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 for answers, taking your calls and responding to your questions at 877-207-2276. Here's Matt Slick.

Hey everyone, welcome to the show. It's me, Matt Slick. You're listening to Matt Slick Live. All right, now, if you want to give me a call, as usual, it's 877-207-2276. You can give me a call.

I want to hear from you. You can also, if you are interested, send an email to info at carm.org, info at carm.org. and put in the subject line, radio comment or radio question, either one, and we sometimes get to them. All right, we're already starting off with a busy day. We have a special.

Caller. Yeah. Hey Eric. How you doing, buddy? Hey.

Hey Matt, how are you? Good. Long time, no talk. Yeah. Yeah.

All right.

So, ladies and gentlemen, this is Eric Johnson, and he's the. He works with Bill McCewever at Mormonism Research Ministry. And uh so he's going to talk about a trip we're taking. I'm just so fill us in.

Well, hey, Matt, you're going to go on a trip as you've gone on some of my trips before. This one is it I titled it, it's not a Reformation tour per se, but it's called A Protestant View of Germany and England. And it's made specifically to take a look at the last 500 years of Protestant history, and especially focusing on some of the men who. We're so important to our Protestant heritage. And so this is going to take us to, as it says, Germany and England.

Um we're going to be going in October. The dates are october 14th through the 26th of this year. And most important, here's the website if people are interested in looking at this trip. It's www. GermanyEngland.com.

That's one word, GermanyEngland.com. And on there, if you look on a desktop computer, it's actually better than if you try to look on it with your phone because I have some pictures and things in there. They get messed up when you look at it on your phone. But we're going to be spending a lot of time in Germany. We will do a lot of Reformation things having to do with Martin Luther.

I'll tell you some of the places we're going to go. We'll go to Augsburg. We'll go to Worms where Luther challenged. The Catholic establishment. It's also where William Tyndale completed the printing of the New Testament in 1525.

We're going to talk about those kinds of things, like the Gutenberg Press. We'll go to Mainz, where that Gutenberg Press was created. And the Bible was the first printing from the Gutenberg press. We'll go to Eisenach, the childhood home of Luther. We'll go to Wartburg Castle, where in three months Luther.

Hid after the Diet of Erms, and he translated the New Testament from Greek in just three months. It had just been put together by a guy named Erasmus. That and he in 1521 he actually translates that.

So we'll go to places like that. We're also going to see other people besides Luther. We'll see Dietrich Bonhoeffer's home in Berlin. We'll talk a little bit about. Dietrich Bonhoeffer.

And we'll go to Berlin and see.

Well, we're gonna see some things besides Bible things. Like, for instance, we'll go to Dachau. Doctile where um the concentration camp was.

Some things dealing with World War two we'll have a chance to see as well. Then we're going to fly over to England, and we'll be seeing a number of things there. One of my favorite things to do when I'm in London is go to the British Museum. And we're going on the day that they're open till 8:30 for nerds like myself. And I think probably you, Matt, you're going to love seeing the Rosetta Stone, the room filled with the siege of Lakeish, the artifacts from Sennacherib from 701 BC, the Amarna tablets, the Taylor Prism, the Lakees letters, the Cyrus Cylinder.

Pound for pound, the British Museum is the greatest museum for biblical artifacts anywhere in the world.

Now, I'm going to say even more than the Israel Museum in Jerusalem. But we'll go to the Metropolitan Tabernacle where Charles Spurgeon preached. We'll talk a little bit about Spurgeon. We'll go to Oxford. We'll go to the home of Charles and John Wesley, as well as C.S.

Lewis. where they taught at Oxford. We'll go to the church where Lewis attended. We'll go to Sto um we'll go well we're just going to see so much in that area where Oxford is. And what's another thing?

Let me see. I mean, we're going to do some of the things in London, like the St. Paul's Cathedral. We're going to take a cruise on the Thames. Um we'll go to Stonehedge.

So we'll go to Stratford upon Avon, made famous, of course, by Shakespeare.

So it's going to be a lot of things, a lot of biblical things and some things that are not. But here's the thing, Matt. The website, I would encourage people, we got to do this quickly because this trip is happening in October. And you're going and you want to take some people. We're limiting the trip.

And so we only have a few spots left. We really don't have very many. I can count them on one hand how many spots we have left to go on this from October 14th to the 26th, 2026. Go to the website. GermanyEngland.com.

And here's what I'm going to say. If you're interested, we can't do unlimited. It has to just be a few people. But if you want to go with Matt, contact me. I'm going to give you my email.

It's Eric, E-R-I-C. At mrm.org, MaryRichardMary.org. It's listed on the website as well. Write me by Sunday. And tell me you're interested because you can't sign up online.

We're limiting who's signing up for this. If you tell me that you're interested, I can give you the link to sign up. And if you do that by Sunday, I'm going to give you $100 off the trip just to get I'd like to get a few people coming with Matt.

So anyway, that's kind of what we have, Matt. Oh, the price, people are going to ask, of course. Uh it's $6,095. which a if it's a 13 day trip. And in this day and age, travel has gone up.

So $6,095 is the cost of the trip. And we're having a group flight. You can fly there yourself. But the round trip is out of Salt Lake City and it's $1,700.

So if you wanted to fly with us, and I think you'll be flying with us, Matt, right? Will you be going out of Salt Lake? Yeah. And so if you live in the West and you're able to get to Salt Lake, that's actually a really good airfare right now. All the money is going to be due in the summer, so in a few months, the money will be due.

You can use a credit card. We travel through pilgrim tours. And we have a great guide, a guide that I have used before when I've done this in Europe. And he knows Christianity. And he knows his history.

The guy really is good.

So he'll be flying with us once we leave Germany to go to England. He'll be coming with us as well.

So if people are interested, and I know this is kind of late notice for a lot of people because this trip is in just six months, less than six months. But we just now decided that you were going to come.

So now that we know you're coming, if people want to travel with you, this would be a fun time. I'm sure, you know, if you want to sit near Matt on the bus, Matt is hilarious. You are such a character. And then we eat meals together. The price includes everything, all inclusive, breakfast.

and most dinners, not all the dinners, but and it's not including lunches, but it will include all your breakfasts, four-star hotels, the bus, the driver, all their admission fees, all of that. The only thing that won't be included will be several of the dinners, which we did purposely so we could eat in the cities of where we're at in Germany and England so we can experience the food. Uh locally there. And but for the most part, everything is included. But it's all listed on the website, GermanyEngland.com.

Wow, man, makes me want to go all the more. Yeah, I appreciate that. It's a great trip. It really is. I mean, I know a lot of people I the reason I didn't call it a Reformation tour and why I didn't go over to let's say Scotland or something like that, which would be normal, is I know a lot of people probably are scary of history.

But we shouldn't be scary of history. We should know where we came from and our roots and the Bible, where it came from. And we're going to be seeing a lot of things that are related to that. It's going to grow us as far as our understanding of Christian history. Yeah.

Yeah, I've been wanting to go for a long time, and I've done, you know, I think we've done, I don't know, three or four together. I don't know. One, two, yeah, they had four together at least. And I got to say, you do a good job. That's for sure.

We always have a good time. Oh, I it's you know, the thing about these trips is it's not a it's an it's an educational trip. It's not a vacation. You're going to be working because we're going to get you up. We're going to be going out of the hotels by usually 7:30, and we may not get back till five or six.

It's all day, and we are busy. We're seeing a lot of things. I know people pay a lot of money to go on these, and so I don't take that lightly. To make it so that people can actually experience the place that we're visiting. And I don't do this trip very often.

In fact, I have not included England on a trip before. I've done Germany before, but not England.

So I may not do this trip again, even though we do have a pretty full bus. There's only a few spots left. But I usually go to Israel or Turkey, Greece, and Italy, or even Jordan. This uh this one I wanted to do. My wife wanted to she wanted to see some of the things in England.

She's been with me to Germany before, but um So I wanted to have her come. She'll be with me. My friend Bill McKeever from Mormonism Research Ministry is hoping to go. And so for those of you who like apologetics, we're not going to be talking apologetics at the different sites, but we will have a chance to To talk at dinners and lunch and breakfast, and we eat together. The pastor that's going on this is Brian Hurlbut, and he's the pastor over at Lifeline Community in West Jordan.

So he and about eighteen of his people are on this trip. I have some of my friends going. Hopefully, we'll have some of your friends going, Matt. And some of the people that are from our Utah Christian Research Center based in Draper, Utah. And if you live in Utah, come on over.

Just come on over Wednesdays through Saturdays. We're open. You can go onto our website, UtahChristianResearchCenter.com, and we'd love to give you a tour of our Bible Museum and other things that we have here. We have a bookstore with Bibles in it. But um anyway, that's uh what well I'm having several of my um My uh people from um the center who are volunteers coming as well.

So it's fun to have a group of people. We're all like minded. We want to just grow. We want to stretch ourselves. And this isn't necessarily a Bible trip, but it's about the Bible.

Yeah. Yeah, it's going to be fun. I have a lot of good memories of being on that bus, just making friends with people, talking, eating. In fact, my daughter travels a lot, and I just dropped off at the airport today, and she's been all over the world. And we talked about eating.

I just really like the different menus and different stuff that's around. We just talked about various things. But. Yeah, it sounds good.

So, what how they sign up or look at it again? What was it? The address?

Okay, so the address to go to is GermanyEngland.com. One word. Go look at it. My email is on there, on that website, but I'm going to give it one more time.

So if somebody wants to just email me because once I get, I think it's three or four people. And once I get that filled, it's sold out. And there's no, unless you want to go on a wait list and somebody drops out. But my email. is Eric, E-R-I-C at Mr M dot org, Mary Richard Mary dot org.

So if you're um You can go back on your on CARM.org and you can listen back if you need to. But if you go on to GermanyEngland.com, that should be easy to remember. That you can find my email on there. I'd be happy to answer any questions you might have. Um anything I can do to help.

Alright, brother.

Sounds good, man. Really appreciate it. You're awesome. Thank you for having me on, Matt. Thanks again, Eric.

God bless you. All right.

If you haven't known Eric for years, great guy, does great tours. Seriously, they're great. Anyway, hey, we'll be right back after these messages. Please stay tuned. It's Matt Slick Live, taking a call at 877-207-2276.

Here's Matt Slick. All right, buddy, welcome back to the show. If you want to give me a call, all I got to do is dial 877-2072276. Let's get to Chuck from Ohio. Chuck, welcome, man.

You're on the air. All right, thank you. Night. Got a question I've I've kind of been doing a little bit of research on. Um As far as um mission work to people that haven't received uh the gospel of Jesus Christ.

What? As far as your knowledge, what is But more effectively. organizations Oh. I don't know. I I I just haven't studied different missionary organizations to tell you which ones are good or bad.

Maybe Charlie, who's listening, he works with us, maybe he might know if you do or do you know any better good ones, Charlie? Nod your head. Is that a yes or no? Maybe? A couple?

Yeah. If you got it, but with the texture.

So, yeah, I'm just not really familiar with it. I know there's some good ones out there. I would just suggest that you research and stuff like that. Yeah, it's a it's a good question though. Go ahead.

Okay, well, yeah, I had been doing an AI search on it, and they surprisingly came up with. What seems to be a pretty good list but you know I wanted to do some Additional, you know, research on it, checking into it, but. because some of them I had not heard of, the ones That are commonly more heard of, like open doors, voice of the martyrs. Um Wicklip is still You know, cutting edge in translation, but they don't do much of You know, preaching the gospel or helping churches get started and.

Some of the countries that Uh I thought North Korea You know what B. Number one, which it is as far as a a country But in the search that I did, it said it wasn't considered an unreached. Uh, people group, it was just a closed country and it does have an underground church, right? But they uh they said there was a lot Like I think it said 2%. of the missionaries are can dedicate their work To about ninety-eight percent of the unreached people.

And it was in uh millions or more. that had never heard at all. Yeah, so that's why Mm-hmm. I do know. I have some friends.

I've got two things to tell you. I have some friends who work with Samaritan's Purse. That's. uh Billy Graham's organization. And they do a good work.

So they're personal friends of mine, and they volunteer and they help out there with missionary work and various things.

So, Samaritan's purse is good. And uh And then we have, believe it or not, we have missionaries that we support. Carm does. We have. We have a missionary in um in Brazil and We just support him.

He gets almost all his money from us. And when we don't pay him enough, because we don't have a whole bunch, he has to get a job doing electrical work. But we support him, and he does stuff with orphanages as well as preaching the gospel in different languages and reaching out and teaching in churches. And he does the Portuguese website. We have a guy in Brazil also who does the same thing in Spanish.

And he works, he's been great. We've known both these guys for many years. And then we have a guy that we support in Malawi and another guy in Nigeria. And the guy in Nigeria goes out and risks his life. He was just assaulted last week.

And he thought, well, the reason I'm bringing this up is the money that donated to us for the missionaries goes straight to the missionaries. 100% goes to them. We don't keep anything, we don't keep anything overhead, we don't do anything.

So it's 100% if we just send it to them. And that's what happens.

So but there are good organizations out there. That's great.

Okay, well. Thank you very much. I met a fellow Actually, shopping at Kroger's. I don't know if you remember. Kroger's is a big grocery chain around here.

And. I was in there. This was back during COVID. I was in there at night. in the the meat section and this small little guy come up And So I gave him a track or so we gotta start talking.

Uh He was from Nepal. And he was a Christian. Yeah. You know, we We got together a few times after that and then he moved away. And I haven't heard from him for a long time, but I kind of looked into that and it's it's not an unreached country, but there's only like maybe two percent Christians out of And it's not wide open either.

You have to watch what you say and what you do. Mongolia is another one that's kind of the same way. Are you okay, so you're looking for organizations that reach out to these lo to these un basically more majority unreached groups? Then you have to d do uh research and just figure out which ones do that. One organization called Frontier And there's some other ones that I can't really remember right off the top of my head that I've got.

I've got uh recorded at home. But yeah, I was just kind of checking into that. Yeah, well just do your research and let us know if you want, if you find anything good. But do you have any other questions you uh you want to run, Bobby? Um No, that's all I was really um Thinking about right now as far as just trying to find out who.

Really? Going to the To the unreached people in the world? Yeah, I couldn't tell you. I just haven't researched that. But I do other stuff.

So, but hey, I appreciate the call, though, okay? All right.

Okay, thank you very much. All right, you two. God bless. All right.

Hey folks, you want to give me a call? 877-20-722-76. Gill from New York. Gil, welcome. You're on the air.

It's such a pleasure talking to you. And I feel from the first day I spoke to you that you really. truly, sincerely love me and care for me very much. I can feel it. Every time I talk to you.

And um I want to share some verses and then talk to you about the suffering I've been going through with insomnia, pain in my eyes and everything. One of them is Philippians chapter 4, verse 6. It says, Do not be anxious about anything, but in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving, present your request to God, and the peace of God which transcends all understanding and will guard your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus. And another one I think of is when I'm going through this is Psalm 46, verse 10. Be still and Know that I am God, And Matthew six thirty-four says, do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow worry about itself.

Each day has enough troubles of its own. I've been having this problem for My Yeah, like a couple of months maybe. Um I haven't been able to sleep at night. And I'm worried that you have a question. Yeah, how do I handle these verses in light?

Because I do pray to God, but I feel like nothing is. nothing is really occurring. When I sleep at night, um, my ears pop in my nose. And the more that that happens, it wakes me up that I can't sleep all night. I even take I'll tell you what, we're going to break.

We're going to break.

So let's talk about this kind of stuff. Unanswered prayer, so to speak, when we get back to the 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. All right, everybody, welcome back to the show. If you want to give me a call, it's easy: 877-207-2276. Let's get back.

Oh, sorry, Jermaine. The wrong one, Jermaine. Hold on, buddy.

Sorry about that. Let's get back to Gil from New York. Hope you don't mind waiting. And I only slept for just a few minutes. I was reading Rick Warren's book when it says, When you live in light of eternity, your values change.

And it's amazing that I slept for at least a few minutes. But I'm going like many nights without sleep. And the most important thing I forgot to mention is that I've been getting nauseousness. And when I try to play the piano, I feel very very weak, I don't have the same strength that I used to have, you know, since I've been having the nauseousness.

Okay, so I wouldn't recommend r uh reading Rick Warren for one thing. I know, not the whole book, yes, yeah. Not everything is good in it, yeah. Yeah, I just wouldn't recommend reading him.

So, um I was just letting you know why where I fell asleep, that it was amazing that I was reading that and I slept for a few minutes and I didn't think I would sleep at all.

Now the night before I slept pretty well.

So um uh you need to you know you need to be involved with seeing a a physician who can help work through some of this Okay, that's that's I try to get. I live in a nursing. Hold on, hold on.

Okay, hold on.

So that's one thing you need to do. You're a physician. And as far as prayer goes, Yeah. You know, it's difficult to answer questions on why God doesn't answer certain things. My wife had a lot of problems, and it took her life last year.

So we prayed for her healing, and the healing never came, except to say, now she's with the Lord, she's ultimately healed. Why is it that sin, I mean, excuse me, that. Prayers often don't go answered the way we hope.

Well, one of the reasons is because it's part of God's sovereign plan to do a certain thing, and that we need to get in the habit of not desiring that God do things for us, but to change our heart so that we're in His will. Because if He has allowed certain things to happen to you, to me, my wife, etc., Boy, it's getting odd to say wife now.

Well, that's weird. Anyway, so when God allows these things, we have to find out what is the flow that we need to get into to work in and through it.

So a lot of times people who have physical ailments through their whole lives And they die and they go be with the Lord, they're never healed during that life, that earthly life, they can then theoretically receive a greater amount of reward and glory for eternity to come because in their difficulty they were praising God. This is just one of the possibilities that is there. We could also say that we're asking for wrong motives, and that's just something we have to be careful of. We're not asking for the wrong motives. We could be asking because we have a lack of faith, and we don't get answers.

That could be another issue. But, like I said, praying outside of God's will.

So, these are just things we don't have answers to. We just have to pray faithfully as best we can and trust that God answers. And if He doesn't, then He doesn't, and we move forward through what we have. And, you know, as Walter Martin used to say, everybody's going to have one that lasts sickness, the one that takes them.

So every sickness is not healed. Every issue is not solved and uh sin has its consequence upon us and we're g we're gonna suffer and we're going to perish. Through it, you know.

Okay. I like Walter Martin. He used to do the Bible Answer Man, I heard years ago. Yeah. Yes, I used to go to his classes.

Yep, down in Southern California. Kingdom of the Cult, I know, is a great book, yes. Yes, indeed. There's something else you said to me that was comforting in the midst of it, because when I'm in bed, believe it or not, since I've been listening to your show, and I can't sleep at night, you're always on my mind when I'm going through this. Seriously, I want you to know that when I'm going through this, I'm like, he must be praying for me, or is he praying for me?

You know, and everything like this. I don't pray enough for people. My wife told me I don't know if this makes anything, I'm not trying to be narcissistic here or anything. She told me my voice was very soothing, it could help her go to sleep.

So I actually developed a um uh uh I read five five psalms. Into recording, and she would play him at night and go to sleep to my voice.

So, um, you know, I don't know if you're desperate, he could just listen to me talk on the radio and stuff like that. I don't know, but uh. Anyway, so you know, different things work for different people and you just have to do the best you can. It's hard because I live in a nursing home and I try to see the doctor and I can't find them in the office and all. All of that stuff and You know, everything that's happened, this could be dangerous.

I could get a seizure from this too, you know, if this keeps on going, you know. It's very dangerous because I actually fell off my chair and injured my arm. I never fall, but I fell down. Two days ago, because I was I was feeling nauseous and in pain, you know, from the eyes and everything. you know I literally fell down, I had no control, and now you don't usually fall, like I said.

Yeah. And I did. Yeah. And the other thing you said that was comforting to me, you talk about your wife, too, that I love when you talk about her. Um you said to me, uh you said that you you're gonna be much closer to her in heaven.

And I was thinking like I was so close to my Nancy here on earth I can imagine how much closer we're going to be in heaven, like Paul says in 1 Corinthians. I mentioned it before. Eye is not seen, ear is not heard, nor has it entered into the heart of man what God has prepared for those that love him. I mean, I've been in such discomfort Because um this thing that I've been going through, I've been like asking God take me from this earth or bring this world to an end sometimes 'cause I'm going through so much, you know. I wanted to stop, you know.

Well, I can't answer that one. You just have to like even my wife, we talked about it, and she never denied Christ during all of her great suffering. And she was in a great deal of pain and suffering for a while towards the end. And she never denied Christ. And She would thank the Lord and we would pray.

In the middle of pain, and I mean pain. she would stop moaning and then listen while I was praying. for for her. And uh this is the kind of woman she was. And uh You know, so she's with the Lord, and I'm sure that the reward that she's garnered because of that, not for salvation, but wait to see her, yeah, yeah, that she's blessed and she'll be blessed greatly.

So that's that's my hope. All right, okay, Gil. Yeah, thank you very much.

So please pray for me at night if you can, because if I get a few hours of sleep, that'll be good, because I did a couple of nights ago sleep. for about seven hours, which was much better than last night.

Alright, well, God bless, brother. God bless. Love you. Bye-bye.

Okay, bye.

Okay. All right.

Now let's get to Jermaine from California. Germaine, welcome. You're on the air. Hey Matt, um I wanted to talk about acupuncture. It seems to be a controversial subject with some believers.

I wanted to hear, do you have any stance on that? Or is there any biblical grounds to not Give acupuncture, I've received it as a part of my treatment they prescribed. Yeah, acupuncture it was be begun, like yoga, was begun i as a spiritual connection thing and energy movement and things like that. And in ch in yoga, it's chakras, in uh acupuncture it's it's chi.

So, as long as you're not doing that, spiritual metaphysical stuff is not a problem. Just like stretching is not a problem. Acupuncture is not a problem. There's studies that have been done to show benefits from acupuncture. There are people who just take their needles, they just poke because they understand it does help for whatever reason.

They're not doing energy balancing, not doing qi movement or whatever it is. They're not doing any of that spiritual crud. And so, in that sense, yeah, no problem. As long as you're not attending anything and doing anything spiritual in the context, just like yoga. As long as you're not doing yoga, you're just, because yoga means the spiritual connection with stretching.

If you're just doing stretching exercises, that's not yoga. If you're doing the same exercises, it doesn't mean it's occultic. It just means you're stretching. Just like acupuncture can be used without the metaphysical connection. Just don't have any participation in that and refuse anything that goes along with it.

And if they just, if some doctor goes, yeah, Pokey, right here, you feel better?

Okay, good, it worked. See you later. You know, that kind of thing. Not a problem. All right.

Yeah, I've um it's it's just been part of my therapy and Some of it is work, some of it's just been like kind of blah, but yeah, there's no spiritual component at all for me. Good. What are they working in? I'm tempted to say it must be in your brain to fix a lot of stuff, but I don't know. I mean, you know.

Well, my wife would probably say that, but it's uh. It it was a back-related injury I sustained. a couple of years ago, still fighting through our little workers' comp journey and You know, God has healed me. tremendously but Yeah, it is a part of my therapy, and I found that some of it does work, but there's no. spiritual aspect of it at all.

Um and good. I mean, for me, it's no different from I I see p people say they won't do that, but they'll Listen to what the doctor says, take every prescription on the planet, and then they're effectively drug addicts.

So, y yeah, I I'm just careful with everything. Good, and you should be. Just remember: a physical needle is not the issue, it's the worldview that's the issue.

So a Christian should avoid anything that deals with spirituality that's other than Christian. That's all. And if it's not, it has no spirituality in it, then, you know, within reason, of course. Go for it, acupuncture. I wouldn't see any problem with doing that.

Okay. Okay. All right, well thanks man, I appreciate it. Hey, I got a question for you. I'm hypersensitive and I mean extraordinarily so.

I've even had doctors be very surprised that I can feel stuff that most people don't feel. I even had a test with blind people. I was tactically far more, far more sensitive to touch than they were. And so, this is true. Anyway, so I was always wondering needles, you know, like, oh, I'd feel them.

But maybe one day, you never know. You never know.

So.

Alright, brother, we gotta go.

Okay, God bless. All right.

God bless you. Okay. Woof! There you go. Hey, may the Lord bless you.

Be right back after these messages. Please stay tuned. It's Matt Slick Live, taking your call at 877-207-2276. Here's Matt Slick. Alright, everyone, welcome back to the show.

Okay, we have nobody waiting, so I'm going to do a little bit of teaching. Um Have you ever had this happens to me every now and then? You'll hear something, and in the back of your mind you're going, Something's wrong. And you got to think about it.

Well, that happens to me periodically. working on articles, thinking about concepts. And one of them uh it it's occurred with both the idea of eternal intelligences and becoming gods in Mormon theology. And so I just released about an hour ago right now. I just released an article: What is the problem with the LDS doctrine of pre-existent spirits and stuff like that?

So, um I want to go through a little bit of it. It took me days to work on this because. I would write and then that's not right, it's not feeling right. And then I'd leave it alone, come back to it, and write something, oh, that's better. And I kept working through it.

And trying to be technical, trying to be clear, trying to be simple. And a lot of times when I'm writing an article like this, I'll write things, I'll sit in bed actually, and I'll dictate into the phone an entire paragraph. And I can just concentrate, think, and work through it. And the next day, I'll take that paragraph and I'll work through it. And so sometimes, because my IQ is not as high as I want it to be, I have to put in extra effort to make something cogent.

And what I'll do is break things up in segments and then focus developmental energy on a segment and then work the segments over and then do it like this. And so this took a few days. And um I've worked on this article about the problem. There's a problem with the LDS doctrine of intelligences. And what are they?

The term intelligence can refer to the spirit element that existed before being begotten as spirit children. This is DNC 93:29. The LDS Church manual talks about this. And intelligences are pre-spirit entities. That were never created, DNC 9329.

The never created thing. Along with Uh the A universal called intelligences, it's a category, an instantiation of individuals. This is the problem, and it has to do with shared essence and essential and non-essential properties.

Now, I know I'm using big words. But Okay. What I'm going to do now is go through some stuff. Let's see if I can make it make sense. I've got this article: Problems with LDS Intelligences Being Eternal by Nature.

And then I have a deeper dive into that. And then I get into the biblical problems and then an objection answered. And then I provide documentation from LDS sources more in depth. where their doctrines are taught from their own sources.

So What I'm going to try and do right now, I'm going to try. See if I can make this make sense. As I'm going through it, the goal I have a lot of times is to break things down, complicated ideas, to break them down to a level that people can grasp, the average Joe. Because if you're not trained in this and thinking about this, you can't get this. And we're not born with it.

You gotta think, you gotta learn, you know, like anything in life. That's okay.

So check this out. Yeah. The idea here is that intelligences are without beginning. If they're without beginning, then they are self-subsistent.

Okay. That means they exist. Then they are self-subsistent. They exist independently of. Heavenly Father.

So this is important. If intelligence is Oh, by the way, intelligences are the things that are before that you're made into a spirit. The intelligences are eternal in Mormon theology, and the documentation I've got. Uh right here. Man was also in the beginning with God.

Intelligence, or the light of truth, was not created or made, neither indeed can be. That's in churchofjesuschrist.org, and I got the documentation there. And in Abraham 8.3.18, it talks about it, the DNC. Student manual says, We know, however, that there is something called intelligence which always existed. It is the real eternal part of man which was not.

Created or made. This intelligence combined with the spirit constitutes a spirit entity or individual.

Now, this is Mormon theology. This is what I'm reading. And another one says: the prophet Joseph Smith taught that the intelligent part of man has always existed. The spirit of man is not a created being. It existed from eternity and will always exist to eternity.

Anything created. Anything created cannot be eternal. History of the Church, Volume 3, page 387, etcetera.

Alright, now.

So, you know, I've gone, I did my homework in that, I researched. LDS documentation on this. I want to make sure I was understanding their view right. 'Cause it was percolating in the back of my mind. Percolations.

And so I thought, okay, I noticed a problem. It has to do with categories. It has to do with instantiation of a category and what's called essential and accidental properties.

Now, having said all of that, let me get back into this. If intelligences are without beginning, then they are self- Subsistent. That means they subsist and exist independently of. Heavenly Father.

Now Heavenly Father in LDS theology. is Elohim, he is distinct and separate from Jesus Christ. And there's different views about him. I'm going to do some more research on him. But what LDS are now saying is that he's eternal.

We got some problems here.

So, anyway, if these intelligences exist independently of Heavenly Father. It means Well, I'll get into that. Then he is not the ultimate source of ground of their being.

So Even Heavenly Father in Mormon theology was an intelligence the the essence from forever ago.

So, this means then that we are all, according to LDS theology, of the same class. God class, intelligence class, whatever you want to call loosely spoken of. As all others.

Well, this presents difficulties. If Heavenly Father is not the ultimate ground, of actuality, truth, reality, intelligences, etc. Denelvia is LDS theology has no ultimate explanatory principle. that accounts for the preexistence of intelligences or of Heavenly Father Himself. This is a serious problem.

Now there's different directions I could take this. I'm thinking about going back in and adding another issue of what's called the problem of an infinite regression. You can't have that. But here what we have is intelligences that just simply exist eternally.

Well, this is a problem since a system That has no ultimate explanatory ground cannot account for its own existence.

Now, people might say: well, the intelligences are their own ground. This is where that becomes a problem. For there to be many intelligences, Each distinct intelligence must possess what another does not. in order to be distinct.

So The idea of tree-ness out there. or humanness out there. Trees, all right.

So, treeness is an idea, it's a category. And we see distinctions between trees. because each tree has a property of itself that is not identical to another tree next to it. This is how we recognize distinctions. All right.

But Think about this. If this idea of intelligences are all of one essence, The idea of intelligence. Then, in order for there to be many intelligences, there must be distinctions. What are those distinctions? These distinctions are what's called accidental properties.

This is a problem. If each intelligence possesses accidental properties, Which means, for example, this tree is five meters tall, that tree is ten meters tall. That other tree is a meter in circumference, and that other tree is half a meter in circumference.

So we have Tree-ness, which is essential, but the properties: size, shape, diameter, mass. Uh you mount into stuff. That are accidentals. It's just something that could or could not be and a tree still exists.

So if each intelligence possesses accidental properties, In addition to this shared essential nature, then that makes each one a composite. This is critical because if the issue of the intelligences that pre-exist before all things. And they are eternal themselves, then, in order for one intelligence to be distinct from another, it has to have a quality distinct from another. But this introduces composition. because it's saying what is necessary.

to the being is the essential quality of intelligence and also a non-essential quality. which is not equal to the intelligence. But that would mean, then, that that which is not equal to the intelligence is not personal. If it's not personal, then you have a necessary essence or part of the being that is uh impersonal.

Now you have what's called a personal and an impersonal composition in the same being, and this is impossible because it's contradictory.

So a composite beings are derived and dependent. Because a being whose existence requires properties that are not identical. with essential nature, depends on those properties for its individuation. That which depends on anything for its existence, Other than its essential property, is by definition not subsistent, not self existent. It's self-sufficient.

So Possessing a derived non-essential parts contradicts the premise that his intelligences, Eldius intelligences, are eternal, uncreated, and self-subsistent. I hope this is making sense so far, okay? Because this is tough.

Okay, it can be tough. Uh Okay.

So The requirement of accidental properties for individuation undermines the underived status of the intelligences, generating a self-contradiction within the category itself. That's a lot.

So I'm sorry, but okay, it's in other words.

Okay, here we go.

So if individuation occurs inside the multiplicity of intelligences, The individuation necessitates that there's qualities each it possesses not identical to another or any other. Because if all attributes, accidental and essential, are identical to something else, then it is a something else. It's called Leidel's law of uh transitivity of identicals.

So it's a logical necessity that if you have two objects, let's just say theoretical objects, and every single aspect of each one of them is identical in every single way, then they're the same thing. to the same object.

Alright, there's no differentiation. But if we can have The class of intelligences, then it has properties necessary to that class of intelligences. But This means that the properties necessary to that class are personal. But How do you differentiate between different entities? different intelligences which are their own beings.

How do you differentiate to them? And that's not something I've heard any LDS theologian get into. I've not read anything like this. How do you justify the individuation of intelligences?

Now this could get into some really serious discussions. They might want to say relationship, but then that relationship actually designates differences in entity. Not in a nature, because that would differentiation would require that. Then what you have is a an additional characteristic which is non-essential to the nature. Of uh Now let me get into this.

How would they then list out what those nonessential characteristics are that then individuate or cause separation between entities that then are their individual distinctions? I'm probably losing all of you guys. You're probably going, you know what, Matt? I love it when you talk, but sometimes, sometimes it just doesn't work. And this might be one of them.

And so I'm trying to show. And I'm going to find an even simpler way to do this so the average joke can get it. But it basically is like this. If all the intelligences are of one ca class or category, then they all have to share the same essence. Otherwise you're not the same thing.

But what separates them? And that separation means composition. Composition means parts. Parts means that it's not self-sufficient. That's the basic argument.

Hey, we'll be right back. We won't be right back. We'll be back tomorrow by God's grace. And we'll talk to you then. Have a great evening, everyone.

Hope your head doesn't hurt too much. God bless. Another program powered by the Truth Network.