A previously recorded Matt Slick show. It's Matt Slick live. Matt is the founder and president of the Christian Apologetics Research Ministry found online at karm.org. When you have questions about Bible doctrines, turn to Matt Slick live for answers.
Taking your calls and responding to your questions at 877-207-2276. Here's Matt Slick. Everybody welcome to the show. It's me, Matt Slick. I hope you're having a good day today. If, by any chance, you want to give me a call, same as always, all you got to do is dial 877-207-2276 and we can talk.
We have five open lines, so we're wide open right now. I hope you guys watch the vice presidential debate last night. I did.
Most of it anyway. I thought it was enjoyable. I thought it was interesting. Let's see what else. We have some theology we can talk about.
If you have questions on Mormonism, Jehovah's Witnesses, Christian Science, Unity Baha'i, Islam, Atheism, UFOs, the Occult, give me a call and we can talk if you've got questions. We've got nobody waiting, like I said. What happens usually, as I'll just fill in the time a little bit, is that people call in towards the end of the show and almost always have to hang up on people because we've run out of time. There you go. We had somebody come in, just left.
Let's see. We have three schools. If you guys are interested in checking out theology and apologetics, defending the faith, you want to know what the Christian faith is, you want to know what's right, you want to know what's wrong, you can just go to karm.org, C-A-R-M dot O-R-G. On the right-hand side of any page, you will find the school links and you can check them out. We charge for them, but we can also give them away for free. All you've got to do is just say you can't afford them.
You email us, say you can't afford them and we give to you for free. We're not here to make money. We're here to equip the body of Christ, but we do need to pay the bills.
So just let me know. And there's a school on theology. You can learn a lot of theology and I've been doing this for a long time, decades. And so I know what the essentials are.
I know how to break things down and make sense and be easy for you to understand. So if that sounds like something you want to do, you can check it out. It's self-paced also. And also we have one on apologetics, how to answer cults, how to answer false theologies and things like that. And of course, a little bit on critical thinking. You can check that out.
And also, I'm still getting over this head cold. So it's got a little bit of that going on still. If you want to know some about my books, all you got to do is go to Facebook, not Facebook, Amazon. You can go there. We have a lot of them listed there on Amazon. Just type in Matt Slick books and you'll find that they had stuff. You can find that.
I think I got a list of some of my books on the CARM too. I don't know if I do or not. Let's see, Matt.
Let me try this out right now. Matt Slick books. Do I have an article on there? Recommendations. So I don't think so.
I'm going to have to make a list. I can just tell you where to go on CARM that is. All right. All right.
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Let's get to Elizabeth from Utah. Welcome. You're on the air. Hi, Matt.
Hello. So I was just curious. I have a few friends that are very into the paranormal and they're constantly telling me stories about seeing things in their home and spirits and ghosts and I'm just such a skeptic and they think they have amazing spiritual gifts, which maybe they do have. So I'm just curious how much of this kind of thing do you really believe is going on versus just maybe a little bit they've maybe fed into it a little bit too much? Well, it's hard to tell you because there are demonic manifestations. There are real things that occur in people's homes. And one of my daughters said she saw a figure in the hallway upstairs. She looked and the figure moved and she wasn't on anything, wasn't sleep deprived. So was it legit?
I don't know. My mom and dad said they saw things. Now we have a bit of a history in our family of spiritual events and one in particular deals with something my mom said that she would see. And I haven't gotten into too many details about it, at least not over the radio, but she saw a figure in her dreams approaching and then she'd wake up and he would manifest. And there's some more stories and after I was born, he was looking at me in a crib and it disappeared and it no longer showed up. And yet he manifested again when I was involved in the occult and a friend of mine was doing some weird stuff.
And described the same figure to me that I'd never told him about. So is it legit? Well, don't know. Are there things like that that can happen?
Sure. You know, people who say that the material world is all there is, they don't know that. They can believe it, but there's no way to verify it. And we know that the Bible teaches us that there are demonic forces. So can demonic forces manifest?
Absolutely they do. They can do what's called poltergeists and they're kind of mischievous little spirits. Sometimes poltergeists happen and manifestations happen around children for some reason.
I don't know why. Then they can happen with people who do injectable drugs. It can be a lot of things about dealing with possession because the Greek word for sorcery is pharmakeia. So there's a lot of things, a lot of doors that people can open up that open up to the occult. And the occult is a real thing. So Ouija boards and seances can be door openers. Getting crystals. Now, not that you get any crystal.
I think you're breathing into the phone there. But crystals that are used for the purpose of trying to tune into the divine consciousness of the universe or whatever it is and that kind of malarkey. Then those things can be, because they're intended to be something like that, they can become doors that open up to the occult. So what are your friends into? If I was out at dinner or your house and they were all there, we all got talking, you know, I would ask questions. I wouldn't judge, at least not right away, because I want to ask questions.
And if you did drugs in your past, involved in the occult in your past, do you have any friends who are involved with this stuff? What are you seeing? What's it look like? You know? And I have, with a witness, seen a manifestation.
With a witness, not just me. We saw the same thing. This stuff, it happens. Okay.
I need to be a little more open-minded, a little less like, okay, you just want attention. It's kind of what it feels like. Maybe.
It could be. But, you know, if someone tells me, you know, I thought I saw something moving in my house when I wasn't, you know, I was looking down the hallway, I saw this figure. Are they wearing glasses? Is it a smudge on the glasses?
Is it a movement of a shadow? You know, you always have to look for things like that. That's what I do. And I'll ask them questions. And if they say, well, I don't know what it was. And then three weeks later, I saw it again. Well, did you have your glasses on? No, I didn't.
Well, how good's your vision? You know? And then they say, I saw it again. Something's happening. You know, then I'm, okay, now I'm interested.
Okay. So, you know, I've talked to women who've had, how do I say this, politely. Because I know there's a lot of women who are going to be out there who can't say anything because it's happened.
But there are times when women are going to sleep and, or at that time, in bed, where certain forms of paralysis and other things occur. And so these kinds of things are there. So I don't talk too much about this kind of stuff over the radio. But, you know, I'm familiar with a lot of it.
And because I get to be careful, you know, scare the bejeebers out of people and give them the wrong idea about stuff. Right. But it's out there. Okay. Okay. Well, thank you so much. I really do appreciate your insight on this.
And one more thing before you go. When I talk about this at churches, I haven't done it for a few years. I love talking to the youth groups about this stuff, because it's, I ask permission to do that, because it's, you know, that kind of stuff. And I've done it one time I did this, and the girls and the guys are all mixed up, you know, sitting here. And most of this time, and this one time, most of the girls were up front. And I was telling this story. And I was getting slow in my voice, and intense in my voice. And I'm describing it, what I was seeing, and I could see their faces, you know, eyes bugged wide open, mouths agape, just entranced entranced in the story. And I paused. And I pointed all in one movement.
What's that? Right behind them. And they screamed. It was great. That would be me.
I would scream in a second. They laughed. And we went back, because I had them right where I wanted them. What is that? You know, it's a lot of fun. Okay. So anyway.
I love it. All right. Okay, Elizabeth, hope that kind of helps. All right. And particularly since you're in Utah. Thank you. You're in Utah, Mormonism's heavy there. That's an automatic occult door. Okay.
To the demonic Mormonism is. Right. Okay.
So you never know. All right. All right. Well, thank you. I appreciate it. All right.
What's that behind you? Okay. God bless. All right. Yep.
When I teach, I have fun, believe it or not. If you want to give me a call, three open lines, 877-207-2276. Let's get to Scott from Winston-Salem, North Carolina. Scott, you're on the air. Yes, thank you.
You're welcome. Brother Matt, I had a verse, and I think I can interpret it. Of course, the more people involved, I guess, could come up with a better answer than me. But Luke 11, 35 and 36. Okay.
I got the King James Version. Okay. Watch out that the light in you is not darkness, and therefore your whole body is full of light with no dark part in it. It will be wholly illumined as when the lamp illumines you with its rays.
If therefore your whole body is full of light with no dark in it, it will be wholly illumined. Yep. Okay.
Okay. What I'm thinking is, you know, does that mean that I have, like, for example, doctrine on different subjects? Is he saying that you must have a correct doctrine? It's not necessarily doctrine.
It can be what you watch, what you see, what you're filling your life with. Because the light, you know, comes from God ultimately. Let there be light. And it says, you know, then watch out that the light in you is not darkness.
So what's he saying? Well, the previous verse, the eye is the lamp of your body. When your eye is clear, your whole body is also full of light. And when it is bad, your body is also full of darkness.
Then watch out that the light in you is not darkness. Now, when he says things like this, you're like, what is going on? And it's tough sometimes to figure all these kind of things out. Looks like we're having an internet connection here on my end or something. I don't know. But so can you still hear me? I just want to make sure. Okay. Yeah. Let me show it to you.
All right. It says to watch that... So does that mean that... Go ahead. That, like, for example, I teach you on baptism. If you get that wrong, will God ever look at it and say, well, He got 90% of it right, you know? Well, the idea of the lightness, the light deals with the issue of truth and purity and holiness. And so what you want to do is have your mind be full of good things. And, you know, the best way to do that is, of course, read the Word of God to pray, being in fellowship with Christ.
This is really the whole idea of what is really kind of mentioned there. Okay. We'll get a break. All right. Well, thank you. Okay, buddy. Okay.
God bless, man. All right. Hey, folks, be right back after these messages.
We have three open lines, I think. No problem here. Be right back.
Okay. It's Matt Slick live, taking your calls at 877-207-2276. Here's Matt Slick. Hey, welcome back, everybody. If you want to give me a call, we have two open lines, 877-207-2276. Let's get to Daniel from Fort Worth, Texas.
Daniel, you are on the air. I had a question about the claim that some Baptist preachers have been making on TikTok of all places. There's a lot of them on there. And because of the recent Israeli peace deal that Trump signed, they're saying that some rabbi was recorded saying that he may possibly be their Messiah that they've been waiting for, and he connects that to Trump being the Antichrist from Revelation. Do you think there's any validity to that argument?
No. No, the Messiah was missed by the Jews, and he prophetically, you know, has to fulfill certain things which only Jesus could fulfill. So the Jews, when they realize that later, will affirm that. So to say that Trump is in any way the Messiah is ridiculous, and to say he's the Antichrist is ridiculous. The Antichrist will most probably be a homosexual, for one thing, and he's going to come out of Europe. And one new theory is that he might be Muslim. So no, you know, and the Antichrist will have a wound to the right eye or the right head, the right side of the head, or the left side, because the right eye is blind and the right arm is withered. And that's where the beast or the Antichrist is going to have some symptomatic issues as related to him on these things. So no, he's not. We get people who just, they don't know how to use the word, they don't know what the Bible really says to make things up, and it just has no merit. Okay.
Yeah, thank you so much. That was a good clear answer. I actually have to continue reading Revelation because I actually jumped on the guy's stream, and I was trying to tell him, like, I don't think there's enough evidence to constitute him being the Antichrist. Like, he just, like, flat out just kept disagreeing with me and kind of throwing verses at me, and I wasn't really prepared. What verses?
I don't know. I didn't really know how to respond. Well, what you do is you say, show me that verse again, and you just look at what they say. Here's a basic technique of apologetics. So let's say I'm talking to somebody, he goes, Trump's the Antichrist. Okay, show me that in scripture. And they give me a verse. And then they ignore what the context is. They'll go on to something else, another verse.
They say, wait a minute, you gave me one verse. Can we look at it in context? No, we don't look at it in context. We just, this is what it means. That you know that, you know, he's just, you know, climbing up a totem pole.
He doesn't know what he's doing. And so if you look at the context, usually it's like, well, how does that fit? You know, how does it fit? And it doesn't fit.
When you look at things in context, a lot of these ideas just fall by the wayside. Okay. All right.
Yeah. Thank you so much. All right, so much.
God bless. Okay. Thank you. Bye-bye.
All right. If you want to give me a call, we have three open lines, 877-207-2276. Tom from North Carolina. Tom, you're on the air.
Hi, Matt. Thanks for taking my call. Sure. I have a question about healing. And I'm sure you've had a lot of questions about this, but let me pose it to you this way. If I, if you were a pastor and I came up to you after church and asked you to pray for me for physical healing for something that was going on, and then you did, and then a week later I came back and I said, you know, I wasn't healed. What would you tell me? I'd say, okay, you weren't healed. Want to pray again?
Okay. And I'd say, are you seeing any doctors? Are you seeing any doctors? You know, you know, because God uses doctors to heal and sometimes, you know, hey, I've got a bad back. I have a deformed fourth lumbar vertebra. I wish, and I have tinnitus at 80 decibels. I prayed for healing, no healing.
Wife's got something called Louis steeds. I prayed for healing for her. No healing. Doesn't mean God's not there. Okay. So I agree with that. And I, I have a problem with people who guarantee that we're supposed to be healed.
And those are idiots. I don't, there's a scripture though, that I'm sure I don't understand the context, but it says, you know, if any of your sick come to the, to the leaders of the church and that, yeah, with, for a prayer of faith and you'll be healed. What is the context of that? It's the elders of the church and anointing of oil, which was a medicine back then as well.
And you'd ask for the, uh, for the elders to heal. And when you look at the context, I think it's James 5, 16. Let me see. Um, no, that's, that's something else. Uh, uh, that was wine.
Where is it? Revelation. Nope.
Come on. Um, uh, anyway, the, at the old, the elder that's right. And they will anoint, I'm trying to find the exact verse. This is why it's important for me to have verses memorized, but I don't have more memorized.
So sorry about that. Uh, where is that verse, man? I want to read the verse, the context, because, uh, the context is really important.
So maybe somebody in the chat room has beaten me to it and put in the verse, uh, content or the verse reference and I can go check it out. But, um, let's see. Here we go with that. Oh, I haven't got that going. That's why that's like that. Yeah. I had to reboot my computer during the break.
So sorry about that. Um, and anyway, so the whole thing, one of the questions about that text though, I wanted to read the context and show you, but one of the questions is what kind of healing is it talking about? A spiritual healing or is it necessarily a physical healing and there's debate because of the context of what's going on. So, uh, I don't know what to tell you other than what we do is we pray for healing. We pray and we trust the Lord. And a lot of times the healing just doesn't come and we can ask, uh, God, you know, why is it that the, uh, the healing doesn't come? Why are you not healing us? Well, you know, I've thought about this over the years and one of the things I think might be an issue is that if God heals us, would we receive greater reward in heaven if he healed us now? Or would we receive greater reward in heaven for an eternal reward if we were to not be healed now and our trust was in him in spite of our circumstances? And that's, that's what I'm thinking about from his perspective.
He says, I want the best for you. The best is the reward in heaven. If I heal you now, then where's your faith?
You know, they still believe, of course. And will it be something that you have in heaven for the whole time? Uh, if you get my, you see what I'm saying?
So, um, that's what I'm looking at and considering and stuff. And I don't know, but God does do healings. He does heal. Right. Okay. Yeah, I, I agree.
And I just was curious as to what you would say about that. Um, I appreciate it. I appreciate it. Okay. Well, James 5 14.
That's right. Thank you. Let me go to the verse really fast. Hold on. Okay.
I knew it was right about there. All right. Um, no, I'm in the wrong book. James 5 14. There we go.
Yeah. Uh, so back up above all my brethren, do not swear either by heaven or earth or within the oath, but you, uh, but your yes, be yes, let your SBS, your no be no. And it may all may not fall under judgment. Is anyone among you suffering? Then he must pray. Is anyone cheerful? He used to sing praises. Is anyone among you sick? You must call the elders of the church and they're to pray over him anointing with oil and the Lord and the prayer offered in faith will restore the one who is sick. And sometimes they think that sickness is due to spiritual sin and the restoration has to do with spiritual healing.
That's what the point is sometimes. Okay. Okay. All right, man.
God bless. Hey folks, we have three open lines, 877-207-2276. Be right back. It's Matt Slick live, taking your calls at 877-207-2276. Here's Matt Slick. All right, buddy.
Looking back to the show. We have three open lines. Why don't you give me a call?
877-207-2276. Joanne. Yes, I can.
Joanne, you're on the air. Okay. Okay. I might be going overboard. I want your opinion on this.
All right. I've just gotten, the more I pray and the more I read your things and edit your things, I've really gotten bothered by the way we Baptist have an altar call every day, every Sunday and say, you know, you just come in, come up and, and repent of your sins and, and you've got Jesus in your heart and then you never follow up on them. And so what if they just want to do that, but they're not the elect and it was done today on a friend of mine's funeral, her little boy passed. And so the preacher of course was talking to the 15 year old children and said, Andrew would want you all to accept Christ and all you have to do is ask him in your heart and you'll be saved in heaven with Andrew.
Does that bother you? Oh yeah, because the phrase ask him into your heart is not a biblical position to hold. It's not a biblical. He has to knock.
He has to come to us. Well, the Bible says in John 6, 44, you cannot come to me unless the father draws you. In John 6, 65, you cannot come to me unless it's been granted to you from the father. We receive Christ, John 1, 12.
And in Acts 13, 48, the Bible says, as many as had been appointed to you, as many as had been appointed to you. Can you hear that? Is that you on your end, Joanne?
Okay, we got something going on here. Okay. Can you hear that, Charlie? Can you hear that feedback?
Yeah, he can. Okay. So we don't know what's going on.
The tech guys are probably looking at it. So anyway, you know, this phrase is not a good phrase. Just ask Jesus into your heart. Okay, hold on. Tell you what, Joanne. Okay. I've got you on hold.
Maybe we have a weird connection. So Joanne, call me right back. Okay. Call me right back. And we'll redo that connection and we'll get you on the air. Okay. So I know that she can hear me because she's in the room and she's one of the persons who helps edit the articles on CARMS or moving them from one version of CARM to another, getting ready for the new release of the site in about six weeks.
We hope at that rate. So call me back. Okay. Let's get to John from Texas. Hey, John. Welcome here on the air.
Yes, hi, Matt. How are you doing? Doing all right. Hang in there.
Yeah, I'm glad to hear it. I have a question about the Greek word Helen and who is included exactly in it. In verses like Galatians 3 28, Colossians 3 11.
Galatians 3 28. Well, what word? Because neither Greek nor Jude nor Greek. It's basically the word for the Greek word Helen. Oh, oh, the word Greek. Yeah, yeah.
It's Helene. Yes. Okay, I'm sorry. Yeah, and I was curious who exactly is included in it, because I've got conflicting answers, like some folks will say it's essentially the same as Gentiles, and yet others would say it actually can include some Greek speaking Jews, which is, to me, is a little peculiar because there's other words, you know, Hellenistic Grecian, that's used as well. Okay. Well, let's check it out here, because the Greek word occurs 25 times in the Bible in the New Testament.
Just 25. I'm looking at them all, and he's not intending to go to the dispersion among the Greeks and teach the Greeks. Okay, I won't read the references because it takes too much time. Now, there were some Greeks among those who were going up to worship at the feast, and people believed both Jews and of Greeks. The father was a Greek. The father was a Greek, God-fearing Greeks, Jews and Greeks, Jews and Greeks, Jews and Greeks. The phrase occurs a lot, and obligation both Greeks and two barbarians.
Interesting. So, it looks like it can be used as a classification to Jews and non-Jews. Now, you can understand what the Greek means, because Greek was the language that was brought into the Mediterranean area by Alexander the Great about 330 years before that. So, he came in and dominated the entire Mediterranean area and instituted Greek. And so, Greek became the Langua Franca, which means the language that was used as a universal language.
And so, the Jews translated the Old Testament Hebrew Bible into the Greek, called the Septuagint, done about 250 BC, give or take. So, that's what they're talking about here with the Greeks. It's those people who speak Greeks in that culture because, you understand something too, there was one empire under Alexander the Great. Now, it broke up into four, but they all had the same Greek language, the same basic Greek culture. Rome came in and dominated through, and they also had Greek, and they also spoke Latin.
Greek as one of the languages that was there, and it was the Langua Franca. So, Greek probably could mean all kinds of people, as well as a narrow group of people, depending on the context. Would you think, with regard to someone like, say, the Samaritans, where they were practicing kind of a watered-down Judaism, but the Jews themselves thought they were like half-Jews or maybe something worse, would you consider them in the Jew category or the Greek category? Neither.
No. Because the Samaritans believed in the Torah the same as the Jews did, and were under obligation to keep the same laws as were the Jews. But the Greeks were not. They were not circumcised.
They were not worshippers of the true and living God, as the Jews and both the Samaritans were. So, in the context, you know, like Galatians 2-3, but not even Titus, who was with me, though he was a Greek, was compelled to be circumcised. A Greek.
Well, we don't know exactly where he was from, at least I don't on the top of my head. Or 1 Corinthians 12-13, for by one spirit we are all baptized into one body, whether Jews or Greeks, whether slaves or free. So there, Jews and Greeks just means two classifications of people. The Jews, not the Samaritans, but sometimes, I think the Samaritans might have been called generically the Jews also, because they held to the same law. But nevertheless, the two major divisions were Jews and Greeks, or Jews and not Jews, basically.
And Greeks was just a word used culturally and colloquially to describe those people who spoke the Greek language, the Greek culture, and things like that, could have been all over the place. And would you think that they, let's say, in their life by blood, but had he had abandoned the faith, the Jewish faith, would he be considered a Greek then? Not a Jew.
I know I'm getting very... No, it's okay. No, they were Jewish, even if they denounced the Jewish faith, they're still Jewish. Because they're Jewish by circumcision, by culture, by speech, by accent, and they were just classified as Jews still. You could have good Jews and bad Jews.
But they don't lose their Judaism if they're not practicing all the laws of the Torah, and they don't become... No, they wouldn't be considered good Jews. But the question then becomes, if, let's say, one guy left Judaism, no longer practiced it, and he's walking among the Greeks, and a centurion says, you Jew, how would he know he's a Jew? Because a Jew was raised in Israel, and they would speak Hebrew, and Hebrew was the dominant language there. So when they would speak Greek, they'd have an accent. Just like today, I was at a place and I heard a guy speak English, and I knew he was Spanish. And so we got talking in Spanish a little bit. So I knew that. And they could do the same thing with the people who had the Hebrew accent inside of a Greek, unless some people could just speak both languages perfectly with no accent.
So that kind of a thing. So he'd be called a Jew. But was he practicing Jew?
No. A Jew by heritage, a Jew by culture. How would you classify somebody as a Jew? Do you classify him by culture, by dress, by language, by accent, or by intention?
And who's doing the classification? If he self-identifies as a Greek, but he's not, I mean, if he's not a Jew, he says, no, I've given it up. He's no longer Jewish in his mind. But others would say, no, you're Jewish.
Go line up over there. So it's not that easy to answer. It depends on who's doing the classification, what the context is. Okay. Okay.
I appreciate your input. All right, man. Okay.
God bless. All right. Let's get on the lines with. I think it's still doing it. Can you hear me okay?
Yes, I can. If it does it again, we'll just have to... It's like I'm catching every third word. I'll just leave you alone. It does it again. All right. So where were we? What was the question? What were you saying? I forgot. About ultra-cause.
Oh yeah, ultra-cause. And they say, just say the sinner's prayer. But the sinner's prayer isn't in the Bible.
Right. The sinner's prayer that's used the way it is is not in the Bible. But there is a sinner's prayer in the Bible. And the sinner's prayer. Well, I can tell you where it is after the break.
But it's in the Bible. Okay. All right. Okay. Hey folks, we'll be right back after these messages. Please stay tuned. All right. Let's get back on the phones with Joanne. Are you still there? Yes, sir.
Barely. All right. Alter calls. So the place in the Bible where a sinner's prayer is stated is in Luke 18, 9 through 14. And it's where the Pharisee and the tax gatherer go up to the temple.
And the tax gatherer, the sinner, just simply says, God be merciful to me. God be merciful to me. Okay. I'm going to put you on hold. Put you on hold. You're not gone yet.
I'll come back to you in a second if we can talk about this. Don't know what is up with that. And so that is the sinner's prayer folks. Nothing in here is ask Jesus into my heart. If you go to a church and they say, all you have to do to be a Christian is ask Jesus into your heart. You know, what does that mean?
Ask him into your heart. What does it mean? Does it mean you're trusting in Jesus Christ as God in flesh who died in the cross and rose from the dead and you're receiving the sacrifice that he has offered and you're receiving it by faith and trusting in him to forgive you for your sins?
Because that's what you're supposed to be doing. The knowledge of the preaching of the gospel is a death, burial, and resurrection of Christ. And you put your faith and trust in that.
You receive Jesus as the savior. There's nothing in the Bible that says, ask him into your heart. This is just another example, in my opinion, of the apostasy that's occurring in the Christian church when they don't preach and teach the true gospel, but they say something as milquetoastish as ask him into your heart and you're a Christian. That's a false gospel. It's not the gospel.
Now, depending on the context of what it said, okay, you know, but still the phrase, it's just not there folks. I wish people would actually check the word of God instead of being like Roman Catholics and go with their tradition and let the tradition govern what they say and teach and believe. You know, they should go with what the scriptures teach. That's how you should do it because that's the anchor of truth. So, can you have an altar call every week?
Sure. I don't see any way at any point to prevent that. It's not an altar call that saves anybody. If I were a pastor and I was preaching a gospel and I said, look, I was preaching the gospel and I said, look, we're going to have a moment here of prayer and if you want to receive Christ, you can do it sitting down. You can do it by raising your hand.
You don't have to raise your hand. I'm going to offer an opportunity for people to come up forward if they want to come up forward to receive Christ with people who come out of the congregation, elders and others who will pray with you. And you can talk about these things with them, the Lord, or I can do this right now from the pulpit and give a generic kind of prayer. And I say, not that the prayer saves you, but the prayer is an appeal. It's the appeal to God. This appeal of trusting in Christ and believing in what Christ has done and trusting in his sacrifice and nothing in yourself.
Not this, hey folks, just ask Jesus into your heart and you're a Christian. That's out of the book of deuterectomy. It's just not there. All right.
Joanne. Well, I'm just, oh shoot, I wish that would quit. I might be going overboard, but it's eaten me up because to me, salvation is something you go overboard for.
And I just think it's giving people a false promise. Almost like the big old, I'm sorry to use the name, I can't think of anything right now to say except Joel Osteen, but false security. That, oh, well, yeah, I asked, you can ask somebody, do you know Jesus? Yeah, I asked him in my heart when I was six and they don't know a bit more about the Lord than the man and the man. That's right. And I've actually heard Joel Osteen say that kind of stuff.
Yeah. I was there once, you know, if you've asked Jesus in your heart, welcome to the family of God. I'm like, what? That was a false gospel. And so people, I mean, and, and even, you know, the daughter of mine that I'm so worried about, she recently said to me, she said, you know, and she called a precious preacher's name that's in heaven now, but she said, he said, if you don't want to go to hell, you just come up. And she said, at five years old, that scared the bejesus out of me.
And so, you know, now I'm really questioning, well, you know, there's no fruit that I'm scared, you know? I don't think I say it. In your own life or somebody else's? In your own life or someone else's?
In my daughter's. Oh, okay. God making sure, making sure.
Well, the thing you do is you pray, you know, just ask the Lord to strengthen your daughter and have a real commitment to him. A lot of times a seed of truth lays dormant and then the Lord waters and it waters. Okay. Okay. Okay.
Put on hold again. So we'll do is we'll move along after this, but that's what you have to do. You have to trust the Lord in that situation. I know. I mean, I know how that is.
So, but good call. Good questions. And let's get on here to, let's see, that would be Arlene from Richmond, Virginia. Arlene, welcome. You're on the air. Hello. Oh, I got to hit the right button. Are you there?
Yes, I can. Sorry about that. Okay. My question is relating to Matthew 18 6.
Okay. And I've been told by several people that that scripture says that if you're a child molester you're going to help. No, it doesn't say that. Can you explain that? No, it doesn't say that.
We have to be careful of things like that. Let's look at the context. Truly I say to you, unless you are converted and become like children, you will not enter the kingdom of heaven. Whoever then humbles himself as a child, he is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven. Whoever receives one such child in my name receives me. But whoever causes one of these little ones who believe in me to stumble, it would be better for him to have a heavy millstone hung around his neck and to be drowned in the depth of the sea. So this is not where you go for pedophilia. You go to other areas of scripture. First Corinthians 6, for example, and Romans chapter 1, but not here. Now, it says, for those who believe in me, if you're teaching something or doing something to hinder the fellowship and the walk of people before Christ, then it's better that you were never born. And that's what's going on there. It's not about a sexual thing.
Okay. It's not a sexual thing, but it's just whatever you do that causes one to not believe in God. To stumble them. And stumble them in what way?
If you want to say it's a sexual stumble, well, then demonstrate from the text and the context that that's what it is. But it would seem to be that it's a better issue of spiritual because it says cause these little ones who believe in me. So Jesus is saying that these are the ones who are believing in him. So it's a spiritual issue here. You cause them to stumble and doubt who he is.
Better for you not to have been born. So a lot of people do that, atheists in particular. They work to stumble people's faith in Christ. So Jesus related it to the children. You've got to come and trust in him.
That's what he's talking about. Children just trust. And that's what you're to do is to trust in the Lord Jesus. And those who would hinder that trust, they're the ones in trouble. So whoever would use that verse, Matthew 18 6, against pedophilia is just ripping it out of context and misapplying it. Okay.
Can you give me one example that would cause someone to stumble? Yeah, teaching Mormonism, teaching Roman Catholicism, teaching that you have to be good and keep yourself right with God by doing good things in order to keep yourself saved. Oh, false doctrine. Yeah, false doctrine.
You know, teaching that Jesus is not God in flesh, teaching he didn't rise from the dead, things like that. Okay. All right.
That makes sense. Okay. Appreciate it. Thank you. Okay.
God bless you. Okay. Goodbye. Let's get on with Andrew from Ohio. Andrew, welcome.
You're on the air. Thanks, Matt. Yeah, I wanted to just go through two Timothy chapter three. I just can't get what's happened in 2020. And I watched the vice president debate last night and it just two Timothy chapter three, Paul's prophecy.
It's just amazing to me, this prophecy. Oh, about the apostasy and stuff. Yeah. Difficult times. Yeah. Men will become lovers of self, lovers of money, boastful, arrogant, revilers, disobedient to parents, ungrateful and all kinds of stuff is listed.
Yep. That's what we're having in America. They turn their backs on God.
And so now we have liars who run for office. And I'm picturing Paul writing this in 60 AD and he would have no idea. It's just that the Holy Spirit is so amazing that when he wrote this, he had no idea what would happen. It's just I would share this verse with unbelievers. I would probably, because I've shared this verse with unbelievers before and there's really, you see something, you see a seed or something grow in there. But I know I'm Reformed, but I still come through the, I still want Arminianism to be true, I guess you could say.
Yeah, I hear you, but it's not. Here's the thing is I was thinking about this actual pericope of scripture last night in regards to political leaders. What if it was a requirement for the political leaders, the husband of one wife, temperate, prudent, respectful, hospitable, hospitable, you know, have hospitality, able to teach, not addicted to wine or, you know, want to fight, but gentle, peaceable, free from the love of money.
He manages his own household well, keeping his children under control with dignity. So wouldn't that be a great set of qualifications for a public office? Yeah. But we have... Hey, if you watched the debate last night, you could see Mike Pence, you could see the Holy Spirit working through him and you could see Kamala, she was just making faces and faces and, don't interrupt me, don't interrupt me, you could just see the arrogance of that woman. I couldn't believe it. Well, she dodged, you know, some issues. And I wish I was debating them.
I could destroy her. Even I don't even know politics very well, but the kind of mistakes she made and the things that she was doing, they're what cults do. And I've debated so many people over the years. I could have said, you did this, you said that, you ignored that, you did this because of that.
I mean, it was obvious to me. I wish I could coach Pence and Trump on how to debate and how to spot errors. I was thinking, okay, you just committed a fallacy called a fallacy of composition. What you did was you said one thing here, what you're using to represent all people, that's a fallacy of argumentation. You shouldn't be using that here in public view. Also, if you're using that kind of logic in your argumentation and it's fallacious, what kind of thinking that might also be fallacious are you committing in other areas?
That's what I'm concerned about. You can't even get this right. That's how I would argue with them. I'd pointed out what it is and what it is, what it is. And I'd say, you know, when, you know, are you going to pack the court, the Supreme Court? And she just wouldn't answer the question. I said, you did not answer the question. I'm asking you specifically. I'm going to give my time to you to answer it specifically.
Are you going to pack the court? But if I was debating those people, I'll tell you, I would have already done my homework. And I'd have had notes on all kinds of topics in a notebook, quotes from what they said and when they said it. And I'd have had them arranged by tabs. And I could say, this is what you said.
I'd also have a laptop there where I could type in my notes. When they're speaking, because I'm going to respond to it, I'm going to type in my notes. And this is what I do during debates. And I'll tell you, it's extremely effective. Extremely effective. You listen to what they're saying.
You write your notes. They made a mistake here. You know, type this comment out. It's a logical fallacy here. And I'll go back in my debate and say, you said this, but that's a problem here. You said that. And they'd say, I never said that. I wrote it down what you said. I type it 60, 80 words a minute. And that's what you said.
You know, I'd love to be able to help those guys out. Yeah, they keep saying, she keeps saying the Affordable Care Act, the Affordable Care Act. The average American pays around $10,000 in health care costs.
That doesn't sound very affordable to me. That's all you have to say. Call it tomorrow.
Talk about socialism and the three areas of power in America and why the three branches of government are there and why socialism denies those. We've got to get going. Okay. We're out of time, buddy. God bless. Hey folks, we are out of time. Sorry about that. Call back tomorrow, Friday, and then by His grace, we'll talk to you then. See you. God bless. Bye.
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