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. All right, everyone, welcome to the show. It's me, Matt Slick, and you're listening to Matt Slick Live. If, as usual, you want to give me a call. The number is 877-207-2276.

And if you want, you can email me also. Email to info. Info at CARM.org info at carm.org and we can get to it. We can get your emails. And we don't have anybody waiting right now, so a lot of times what I'll do is kind of update on some things that happened recently.

I get into chat rooms and did an interview on the Trinity today. or someone interviewed me on the Trinity. But uh Wide open line, so I want to hear from you. Give me a call, 877-20722. 7.6.

Now, for those of you who might be new to the show and want to know what this is about, I'm a Christian apologist, which means I defend the Christian faith and teach doctrine and refute false teachings out of Mormonism, Jehovah's Witnesses, Christian Science, Unity, Islam, Roman Catholicism, Eastern Orthodoxy, Atheism, and various things, and talk about all kinds of topics. And if you have questions and comments about all kinds of stuff, Christian theology. Churches, good or bad, women, pastors, and elders, should they be? No, they shouldn't. All kinds of stuff.

Then you can just give me a call and we can talk. You can also send me an email, info at carm.org. Info at carm.org, put in the subject line, radio, comments, or radio. Question, and we get to them.

Alright, now, so we have nobody waiting.

So, last night I did a couple hours on TikTok. And it wasn't as ev eventful as the previous night. But that's okay. We had some good discussions. But something interesting happened, minor.

A woman got on. And usually, seriously, usually arrogance and pride and stubbornness are mastered by young males. But this woman She was competing with them. And she was saying Jesus is the Father. And she was pushy and she was difficult to work with.

And wouldn't answer any questions. Even people in the chat are saying she's not answering the questions. And so she would say the father and the son are the same, same person. And I said, Well, if that's the case, From what you've said, if that's the case, when Jesus said in Luke 22:42, not my will, but your will be done. How is he the same person as the father if they had different wills?

It's a serious question. And she wouldn't answer it. She would just go into something else and then tell me that I wasn't spiritual, you know, didn't know what the Bible was, and then would ask, Don't you believe the Word of God? And I said, Yeah, I do. And I'm just asking you a question in light of what you said from the Word of God.

Could you please answer that? And she wouldn't answer. This is pretty typical. Usually it's young males who act as obstreperously as that. But she was right there with them.

She was. Usually it's not the ladies who behave so badly.

Well, that was one thing, not a big deal. Got into some discussions with some other people and just did some QA like I always do. And also, um, And I just want to let you guys know about something that's not a big deal. But um So, you know, as you know, when I ask for donations and things like that, I let you know that we're going to, you know, we support the missionary. Here's an example of something.

And the uh One of our guys, our guy in Brazil. Years ago, we bought him a laptop. And uh You know, we just help them out.

So we bought them, I don't know how many, 10 years ago, maybe, we bought a laptop. And so, um Last week, it started acting up really badly, and we've talked over. Over the phone about how to fix things, how to do stuff. And long story short, it died. And he even took it to a place, and they said the memory slots on the motherboard.

Are bad. And so the system is just kaput.

So we got him a new laptop. I bought him a new one. I paid for it today in Brazil. And it's things like this that we do to help out the missionaries. And let me tell you, it costs.

close to $1,000. And He showed me the exact model and I used to be computer tech.

So, I know what computers are. I know how to read the specs. I understand them. And he didn't even go on the super powerful end. He just went on a basic.

Basic low-level, but reliable system, and it costs that much. That's down in Brazil.

So, anyway, your support helps with things like that. And what he uses it for is sermon preparation for the church, working with the orphans, and developing articles and maintenance of the Carm version of the website in Portuguese down there.

So, he uses it quite a bit. There you go, just saying, hey, praise God, you know, for your support.

So, one of the ways is support. And also, I went to the bank yesterday, or was it yesterday or Monday? and paid our support for our missionary in Nigeria and another one in Malawi. And it gives them gas money and being able to pay for the car. Treatments, treatments, car repairs, and things like that as they go on dirt roads.

And we help them out.

So, and they're spreading the gospel.

So, your support. Goes there. And just thank you.

Okay, just thank you very much. Let's get to Tiffany from South Carolina. Tiffany, welcome. You're on the air. Hello, Tiffany.

I'm not hearing you. Hopefully everything's working. Oh. There we go. All right.

Can you hear me now?

Now I hear you.

Now I hear you.

I'm here.

Okay, perfect. I've asked this question to quite a few Christians and No one has really given me an answer. That makes sense to me. But going back into Genesis, as far as the the chronological six day progression. uh just creation um Of course, on day Thanks.

when God created humans and land animals and things like that. My question has always been in regards to the scientific evidence of dinosaurs. and other forms of life that were on this earth. Millions, possibly billions of years ago, but yet humans have only been here, what, maybe 6,000 years. And it's such a huge discrepancy of time.

And it's confusing to me because we already know that dinosaurs were here at one time, and it was way before humans, but yet the chronological order of progression in Genesis. Kinda goes. against that.

So I just I'm just really trying to wrap my head around Right.

Okay. There are mentions of dinosaurs in the Bible, and it's in the last three or four chapters of the book of Job. One chapter describes a land creature, another one a water-based creature. You can go to my website, carm.org, and look up dinosaurs in Job. And various commentators have offered different explanations of what they are, a crocodile or hippopotamus.

But when you read them, it doesn't make any sense. It has to be large creatures, like the tail moves the river and causes a wake to flow and it's bubble up. I mean, it's just huge. Javelins and spears cannot pierce the armor of its skin. One of them says it brings forth fire.

Breathes fire.

Now, what's interesting. Is there's something called the bombardier beetle, and it has two chemical sacks, and they mix in the air and it produces fire, and it's a defensive mechanism. In ancient China, There are dragons, which are fire-breathing reptile creatures. And it seems to match what is already there in the book of Job.

So dinosaurs are there. There are anecdotal stories around different places I've read over the years where, like, for example, in the Congo over in Africa, some scientists brought a dinosaur book, you know, illustrated dinosaur book, and showed it to the, for one reason or whatever, showed it to some of the natives that were, you know, they were not, natives that lived in the jungle, that kind of thing. And they were laughing at the pictures, you know, just enjoying them until they showed one dinosaur picture and they all stopped and they all pointed to a certain direction in the forest.

So stories like this are there. Plus, they're finding soft tissue and DNA and uh stuff in bone marrow. from dinosaur bones. But if they're 60 million years old, it's not supposed to last that long. It can't do that.

Furthermore, Yeah. There are all kinds of problems with dating, not between males and females, but between dating the age of things. For example, carbon-14 has a half-life of 5,730 years. And this means that half-life means if it has one gram of mass. Than or one gram, you know, mass.

Then in 5630 years, it has half a gram. It's called half-life. The only way, that's not technically accurate, but the primary way that carbon-14 is introduced into a biological structure, you, me, cells. uh organism, butterflies, squirrels. is through uh respiration and or eating.

and or drinking. And so when an animal dies, the influx of carbon fourteen ceases. This is how they're able to use carbon fourteen carbon dating for the life how long an animal's been been there.

So technically speaking, after ninety two thousand years, uh let's say a squirrel dies, gets buried uh after one hundred thousand years, it has no carbon fourteen in it, period. None. because that's what's required in physics. Why am I bringing this up? because diamonds and coal shales Diamonds are supposed to take millions of years to p to produce coal shales also millions of years, and they have carbon fourteen in them.

And this is a humongous problem because they're both dialogically based, which implies that their age is far less than the millions of years that they've been saying.

Okay. Now, there's more. Oh, I can go through this.

So So we have um Uh They can do what's called stratigraphic uh There's so many things to talk about.

So hold on, let we'll do it this way.

Okay, have you ever seen uh a picture like uh Grand Canyon or some canyons where scientists are saying, look at this, the Cenozoic, the Mesozoic, these layers, right? And they're real fine layers, right? I was watching a video once, and a guy, a Christian guy, he goes, look at these layers. This is supposed to be Cenozoic, Mesozoic, Paleozoic, all these things in here. And he and it says yeah and he goes Why are they straight?

And I looked at it and he said, think about it. If these take millions of years, To lay down erosion, rain, wind erosion. will cause these lines not to be straight. They will be jagged. And the light went on.

I'm like, that's right. But yet, and he says the camera panned back, and you see 600 million years of rock strata, whatever it was. all straight lines. Me and What is it that produces straight line stratigraphic uh formations. floods.

So it didn't fit this thing.

So, what they can also do is call stratigraphic. Yeah, uh dating.

So they can say, well, a scientist can go, see that rock right there? We happen to know that it is the. Whatever. Yeah. And it's blah blah blah.

All right. So, they have different methods of trying to date elements because the carbon-14 fails after 100,000 years, so they use things like rubidium strontium. potassium argon. Uh okay.

So rock layer positioning. In like some tests, they've placed the scene rock layer. They say, by their knowledge. Is 1.6 million years old, and yet when they date it with the rubidium strontium, it's 773 million years old. The upper Miocene to Pliocene lava, potassium argon, 5 to 9 million years, but the rubinium strontium gives 31 to 39 million years old.

They're wildly off. Right. No, hold on back. A lot more I can tell you, okay? A lot more to tell you, so hold on.

Be at a break. Hey, folks, we'll be right back after these messages. If you want, you can give me a call: 877-207-2276. Be right back. It's Matt Slick Live, taking a call at 877-207-2276.

Here's Matt Slick. All Robin, welcome back to the show. Let's get back on with Tiffany. Are you still there? I'm here.

All right. All right, so. You mind if I just keep going and throw stuff out at you? No, not at all. And I agree with what you're saying, how a lot of times science, it's not.

super accurate as far as the time. But in my mind, I'm thinking even if they're millions of years off in their You know Yeah. evidence or whatever you would want to call that. It's still So far off from how long man has been on Earth.

So it's such a huge time discrepancy.

So that's the part I'm trying to understand. And that's assuming that the scientists are accurate and they're reporting stuff accurately and truthfully. There have been countless examples documented where scientists have falsified information. Just because they're scientists, they get a they get a carte blanche. Oh, they're always going to do what's right.

No. Even in the hominid or human ancestor line, missing links, some were forged. And they they admitted they forged them because they couldn't find any any missing links.

So, I'm not saying that all scientists do this, and this invalidates the whole theory of evolution. I'm just saying that this is part of the overall understanding. Understanding of things. People will, okay, let me give you an illustration of something, what evidence is.

So, this is a typical illustration I use.

Now, I live in Idaho. Let's say that in Florida, there's a break in a house, and there's footprints outside in the mud out of a window. The glass is on the inside of the house. And there's footprints, muddy footprints in the living room, and the place is ransacked. The front door is open, and footprints go out the door.

The footprints are evidence that the perpetrator entered in through that window.

So the footprints fit the model, so it's accepted as evidence. but if I said to you, Those footprints are the proof that I love my wife It makes no sense. It doesn't fit the model, so it's no longer evidence. Evidence is an abstraction in the sense, then, that whatever is observed, any phenomena that occurs, it has to be interpreted inside of a framework. Scientists, like 99%, have a framework of naturalism and what's called.

uniformitarianism. and that uh the earth has to be millions of years old.

So they assume these positions and they interpret evidence in them. There are lots and lots of scientists, a growing list. who reject the neo-Darwinian theory of evolution. Say the evidence doesn't support it. And a lot of them are silenced.

And a lot of people, there's been surveys done that there are scientists who say, no, evolution doesn't work. And but they can't say it doesn't or they'll lose their jobs.

So, there are pressures inside the scientific community for conformity. And yet they claim objectivity. And so if you don't hold to If you don't hold it as standard The standards you don't tote the line. In fact, I've I've uh Used to listen to some podcasts about some stuff where a create a intelligent design advocate. was asked by a college to go in and give that side of things.

And the students rose up and others rose up saying they don't want him in to give that in kind of information.

So and were canceled.

So this kind of thing has happened many times and it still does.

So I'm just saying, I'm not trying to throw all of science under the bus. I love science. I wanted to be a marine biologist when I was younger. I love everything about that. It's just that there are evidences They're problematic.

Now, About the age stuff. Uh the theory of rel relativity talks about speed, movement, mass acceleration, and time differentiation. And so some theories have been postulated that God Himself could have created the universe and it exploded and it expands. One of the things about the expanding nature of the universe is I'm going to break this way, way down. It seems to be the case that space, the fabric of space, is stretching.

And it's accelerating, I'm not sure why. If it's stretching, what does that do to time in different places?

So if you have a balloon. And in the very center of the balloon, in your imagination, this balloon is a perfectly round balloon. This there's a little dot, right? That's just where the center is. And if you blow it up and you expand, the distance between the center and the edge expands.

and every surface point gets further away from every other surface point. At the same time.

Well, if the distance between the center point and the edge was space and it was stretching, then that which is closest to the center isn't moving. But on the outside it is moving, and so differentiation between time perception can be manifested. And age differences can be.

So there are some theories that are being postulated. And a lot of this has to do with the deceleration of the speed of light. And there's been some interesting work done on this. And apparently, there's some evidence that the speed of light is slowing down.

Now, when I talk about this, there are people who jump on here. No, it's never the case, but there are documented cases over the years, from 200 years when light has been measured, with the plus or minus factor, the error method, has been decreased over the years with scientific instrumentation precision increase.

Well, the plus or minus factor from 200 years ago. uh isn't great enough To alter or to answer the problem of the speed of light slowing down. This is related to the very natural fabric of the universe.

So, this whole thing is a whole nother issue. And I have heard arguments about this that there are some very good, sophisticated answers from the Christian perspective that answer this supposed issue.

Okay. Mm-hmm. Awesome.

Now there's more I could tell you. Yeah, I mean, I'm so curious. I mean, you've already helped. on its lay just explaining what you've already explained.

So that's that's The best explanation I've heard so far. Other than other people I've asked.

Okay. Well, I have my notes on Carm. If you were to go to carm.org forward slash outlines. And just look, you can see the science notes. And I was reading from my notes.

Okay. And I'm going to be adding, it's free, and there it is.

Okay. Awesome.

Thank you. I appreciate your explanation and your time.

Okay, no problem at all. And there's a lot more about this I could tell you too. But at any rate, that's okay. I'm sure there is. I wish we could just sit down and talk about it for hours, but I'll definitely go onto your website and look at your notes.

Okay, sounds good. All right, well, God bless. Thank you again. Have a wonderful evening. Thank you, you too.

Bye. Thank you. God bless. All right. Okay.

All right. Yeah, I do theology, but I also love science. I really do. people don't know that, but I love watching documentaries about stuff. Get a kick out of it.

I do. I I got issues. Let's get to Jack from North Carolina. Jack, welcome. You're on the air.

Hey there, thanks so much for. Take my call. My question is: I come from a Roman Catholic background. And a lot of what I've heard From from the search would see of like in how scripture was created, which makes that sola scriptura Um and that's it's in that scripture if we only infallible source of truth. That that just doesn't make sense.

The the logic goes something like That the church created the Bible. Yeah, so therefore, the church is created. Yeah. Hey, we got a break. Hold on, Curtis.

Correct.

So when we talk about like, hold on. Hold on. We got a break, okay?

Sorry, gone.

Okay. Hey, folks, we'll be right back after these messages. We'll get back with Jack about this issue. And please stay tuned. It'll get interesting.

Be right back. It's Matt Slick Live, taking a call at 877-207-2276. Here's Matt Slick. All right, everybody, welcome back to the show. This get back on with Jack from North Carolina.

Jack, you're welcome. You still there, Rudder? I am still here. Yep, absolutely. All right.

So basically, what you're saying is the people are saying, or the Catholics are saying, we gave you the Bible, so therefore we're the true church, that kind of thing? Not that we're the true church, but it's that we gave the Bible, so therefore. Scripture came out of tradition. And so, therefore, that's why you need to have both scripture and tradition, and tradition obviously is. held within the church.

That yeah, it wasn't vice versa that scripture. Uh scripture created tradition. It's tradition created scripture. Yeah, that's equivocation and it's a fallacy of argumentation.

So, the church recognizes the Bible, and it doesn't grant it authority. The authority is extant in the fact that it is what it is. For them to say that they gave us the Bible, the Bible came from their tradition. What they're doing now is using the word tradition equivocally. Tradition can mean anything that you do.

Like, I have a tradition in my house. When I get up, and my wife's not here anymore, she's passed on, and I'm by myself. And what I do when I get up every morning, I drink a large glass of water. It's a tradition.

So that's a tradition. Churches have traditions, and I went to Calvary Chapel for years, and they have a certain style of tradition of a service. Catholic churches have them. There are different kinds of traditions that have come down through centuries that are valid and invalid or whatever. Tradition doesn't have any validity.

What they're trying to do is say tradition is from where the Bible came.

Well what is tradition, then? And when you ask them this question, well, what is tradition? Is there a list of traditions that your church has, an infallible list? Or is it not infallible? Or is there a list?

Or is there not a list? Define exactly what tradition is that you say is where the Bible came from. And you ask these questions, and all of a sudden Their brains stopped functioning because, well, the initial reasoning that they had wasn't very good to begin with. And now you start asking questions for clarification, and they stub their theological toes. But would would they res would the would the Catholic, and I'm sure the Orthodox would respond the same way that Well, know that we do have these infallible things, and those would be the councils, right?

And that's what gave us. the the creed and these are, you know, like the things that That were defined by the church. And one of those things was was also scripture.

Okay, when they say councils they have a problem.

So this is what I'll run through them with. Scripture is the inspired self-revelation of God. And I ask, Do you agree? and they'll say yes. The validity of Catholicism and/or Eastern Orthodoxy rests on God's authority, since no church has authority except for what God grants it.

Is that correct? And they have to say yes.

Well then Are sacred tradition and the authority of church councils themselves inspired revelations of God, or mir merely interpretations of the revelation? And that's the critical issue. Because what they want to do in their Foolish. pagan arrogance, of what these people do. is they want to say that their church is the true church.

And their church basically has replaced Christ. Their church is the way, the truth, and the life, and nobody comes to salvation or God but by their church. and they want their church to be exalted, their ecclesiologists. Ecclesia is the word for church in the Bible in Greek, and they're idolaters, but they're ecclesiolators. they worship and serve their Church, instead of what Christ says.

So they're ungodly.

So, when they say that the authority of the church councils is equal to scripture, I'm going to say, and where do you get this statement from? Validate the statement. If they say the church councils themselves say that they have it, then that's a council authority apart from God's authority, therefore we can't trust it. If they say it's derived from God, I'm going to say, from where then is it derived? Does he go to these councils and do a pillar of fire in the middle of a council and say, I now give you the authority?

No. Nothing like that. Would they let I'm just taking the logic? Like they would then point to the Council of Jerusalem, right, in Acts of the Apostles, where yeah, the the the there's a council between that the apostles. Yes, in Acts 15.

Yes, I do. I think it's coming.

So there's a Yeah, many, many, many times we had these conversations.

So I'm running you through how it goes, okay? Yep, yep.

So these councils then, that's not the Jerusalem council. These councils that they're talking about are the councils of their particular church. And I asked them about those councils and those churches. Are they authoritative and on what basis are they? They can't have their own authority.

They have to be derived from God's authority. Where's that? That's in Scripture. If they derive their authority out of Scripture, then the Scripture is what's above them. And their authority, and their councils.

Now, this brings us to Acts fifteen with the Jerusalem Council. Because this is recorded, but what happens in there? It says it seemed good to us and the Holy Spirit. They had an idea about what the council was to say. And in that, in fact, my notes on the Jerusalem Council are really interesting.

Because, let me go there, Acts 15. Let's see, I drew some counsel. I got it broken down. I did some stuff, some analysis. Come on, computer.

Come on, go, get up. There we go. And um Yeah.

So uh So the Gentile i in Acts 15, 9, it says, The Gentiles are cleansed by faith. That's a quote.

Well, the council itself is teaching salvation by faith, not by faith in works, which is what the the uh Catholics teach. In paragraph 2068 of the Catechism.

So you say, if you are going to go to the Council of Jerusalem in 15, you have to be careful because in it it says that Gentiles are cleansed by faith. And it says in verse 28: it seemed good to the Holy Spirit. This is not saying that the council was inspired and inerrant. It says we think this is right. They're not claiming any self-attested authority.

But they're trying to tie it in with the power of God. It seems like it's consistent with what the Holy Spirit's saying. And that's the appeal.

Okay, so the phrase, it seemed good, not declared to be correct, occurs four times in that. In chapter 15. It refers to the apostles and the elders, and others, etc., etcetera.

So the council considered the issue of salvation, taught that it was by faith through grace, and then sent a letter stating such.

So, if the Catholics want to appeal to Acts 15 about the Council, then you can ask them, well, go to Acts 15:9. The Gentiles are cleansed by faith.

So, is it the case that they're cleansed by faith or not? The case that they're cleansed by faith?

Now they're going to be stuck because they're going to say faith in works.

Well, wait a minute, you brought up the council. Yeah. Here's something else I want to show you. I'm going to go to 2 Thessalonians 2.

Now, they're often going to go to 2 Thessalonians 2:15 and hold fast to the traditions we give and say, Good, which traditions are those? Which ones? Where's the list? You don't even know what they are. If you don't know what they are, you can't say this is what they are.

Where's the infallible list? They don't have an answer. The context is about the return of Christ.

Now I'm going to show you something. I do this with Catholics and Eastern Orthodox all the time. I say Okay.

So you're saying your traditions are sacred and infallible. And that your church discerns what the true ones are, right? Does it have a list of these traditions? Is it working that You know, this guy Bob in some sacred hallway says to Frank, Hey, did you hear the one about Paul the Apostle who said, blah, blah, blah? Really?

I didn't know that. Is that a sacred tradition? How would you know? Where did it come into existence? How do you trace it back to the apostles?

How do you trace it back to Jesus? Where's the documentation for tracing it back?

Now they can't do this because it doesn't exist. They want to say tradition is some ethereal kind of a smoke. They want to reach up and grab a handful of smoke. But they can't. Because it's not solid, it's not written down.

What it is, is a means for their false churches to justify their heretical teachings and say sacred tradition.

Now, when I go to 2 Thessalonians 2, Check this out.

Now we request you, brethren, with regard to the coming of our Lord Jesus and the gathering together to Him.

Now this is by the return of Christ. That you not be quickly shaken from your composure, or be disturbed either by a spirit. or a message, or a letter, as if from us. I A spirit? A message?

A letter? as if from us to the effect that the day of the Lord has come. These three areas, spirit, message, and letter they cover all kinds of stuff. But check this out. Let no one deceive you, for it will not come unless the apostasy comes first, the man of lawlessness is revealed, the son of destruction.

Who opposes and exalts himself, et cetera, et cetera. Verse 5: Do you not remember that while I was still with you, I was telling you these things?

Now The Thessalonians They were told straight by Paul the Apostle. His mouth to their ears. He was there in the Thessalonian Church. He was telling them this stuff. He says, Do you not remember?

While I was still with you, I was telling you these things. And they got it wrong. They had the, so to speak, oral tradition spoken directly from Paul. and they got it wrong. He had to write Scripture to correct their faulty tradition, their faulty understanding, their oral whatever it was.

See, they move this. I show this to the Catholics and East Orthodox. I'm not sure what to do with it.

Okay, I know I've been talking a lot. We got a break. Hold on, and we get back. We'll get you on here and we'll follow up. Please, ladies and gentlemen, please stay tuned.

If you want to give me a call, we have one open line, 8772. 072276. Direct back. It's Matt Slick Live, taking your calls at 877-207-2276. Here's Matt Slick.

All right, welcome back to the show. Oh, let's see, Kevin from Texas. Is that who I'm talking to? Or I'd lose you. Hello?

Hello? Yes, I think I got the wrong window, or the guy is gone. I don't know, I can't tell. Let's see what we got here. Yeah, that's it.

Yeah, wasn't I just talking to you? Campbell?

Okay. I guess we dropped him or he dropped. Hey, Kevin, welcome. You're on the air. Okay.

My question was Um Is it proper to pray to the Trinity, as in? The Holy Spirit or the son or the father, or are you supposed to pray to the father? You can pray any way you want. Because all are by nature divine, and God is a Trinitarian being. Jesus prayed to the Father, and Jesus receives prayer as well in 1 Corinthians 1:2.

But he also says, Ask me anything in my name, and I will do it, John 14:14. Our fellowship is with the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. That's the last verse of 2 Corinthians. That's uh 13, 14, I guess, or 1415. And to have fellowship, you have to be in communication with So we can have that fellowship and the intimacy with the Spirit as well.

Now the Spirit's main ministry work to convict us of our sin, but also to bear witness of Christ. John 14, 26, John 15, 26.

So we can pray to the Father, Son, or Holy Spirit. How I pray normally is just say, Lord. And I just, I don't think of any one person. I don't think of any, I just say, Lord. And I just start addressing my Lord.

And I could say, Father, I could say, Jesus. I can say, Holy Spirit, please convict me. of my sin all the more, that I might serve you better, etcetera. etcetera.

Okay. Okay. That makes sense? I think that's all I have. I'm I'm kinda shy.

never called in before. That's all right. It's a good question, seriously. It's been asked this before, and it's one of the better questions. It's a good question.

So you can pray to either one. Or you can just pray to just say, God, Lord, Yahweh. You just pray, it's okay, either one. All right. Okay.

Do you have time for one more question? Yes, yes, I do. What do you got? Um regarding the pre-incarnate Christ Yes. What?

What, like, he this is before he had flesh, so. What did he look like or what was his, I guess, nature? Nature is divine as well. The word was that is Trinity. The Word is is the second person of the Trinity.

Now we see in the Old Testament what we call manifestations, not incarnations. A manifestation of God is an appearance of, but an incarnation is a permanent permanent dwelling in.

So we see it when God, the pre-incarnate Christ, walked with Adam and Eve, and we see it in Exodus 6, 2, and 3, Exodus 24, 9-11. We see in Genesis 17 and Genesis 18, we see varying places where God manifests and walks with people and they talk with them. But it's not the father. Because of some varying verses in the New Testament, but it's the pre-incarnate Christ.

Okay. Okay. Alright, and he would appear in human form. But not permanently, just like an angel could do that. It was not an incarnation, just a manifestation in that form.

But God also appeared in a flaming fire. True. In Exodus 3 with Moses and in the pillar of fire that moved across the desert when they were out of Egypt.

Okay. Alright.

So would it be accurate to say he appeared to have flesh? Yes, you could say he appeared as man, and you can go to, for example. Our genesis 17. and Abram was ninety nine years old, the LORD appeared to him and said, I am God Almighty, walk before me. And then when you go to Genesis 18, 1.

And you read through it. The Lord appeared to him by the oaks of Mamre. which I'd been there. I'd been to that place. And he lifted up his eyes, behold, three men were standing opposite him.

And when he saw them, he ran to the tent door, etc.

So these are manifestations. Hope God.

Okay, that makes sense.

Okay, yeah, no big deal. All right. All right, thank you for your ministry. Amen. God bless, brother.

God bless. God bless. Okay. Yeah. All right, next longest waiting is Pop Poppo from Puerto Rico.

You're on, brother. You're on the air, man. What do you got? How how you doing, man? I'm doing all right.

Hanging in there. Hanging in there, man.

Okay, I have I want to present you my contingency argument. Uh uh in modus ponen and modus tollen, so you can tell me if if it uh i if it if it's correct in those two modes. And then I want to present you uh an argument that shows that there is no such thing as material reality. And if you're not because he loves I tell you what, why don't you write them up and email them to me? Because when you say modus ponens, modus tollens.

And you want to do an argument on the lack of materiality, it would require you to just sit there and just speak them out while I'm having to take notes. And And it's just not really conducive right now on the end of the show because we're going to be done here in a few minutes. And so I would suggest write them out and email them to me at info at Carm.org. That way you can present it the best way you can and I can analyze and take a look. And then we can then call me up in a day or two and we'll We can talk, okay?

Okay. Okay, what's your email? Info at carm.org Info at CARM.org I'll do that.

So can I present the argument? Yes, do it by Goodbye, your email. Yeah. The material reality argument?

Okay, we'll try that really fast. Let's give you about three minutes. Let's go for it. What do you got? Okay.

If we can only experience all of reality In the field of immaterial consciousness, then all of reality is immaterial. We do only can only experience all of reality and everything that exists immaterially in the field of material. Hold on, premise one. If we can only experience reality, what was that again? If we can only experience all of reality in the field of immaterial consciousness, Then all of reality is immaterial.

Okay, wrong.

Okay. What you've done there is conflated perception with Entos. As we perceive something, it doesn't mean then that the perception is only or what we're perceiving is only a mental construct. It so the first premise doesn't work, okay? But we cannot get out of consciousness.

Yeah, but you're talking about an epistemological issue here dealing with rationalism, and which is tied to empiricism, that learning about our world in relationship to the senses. But our senses have to interpret it, and interpretation requires rationality, which also includes and necessitates a worldview.

So when we have the evidence of our experiences, we don't know if our this is the problem of epistemological issues related to empiricism, we don't know if our senses are accurately perceiving reality.

So if you say we can only experience reality in the area of immaterial consciousness, I don't know if that's true. Because the r the uh I I just don't know if it's true, because you have to define what immaterial consciousness is. And if you say perception, like hearing, That's not immaterial, it's an actual physical occurrence, occurs in the brain.

So, I just don't think the premise, number one, is well formulated, okay? And you get to work on that premise. But it's ontological also because it's an experience. Yeah. Yes, but see look.

You have to define your terms.

Okay. So if you were to say That uh You have to define what experience is, what reality is. If you experience reality, then reality is immaterial. But are you experiencing an immaterial thing? when you bump in your your uh your toe into a corner of a of a door.

Is it an immaterial? Or is it a transcendental or what we call a universal with a particular manifestation of a universal? Universal is the abstraction. But the particular manifestation of it is the the door corner we bumped our foot into. And so we get in the primary, secondary source I mean uh n um Nature's, okay.

Right now that you are talking to me. You are talking to me, and you cannot get out of the experience in consciousness. you are experiencing everything are talking and everything around you in the field of consciousness inside of you. It's a material experience. Yes, it's used this kind of argument is used in what's called idealism.

All right. So that Um It's the view that reality is fundamentally mental or immaterial. That's called ideal. I'm saying it's immaterial. Presence.

And those objects are pressed. Yes, an abstraction is immaterial. You have to understand that an immaterial thing is a universal. and a mental construct is immaterial. and that if you talk about the issue of perception, The perception is an immaterial perception of what we constitute a phenomena around us.

And you're you're getting into what's called idealism. that consciousness, mind, or ideas are the primary reality. This is what the premise one is leaning towards.

So you've got to work on it.

Okay. You can work on improve it, all right?

Okay, so you don't agree with it? Premise one, I don't grant, because it has to grant a validity of idealism. When you say if we can only experience reality in the area of immaterial consciousness, then all reality is immaterial. No, you could only say then reality is perceived in an immaterial construct of our mind. but it doesn't necessitate that the ontological nature of the reality under observation is itself immaterial.

But how can we get out of consciousness to experience so called objective reality if objectivity is also immaterial presence in consciousness? It's easy. Believe what the Bible says. God is the one who created reality. The Bible is okay, God's the one who created all reality, judge reality and truth by what He's given.

If He's made us in the image of God, then we can presuppose that the universe will be natural and that the universe will be Consistent along the laws of logic, which are immaterial abstract entities. But we can also believe and assume the validity of our senses are accurately representing what God has created us to see.

So then we can start seeing a differentiation between what we perceive and what reality is, because reality existed before we were existing. That's in Genesis chapter 1. It's still reality. But I make a distinction between a nuance distinction between visible immaterial and invisible immaterial. And the Bible doesn't give metaphysical categories.

So you can't change the Bible. I understand, but if you don't use the presuppositions of the Bible as your starting point, then you're becoming an atheist humanist in your argumentation. It's not granted from a Christian. You're a Christian, right? You've talked before.

That's right.

So you must assume the universality and the truth of the Trinitarian being, who is a necessary precondition for all intelligibility. only from there can you do this. And then you have to get into the issue of what reality is, and then you get into the issue of the one and the many. I'm just saying I don't believe the premise one is is good because it presupposes basically the idea of of um realism.

Okay? Up idealism, excuse me. All right, and there's the music for our time, brother. All right, brother.

Okay, we'll talk to you later.

Okay, Matt, thank you very much.

Okay, God bless.

Alright, hey Cody, sorry. Follow-up question about the dinosaurs. Waited a whole half hour, Cody, from North Carolina. My apologies. Call tomorrow, and we'll get to you.

All right. Hey folks, we are out of time. May the Lord bless you. And by His grace, back on there tomorrow. We'll talk to you then.

Have a good evening, everyone. God bless. Another program powered by the Truth Network.