Matt Slick Live

The following program is recorded content created by the Truth Network. It's Matt Slick live. Matt is the founder and president of the Christian Apologetics Research Ministry, found online at KARM.org. When you have questions about Bible doctrines, turn to Matt Slick live. Francis, taking your calls and responding to your questions at 877-207-2276.

Here's Matt Slick. Hey, everybody. Welcome back. Oh, I should say welcome back from me for being gone all last week. I'll explain that and what happened and stuff like that. If you want to give me a call, all you got to do was dial 877-207-2276. Hey, I'm going to catch you up on some stuff. Today is the 24th of April, 2023. Hey, I changed some graphics on Facebook pages.

Matt Slick live. Is Roman Catholicism true? Is Universalism true? You can check out those Facebook pages. I'm using artificial intelligence graphics generation. Go in there and check it out and see what you think. Just for kicks, I went in and prompted it to design a living room. Man, it's like I have a magazine.

These things are incredible. All right, so what happened last week, I'll tell you why it wasn't on the air live. You guys know out there, my wife has a lot of medical issues. It runs in the family. Her brothers, she has four brothers, and two of them have already passed away from this condition that she has, that they all have.

Her oldest brother, Ken, his ascending aorta is dissected. This is the kind of thing that will kill you. I actually talked to him on Monday morning and said, dude, you got to get in, man.

Your speech is slurred, and you're not thinking clearly, and I could tell. He goes, okay. Others have been prompting him, and he finally called. His neighbor took him to ER, and they operated that evening.

This is how serious it was. The operation went from eight to ten hours. He has a zipper from the upper part of his chest down to his belly button area, and they opened him up completely. They had to fix that aortic system. He's healing up.

He's healing up really well. We had to take an emergency flight down there on Monday and do the whole everything. My wife, she can't really pull luggage because of her condition, and she has to walk slowly. Basically, I'm a pack mule.

I've got a picture of me in an elevator loaded to the gills with stuff and getting around. That's how it was. We flew back Saturday.

There you go. We flew back Saturday, and brother-in-law is doing fine. I want to thank all of you for the prayers that you offered him. He's not a believer, and I told him. I said, look. I said, you've had a couple three of these instances. I said, you've got to wise up. I said, eternity is a long time.

You can take a last breath one day. Then what? He mocks the Jesus thing. You'd think that something like this would wake someone up when you have all this stuff going on. He woke up, and he said that he was surprised he was alive.

That's how serious everything was. To add things on, his wife has Huntington's disease, and it's pretty advanced. The result of it is that she can only utter a few words, and they're muffled. They're not very clear, and she doesn't walk very well. She can go up and down stairs on her own, but it takes a while. She has to take one step and condition herself or get ready. This kind of a thing.

We had to take care of her too. Not complaining. It's just this is the situation.

Neither one of them, as far as I know, love the Lord and are Christians. I'm just going to ask all of you to pray. Get this. During the week, I went down there to the cafeteria and grabbed a salad. I grabbed a salad, and I looked in the cafeteria area, and there was no place to sit. All the places were taken. There was this one woman at a table, and this table was big enough for six people. She was just sitting on one side of it by herself. People would do that.

It would be nice if I sit here, and I could tell that's what they were doing, because there's a lot of people there. I asked, and she said, yeah, sure. I saw that she was reading a Bible, and I looked at it. I thought it was Chinese.

It turned out to be Korean. We ended up talking. Then her husband showed up about 10 or 15 minutes later. Her name is Catherine, so you can remember her in prayer. His mother has bad Alzheimer's, so they're Christians. Let's just say I did an impromptu counseling session with them right there. It took a bit for them to open up, but once they found out what I did and et cetera, I just ministered to them by God's grace. It was one of those God-ordained things, and they were so appreciative. I was able to connect with them. I can't tell you details, but I was able to connect with them and relate to them in some areas and just focus on the things of God.

We exchanged phone numbers for text, and she was extremely appreciative. She said it was a God thing, and it really ministered to them and helped them a great deal. So praise God. When you guys pray, the doors open up, not only in the direction that we want, but also in other areas as well. I just want to thank you again. Seriously, thank you for the prayers. I was out all last week.

We had rerun shows, and that's just how it was in urgency to get out. It's going to happen again because this condition that my wife and her family has is very serious. All right, here's another something, and I want you to give me a call, 877-207-2276. Tell me what you think of the graphics on the Facebook pages I've mentioned, the new graphics and stuff, playing with stuff with AI. Okay, now there's a movie out that I recommend you go see called Nefarious. I've seen it three times already, and it's not that great. Don't expect that great a movie, but I love the premise and I love the theology that was buried in it, and this is why I've seen it three times. It's written by a Christian, and it's, in my opinion, the best Christian movie ever done. It's in the genre of C.S.

Lewis' book, The Screwtape Letters. I'm not going to give anything away, but the premise is a psychiatrist needs to go into prison to interview a man who says he's demon-possessed, and the psychiatrist needs to determine whether or not he's going to be diagnosed as insane or not so that the execution can go forward or not. And the man who claims to be demon-possessed says, by the time this guy leaves, the psychiatrist leaves, he will have committed three murders.

And it's interesting. So what happens is the individual starts talking theology from a demonic perspective. Now, it's not teaching demonic stuff, but what he's doing is teaching methods of deception. And I was thinking, you know, if I was writing something like this, I would have said a lot of that, done the same kind of a thing. And in my next novel, I've been thinking about different avenues of communication between the angelic and the human world for the next novel that I'm going to write in this series of The Influence. And I actually wondered about this before I saw the movie, about having a discussion that would happen about the bad side, because I already had a discussion with the good side, where Mark, the main character, discusses things with an angel. And I was thinking, I've got this character, and maybe do something on the demonic realm.

So anyway, just a lot of information, a lot of stuff. And I just want to say thanks for all the prayers again. All right, four open lines. If you want to give me a call, 877-207-2276. Let's get to Rudolph from Raleigh, North Carolina.

Rudolph, welcome, man, you're on the air. Yes, sir. Can simple man choose God? Yes, if God enables him to choose, yes.

Uh-huh. God grants that he believe, Leviticus 1.29. That belief is in Christ, John 6.29. And so God calls us to be born again, 1 Peter 1.3. We're born again not of our own will, John 1.13. Born again is a change in our nature in that we're changed. We're still human, of course, but now we're dwelt by God, redeemed. And that does not occur by our work, but by God's work. That's, like I said, 1 Peter 1.3 combined with John 1.13. So he makes us born again. We're a new creature, 2 Corinthians 5.17.

And because of it, we're able to then freely choose God. Okay? Okay. Before I go, I'm praying for your family, but before I go, may I give you a joke? It's a clean joke. A clean joke, okay.

Let's hear it. Yes. Okay. What did Isaac Newton create? What did Isaac Newton create? Was it some cookies?

I don't know. What? Because Fig Newtons.

Fig Newtons. I knew something like that was coming up. Well, appreciate that. That's good. Okay. Well, take care.

I'll talk to you soon, brother. Okay. All right, man. I'll see you. God bless.

All right. Hey, folks. We have Wide Open Lines. Why don't you give me a call?

877-207-2276. So in light of last week's emergency, having to fly down to LA and LAX and all of that. Yeah, I grew up down there. So I'm familiar with the freeways and with the traffic at 80 miles an hour. You drive 80 miles an hour and you got to watch out.

It's fast. But, you know, the issue of the effect of sin in the world. The Korean couple that I spoke to in the cafeteria, the mom had Alzheimer's, and the thing is that it doesn't affect just one person, but it affects everybody else around her.

Just like my brother-in-law who had this surgery, it affected so many other people so quickly. Doctors and nurses, emergency neighbors, you know, my wife and me, the rest of the family. And this is the nature of where we live in a social construct and stuff like that. And so one event is never by itself. This is a philosophical truth. You never have facts that are isolated. Facts always have a context. Well, you also have events that occur in life that are never isolated.

They're always in a broader context, a broader set of circumstances. And it's like a gigantic hair ball. You pull on one hair and others are affected. And the closer to the original source of energy, the more it is affected there. Okay, well, you know, but here's the thing. God's in control of all of it. And he understands every single event that will occur and has occurred. And all of the ramifications of all of those events that will happen on different people in their hearts, their minds. And it's a good thing to be able to trust in God in this. But the effect of sin in the world is unfortunately a reality. And I know that there's so many people out there right now who have loved ones who have illnesses, who are going through financial difficulties, who've suffered something that wasn't even your fault, and you're having to deal with a lot of stuff.

And I know that's the case with a lot of people out there. All I can say is where you are and in the context that you are in is where you need to work in that whatever circumstance you find yourself in, give that circumstance as well as your hands and your heart to God and say, you've allowed this for a reason. I may not like it, but I'm in it. Teach me how to survive in it, to thrive in it, and bring you glory through it. Because I won't have this circumstance forever. But in this one, for now, guide me that I might bring glory to your name and give me strength to endure.

That's what you got to do. Hey, there's the music. Four open lines, 877-207-2276. We'll be right back. It's Matt Slick live, taking your calls at 877-207-2276.

Here's Matt Slick. Everybody, welcome back to the show. If you want to give me a call, 877-207-2276. For those of you who might be tuning in late, I was out last week.

Today is April 24th. It's a nice Monday if you want to give me a call. 877-207-2276. You can also email me at info at karm.org and just type in a radio comment or a radio question and I can read it on the air. All right, let's get to somebody, anonymous from Raleigh, North Carolina. Welcome. That's my first, middle, and last name. Good evening. I went to call you, I don't know if it would be the first caller, I guess it would have been. I'm chickened out.

But I thought I wanted to call and tell you how much I have gleaned from listening to you and hanging out with the last couple of years and that says you're like a friend and I want to thank you and tell you that I'm praying for you because it gets a little scary sometimes. I feel you on that, but Romans 828, right? That's right. That's right. All things work together. That's right.

That's my whole question, really. I just wanted to tell you that. Well, I appreciate it. Well, good. Thank you.

Do you have anything else you want to add in or? Well, the feeling I have lately and it's increased, which is he's carrying me basically at times to where letting me know and giving me strength to get through what we're about to go through, but can really, I've always been more sensitive and like I can really feel it rocking and rolling on him, you know? But that rock did roll, so. You mean regarding society? It's just this whole thing, this whole thing, it's just right around the corner and I just feel like it. So, you know, it's like I wish I could unload a lot of things, but the feeling I've been having lately is just like a, it's not a winsome, just a wistful feeling, you know? I have the peace from him that does pass all understanding, but at the same time I have that, I know, I can imagine how Jesus has felt, you know, in that amount of grief that he felt over us and I'm feeling just a slight taste of it and I don't want to do that to him.

I don't want to grieve him like that, you know? Right. So, yeah. Well, there's, like you said, there's a lot coming and, you know, we talk about, or I mentioned this, it's just the world we live in. You know, most Christian churches want to teach about prosperity and God has a wonderful plan for your life while they're ignoring the signs around them and the storm that's on the horizon moving and we need to be well-prepared and I agree with you that something's coming and ever since the Biden administration got in, the Biden crime family, our country has just taken a direct, just a path down to hell and it's going to continue unless something major happens to the Christians. The Christians are the ones who got to be praying and do it, not just pray, but do it. I don't think we're going to be going out there and tearing up the streets and saying Christian lives matter so, and oh, why are we standing on the air with us?

Absolutely. We should say Christian truth matters. They should have a sign, Christian truth matters and we just, and everybody should be marching, all the Christians should be marching all over and there should be hundreds of thousands of Christians all over the country marching. But you know, they don't because they're fond of the blonde hair, blue white Caucasians serve for Jesus and you know, turn your other cheek and God wants you healthy and wealthy and prosperous. You can't do that. You can't be healthy and prosperous if you're going to risk going out there and actually doing something Christian like going out in front of a, like I'm thinking about doing this again, going in front of a Mormon church, for example, my sign that says is mormonismchristian.com just stand out across the street, just hold it up or you know, go to, go to parades with Christians and pray and hold up signs and get gathered and do it.

I think this is what should happen, but I don't understand why Christians are so afraid, you know? Yeah. And it's too real to be just camping out or hanging out on the sidelines.

I did that for 50 years without going into whatever, um, that I'm even alive is a miracle. Uh, it's a lot, a lot. And uh, uh, anyway, uh, I'm not hanging out at the sidelines. That's not happening. I'm not compromising, you know, a neighbor kind of took me off guard yesterday and you know, um, you know, with some stuff about, but uh, I told her the first time I heard that come out of my mouth and that it actually, it's really something, it was for me.

I needed to hear. They're nice to look me and I'm not compromising with this. Good. Don't compromise. But too many Christians are compromising. They don't realize they're compromising by not following Christ's command to pick up your cross daily and follow after him and to give up your life for him and to lay down everything for him. So people think they're not compromising, but they are all the time. Even by going to some of the churches they go to and they compromised by supporting women pastors and elders. They compromised by supporting the heretics like Joyce Meyer and Kenneth Copeland and uh, and them and the positive confession idiots out there. Yeah.

It's a lot of compromise in the church. Absolutely. It's kind of like, you know, where do we stand? Where do we hang back? Oh, I don't want to say anything because the AI and this and that and you already know what I'm saying.

Probably. Everything that I'm saying. But it's already out there. It's all being recorded. The NSA has, the NSA has, uh, their fingers in all, uh, communications avenues. They can record everything.

They have all the, the, uh, technology, uh, to do all that stuff. I'm going to go and pet my cat reality or something or unreality or surreality. God bless you, brother. Thank you so much again. God bless. God bless. Alright.

Okay. And so, uh, you know, folks, um, you know, I feel, sometimes I feel like Jeremiah, uh, in the Old Testament prophet, I'm not a prophet of course, but he spoke the truth and people wouldn't listen to him and he's an outcast. What we, uh, what we have happen or what we're having happen is, uh, the failure of the Christian church overall to pick up its cross and follow after Christ.

And that can be done in different ways, different levels of, um, of truth. And uh, you know, raising kids for the glory of God, being a good mechanic, a good waitress or waiter for the glory of God. But sometimes what God wants us to do is to, uh, not just go to a church on Sunday and you put your tithe in and that's your Christianity. That's a weak form of Christianity. Church is good. Taking communion is good. Hearing the sermon's pastor preaching is good.

But if that's all your Christianity is, then are you picking up your cross like Jesus said to do and following after him? If we could talk about this, if you want, give me a call. 877-207-2276. Be right back. It's Matt Slick live, taking your calls at 877-207-2276.

Here's Matt Slick. Everyone, welcome back to the show. Let's see at the bottom of the hour if you want to give me a call, 877-207-2276. Let's get on the, on the air here with Katie from Missouri. Katie, welcome.

You're on the air. Hi. Hi. Hi. Okay. Um. So what do you got?

Okay. I was calling, um, I have been wondering, um, I've been kind of studying more on the lukewarm in Revelation 3 and how God says he will spit you out. And it actually kind of scares me because I don't know if I'm lukewarm. I feel like I'm constantly seeking the Lord. Um, I love him so much. I, I study the Word every morning. I spend time with God, but I feel, I mean, I don't want to trust feelings, but you know, um, I just, I hope that, like, I don't know, I just hope that I'm not considered a lukewarm Christian.

It scares me. Okay. Can you break that down a little more, I guess?

Sure. Well, what do you think a lukewarm Christian is? I don't know.

I mean, I would think, okay, somebody that doesn't even think about the Lord doesn't even care and just lives recklessly and carelessly and, um, I have friends, you know, I will say, and I feel like I'm, I'm on fire because I feel like I lost a lot of friends because that's all I do is talk about God. Well, you're obviously not lukewarm. What do you say? You're not lukewarm. See, hot or cold is, is the thing. Be one or the other. Make a choice who you can serve.

You serve one master, not two. You're either hot or you're a cold, you're either with the Lord, you're not with the Lord. You're with the Lord. You're not lukewarm. You're fine.

Okay. Can you tell me what would be considered, you know, the lukewarm, I guess, because I'm finding I have my friends that are Christians that say they're Christians, but I don't even think some of them read the Bible. And then I have the other ones and it's so crazy because there's some that I have that are like, so I have to basically be like, oh yeah, my ladies that I talked to, my Christian friends that are in my Bible study, because we all just talk every day, like we're all part of this like group chat and we study the word every morning versus my other Christian friends. And you know, I'm like, oh yeah, I was talking to my other friends, but it's like crazy because the ones don't even like probably never open the Bible ever. But then they call themselves Christians. Yeah. Those are liars. Okay. They're liars.

And then when I try to talk about it, they all shut up and they act like I'm weird and I'm like, okay. Yeah, they're liars. If you say you know him and don't keep his commandments, the truth is not in you and you're a liar. Wow. Yeah. That's 1 John 2.4. So the thing is lukewarmness, just think of apathy and just kind of associate them together and you'll have the generic meaning. In the culture, you know, there were springs in the area of the church there and hot or cold water would come out. Lukewarm wasn't good for anything.

And so lukewarm water could be swallowed in order to induce vomiting and stuff like that. So at any rate, the idea here is that a lukewarm Christian is someone who says he's a Christian or she's a Christian, really doesn't go to church, doesn't care to go to church, doesn't really read the Bible, you know, whatever, and isn't really interested in the things of God and yet they claim to be a Christian. So they have one foot in hot, one foot in cold, so to speak, and they're neither. And they are the liars, those who say one thing and do another. And they're the ones who are, we could say lukewarm, apathetic.

You're obviously not like that. And you're going to find that with your friends, when you speak of the things of the truth of God's word, you'll find out what's in their hearts. Because if the things of God are in your heart, you'll rejoice to some degree on hearing the things of God. But if your heart is filled with darkness, the light will expose that darkness and you'll remove yourself from that light.

And so that's how you find out what's in them and where they're at, okay. Oh, well that actually sounds like a lot going on lately, actually. Because it seems like that's really getting more and more, like a lot this past, I would even say the past few years, it seems like everybody says they're a Christian, but you don't really see the fruit of it.

No. You know, if I were to just say here really quickly, what does it mean to be a Christian? It means to not lie and to tell the truth, even if it's going to harm you.

To be a person of sacrifice doesn't mean everything in every instance, every second, but you have to have a life of sacrifice for the benefit of others to some degree. You should be attending church if you're able to. You should be seeking the things of God if you're able to.

And you should always have your mind other-centered and outward-centered on how to present the gospel of Christ out into the world. Not just go to a church and then think that going to church on Sunday means you've fulfilled your duty. That is not it. In fact, that verse- That's definitely not it. That's right. In Hebrews 10 25, it says, do not forsake the gathering together of the people of God.

It says it in one place. But what Jesus says is pick up your cross daily and follow after me. Love your neighbors yourself. Go visit the orphans.

Go visit the prisoners. He's talking about going to do. And most Christians just don't do anything because they have an easy Christianity. It's just pre-trib- Sorry, but I'm going to step on people's toes, pre-trib rapture mentality. Not all people hold to that though. But the pre-trib rapture mentality of I'm not going to worry about anything because I'm going to be raptured out of here.

Now not all pre-tribbers believe that and are that apathetic, but I'm saying it's a contributing factor. And so we've got to be very careful here, but Christians are called to be aggressors in the world. The gates of hell will not prevail against the church. The gates of hell are things that sit and we are the ones who knock them down. You don't hear stuff like this preached.

I would love, just love to be invited to a church and preach a sermon about this, about what it means to get off your duffs and get out there into the world and how to do it. But you know. I need to know how to do it, yes, if that's right. Let me tell you how.

Let me tell you how. I come across people all the time and I get in. I don't try to get in battles, but I do hair and I consider it my ministry. And being in the beauty world, there's a lot of, there could be gay and all that, you know. And I just got a lady on Saturday that was like, look at people attacking transgender, blah, blah, blah. And I said, well, no one's attacking them, but we stand on the word of God.

She's like, God made them that way. No he didn't. So here's the thing. Here's the thing.

I said, no he did not. Watch this. Look, just to say, oh, they're transgender. Okay.

So moving from what to what? Man to a woman, right? Oh, okay. Well, I want to know, you know, since you support that, can you tell me what a woman is so that I can, I can be more educated on this?

Go ahead. And they're not going to have an answer because they don't know. And if they don't know, you say, well, then I'm confused.

Why would you say it's a good thing to go from man to woman if you don't even know what either one is? And then just leave it at that. Okay. Right. And she asked me because she said that I was not being loving like Jesus. And I was like, no.

Yeah. I'm not loving to the, to the, to the murderer and who it's just the way he is. God made him like that.

It's the stupidity of people. You're not loving. You tell me what your standard of love is. Love doesn't mean you agree with someone's sin and rebellion. Love means that you tell them the truth. And this idea of love is being co-opted by the unbelievers as though they have a market on it. Yes.

They're just, they're just full of lies and self-deception. No. It's getting harder. I want to teach people how to answer. I want to teach people what to do. I want to teach people. And you know, I wish pastors would have me out of their churches or do seminars to equip or do an online seminar to equip.

It would be great if pastors wanted to have someone like me do that, but it's, it would, I don't believe it's going to happen. Anyway, that's what it is. You know? Okay. Well, thank God that you do this on the weekdays at five o'clock. Well, and I do it in the evening sometimes on different chat venues and, um, and on the web, the website, karm.org. I don't know if you've ever been there, but we'll get hiccups there at karm.org, C-A-R-M.O-R-G. Go check it out. Oh yeah. I've been on there.

I read a lot on there. I'm glad that you do that. Okay. All right. Okay. Well, thank you so much. You're welcome so much. Well, God bless. God bless you. Okay.

We'll see you. Okay. All right. All right. Hey, give me a call. 877-207-2276.

We've got about a minute or so before the break. Matt from North Carolina. Welcome. You're on the air. Hey, Matt. How you doing? Doing all right, man. Hanging in there.

What do you got, buddy? You ever been in a service where there's no preaching in it? Oh, yeah. Yeah.

I've been in services before where it's a how-to thing of moralism. Yeah. Hey, hold on.

We've got a break. Okay. Hey, folks. We'll be right back after these messages.

Please stay tuned. It's Matt Slick live, taking your calls at 877-207-2276. Here's Matt Slick. Hey, everybody. Welcome back to the show. Let's get back on the air with Matt from North Carolina.

Check it out. Okay, Matt. Welcome.

You're back on. Yeah. See, I go to a church that has services after services with no preaching in it. Is that a good thing or is that a bad thing? No, it's a bad thing. Bad thing. Why would they not have any preaching?

I mean, what's the only thing? Well, I mean, the Holy Spirit preaches. Okay. I don't understand. The Holy Spirit preaches. People testifying in church.

Well, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, hold on. If you say there's no preaching, okay, if you say there is no preaching, then the Holy Spirit preaches. That's preaching. So you're giving me conflicting statements.

So now I'm confused. All right. All right. Okay. Okay. All right. Like we have people that stand up and testify in church, you know, and, and, like, say that figures on for 30 minutes, is that a good thing in the church or a bad thing in the church? Well, it depends.

I mean, uh, you know, it just depends on context and, and you can't say that it's always wrong or always right, uh, that sometimes you might have a series of sermons that lead up to the idea of people giving testimonies and that's permissible, uh, but if that's all that it is, uh, then it's rather haphazard and you don't have the teaching going on. Okay. Okay. Yeah.

Yeah. We had to force preaching at our church a little bit here and there. The people will testify and the preacher, when the pastor's like, Hey, hey, Kenny wants to preach this, preach the sermon. You know, and there's a good sound preaching in the church too. So is this a United Pentecostal church? No, it's a free will Baptist.

Free will Baptist. Is there a pastor? Yep.

Yep. Does the pastor get up and deliver anything out of the word of God? Yeah, he, um, he does, but this, this, this pastor, the preacher's Papa, he's too, he's old.

He's getting older. He used to read and study his Bible and he just, and he just testifies. And then there's in the, my uncle, he preaches too. I have a church for you, just put it that way. We preach at church for you, stuff like that.

But there's preaching there too. So I'm just, I'm just like, well, is that a good thing or a bad thing? And yeah, so I am confused, um, what's going on there. So uh, uh, so you're saying there's an elder, I mean, there's a pastor and there's elders and somebody gets up and talks about the Bible.

So I don't know what's going on. I don't know if it's a, if you're relating it accurately or what or, you know, I just don't know. But there needs to be the idea of teaching. This is what, uh, first Timothy five 17 talks about, uh, with the elders.

Okay. And it talks about, uh, the elders there, it says, uh, the elders who rule well are to be considered worthy of double honor, especially those who work hard at preaching and teaching. And generally this is done in the context of the church gathering and that Paul's message, uh, you know, he preached while people were gathered and this has done the Lord's day, uh, which is Sunday.

So the motif, the model is a sermon of some sort that occurs on a Sunday. And so there should be this gathering together to do that. If there's just testimonies, then that's not teaching. Plus there's a problem with the idea of testimonies is the testimonies need to be guarded by the elders. The elders need to know what's going on. They built, they need to build it to refute, uh, error and teach sound doctrine for, uh, Titus one and first Timothy three.

So it sounds to me from what you're telling me, it sounds to me like they're not doing their job there. And this is just a lazy, uh, church service. Okay. But all the details, I can't tell you. Okay.

Well, if you're going on Facebook and look up Sandy Ford FWB church, it has, we have for a lot of services done on, on Sundays, on Sunday morning. Well, he goes to us and, uh, you know, and say, Hey, here's the URL to the church. Uh, what do you think of this? You know, and things like that. But, uh, I, it's hard to be able to tell you, okay.

It's just, it's hard to tell you because without having studied it and it takes a while to go through and watch and listen, um, so if you have a concern, you need to take it to the elders. That's what you should do. Okay. All right. Thank you. Thank you, Matt. You're welcome. All right, man. God bless. All right. Let's get to Bob from Salt Lake City.

Bob. Welcome. Hey Matt, I appreciate you taking my call. I think, um, I'm, I'm fascinated by presuppositional apologetics. Good.

Um, it's just a fascinating argument that, uh, frankly I have a tough time sort of wrapping my head around. So, um, maybe a question or two, I'd be grateful. So, so if the Christian God were evident, why must we presuppose? Okay.

Um, okay, hold on one sec, there we go. So we presuppose because that's what we do as Christians. Um, we can't prove all truths. Everybody makes presuppositions. Everybody assumes certain things.

Let me give you some background information. So for example, the laws of logic, the law of identity, law of non-contradiction, law of excluded middle law, proper inference and things like this, modus ponens, modus tollens. You have various laws, various facts of logic, but you can't prove them true without presupposing their truth.

You have to presuppose the laws of logic to demonstrate the laws of logic are true, but that's called begging the question. So what we do is in certain things, some people call this a priori or just, um, uh, fundamental basics or whatever it is that they have these terms that these are just part and parcel of actuality that we need to adopt and just believe in and then argue from that position. And so what I do with atheists, with agnostics, with varying people who, who I like to argue with and I don't mean argue, yell at, I mean, you know, discuss and they'll ask me various questions. For example, they'll say, well, why would your God do such bad things in the Bible? Well, that's a, uh, an open ended question and it's a question that necessitates presuppositionalism. So I'll say, hold on my throat, I said, okay, so you say the God of the Bible does bad things, right?

Okay. So define to me what a bad thing is. And if you do that, you need to understand that it can't be a subjective preference of what you like and don't like.

It has to be universally be universally applicable because you are saying that there is a principle you're assuming you're presupposing that there's a universal moral principle out there that you're in contact with that you can then apprehend and say, this action of God recorded in the Bible is wrong. So please tell me how you justify that as being the case. This is what I'll do with them. Just like I just said to you. And it puts them on the defensive. And the reason it does is because I'm just exposing their, their fallacious argument. That's all I'm doing. Now they might come back and say, well, Matt, you presuppose God exists.

I go, yes I do. It will. Isn't that also circular? Yes, it is. And they'll say, well, see, that's invalid.

I say, no, it's not. I'll say everybody presupposes circularity and there's a principle you have to understand. Everybody presupposes certain values that are consistent with your worldview because if you don't do that, then your worldview is inconsistent and self refuting. If you have a set of values that you judge truth by a worldview and you say, I'm assuming the truth of these and they're consistent with my worldview, my worldview is consistent with that. That's internal consistency. Okay, that's fine. We do that. Atheists do that.

But what I'll do is I'll say, okay, here's the tough question now. What must be the case in order for your worldview to be valid or the way of saying it is what must be the case in order for your presuppositions to be valid? Everybody is a presuppositionalist. Everybody is. You are.

I am. Atheists are. There are different forms of it and different degrees of it. Everybody presupposes certain values in order to argue, to try and make arguments, reasons, moral basis, social basis, political basis, everything. Everybody does this because you can't prove every single detail of every single thing. There are certain things you have to assume and that's fair. The question then becomes what worldview best accounts for the validity of those presuppositions? I'm going to say this again. Which worldview best accounts for the validity of those presuppositions?

I'm going quickly here because I don't have much time. If I as a Christian presuppose the Christian Trinitarian being who is the necessary precondition for all intelligibility, then in so doing I can account for what's called the one and the many issue. I can also account for the universality and true nature of love.

I can account for the true nature and aspect of personhood being manifested in the being of God who is that precondition. If you're an atheist, for example, and you say something is right or is wrong, then you have what's called the is-ought problem. How do you know that something that is beating up that guy on the street corner at what is is wrong? Just because you say it's wrong doesn't mean it's wrong. You have a set of values, so Mr. Atheist, justify your universal required foundation by which you can then say that is a wrong thing for him to do.

How would you know? What's the universal that you would appeal to? What's the presuppositional thing that's universal? This is what presuppositionalism is, this kind of a thing, and I'm going quickly because we're getting low on time.

If you use like this and you say what must be the case in order for your assumptions to be true, that's a presuppositional work. It's extremely powerful and it exposes the nonreligious and false religious systems as being incoherent. Only the Christian Trinitarian worldview is internally coherent and explains all things. This is why we presuppose the Christian worldview, and when you do, everything makes sense. Did that help, are you there, I don't hear anything, I just imagined his eyes rolling back in his head, losing consciousness, shaking, and that phone hangs up, overloaded his brain. So I don't know, I'm just kidding, but I pictured it and it made myself laugh, and it just blew my mind.

Anyway I went through it quickly folks, I wish someone would transcribe the last five minutes of what I said so I can write it up and you send it to me and I can polish it. Everybody presupposes certain things, everybody does. Here's the question, what must be the conditions in order for what you presuppose to be true to actually be true?

It's really simple. You have a chair, what must be the condition in order for the chair to stay where it's at? Well it's got to have a floor underneath it. What must be the condition for the floor to stay where it's at? Well it's got to be on the foundation of the ground. Well what must be the condition for the ground to be there?

Well it evolved, what must be the condition for? And you can do this back until you get to the single uncaused cause. Because all facts and all actualities have an eternal context that must relate back to the eternal, initial, I'll say this for now, the initial beginning, the initial thing from which all facts and actuality derive.

You can't have an infinite regression of causes going backwards and I can explain that some other time with some illustrations tomorrow if you guys call up and say, after I recovered from listening to you, can you explain it again and then we can do that tomorrow if you want. Hey there's the music, I got to get out of here, may the Lord bless you. By his grace, back on here tomorrow, hey, thanks for those of you who prayed for the situation of family members and surgeries and emergency this and that for all last week, God bless everybody, thank you. Thank you.