Matt Slick Live (Guest Host Luke Wayne)

The following program is recorded content created by the Truth Network. This is Luke Wayne filling in for Matt for the next couple of days. Matt is traveling on ministry. In fact, he's going to be joining me here in Utah this weekend, doing some evangelism and outreach, especially outside the Hare Krishna Festival down in Spanish Fork, where we'll be handing out tracts and talking to anyone who's willing to talk, sharing the Gospel with the community, and going to be looking forward to that. So be praying for us for open minds and open hearts and good conversations. And for those of you who are in the Utah area, tomorrow, that's Saturday, March 25th of 2022. In case you happen to be listening to this as a rerun, it would not be tomorrow for you. But Saturday, March 25th, 2022, tomorrow, at the time of this recording, is going to be an informal gathering with Matt Flick and myself and anyone interested in meeting with the CARM staff. It's going to be at Calvary City on a Hill in Provo, Utah at 6.30pm. Dinner will be provided.

There's not going to be any formal teaching. It's not a formalized event or a conference or a seminar, just a casual time to get together and fellowship over dinner. And we would love a chance to get to know any of you guys. So that is going to be going on again. That's tomorrow evening, 6.30pm, at Calvary City on a Hill in Provo, Utah.

So we'd love to see you guys there. If you're new to the show, this is a radio outreach and extension of CARM.org. C-A-R-M dot O-R-G. That's the Christian Apologetics and Research Ministry. And so we are a ministry devoted to equipping the saints and reaching the lost through careful research and through apologetics, which is the field of theology concerned with the defense of the Christian faith. And so we attempt to answer your challenging questions on matters of biblical interpretation, theology, history, world religions. And so if you have questions, you can call in at 877-207-2276, and we are excited to take your calls.

So again, the number is 877-207-2276, and the lines are open. So before I get to the calls, as we move on into the show, you know, there's being a missionary here in Utah, and doing street evangelism a lot, talking to people on sidewalks. You know, there's a common objection that I hear out here, but that you probably hear from people of various backgrounds where you're at. When you're sharing the Gospel, you open your Bible, and you show the truths of Jesus. You show the call to repentance, you show what Christ has done, salvation that comes through faith alone in him, in his finished work, in his sacrifice, and there will be a pushback. Well, sure, that's what the Bible says now, but the Bible's been translated so many times. How can we even know what it originally said? How can we trust it? And this is an objection I've heard my entire believing life, from atheists, from Mormons, from Muslims. This is extremely common that people will push back and challenge that the Bible can't be trusted because it's been translated so many times. And this rests on three major fallacies.

And when we stop and look at it, the opposite is in fact true. That the Bible has been translated so many times gives us even more reason to trust that what we have in our English Bibles today does accurately reflect what the original says. So first, the assumption generally smuggled into this idea that the Bible being translated so many times must mean we can't trust it, is the idea that the Bible you have in your hand today, be it an NASB, an NIV, a KJV, or whatever translation you may be holding, is a translation of a translation of a translation of a translation, and once it's passed through so many languages, it's lost all of its original meaning.

And if you go on, say, Google Translate, and you type up a sentence and translate it from English to French, and then from French to German, and German to Japanese, and Japanese to Chinese, and then back to English, it'll often have changed in some weird ways. But the problem with this assumption is that that isn't what Bible translations are. They're not translations of translations of translations in an ongoing chain. Each translation is, almost every time, a fresh translation or an expansion on an existing translation, in the case of, say, the KJV going to the NKJV, the RSV to the NRSV and such things. But all of these, what's being done is they're revisiting the original Greek and Hebrew. Of course, I don't mean the original copy, but the original language. We have ancient and numerous manuscripts in the Greek that the New Testament was written in, in the Hebrew that the Old Testament was written in, and when translators in any language are producing fresh translations, they're almost always going back to those original languages, to the Greek, to the Hebrew, so the existence of other translations does nothing to harm the accuracy of the new translation.

So the idea that while there have been other translations, that makes your translation wrong, there's just no logic to it whatsoever. The existence of another translation does no harm to a fresh translation that goes back to the original languages. And because we have such an immense and very ancient body of manuscripts of our Old and New Testaments, we can reliably and confidently go back to those original languages, early manuscripts, numerous manuscripts, and through that, produce fresh translations that are reliable and can be trusted. But I want to push back even more on this idea, because as I stated earlier, it's not just that the existence of other translations doesn't harm our confidence in the Bible, it actually helps our confidence in our modern English Bibles.

Well, how so? Well, first of all, let's talk about ancient translations. So Christianity, from the beginning, was a translating faith. The New Testament itself, when it wanted to quote the Old Testament, didn't quote it in Hebrew, because the New Testament was writing in Greek to a Greek-speaking audience, and so they translated or used the existing translation of the New Testament in Greek. And so right from the beginning, the inspired authors of the New Testament already believed that God's word could be reliably translated into other languages, and did so. Even before that, you had Jews who were reflected in manuscripts we have of the Septuagint, the Dead Sea Scrolls has both Aramaic and Greek fragments, that we can see that even before the time of the New Testament, the Jews had translated the Old Testament scriptures into Greek and Aramaic. And so the common languages that the Jewish people scattered from the land were speaking, they translated into those languages. So translation has been going on since the earliest days of at least the New Testament, and even before that in the pre-New Testament era of the Old Testament. So what's that mean?

How's that help us? Well, very anciently, back when Hebrew and Greek were still, and Koine, ancient Greek, were still living spoken languages, we had translations made into other languages, into Greek and Aramaic, later into Syriac, into Latin, into Armenian, Georgian, Gothic, Slavonic, Sogdian over in the Persian Empire, even beyond the borders of the Roman Empire, or Ethiopic, again beyond the borders of the Roman Empire. So across political lines, across cultures, across regions, the word of God was being spread through translation. That's valuable to us, because if we want to know for sure, are we rightly understanding what these ancient Greek sentences and words mean? Do our modern scholars looking at the Greek really know what it means? We can look at these ancient translations made by people who spoke that ancient Greek language, and we can compare and see, yes, what they translated into Latin as, what they translated it into Syriac as.

We can look and see, that means what we understand the Greek to mean. Comparing with those ancient translations gives us a richer confidence that we do know what the ancient Koine Greek of the New Testament, what the ancient Hebrew of the Old Testament actually mean. And so this very early widespread practice of translating the scriptures helps us to have confidence that we can accurately translate from those languages.

It's extremely helpful in boosting our confidence. But what's more, the existence of many modern English translations, far from the common accusation that that causes nothing but confusion, that actually boosts our confidence because it would be one thing if each English translation said something completely different. If that were the case, then yes, we'd have to wonder who's translating it. But when you read the NASB, and then you read the ESV, what you will find is that it is saying the same thing in different words. Then you pick up the NIV, or the NKJV, or the old KJV, and you'll find that in almost every word and phrase, it's translating it to mean the same thing, just using different English words to reflect it. The rare instances where that's not the case, there's almost always a footnote acknowledging the other possible translation. No one's trying to manipulate or hide anything. The scholars are admitting, okay, this could be translated this way or this way, and we're going to show you both. These are the options. There's not another one. We know the words are vague enough they could mean this or this. And in many of those instances, it's simply the identity of a particular gemstone or a particular animal, that it's hard to know for sure what the ancient Hebrew writer meant by that word.

And so when we look at that, even the minor exceptions prove the rule that this multitude of translations only strengthens our confidence that when we look at the Bible in our hands in English today, we can trust that what we have there is the Word of God. So we'll come back and talk about more of this after the break or take your call. Please call in at 877-207-2276.

Lines are open. We'll be back with you right after this break. Welcome back to Matt Flick Live. This is Luke Wayne filling in for Matt while he is traveling on ministry, actually heading down this way. He's going to be here with me this weekend down in Utah, where we're going to be hit the sidewalk sharing the Gospel with the community, especially outside Saturday and Sunday, the Hare Krishna Color Festival down in Spanish Fork. Look forward to it every year to go down there, hand out tracts, and share the Gospel with anyone willing to stop and talk. So we're going to be out there this weekend.

We'd ask you guys to be praying for us. And if any of you guys would like to meet us and the CARMS staff this weekend, if you're in the Utah area or can easily travel here tomorrow evening, that's Saturday, March 25th of 2022, in case you're listening to this on a later recording. But tomorrow evening at 6.30pm at Calvary City on a Hill in Provo, Utah. We're going to be meeting there. It's not going to be a formal seminar.

You're not going to be sitting through any teaching or lecturing from us. It's more casual get-together, a time of fellowship. Dinner will be provided, and we'd love for you guys to come out and meet Matt and put up with me and some of the other volunteers and people who are involved with CARMS. So we'd love that chance to spend some time with you guys if you are available and interested.

We look forward to seeing you guys there. Now that said, let's jump right to the phones if you'd like to get on. Don't forget you can call in.

Lines are open at 877-207-2276. We'd love to answer your questions, but let's go to Laura in Utah. Laura, you are on the air. Hello. Can you hear me, Luke? Yes, I can. How are you doing today, Laura?

I am doing well. Thank you so much for jumping in and filling in. And Matt said while he's traveling down here, it's going to be great to see him again. Exactly. But my question is, now the Mormons, the LDS, they do baptism for the deaf, and they take that verse out of context. What I'm curious about is, so it's in their own Book of Mormon in Alma, 34, I think it's verses 32 through 35, it says something totally different about when you die, you're done. How do we witness to Mormons about this when this gets brought up?

What is a good thing to be able to talk to them about? Yeah, I've found with LDS that I meet in the street out here in Utah, when you bring up those conflicts, between the Book of Mormon and the later teaching that developed in the LDS Church. And there certainly are plenty of such conflicts. But when you bring those up, which is certainly worth doing, planting that seed for consideration, showing that, oddly enough, in some cases, the Book of Mormon agrees with me more than you. But typically, those things are simply reinterpreted or downplayed. But it can be a helpful extra tool of, hey, pointing out, look, even the Book of Mormon shows that what you believe on this would disagree with what you would say on the nature of God, as you're saying, the nature of the afterlife, that final judgment, the fiery torments of hell, are clearly taught in the Book of Mormon. And so there can be value in pointing those things. I've personally never found it to be a major persuasive thing with any of the individuals I've met, but Mormons are individual humans, all each with their own perspectives, and it's worth bringing that out. So I do think that there's value in raising it as part of the point. But then, of course, we want to go to 1 Corinthians 15 itself, where they're getting that.

And hold on, my program is freezing here, so I'm turning there now. But the context there in 1 Corinthians 15, which is so important to have in mind, it's dealing with the fact that there are false teachers who have come in who are denying the resurrection. And so Paul is attempting to affirm, not denying Jesus' resurrection, but denying the future resurrection of Christian believers today, or in Paul's day, at that time. And so we're saying, there is no future resurrection. When you die, your body will not be raised, and Paul is refuting that in various ways, showing how their teaching doesn't hold up. And so, now if Christ is preached that He has been raised from the dead, how do some among you say there is no resurrection from the dead?

So that's who he's challenging, but there are some who say this. And as you move through the passage, Paul will go on to say, moreover, we are even found to be false witnesses of God if that teaching is true. So there's a we, Paul and those who are preaching, and if Christ has not been raised, your faith is worthless. So Paul is writing, there's a we, and there's a you. And those are the pronouns that he's using, Paul and his audience that he's writing to. Now, if Christ has been raised from the dead, the firstfruits, those who are asleep, for since by one man came death, by a man also came the resurrection of the dead.

Again, the topic hasn't changed. He continues to walk through all of this, talks about putting all things under subjection, under his feet. When all things, verse 28, are subjected to him, then the Son himself will also be subjected to the one who subjected all things to him, so that God may be all in all. Then we get to the strange phrase to our modern ears, otherwise, what will those do who are baptized for the dead, if the dead are not raised, why then are they baptized for them?

Why are we also in danger every hour? So we are facing persecution for preaching the resurrection of Christ. We are willing to die for our faith, knowing we're going to rise again. But they are baptizing for the dead. Now, who are the they here? It's not Paul. It's not Paul. It's not Paul and his group. It's not the whole church at Corinth.

It's not you. Why are you baptizing for the dead? It's why are they baptizing for the dead? When you follow the context, the idea that Paul and the Corinthian church as a whole are baptizing for the dead is not a possible interpretation of this. What's clearly going on here is that there is a they, there is a separate group, and in context seems to be the heretical group, the false teachers, and he's showing the contradiction in their own false teaching and their own false practices. Their own false practices don't add up with their own false teachings, and so he's showing their contradiction. They are baptizing for the dead, and that doesn't make any sense with what they're teaching. We are suffering for our faith, and that doesn't make sense with this false teaching. And so, I hope that answers your question, Laura.

That does. If you don't have another call, I'd like to hang on. Okay, stay with me then, and all of you guys stay with me. Call in yourselves at 877-207-2276, and we will be right back. Welcome back to Matt Slick Live.

This is not Matt Slick. I'm Luke Wayne, a colleague of Matt's at the Christian Apologetics Research Ministry, CARM.org, and I'm filling in for Matt for the last couple days while Matt has been traveling on ministries, actually heading this way to spend the weekend out with me and some brothers on the sidewalk sharing the Gospel at the Harry Krishna Festival in Spanish Fork this weekend. So please be praying for us, that God would give us open conversations with people willing to listen, and an opportunity to cheerfully share the good news of Jesus Christ. And while Matt's in town, we'd love a chance to meet you guys, the listeners of this show, in the Utah area. So if you are near Provo, Utah, or able to get that way, Saturday night, tomorrow evening, March 25th, we are going to be gathering at 630 p.m. at Calvary City on a Hill in Provo, Utah. Dinner will be provided there, and this won't be a formal seminar or conference or teaching situation. This is going to be a more informal, casual gathering, a chance to fellowship together, and for us to get to know some of you, our listeners, and for you to get to know the CARM staff and volunteers. And so we would be excited to see any of you guys who can make it. Again, that's 630 p.m. at Calvary City on a Hill in Provo, Utah. So we are eager to meet you guys then. Well, phone lines are open. You can reach us at 877-207-2276 right now with your questions, and let's get back to Laura from Utah. Laura, you are on the air.

Hello. So, since I was talking about the LDS, and we can see that they take a verse and they don't take things in context, and it's hard to talk to them that way. For us who, especially us here in Utah, that Mormon religion is worldwide, how do we witness to them when they don't take things in context?

They just take that one verse. What is some good things to help us as we are trying to witness to them? Oh, that is a fantastic question. And first of all, the fact that things are often taken out of context, I want to still reassure people, don't let that make you hesitate to still open up and quote from your Bible and let the Word of God speak, because the Word of God will speak. And so we still open up and share from the Word, and that is first and foremost what to do. Sharing the Gospel with an LDS person begins, and at its core, is like sharing the Gospel with any person. We do want to open up the Word of God and share what it says. Now, that said, I'm not going to sidestep your question. I do have some specific tips on at least how I go about it.

There's no magic formula. Every Latter-day Saint is an individual person who's coming from their own background, their own experience, their own way of thinking about things, and there's no magic bullet, this is the way you share. But there are some things I found helpful in getting the Gospel across. And so first of all, I like to go to the very words of Jesus himself, and specifically on what Jesus said on how we attain eternal life. There are a lot of great verses on how to be saved, but in traditional Mormon vocabulary, saved can be a very general term that means bodily resurrection to any eternal destination. Any of their three kingdoms of heaven, or some would even say going to outer darkness, is you're saved because you have a physical body. You got raised to the dead in a physical body, you're saved, even though you're suffering in outer darkness.

So the word saved can trip up, can lead to a break in communication. And so I prefer to go to verses that use the word eternal life, because in traditional Mormon vocabulary, traditional LDS vocabulary, the term eternal life refers to getting to live and progress forever in celestial glory in the presence of Heavenly Father. And so it's the closest parallel to the actual biblical idea of getting all that God offers us in genuine salvation, and the eternal life that he gives us in Jesus Christ. So I like to go to verses that are about eternal life, and specifically I like to go to the words of Jesus, because while every word of Scripture is equally inspired, conversationally it can be helpful to say, look, I can tell you how I think we get eternal life, you can tell me how you think you can get eternal life, but I think we can both agree, sincerely, this isn't a game or a strategy, I think we can both agree, what Jesus says about how we get eternal life is, you can't go against that. However he says we get eternal life, that's how we get eternal life.

And so then I will walk through examples of this. Some of my favorites are John 3, 14-17. As Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, even so must the Son of Man be lifted up so that whoever believes will in him have eternal life. So he begins, verse 14, with a pointing back to an Old Testament example when Israel was under judgment, and the symbol of their suffering, they were being bit by these venomous snakes, and suffering this tormenting death to the venom of these snakes, and so an image of their suffering, an image of the serpent was made, and if they trusted God enough to just look at it, just look, God would deliver them and take that punishment away. And so in that comparison, in the same way, it says just as anyone who looked at the serpent was delivered from judgment, whoever believes in him will have eternal life. He continues, for God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten Son that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life. God did not send his Son into the world to judge the world, but that the world might be saved through him. He who believes in him is not judged. He who does not believe is judged already because he has not believed in the name of the only begotten Son of God. So throughout this passage, there is a drumbeat that there is all who believe are going to receive this eternal life, and all who do not believe will not receive it. This doesn't go to everybody, it goes only to those who believe, and it goes to all of those who believe. Not some of those who believe who are also baptized and fulfill their temple ordinances and obey the commandments, and on and on and on and on. It is all of those who believe will receive this, and all of those who do not believe will not receive it, but instead will be judged.

Does that make sense? Yes, but then they all say, well, we believe in the same Jesus. Oh, absolutely. And so I'll drive that home by showing John 5, 24, 640, 647, 11, 25-20, again and again, there's this idea that all who believe. And so some will push back at this point, well, you have to be baptized, you have to be this. Okay, that's not what Jesus says. But you're right, the other pushback you'll get is, well, we believe we just also do these works, so on what you're saying, won't we be saved too? So you're absolutely right, that's the pushback, and that's where we have to let the New Testament define the kind of belief it's talking about. And so Romans 4, 4-5, now to the one who works, his wage is not credited as a gift, but as an obligation, as what is due. But to the one who does not work, but believes in him who justifies the ungodly, his faith is credited as righteousness. So when Jesus is talking about this belief, his apostles, his appointed sit ones, explain to us exactly what that belief is. And the type of belief that's credited as righteousness is one that trusts fully and completely in what Jesus did, and does not attempt to add our works, that doesn't say, okay, what Jesus did got me started, but I also have to. Once you add your works to it, it's no longer the kind of faith that Jesus is talking about.

The one who works, his wage is not credited as a gift, but as an obligation. The moment you say, and what I do, my obedience to the commandments, my temple worthiness, my baptism, my ordinances, finish what Jesus started, and I know most LDS would not like that wording, but the fact of the matter is, if my faith in Christ is not enough to receive all that he has, and in fact, if I don't fulfill all those things in this life when I die, someone else has to go in a temple and do it for me, because what Jesus did isn't enough, and Jesus plus my work still isn't enough. Jesus plus my works plus what the Church does on my behalf. That's not faith. You're not trusting in what Jesus did.

You're not relying on his finished work. Amen. Thank you, Luke.

Does that answer your question, or do you want to... Okay. No, that's good. Thank you so much. Okay, no problem. Hopefully that helps everybody. All right. I hope so, and you too, you too.

All right. Phone lines are open, 877-207-2276, and we'll be right back after this break. It's Matt Slick live, taking your calls at 877-207-2276. Here's Matt Slick. Welcome back to the show.

This is not Matt Slick. I am Luke Wayne, a colleague of Matt's at the Christian Apologetics and Research Ministry, filling in for Matt while he is traveling on ministry, doing some mission work, including this weekend he will be joining me here in Utah, where we're going to be hitting the sidewalk, sharing the Gospel with people in the community, and definitely would encourage you to pray for us as we're out there, that God would open hearts and minds that we would be able to have good conversations, free from troublemakers and able to just genuinely openly share with people and have them hear the Gospel, and to hear from them what they're saying, have open dialogue, and ultimately proclaim salvation and the perfect finished work of Jesus Christ. So be praying for us on that, and if you would like to meet Matt Slick and myself and others who are involved in CARM, if you're in the Utah area or able to reach Provo, Utah, we're going to be having an informal casual fellowship and get-together where you can meet the people at CARM. We're going to be gathering tomorrow, that's Saturday, March 25th, going to be meeting at 6.30pm at Calvary City on a Hill, that's a church in Provo, Utah. The address there is 105 East 100 North, and dinner will be provided, it'll just be a good time to get-together and fellowship, spend some time getting to know you, the listeners of this show, and those who benefit from our ministry or interact with our ministry, and for you to get to know us, the people behind CARM and behind the Matt Slick live show.

So we would love for you guys to come out and join us. That said, we're going to be turning back to the phones now. You can get online at 877-207-2276, and let's turn to Rachel in North Carolina. Rachel, you are on the air. Good afternoon, how are you?

I'm doing wonderful, Rachel. Good. I would like, please, for you to address the Scripture. I don't have an infamous meaning, if I misquoted, forgive me, to bring up a child in the way he should go, and when he is old he shall not stray, and I'm going to hang up and listen.

Okay. I will be happy to turn to that proverb. So, yeah, this is a very commonly quoted proverb. Unfortunately, as wonderful as this proverb is, it is sadly one of only a few proverbs that the average Bible reader is familiar with. The book of Proverbs is a wonderful, rich treasure trove of God's revealed wisdom, and we would all do ourselves a favor to spend more time reading all the proverbs and what they have to say. But this one in Proverbs 22.6, which says, Train up a child in the way he should go, even when he is old he will not depart from it. So this is often, on the one hand, we can exaggerate what this is saying.

On the other hand, we can downplay too much what this is saying. So we do have to remember that this is a proverb, and a proverb by itself is a simple, memorable statement of wisdom that reflects how life generally works. It is not a prophecy, or a promise, or a law. It is a wise statement that helps us understand the world as it typically works.

And there are other books that wrestle with some of the exceptions. So there will be proverbs that talk about the way that God will prosper those who obey and follow his ways, and then Job and Ecclesiastes will wrestle with those times when those who are following God's ways nevertheless find themselves in difficult, tragic, suffering, agonizing situations. And so that doesn't make the proverb wrong, it makes the proverb a proverb. And so even within the Book of Proverbs, there are different proverbs on the same subject that we have to put together to see the larger picture. And that's what the Book of Proverbs is meant to do, is for us to learn not a proverb, but all the proverbs, and to look at them together to get a more holistic picture on each of the topics that it talks about, whether it be money and generosity or sexuality and marriage and adultery, or in this case, in parenting. And the proverbs do have a lot to say about parenting, and this is one of them. And it is a wise and true thing to know that when you train up a child in the way he should go, that it is generally most often true that even when he is old, he will not depart from it. Now what this proverb doesn't answer by itself, if we take it on its own, is, what is the way a child should go?

Well, this proverb by itself isn't meant to answer that. It is a statement that's meant to be taken in the context of the rest of the Book of Proverbs and the rest of Scripture as a whole, that teaches us what godly parenting looks like, but that we are to, as Paul would say, to raise up our children in the teaching and admonition of the Lord, that we are to instruct our children in the ways of God, that we are to teach each child to be the man or woman that God has made them to be. And it is generally true that a child who is raised faithfully will go on to live faithfully, will go on to live out the morality and the teachings and the wisdom that they were raised in. And so, again, this isn't a prophecy that everyone who does this absolutely will in every instance never have a child who disobeys it. But it is a statement of God's wisdom about how life generally works, and we parents should reap this and take it as a challenge that, look, I really do need to put the effort into raising my children right, because that will lead to children growing up to behave and act, and Lord willing, if the Spirit regenerates their heart even inwardly, but he believes the things of God, and to walk that out. And we do have a part in that.

God has chosen parents as the means for raising the children up in godliness. And so it is a wise statement for us to remember that what we do in the younger years, when the children are under our charge, will have impacts on the rest of their lives, all through their adulthood. And if we squander that, that's going to have a major negative impact on our children. But if we take advantage of it, it will have a major positive impact. And, you know, as we're speaking on this, before I jump to the next call, and I really want to emphasize, especially in a nation plagued by absentee fathers, when a man desires a child and then chooses to walk away and not be there for that, your failure even in absence to be there to train up that child, does a violence to that child's life that you cannot possibly grasp and understand.

You have no idea the damage you're doing. Repent and turn from that. Even if it's later in that child's life, turn and invest in that child's life.

We have a duty, but it's a privilege as well, because those seeds we plant will blossom in that child's life and make a difference, an impact. All right, so that said, I would love to just continue preaching on the book of Proverbs, and anyone else who has questions about Proverbs, please call back in 877-207-2276. But we got a call from Jose in North Carolina, and I'm excited to see what his question is here. So Jose, you are on the air. Hello, brother. Can you hear me okay? I can hear you just fine.

Great. I heard you mention that, by the way, I just popped into the show and I had to call, because I heard you mention that you were going over to Utah, and that reminded me of something that's kind of been nagging at me for a bit, because I had run away from a church that insisted that they were the only ones that had the authority to preach the Gospel. And it was unfortunate, because, long story short, it spooked me.

It really did. And lately I have been trying to get back into church, and I have just not found the correct place, because they're spearheaded by women who are the ecclesiastical leaders in these places. I don't know, big coincidence there. And so my question is, on the authority to preach the Gospel, I know it's for men to be the deacons and the elders, but can you speak a little more on this, please? Absolutely. So if you're talking about preaching in the context of the gathering of the church, so preaching the word to the church as a pastor, as an elder, that role of public proclamation to the body has been given to men. Because you said this in the context of the ministry we're going to be doing proclaiming the Gospel out in Utah, the preaching of the Gospel out on the street, person to person, to an unbeliever, out sharing the good news of Jesus Christ with other people is something that every believer, man and woman, has the responsibility, the authority, the privilege, the honor to do. Scripture does not limit that to specific ecclesiastical roles. Only elders and deacons can share the Gospel with people, or even to be a specifically masculine role of sharing the Gospel. We have, for example, with Apollos in the book of Acts, Priscilla and Aquila, both husband and wife, when he came preaching as a former disciple of John the Baptist, who knew something of Jesus and the Gospel, but had not received the full fulfilled Gospel after his death and resurrection and everything that had come. So he came preaching true but incomplete things, and they both pulled him aside, and it says they both shared more completely the finished work of Jesus. And so that's a case where we see a man and a woman both, and who have no official authority in the Church whatsoever, no position, no status, but sharing the Gospel with this open person in the community, and sharing that truth of Jesus Christ with him. So there's certainly, when it comes to sharing the Gospel with unbelievers, person to person, that's something that we all can, should, and get to rejoice at the ability to do. Well, Jose, I'm sorry, I'd love to talk with you more. That's the end of Callback Monday, and we can talk more on this subject. I'd really like to help you find a good church, and to understand this issue more. Thank you guys, you have a wonderful weekend, and we will see you on Monday.