Matt Slick Live

The following program is recorded content created by the Truth Network. And you're listening to Matt Slick live.

It is, let's see, August 18th, 2021. If you're interested in giving me a call, all you got to do is dial 8772072276. And if you're new to the show, well, this is a Christian show and we deal with the issue of apologetics or the defense of the Christian faith. So if you have a question about the Bible or evolution, UFOs, Roman Catholicism, Eastern Orthodoxy, Islam, Mormonism, Jehovah's Witnesses, the Trinity, and all kinds of stuff. All you got to do is give me a call and we can blab. Easy peasy.

All right. Now, last night, last night, I started a series on Patreon on the doctrine of the Trinity. I've been working on a definition of the Trinity for a few months, just off and on, you know, every now and then I'll go in and read through it, modify it, and try and perfect it.

And it's always, you know, expandable and, and, and stuff. But what I'm trying to do is develop something that can be presented in debates so that when I'm debating an atheist, for example, or a Muslim, or a Oneness Pentecostal, whoever it might be, that they would then understand what the doctrine of the Trinity actually is. And whether they agree with it or not isn't the issue, but that they would then argue from what we believe what the Trinity is, not what it is not. And that's what happens a lot is that, like, I debated a guy last week, Turbeville, who said that he knows more about what I believe than I do. And even though I've been studying defending the Trinity for over 40 years, you know, he kept saying the Trinity was three separate gods and kept telling him, no, it's not. He said, yes, it is.

You know, he didn't know what he was doing. And so I've been doing this along with developing a set of questions for varying topics so that if anybody wants to debate me before I'll debate them, they have to answer all the questions. And that way I know where they're coming from. And, oh boy, if they're going to debate me on a particular topic, then they'll know what the biblical position is for what we hold to, what I hold to.

We can, you know, mitigate the idea of wasting time and trying to discern what to argue, what not to argue, and things like that. All right, we have four open lines. If you want to give me a call, 877-207-2276. As I was saying, I started the series on the Trinity and it's on Patreon. You go to Patreon, P-A-T-R-E-O-N.com, Patreon.com forward slash Matt Slick. And you can find it and you can sign up and help me out there if you're interested in that.

And I'll be releasing these videos, you know, two, three months later. But, you know, people who sign up, they get the support and my people see stuff right away. So that's big help because, well, we certainly do need it.

We just do. Also, all right, there's that. Also, I'm working on an article, I mentioned it yesterday and I'm still working on it, but the article is on the Christian's right of self-defense. And I plan to release it this week. And I'm going to be giving it to a couple of pastors and asking them to review it because this is a very important issue. And as Christians become more and more under attack in the world, what is the Christian's right and responsibility for the use of physical violence to stop a physical threat?

And I've got an opening paragraph that I've been working on with defense of the paragraph, you know, as I go on. So there's a lot here and it's necessary because I know that in Africa, people are being killed for their faith and in India as well, Christians are being killed for their faith. So how far can we go as Christians to be violent?

I'm not advocating violence. I'm just saying what can we do? What are the scriptural admonitions? What privileges do we have?

What responsibilities do we have? And things like that. Believe it or not, a lot of people are really surprised when they find out what the Bible actually teaches. So there's that and hopefully released that sometime this week. It's basically ready to go.

I just want to make sure that I'm getting some good feedback from people on it as well. All right. Three open lines. Give me a call 877-207-2276. Let's get to Kim from rural hall, North Carolina. Kim, welcome.

You're on the air. Thank you, Matt. A lot of questions from numbers 12, 1 through 14 about Miriam and Aaron. And now the question is now, is it true that Aaron not only fashioned the golden calf, but when Moses asked him about it, he lied about it. So now he had three things against him, but yet the Lord put their privacy on Miriam. So my question is, is it, or can you be in that position of authority under God and do things like that? And he had just overlooked.

Well, it's not an issue of just being overlooked. Figure number 12, it says that Miriam and Aaron spoke against Moses because of the Cushite woman whom he had married. Cushite was Ethiopian. So incidentally, this is off topic, but I use this verse to demonstrate that interracial marriage, black, white, brown, green, orange, purple is fine in the scriptures. But because Moses married a Cushite woman, a black woman.

Anyway, so they were upset with that because she's Cushite, not because of the color of her skin. And they said, has the Lord indeed spoken only through Moses? Has he not spoken through us as well? And the Lord heard it. Now Moses was a very humble man, which is interesting verse.

Suddenly the Lord said to Moses and Aaron and Miriam, you three come to the tenant meeting. And Aaron was not given leprosy, but she was. Moses was the spokesman. And so he wasn't the one speaking against Moses himself. And the conjecture that we, basically the commentators and I agree with is that the reason Aaron was not given leprosy was because he was the high priest and had to be ceremonially clean in order to continue in his ministry. And as he ultimately represents the work of Christ who had to be perfect and clean. And that's why he was the priest who was not given that leprosy, but later she was cured.

That's what I understand it to me. Okay. So he was never punished for bashing in the golden calf or even lying about what he did in that position? I don't know. Actually, that's a good question. If he was punished, I don't know. That's a good question. I never thought about that. I would think that something would have come down the road here and he had gotten a little comeuppance for it.

But I don't know. I would think though, that at the very least, not that this suffices, but the idea of his sister being struck with leprosy would have really scared Aaron a great deal. And he would have repented and realized his sin against God by speaking against Moses. Now, this is an important concept that we have to understand that Aaron, the high priest was not cursed in that sense, because ultimately he represented Christ. And so that's the reason I believe he was not punished to the degree he should have been punished or could have been punished, I should say.

Okay. So the question again is, if you are in that position, let's say you're a pastor and you perform or sin, because that would be sin in other words. And he had three strikes against him, but only a million.

She was the only one that married me against him. So I would say that was just one strike. But he got a pass because he was a high priest.

Right. So if you are a pastor in any situation, you can do certain things and get a pass from God just because you hold that up. A pastor is not a high priest. The priesthood in the Old Testament, well, everybody represents God as a Christian, but this is different. This is the priesthood.

There are several interesting facts about the priesthood, the priesthood, not a pastor, it's different. But for example, the cities of refuge that a man who was accused of a very serious crime could flee to a city of refuge. And as long as he remained in that city of refuge, he could not be killed, could not be assaulted by the relatives or anybody else. But if he left that city, then he was open to being killed. And as long as the high priest in the city remained alive, then he had to stay in that situation. But once the high priest died, then he was free to leave the city and not be attacked. And that death of the high priest obviously represents the death of Christ. So the idea of the priesthood points to the true priesthood of Christ because he's a high priest after the order of Melchizedek. And Aaron was in that position of representing Christ in that priesthood sense. A pastor does not do that.

That's what the difference is. All right? Thank you, man. God bless you. God bless, buddy.

All right. Hey, folks, you want to give me a call? All you got to do is dial 877-207-2276. Let's get to Nicole from Raleigh, North Carolina. Nicole, welcome. You are on the air. Hey, Matt.

I hope you're doing well. I just want in one minute or less, could you help explain the Trinity to a non-believer? Yeah, the Trinity is the biblical revelation of one God and three distinct simultaneous persons.

And in Romans 1-20, it says that the attributes of God are known in creation. So if we look at creation, we can see, for example, a Trinity that we understand, time. Time is past, present, and future. They all share that quality of being time. But the past is not the exact same thing as the future, which is not the exact same thing as the present.

They are the same thing, time, but they have different qualities, different aspects. And so the Trinity is like that. And that is one God and three distinct simultaneous persons, the way time is past, present, and future. How would you explain when the Son submitted to the will of the Father?

Yeah, now we get more away from analogy. And we say that the second person of the Trinity became flesh. So the Word became flesh, became one of us, and was made in union with a human nature, made in union, called the hypostatic union. Philippians 2, 5-8 talks about this. And because of that, a human being was made under the law, as all humans were. And so and so being under the law, Galatians 4-4, he would then be subject to God, in this case God the Father. And in this we have the manifestation of the Trinity, the incarnation, and why Jesus was submitted to the Father. Okay. And then since he submitted to the will of the Father, then how would you explain that judgment is now given over to the Son?

Because being made under the law, he had certain requirements, and we had a break coming up. So hold on, we'll explain this when we get back, okay? Hey folks, 3 Open Lines, give me a call, 877-207-2276. We'll be right back. All right, welcome back to the show. We have three open lines. Why don't you give me a call if you have a question?

877-207-2276. Nicole, are you still there? Yes, sir.

All right. So you asked why was the judgment given to the Son? This is because, and what you're quoting there is John 5-22, because Jesus, who's God in flesh, there's this interesting phenomena in that he has two natures, both divine and human, and he would walk and talk and go to the bathroom, sleep, eat. And so we see that he was completely and totally a man, but he was also divine, and the attributes of both natures were ascribed to the single person.

That's called the communication of the properties. And we see him saying, I'm thirsty. We hear him or see him saying, you know, I'll be with you always, even at the end of the earth. So we see the manifestation of both natures in the single person and being made under the law. He would then be subject to the Father. And so, because he still is God in flesh, then the judgment would be given to him by virtue of him fulfilling the law and being righteous according to that law, thereby earning the right of judging everybody according to that law.

Okay? Okay, so since he fulfilled the law, he has now given authority over the law, since it's been fulfilled through Christ. In that sense, yes. He's the author of the law and the fulfiller of the law at the same time, because he's God in flesh. And then he became, under the law that he, because he's God, bestowed on people and then fulfilled it perfectly and died in it, fulfilling the requirements of the law.

And so he has that righteousness of judgment that is his. Got it. That makes more sense now for me to be able to explain to people.

Thank you so much. Okay, well, I'm curious because those are interesting questions you're asking. And it tells me you're talking to probably unbelievers or other Christians who just have lots of questions. So I'm curious, what's up? Tell me. Yeah, so I have a social media platform. Gen Z asks a lot of questions.

They really do like to not necessarily argue about the faith, but they just want to know essentially topics about the Trinity. So that is a topic that comes up a lot. I'm sorry. Where is that form? That place? Oh, it's on TikTok. I have a TikTok account. Can I just talk about music?

Could you contact me about that? Because that's one of the things you want to get into more is TikTok. We're actually creating a file on different media outlets and sources and where we're going to be analyzing a lot of stuff. So I am curious about that. And maybe I can get in and answer some questions. I like to do that in different venues.

So learn if you want to. Yeah, and I'd love to, if you're open to it, I have three-minute access on TikTok. Normally you get 60 seconds, but I have three-minute access. So maybe I could just record you kind of debating a topic on the apologetic realm. All right. Well, could you email me at info at karm.org and give me your contact info too, because maybe I'll call you and we can talk about this one minute, three-minute thing. You can kind of coach me along a little bit because we need to do this.

We're trying to reach out as much as possible. Sure. Well, thank you, Nicole. Appreciate it. Okay. All right. Okay. Well, God bless.

All right. Hey folks, Four Open Lines. Why don't you give me a call?

877-207-2276. Jacob from Wisconsin. Jacob, welcome.

You're on the air. When people speak about the wedding garment that the saints have, they say it's the righteousness of Christ. But in Romans 19, 8, it speaks about a garment and says it's the righteous act of the saints. So what is this garment? What is the what? The last word I didn't get.

What is what? What is the garment spoken of in Revelation 19, 8? Well, it's a lot of symbolism because it says, let us rejoice, be glad, give glory to him.

And let's see, there it is. So yeah, it says, it was given to her to clothe herself in fine linen. Linen was used by the priest in the Old Testament. It's a symbol of purity and royalty, not royalty, but purity is good.

It's bright and clean for the fine linen is the righteous acts of the saints. So this is symbolic. It's also mentioned that we get a white stone. And the white stone was used in the culture to signify innocence because when someone had been accused of a crime and found guilty of a crime, they had certain things they had to do for restoration. And then once that was completed, a white stone was placed outside their house, signifying that the debt had been paid.

They were to be considered innocent. And so the clothing also may have something to do when it talks about being clothed in the righteousness of God and that Adam and Eve were clothed in his glory. Some theories have it and that when they sin, they've lost that. This is a reflection, so no pun intended, reflection of the very glory that God or that Moses experienced by being in the presence of God in Exodus 3 and his face shined. So it looks like in Revelation, what it's talking there about is the issue of the symbolism of being clothed in righteousness and the good deeds that we did in Christ. Not that those deeds contribute to salvation in any way, but those are the things that we get clothed with ultimately. And then we are given crowns and then we give those crowns back to God. So there's a lot of symbolism here and that's what's the context.

Okay. So in the King James, it just says the righteousness of the saints. So why is the NASB translated as the righteous acts? Because in the King James, you could just say, well, that's the disputed righteousness of the saints. But I just am wondering why they chose to translate it that way or what's the better translation? Yeah, the righteous deeds, the righteous acts and of the saints of the Haggioi. And so it's in the genitive. So it would be the righteous deeds of the saints. And what does the King James say? It just says the righteousness of the saints.

Oh, righteousness of the saints. Yeah, it's doable. But let's see.

No, I think I'll do it that way. Anyway, let me check this out. The righteousness. Let's see. Because I like to check things out.

And let's see. Righteousness. The righteousness of saints. The righteousness.

And yeah, and so what it is. So the righteous act. That's just how they translated it. The other translations don't do it that way. They say the righteous deeds of the saints. The new King James says righteous acts of the saints. And it's the righteous deeds, the righteous acts. That's how it's translated.

I'm looking at different translations and stuff, how they are, how they have it. Oh, we've got a break. So hold on. We'll take a look after the break as well.

All right. Hey folks, we have four open lines. You want to give me a call? 877-207-2276.

We'll be right back. Give me a call. It's Matt Slick live taking your calls at 877-207-2276. Here's Matt Slick. Welcome back to the show. Why don't you give me a call? 877-207-2276.

Let's get back with Jake. Are you still there? Yes. So I'm looking at a different translation to it. I see that the Catholic translation translated justifications of saints. So is that just their heretical theology influencing the translation? It might be, but dikiazo is righteousness, and dikiamata is the word here to cognate.

Dikiuma is to justify. And I'm looking at my Bible program that says the product or result of being justified by God, the rights or claims which one has before God. And it actually mentions in the commentary on the lexicon, I should say. In Revelation 19, dikiamata is translated the righteousness of saints, and in Hebrews 9-1 ordinances of divine service. So what I'd like to do is check varying translations to see what other, you know, just other Bibles would translate things as.

And when we do that, we can learn what is it the intent is, apparently, of the translators. So the New Living Translation says good deeds, the, let's see, the HCSB, and the righteous acts of the saints. The Lexham English Bible says the righteous deeds of the saints. The Net Bible, the righteous deeds of the saints. The New Century Version says good things done by God's holy people.

So there's an ISV, for example, the righteous deeds of the saints. So the reason I'm looking at the other translations is when you get certain levels of Greek, and it's beyond me, but I do know that there are rules to varying constructions in Greek on how we are to translate. And it can get complicated sometimes.

That's why the experts are the ones who know these rules and will do things. One of them is called the Granville Sharp Rule out of Titus 2 13, which are certain kinds of rules when you have certain Greek constructions and patterns. And so the thing I'm wondering about is if there is a Greek construction here. If I were to be doing a commentary on this or really researching it to preach or teach, what I would then do is go into Greek manuals that teach you Greek. And I would look for this particular verse.

I would look for any analysis that they might have. And sometimes they'll say, you know, it's a dative of means. Whenever it's after a prepositional phrase, it means this.

And they do these weird things, I'd see if any of that was there. If nothing like that was there of some sort of a Greek rule applied to that, I would just go with Greek translators at that point and say, okay, so it's the righteous acts of the saints. And probably because of the saints is in the genitive, which means it's possession, and it's hagioi. And so that makes sense. And then in the issue of the righteous deeds, dikio mata, that makes sense to the righteous acts of the saints.

Now, is it righteousness of the saints as if they have equality in themselves, or is it the righteous acts of the saints? And that would be the question to learn. And then what I would do, another thing I like to do is, it's 1345 in the Strong's Concordance. And then I go take a look at how many times it appears in the Bible and how it's used. And it's used 10 times. And I can find every single place where it's used like that. And then I would look for constructions. And it says, for example, in Revelation 15, four, it says your righteous acts.

And let's see, righteous acts. And that is nominative plural. So nominative plural. Yeah.

And so, you know, you just compare, it's just what it is when we do this kind of thing. It gets more complicated. So that's what I know. And nominative plural and nominative plural.

Yeah. So it's the same same form of the word in Revelation 19, eight, as it is in 15, four. And it says, for all the nations will come and worship before you for your righteous acts have been revealed. And so that's, I think that makes sense why they are, your righteous acts have been revealed. I wonder what the King James would say on that verse. See if they would say your righteous, righteousness has been revealed.

That'd be interesting. In 15, four, let's see, King James says, your judgments have been revealed in four and judgments are made manifest. Interesting how the different word, the same word is used there for your judgments are made manifest. See, I like this kind of stuff because, I'm just rambling here, but because this is the kind of thing that causes me to study, well, wait, why do they say that that way? And then I'm going to go look at it in other translations and I'm going to get what's called a semantic domain of the word.

And I usually learn something in the process like, Oh, God's doing something here and I can learn it. But in rate not having done that right now, I couldn't tell you much more than I already have. Okay. Cause I see in all the old translations before the King James, they all say righteousness of things. So is there anything manuscript different, anything like that? That I would have to check out to see if there's any textual issues. I have a Greek New Testament has all the textual variations in it and I have stuff online as well. So when I do studies like this, it takes time.

It takes a half hour to an hour just to gather the information and then to assess it. So can't do that right now. And I don't know if there's a textual variation or if, and here's some of the things to think about. Sometimes the translators of, um, Greek hundreds of years ago would not be as accurate as they are now. And there's two reasons that are at least potential right there.

One is get a better manuscript issue where you find a variation. And that's, that's one possibility, but also believe it or not, the more we have Greek, the more we study it, the more we learn about it. And the modern scholars, in my opinion, are better than the scholars of five, six, 700 years ago, because they have more information. They discovered more, uh, other manuscripts that have Greek and have used the same words. They've had further to time to analyze, and they can find every single instance of a verb's form and noun form in different contexts to discover if there's certain patterns where they couldn't have done that before because they didn't have computers. So this is why I say, you know, as things get more modern, things get even more accurate. Not that to say that they were inaccurate back then.

I just say even more accurate now. I don't know if that makes sense, but that's, that's where it's at. And these kinds of things all bear into, um, into mind when we're looking, analyzing, considering. And then I have, believe it or not, I have Greek based commentaries, or not in Greek, but they're commentaries done by scholars who analyze the Greek text and they put in rules and say, this is why this is done here. And that's another study level that I can get into if I really need to. These tools are out there. So one of the things, if you're curious about this, I would go to the blueletterbible.com, blueletterbible.com, blueletterbible.com.

And, uh, they have a great deal of resources there and you could go in and do some research and see if you can find some comments on it. See if there's any differentiation about why they translated slightly differently. Okay. Okay. Thank you. You're welcome.

You're welcome. And good questions too. All right. So folks, yeah. Um, believe it or not, this is how I study sometimes and enjoy it. You know, you've got to be nerdy like me to enjoy that kind of study where, um, you just get into varying things. It's kind of fun.

Uh, it's like buried treasure, you know, as you're digging for it, you discover other things while you're looking for it. I like that. And, uh, that was a good question. We have four open lines. Watch if you can call 877-207-2276. Let's just get to Courtney from Ohio. Hey Courtney, welcome.

You're on the air. Whoa, that was fast. Okay. So I was, um, recently checking out your table that compares Calvinism to Arminianism. I hope I said that right. And I was wondering, the last part of it was the security part where Arminians think that they, you know, about the falling from grace and all that, losing salvation and all that. Do they presume on their ability to keep the law? No.

Now, just so people know, that chart or that table is a broad representation. There are Arminians who teach that you cannot lose your salvation. In fact, there's an organization of actual Arminians that have a national organization, and they're pretty reformed in a lot of their theological perspectives, though many of them hold to the idea that it's possible to lose one's salvation. In part, the reason is, is because I believe that ultimately they, this is, I'm going to say this and step on some toes. I think they're humanist in their philosophy regarding human free will. So Arminianism generally will hold to what's called libertarian free will, where the reformed will hold to compatibilist free will. This is an issue that once you understand it, you go, oh, now I see why they say what they do about this area and that area. So free will is the ability to make choices that are consistent with your nature that are not forced upon you.

That's basically what free will is. And we've got a break coming up. So I'll tell you what, I'm going to start this again at the end of the, after the break, and I'll explain the relationship and stuff like that. Okay.

All right. We'll be right back after these messages, please stay tuned. It's Matt Slick live taking your calls at 877-207-2276. Here's Matt Slick. Welcome back to the show Courtney. Are you still there?

Still here. All right. So let me lay this foundational stuff down so we can make sense of some stuff. So free will is the ability to make a choice that's free, not forced, but is also consistent with what you are.

And the reason we have to add that last part is because we don't want to be humanistic and define free will based on human ideas. We're made in the image of God, Genesis 1 26. And so God is a standard of righteousness and all that is true. And that's 1 Peter 1 16. He says, be holy for I am holy.

He's the standard. So if we say that free will is the ability to be able to choose between good and bad and be able to build it, to do either one and choose between them, then that means that God doesn't have free will because God cannot choose to do anything evil and then just not do it, which is what a humanistic ideology would be. And so if we're going to use truth, we need to have God as a standard of truth, not man. So free will has to be defined in such a way where it includes us and God. And that's why I say free will is the ability to make choices consistent with your nature that are also not forced upon you. So God is holy. He will only make holy choices. An unbeliever is sinful and will make sinful choices. No one's forcing him to. He's still free to be able to do that. So when people say, well, that's not true free will.

Yes, it is. Because if they're going to say that it's not free will, then they have to come up with a standard that is universally applicable, biblically based and based out of the nature of God. And so they have to come up with something that includes God and not exclude God from the nature of truth. And then they define themselves apart from God's nature.

And that's a problem. That's humanism. So God can only do what's consistent with his nature.

He always does what's right. He cannot lie, Titus 1.2 says. So free will is the ability to make choices consistent with their nature that are not forced.

The unbeliever will fit that very perfectly, very well. And he will always choose to do that, which is ungodly, because that's his nature. This is why the Bible says it has to be granted that we believe, Philippians 1.29, cause to be born again, 1 Peter 1.3, born again, not of our own will, John 1.13. This is why Jesus said 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 granted to you from the Father. So if it's up to our free will to be able to come to God, if we just need some help, that's a problem. Arminianism, some aspects of Arminianism would then say, well, we understand the problem of human nature and the sinful tendency of people. So therefore they introduce this concept called prevenient grace. Prevenient grace is the grace that comes before that enables a person to be free to be able to choose God because they recognize that there's a problem with the sinful enslavement that an unbeliever has. So they invent, invent prevenient grace. And so one of the things I'll do with Arminians who talk about this and others who say prevenient grace, cause I call it kindergarten theology.

And the reason I do is because it doesn't make any sense. We have Bob and Frank, two men. They are absolute twins, identical twins. And they went to the same schools, the same colleges and married twins. And they do everything together. They live next door to each other to even have the same job.

They're identical. Bob and Frank go to church one day and Bob believes the gospel and Frank does not. Now, why? Now they're going to say, well, because of the grace of God's prevenient grace. That's just the way the free will is.

Well, wait a minute. Why does Bob's free will enable him to believe that Bob and Frank did not? Well, it's just how free will is.

It doesn't answer the question. Particularly, we understand that God grants that we believe. Look at 1 Philippians 1 29. And so the Arminian who posits prevenient grace is ignoring scripture that requires an understanding of our freedom to be consistent with our nature and the fallenness. There's no prevenient grace because if prevenient grace is true, then why is it that one believes and another does not when the prevenient grace, whatever that is, is given to a person? What does it mean to have grace given to you?

Is it a substance like the Catholics teach in paragraph 1999 of the Catechism, which is infused into the soul and helps you do good stuff and it helps you believe? Because they don't have an unbiblical view of human freedom, then they get into one step closer to Roman Catholicism and its etyrological stuff with semi-Pelagian, sometimes full-Pelagian anthropology. But anyway, so the question then becomes that they say is, if you're free, how can God predestine you? And if you're free and yet God predestines, you really can't be free. Now this is a false complaint that they raise because God can certainly work the heart of the king where he wishes to go, Proverbs 21 1. And we're born again not of our own will, John 1 13.

This is scripture. So those people who don't like the idea of compatibilist free will, which is the teaching that God's predestination and election are compatible with our freedom. They're compatible that God can predestine us in our freedom and that we choose God because he draws us, he grants it to us, et cetera, et cetera. And Jesus said he only came to do the will of the father, John 5 19 and John 5 30.

He says he can only do what the father does. Jesus has free will and yet he could do nothing of his own initiative, the verses say. So that's compatibilist free will, not libertarian free will. Those who hold a libertarian free will are just hop, skip, and a jump away from full-blown humanistic philosophy. When they impose- What's the libertarian free will? That's libertarian free will, yes. Man is at liberty in his sinfulness to be able to choose God, but the Bible does not say that. 1 Corinthians 2 14, the natural man cannot receive the things that God first foolishness to him. And they'll say, well, the natural man just means that part of you that's not really good, but the good part of God in you makes you can.

They just play games and it gets ridiculous. It's humanism. Okay. Okay. Wow. That was a great answer to a small question. I mean, it was a short question, I guess. All right. I'm going to re-listen to that. Yeah.

It's a great question. Okay. Thanks for the answer.

I'm going to listen to it over and over. Okay, Courtney. God bless. All right. You too. Bye-bye.

Okay. Hey, Four Open Lines. If you want to give me a call, 877-207-2276.

Let's get to Fail from Greensboro, North Carolina. Fail, welcome. You're on the air.

Yes. Hi, Matt. Hi. And thank you so much. Well, thank you so much that you hung up.

Sorry. Well, I think you lost the connection there. So she'll have to call back and we'll see. We have five open lines, folks.

877-207-2276. I think that's her calling right back. So this issue of free will, folks, is a big one. Now, I'm going to ask you a question out there as you're driving, as you're just listening, you're contemplating what I just said. Let me ask you, are you yourself the standard of truth? Is your experience, your choices, your understanding how you judge what is true before God and before people? Is that the case?

Or is it the case that the Scriptures hold that place of supremacy in your life and whatever it says is true? That's a question you got to ask, especially when it comes to free will. All right. Let's get back on the phones with Fail from Greensboro.

Hey, we lost you. Now you're back on. Okay. Yes, thanks, Matt. Sure. First of all, thank you so much for that excellent apologetic answer that you gave my sister that just called in. Excellent.

And one day I'll be able to do that. This is my question. In God's plan for men, do you consider Genesis chapter 3 as plan B from God for his redemption plan for men? No. God never has a plan B, ever.

Period. The reason is it because, 1 John 3.20, God knows all things. He cannot increase in knowledge. Therefore, this means that he is the source of all actuality as well as potentiality.

So let me explain this. Before the universe existed, there was, I don't know if I can say infinite number, but I'm going to use that term, an infinite number of potential things that could occur if God created. The atom could have been located over there instead of over here.

I could wear a different shirt. We have a lap of a wave on a beach that might have happened one second earlier or later. God is the one who knows all potentialities. So let's just say there's a kabillion potentialities and God brings one of them into existence. Then out of an infinite number of potentialities, one actuality is manifested. Because God knows all things, then that actualization of the potentials means that, according to God's omniscience, omnipresence, he's in all places at all times with all power and all wisdom, then whatever occurs, occurs because it is the plan of God, not a second plan, not a backup plan of any sort. Furthermore, it says in Ephesians 1-4 that he, God the Father, chose us, the elect, in him, Jesus, before the foundation of the world.

That would be holy and blameless. This means that the plan of God is eternal. Furthermore, the Trinity doctrine is the teaching that God exists eternally as three simultaneous and distinct persons.

Not three gods, but one God and three persons. This means then that there was an infinite number of years, of seconds, of moments, however you want to call it, where God's fellowship inside the Trinity was manifested. Furthermore, inside of that Trinity is the eternal plan of salvation, which can only be one actual plan because God knows all things to the best of any ability. And since he knows all things to the best of all ability, and God doesn't do things second best, then that eternal plan was eternally known by God and was manifested when he created the universe, sent to the sun, etc. So there is no plan B for man's redemption. It was always ordained that the eternal son would be the one who would die for our sins, rise from the dead, etc. Okay?

Yes, thank you. And I agree, totally. And one other thing I've said about just a little bit more, is that if man had not sinned, then we would never had the opportunity to be witnesses and also able to experience God's attributes. In that sense, in some of attributes, because the fall isn't what makes us able to understand his attributes or experience them. So the issue here is, there's also within these circles and discussions we say, could, like for example, the man who nailed the spike through Christ's wrist, could he have not done it? And the answer is yes, he could have not done it, but it was ordained that he would.

Then we get into the issues of how is he free by ordination. Well, God can bring about whatever he desires. He works all things after the counsel of his will. Ephesians 1-11, and also Ephesians 1-11, and also Isaiah 46-10. He declares the end from the beginning. He says this, and his purpose will be established. This is fundamental. Isaiah 46-10 talks about this. So in one sense, a person could make a different choice, but in another sense, they're ordained not to, and yet it's compatibilistically consistent.

They have freedom, and yet God can ordain what they do. And I can explain that more tomorrow if you guys are interested in calling me back and run out of time, fail, okay? Thank you. All right, God bless. Thank you so much. All right. Hey, a little bit of heavy theology and stuff there and some logic. Hope that helped. May the Lord bless you. By His grace, we're back on here tomorrow. Talk to you then. Another program powered by the Truth Network.