can make sense because Jesus is

02:09:02

God. So it would be God cutting off God, right? I mean - Right. There's problems there. But on the other hand, and I'm just gonna be fair with you, just be polite with you.

02:09:10

You know, I wanna be. But on the other hand, your question's a good question. What does it mean? And Christian theologians have worried about that, or not worried, have debated it.

02:09:19

Like, well, what does it mean? And they go, well, we're not exactly sure. You see, this is what's...

02:09:25

You can see why this doesn't bring me comfort. Well, okay.

02:09:32

But, you know, I mean, not to be disrespectful, but I'd say so. And I'm not gonna be disrespectful to you.

02:09:38

It doesn't bring you comfort. I mean, okay, so what? I mean, it's not that comfort is what we have to go by in order to determine truth.

02:09:46

I'm not trying to be disrespectful to you. Oh, yeah. I know emotion. When atheists say, like, emotion, just because you believe in God, just because of emotion, and they would go on to say, well, emotion, you can't touch love.

02:10:00

Like, they would say, I love my son. And then they would say, I would say, well, what is love? They would just say, oh, it's emotion. Then I would say, well, is it intellectually, you know, intellectually?

02:10:10

Yeah, you understand? So I understand what you're saying. But for me, intellectually, it doesn't sit well for me.

02:10:18

I can understand that. Actually, in the Quran, it says this. And it says this about your faith. But it's confusing.

02:10:26

And God isn't an author of confusion. Well, being an author of confusion and something being confusing are different.

02:10:35

And so this is where I think a lot of Muslims make mistakes. And not just Muslims, but other people that I've had to deal with make mistakes like that.

02:10:43

And he's not the author of confusion. He's not contradicting himself. But just because we can't understand him in his nature doesn't mean that it's confusion.

02:10:52

It means we don't have the ability to understand him completely and totally. But we're just creatures.

02:10:58

Okay. Do you know what? Let me just maybe go on a little bit more. Do you know in Calvinistic imputational theology,

02:11:06

Jesus takes our punishment, correct? Yeah, to a degree.

02:11:12

And our punishment is internal damnation and separation from God. Yeah, uh -huh.

02:11:18

So if Jesus had to be separated from God to complete the transaction, then you would either be an historian or an

02:11:26

Arian by deduction. Who said he had to be separated from God in order to do that? Because we would be separated from God and he took our punishment.

02:11:34

Separated from God in what sense? Well, separating God, that's a good question.

02:11:42

How would you, how would you, what would you say? Okay, let me tell you before I answer. I want you to understand something.

02:11:48

I'm not trying to play a game with you. I want you to understand that I'm not playing any games with you. This is actually how

02:11:53

I do this, even with Christians. If we were in a private room with Christians, I would ask the same question.

02:12:00

Okay, so I just want you to know that this is how I think and what I do with the theology.

02:12:06

What does it mean to be out of the presence of God in a sense of hell? Can it ever be out of the presence of God?

02:12:11

In one sense, yes. In another sense, no. Because God is all places at all time. They can never be out of his presence.

02:12:18

But in another sense, there's a Shekinah presence, where a direct presence of his essence and his being in a way that is more real, more of him, which

02:12:28

I don't like using the phraseology, but I don't know what else to say. And in that sense, no, they would be out of his presence in that sense.

02:12:34

So there's different senses in that. When Jesus bore our sin and he was forsaken and he was judged and he bore our punishment, it's a common question, then why didn't he go to hell forever?

02:12:47

The reason is because if I were to slap you in the face, which

02:12:52

I'm not going to do that. I'm not trying to be hostile. Just an illustration. I slap you and you go, what was that for?

02:12:58

I'd say, well, I didn't like you. That's not a good reason. Okay, so what's that?

02:13:03

I thought we were the violent ones. Okay, that's pretty funny. And so if I were to slap the president of the

02:13:12

United States, well, that's, you know, wait a minute. Now I'm in a lot of trouble. You might take a swing at me.

02:13:18

You might step back and say, well, that was stupid or whatever. But if I do that to the president, now I'm really in trouble. But the exact same act gets a different result.

02:13:26

When we, so to speak, slap God in the face by sitting against him, there's an infinite result and an infinite consequence because of who he is.

02:13:34

Jesus is divine in his nature. He was able, by the fact of being divine, capable of offering an infinitely valuable sacrifice.

02:13:43

And so therefore on the cross, his death was of infinite value and was not necessary for him to suffer an infinite punishment of duration of time.

02:13:51

We have to suffer an infinite duration of time punishment because we're not capable of satisfying the infinite requirement.

02:13:57

It takes an infinite amount of time. But he does not have to do that because he is infinite in value. Therefore, the death is sufficient.

02:14:05

Okay. So you think it wouldn't be best to say eternally damnation, but damnation?

02:14:15

I wouldn't say damnation in reference to Christ. Okay. And you should not.

02:14:22

Let me warn you. If you do that in your book and you publish that, they're going to rip it to shreds.

02:14:29

Oh no, my book is just for me to study. I can't run to shreds. Damnation is

02:14:37

God's judgment upon the unbelievers who have rejected

02:14:42

Christ and they will be damned. They will be judged to eternal outer darkness, lake of fire, out of that Shekinah presence of God.

02:14:53

That's what it means. You can't apply that to Christ. Right.

02:14:58

So in what way, then? So what did God the Father do to God the

02:15:03

Son on the cross? Imputed to him the sin of the world. That's what we understand.

02:15:10

But isn't sin will and not being? No, sin is a legal debt.

02:15:17

Right, but you would say that sin is will. It's not being.

02:15:23

Wouldn't that be Gnosticism? No. No, that's a different category.

02:15:33

Sin is breaking the law of God. Sin is an action. If I were to slap you in the face, is it a sin or not?

02:15:41

Well, it depends. If it was to save you from that super poisonous spider I saw on your cheek, then it's a good thing.

02:15:47

If it's because I don't like you because you're a Muslim, that's the only reason. That's not a good thing. So the intention has to do with whether something's morally right or wrong.

02:15:57

And the standard has to be God's standard himself. So what we say sin is, is the intentional breaking of law, basically.

02:16:05

And there's some variations in there, but this will be sufficient for now. In that if I know it's wrong to lie,

02:16:10

I lie. That's a sin. Even if I don't know it's a sin, because it doesn't, you know. But we do that. So it's intentionality.

02:16:16

But it's a legal thing. Because Jesus said, our Father who art in heaven, hallowed be thy name. Thy kingdom come, thy will be done.

02:16:22

He said in Matthew 6, 12, forgive us our debts. He said in Matthew, in Luke 11, 4, he said, forgive us our sin.

02:16:28

So he equates sin with legal debt. We know from 1 John 3, 4 that sin is breaking the law of God.

02:16:34

So sin is a legal issue. Not only legal, not only. But it's also legal.

02:16:40

Because it's a legal offense because it's breaking the law of God. The law of God requires a punishment.

02:16:48

The weight of sin is death, Romans 6, 23. So sin is breaking the law of God.

02:16:54

It's a legal problem. Not only a legal problem, but it is a legal problem. Jesus equated sin with legal debt.

02:17:01

Jesus said in John 19, 30 on the cross, it is finished. That's a Greek term, tetelestai, which has been found on the bottom, handwritten into the bottom of ancient tax receipts, signifying a legal debt had been satisfied.

02:17:14

And so Colossians 2, 14, Paul calls the certificate of debt, the sin debt that Jesus canceled on the cross.

02:17:22

So having said all of that, sin is a legal issue. So sin, being legal, can be transferred.

02:17:30

Right. Okay. So when you say this, other

02:17:36

Protestants, when they say this, and they say that Jesus suffered internal indignation, either as a man in his human nature, meaning...

02:17:47

Internal or eternal? Eternal. Okay. He did not suffer eternal indignation.

02:17:55

He didn't? No. Because he's in heaven right now, glorified, exalted to the right hand of God the

02:18:02

Father. Right. Like you said, he's the divine person.

02:18:08

So on that cross, what you said before, that would be why.

02:18:16

But what I don't understand is that, in his human nature, right?

02:18:22

So meaning that his suffering was actually a separate subject or hypostasis, which would be Jesus, or that he suffered the indignation as the very son of God, the

02:18:31

Logos. And for a time, the Trinity would have split. But how could the Trinity have split when that would break the hernosis union made by Cyril of Alexandria?

02:18:40

Even though I know you said earlier, you don't really care. Yes. But wouldn't that be defeating early church?

02:18:48

Look, I was saying my church father can beat up your church father. I believe in the inspiration of Scripture.

02:18:54

I go with that. Church fathers had different opinions about different things at different times. Some may have been spot on, and some may not have been.

02:19:00

I just don't put any credence in what they say as any authoritative, a doctrinal dissertation. I go with what

02:19:06

Scripture says. Best I can. I try and go with Scripture then. In John 17, 1, 3, where the

02:19:13

Trinity itself, the Trinity is no longer, is in divine communion, sorry.

02:19:21

So in John 17, 1, 3, the Trinity, the Godhead is in divine communion. But if that was the case that on the cross that he cut off, then that would cut the divine communion, which would then be the

02:19:37

Trinity. That, no, you could, no. I mean, I understand what you're saying, and there's a sense in which

02:19:43

I could see that's a possibility that communion and the fellowship was damaged. Just as my wife and I could have an argument, and our communion is damaged, but our marriage is still there, and our natures are still there.

02:19:58

So we can, by analogy, say the breaking of communion or fellowship does not necessitate that the

02:20:04

Trinity is broken. Right. But I don't understand how one being, like I said, they're undivided, right?

02:20:11

In will. So how would the father will something contrary to the son, like damning him?

02:20:18

He did not damn him. Okay. I don't know what you guys say.

02:20:23

Whatever he did on the cross, why would he do that when that would be contrary to...

02:20:30

I can tell you why he did this on the cross. Yeah, but that would be contrary to the divine communion, right?

02:20:35

No, it's not. No, it's not. Look, if I were to slap you in the face, and then

02:20:43

I apologize, and I said, please forgive me, hopefully you'd say, okay, forgive you, right? Let's say you have a brother.

02:20:49

I don't know if you have a brother or not, and he's standing there, and I slap you in the face, and I turn to your brother, and I say, would you please forgive me for what

02:20:55

I did to him? You might look at me like, you gotta ask him, not me. The one offended is the one who forgives.

02:21:05

Okay, but you accept the early councils, even though you don't, right, or not?

02:21:11

I'm sure Calvinism, they accept everything except for icons, right, in the early councils. I'm a

02:21:17

Calvinist because I read scripture. Okay, but I know that dogmatically,

02:21:22

Calvinists do take all the councils, except for the one Constantinople, or First Council of Constantinople was one of them, where they said icons was fine after the

02:21:32

Byzantine Empire tried to smash them all, and then John of Damascus wrote his treatises, et cetera, and then they allowed it.

02:21:41

But what I'm trying to get to is that, so you would accept Theseus and Nicaea, the

02:21:47

Second Council of Nicaea, where monophilatism, I can't say that word properly, which is -

02:21:54

Monophilatism? Yeah, where they basically say they're basing will on being hypostatic, and hypostatic, sir, so -

02:22:02

Monothelitism is false. Right, but that would be, monophilatism is based on will being hypostatic, would you agree?

02:22:12

No, monothelitism deals with the idea that the one person has one will, but that's not logically possible, because if Jesus is the word, by definition, the word has a will, and the human nature has a will by definition, therefore the orthodox doctrine is dithelitism, not monothelitism.

02:22:29

Dithelitism necessitates that each of the natures has its own will, and then it's expressed in the single will of the

02:22:37

Son through the word. And this is something we just can't comprehend, but that's what the scriptures teach, and that's what the logic requires.

02:22:46

Right, right, I understand that, but I'm saying they also believe that will is based on being hypostatic.

02:22:53

So, when you say that the result of the

02:23:00

Father is willing something contrary to the Son, quote -unquote, damning him,

02:23:06

I know you don't believe that. You should stop saying that, because it's just simply wrong.

02:23:14

Okay, but I don't know what you guys say, though, like I'm saying quote -unquote. Just say he forsook him, quote the scriptures.

02:23:21

Okay, so when the Father will something contrary to the Son, like forsaking him, that would be actually condemned from Ephesians to Nicaea II, because that would be monothelitism.

02:23:37

No, no, it's not monothelitism. I think you're...

02:23:46

I wish Christians studied like you did. This would be great, seriously. I know

02:23:52

Christians who do, but not that deep. You're trying to do it for a different reason altogether. You want to understand

02:23:57

Christian theology to find problems with it, and you won't be able to.

02:24:03

I mean, you already admitted today it's most of it's a mystery, and you don't know, so...

02:24:08

No, having a mystery is not a problem. Having a mystery simply means that God is God, and we are not.

02:24:14

There are certain things about God that are incomprehensible. We just can't understand. And so... Every time he says that, he's proving that his

02:24:23

God is not God. Well, I gotcha, but the thing is that,

02:24:30

Muhammad, look, there are going to be things about God we just can't understand. You acknowledge that, right?

02:24:37

Right, but I wouldn't, yeah. Okay. Do you understand everything about Allah? I don't know his essence unless he's revealed to me in the

02:24:49

Qur 'an what he has revealed, right? So... And I say the same thing about Yahweh in the scriptures.

02:24:56

Yeah, but you would say, what you get in the scriptures is that you say, well, we don't know.

02:25:04

Even though it's been revealed, we don't know. In the Qur 'an, in our faith, we wouldn't say that. Whatever he revealed in the

02:25:10

Qur 'an, we know. And he revealed it, and then that's what we can't understand.

02:25:16

You can't understand everything that Allah says about himself. You can't...

02:25:21

Unless he revealed to us what he has in the Qur 'an. No. Actually, we're getting into a side topic.

02:25:30

You have to understand that the nature of God's omnipresence, for example, can you comprehend how that works?

02:25:41

Being, as I believe, in divine simplicity, yes. So you can understand how

02:25:47

God can be in all places at all times. You comprehend that essence. Well, I can't comprehend it, but I can understand it.

02:25:55

Okay, there's a difference between comprehension and grasping it and understanding a concept.

02:26:00

I can understand the concept E equals mc squared. I understand energy equals mass times the speed of light squared.

02:26:07

I understand that's what it's saying. I don't understand the formula, how it got to that. And that's okay.

02:26:13

It's beyond me. Well, there's certain things about God's nature that are beyond us. We have to understand, how does

02:26:18

God... Look at this. The Qur 'an is both divine and physical at the same time, right?

02:26:27

I wouldn't say the book is divine. I would say what's in the book is divine. Well, I'm going to do this with you.

02:26:34

Watch. So how is the book divine? The meaning in the book is divine, not the actual book.

02:26:42

Are you saying meaning is actually embedded in pages? Yes. Okay, meaning is an abstraction.

02:26:55

Right. So you're saying abstractions are now embedded in physical form?

02:27:01

Right. They're captured by physical form. So are these abstractions universal?

02:27:10

Well, they would have to be, yeah. Okay. So if I were to destroy one Qur 'an, am I destroying the universal essence of those abstractions?

02:27:19

No. So I'm only destroying a particular instance of one, right?

02:27:26

Yeah. But then if I'm only destroying an instance of that abstraction, I'm not affecting the abstraction, am

02:27:33

I? No, I don't think so. Okay. So what you're saying then is that the

02:27:39

Qur 'an then embeds an abstraction. Yeah.

02:27:46

But you have to understand that the abstraction is meaning. So now, supposedly, from your perspective, you have

02:27:53

Allah, excuse me, Allah, who is embedding in Arabic on a page a certain concept.

02:28:01

It doesn't matter what it is, just something, all right? You then go read it. Wait a minute.

02:28:08

If it's an abstraction embedded in the concept, you don't need Allah for that because it's inherent inside the page and all you have to do is perceive it.

02:28:18

But that doesn't make sense because it's not simply an abstraction embedded in a page.

02:28:24

Meaning comes by the intentionality that is then conveyed. So if you and I are having lunch together and we're just talking and I give you an idea about a concept,

02:28:36

I'm thinking about writing in a book. I convey the meaning to you and you perceive and understand that meaning.

02:28:42

It's not written, it's just verbal. So the abstraction now is conveyed verbally, but it's from one mind to another.

02:28:49

You don't need the Qur 'an for that abstraction, do you? No. But your

02:28:55

God has chosen to use this as a way of conveying an abstraction.

02:29:03

But the abstraction is by nature divine, isn't it? Yeah. So the

02:29:08

Qur 'an now partakes of divine essence, doesn't it?

02:29:15

Well, it would be Allah's word, yes. So it has divine essence in physical form.

02:29:24

Right. Jesus is divine essence in physical form. What's the problem? Because being a human, can

02:29:34

God really pee? Can he really go to sleep? Can he get weak?

02:29:40

Can he get tired? I know that's a doceticist kind of way of thinking, but it's true.

02:29:46

Very good, but it would be docetic. But it's true, though. They have a point.

02:29:52

Then how can God be infinitely powerful and then infinitely not?

02:29:58

It's like a contradiction, right? Yeah, that would be a contradiction. Right.

02:30:04

But Christ isn't all -powerful, right? Because he says, I can only do what the

02:30:09

Father teaches me. Right, John 5 .19. And he could do nothing of his own initiative,

02:30:15

John 5 .30. And yet, he says, don't you know I have the authority to call down from heaven, blah, blah, blah.

02:30:21

And the Bible says he's God in flesh. It says it. You can go over those verses sometime if you want, but it says that.

02:30:27

No, I agree. I'm not a Muslim to say that the text doesn't say Christ is God. It very clearly says when

02:30:33

Thomas says, my Lord, my God, I don't dispute that. But I don't believe in the book. I believe it's been corrupted like many passages have been throughout history.

02:30:41

But the abstractions of God have been corrupted? In your book, yes.

02:30:47

Okay, even though the Quran says that the words of God cannot be corrupted? That's referring to the

02:30:54

Quran, yeah. Oh, are you sure it's referring only to the Quran? Well, yes,

02:31:02

I'm sure to my extent. Okay, well, man, I wish you were a Christian. We could have some great conversations.

02:31:09

Dang it. I'm only 19. I might one day, huh? If God, in his great grace, releases you from the deception of Allah.

02:31:21

No, no. Yeah, because in Genesis chapter three, don't worry.

02:31:29

I'll close the room down. Okay, Andrew, I'll close it down. You see, can

02:31:40

I show you? Okay, can I show you something? Yeah, of course. Okay, this is way off topic, but I want to show you something.

02:31:50

See what you do with it. All right, you believe in mathematics? Yeah, I believe they're universal.

02:31:58

They're from God himself, yeah. Okay, very good. And you ever heard of the universal probability bound by any chance?

02:32:07

Probably not. No, maybe if you explain it,

02:32:13

I might, but I don't know the way you phrased it. It's just a mathematical limit. And what it means is this is just very generic.

02:32:20

If the universe is 18 billion years old, and if every single particle in the entire universe was changing its state at the maximum rate for 18 billion years, then the number of possible events is 10 to the 138th power.

02:32:37

It just means if the universe is 18 billion years old, if it was that.

02:32:44

I don't believe that, but if it was, and you have... I believe in old earth, yeah. Okay, and it had 10 to the 80th particles in the universe.

02:32:52

That's a huge number. It's incredible. And 10 to the 80th particles. And each particle can change its state at the maximum rate of physics that allows it.

02:33:02

It's 10 to the 40th times per second. Now you just take them all, you multiply them together, and you get the maximum number of particle changes in the entire universe for 18 billion years.

02:33:10

If every particle was doing that all the time for 18 billion years, would be 10 to the 138th.

02:33:15

It's just called the universal probability bound. That's all. Yeah. It's huge. All right.

02:33:21

Okay. Now, some mathematicians have done some studies on the prophecies of Jesus in the

02:33:28

Old Testament. Born in Bethlehem, a messenger sent ahead of him. He'll enter

02:33:34

Jerusalem, be betrayed by a friend, betrayed 30 pieces of silver, et cetera. And those for eight prophecies, it comes out to 10 to the 28th power.

02:33:45

And when they do 48 prophecies, it comes at 10 to the 157th power. Now this is something you can research later, but it exceeds the universal probability bound.

02:33:56

Now, whatever. But here's the thing. There's other prophecies in the Bible that are spoken of.

02:34:02

The destruction of Tyre, Samaria will be a heap as a field, Gaza and Ashkelon are desolation foretold.

02:34:08

I can go on and on and on. And just in 11 of them, the odds have been calculated at 10 to the 59th power.

02:34:16

I mean, it's just, it's incredible. And so we add all these things up just from this brief stuff. And I'm going, I know

02:34:21

I'm going very, very fast. I know that. I don't expect you to get this, but that's 10 to the 216th power of all these.

02:34:27

It's just, it's just ridiculous. But nevertheless, in Greek and in Hebrew, there are no sets of numbers and letters.

02:34:38

There's only one set for both. And in Arabic, I'm assuming we have the

02:34:43

Arabic numerals, which we use. And you have Arabic letters, right? There's two sets, right? Yeah.

02:34:49

I'm not an Arabic fluent, much of the British convert, but yes, that is true. Okay. Thank you.

02:34:55

So you, I can tell you're intelligent. I'm not trying to, you know, just, you know, set you up for a fall, but I can tell.

02:35:03

All right. Is that my accent, huh? Yeah, sure. British people always sound more intelligent than Americans.

02:35:10

We're colonists. That's all we are. All right. So in Matthew's genealogy of Matthew 1 verses 1 through 17, written in Greek, each

02:35:21

Greek letter is also a number. Each Greek letter is also a number. So when you write a word, you're also getting, writing a series of, not a big deal.

02:35:32

So the funny thing is, for example, in Matthew's genealogy of Jesus, the number of nouns is 56, which is eight times seven.

02:35:43

The Greek word the occurs 56 times, which is eight times seven. Now I don't have to explain it, but in Greek nouns decline.

02:35:53

They change their form. Like boy, boys, the word the does this and it's seven different forms.

02:36:01

Everything here is divisible by seven. The number of Greek words that occur before the deportation of verse 11 is 49 of those 49 words, the number of words that begin with a vowel is 28.

02:36:14

Of those 49 words, the number of words that begin with a consonant is 21. Of those 49 words, the number of letters is 266.

02:36:22

Of those letters, the number of vowels is 140. Of those 266 letters, the number of consonants is 126.

02:36:29

All these are divisible by exactly by seven. The number of words that occur more than once is 35.

02:36:35

Number of words that occur once is 14. Number of nouns is 42. Number of words that are not noun seven.

02:36:41

The number of nouns that begin proper name is 35. Number of male names, 28. Number of times of male names occur, 56.

02:36:47

That's just in there. And I actually tried to do something like this in English, and I'm not stupid.

02:36:55

I got a high IQ. I gave up after five minutes. I just, I couldn't do it.

02:37:01

I'm not saying it couldn't be done, but that's just one thing. And then we get into the account of his birth.

02:37:07

The number of, and I'll go much quicker, the number of words, number of letters. Of those words, there are 105 forms.

02:37:15

Those forms, the number of verbs is divisible by seven. The gematria, which I'll get into another time, is divisible by seven.

02:37:20

It goes on and on and on and on. These are not possible to be done by mere human minds.

02:37:29

These relationships, these things. Hmm. That's interesting.

02:37:36

I'll look into that. In fact, in Daniel chapter nine, verses 24 through 27, 70 weeks have been decreed for your people and for your holy city to finish the transgression, to make an end to sin, to make atonement for iniquity, to bring in everlasting righteousness, verse 25.

02:37:52

So you were to know that from the decision that from the issuing of a decree to restore and rebuild

02:37:58

Jerusalem, that's March 14th, 445 BC. They know the exact day when that decree occurred.

02:38:06

And not just me saying it, not just two Christian guys saying it, history says, archaeology says, they go, yeah, they know.

02:38:14

So from that decree to rebuild Jerusalem until the Messiah, the Prince comes in to be seven weeks and 62 weeks.

02:38:23

And I could get into the details, but what the week is referring to is years. Six weeks and 70, you know, weeks, talks like this, it's code.

02:38:31

So seven weeks and 62 weeks. Why would I say seven and 62? It's interesting. That's 69 weeks.

02:38:37

I'm not going to bore you with all the details. The 62 weeks or the 69 weeks, excuse me, is of years.

02:38:44

And you convert them into years. You convert into days. I can show you how to do that. And you come up with 173 ,880 days from the decree of March 14th, 445

02:38:56

BC. When you go into the future and the history, the

02:39:02

Messiah came in, Jesus, exactly on that day into Jerusalem. Exactly.

02:39:10

The Qur 'an has nothing like this. Nothing. It does have some, but I don't like to use them.

02:39:18

Do you ever heard of a guy called Zakir Naik? I don't know. I've heard so many things. I don't know. He's the one, he makes that kind of argument, but for the

02:39:28

Qur 'an and science and the Qur 'an, I don't like any of them kind of arguments myself.

02:39:35

I've seen some of them and I found them to be very faulty and to read into the text.

02:39:45

But you don't understand, no offense meant, the sophistication that exists in the

02:39:51

Old and New Testament. Right. But there's been so many add -ons and stuff that I find it hard to believe.

02:40:04

You can believe whatever you want or not. In fact... Like the three powers in heaven, that's an add -on, right?

02:40:11

The three what? That you bear three witnesses in heaven. Oh, the

02:40:17

Comma Jehannium, 1 John 5, 7. That's not found in any manuscripts older than the 1500s. The King James added it in.

02:40:23

They blew that. The ending of Mark, Mark 16, 9 through 20. I could go into why that's a problem.

02:40:29

And then the only other issue of any concern is the woman caught in adultery. When we have...

02:40:35

See, I've actually researched the arguments for that and I actually... There's a guy who

02:40:40

I watched on YouTube called Jonathan Sheffield or something and he was explaining about the adulterous woman.

02:40:47

And I actually agree with him that I could see it being there given the evidence, but I can't see the three bear witnesses being there.

02:40:55

And I can't see... There's something about the begotting as well. It doesn't say begotten in John 3, 16.

02:41:01

It says something else. Monoghanese in John 3, 16. I'm with you on the other two things that you said.

02:41:07

I agree. You're fine. But Monoghanese, I don't know what he brought up. Did he bring up the idea of a diphthong?

02:41:14

Did that ring a bell? I think so, yeah. Because mono and ganao is only and begotten.

02:41:23

And mono ends with an O and ganao is a G. But when you make it in past tense in Greek, you put an

02:41:30

E on the front of it. So it'd be monoegennata. So the O and the E form a diphthong and there's rules in Greek.

02:41:38

When you have words come and they form a diphthong, they change to another letter sometimes. Sometimes they change to just one of them, but at any rate.

02:41:45

And so it just so happens, coincidentally, that the word for unique in Greek is monoghanese.

02:41:51

And the word for only begotten that combines is also monoghanese. Interesting. Do you, just another question, because I've got it.

02:42:00

It's actually nearly four o 'clock in the morning here. But just a quick question. Do you believe, again,

02:42:08

I'm not trying to attract you, but I'm just trying to understand what you believe. Do you believe that human nature, like Luther and Calvin said, human nature became inherently evil?

02:42:22

I wouldn't say, I don't know what sense they meant inherently evil. What I would affirm is called the doctrine of total depravity in that sin affected all of what we are, heart, mind, soul, body.

02:42:34

And that there's an effect of that upon us at least twofold. One is we will never receive and trust in God, the truth on our own, unless God intervenes.

02:42:43

And that we're not as bad as we can be. But that's what total depravity means. I have got

02:42:49

Calvin's institute, and I know he goes on Romans 9 and stuff, but when I'm on Ephesians 2 or something.

02:42:56

But what I mean by that is that when you said heart, body, and all these things, does not sound like very manichaean, like very agnostic?

02:43:04

No, that's just the doctrine that sin has touched all of what we are. But isn't that like what they proposed?

02:43:12

I don't know to what extent that they may have or may not. But in the biblical sense, we know that we are by nature children of wrath,

02:43:20

Ephesians 2, 3, did not trespasses of sins, Ephesians 2, 1. That the harsh, desperately wicked, deceitful cannot be trusted,

02:43:26

Jeremiah 17, 9. And that no man does good or seeks for God, Romans 3, 10, 11, and 12.

02:43:32

That they are slaves of sin, Romans 6, 14 -20. And 1

02:43:38

Corinthians 2 .14 says that the natural man cannot receive or understand spiritual things. So we draw the doctrine of total depravity out of verses like that, which the effect of sin upon us is the incapacitation of believing the truth, unless God reveals it to him supernaturally.

02:43:52

But do you know, so you would say, but that means we're giving, that means in your framework, you're giving evil a substantial reality.

02:44:00

Uh, and then it's identified with God's creation. So, um, and then you might say, well, it's just, it's just the nature that is evil, but, um.

02:44:13

Fallen. You would say fallen. I would agree that would be a better word to use, but when, um, okay.

02:44:22

I think that's a better word to use, but I know most Calvinists and Protestants, and they would say it's inherently evil and they would quote

02:44:29

Calvin and then Luther. Yeah. And then in that sense, yeah, we are inherently evil in that we rebel against God naturally.

02:44:37

Any rebellion against God is ultimately by definition evil. But when I talk about evil, sometimes what I talk about is the very nature and essence of evil itself in the form of Satan in that demonic realm, which is that form of evil, but we don't possess that, but yet we have a fallenness that is a, has a propensity towards evil.

02:44:58

Right. So does, does that mean does evil then consist or subsist in Christ or does he hold evil in being?

02:45:08

And is the fact evil has, that's even if the fact that even, even evil has a being.

02:45:15

I'm not sure I understood what you're saying, but Satan is by nature evil. I know that.

02:45:23

So you'd say God created evil. God created evil. It says in Isaiah 45, seven, he created, uh, the

02:45:31

King James, he created evil, but the word evil is juxtaposed with peace. And the

02:45:37

Hebrew word is raw peace. So he creates light and darkness opposites peace.

02:45:43

And, and then the word raw is used, which some say evil, but it means natural calamity, which is why the

02:45:49

NESB says calamity. So we would not say that God created ontological evil. That's what I say.

02:45:54

I use that phrase. God does not create ontological evil, but he allowed it to occur in the fall of Satan who then became evil.

02:46:06

But would you say like Christ is the antithesis of evil? Like he wouldn't create it and give it being like, um, like monarchy ism.

02:46:15

It's like it's total monarchy ism to, to attribute evil to an ever existing subsistence and antithetical to God.

02:46:24

Right. It cannot be ever existence in the sense of its, um, regression, only

02:46:31

God is eternally existent in the past, but evil had a point of beginning and will continue on.

02:46:38

And Satan will continue to exist in his damnation and judgment out of the presence of God.

02:46:44

And so in that sense, evil will continue to exist, but it will be restricted, contained and ineffective.

02:46:50

Right. But I understand what you're, what you're saying there, but that means you're saying it began at a point in time, right?

02:46:59

Evil did. Yes. Right. Rather than like being an eternal principle as what the Manichean stated.

02:47:06

Well, a principle, if you define it as an understanding of a concept in the mind of God, then it's eternal in that principle state in that it's a concept or an abstraction.

02:47:15

God was always aware of it, but the actuality of its existence had a beginning. Right. But because you, but that means, that means you've allowed an opposite principle to God to attain an attribute of God, like name the eternal existence.

02:47:30

Well, it depends what you say, an attribute of God. I have an attribute of God. He can think I can think, and we have in Christian theology was called communicable and incommunicable attributes.

02:47:38

So the communicable attributes of God, or he can think I can think he can love, I can love, but incommunicable means he's everywhere all the time.

02:47:46

I'm not. So there's certain things that can be communicated to me. And in the sense of Satan coming into existence and then manifesting a concept

02:47:56

God was already aware of, which is rebellion against his nature, then it was given. We don't know how that works, though.

02:48:02

He became fallen by his nature and essence. And so evil came into existence in that ontological sense, not in merely an abstract sense.

02:48:13

Right. And like I said earlier, though, about the divine person being cut off, the divine person of the son being cut by the father, that means you would have two principles since the son must become evil.

02:48:30

No, he did not become evil, but he became sin and sin and evil are different.

02:48:36

Sin is breaking the law of God, and our sin was imputed to him. He bore our sin in his body and the cross, 1

02:48:42

Peter 2, 24. And the only way I can even conceptually understand how that works is if sin is a legal death that's transferred.

02:48:49

Right. But sin, would you not say sin is evil? I would say sin has a characteristic of evil within it in one sense, not in another, because there's different ways we can understand what evil is, an ontological thing.

02:49:05

So if I, as a Christian, lie to you, which even saying it is just repulsive to me,

02:49:12

I can't do that. I cannot lie to you, even, you know, Takiyah, you know, but I can't do it.

02:49:20

That's actually, that's a bit of a straw man. Yeah. I mean, I can go through it if I wish.

02:49:26

Yeah. Actually, Takiyah is actually a Shia doctrine as well. It's not Sunni. Right. But we can go to Surah 354 and discuss it another time.

02:49:36

But anyway, so sin is a form of evil in that it's rebellion against God.

02:49:42

Right. Yeah. So God, so Christ became rebelled from God the Father, right? No, no.

02:49:48

We would say that Christ bore our sin in a legal sense. It's called imputation.

02:49:55

To impute means to reckon another account. So we receive a righteousness that's not our own.

02:50:01

Are you familiar with that? Flipping 390. Are you familiar with what justification is? Yeah.

02:50:06

You believe you're in a court case and then you're standing before like a judge and then you're justified because someone walks in front of you.

02:50:14

Not really. That's more of a propitiation or kind of an expiation, but a transfer kind of justification is a legal act of declaration of the righteousness of God reckoned to the account of the believer.

02:50:31

Okay, but let's rewind a bit and then I can counter that. I want to tackle it one by one by one because I'll lose it.

02:50:40

When you said Christ became sin, right?

02:50:49

Did the divine person become sin? So did

02:50:55

God become sin? What we would say is that Jesus became sin because the

02:51:01

Bible uses the phraseology. Now, what exactly does that mean? That it became sinful in nature?

02:51:06

Well, we can't say that because that's not possible because that would violate the doctrine of the Trinity, the very nature, the holiness of God.

02:51:13

When we understand from other places of Scripture that sin is a legal debt and Paul the

02:51:20

Apostle clearly says that, Jesus certainly implies that and teaches that directly. Then we can understand that when he became sin that we say that his sin, our sin account was transferred to him.

02:51:32

That's what we would understand it to mean. I can see where you're coming from.

02:51:41

I do disagree though. That's what the Scriptures teach. Yeah, I'm not a Christian, but I mean, logically for me, as an assailant, that doesn't make sense because you're saying...

02:51:51

Think about this. Think about this. Let me set you up with a trick. Are you ready? Yeah. Okay.

02:51:59

So there's a judge, there's a jury, there's people, there's a guilty man.

02:52:06

This man has done innumerable evil acts, murder, rape, theft.

02:52:12

Just no one doubts his guilt. It's on film. He admits it. All the witnesses point to him and he is absolutely guilty.

02:52:20

All right. And now he's been found guilty and the judge is going to sentence him. And the judge says, forget about it.

02:52:28

You're free. Go ahead. You just let him go. I've got a question for you. Is that judge a righteous judge or an unrighteous judge?

02:52:39

I'd say God is a man. So he's infinitely more better than him.

02:52:44

Is that judge an unrighteous judge or a righteous judge? I'd say

02:52:49

God is more merciful than we are. Good. I'd say, is that judge righteous or is that judge unrighteous?

02:53:00

To do what, sir? Could you maybe... Is that judge righteous or unrighteous when he ignores the law and just dismisses it?

02:53:10

And just sets the guy free. Is that righteous or unrighteous to ignore the law?

02:53:18

Well, this would be like a presupposition that you have, right? Is it righteous or unrighteous for that judge to ignore the law and let a guilty man just walk?

02:53:32

Inhumanity? No, it wouldn't be just. Okay. In Islam, Allah is that judge.

02:53:39

He just lets people go. Okay, he's free. Inshallah. Okay. Now, before you respond, let me carry something over.

02:53:48

In Christianity, God is the one who's offended. When we sin, we break his law.

02:53:54

And the law must be satisfied. Because if God does not satisfy the requirements of the law, then he's approving of evil.

02:54:03

Because a law is not a law unless that's a punishment. Okay. That's what a law is. You speed, you get a ticket.

02:54:09

All right. You murder somebody, you go to jail. All right. Laws have punishments because that's what they are. If God were to ignore the punishment, he's ignoring the law.

02:54:19

And then by ignoring the law, he's approving of evil. He's saying, ah, it's okay. Do what you want.

02:54:24

There's no consequence. Go ahead. That's approving of evil. That's unrighteous. In Christianity, God is the one who is the author of the law who's offended by the lawbreaker, you and me.

02:54:36

In Christianity, he is the one who becomes under the law and then bears the law breaking of the lawbreakers.

02:54:46

And then the law requires death and he meets the requirement. So then he can forgive righteously because the law is required to be true and met.

02:55:02

Otherwise, God's approving of evil. And so what he does is he satisfies the requirement of the law himself.

02:55:08

The legal debt, that's what law breaking is, is transferred to him. He makes a requirement that wages in his death.

02:55:16

He dies, satisfying the requirements of the law, and he's able then to forgive somebody. That's Christianity compared to Islam.

02:55:25

Right. Tell me why your God is not unrighteous then.

02:55:32

Because we don't have your presupposition that he has to be this judge. So he's okay for your God to ignore his own law?

02:55:39

No, because he doesn't have this law that you guys have. So the law is a reflection of the nature of God, right?

02:55:50

Can Allah lie? No. Okay. So then it would be wrong to lie because Allah cannot lie, right?

02:55:58

Yeah. Okay. So he says, don't lie. So if you lie, you've sinned against Allah, right? I wouldn't say

02:56:06

I've sinned against Allah. Sin is breaking the law of God, right? That's what it is, to break his law.

02:56:12

And you've sinned against him. So does your God just ignore that? That's a good question.

02:56:20

I'll come back to you another time. I wanted to go back again because it demonstrates the insufficient.

02:56:28

That's just one of the issues I can raise against Islam. Just one of them. The reason I did, because we're talking about the nature of the law.

02:56:35

And now you can understand. Christianity is better because God satisfies his requirement of his own law at the benefit of others.

02:56:45

And he doesn't ignore his own law. Where in Islam, in order to be forgiven, your God has to ignore his own law.

02:56:51

But that's inconsistent. That means he's approving of evil. Right. Do you know this whole law thing?

02:56:58

This came from, I know you're going to say, nope, I got it from the scripture. This came from Calvin, right?

02:57:04

Like 1 John 3, 4, sin is breaking the law of God. Jesus said, you can give me scriptures.

02:57:11

I understand. That's why I said you're just. But what I'm saying is you can't show me historically that people believe this.

02:57:21

You already proved it when he asked you whether the judge would be unjust.

02:57:27

That's why he asked you that. You said if a judge lets someone go, he'd be unjust.

02:57:34

All he did to be fair. Yeah. He just changed the situation and put a lot in that place by you, by you saying that a judge that lets someone off is unjust.

02:57:45

That's a law. That's what he's saying to you. So he already accepted that.

02:57:52

Well, I didn't accept. I mean, I wouldn't say I accepted. I'll come back to him on the issue.

02:58:00

Is the judge unrighteous for letting people off? They commit a crime.

02:58:06

But you're giving what we do as humans to the transcendent and I think that's fallacious.

02:58:15

It's fallacious? Yeah. Why? Because you don't understand it?

02:58:21

Well, I don't fully understand it, but I don't think doing stuff that we do, because we do lots of bad stuff, we wouldn't then attribute it to the transcendent.

02:58:34

Yeah, but as Matt said, we get those things from God. That's where we get those attributes.

02:58:39

The thing is, is you said it would be unjust. So unless you're saying that God has a different standard than he has for us, because if that's the case, then you got yourself a different issue.

02:58:56

Right? I mean, are the rules for him different than us?

02:59:04

Well, he, I mean, it's whatever he willed, I mean. So justice for him is different than the justice that he defines for us?

02:59:16

Well, again, it's a good question. I'll have to come back to it. Let me, and I know

02:59:23

Matt may have more, and I know you said it was late for you. I want to ask you one thing, if I could. Can you, and I agree, and I know you're going to say this isn't the case, but I want to just hypothetically, if the

02:59:35

Quran contains an error, can we agree that it cannot be written by God?

02:59:43

Yeah. Okay. What I want to do is I want to get you to read out of your Quran, so in whatever

02:59:50

English translation you want, so that we don't get into a thing of which translations, but if you could read

02:59:58

Surah 5, verse 116 for me. In English? So it's

03:00:04

Surah 5, verse 116. So Surah 5,

03:00:11

Ayat 16? Yeah. Okay.

03:00:34

What are you trying to? Read that in English, whether you translate it, or if you have an

03:00:41

English translation that you accept. Okay, I'll just, let me just go to Yusuf Ali.

03:00:54

516, right? 516. Ah, okay, okay.

03:00:59

That's what I was thinking. Just read it out loud for folks to hear, so I can hear the translate.

03:01:20

Yes. Okay. Yusuf Ali, and behold, Allah will say, O Jesus, the son of Mary, didst thou say unto men,

03:01:28

Worship me and my mother as gods in decoration of Allah? He will say, Glory to thee.

03:01:34

Never could I say what I had no right to say. Had I said such a thing, thou wouldst indeed have known it.

03:01:41

Thou knowest what is in my heart. Thou, I know not what is in thine.

03:01:48

For thou knowest in full all that is hidden. Okay. Now you understand clearly, as we've been discussing tonight, you understand some of the doctrines of the

03:01:58

Trinity. Is Mary ever considered part of the Trinity in Christianity?

03:02:07

Well, I would say, if you go to Luke, it says, Hail Mary, right? Nope. That's not calling her part of the

03:02:15

Trinity. There's nowhere in Scripture that says Mary's God. Right, but you only hail to God.

03:02:22

No, you don't. No, no, no. Hail Mary just simply means, she's praised and stuff like that.

03:02:28

It's not a form of worship. Yeah. You only praise God. That's what we say. Yeah, but Sura 5 .116

03:02:35

teaches what? That Mary wasn't part of the Trinity? Yeah, this is clearly saying that Christians believe

03:02:44

Mary is God, that we claim Mary's God. So I'm asking you, is that what

03:02:50

Christians claim? That Mary is part of the Trinity? That Mary's God? I wouldn't say you guys would say it's the

03:02:57

Trinity, but I would say, from an outsider, we would say that you guys would worship

03:03:03

Mary. No. No, we don't. Well, Catholics, no, we don't.

03:03:10

Well, Catholics, they venerate her and they lift her up, and that is a more recent thing.

03:03:15

But here's the thing, okay? And this is the reason I point this out. The author of the

03:03:21

Quran did not know Christianity, and this is a good example of it, because he has a wrong definition of what

03:03:28

Christians believe about the Trinity. And I'm bringing this up because we agreed that if there's a contradiction, this could not have been written by God.

03:03:38

I know you want to hold on, you want to hold to the Quran. Well, hold on.

03:03:45

The thing is this, Mohamed, your eternal life depends on this, okay?

03:03:51

And so this is a big deal. If the Quran says that Christians believe Mary is

03:03:57

God, now I fully admit that you can a way, a life -saving device to find a way to argue for this.

03:04:07

But if you don't want to be intellectually dishonest, if this is saying that Christians, that we're saying that Mary's God, when that's not what

03:04:18

Christianity teaches, that's not what the Bible teaches, it may be, because what many

03:04:26

Muslims will do is find a heretical group that was out in that area of where Mohamed was, which then says that Mohamed was influenced by people that were heretics, not by Christianity.

03:04:38

And if the author of the Quran is Allah, is God, he should know the difference. He would be able to know the difference between a small fringe group of heretics versus Christianity, but Mohamed would not.

03:04:52

And that's something to consider, because if this is an error, if this is a contradiction, and it is, then the

03:05:01

Quran could not have been written by God. So Matt gave you one thing to consider, and that would be that in Islam, you cannot have a

03:05:09

God who's both just and merciful, because they're mutually exclusive. Only in Christianity do you have that.

03:05:17

Here you have another thing where the Quran shows a contradiction. Okay. Some things for you to think about, and I'm sure you're going to come back with stuff more, we're here every

03:05:29

Thursday night, but I want you to really think about these things, because as Matt tried to explain to you, the difference between Islam and Christianity, it's the difference between seeing salvation by grace or salvation by works.

03:05:44

Okay. Go ahead. I know you guys would say that, but isn't having faith work within itself?

03:05:57

No. It takes work to have faith? It's not how the

03:06:02

Bible defines work. No. Philippians 129 says that our belief is granted to us by God.

03:06:07

He gives us that. Okay. And this is the thing.

03:06:15

So what you end up seeing is that you, Matt, brought up the fact of one thing that makes

03:06:21

Christianity unique from every other world religion is the fact that only in Christianity can you have a God who's both just and merciful.

03:06:29

Okay. Because they're mutually exclusive. And so if a God just lets criminals go, then he's not merciful.

03:06:37

If he punishes everyone, then he's just, but he's not merciful.

03:06:43

If he gives them a lesser sentence, then he's neither. Only in Christianity, as Matt explained, can you have justice and mercy.

03:06:51

Only in Christianity can you have a real substitute because Jesus being a man, having never violated the law, he can be a sacrifice for other people.

03:07:03

Being God, that sacrifice pays the eternal debt because he is eternal.

03:07:10

Now, here's the third thing that sets Christianity unique from every world religion. It is the only religion by grace, by God doing all the work, not man.

03:07:20

Every man -made religion has human effort added to getting right with God.

03:07:26

Whether it's faith plus works, whether it's saying a prayer and then doing works, but there's always an element of human effort.

03:07:35

And it's what the Bible teaches, what Christianity teaches, is that it is always a work of God alone.

03:07:41

And it's the only religion in the world that teaches that. Why? Because every man -made religion adds human effort.

03:07:48

I mean, you can figure that out when you read your history, right? You look at the kings, even if they lose the war, they're going to talk about the battles they won because they always want to praise their own efforts.

03:08:00

And that's what you have there. So from looking at what we shared with you, what Matt has shared with you, what

03:08:05

I just shared with you, we're trying to show you is that Islam is just another man -made religion with a book that's full of errors.

03:08:14

And here you have something that's true. And one of the things to consider is when the

03:08:19

Quran says that you can trust the book, speaking of the Bible, we have that book that if you want to try to appeal to, oh, well, there's textual variances and things like that.

03:08:32

Well, we have copies of the New Testament that are much older than Muhammad.

03:08:38

We have copies that go back in the first three centuries. We have hundreds of manuscripts. And so when we look at that, we have copies of the

03:08:47

Bible that go far back, way further than Muhammad. So the

03:08:53

Bible Muhammad would be referring to, we have. And there's not a single doctrine, not a single one, even

03:09:02

Bart Ehrman admits this, that not a single doctrine of Christianity is affected by any of the manuscript variances.

03:09:11

So we can't say that the Bible was corrupt so that we can throw it out. You can't do that. Okay. And so these are some things, realistically, what we want is we want you to consider because your eternal soul rests on what you do with Christ.

03:09:28

Okay, not the Quran, not Muhammad. It's not your works. I know you're a young man.

03:09:34

I think you said you're 18. I want to 19. And, you know, as Matt commended you,

03:09:40

I want to commend you. I mean, I don't know many 19 year olds that spend this much time and have this much detail in understanding these things.

03:09:51

And it's good that you study. But what I want to challenge you to do is to study, not to refute it, but to understand it in proper context.

03:10:03

You know, when I wrote my book, what do they believe? I studied Islam. I gave it to a bunch of imams.

03:10:08

I studied Mormonism, Jehovah's Witnesses, you know, Judaism, which is my background, Catholicism.

03:10:14

The thing is, I gave those to experts that believe those things. And they said

03:10:20

I was right in what I say because I wasn't looking to refute them. I was looking to understand them so that I could argue as a

03:10:27

Muslim. I can make the case a Muslim would make because I understand Islam. I could do the same thing with Catholicism, Judaism and the others.

03:10:36

OK, and that's what I'm going to challenge you to do is to read the Bible, not from the lens of the

03:10:42

Koran, because the lens of the Koran has errors. And that's not what the

03:10:47

Bible ends up teaching. If you remove that presuppositions that you have from the

03:10:52

Koran and read the Bible, you're going to have a very different perspective than what the Koran gives it.

03:10:58

That'd be my challenge, you know? Anyways, man,

03:11:05

I've got to go now. I should have. But thank you so much for letting me speak. I hope you come back in.

03:11:11

I really do. I'm glad that you came in. And look, you can go to apologexlive .com every Thursday night or in your case,

03:11:17

I guess it's really Friday morning. But the link's there. So you just have to go to that one website.

03:11:25

You're going to have it. OK? Yeah. OK, thanks, man.

03:11:31

Well, I appreciate you coming in and really give some thought to what we shared with you, because, you know, we don't want to see you, you know, face

03:11:41

God and have him as your judge. We'd rather have you face God. And, you know, because of repentance, you would be in the faith of Christ and be a child of God.

03:11:52

OK? Yeah. All right. Well, with that, we're going to close this up.

03:11:59

What I'm going to do for folks, I was telling folks in the chat there, Matt, what I'm going to do is take this episode and for the podcast, we're going to split it up into two.

03:12:11

So what we heard at the beginning will be one episode. It'll be a shorter one. This one went about,

03:12:17

I think this discussion went about two hours, and it'd be good to have this full discussion with Muhammad and Matt.

03:12:24

By itself, there's a lot there that I know folks were saying they wanted to go back and listen to So if you subscribe to Apologetics Live in your podcast app, whichever podcast app you have,

03:12:36

I should be able to pick it up in all of them. But if you search for Apologetics Live, you'll be able to get this.

03:12:41

And as each week they download, you can have it in a podcast form. So you hear the audio wherever you are at your convenience.

03:12:50

And so, again, I do want to just, you know, mention that for Matt and I, if you care to support us, you know, and understand that when you go to Patreon and look for Matt Slick, you're supporting

03:13:04

Matt Slick, okay? That's not supporting Karm. This is actually a way you can give directly to Matt, okay?

03:13:13

To help him. For folks who don't know, he's moving. He's going to be moving to Arizona. It's quite a bit to move.

03:13:20

His wife has very bad health. That's the reason that they have to do this move. And so you could help him out directly in some of that.

03:13:29

Now, that won't be tax deductible. But if you're giving for that purpose, okay, then give to Karm.

03:13:36

Give to Striving for Eternity. But if you want to directly help Matt, go to Patreon. Search for Matt Slick.

03:13:42

If you want to help Striving for Eternity, I don't get that money that goes to Striving for Eternity. And that is tax deductible.

03:13:50

You can look up Striving for Eternity. And like I said, we're giving away free books if you're donating.

03:13:57

And so appreciate all the folks that are. So with that, we're going to close out and just let folks know next week we'll pick up again.

03:14:06

I hope that folks come early. I know there was some folks in here that had questions and we didn't get to all of you.

03:14:13

Encourage you to come back in next week. And I know Emmanuel is here,

03:14:18

Matt, and he's contacted me. I was to see about translating some stuff in French for Karm.

03:14:26

So we got to vet him and probably set up a time to talk with him.

03:14:32

But folks, those who are here, if you want to come in next week, come in early and we can get to your questions.

03:14:39

Sorry, we couldn't get to all of them. But with that, we want to thank you guys. Go check out Karm .org.

03:14:45

Check out Striving for Eternity. Also check out my podcast, The Wrap Report. Just dropped a very important podcast with Todd Friel talking about discernment and some great, great principles he gave on how to do discernment, especially if you're blogging or doing things, podcasts, things like that.

03:15:05

Some great principles for people to follow. So check that out. You can just search for Andrew Rapaport's Wrap Report.