The TRUTH about the "Church of Christ"! w/ John Anderson

Welcome back to Wisdom for the Church. Thanks for tuning in. Today's guest is Jeremiah Nortier, otherwise known as the

Apologetic Dog. I think that's the coolest name for like a channel or whatever.

I'm glad to have you on, man. We're going to talk about some of the basics about the

Church of Christ, and it seems like you have some experience knowing about that sect, we might call it, to start out.

Tell us a little bit about yourself, though. John, thanks so much for having me on. The Apologetic Dog, people ask why.

I tell them, it was a process. I felt the calling not only to ministry, pastor, elder, and I serve at 12 -5

Church in Jonesboro, Northeast Arkansas. The more I've talked with people, I've talked with my wife, apologetics, giving a defense for the hope that lies within us, filling the call to apologetics ministry as just something to do on top of my pastoral work.

My wife and I were in the living room talking about what should it be called and what should the logo look like. We were thinking about the acronym

DOG for the Doctrines of Grace. I remember my wife saying the Apologetic Dog, and I said, babe, that is such a great name.

I just don't want it to be based on soteriology. I want it to be broader. The more we talked about it,

John, I was like, well, a diverse that I really wanted to use was 1

Timothy 6 .20, just because I'm a student of Cornelius Van Til and Greg Bonson, thinking presuppositionally and always wanting to vindicate the

Christian world. You're never leaving the word of God, even in apologetics. And so that verse, John says, oh,

Timothy, guard the deposit entrusted to you. And so my wife and I, we had a eureka moment.

We're like, oh, guard dog, Christian guarding the gospel of grace. And that verse continues on to say, and avoid irreverent babble and knowledge or what is falsely called knowledge.

And so avoid those contradictions. So any of those worldviews that rival the Christian worldview, no, we do the internal critique.

We show how ultimately it's going to be self -contradictory and it can't vindicate truth. So anyway, that's a little bit of the background for the

Apologetic Dog. And so if your audience goes and looks up the Apologetic Dog and they see a pit bull with the beard, they've arrived at the right place.

Okay. Yeah. So definitely you put, you and your wife sounds like put a lot of thought into the name of it, but also the logo wasn't just like, oh, dogs look cool.

So the hard part was finding which dog looks good with the beard. Oh yeah,

I'm sure. Yeah. Great Dane or maybe, I don't know, maybe a pug. There's a lot of options out there.

Well, before we get into the Church of Christ, this might be helpful for those who listen here.

I know there are two major schools since you're in apologetics, two major schools of thought on apologetics, the defense of the faith.

There's presuppositional and maybe classical apologetics. If you were to give a basic summary of those two schools of thought,

I know it's off the cuff, but. That's a great question. So, and I have a lot,

I just want to preface this just because I adhere to the presuppositional school of thought when it comes to apologetics.

I have much love for William Lane Craig and R .C. Sproul. May he rest in peace.

I would say now he's a presuppositionalist, but I have a lot of love for the classical slash evidential apologetic school.

And the biggest way to understand the difference is the evidential slash classical apologetics starts with man and tries to reason up to God.

Presuppositional apologetics says, well, in order to have certainty, in order to actually justify knowledge, you must start with God and the whole worldview in which he has revealed himself and then reasoned down to man.

And the big difference is when you start with man, you have to use induction, inductive argumentation.

And so the conclusion at best can be only God probably exists, but presuppositional apologetics tries to start with God and it ends with the certainty that God not only exists, but you know he exists.

And so he gets to give us truth. Gotcha. Okay. That's a good way of thinking about it.

And I'm sure there's a lot more to it than that, but that is helpful because, you know, you often see the two schools kind of going at each other.

And obviously there's a difference there, but thank you for that kind of concise definition. I think that'd be very helpful.

Yeah. And I do want to say that presuppositional apologetics uses evidences.

There's a difference between evidentialism and evidences because the precept says all evidence ultimately points back to God.

We can know piecemeal which piece of evidence we look at ultimately is grounded, pointing back to the creator as where those other schools of thought tries to analyze each piece of evidence from a neutral standpoint.

And like I said, all evidence points back to God. So I want to tip my hand a little bit more and say, if someone, you know, bleeds

Sola Scriptura, then I believe it was John Frayn that said presuppositional apologetics is

Sola Scriptura applied. Yeah. Because everything goes back to that one source of God and where he's found is what he's revealed himself in his word.

Well, we'll get into it then. So the Church of Christ, and you've done, I think, some debates and just some videos on the

Church of Christ. We'll start here. What has been your personal experience of the

Church of Christ in that you seem to know particularly or have like a lot of knowledge in that particular area?

Have you, did you like come in that background or? Well, really good question. And a lot of the friends

I've made over the years, that's typically their experiences they've come out of it. Especially my really good friend

Trey Fisher. We were on the Cultish podcast, both of us. He was on the first time then had me on with him the second time to speak about this.

But the reason why I have engaged with the Church of Christ is because in Jonesboro, there's two major denominations.

It's the SBC, Southern Baptist, which I grew up. Now I am Reformed Baptist, but I still have much love from my

Southern Baptist brothers. But if you weren't looking at a Southern Baptist church, then there were typically the

Church of Christ. It was almost like they were juxtaposed to one another on every street.

And when I started sharing the faith around 21, really felt confident understood that that's what

I was called to do. I started interacting a lot with those that said that they were

Church of Christ. And it was like, okay, well, maybe that's just a different denomination. And we see things a little bit different because my background in engaging with the

Methodist or the Presbyterians or different versions of Baptist. Okay, we're going to have a little bit of disagreement.

But I noticed with the Church of Christ, we said the same words, but meant totally different things.

And so baptism was the thing that kept getting brought up. And it just struck me as the wildest thing that they would say that baptism is necessary for your salvation, meaning unless you get baptized, then you can't have your past sins washed away.

And so I kept studying more of the proof texts that I kept hearing because I wanted to share verses like John 3, 16, or Romans 5, 1.

And I noticed with them, it was a different set of verses like Acts 2, 38, Mark 16, 16,

Acts 22, 16, just other verses. And it was kind of like, huh, okay, obviously I need to study this more.

And so anyway, over the years, I started realizing, oh yeah, we believe in different gods. We believe in different methods of salvation.

But what's wild about the Church of Christ, as we'll get more into, is they still use the 66 books of the

Protestant canon as where a cult like Mormonism, they have a totally different... They have other books.

They have other books. They have a ton of other books. And so I think there's a subtlety there with the

Church of Christ. Yeah, yeah, because they only have the 66 books that we would call the

Old and New Testament. So we'll get to salvation. How is one made right with God?

But you also mentioned a different God. Does that have to do with the salvation reality or is the nature of who

God is found to be differently in Church of Christ? Yeah, yeah. So typically with cults, usually there's a figurehead in Church history that is deviated from orthodoxy.

And it usually tries to capitulate on the nature of who Jesus is or how you receive

Jesus as Lord. And so this is where the Church of Christ come in, is they would deny that salvation is by faith apart from works.

They're going to commit the same move as the Roman Catholic Church to say, well, faith is just one of many steps in order to not only have a right standing with God justification, but it's a justification that's ongoing, that it's based on your own works.

And so once again, the Church of Christ, they'll deny that they're doing works for righteousness. But when you ask the right questions, you could say, oh, well, that's just definitionally what's going on here.

And so that's what I mean, is they're really distorting the gospel of grace. And I think when you distort the gospel of grace, well, then it necessarily distorts who

Christ is. Yeah, absolutely. So sounds like adding works to what justifies or what makes someone right with God.

Now, is that baptism? Is that that particular work or are there other realities you've run into?

And we must do X, Y, and Z before Christ can accept us?

So we typically are told there's five steps in order to be added to the

Lord's Church and to be saved and have your past sins washed away. You must hear the word of God.

You must believe, which is just a mere intellectual ascent. You must repent and you must confess that Jesus is

Lord with the mouth, and then you must be baptized. And then you think, okay, this goes all the way back to Alexander Campbell and some of the early men right after him.

They really wanted to have a mnemonic device of five points. But when you ask more questions, then you realize, oh, you have to be baptized into the right church.

So that's hidden step number six. So this is another kind of mark of a cult is you have to be a part of their association, right?

Their institution. So you got to be baptized in their church, which they would say is the church across the one true church.

And then number seven is you have to continue to live a faithful life in your obedience.

And so, like I said, some of those words we would agree with, but we mean it in totally different ways.

Yeah. And we're talking about what makes someone right with God. And as people that truly want to know

Christ and follow Him, we cannot get cart and horse mixed up. If that makes sense, that's one thing

I've mentioned this on my channel before. I think so often when it comes to you are leading someone astray, or you're really going down a terrible path is when categories are confused.

You really get in trouble. Like that's, I think, honestly, that's a big heart of my channel, even though if I didn't express it when

I began just because I'm kind of figuring it out, but categories being correct, and then Christian ethics, because we've been in such an ethical mess that we've whiffed on for decades.

But the last 10 years have been incredible to me as the church. But in this sounds a lot like the

Galatian heresy. You must do this. In this case, it was you must have this law code of circumcision in order to be justified, made right with God, except here it's not circumcision, but it is baptism.

Is that a fair, in your experience, is that a fair reality? 100%. The biggest objection from Church of Christ is, well, we're not adding circumcision.

We're not adding the laws of Moses. I try to explain, but you're obliterating the gospel law distinction.

By trying to implement your working participation in a ceremony, you are taking us back to the old covenant.

And that's a big part of the discussion is there's really a disconnect with the Church of Christ with the continuity between the

Old and New Testament. And so they don't have, in my opinion, a very developed theology when it comes to the

Old Testament. And now not all Church of Christ believe this, but very recent

Church of Christ apologists, they'll say things like, well, under the Old Covenant, Jews were just born in a saving relationship with God.

And then you're like, no, that's what the Pharisees of the Second Temple Jews believe.

That's what the Pharisees of the Jesus day, but Jesus was on the baptism. They would say, well,

God could raise up these stones to be sons of Abraham. That doesn't mean Jack, you know what I mean? And if you were sons of Abraham, then you would accept

Jesus and the gospel of grace. And so the reason why I'm bringing all that out is you're exactly right with the

Galatians 1 heresy. It's not when it, when Galatians 2, I believe it's 16 says that we are justified by faith in Jesus Christ and not by works of law.

Then you can put anything you want in that negative placeholder, but we know the positive affirmation is that we are justified by faith apart from works of law, apart from our working participation in other ceremonies.

And this is another thing you talk about a conflation of categories is there's a conflation of justification and sanctification.

It's the same kind of Achilles heel with the Roman Catholic church. We got to understand that these two doctrines are distinct and yet you can't separate them because you are justified.

You're immediately sanctified, but there is a life of ongoing sanctification and we can't confuse that with our initial justification.

Yeah, absolutely. So that was one thought I was having as I was thinking about, interviewing you was what are some things

I wanted to ask you? One of them you've already talked a decent bit about is salvation. I feel like when

I'm thinking about like any religion, but particularly, you know, sex or group driven cults that profess

Christ is that gets to the heart of what a group really believes. And you get to the short of it is how is one made right with God?

And it, you know, it seems like with, you know, the church of Christ, it is not simply a person turning from their sin and placing the sole weight of their trust, their faith in Christ alone and his merits apart from any work, even like a good work like baptism.

It sounds like that would, that would be denied. You're 100 % right.

And, you know, I have grace with the Lutherans that are trying to hold to a doctrine of baptismal regeneration with justification by faith alone.

And I don't think those work together. But when it goes back to Luther and Melanchthon from the

Protestant Reformation, I have a lot of grace there because Luther was still working a lot of things out. And the key and conversations like this is the culture of those that fundamentally deny justification by faith alone.

And then of course, the church of Christ are going to deny, this is the slippery slope that they're going to talk about.

They're going to say baptism's not a meritorious work. And so, you know,

I've done debates on my channel and they'll say, well, show me where does it say that baptism is a work?

Because we can show you Colossians 2 .12 that baptism is the powerful working of God. And you know what

I ask usually, and it stops church of Christ in their tracks is, well, tell me the definition of works.

And they know once they give you a functional definition, then they're trapped and they can tell you something done.

Or they're just going to say, well, I can tell you different kinds of works. And I'm like, well, you give me a kind of work, like a work of the flesh or the works of the

Mosaic law. I'm going to say, okay, well, what definition does that beg? What definition does that already assume when you give me an example?

Because at the core of it, when you look up the definitions of Ergon and Ergodsimae, it's activity of action, deed of any kind that can be displayed.

And so when you read in passages like Romans 4, faith and works are being contrasted with one another.

We want to be careful not to define faith in such a way where it's a work that we do.

And the way that Paul and I would say the gospels bear out is faith is something that's internal and of the heart that God sees and knows.

And then works flow out of a heart of faith, flows out of a heart that's trusting solely in God and wanting to give him all the glory.

And so, you know, there are many passages that I think it's Galatians 5, 6, that says faith, working love.

And that's the Protestant position is a real heart of faith, a heart that is justified based on trusting in Christ alone, always produces works.

But I do want to tell you this, John, I think the cults have something all in common, and it's a misunderstanding of James chapter 2.

They're trying to make James chapter 2 a justification by works before God Almighty.

And that's how you know you're interacting with the cult is when they explicitly denied that justification is by faith alone before God.

Okay, gotcha. So yeah, we can move toward that. You said James 2 is a very common text, and I know, you know,

James 2 was a very important text of debate back in Martin Luther's day.

And so, what have you heard before from that vein, the church of Christ, that would be in opposition to biblical

Christianity? Usually, it goes like this, John. Well, Jeremiah, I would believe in faith alone if you could show me one verse that says faith alone.

And oh, there is one in James 2, and it's preceded by the word not. And I'm like, oh, here we go.

So you got to understand verses in context. And so at church Christ, there's about eight proof texts, seven, eight proof texts that they use to say you must be baptized in order to have your past sins washed away.

And I always point out it never says past sins, but that's their interpretive conclusion. And so with James 2 24,

I'll just go ahead and read it, but then we'll kind of unpack the context. James says, you see that a person is justified by works and not,

John, by faith alone. And a lot of times asked, well, who is

James talking to when he says you see? Because when you follow the pronouns back up to verse 14, he says, what good is it, my brothers?

And so instantly, I would say, okay, this is a type of demonstration, because when you look into the semantic domain of just justified, dehiosis in its many forms, is it can vindicate, it can be demonstrated before other people.

And the question is, is this a justification before God or before man? Well, he already says, what good is it, my brothers?

And if we skip down to verse 18, this is kind of the key point, but someone will say, you have faith and I have works.

So notice it's human to human. And he says, show me your faith apart from your works. And I will show you my faith by my works.

So that's the whole point. Man to man, person to person, demonstrating a kind of faith, which if we go back to verse 14, what good is it, my brothers, if someone says he has faith?

So just merely saying you have faith and your whole life denies that, well, that is a dead, useless faith before man.

And if it's useless before man, it is most definitely useless before God. And because I do want to tell people, well,

God is always in the picture. He is omnipresent. And so that's why it goes on to say, but does not have works, can that faith save him before God?

Absolutely not. If it's useless before man, then it is absolutely useless before God.

James 1 .27, religion that is pure and undefiled before God, the Father, will look like this, someone that visits orphans and widows in their affliction and to keep oneself unstained from the world.

So the fruit of justification will always be demonstrated before man and also before God.

Our sanctification is always before God. Absolutely. Yeah, that's some solid

Bible study right there from James 2. I'm definitely remembering back to when

I was a new Christian. I remember going through James 2 and being like, man, this is wild.

I just read Romans and all these places and what's going on. And then I was always comforted by that little word, that.

Can that faith save you? And basically the faith that James described before that verse is basically a fake faith.

A fake faith that doesn't actually show itself by obedience.

Can that kind of a faith save you? No, because it's a false faith.

Right. But I think that's really helpful, kind of what you break down there in terms of faith will show itself by works and will be evidence to others, much like in Abraham or Rahab or I think others who are mentioned in James.

Well, you mentioned Abraham. That's so important because verse 21 says, was not Abraham our father justified by his works when he offered

Isaac his son on the altar? And so that's Genesis 22. But if we're familiar with Genesis 15, 6, well, he was already declared right before God, way before Genesis 22.

And so Genesis 22 is showing us, the readers reading James own words of saying, oh, that's what real saving faith looks like.

It demonstrates itself. That's one of the apologetic to the writer of Hebrews in Hebrews chapter 11, right before chapter 11, it quotes the

Old Testament says, the just shall live by faith. And so Abraham is demonstrating his faith, living at his faith.

Another word that Paul would use is his sanctification is still by faith. And so justification is by faith alone, but a justified faith is never alone, meaning it will always produce good works.

Absolutely. So the main ground we've talked about obviously so far has to do with the

Galatian heresy, essentially marring the difference between law and gospel, adding a work to be a good work done by someone in order to be made right with God.

Go ahead. Other categories with when you conflate law and gospel, you conflate justification and sanctification.

And here's another big one. And I've even done debates with Greek Orthodox. And I asked this question, what is the difference between faith and works?

And the gentleman I debated said, there is none. I'm like, well, that's a problem. When you read Ephesians two and Romans four, if they're synonyms, then

Paul's point doesn't make sense. Yeah. But no reason for the difference.

Right. And so those categories get conflated, when you don't have that gospel law distinction.

Yeah. Okay. So that's the big one we've talked about thus far. And obviously that has to do with how is someone made right with God?

And that's category one. That's the most important thing. So you did mention though the idea, maybe among some at least, of we're the one true church.

And I have definitely noticed that that is a repeated theme in some cults, or at the very least, shaky, we'll say, dominations.

But I think the Eastern Orthodox Church would claim that. I believe

Roman Catholicism as a system would claim that. We've got like landmarkism and then this, and there's probably more.

But is that something that you've run into quite a bit? The idea that there's only one true church under God and that's

Church of Christ. Yeah. So in my study of the Church of Christ, like I said, it stems all the way back to the

Restorationist Movement in 1811 with Alexander and Thomas Campbell. And so they were riding the coattails of the

Baptists and the Presbyterians. And eventually we got to restore God's church, you know. And so they claim to be the one true church.

And I will say this, Church of Christ typically do not like to be called a denomination because they claim to be the one true church.

So they will actually point the finger at us and say, oh, that's just denominational teaching.

We are the Roman 1616 churches of Christ. And usually denomination is supposed to be a good term that says we are from the right gospel, the trinity, and then we can just differ on some tertiary things that are important.

But we just might have, you know, the Presbyterian church over here and then the Baptist over here, but we can still evangelize together, you know.

And so most Church of Christ do not want to be referred to as a denomination. I'm saying,

I'd remind them, I'm like, definitionally y 'all are a sect holding to a doctrine.

Even when you say there's no creed, but Christ, that's your creed. Yeah. There's no one is not a denomination.

Yeah. I tell people that's just begging the question. You're just assuming you're the church that Paul is mentioning, which by the way, he's not saying call yourself the

Church of Christ. He's talking about the nature of the church, which is Christ. So I'm just saying, like,

I get into that conversation a whole lot. And so I do think that is a big red flag is when one group is claiming to be the one true church.

Now, I would look at the one true church as something that is universal, that God knows.

It's the people of God who have been called out, right? The churches, the ecclesia, the called out ones by grace apart from works.

You know what I mean? Yeah. And so that's what we're getting into. And the universal church has always existed.

There's something that has connected us even to the saints of old like Abraham. But when

Jesus talks about, I will build my church and the gates of hell will not prevail against it. I believe he is talking about something unique that's going to happen at Pentecost, where the mystery of Christ is going to be revealed, no longer having any division between Jew or Gentile.

I mean, it's beautiful. The church as we know it today, the visible church is incredible because you have people coming from all different backgrounds.

But what unites them together is the grace of God resting solely in Christ alone.

You know what I mean? Yeah. To your point, that would be the very thing that disqualifies them for being the one true church is the churches of Christ.

Christ alone merit is what determines what the church is. It's by his grace or the unmerited favor that we can know him.

And since that category is muddied, the very churches that claim to be, we're the one true church often, you know, you question, do they even know

Christ at all? Right. What I take a lot of rest in, because you and I, we have a high view of God's sovereignty, is

I know that since we can preach the gospel of grace, we can share God's truth, that we know even those within the church of Christ and other cults,

God's sheep will hear his voice. And maybe there are genuine saved

Christians in some of these cults, but they need to be saved out of that cultic movement. Like their heart may be trusting in Christ alone, but they just don't know how to articulate what's truly on the inside because they're, you know, being brainwashed essentially.

And so that's why it's worth pursuing cults with the gospel, knowing that God's sheep will hear the good shepherd's voice.

And so, like I said, that's the church universal is a work that God is accomplishing from beginning to end.

And he can't fail in that pursuit. Yeah. Amen. So one thing about, you know, you've, you've mentioned multiple times cult, cult, cult, cult, cult, right.

You know, you're pretty strong in that language, which is totally fine. A lot of people don't like that.

Yeah. So with that, when I think of cult, usually, you know, you think of a few plastic marks, there could be a cult that's not particularly of a

Christian variety, but just there is a charismatic leader. Oftentimes people are brought, you know, to live in a certain way.

That's a lot of times outside the norm that will do things they wouldn't do. There is some sort of indoctrination that over time just goes right past reason and goes because they've been thought, been made to think in new ways.

And you don't question basically the people up top. That's a huge thing with, with cults, but to varying degrees,

I'm sure that's true in all of them. But my question for you is, if the church of Christ is in that category or close to it or whatever, in terms of the practical effects, have you seen any practical effects of harm on individuals who've been in those types of churches?

And all churches too, you know, even a true church is going to have sin, obviously. But, you know, when

I think of a cult, I think of crazy abuse and like, you know, you're brought out of it. Any stories like that?

Yeah. Well, I want to do a shameless book plug. This is Christ Rescued Me from the

Church of Christ written by Leanne Ferguson. I just want to encourage your audience to go check this out because she grew up in the

Church of Christ and talks about a lot of harm that she received. But like you said, the harm doesn't just come from the people within it.

It all stems from the doctrine that's being taught. And the doctrine at the core has no distinction between law and gospel.

Therefore it's legalism. And legalism is going to breed abusive behavior.

It's going to basically, you're being taught, do better, obey this formula.

You can do it, right? You have this kind of categorical free will ability to do what's right.

And so there's a redefining of grace because you can pull yourself up by your bootstraps.

I tell the Church of Christ, they've added a Sola called Sola Subbot Stratus. And that's going to hurt your day -to -day walk.

And can you imagine, John, the leadership teaching that? The leadership, they perceive themselves as the most obedient.

Therefore you must obey like I obey. And if you don't obey, then you're the problem, right?

And so that opens up all doors. And like you said, even evangelical churches, they can have that atmosphere if they too have deviated from the law of gospel distinction.

If they're just preaching a harsh morality, right? Not constantly pointing people back to the author and the perfecter of our faith,

Jesus Christ, the way that Philippians 2 would. Well then, yeah, you're going to have those types of sin problems in the church.

But listen, from the bottom up with the Church of Christ, that's all they teach.

And so you're going to be harmed, you know, at every point and turn. And those that are kind of the elitist, think about how much they have to suppress, how much they know that they've sinned.

They're not going to perfectly repent because when you get baptized, that's just the reset button, right?

That's just your past sins. Your current sins, your future sin, getting forgiven is based on your repentance.

And so if you can't maintain a perfect repentance, then that's going to be a heavy yoke of bondage.

So I'm just saying that even those that stay within the Church of Christ, that buy into that system, they have to give on this facade that they are being obedient to the

T. And so like, if people go look at my last debate I had with Church Christ, it was crazy,

John. My opening statement, I made a case that the Church of Christ is the modern day

Pharisee of Luke 18 between the Pharisee and the tax collector. So obviously my interlocutor probably didn't appreciate that, but my whole point is you are trusting in your own righteousness.

If you think baptism, your participation in a ceremony like baptism is necessary for your justification, well, that's

Phariseeism. Yeah. Because the entire freedom and peace that comes with knowing that my sins have been forgiven and I have a real inseparable bond with Christ or union with Christ, we're going to do that a little bit in my church.

We have all of these blessings. It seems to me that with that system, those would be at least in the back of your mind in question based on how well have

I obeyed this week, or how much have I failed, or you're just basically trying to keep things going, look good in front of others, just keep up the rigor and the religious rituals.

And that's got to be such a burden on the soul.

So if I could do another shameless plug, if your audience were to go to my Facebook page,

I have a group that's pinned. The first thing you see when you click on my page is the Church of Christ Exiles.

And so me and my buddy Trey Fisher, who came out of the Church of Christ and just loves the

Lord, embraces the gospel of grace and the doctrines of grace. I mean, we just say salvation is totally of the

Lord's. We started this group, and we have over 300 members. And this is specifically for those that have been saved out of the

Church of Christ, and now they just need community. Because what's going to happen is when you abandon the

Church of Christ doctrine, that church will shun you as an outsider. You are no longer in the

Church of Christ. Therefore, you're outside the ark of salvation. And so people have to count the cost because they're going to lose family and community.

And so Trey Fisher and I, we want to provide that kind of community to ask questions and to give recommendations.

One of the things within that group is I show them the 10 elements of a healthy church to just try to help point them in the right direction of where to go next.

And so John, it's just been incredible to see so many people come out of the Church of Christ because they're starting to see through the facade.

They, by God's grace, feel the weight of their own sin. You can't keep suppressed. If the

Spirit of God is truly working on your heart, then you know you need a perfect Savior. You know that you have to look to Christ alone and not partially looking to yourself and your own obedience.

And so I just want to encourage people that if people are looking for community, definitely join that group because even though you may not have come out of the

Church of Christ, but you want to help those who have come out of it with community, we also welcome people that want to help those coming out of the

Church of Christ. Okay, that sounds like a worthwhile group and a help to them.

So that's a cool little thing you guys started there. We also have a number of Church of Christ preachers that have abandoned the

Church of Christ doctrine, but they are wanting to reform their congregation from within.

And so getting to talk to those gentlemen have been incredible too because the Church of Christ have about four different sects.

You have a far right wing, a right -leaning moderate, and then you have left -leaning moderate, and then far left wing.

And so the far right wing are the most staunch, quote -unquote, conservative, dogmatic.

They all kind of speak a certain way. And then my last debate with Mike Hysall, very right -leaning moderate, going to differ with the hard right sect in many different ways.

But then you do have those left side that are more willing to not dogmatically say you have to be baptized into the

Church of Christ. I was just going to say there's kind of an array of those things.

And so some of these preachers that are on the left moderate wing side, their churches have not kicked them out of the pulpit about teaching them about the double imputation of what happens with the great exchange when you look to Christ alone.

Well, then all of your sin, past, present, and future, goes all the way back in time to Calvary. And in exchange, you see the perfect righteousness of Christ.

And so these preachers are saying, hey, I'm going to preach penal substitutionary atonement to my congregation, which is the core of the gospel.

And anyway, we've just, we've heard miraculous stories of these congregations just being transformed.

And praise God for that. Because like I said, you have four different kind of sects where that can be more tolerated on the left side of things.

But on the right side, that is, you know, outright condemned. Wow. What, to your knowledge, are there a larger percentage that are more on the right, the left, in the

U .S., for example? You might not know, though. I don't know the exact percentage, but the majority is the far right and the moderate right.

And so most Church of Christ perceive themselves as the one true church. Now, those two groups fight a lot.

I mean, you get internal, because you got to think, legalism fights with itself. Legalism fights with legalism.

And so the kind of internal disputes that the Church of Christ have is one

Church of Christ might use many cups at the Lord's Supper, and another congregation might use one cup.

Well, if they interpret those passages differently, well, then we must be right, and you're disobeying the gospel, you're disobeying

Christ, so you're lost. And so that's the wild internal battles within the

Church of Christ. I see. Yeah, that's got to be a stressor right there. Man.

I mean, that's just one example. I mean, you get other things about instrumental music.

I mean, the Church of Christ is kind of known for being a cappella only. And what they'll say is, well, there's nowhere explicitly commanded to use instruments, even though we can point to a few verses that seem to explicitly talk about instruments.

But check this out. Church of Christ, clapping your hands can be perceived as an instrument, and so they'll condemn each other over clapping hands if that's an instrument.

Or if you have a kitchen in your church, well, that's not prescribed in the Bible to be in a church, and so that church down the road is outside the faith.

I mean, it's just wild. Wow. Okay. That is a good, I think, phrase that you use that I think is helpful, not just for the

Church of Christ, but just in general, I think, for people to think about is, you know, legalism fights itself.

So adding laws that are not of God to, you know, yeah, adding laws, basically, that you're saying this is binding and legalism will fight itself because I have these certain, quote unquote, rules that are not actually rules, but I made them up, and you have these, and obviously, we're never going to be 100 % together.

And so it's naturally going to just butt heads, which is why, again, the categories thing, so important.

It's so important. Christians, we need to know law, gospel, liberty, you know, so on and so forth.

And I think that for myself, even, that's where I think about sins that I've committed in the past, or even just wrongheaded thinking.

It's like, oh, I just, I basically had a mini sort of legalism that was completely liberty, basically.

But I kind of put myself on a, you know what I mean, like a pedestal thinking about like a certain person. And it's like, you know,

I think a lot of times this happens, for example, with, you know, are they that profitable?

No, but like video games? You know, am I a huge fan of people spending a bunch of times playing video games?

No, but I think there are times where it's like, that's treated as the sin. But then watching television is totally okay.

And it's like, that's kind of a manmade, you know, law there. There's the hypocrisy there, too.

You know what I mean? Yeah, because I'm trying to think of the verse that Paul says in 1 Timothy 6 .12, but you know, all things are lawful, but not all things are profitable.

So we do need to implore wisdom. We need to surround ourselves with the saints to have that accountability in our life.

But you're right, when you're imposing a law where there is no law. I mean, you're, in principle, returning back to now you're gonna see my

Reformed Baptist come out of me. In principle, you're returning back to the old covenant that could not save.

It's always been the new covenant that saves to the uttermost. We talked about Sam Waldron earlier. I think you would agree with him.

Yeah. Yeah. So when we talk about legalism,

I just wanna encourage your audience, if they go watch any of my debates, when I do cross examination, being presuppositional,

I'm going to grant, for the sake of argument, their worldview and show how it's internally contradictory.

And how do you do that? You fight legalism with legalism. Jesus essentially did the same thing in Matthew 12 when he says, a kingdom divided against itself cannot stand.

And so legalism will always be its own demise, if that makes sense. Yeah. Well, I think you have covered a lot of ground with me.

I really, really appreciate it. I definitely feel like I've learned a good bit more about the

Church of Christ. I mean, basically the biggest point is, wow, how we're made right with God.

Can I give two plugs real quick? You're allowed four plugs per video.

You've done two, so you've got two more. You've got two more to happen. I tried to use them wisely.

Yeah. August 13th, I will be in a two -on -two debate.

Me and the Fishbone, Trey Fisher, we're going to be debating to Church of Christ on the

Gospel Truth YouTube channel, which is a Christian debate platform. So I've engaged on a ton of debates on this channel.

I love Marlon Wilson, that brother, what he's doing over there. And so I just want to encourage your audience. It's going to be in August.

I mean, me and the Fishbone, we eat and breathe this stuff. So we're much just going to, when it's go time, we're just going to show up ready to roll.

You know what I mean? And so that's coming up in August. And I may do some more debates in between there, a little bit after.

I mean, some of these things I just say, let's just have at it. The really big debate will be next

February at the Open Air Theology Conference. I will be debating a

Church of Christ on the issue of eternal security. And so that'll be next February 2025.

And so I just want to tell people, be on the lookout for that. Yeah, absolutely. And they can find you at your

YouTube channel, Apologetic Dog. Yes, the Apologetic Dog on YouTube. I just hit 2000 subscribers.

So that is a huge blessing. And people ask how they can support. And I have a website that's getting revamped.

And so that's really exciting. But the biggest kind of support, you know, apart from liking, subscribing and sharing the content, and there are some generous

Christians that want to support with, you know, money and things like that. And that's been a huge blessing.

But please pray that I would not, for one, that I would prioritize my time well, because my church really wants me to pursue apologetics.

My wife really wants me to pursue this ministry. But I just want to be a faithful steward of what all

God has given me. Yeah. Well, yeah, I really do appreciate your time.

And it's been a blessing to have you and to learn a bit more about this particular area and would love to have you on again sometime.