The following program is recorded content created by the Truth Network. If you want, you can give me a call at 877-207-2276. The last four digits spell C-A-R-M on your dial, so you can give us a call.
We have five open lines, so I want to hear from you. Some of you may have noticed we changed a few things on the CARM home site, or the page, the CARM site. And we have a navigation on the left-hand side now. We had some unusual problems with what the other navigation system was.
It was just the weirdest thing. Basically, I call it the CARM curse, in the sense that people work for CARM and they have problems. Let's just say that some of the issues of the old navigation system just didn't work out very well. So now we have another one, and it's working out very nicely. I'm checking it out, and if you want to check it out, you can. It's good stuff. Hopefully you can give us some feedback. Oh, yes, it's going well.
We're going to be modifying the home page and all of that kind of stuff. Isn't that thrilling? Isn't that interesting and just fascinating? You're like, no, I can't even get out of the car. That reminds me of a story.
I haven't even thought about this for quite a while. I remember this story. I was going to a job, and I purposely was late because I couldn't leave the car. The reason I couldn't leave the car was because of the story they were telling, true events about a missionary team that was coming back from Russia over the Bering Strait. I just remembered this. It was such a gripping story. I'm going to tell it to you. I don't remember it perfectly, but these guys were guys and girls.
How many? Four, five, six, seven, something like that. They were on a two-engine plane, and they were coming back over the Bering Strait and had engine trouble. If you crash land in the Bering Strait, you don't have long to live because it's freezing water. Well, before they'd taken off in Russia, someone asked them to carry some gas cans, and they were empty gas cans. So they put them in the aisles or the aisle, whatever it is, between the seats, however it worked.
Anyway, so they had those gas cans. They were flying, and they lost one engine, and then they lost the other engine, and then the pilot put out a distress signal, and they crash landed into the Bering Strait. I'm trying to remember a few of the details, but someone picked up the distress signal and relayed the information to whoever, whatever, and they contacted an airliner that was flying over and asked the airliner to drop down and see if they could see anything in the water because they weren't sure where this was or what was going on. And the pilot or co-pilot said they saw a reflection of something down in the water at a certain location.
Well, what happened? These people had crash landed in the water, and there was nobody, absolutely nobody around to help them. And so they were floating on the gas cans.
The plane was sinking and did sink, and they just had these gas cans, and they were floating on the gas cans. And so they're waiting. They had nothing.
There's nobody out there. They're going to die. So they're praying, just asking God to deliver them. All right, so in the meanwhile, the airliner had given the location. Well, there's no way to get out there, but because you can't get a boat out there and you can't get a plane out there, the only thing they could use would be a helicopter. Just so happens that there were two guys ferrying two helicopters through some area off the coast, and they were stopped at a place, getting a break, getting lunch, whatever it was. And the word came in, hey, can you guys go out in the helicopters and see if you can find them? So they just get in the helicopters, and they go out, out into the Bering Sea, not knowing where they were. They had a general idea, and they just went out there. And so the people were talking about, yeah, I was in the water, my legs were freezing, and, you know, we're sitting there talking, we're praying, and we're asking God to deliver us, and, you know, are we just going to die?
And that's okay. And the whole bit, and they heard a, and they looked off to the horizon, and there were these two dots coming right at them, and it was those two helicopters. And the helicopter pilots just happened to just head right at them.
You know, I don't know how far off the shore it was, you know, it was like 20 minutes or something like that, 15, I don't know. But they came right up to them, and the people in the water were freezing and having a lot of trouble functioning because your body just kind of shuts down. And so what happened was they had two guys and another couple of guys. That's right, because one of them held the two helicopters.
I can't remember, it doesn't matter. One of them flew the helicopter, and another guy reached down and grabbed the people from the water off the cans and drug them into the helicopter. And this went on and on, which is risky. And this woman who's in the water, she said that she was watching as the guy was getting each one of them off the cans and pulling them into the helicopter, or the helicopters, I forgot which, and she couldn't hold on any longer to the cans. And she started slipping off the cans. She couldn't move. She's freezing, and her body, you know, hypothermia is severe and lost motor control, and she started rotating off the can. And she said she watched as the water covered her face, and she could watch the water surface moving away from her, and her hand was up. And this guy reached down through the water and grabbed her hand and pulled her back up and saved her life. And they all made it back. So those were those stories.
I haven't thought about that in so long. And so I remember I got into work late on purpose. Yeah, I was listening. I couldn't leave. The guy goes, uh-huh. But that's what it is.
That's what it is. I don't know what got me onto that, but stories are fun and interesting, and I've got some real-life ones, too, I could talk to you about sometime. At any rate, hey, folks, give me a call. We're open lines 877-20-722-76. Let's get to Alberto from Georgia. Alberto, welcome. You're on the air.
Yes, good evening, sir. My question is when Philip asked Jesus about, you know, when he said that she was the father, he just said, you've seen me, you've seen the father, what exactly would Jesus meant by saying when he said that? You've seen him, you've seen the father, but a lot of Jehovah's Witnesses think that he was talking about his physical appearance. If you've seen me, you've seen the father, it looks like they just have hair and all that and nose and eyes.
But what Jesus said to Philip, what did he actually mean by that phrase? You've seen him, you've seen the father. Did you mention the Jehovah's Witnesses?
Yes, sometimes they believe. Hold on, hold on, hold on. I just asked. You did mention them. Are you studying with them? No, no, no, no, no, no, no.
I didn't count on them in the past in the street, in the streets. Oh, okay, okay. I think I know what you mean. So Jesus says this in John 14, 9, okay? He says, I have been so long with you, Philip, he said, he who has seen me has seen the father. How can you say show us the father? Jesus is the express representation of the father.
That's Hebrews chapter 1, verse 3, I believe it is. He's the radiance of his glory and the exact representation of his nature. So Jesus is the representation of the father. Nobody can actually see the father because Jesus says in John 6, 46, not that any man has seen the father except the one who is from God, he has seen the father.
That's talking about himself. So when they see God in the Old Testament in Genesis 17, 1, 18, 1, Exodus 6, 2, 1, 3, Exodus 24, 9-11, Numbers 12, 6-8, when they see God, it's always the pre-incarnate Jesus. So he was the one who represented the father because no one can see the father. So because he's the representation of the father, of the nature of the father, then therefore he can say if you've seen me, you've seen the father.
Okay. So in other words, invisible attributes of him. Not the physical, just the divine.
No, no, no. God the father, God is spirit, John 4, 24. Spirit does not have flesh and bones, Luke 24, 39. So the father is not a physical form.
Even like the Mormons that say that God is about six feet tall and has a goddess wife and came from another planet. So this is not biblical at all. So when it talks about this issue of seeing the father, Jesus is the representation of the father.
That's what's going on. And the attributes are what we would say in the human form, what we call the communicable attributes. So God loves, we can love. God hates, we can hate. God can think, we can think.
He does them perfectly, but we don't. And so these attributes of God's nature are communicated to us so that we can participate in them. Likewise, they're communicated to the human person of Christ. The human person. The one person of Christ, the human nature.
Okay. But Jesus said one time, and he said that the pure heart would see God. So we can't see God like the spirit. Even when we do put ahead of him, we still can't see God, because God is too eternally big inside in the spirit. So we can never accumulate God in a certain form, shape, shape, form. But I know the Old Testament said that Moses saw the form of God, the form of God, the form of God. I think God has no form because God sees eternal spirit. Right.
That's correct. The pure heart, that's the beatitudes, those are wisdom statements. And you'll be able to see God. Now, Jesus says no man can see God at any time.
And so we're going to balance them. What's he saying? In one sense we can see him.
Just as Stephen saw the glory of God in Acts 7, 55 through 60, it's probably talking about something like that. Okay? Okay. All right. Thank you, sir. You're welcome. All right, man. God bless.
Okay. Let's get to Jay from Boise, Idaho. Jay, welcome.
You're on the air. Hello. And thank you. Okay, there. Now I hear you. Okay.
So can you hear me? Yeah. Okay. Yes. So I had a question about, I've called in a couple times before, about annihilation. This question isn't necessarily related to annihilation, but it is somewhat related. So I don't know if you recall or not, but I am, we've talked about the version of annihilationism where there is torment followed by an ultimate annihilation in a second. Yeah.
I brought up, I said the fulfillment of the law, why are they then annihilated if they fulfill the requirements of the law, they should be saved. It's a logical problem with that position. Exactly. That was the exact same conversation.
Right. So my question that I wanted to ask based off of that was the Bible, specifically the Old Testament, but really all throughout, you know, exhausts God's fairness, eye for eye, tooth for tooth, nail for nail, so on and so forth. So is there any way under the ECT view that there is a level of fairness in divvying out, like from the atheist grandma to Adolf Hitler, or is there some other explanation as to why the same punishment for all is fair? No, the punishment is eternal in its duration, but the intensity is different. Some will be with a few stripes and some with many, Jesus says, I forgot where, but he says so.
So that's it. They're going to go on for eternity, and the reason is because they've offended an eternal God, and to be annihilated is to stop punishment. Punishment in the Bible is experienced.
You don't find any place in scripture where someone's punished, and the punishment itself is nothing. That's what the annihilation is saying. Hold on. We've got to break, okay? Hold on.
Okay. Hey, folks, we'll be right back after these messages, three open lines. 877-207-2276.
That's actually right back. All right, everybody, welcome back to the show. Three open lines, why don't you give me a call?
877-207-2276. Jay, are you still there? Yes, sir. All right.
So where were we? Yeah, punishment. Go ahead.
So I guess my question and follow-up would then be how can there be, I guess, different severities and punishment in an eternal world? And so to give an example, because some might think that that question might be like a non sequitur or something, but like if I were to say you and I, say I'm a third person, and I'm talking to Jay and Matt, and I say Jay gets an infinite amount of gold and Matt gets an infinite amount of gold, but Matt's gold will be more infinite than Jay's or will be worth more than Jay's or something along those lines. You got it wrong. You got it wrong.
No, no, no, no. You're not understanding the issue, and I can tell that you want to hold to annihilationism. I'm not getting mad or anything like that. I'm just saying I can tell by the way you phrased it because it was a definite misunderstanding of the issue.
This is the kind of thing that they do on these annihilationist sites. They don't really tackle the issue logically. As the Bible says that people receive many stripes and some few stripes. This is what the Bible says, and that there's a punishment that goes on.
As it says in Matthew 11, 22, 22, it would be more tolerable for you, for that city for Tyre and Sidon than for you, more tolerable in that day of judgment. If they're annihilated, how is one punishment worse than another? If they don't exist, then it's not punishment. Non-existence is not punishment. It's not punishment. They say the cessation of life is punishment. No, cessation of life is cessation of life. Punishment is something that's experienced in the Bible. That's how it always works. I've done these studies. Now, we have to understand that some will be beat with few stripes forever and some with a lot of stripes forever.
That's it. And you can't say, well, five stripes a year versus ten stripes a year forever is the same. Well, it is and it isn't, but we get into what's called the problem of what's called an app. There's potential and actual infinites. An actual infinite is what you're talking about and just logical problems with it.
So let me give you an example. An actual infinite is if you just take your hand and put it out in front of you two feet a foot apart, whatever, it doesn't make a difference, and there's a line between your fingertips, a single line. How many points are on that line? Well, an infinite number.
Well, if you take half of that length of that line, how many points are on there? Well, it's an infinite number as well. Well, how could half the infinite be equal to the whole of the infinite? This is why there's a problem with actual infinites because they are rather paradoxical. A potential infinite is different. So a potential infinite has a beginning of an event or a sequence of events that continues on. So if there's an infinitely long line of dominoes to one side and yet it has a beginning, and you and I are standing at that beginning of that infinitely long line of dominoes as time would be infinite in the future, right, and we click over those dominoes, it doesn't have an infinite regression but it has a definite beginning, and so it'll go on forever. But whenever we want to stop to measure it, it's a finite number. It has a potential of being infinite as long as the sequence of events continues. So both of these issues, the infinite, what you're talking about is an actual infinite, but what really you need to focus on is what's called a potential infinite. So if five stripes an hour versus ten stripes an hour for eternity, both of them are eternal, but there is a greater punishment, a potential, a greater potential punishment for one than there is for the other.
Does that make sense? Yeah, I think it kind of, it reminded me a little bit of Chesterton. I think Chesterton has something about how a big circle and a small circle are the same infinite length.
I was kind of reminded of that. Yeah, absolute infinite, or actual infinites are really problematic, and I use them in apologetics dealing with atheists who say the universe is infinitely old. Or we go into the issue of the kalam cosmological argument and the infinite regression of uncaused causes. You can't have that because it's an actual infinite, but there's problems with them. So God is himself infinite in the actual sense, but in the sense we can't understand because we don't relate to him in the way he actually is. And then we get the issue of time, beginning, and oh, it gets really complicated. But for people who have a beginning of existence and then they die and they continue on and receive, in an ECT, they receive punishment.
Five stripes or, you know, I don't want to use them as illustrations, but five stripes or ten stripes an hour. Well, the potential infinite of those is different because it's 10, 20, 30, 40, 50 versus 5, 10, 15, 20, 30. So the amount of punishment is actually different.
During a duration, when you stop to measure how many stripes each one has received, it's a finite number. There's an absolute difference there, okay? So the annihilationists, when they get into this logical conundrum, they don't understand the issues, and they don't understand that. They don't understand that punishment is experienced in the Bible, and to say that punishment is to not exist is nonsense because we never find in the Scriptures any place where God says, I'm going to punish you, and then nothing happens. Punishment is experienced.
It goes on. There's a discipline. That's how it is in the Scriptures. And so Matthew 25, 46, and I love this, what they do with this.
They always read into the text. These will go away to eternal punishment but the righteous to eternal life. They'll say, see, the punishment is juxtaposed with life, so therefore it means death. They'll say, well, wait a minute, eternal life means life in a blessed sense with God. Eternal punishment means that punishment that's eternal outside the presence of God, and both have existence.
Both have existence. That's what punishment is. So the annihilationists repeatedly read into the text and make the text say what they want it to say in different ways, and it's aberrant, and it leads to further problems the more you hold onto it.
Continuity issues, punishment issues, and if you've gone to Carm and read up my articles, you'll know I've written a great deal on this. And you can go look at the word punish. There's several words in Greek that are used for punish. Go look and see how they're used in the Bible.
And you'll see some, it's quite varied, but in Matthew 25, 46, it talks about eternal punishment. The word is colossus. Then go and look up how colossus is used. I've done the research. You can check it out. Does that mean cessation?
Does it mean non-existence? Nope. Okay. Okay? Well, I do appreciate that answer, and I'll definitely be thinking on it, and I'll probably be calling back here shortly in the coming weeks, but I appreciate your answers.
No problem. You know, I teach a Bible study here on Thursday nights at NAMP if you are interested in attending. So I'm going to be going through some basic doctrine.
Yeah, absolutely. Some basic and advanced doctrine in about a week. I might start this Thursday.
I'm going to finish up Jude, and then probably jump into some doctrine. I'm going to go slowly and really get into some deep issues. Okay? So it's up to you, you know? All right, buddy?
Yeah, absolutely. I'd love to. Okay.
Email us. You have a good rest of your day. All right, buddy. God bless.
All right. We have four open lines if you want to give me a call, folks. 877-207-2276. There's the break. Who's going to be the next one to call? We've got a question on Calvinism after the break. Four open lines. Give me a call.
877-207-2276. We'll be right back. All right, everybody. Welcome back to the show. Let's get on the air with Jay from New York.
Jay, welcome. You're on the air. You're on the air. Matt, you think you're so sick.
I thought it was going to be you. Yeah. How you doing, buddy? Talking. And I am slick. I am slick, but how you doing? Doing great. Great.
All right. Yeah, you know, I didn't have a question about Annihilationism, but one of the things I do want to say real quick before I ask my question, get off my chest. One of the things I love about Annihilation is utilize the word eternal. They want to pick and choose when the word eternal means a temporary amount of time. And then when it means, you know, I mean, Matthew 25, 40 something something is a perfect example. It says eternal life and eternal damnation.
So only eternal in one of those, one of that one part of that verse means a temporary amount of time while the other one is, you know, eternal life. That's right. Yeah.
Good for you, buddy. But anyway, I have a question. I'm talking to, you had a discussion with this individual maybe a month ago.
You probably won't even remember who he is, but his name was Bob. And he and I, you know, we have a couple run ins usually on a regular basis talking about Calvinism. And he lately has been bringing up this thing called Manichean agnosticism. I don't, Manichean, I think it's called.
Oh, Manicheanism? Okay. Yeah. Yeah.
He keeps associating that with Calvinism saying that John Calvin was a Manichean something like that. I don't know. I want to know if you ever heard of such a thing.
Yeah, I've heard of it. I'm going to refresh my memory. What it was, let me go to Carm and let's see. Okay.
Because it's been so long. You don't hear about that very often. Manicheism.
Yeah. Well, I guess basically I just wanted to know if you could give me a quick rundown of how, you know, what came first and how did it all play out, you know, Pelagianism, Armenianism, Calvinism. Just kind of give me a brief history of. Well, yeah, Manicheism is the issue that there's like a yin and a yang, a good and a bad, a light and a dark, and there's two main forces in the universe. And so if you were to say that Calvinism relates to Manicheanism, he has no clue what he's talking about.
None. Right. So that's it. So Pelagianism was a heresy that occurred in the three or four hundreds. Pelagianism teaches by Pelagius who taught that when a person is born, that his soul, his spirit is not fallen, but he's in a state of neutrality. Tabarasa.
A blank slate. He's basically good. And he becomes a sinner by sinning. That's Pelagianism. So basically every church council that's ever addressed it throughout history has just condemned it as flat out heresy because it is heresy. And then semi-Pelagianism, which is what a lot of churches teach, semi-Pelagianism says, I'm going to borrow a little bit of a phrase from Princess Bride, you know, and when Miracle Max said, you're just mostly dead. And so semi-Pelagianism would say, that was a great show, semi-Pelagianism would say that the person is born in sin, he's just mostly dead, but he's still capable of receiving Christ, of his own freedom, his own wisdom, his own will, because he just needs the right information.
That kind of a thing is what's going on there in semi-Pelagianism. And it was condemned as a heresy in the Council of Orange, I know that. And I reject it as a false teaching. It's not biblical. And most Christian churches today teach that. It doesn't mean they're not saved, but they teach it because it's up to man and it's humanism.
See, we have, let me just take a little bit of a side note here. We have two worldviews, two main worldviews, Christianity and everything else. And, you know, it's grace or works. But we also have this issue of the sacred versus the secular. And the secular is humanism, and humanism is man-centeredness. Man-centeredness is the idea that man is the measure and the standard of what's right and what's wrong and true.
Well, another form of humanism is to judge truth by one's own experience. So someone will say, I chose Jesus. I am the one who prayed. I'm the one who realized I needed him.
I'm the one me, me, me, me, me. And so what they're doing is they're not reading the scriptures about how that's even possible, which I can clearly teach about that. What they're doing is using their own experience as a judgment of what is true, and that's called humanism. And so humanism creeps into the church this way.
And so that's what it is. Now, the Bible says that God grants that we believe. Ephesians 1.29 grants us repentance. 2 Timothy 2.25, we're caused to be born again. 1 Peter 1.3, born again, not of our own will. John 1.13, appointed to eternal life. Acts 13.48, you know, from the foundation of the world, we're chosen. Ephesians 1.4, predestined to Ephesians 1.5. This is what the Word of God says. It doesn't say God looks at the future to see who's going to pick him or what person has this wisdom in himself that he's going to pick and someone else didn't.
Those are false teachings, and too many churches teach them today because they're humanistic in their philosophy imposed upon the scriptures in this area. And when I say this, I know a lot of people are frowning and say they don't agree. Oh, yeah.
That's right, they do. And you know, because you and I have talked off and on for years in a different context where I've debated a lot of people, and that's the case, because humanism has crept into the church at any rate. So that's what same as Platonism. Platonism is, and this issue of the Manichaeans, the guy doesn't know what he's talking about as far as that goes.
He's uninformed in that particular area. So another question with the conflict between Arminianism and Calvinism. I thought I heard somewhere that Calvinism or the Tulip acronym kind of came about as a reaction to the Arminian view or the Platon view.
Could you give me a little bit more detail? Yeah. It came up afterwards. As is often the case, acronyms and things that help us remember other things came into being, and I forgot exactly when and how and who and what.
But yeah, Tulip was developed by, I forgot who, I think it was the Arminians I even think, but I could be wrong, I don't know, to give a mnemonic in order to remember the main points. T-U-L-I-P, you know. But we have five points and five solas. You know, sola gratia, grace only, faith only, Christ only, scripture only, you know, God only, the glory of God only. So these are the five solas and then we have the five points.
And in the five solas and the five points, in my opinion, you have the epitome of biblical theology where God is the most greatly glorified and we recognize our sinfulness and the very merciful work of God to save us. That's what I think about. Right. Okay? Gotcha.
Okay, that's it. I got a ton of other questions, but I'll, you know. You can get back in line. You can get back in line, you know.
Yeah, I can do that. I can tell that's the last time we met that you're a lot smarter, so that's good. You've been talking to my wife again. So I was thinking your IQ is probably up to about 80 now because you've improved. Yeah. Hey, speak for yourself.
I'm at 82. We should get our wives together and then they could. You know what would be great is if your wife and my wife were sitting in the same room and we weren't saying anything, we're in the room just listening.
They didn't know we were there. Oh, that would be good. Yeah, we take notes. We can do that. Yeah. No, no, no. That's not stupid.
Let me tell you what my husband did. That's how it would be. Yeah.
I can tell. I don't even know where to begin. They should make a documentary.
My wife would probably pay Netflix to have a documentary made for me. My doofus McGee. That's right. All right. Well, thanks again. Go back in line.
I'll be tuning out. All right, man. God bless.
All right. As you guys can tell, we've known each other quite a while. He's a great guy. He has really a lot of fun. We have the same sense of humor.
It's the safe and the humor. It's awesome. All right. Let's get to Bill from Raleigh, North Carolina. Bill, welcome. You're on the air. Hello, man. I read today in the first book of Samuel, towards the end.
I'm in the car. It's chapter 29 or 30. Saul was praying before they were fighting the Philistines, the Israelites. He couldn't hear from God, and so he sought out a witch. Witch of Endor.
God had commanded them to rebuke the – I think to kill the sorcerers and witches and stuff. That's right. That's level 28. That's right.
Yeah, 28. Okay. Thank you. When that witch summons Samuel, who is Samuel in that? What's going on there?
She was obviously taken aback. It was Samuel. It was Samuel. Yeah. That's what I believe.
So how should we think of that if it's a witch summoning a great man of God, then in turn speaks? We've got a break coming up. Let me help you out. There's the break. So hold on. Okay, man. Hey, we'll get right back, and we'll tackle it after the break. Sorry about that.
That's timing. Hey, folks. We'll be right back after these messages.
We have three open lines. Give me a call, 877-207-2276. We'll be right back. It's Matt Slick live, taking your calls at 877-207-2276.
Here's Matt Slick. All right, everybody. Hey, just a quick reminder, we're going to Israel next year, and at the end of the month, we are stopping a $100 discount for the trip. If you sign up this month, you can go with us to Israel, where people are signing up. It's going. It's going great.
If you want to check it out, just go to karmisrael.com, C-A-R-M, Israel, one word, dot com, and you can check it out. It's a lot of fun. I have been before. Looking forward to going again. So, by God's grace, we'll end up there. All right, check it out.
karmisrael.com. Bill from Raleigh. You still there? I'm back.
I'm here. Okay, so. So, my question is, I guess it's two-fold. One is, what the heck happened there? That was kind of confusing to read.
Let me help you out. And then, was Samuel coming from heaven to, you know, speak to, yeah, so what does that mean? It seems confusing.
I don't understand it, I guess I should say. So, first of all, most probably what happened is a familiar spirit, or familiar spirits, which are demonic, deceptive spirits that imitate humans and people, were in contact with this witch called the Witch of Endor in 1 Samuel 28. And when she saw that it really was Samuel, then she knew that the gig was up, or the gig was up, and so she says, hey, you're Saul, and et cetera.
So, it looks like it really was Samuel who was called up, but it was only called up, not because she had the power to, but because Saul was going to be rebuked, and God allowed that to occur. And now it says, come up out. And so, the view is, before the crucifixion of Christ, that all people went to Abraham's bosom. And there's two sections, one is a good place, one is a bad place, the paradise, and then a place of judgment.
That's Luke 16, 19 through 31, with Lazarus and the rich man. So, that's why it was coming forth, you know, and that's it. That's all. All right.
Okay. And then what's your gut on, did Saul go to heaven? You think he did? I don't know. I don't know.
He was judged because... I always wonder about the Samson and Saul and guys like that, if they came around in the end through Solomon, you know. Yeah, I'm not sure.
I think he probably was saved because of covenant stuff, but that's, you know, another topic. Okay? Yeah. Thank you so much, Matt. Have a good one, man. You too, man. God bless. Bye.
All right. Let's get to Roseanne from North Carolina. Roseanne, are you there? Yes. Roseanne. Rosemary.
Roseanne. Are you there? I'm there. I am. Okay. I am here.
Good. I have listened to you, and I have to tell you, I have listened under men of God throughout my 67 years, and you speak the truth, and I respect you highly. So my issue, my question to you is, my son has turned his back on God. He accepted Christ at an early age of five, on 1-1-2000, and he was in Christian schools all the way up to college, stayed with the college career group the first year, and then somewhere in that sophomore and on, he has been totally off the chart. I can't mention Christ. I can't even say the word divine to him.
He has restricted me from communication because, you know, I am speaking about God or Jesus or anything having to do with religion, and I need your advice on how to handle that, or even just know that God has his eyes on him constantly, and he cannot lose his salvation. He does not remember the five-year-old experience, but when I thank God for giving us his son, for giving us our son, my son immediately took the prayer off and said, and dear God, I thank you for dying on the cross to save me from my sin. The next three sentences were so absolute, off the wall for maturity of the five-year-old that I'm thinking, I've got to grab this, I've got to write it down. And then the second sentence was more as powerful or more that was way beyond the five-year-old level, and then, again, I forgot that one because it's blowing my mind. Then the third sentence he said was the same, and he doesn't remember what he said.
I don't remember what he said, and his dad says, anyway, I need your assurance that, I guess, of eternal security. That's what I grew up with, but then my mother's heart hugs that maybe he has gotten to the place that he has gone too far, or is he running from God? I have all these rambling thoughts that they come and...
I can jump in here if you'd like and talk about this a little bit, okay? I understand your pain. I have a daughter who, same kind of thing, and I can't even repeat how far she's gone away from God. Because it's not for Christian radio.
And so what I do, and we taught her, my wife and I taught her, there's no guarantees, okay? Except once we're saved. So I don't know if your son was really saved at five, not saying he was, not saying he wasn't. If he really was, God will deal with him and either kill him or take him home. I had a 1 Corinthians 5 to save his soul. Or let him have his sin to teach him a lesson, and then he'll repent.
Or he really wasn't saved, and we'll find out what happens. Either way, the job that we have as parents is to trust God. My wife and I pray every night, and I lead our prayer, and I always, always pray for the salvation. I have three daughters, and for all of them.
I pray for all of them, appropriately for each one. That's what we do, and that's what we can do. And plus, your mom. Moms can't say anything about stuff like that, but a stranger could. I can't.
Yeah, that's how it is. And I'm the dad. And one of my daughters loves a guy that I know, and he had to apologize to me. He says, she'll listen to everything I say about the Lord. I go, no problem, don't apologize. I understand how it is. And I said, just keep going, keep talking, it's okay.
He goes, I'm saying the same thing you are. I know. It's mom and dad, forget it. So what you've got to do is just trust God and keep praying and keep praying, and don't push him.
Let God deal with his heart and convict him. But I will say this. I'm going to tell you, I don't talk about this very often.
I really don't. But I backslid for a couple of years. And I was so backslidden, I called up my brother who was going to a Christian university, and I threatened him and told him to stop praying for me because the conviction was getting bad. And I'm so embarrassed, but I'm going to say this.
This is what I did one day. I shook my fist up on the air at God and yelled at him to leave me alone. And so here I am now, I lost that argument, and praise God for his mercy.
Absolutely. I look back on my life back then in some areas, I'm like, why did God let me live? I don't know, except to say by his mercy. So we don't know what the end of the picture is.
We don't know the end of the story. And so you need to trust God, as I do with my children, my wife and I do, to trust our Lord with them and continually ask God to save. And then ask God to bring people into his life to witness to him. Ask God to convict them of his sin. And let him see Christ in you without the lecture. I don't mean that in a derogatory sense towards you.
That's what it is when mom and dad say anything. It's a lecture. And so you've got to really be cool on it, you know. I appreciate your ministry.
It just hits my soul right every time, you know. I hear you give advice, so you're doing what you're supposed to be doing. Well, thank you.
In spite of my sin and only because of God's grace, and I pray that God uses what we do, that's all I can do, to pray that God is merciful. Absolutely. Thank you so much.
You're welcome so much. All right, God bless. Okay. Okay. Bye-bye. All right. Oops, I hit the wrong button. Darn it. I just hit the wrong button.
Somebody hung up on him. My apologies. Oh.
So in that case, let's get to, it was on 1 Samuel 2, so I messed up. Let's get to Matt from Florida. Matt, welcome. You're on the air. Hey, Matt. Longtime listener, first time caller. Okay.
Well, you must be an intelligent, humble, good-looking guy with a name like Matt. I have a question about 2 Corinthians 12, 9, where it says that my grace is sufficient. The Greek word for the word grace, I was going to find out what the Greek word was. And then in Jonah, they use the lovingkindness in Jonah 4, 2, and I was going to see if it was the same lovingkindness, grace.
No. The Old Testament, Jonah, the Old Testament was written in Hebrew, and the New Testament was written in Greek. They're completely different languages.
And so in Jonah 4, 2, in order first of all to be a gracious and compassionate God, the word there is, let's see. By now, dude. Well, man.
I'll go see if I can read it. Anyway, it's a completely different word. In Greek, it's charis, and so it's just completely different, okay? Okay.
I just didn't understand how they, because like in my Amplified Bible, it says lovingkindness is grace, and we're trying to find out how the Greek word is defined. Here, let me help you out with what grace really is, okay? So let me help you out. So you have a bicycle. I come over your house. I steal your bike.
You catch me. I go to jail. I'm punished.
That's justice. I get what I deserve. I come over your house. I steal your bike.
You catch me, but you like what I do on the radio, and you say, go away. I'm not going to call the cops on you. That's mercy. I don't get what I deserve. Justice is getting what you deserve. Mercy is not getting what you deserve. Now, let's do grace.
I come over your house. I steal your bike, and you give me, you catch me, you give me the bike and a hundred bucks. I'm like, wow, what kind of a guy is this? That's grace, getting what you don't deserve in a good way. Grace is not just a kindness. It is the act of God emanating out of his essence and his being, where he graciously, that's defined in the word of the term, but he gives to us in a good way that which we absolutely do not deserve. That's grace. Amen.
So that's what grace is. And so that definition you gave me was just really insufficient. Okay.
Okay. Okay, so, and he is the God of love and kindness and grace. Yes. And mercy and justice and righteousness. And so he is all of these things. And Jesus' grace is sufficient.
Yeah. He says, my grace is sufficient because Paul had in second Corinthians 12, 10, he had a problem and a physical infirmity and there's discussions about what that might be. And yet God says, my grace is sufficient to you. And what he's saying there is that I'm going to be with you and I'm going to comfort you. I'm going to show you kindness, but you're still going to be in your problem and you get to deal with it inside of it. Well, thank you. Okay. All right. Thank you very much. Okay. God bless Matt. All right. Sorry, Jan and Jerry and Merle and Andrew. Well, call back tomorrow earlier in the show and get to you all.
I mean, the Lord bless you by his grace, folks. We'll be back on here tomorrow and we'll talk to you then. Have a great evening. Bye.
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