Matt Slick Live

The following program is recorded content created by the Truth Network. Welcome to the show.

Today's date is May 22nd, 2025. As usual, if you want to give me a call, the number is 877-207-2276. You can also email me at info at karm.org. Put in the subject line radio comment, radio question, and we can get to them. So, there you go. I hope that you'll enjoy the show today. And let's just jump right on the calls and get to Marty from Washington, D.C. Marty, welcome.

You're on the air. How are you doing, Madden? I hope you can hear me. I can hear you. I hear you fine. So, what's up, man?

Okay, great. Recently, I had a conversation with a couple of friends, and I take it there's this opera out there, or it was out there, called Salome. And supposedly, it's about Herod's daughter, which they named Salome. I did a little research and found out that that's only Josephus is the one who named her Salome. The only Salome in the Bible is mentioned very insignificantly. Can you shed some light on who people think Salome is and who she actually is and all that? Well, I would if I knew. I'd have to go through and study that. I've not studied Herod's daughter. So, I really can't tell you. But if you're talking about Salome as an opera, is that what you said?

Yes. Yeah, I believe it's an opera, because my friend is a big opera freak, and I think the opera is probably about... They're thinking that Salome is Herod's daughter, the one that said, give me John Baptist's head on a platter, you know, after she danced and was promised whatever she wanted. And I just wondered if you knew anything about it.

I called some friends, and they said, listen, the only Salome is mentioned, I think it's in the beginning of Mark, or it's in Mark, and they just mentioned her name once and nothing about her. And so I was wondering if you had any thoughts on that. Well, let me look here. So, trying to find the reference. Let's see if we can do this.

Let's go straight here. We'll go to Matthew, and then hit control F, Salome. So that's... F-A-L-O-M-E. Yes, it's in Mark 1540, is the first occurrence of it. But it says there, there were some women looking on it from a distance among whom were Mary Magdalene and Mary the mother of James, Les, and Joseph, and Salome. So, that's it. That's it. Mark 16.1 is the person that's brought up again.

So, other than that, I don't know. Now, there's certainly the possibility that, you know, the word, the name is used of different people at different times. If Josephus says that's the name, well, you know, just go with it and say, okay, he's probably right.

Just live with it. Not a big deal. Yeah, it's very interesting. I'm just curious. I guess they turned that story into an opera.

The story of John the Baptist had delivered on a platter. Yeah, that'd be an interesting thing to watch, though opera is one of the things to me that is torture. So, I don't know how people can like it, but if they do, you know, it's like opera, Chinese opera, American opera, and country western are all in the same realm of torture for me. So, I don't know.

Yeah, I got some issues there right now. A lot of people just got offended. Why would you put that in there? You know, country western. So, I don't know. I couldn't tell you. All right. All right, so these people were talking. I remember when they brought it up, they knew it was Christians. Marty, it's in the New Testament, you should know. So, I guess they're just going on information that was in the world rather than in the scriptures. Right. And, you know, it's like in Luke 16, 19 through 31, I remember reading years ago the issue of Lazarus and the rich man.

I remember reading the name, supposedly through tradition, the name of the rich man is Dives, D-I-V-E-S. I forget where I read that, but it's something I remembered. Is it true? Might be, might not be.

I'm just bringing it for trivia points right now. It's not scripture, so I don't count it as scripture. Maybe it's true, maybe it's not. Just like what Josephus said, a lot of what he said is true.

It's not in the Bible, but that's okay. He's a historian. So, maybe that was her name, maybe it wasn't. I don't know. And one last detail I heard when I was doing a little bit of research on YouTube, which you take it for what it's worth, that this particular Solomon that's mentioned in Mark was the midwife of Jesus. She helped deliver Jesus. So I don't know if there's any truth to that.

Again, that would just be conjecture outside of scripture, because the two occurrences of that spelling of that word don't show that, so we can't confirm it biblically. But if there's enough history that we could put some, maybe it's true, maybe, maybe not. I don't know. Okay?

Well, I appreciate it, Matt, very much. Sure. Yeah, I wish I had a better answer for you, but that's all I got on that one. All right. Well, that might be all there is. Could be.

But maybe there's someone out there who's really studied that just knows a lot more, which certainly is possible. Okay. Okay. All right.

Well, thank you. Okay, brother. Okay, we'll see you later. Bye-bye. Okay. Bye.

All right. Now, let's get to Luke from Nashville, Tennessee. Luke, welcome. You're on the air.

Hey, Matt. How you doing? Can you hear me? Yes, I can. I can hear you fine.

What do you got? Hey, I wanted to run something by you. So one of the biggest things it seems like people have with Calvinism or Reformed theology, of course, is the concept of total depravity. So I was thinking, you know, is a one way to understand it, anything that exists is good, right? God is the standard of what's good, right? Anything that's good in this world is because of God's mercy.

Wait, wait, wait. You said anything that exists is good? That's what you said? No, anything, no, God is the standard of good. Yes, okay, good.

Make sure I understood you properly. So God is the standard of good, anything that exists in this world that's good is because of his mercy, right? Oh, now you're mixing action and ontology categories mixed in here. So God is good, it's the essence of his nature. But his mercy that he allows on people is an action. So now we have nature and action being compared. Okay, so if God is the standard of what's good and we aren't God, well, in that way, can we understand that's what total depravity is then? Not instead of people saying, oh, God made us this way? If we're not God and he's the standard of good, would that make sense in the total depravity understanding?

No, because you're not defining the terms as you're using them and you're kind of mixing them up and so it causes a little bit of confusion. So let me define what total depravity is. It simply means that the fallen man and woman has a sin nature and that sin has affected every part of what a human being is. Heart, soul, mind, body, strength, emotions, everything, all rationality is affected by sin. So therefore, we don't do anything or we are not anything. Nothing about us in us is not affected by sin, except for Christian, we talk about indwelling, but we're not talking about that right now. So that's what it is. And then the result of such total depravity is that an unbeliever, a person will never be able, of his own free will, come to Christ because his free will is touched by sin and enslaved to sin. And I can give you the verses for that.

That's what that is, okay? So what would be your answer to the origin of this total depravity though? Did God make us this way or because we're not God and he's the standard of perfection? So he made Adam good and Adam then chose to rebel and then we have this spiritual effect of fallenness upon him.

And so he was our federal head, our representative. That's Romans 5.18, 1 Corinthians 15.22, in Adam all die. But he chose to do wrong because he's not good though, right? Because he's not God, I mean.

Well, hold on. So let me finish this point because then he represented us and so when he fell, we fell. That's Romans 5.19. The many were made sinners. So that means we were made sinners by Adam's fall. So God doesn't make us sinners.

This is the natural result of Adam's representation and his fallenness that we inherit, okay? Okay. So what's the next question? Okay.

So keep going. What was the other part? Well, I was just, I was just, cause you know, the thing that they always say, you know, provisionists, Arminius, whatever you want to call them, free wills. They would say, well, God made us this way cause he decrees all things, but I'm trying to understand. Okay. Well, how would you put it then?

It's like saying he made Satan evil because he decreed Satan to be evil and that logic does not follow the provisionist. Hold on. Sorry about that. I got a cough.

I've been fighting a chest cold. The provisionists, from what I've understood, let's just say their logic is not very sound. They're not very precise in their thinking routinely. They conflate categories and they, they don't understand logical necessities and things like this in a lot of areas.

And they insert sovereignty of man at the expense of God's sovereignty and then they set them up against each other, et cetera. But this is my understanding, my experience with them so far. Okay. Okay. Okay. Well, I appreciate the conversation. Yes.

One of the things I do want to do is tackle the provisionist errors and do videos on them and write articles and stuff like this. I remember when I talked to Leighton Flowers before we had a discussion for a while on the phone, whatever it was, I don't remember. Anyway, I quoted Proverbs 1 29 to him where it says that God grants that we have faith and he said, no, God grants we have the opportunity to have faith.

And I still remember that to this day. I said, but Leighton, that's not what it says. You just changed God's word to make it fit your theology. And that's exactly what he did. He changed God's word to make it fit. And if provisionists have to do this, then their theology is not biblical. And so they fail to understand what the true nature of free will is and have a proper understanding and a standard of what free will is. It has to be defined against God's nature, not human nature. And what they often do, and others like them, is they often raise human free will with humanist philosophy.

They raise it to the level of inspiration because they're interpreting scripture in light of their humanist philosophy and they can't tell the difference. This is their problem. All right. Well, appreciate it. Okay. Well, God bless. You too. Oh, sorry about that. I didn't mean to cut him off just like that, but okay. And now, let's see.

Next longest waiting is Mike from Dayton, Ohio. Mike, welcome. You're on the air. Well, thank you.

I can hear you fine. My question is begotten in John 3.16, the word begotten. I'm a little confused what that word really means and why it's in there.

And some translations don't have it. And I've took about three hours looking around and trying to figure it out, and I haven't figured it out. So what do you have to say? Well, we've got an interesting discussion coming up. We've got a break here in a little bit. And there's the music.

So good timing. When we get back, what we'll do is go through some aspects of what this is theologically, practically, and things like that, okay? So hold on, buddy. We'll be right back. If folks, please stay tuned.

We'll be right back after these messages and talk about the word monogenes, begotten, only begotten, in the Bible, John 3.16. We'll be right back. It's Matt Slick live, taking your calls at 877-207-2276.

Here's Matt Slick. All right, and welcome back to the show. Let's get back on here with Mike from Dayton, Ohio. Okay, Mike, you there?

Yes, I'm here. Thanks. All right, so let me offer a few things, because this is not really a one-issue thing. There are several things interrelated.

So let me just kind of explain them, and I think you might get a better understanding of stuff. Jesus says in John 8.56, Abraham rejoiced to see my day, and he saw it and was glad. So he says, Abraham rejoices to see his day.

What does that mean? In Genesis 21-22, we have the offering of Isaac. It took three days for them to go to the hill. Jesus was in the grave three days. The crown of thorns that Jesus bore, the ram on the hill caught in a thicket of thorns. But God had said, take your only son, Isaac. But 13 years earlier, Abraham had had Ishmael.

13th number of sins, incidentally. But he said, take your only son, Isaac. So the only-ness is in reference to a single special place in that context. And in the context of the Jewish mind, they would understand that.

Now, that's one point. The other thing is that the Greek word there is monogones or monogone. But it's a composite of two words.

I remember learning this in seminary. Mano, one, genao, to beget. So the King James will say so-and-so beget because the word is genao. Now, you have in Greek, when you have a verb like genao, and you want to make it past tense, you put an E on the front or an epsilon. We put ED on the end, they put an E on the front. And then mano is mono. We can do this in English, okay?

It makes sense. And so you have mano and then egano. Well, the O and the E form what's called a diphthong. And then there's rules to which kind of letter combinations become what other kind of letter. So an OE becomes an O in this sense, okay? It's just grammar stuff, all right? Well, only and begotten are mano and egano.

And so when you combine them, you get a diphthong and you get monogones or monogone. But that's also the word for unique. Because now we have only begotten, which contracts and forms the word only begotten, but it's also the same word for unique, which is interesting. So there's a pun going on as the only begotten.

Now, that's not one other point. Now, the only begotten of the Father is dealing with derivation, not creation. So we have the logical derivation, derivation, not creation.

Okay, thank you. So the Son is sent from the Father. And Jesus says, I came down from heaven not to do my own will of him who sent me, John 6, 37, 38.

Thirty-eight, okay? Well, he came down from heaven. Well, his humanness did not come down from heaven.

His physical body did not come down from heaven. So this is talking about the relationship of the Father and the Son before the creation of the world. So the Son existed or the Word existed eternally because the Trinity is three eternally existing persons, the Father, Son, and the Holy Spirit. However, we have a doctrine called the eternal procession where the Son proceeds from the Father. But the procession is not creation, it's an eternal relationship.

We get into the hierarchical structure of the economic trinity and a little bit of the ontological trinity, we can blend those in another time. So what we're seeing here is the procession of the movement of the Father bringing forth the Son. But the Son came from eternally from out of God, you know, the Trinity is because he's God, and then became man. And now he is the only begotten, hence think of Isaac and the gospel message, think of the pun on the word monogones, on unique, and it's talking about his derivation from the Father, which hence means divine essence. But he's not a created being in one sense, but he is in another.

Now you be careful when I say this, I don't want people to get me wrong. The Word is not created, but the union of the divine and the human natures. Jesus is, you know, the one person with two natures, a divine nature and a human nature. This union of the divine and human natures, called the hypostatic union, began 2,000 years ago. But the eternal Word never had a beginning, it's eternal. But the person of Jesus had a beginning when we look at Jesus as the union of the divine and human natures, where the attributes of both those natures are ascribed to the single person, that's called the communication of the properties. Now, so we say Jesus came into existence 2,000 years ago, and what we mean by that is the union of the divine and human natures in the one person. But the divine nature is eternal. So Jesus could say, Father glorify me with the glory I had with you before the foundation of the world. Because what he's doing is he's claiming the attributes of divinity for himself. In Isaiah 17, I mean, John 17, 5, what I just quoted. This is because the attributes of both natures are ascribed to the single person.

It's called the communicatio et deo matum. That Jesus, the one person, says, I'll be with you always, Matthew 28, 20, and I am thirsty. Okay, he said, I'm thirsty on the cross, I'm thirsty, you know, John 19.

So he talked about this, so he's claiming the attributes of both. All right, having laid all this out, Jesus then, God sent his only begotten son, the unique one who is derived from the Father, who has the same nature of the Father, who also reflects, if they're smart, the issue of the prophetic nature of the crucifixion prophesied typologically in the work of Isaac and Abraham as they went up to the mount. And theoretically, I've heard there's evidence to say that Jesus was crucified on the same hill that Isaac was offered, though about 2,000 years apart.

Does that help any? Yeah, it does, and so Jesus was always there, always alive, always been, always had. No, not when we say Jesus is the union of the divine and human nature, therefore Jesus has not always been.

The union didn't occur till 2,000 years ago. The pre-incarnate Christ manifests in the Old Testament, Genesis 3, Genesis 19, 24, Exodus 24, 9-11, Numbers 12, 6-8, Exodus 6, 2, and 3, where the pre-incarnate Christ is there, but he's not incarnate, he's a manifestation, and that's a distinction from the Father. So Jesus, the man with two natures, began 2,000 years ago, but the eternal nature of Christ is eternal.

So we can say then, in this sense of the communication of the properties, we can say Jesus is eternal, because he has the attributes of eternal qualities ascribed to his personhood. So it's a little technical, but I hope that helps. And there's a break, so hold on. Hold on, we've got a break, okay? Okay, that's okay. That's okay.

You broke my mind. Okay, if you want to, well I'll tell you what, call back if you want to get in line, we'll talk about it some more. Okay, we've got to go, there's a break. 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, everyone, welcome back to the show. Now, let's see, next longest waiting is...

Okay, checking. Chris from New Jersey. Chris, welcome, you're on the air. Hey, how are you, Matt?

Melancholy, a little obstreperous, slightly fatigued, but that's it, that's who I am. How's that? Good answer?

Sounds normal. There you go. Quick question, so I've been looking into Mormonism, I know I'm a Christian myself, but at Mormonism I know that's all messed up. But is it disproved in Acts 111 in the onset? Wait a minute, Acts 111, let's see what that is.

Act 111, because I know the whole idea of Mormonism is that Joseph Smith met Jesus physically. And wouldn't that disprove it with that verse? Well, okay, not necessarily, because the return of Christ, his return specifically, is prophesied there in Acts 1, 9-11. So that's not to say that Jesus himself can't appear on earth individually to a person. Nothing in the scripture says he can't just manifest in a vision or a dream, or you're sitting in your room and there he is all of a sudden, and just for a second and you're on your face and he's gone.

I mean, this kind of thing. I don't see anything in the scripture that says that can't happen. Now, it doesn't mean it does. But the fault of the first vision, really where you want to go, is that Joseph Smith said he saw God the Father. And that is absolutely not possible, because Jesus says no one has seen the Father except the one who's from God. He's seen the Father, John 6, 46. That's talking about himself and about those in the past from Jesus' reference.

Not about those in the future. And then Paul says in 1 Timothy 6, 16, speaking of the context of the Father, who dwells in unapproachable light whom no man has seen or can see. And that absolutely, right there, refutes Mormonism. It proves Mormonism is false. But what they do with that is they just say, unless it's by the power of the Spirit, they change God's word to make it fit what they want.

It doesn't agree with them, so they change it. Okay? Yeah, I was just reading that and I was like, oh, wait a minute. That would mean Jesus' second coming would be his third, if that worked out that way. You're on the right track.

You're on the right track. Okay, now, having done this a lot, if I were to bring that to somebody, they might say, well, what about Jesus in a vision? Is that seeing him equally? And then you get into this nuanced discussion of things like this.

And that's why I don't usually do that because I don't want to give them an out. I'll go straight to, like I said, 1 Timothy 6, 16, where it's impossible to see God the Father. And then they'll go to Acts 7. Well, Jesus, I mean, Stephen saw God the Father. No, he doesn't. He says, yes, he did. Jesus was standing at the right hand of God the Father. He says, yeah, they saw Jesus standing at the right hand. It says he saw the glory of God. Not God, but the glory of God. So the glory is not the same thing as God. It's a presence of the light and stuff like that.

So, yeah, anyway, they don't read often very much. Yeah, the way I was trying to get around the whole is it a vision thing is because Joseph Smith said it was a tangible body. Like, he was physically there. And the LDS church said it was a physical meeting.

It wasn't a vision. So that's why I was wondering, I'm like, hey, I wonder if that will work, but I'd better be careful before I misuse church. No, it's good. Give it a shot and see what happens, you know. There's often, you know, I might not think it's a great idea or the best, let's just say, but sometimes people use it and they come back and say, whoa, that was a good approach. I didn't think of it that way. So give it a shot.

You never know. Okay? Yeah.

I'm learning all the time. Yeah, that's true. All right. Okay. Well, that's all I had. All right, brother.

Well, God bless. Okay. Thank you.

All right. Now, Nick's longest waiting is Tom from North Carolina. Tom, welcome. You're on the air. What do you got, buddy?

Hi, Matt. I'm trying to decide about some of the spiritual gifts and just some of the things I see going on on television with these ministries, and they're having wards of knowledge, they're talking in tongues, they're calling things out prophetically. And I do believe in miracles that they still happen, and I have had God speak to me audibly at different times in my life, but I think they're rare events, and I just want your commentary on 1 Corinthians 13, 8, where it says, But where there are prophecies, they will cease. Where there are tongues, they will be stilled. Where there is knowledge, I imagine that means words of knowledge, it will pass away. So what's your take on that in the modern-day world?

Well, I'm unusual because as a Reformed individual, I affirm all of the charismatic gifts for today. And this pericope of 1 Corinthians 13, 8 through 12, I know quite well, I've had to battle over it for a long time, over a lot of issues, but what those guys do on the radio, I mean what they do on TV like that, is stupid. So they'll sit there and tell jokes in tongues, it'll show off. The biblical warrant for using these gifts is in the church context for the edification of the body, not for showing off. And the Bible says, for example, if there's a tongue, there's no interpreter, keep quiet.

And I think it says three at the most, then that's it, you're done. But they violate that all the time. Or they'll make prophecies, and the prophecies don't come true.

But that's okay. So they misuse, these are false teachers, they're charlatans. But that doesn't mean the charismatic gifts aren't around and can't be used. When you were describing some of the events you've had, hey, I can relate. I actually prophesied once, it came to pass. I had a word of knowledge once, very strong, it came to pass. And I heard the voice, not audibly of God, but two times in my life, where I knew it was him speaking into my heart, into my mind. Very profound.

Yes, I've had three experiences in my life like that. Okay. So I have no problem with that.

None at all. If you were sitting next to me, we're talking, I'd go, oh really, what happened? Tell me more.

That's fine. But a lot of Calvinists like myself would say, sorry, it can never happen. I don't buy that.

No, it can happen. And also in 1 Corinthians 1, 7, and I'll read this to you. This is really interesting. So that you are not lacking in any gift, and the word is charismatic, that you're not lacking in any charismatic gift awaiting eagerly the return, the revelation, apocalypsis of our Lord Jesus Christ. And I agree with that for the early church, but how do you deal with 1 Corinthians 13, 8?

Oh, that's easy. And so here we go. It says, for we know in part and we prophesy in part. When the perfect comes, the partial will be done away. So the done away is the same phrase of 1 Corinthians 13, 8. They'll be done away, prophecy, tongues, et cetera.

So when will it be done away? When the perfect comes, what's the perfect? Generally speaking, they'll say the perfect is the completion of the Bible.

But it doesn't fit. Because it says, when as a child I speak as a child, et cetera. And then verse 12, for now we see in a mirror dimly, but then face to face.

The antecedent of the word then refers back to when the perfect comes. So let's look at it this way. When the Bible is completed, then we see God face to face.

No. But when Jesus comes back, we'll see him face to face. I've done a study on every instance of the word face to face in the Bible, and it means personal encounter. Not the completion of the Bible, it's personal encounter. It says, now I know in part, but then I'll know fully just as I have been fully known. Then I'll know fully as I've been fully known.

I did a study on that too. So God knows, he only knows believers. Get away from me, I never knew you. Matthew 7.23 and Galatians 4.5, when you did not know God, you served by nature those which are not God. But now that you've come to know God, or rather are known by God, now you come to serve the true and living God. Jesus says in John 10.27, my sheep hear my voice and I know them.

So this knowing, as I've been fully known, is dealing with the relationship aspect. When the perfect comes, the return of Christ. We're going to see him face to face, we'll be known as we're fully known.

It's an experiential thing that's not yet occurred. All the charismatic gifts are for today. This is what cost me my pastorate, actually, in the Presbyterian Church in America back in the 90s. Our pastor claims that he is a cautious continualist. Yeah, I am too.

Yeah, he's cautious with these gifts, and he's a continualist. And I'm comfortable with that, but what I see going on on television, I'm absolutely not comfortable with. Good. I'm with you. We're all in agreement. I consider myself an experiential Calvinist, and I believe in the charismatic gifts, but it's not normative like all the credit they do.

But God can still use them, and we need to be out there and asking God to use us in them, and carefully, with wisdom. So there you go. No problem. Okay, great. Thanks, Matt. Appreciate it. Hey, awesome stuff, man. God bless. Okay.

All right, now next longest-waiting is Jermaine from the People's Republic of California. Welcome, buddy. You're on the air. Hey, how's it going today, Matt? It's going. It's going all right, man. How you doing? I'm doing good.

You know, today I had a question about receiving prayer from other people. That's okay. Hey, we've got a break. Sorry about that. Sorry to make you wait even longer.

My apologies. But hold on, okay? Hey, folks, we'll be right back with Jermaine, who's awesome, and he calls from California regularly. May the Lord bless him. Hey, we'll be right back after with these messages. Please stay tuned. It's Matt Slick live, taking your calls at 877-207-2276.

Here's Matt Slick. All right, and welcome back to the show. Let's get back on the air with Jermaine from California.

Jermaine, sorry about that timing, but hey, you're back on. All right, no problem. But, you know, my question initially was receiving prayer from people of other faiths. I've had situations where, you know, Jehovah's Witnesses or Mormons or others would want to pray for me about a situation. I would just politely say, hey, it's okay, you know, my God's got it.

And I know they're paying attention, but is there a way to kind of go about that? Because if you're in their space, then I understand being polite, but I don't allow people to just put hands on me and dictate and pray, especially if we're not in the same faith. So I just kind of wanted to hear what you had to say about it.

Yes. I'm glad you brought that up, about laying on of hands. I would not want anybody as a Mormon or a Catholic or, you know, any of the false religions to pray for me, putting their hands on me because I don't want that, you know. Mormons are professing a false God and what Paul says is really interesting in 1 Corinthians 10, 19.

What do I mean then? That a thing sacrificed to idols is anything or that an idol is anything? No, but I say that the things which the Gentiles sacrifice, they sacrifice to demons and not to God. And I do not want you to be, to become sharers and demons. You cannot drink the cup of the Lord, the cup of the demons.

You cannot partake of the table of the Lord, a table of demons. So this concept here is that, and I'm going to say this and the Mormons aren't going to like it, who are listening in different parts of the country here, but they are ultimately praying to demonic forces when they invoke the name of their God and their false God because it's not a Christian religion. And so I don't, if I'm in a Mormon context and they want to pray for me, what I do while they're praying for me, to be polite, I just pray against them.

The Lord Jesus said, you know, just put a hedge around me, protect me from this demonic influence, et cetera. I'm not trying to be rude to them, but I just pray silently and that's what I do. But I don't want any of their invocation of their demonic forces upon me that are trying to be sincere, that are trying to be sincere, that are trying to be good, and I get that.

And I'm blessed by that sincerity. But because they're deceived and they are not aware of their demonic influence that they're under, I don't want them invoking that upon me or anybody I know. So I just pray against them at that time and they don't know that and that's okay.

And so that's what I'll do there. And with the Catholics, they're praying to the true God, but they're not really saved. They have a false gospel and they're idolatry. When they say they're going to pray to Mary, I tell them, please don't do that. I don't want you to commit idolatry.

Don't do that on my behalf. They say, well, I'm going to do it anyway. And I say, well, I'll just be praying that your prayers will fall on deaf ears because you're committing idolatry and I don't want that for you. And that's what I do with them. I try to be polite about it, but that's how I handle it.

So, you know, you seem to be in the same vein there. Well, yeah, just kind of making sure I'm doing things according to how I thought that God wants me to do it. But yeah, I absolutely, I appreciate the authority and I'm glad that, you know, people are thinking about me. But I tell them, you know, the true God, I say he's able to answer the prayers. I don't really need your prayer, right?

You know, I can't force him to stop you yourself. Right. Yeah. And they're not trying to be mean. They're trying to be helpful and I appreciate that. But when they pray to their God, they're praying to a false god, their demonic forces. And I will just counter that by prayer. It's like when people threaten me with, I'm going to pray that Mormon might do it.

I've got to be careful here. Generally, Mormons don't do this. That's not what Mormonism teaches, to pray and curse anybody.

I'm just being honest here. But I've had people in different cults and stuff like that say they're going to pray against me for my destruction. And when that occurs, which is very infrequent, I just say, look, you don't serve the true God, I do. And you better be careful what you ask for because I'm going to pray that what you ask of me is given back to you. This is in the Psalms.

It's called imprecation. So I'll just pray that whatever you ask will come back upon you, even double. And that's how I handle that. And I'll actually pray.

So, yeah, it's a spiritual battle out there. Okay? Alright. Thank you, Matt.

I appreciate your answers as usual. Well, I don't know about that, but thanks. I appreciate the sentiment. Alright, brother. Okay, we'll go with good answers. Well, okay.

What did we say? By God's grace. Okay. Well, God bless, brother.

God bless. Alright, now let's get to Alberto from Georgia. Alberto, welcome. You are on the air. Are you there, Alberto? Yes, I'm here, sir.

God told me to start a new ministry, start being a greeter, so I could be nice and comfortable in the church with fresh nappy dress shoes. Wait, wait, wait, wait a second. Alberto, you're always entertaining, because you always have these observations, and they're always interesting. And you want to weave them into a long question. So let's try to reverse it a little bit. Let's try this. Ask me a question quickly, and then let's get into it and see how that works, okay?

Okay. Well, what if I decide that God called me to a different ministry instead of evangelizing, but just be a church greeter instead? If that's what God calls you, then you obey God, if that's what he calls you to do.

Right? But don't you think we have too many of those and not enough labels out in the streets witnessing going to the communities? Well, wait a minute. That's different.

If God calls you to that, that's what you've got to do. Now it's a different issue. Oh, there are too many of them. Too many what, greeters? I don't know how we have too many people greeting us in the church.

I think that's good. Too many might be the church has 70 people in it, and 300 are greeters. They're coming from out of churches.

That would be a problem logistically, but aside from that kind of ridiculous thing, I don't think there's really any problem with having a bunch of greeters. All right. But don't we have enough label, guys? We're not witnessing the community better because the churches are not doing their job.

They're going to win the losses. People are dying around us, and the church is not doing their job. Well, that's the issue with the pastors and the elders. Their job is to equip the Christians for the work of ministry. Not to babysit, not to get more people in, and not to offer big screen TVs when your church opens, having a drawing. As I know a church local here did. And that same pastor said that your words have more power in your life than the words of Jesus.

Such heresy. So there are a lot of teachers out there who have a mediocre understanding of God, a mediocre understanding of Biblical theology's integration. And they get there and preach and teach. And so this is one of the reasons that the church isn't as being effective as it needs to be.

But just because they're educated doesn't mean it's going to solve the problem either. So the solution is to be dedicated to the word of God. And the pastors need to, they don't need to be educated, but it certainly helps to know things. But they do need to be called of God, and they need to dive into the word of God and let it shape them and it guide them.

And they need to not look for numbers and for smiles and things like that. They need to look not to those humanistic methods and measurements, but what does God believe? What does God say? Is he being faithful to God's word? Is he equipping the Christians?

That's what he has to do. Yeah, but I've watched so many videos on YouTube. I've seen so many crazy stuff in these churches they're doing. I saw them in a church. These guys know what they're doing. They don't care about the body of Christ. They take advantage of them. They're not even teaching God's word. I mean there's much crazy, stupid, blasphemous things happening in God's house.

Sometimes, but I can't say that they all don't care about the people with them. We have different degrees of people who care and don't care and apply scripture and abuse scripture. But there's a lot of charlatans out there and a lot of people who don't know biblical theology. And it's hard to have a pastor who knows theology and theology is something a pastor should know. He should because theology is things like the Trinity, the deity of Christ, justification by faith. And he needs to know how these things interrelate. And the nice thing about being exegetical in scripture is that the more a pastor does that, the more he learns.

And we need people like that. But the focus needs to be on the equipping of the saints for the work of ministry in Ephesians 4. That's the purpose. It's not to babysit unbelievers and members of the church is not to get unbelievers in the church. It's to equip the Christians. The Christians are supposed to be the ones going out there and evangelizing. The pastor is to equip the Christians for that work. That's not what we have, normally speaking, in churches.

We have babysitting sessions. Another thing I noticed, all these YouTube videos, so many people got YouTube channels. And the other thing all the time they do is exposing other preachers or criticizing other preachers or false teaching. But they're not putting no videos attacking the porn industry or attacking the child trafficking.

Hold on. Justin Peters is a friend of mine. He goes out and he does a great job at exposing the heresies of the positive confession, name it, claim it, blab it, grab it people. He doesn't do videos in other areas because that's not what he's called to do by God. He's called to do what he's called to do and he focuses in that area.

And I'm sure in his sermons and his teachings, if it would come up, he would condemn such things as pornography. But that's not his calling. I'm just using him as an example. So different people have different callings in the body of Christ. We can't all do everything. So Paul calls, for example, Justin Peters, calls him to do a very specific thing. He calls me to be more of a generic GP, a general practitioner. And he calls others to do different things as well at different levels. And that's just what God does.

So they all don't have to do anything. I do. I watch him.

I do. I watch him all the time. He's really good. I like him.

I've been sharing his videos with friends and family, friends of mine. And I learn a lot from him because he helps people identify and spot the false teachers, the tricks and words they use so people know how to have a discernment. Yeah, he's great. He does a great job. He's a great job.

Yeah, he does. I've studied this stuff. He and I spoke at a conference a few years ago. And when it was my turn to speak, he was down there listening and he learned. And when it was his turn to speak, he was down there and I learned. I told him later, I said, man, I had no idea some of those guys taught that stuff.

He goes, oh, yeah, and we got talking. He knows his stuff. I'm just using it as an example. So God calls different people to do different things. Like my friend Bill McKeever and Eric Johnson in Salt Lake City area. They are specialists in Mormonism and they're exceedingly good at it. And so he's not calling them to do what I do or what Justin Peter does.

It's just a difference of calling. Yeah, I'm watching his other YouTube channel. It's pretty good, too. It's called Grace Evangelical Society YouTube videos with Bob Wilkins. He's pretty good, too.

I like his channel, too. And he's trying to help Christians understand these Bible verses. Sometimes these preachers misunderstand them wrongly.

Oh, yeah. And the book of John, you know, most of it is a book and others. I learn a lot from that.

I even write down papers and on the notepad and share with people on the bus and stuff, even Justin Peters, too. I share yours, too, with other ministers, you know, about eschatology, the end of the age, the video you have about eschatology and the Roman Catholic. God's providing. That's right. Hey, man, we're out of time. You're just going to start in like five seconds.

Yeah, so praise God and God's going to have a place for you to be used, as well. All right. It's all right, brother. All right. Thank you. All right. There we go.

That's the end of the show. Hope you had a good time listening and learned. And by God's grace, we're back on there tomorrow. Lord willing, we'll talk to you then. So have a great evening, everyone. God bless. Bye.