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 CARM.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. Everybody, welcome to the show. It's me, Matt Slick.

You're listening to Matt Slick live, as usual. And, as usual, if you want to give me a call, the number is 877-207-2276. And you can also email me. That's easy to do.

Just send an email to info at CARM.org, C-A-R-M dot O-R-G. You send that there and put in the subject line, radio comment, radio question, one of those. And we often get to them. Today's a nice Thursday, May 8th, 2025. And tomorrow, tomorrow's Friday, and we do a lot of, you know, sometimes we do them on Thursday and Friday, do some emails where people ask all kinds of questions. Don't like that one.

You love me. We'll get to those, maybe. And, like I said, we have nobody waiting right now. We've had some interesting conversations lately with some Catholic stuff. And Catholics and Eastern Orthodox, I've been working on this. And, you know, as you know, I'm a different kind of radio personality in that I'm a researcher and like to debate and interact and learn from my interactions with those who, well, let's just say, don't really follow biblical theology. And we had a really good, interesting conversation last night with a guy. And this conversation was around the idea of knowing what is, how to interpret stuff, and how to know what the truth is in the Word of God. And so I was discussing that with him.

And I think I mentioned this before, this kind of thing. I want to go over a little bit some of the stuff that we were talking about because I think it's interesting. And I think the conversation went really well because the Eastern Orthodox gentleman was trying to move the conversation toward the idea that you needed an authoritative system to interpret scripture. And it's hard to reproduce that conversation, but we went through some stuff and, you know, I said, look, if you're going to interpret the Word of God, you need to be a believer and, you know, believe the scriptures are true and things like this. And he kept saying, well, yes, but what's your objective standard and, you know, because the EO, Eastern Orthodox on the Roman Catholics, RC, they want the Bible to be subject to the church. They may not say that, but that's what it is. Because they always say you need an authoritative system to interpret the Word of God.

Well, okay, so we went through this. Now, this is interesting stuff because if you're just an average Joe or average Jane and you're not sure how to interpret the Word of God sometimes, well, that's okay. We can go through procedures and ways of better understanding things, and that's certainly possible. But you know what, the Bible never says you have to do that, and it was really interesting because when we're discussing this, this guy was saying, look, what authoritative system do you have to interpret scripture, and my response was the Bible doesn't say we need an authoritative system. The Bible is the standard, but it doesn't say we need anybody to, you know, a church or a prophet or prophetess or whoever, whatever, organization to tell us what it really means.

We don't need that. And he said, well, no, no, no, I understand that, he says, but what system do you do to determine what the truth is? And I said, you're not getting it. I said, you want me to develop a logical system to judge God's Word? When God doesn't even do that with himself in the Word, he just proclaims the Word.

I said, so you're asking me to essentially violate the scripture and say there's something outside of God's Word that you can use to validate what God's Word says? I said, that's a problem, and it took like 10 minutes before he finally got that point. They finally understood the issue there, and it was, you know, a real problem, okay? And so we had some more conversations. We went, and I'll give you some more of what we talked about, but I said, look, I said, the Bible says be convinced in your own mind, in Romans 14.5, and it says, in Romans 14, it says about debatable issues. And this guy said, well, what do you do when an, I'm a Calvinist, what do you do when an Arminian says something about a scripture that you don't believe is true, it's wrong? I said, well, as long as it's not heresy, it's not a big deal, we can discuss it, and we can go through options, pros and cons to certain views, but the Bible tells us what the essential doctrines are, there's like seven of them or so, and if it's pre-Trib rapture or post-Trib rapture or the extent of free will or not or whatever, these are not the things I have to die on any particular hill in that. So if someone has a difference of opinion, the Bible says each man must be fully convinced in his own mind, and this is in regard to Sabbath days and eating habits, but at the beginning of the chapter in Romans 14, it talks about debatable issues. So I'm post-Trib rapture, I believe we're going through the rapture, I mean, going through the tribulation, excuse me, we're going to go through it, we're going to suffer, that's what I believe, and if someone, and I told the guy, I said, if someone disagrees with that, I'm like, okay, that's fine, and he said, well, which one's the right view, and I says, well, I don't know.

I think my view is right, and that person thinks his view is right. Now, as long as we're not causing division in the body of Christ, and as long as we're looking at each other with love and patience and kindness, saying, well, I disagree, but we do it lovingly, then there's no problem. So where does it say in scripture we have to have an authoritative system or a proper understanding? It doesn't say that in scripture, and what I pointed out to this guy was what he was doing was actually imposing upon the word of God a philosophy, a human-based philosophy, and subjecting the word of God to his human-based philosophy, that he and his church need to be the authority to interpret scripture. Well, wait a minute, where does it say that in scripture?

It doesn't. In fact, to the contrary, it speaks. In fact, you know what it does say? In Acts 17, 11, it says the Bereans were more noble-minded because they checked even what Paul said against scripture. So the implication here is that an individual is able to read the word of God and understand it. Jesus says, my sheep hear my voice, and they follow after me. 1 John 2.27 says, the anointing you receive, you have abides in you.

You don't need anyone to teach you, but the anointing which you received abides you, and you will teach you of all things. The implication of scripture is that those who are true followers can understand it. It doesn't mean we're going to always agree on everything all the time, which is why Romans 14 says, be convinced in your own mind, and don't pass judgment on people's opinions about things. So the scriptures itself speak to the contrary what it is you want.

This was an interesting discussion. At this point, he backed off because he saw he wasn't getting anywhere, and his presupposition wasn't biblically based, but it was humanist philosophy. And he didn't realize it, and I was trying to show it to him that he was doing this. Furthermore, the Bible says, don't exceed what's written, 1 Corinthians 4.6. And I said, are you exceeding what's written?

I think I said this to him. Are you exceeding what's written by requiring a system of interpretation and authority to know what the Bible says, when the Bible never says that? But it does say don't exceed what's written. It says, don't go beyond scripture. It doesn't say to go to church fathers or church traditions. Does it say to go to a priest or a prophet or a church organization to have them tell you what it means? None of that is according to what God has revealed.

It's what you've revealed, and I said this. I said, look, Jesus says, and it's going to be John 10 27, my sheep hear my voice, and they follow after me. We hear the voice of Christ. True Christians follow after Jesus. They recognize his voice and they can understand his word. And yes, we can have disagreements, which is what is allowed in Romans 14 one through 12, particularly verse five.

It's allowed. And so when we know that we hear the voice of God, true Christians don't need a prophet. True Christians don't need an authoritative church to tell you what it is because we hear the voice of Christ. We know him. And though we may not understand everything perfectly, it's OK.

He doesn't require that of us. He says, follow him. And so I said, true Christians follow the voice of Christ.

False Christians follow the voice of a prophet or a church or the authority of a system, because they're going after a different voice at that point, not a biblical one. And that's when the conversation basically ended, and it wasn't a gotcha thing, but it was an interesting conversation. It was an interesting conversation, at least for me. I thought it was interesting. And I think a lot of what I said had some good points to it, good merit.

Oh, and one other thing. Did you know? And I pointed this out, too, I forgot to include this, that it says in Acts 16, 14, God opened the mind of Lydia to believe the things spoken by Paul. And in Luke 24, 45, let me verify that, I believe it's 45, he opened their minds to understand the scripture. So the understanding of God's word is the work of God, not a church, not a prophet. Anyone who prefers to listen to a prophet or prophetess or organization or church to tell you what God's word means is not listening to God's word.

They are going to a false teacher, and hence they're lost. So anyway, it was an interesting conversation, and I'm glad that we had that conversation. And I like field testing ideas and field testing stuff, and that's what I'm doing. So I'm looking at my notes, actually, on interpretation of scripture, which I do. What I often do is I go to bed, and I have one of those folding phones. And I have a stylus, and I'll put my notes on Microsoft's OneNote, and then I go into my folding phone, and I'll go and read. And sometimes I'll just write down my question and then say, think about it, because there's nothing to distract me. I can pray and ask God to just teach me, you know, put thoughts in my mind, or what about this, what about that. And that's what I did with this issue of when people have differences of opinions on what the Bible means, how do we settle what is true.

Well, who says we have to? Now, it does in the essentials. That's different.

We can go over those sometime, and I made a differentiation between the essentials and what's called audiophora, the non-essentials. So anyway, there you go. What are your thoughts about that? Sound interesting?

Was that good stuff? You like that? If you want, you can give me a call, 877-207-2276. You can also email me at info, info at karm.org, C-A-R-M dot O-R-G, and you can put in the subject line radio comment or radio question.

I think that's good. All right, all right. So on another topic, so today I released an article about less than an hour ago on the KARM website. And as many of you know, I research, I write, and I love to interact with people and then ask questions, learn, and write articles. And I released an article, Questions for the Eastern Orthodoxy on Their Priesthood. And I've got how many questions, I have eight questions there. And so we'll see if you are an Eastern Orthodox person and you want to try your hand at answering them, please do. And you can send me the answers. I have a little note up there at the top of the list, and you can send me the answers, and then maybe I'll reproduce them and then respond to what you say, stuff like that.

So there's the music. If you want to give me a call, all you got to do is dial 877-207-2276. We'll be right back after these messages. Please stay tuned. All right, everybody, welcome back to the show. If you want to give me a call, we have three open lines, the number is 877-207-2276. And if you want to email me, that's easy, email me at info at karm.org and put the subject line radio comment radio question.

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It's never been how it works, okay? So in order for us to be on the air, we have to raise that fund and the support to be able to do it. And so if you want to support us in that effort and you like it, it's easy to do. Just go to karm.org forward slash donate.

We ask $5, maybe $10 a month, not much, and that way we can make a budget when we get enough of those going. And that's what you want to do, all right? So there you go. All right, we've got callers coming in. Whoa, look at the lines just filled up. Let's just go to Shirley from Ohio. Hey, Shirley, welcome.

You're on the air. Hi. Hi. Hi. Hi.

So what do you got? Do I say my question over again? Yeah, to me, you do because you were talking to the producer and so, okay, go ahead.

I listen to you quite often and I enjoy it. I just wanted to let you know that. I was in some recent Bible study with some people and a couple of men that were leading the Bible study were pretty adamant that they believe that the books of Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John actually belong in the Old Testament. And I was just wondering what their thoughts were on that.

Yeah, I could understand why they would say that. So let's understand something here. The difference between the Old Covenant and the New Covenant is the death of Christ. So the word for covenant in Latin is testamentum. So Old Testament, New Testament.

So technically, in one sense, Matthew, Mark, Luke, John is part of the New Testament. But when we say New Testament, we don't mean the New Covenant, we mean, hey, the later books, not the Old Testament stuff. But technically, another way, the Old Testament covenant, the Old Covenant, because Old Testament means Old Covenant, is not ratified or abrogated or changed until the death of Christ.

And that's Romans, excuse me, Hebrews 8, 13 and Hebrews 9, 15 through 16. So technically, when Jesus was walking around and going and doing stuff before his crucifixion, that technically is Old Covenant time because it's under the Old Covenant obligation, not the New Covenant. So the New Covenant is instituted at the death of Christ.

And once that occurs, then we are now under a different, I don't like the word dispensation, but it helps others to understand it that way. So that's why they're saying Matthew, Mark, Luke, John are in the Old Covenant. However, there's a truth to that, but there's also a problem with that view because after the death of Christ, the New Covenant is in. Well, in John 20, 25, for example, Jesus has been resurrected and he's talking to, you know, appears to Thomas. So after the death, we have the crucifixion that occurs in Romans, excuse me, John 19.

We'll just use John. So then after the death of Christ, we could say that, let's put it this way, Pilate took Jesus and scourged him. Verse 8, this is John 19, he says he was more afraid. And then in verse 16, handed him over to be crucified. And I'm trying to find the exact verse where it says he died. And so when we find that, behold your mother, it is finished.

And he bowed his head and gave up his spirit. So verse 30. OK, so then we could say that John 19, 31 to the rest of the book is now New Testament, is now New Covenant time.

Because the death of Christ had occurred. So am I making sense to you? Yeah, it does. This is the way the Bible splits it, it makes the person wonder. Yes, it's just Old Testament, New Testament.

Yes. And what we've come to understand the word testament to mean a collection of books where literally the word testament is the word covenant. So like the word apologize, I'm sorry, but it comes from the Greek apologia, which means to make a defense for the faith. So over the years, the meaning has changed a little. So you are correct, the gospels are in the New Testament, they're part of the New Testament. They are, they're written and called New Testament. But they're also correct in that the gospels are under the Old Covenant revelation, as far as the time frame goes, when the Old Covenant is abrogated and new ones ratified, that's with the death of Christ. That so that technically they're correct in that. And in the Gospel of John, that'd be the dividing place would be John 19, 31.

That now, we'd say that from then on, those are New Testament, New Covenant words, Old Covenant words, New Covenant words. They're just being technical, unnecessarily, but I understand what they're saying. Okay. Yeah, okay. It's not, you're right and they're right.

Just depends on how you're looking at it. Yeah, it's good that you wonder why when whoever made the Bible that why didn't they put those books in the Old and then put it to the New. Because Malachi was the last of the prophets. There are no more prophets. Okay. And that's not correct.

Let me say this. The last of the prophets who wrote scripture. John the Baptist is the last prophet.

Okay. He's the last prophet, John the Baptist. But he's written about in the New Testament. There's no more greater prophet than John, Jesus says. So, for example, when Jesus offered the communion supper, I tell people the Eastern Orthodox Roman Catholic Church is wrong because they say the communion elements are the literal body, the literal blood of Jesus, which is logically impossible.

It's incoherent. But I say they were under the Old Covenant because Christ had not yet been crucified. So the Old Covenant was still in effect. And in the Old Covenant, Leviticus 17, 14, God says, do not eat the blood of any flesh.

Don't do it. So they were under obligation because they're still under the Old Covenant time. They were under the obligation not to consume blood.

So I asked them, was Jesus then telling the disciples to violate the Levitical law since they're still under the law, under that covenant at that time because his death had occurred. So you see. A little bit more clearer now. Yes. Thank you very much.

I appreciate it. So just remember this. The last prophet technically was John the Baptist. But Jesus is also called a prophet. So we'll just not go there because he has three opposites, prophet, priest, and king. But John the Baptist is the last prophet. He didn't do any miracles, and he didn't write any scripture.

He didn't do that. But the New Testament is done by the apostles. Their writings now are considered New Covenant work because they didn't write this stuff until after Christ had been crucified. And once he had been crucified and died, now they're under the New Covenant system. And they were writing the New Testament under the New Covenant.

But the Old Covenant, the information in the gospels about what happened before he was crucified is Old Covenant. You see? See how it works? Right, yeah. And there's a break. We've got a break. So if you want to hold on, please.

If not, we've got to go. But OK. Hey folks, be right back. Please stay tuned. It's Matt Slick live, taking your calls at 877-207-2276. Here's Matt Slick. All right, welcome back to the show. Bottom of the hour.

And some callers. I want to jump to this one. I think this would be an interesting one.

Curious about it. Hayden from Ohio, welcome. You're on the air. Hayden, are you there?

Hayden. Oh, sorry. I was muted, sorry. That's all right. That's OK. So what do you got?

I'm Matt Slick. I love listening to you. Thank you so much for taking my question. I've just been studying a lot of philosophy recently, and I want to have a good Christian worldview. I've been reading philosophical foundations for Christian worldview by William Lang Craig and J.P. Moreland. And I was just wondering, I've been studying epistemology right now. What your epistemic justification is for having knowledge, and how we should look at that in a Christian worldview? Knowledge is, well, basically I start with what is truth. Truth is that which corresponds to the mind of God. I don't know if you're Christian or not. I assume you are. But what we're supposed to do as Christians is good.

We presuppose a Trinitarian being as revealed in scripture. We don't have to defend it. We don't have to prove it.

Well, there are ways to deal with this. But epistemically, how do you justify anything? In fact, how do you justify the requirement of justification on the ground that you are presupposing a certain value inside of a question on the nature epistemically of having assurance of knowledge and things like this? Particularly dealing with propositions and how propositions work. And then as you know in epistemology, there's different kinds, different ways of learning.

But all of them presuppose certain values. And this is one of the things I talk about with atheists. If they're going to have an epistemic justification, I say, what's your presupposition you start with or presuppositions? Then I ask them to justify those presuppositions. And they can't do it because they beg the question. They'll say axioms are just given truths.

And I say, what must be true that axioms have truth values? And I ask these questions. And I try and get back to what's called the ultimate. Good. So I try to get back to what's called the ultimate.

No, sorry. I didn't want to interrupt you or anything. So the ultimate is that which is nothing greater or nothing equal to. So what's the ultimate foundation of epistemic justification? They're going to presuppose the laws of logic, which they're going to then say are just simply universal truths that are part of the universe. Or we derive them and we discover them in our own minds. And then they negate transcendentals in here. And then they tie the human brain with a cognitive superiority based on chemical reactions.

They get in all kinds of problems. So what I do with them is I'll say, look, I just presuppose the Trinitarian God. And when I do, everything makes sense. That's what I do. OK. I understand that.

That's how I do it. So would you say with presuppositionalism, so we presuppose God exists and the Trinitarian God exists. The Trinitarian God, yes. Would you say, yeah, would you say that is our foundation almost? Because I know, like you're saying, basically, I agree that every other epistemology is either self refuting or arbitrary or absurd because if you're a foundationalist, then those foundations eventually crumble because they need other foundations and they're not. Exactly. Like, would you believe in any self-evident truths? Well, then we had to define what a truth is before we can say something is self-evidentally true.

Yeah, I agree there. So that means they presuppose the validity of the law of identity to be able to recognize things. And so what justifies the validation of the law of identity by which you're then presupposing these and making the statement. And so this is where human philosophy just fails. And then we have the problem of there is an ought barrier, and that's a whole other thing.

But as far as the epistemic justification goes. So when I say, look, let me ask you, are you familiar with the problem of the one and the many? Yes, sir. Is that with particulars and universals?

Oh, dude, I love talking to you. Yes, you are right. So. Good, thank you.

Good, good. So if you're familiar with it, I'm going to say it for everybody else so they can understand what we're talking about. There's a 2,500-year-old philosophical problem. What's the ultimate nature of reality? Is it one thing or many things? If it's one thing, then we don't have distinctions between objects. If we don't have distinctions between objects, we can't verify truth statements because truth requires distinctions in relationships. However, if everything is multiple realities, they're different substances and ultimates, then you don't have coherence between those things. And without coherence between differentiation of objects, then you can't have truth values either.

So this is a problem called the problem of the one and the many. All right, so back to you now. So the laws of logic, for example, are universals that have particular manifestations in the varying minds, like yours and mine. But we are not the author of those truth values. We discovered their existence. And they're not based on physical forms.

We can get into that in another topic. But they're abstract entities, which have to have a place or a means by which they can be justified as having existence, which abstract entities are different than physical objects, concrete stuff. So the issue of the Trinity is this. God is one and many, because the one and the many in God are equally ultimate. We get into what's called predication and identity. So identification, God is three persons.

That's predication. But the statement God is a Trinity is the statement of equality between identity and predication. And this only exists in the Christian Trinitarian view. And this lends itself also to the issue of the one and the many, because then we don't say it's one or many. We say it's one and many. And the coherence between the two rests in the character and the mind of God. And so we can offer epistemic justification based on the Trinity. That's a short, quick version.

Wow, that's amazing. Wow, I never thought of it that way. Because I agree.

I think holism by itself, for example, would be self-defeating. Because if you're making that distinction that the universe is one, then wouldn't that be affirming some system where it's like, so it can't be many. So there's two options there or something of that sort? Kind of. I'm still learning a lot. That's OK. Now what you need to do is get a note system and do outlines and take notes. And when you go field test this and they ask you a question you can't answer, then you write down the question, you say, let me go research it. And you go research it. This is how I've learned this philosophy stuff. Now I'm going to give you a pointer, a pointer against the atheists who love philosophy.

I'm going to give you a simple point that I use with them. And this only works for the materialists and the physicalists. Are you familiar with what's called property dualism and substance dualism?

You familiar with those? I believe, I know the basic idea of dualism in and of itself that there's the immaterial and material and there's mind and body or something of that sort. But substance or you said? Property.

What else? It was substance and? Substance dualism and property dualism. Christians are substance dualists. What that means is the substance of the soul or mind is different than the substance of the physical body. So when the physical body ceases, the mind, soul continues, mind, soul, spirit, whatever we call it, continues. Now generally speaking, atheists are property dualists, particularly the ones who are materialists or physicalists.

Now they're not all that way. Some are spiritists. We can get into that in some other time. So this is what I say. OK, those who are physicalists and materialists, both of those ladies and gentlemen, what that means is that they affirm or they hold to the presupposition that the material world is all there is. Once anybody says that, you've got them.

And I'll show you how. So what I'll do is I'll say, OK, so that means the physical brain is restricted to the laws of chemistry, electrochemical reactions in the brain. Yes, that's correct. That means then your thoughts are the necessary product of necessary chemical reactions in the brain. Because you're saying property dualism, when the physical brain ceases, the mind ceases to exist. That means the mind is the property of the physical brain. If it's a property of the physical brain, it's dependent upon the physical brain, which means the physical brain is limited to the laws of physics, chemistry, et cetera.

That means that the chemical states in the brain are necessary to other chemical states. And you produce what we call answers to questions. So I say to them, how do you know your materialism is true or your physicalism is true? And whatever they say, I then say, well, the chemical reactions in your brain made you say that. Doesn't mean it's true. And in order to find truth, you have to leave materialism and go to transcendentals.

Because materialism can't justify transcendentals. So you see? That makes sense. All right?

Yes, definitely. I'm familiar with Alvin Plantinga's evolutionary argument against naturalism. And that's where he basically said that these chemical reactions in our head are randomized and follow the laws of physics. So you either have to affirm just like materialism, like you're saying, and that it's random. But if it's random, it's self-refuting, if not, you know?

And then like you said, truth can't be refused. We've got to break. Hold on. Hold on. I'm going to put you on hold, OK?

We've got to break. Hold on. 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. All right, everybody. Welcome back to the show.

Hope we didn't hurt your brains on that. I love that kind of talk. Let's get back to Hayden. Are you still there, buddy? Yes, sir. All right. Now look, what I want you to do is email me. Email me at info at karm.org and ask for my notes on philosophy. It's 104 pages, and I'll send them to you, OK? Wow, thank you so much.

I appreciate it. And you'll see, it's a developing thing. And when I have triple x's, it means it's not finished. And I have asterisks next to certain words so that when I am in a philosophical discussion with somebody, I type in whatever the main topic is with an asterisk next to it, and it takes me to that particular area. And if you use it in Microsoft Word and you open up the left side for the view, you can see the table of contents and stuff like that. I've been working on it for years.

Categorical imperative, causation. I have stuff on cognitive dialectics, constructive epistemology. And I usually say what it is and what the problems with it are. And there's a lot of stuff that's just not finished. Wow, thank you so much.

I really appreciate it and everything, your pointers and all that. Yeah, I'm just trying to figure this out, because I'm 18 right now, and I'm just trying to figure out where to go, because I really want to be someone like you when I grow up and everything. That's not a good idea. Yeah, you're scraping the bottom of the barrel. So let me tell you something, OK? Let me give you some advice, OK? And email me, all right? And give me your contact information, stuff like that. So I'm basically 50 years older than you. OK, so you send me your contact information.

Maybe we'll talk. But I can tell you what you need to do in order to learn this stuff. On my notes, you keep adding to it. You just make them your own. You go into chat rooms, and then you debate people. You have impromptu discussions.

And you'll get your clock cleaned. That's OK. And you just write down to them. And it motivates you to learn. And that's how I've learned all this stuff. I mean, this stuff's top of my head, I just said to you, all this stuff, OK?

Because you do it, all right? Thank you so much. I really appreciate it.

All right. And then you can learn about the indiscernibility of identicals. I love that, talking about that, and how modal logic and propositions, because they'll say, what kind of propositional things? Or modus ponens, modus tolens, logical positivism. All these are my notes.

Nominalism, nihilism, and then stupidism. Oh, I know all those, yeah. That's right. Yeah, those are all those.

So you do that, OK, buddy? Yeah. Whenever I met a logical positivist at my school, or well, I guess you could say he was an empiricist, and it didn't really go well. Empiricism is self-refuting.

It is. Yeah, exactly. Well, yeah, I mean, I only believe what my five senses can tell me, and then it's like, well, did your five senses tell you that?

And then, obviously, you could go into this obvious truth also, and then go that route, like ethics, logic, morality. Empiricists are also rationalists. They have to be. Otherwise, they're just reactionary. And so they're inconsistent. And how do they know their senses are infallible or sufficient?

And if they say, because the majority of people have the same observation, that's called argumentum ad populum. Yeah, we could get into this. But we've got callers waiting. So I'm going to get going, OK, buddy? And I'm going to hurry.

Oh, you're OK. Thank you so much. Thank you again. Sure. Now, you email me, OK? I'll send you to those notes, all right? All right, man?

I'll email you. Thank you so much. All right. Sounds good, buddy.

God bless. OK. I love, oh, sorry about that. I love conversations like that, as you can tell.

Am I nerdy? Yeah, I got issues. Oh, look at that. Man, my footnotes in that file. I just saw footnote number 110. How many footnotes I've got in there? 110. Oh, 116? Wow.

Oh, man, I got so much stuff in there. Let's get to Jason from Arkansas. Jason, sorry, man. We're half hour. You've been waiting. But we're on.

What do you got? Yes, sir. Yeah, man, I said, you get banned. And you speak a lot of good intelligent things. And one thing I want to ask you is, would you agree with me that everything is touched by sin? You're out on an inner. Would you agree that? No, no, no. Not everything is touched by sin.

God is not sinful or touched by sin. So I would say everything. Well, you mean all, right?

People? That all people are, except for Christ, but yes. Right, I have to agree with you. Yes, sir.

Yeah. So being that we are in sin, humans are, would you agree with me that God requires men to give everything up to him, your outer and inner, unto him, to be part of him? You mean that everything is touched by sin? If everything's touched by sin, it means that everything that we do is affected by sin. And so the redemptive work that Christ is. Outer and inner, would you agree with that?

With what? Outer and inner, would you agree with that then? That everything is touched by sin?

No? I don't understand the terms, outer or, hold on, hold on. Just let it. Outer, you mean your outer part? Outer, outer or inward. Outer.

External or internal. Yeah, or one. Yeah, sin has affected us internally and the world externally, OK? OK. Right, right. So now that a person that is totally in sin, would you agree with me that God requires us to give everything up to him, to be part of him? No. OK. No.

So you don't feel that we have to die for God being that we're in sin? No, no, no, no, no. That's not what you asked. They give the give up in. No, no, with your esteem, don't give up. Hold on, hold on, hold on, hold on, hold on. You said, you said give up everything in order to be with him.

That's not the case. We are with him because he has redeemed us. And he grants that we have faith within 129. He grants we come to Christ, John 6, 65. And he grants us repentance, 2 Timothy 2, 25. And then in that condition, we're then enabled to seek to follow Christ and try to give everything to him. But that's not the giving everything that makes us Christians or keeps us as Christians, OK? Yes, sir.

I agree with that. See, that's why baptism is important because if you go on a baptism working, try to earn your salvation just by being a merchant of water, your works are not efficient enough to save you. So absolutely, I'll give you your works for not going to heaven. In March 1616, Jesus didn't tell you to go on baptism to work.

He told you go on to baptism to believe. Wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait. Hold on, hold on, hold on, hold on. All right, you're going so fast.

All of a sudden, you start just going. So are you saying baptism is necessary for salvation? No, faith is. But baptism is faith to God.

OK, let me ask you a question. Do you have to get water baptized in order to be saved? It's his requirement, yes. So the answer is yes, OK. So then you're not justified by faith. So you deny justification. Why wouldn't you be? Because if you're justified by faith.

Hold on, let me answer. Because if you're justified by faith, then you're justified when you have faith. You don't get justified when you're baptized. So if you believe that baptism is necessary for salvation, then you're denying that we're justified and saved before God by faith. Well, baptism is faith to God.

No, it's not. See, that's why he used the March 1616. He believed that the man is baptized because your outer expression has been courted for your inner expression to be baptized and be valid unto him. OK, there's a problem with March 1616. There's a problem with Mark 16, 9 through 20. I never preach out of it and never, never will.

Because I'll explain why. Because those 11 verses have two problems with them. There's three, actually.

Well, four, actually, and we're thinking about it. One is they're not found in some of the oldest manuscripts. And two, it says in verse 12 that Jesus appeared in a different form. He did not. He appeared in the same body he died in. That's biblical fact.

And another problem is, I'll just go to this one. There's 17 words that appear in those 11 verses that don't appear in the entire Gospel of Mark. Suddenly, in 11 verses, 17 new words appear. And the type of Greek is not consistent. And the style is not consistent with the rest of Mark.

So it's not a good place for you to go to, because it's a textual variant that's really under a letter of examination. OK? Just telling you. Now, I defend the Bible. I defend it, OK?

And it's true. But it's just not the place I want to go to. And so if you want to go to Acts 2, 38, or 1 Peter 3, 21, or Acts 22, 16, or John 3, 5, 3, 8. Or Romans 6. Or Romans 6, 4, 3, yeah.

That thing is in sin. Why wouldn't God not want you to give everything up unto him? Of course he does. And die for him. Of course he does. He wants you to die for him?

Of course he does. Well, you know, I mean, if you need to physically. Oh, so you're Romans 6, 4? But yeah. But you don't understand. You know, hold on, hold on, hold on. You're not thinking critically.

You ask one thing, and then you insert something else into it. You're saying it's necessary, in order to be a Christian, that everything is submitted to Christ. That's not true. So then you talk about baptism. Christ did. No, no, no.

No. Christ never said that. He says, if you want to follow after. He didn't give himself into baptism. And baptism. That's what he did. Whenever he baptized, he didn't give himself into God.

His will, his plan. You're not understanding. By the way, did you know that Jesus was sprinkled at his baptism? Did you know that? No. Yes.

It is straightaway, come out of the water straightaway. So I disagree with that. Well, hold on a sec. Hold on. Now let's go to Acts chapter 8. And it says that the Ethiopian eunuch and Philip went down into the water. They both came up out of the water, right? So if they were in the water and came up out of the water, does that mean they were both immersed?

Of course not. So the phrase, to come up out of the water, doesn't mean they were immersed. You can walk out into the water and have it poured on you with a cup of hands and water. But Jesus had to fulfill the law. And in the Old Testament, law requirement for entering into the priesthood was to be sprinkled with water, Numbers 8.7.

There's nothing in the Old Testament law requirement of entering into the priesthood where it says that the person thus entering into that priesthood is there immersed in water. It doesn't exist. I know this topic really well. I love talking about baptism. Because I think most people get things wrong. Now, check this out. Well, is the Bible right whenever it says, 1st Corinthians 3, 2021, baptism also, or water, also now saved Noah?

Is that an agreement with you? Well, what does it mean when it says it says, corresponding to that baptism now saves you, not the removal of dirt from the flesh, but an appeal to clean conscience before God through the resurrection of Christ. Now, he says corresponding to that, well, the previous verse talks about Noah and his family entering into the ark. And then the ark, and then the flood came. So let me ask you, what saved Noah? Was it the ark, or was it the water, the flood? What saved them? Well, actually, Noah obeying God by faith to build that ark that saved him. Which saved him? Which was it, the ark or the flood waters? Well, there were two factors. Noah, Noah, two factors. Noah entered that ark by faith, and God given him the knowledge to be saved by his will of killing that ark. Tell you what, we're out of time.

The music's gonna start any second. What I'd like you to do is go to 1 Peter 3, 21, and take a look at it. Look at verse 20 and answer the question.

Then call me back to Mark, because we're out of time now. What does, corresponding to that, what's the that? What's the antecedent? What is it that saved Noah?

Okay, because baptism relates to the ark. Okay? Hey, we gotta go. All right, buddy. God bless. Hey, we'll be right back tomorrow. Hey, have a good evening. God bless. Another program powered by the Truth Network.