Matt Slick Live

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All right, all right. If you have not been to karm.org, please check it out. It's the Christian Apologetics Research Ministry. For those of you who haven't been there, you're listening, you should check it out.

It's a site I've been working on for over 26 years and from the early days of the Internet. I have this habit of writing directly and to the point. One of the things that drives me crazy, you go to the web and you type in, what is the Trinity? You find some website and it goes in, the Trinity's history is blah, blah, blah. It's like, well, I didn't ask that, you know, what's the Trinity?

And what I do is I just, you know, the Trinity is. It's right from the very beginning so you can get your answers quick and slick. And then if you want to continue reading for more information, you can.

If you don't, you don't have to. And that's one of the advantages of the KARM website. We have all kinds of topics we've covered and we've really gotten into a great deal of stuff.

A great deal. We have stuff on the New Apostolic Reformation. We've had stuff on positive confession. We have stuff on atheism, Mormonism, Jehovah's Witnesses, Christian Science, Unity Baha'i, Islam and all kinds of things. In fact, one of the things we'll do is, quote, NAR teachers.

NAR, New Apostolic Reformation, we'll quote them on what they teach, what they say, varying quotes that are problematic. I've done that before. Maybe I'll do it again. But I'll tell you, there's some stuff out there that they're saying. It is just bizarre. It is bizarre, some of the things that they are saying.

So maybe I'll just do that. Maybe I'll read some of the stuff, give you guys something to think about while you give me a call. Not a big deal. But the New Apostolic Reformation is something that started in the 70s where a couple of guys had some, so to speak, visions. And where God told two different men about the seven mountain issue, the seven pillars of society. And so what the point is, is that the Christians are supposed to take over these varying aspects of the seven mountains.

All right. Well, they affirm the idea of apostles and prophets for today. And I've been researching that, and they are on weak exegetical ground. There are some serious problems.

I'll be collecting more information and writing some more articles on this. But it's not good. And so the things that they're affirming is that without the apostles and prophets, the church presently has no foundation. What they're saying is that apostles and prophets are for today. Now, I know that there are a lot of people today who call themselves apostles, and they call themselves prophets.

I am prophet so-and-so. I am apostle so-and-so. Whenever I hear that, I cringe because I don't see any present justification in Scripture for the idea that someone can claim to be an apostle or a prophet. Now, the apostles in the apostolic office was given to the twelve, and there were different kinds of apostles in the early church. But the main apostolic weight fell upon the twelve disciples, the twelve apostles.

And that office is obviously gone. The word apostolo means to send, and so the sent ones are sent by God. And like I said, there are different kinds of apostles. Are there present apostles today? Well, one of the qualifications in 1 Corinthians 9 to 1 of being an apostle is having seen the risen Lord. And I don't know of these guys saying they've seen the risen Lord.

Now, I need to kind of back up and correct it a little bit because I have read in some instances in their writings where they have visions of Jesus. And they'll say that, you know, I was talking to Jesus, or Jesus told me. And they'll be up in front of a group of people saying, yeah, you know, in a vision that God gave me, I went to the third heaven and I saw Jesus. And let me tell you what he said. And people just sit there like, ooh, wow, I went to the third heaven and saw Jesus on the throne. Well, what did he say?

I don't put any credence in stuff like that because of the cavalier manner in which they delivered the information. Yeah, you know, I was with Jesus in the third heaven. If I were to see my risen Lord, if he were to condescend, and I mean condescend, to appear to me, I would be a man undone. And if and when I was in a place where I needed to speak about it, I would still myself. I would be hesitant to speak because it would be to represent the very presence of the Almighty. And when we look at the Old Testament appearances of God, the people who were face to face with God were humbled.

And they did not want to be in his presence because it was so great. But what we see in the apostolic reformation is, hey, you know, people talking to Jesus, having visions of Jesus, and then they just casually talk about it. This is what Jesus told me. I don't put any credence in them because they don't have, in my opinion, a stamp of authenticity which is dealing with anyone having actually accessed the true and living God. Now one of the things they often do is say that the miracles are for today, because if we're having apostles and prophets today, then the sign gifts, the extraordinary gifts, are raising people from the dead, having prophetic utterances, words of knowledge, whatever it might be, that these are all for today. Now personally I believe in all the charismatic gifts, but I don't believe they're normative.

I believe they're still available as a whole to the body of Christ. And upon the right circumstances, God will move. Not that someone or some individual has the office of being a prophet, and therefore they can speak for God. You know, I don't believe in that. But I believe people can prophesy. As it says in 1 Corinthians 14, 1, seek spiritual gifts, but specially you may prophesy.

That's what it says. So I prayed for that. I started praying for that recently. I'm not saying it's going to happen, but hey, the Bible says seek it, so I'll seek it. If God wants to give it to me, great. If he doesn't, that's okay. But what they do is they believe in the prophetic and the miraculous.

All right. I don't personally have a problem with that. I don't believe it's exegetically unsound. Now there's a lot of damage that can be done with something like that. But what they do is they will then start saying that with their apostolic or prophetic offices, which the Bible doesn't say those are offices for today.

It does not. But they will claim them for themselves, and then they will pronounce doctrines, and they'll say they're not supposed to be new doctrines, but they very often are, and that the miraculous will occur. And they say things that tickle the ears. They will mention how God's going to be doing great things. God's going to do wonderful things in your life. He's going to do wonderful things in the church. In fact, the Christian church will be so victorious, so victorious that we're going to usher in the kingdom of God.

And people want to hear this. They don't want to hear the message that I have to say, but according to what Jesus said, things are going to get worse. Flee to the hills. Prepare yourself. Before he returns, Luke 18, 8, he asks, will he find the faith? Will he find it?

He asks. And he talks about Matthew 24, the return of himself, about problems that arise and famines and persecution and coldness of heart. This is what I see scripture teaching. I also see it teaching, for the time will come when they will not endure sound doctrine, but wanting to have their ears tickled, they'll accumulate for themselves teachers in accordance with their own desires. And they will turn away their ears from the truth that will turn aside to myths. I think this applies to a lot of the new apostolic reformation. It's not to say there isn't any good in there, because there is. I've actually read through some of the books, written by some of the stuff, the people, and that's good, that ministers to me, but I've got to be honest.

But you see, as the Bible says, a little leaven leavens the whole lump. When they start teaching these things that are good, and then they throw in something about apostolic rule and the authority that the offices are still there and that they direct the church, that's a problem. That's what Mormonism teaches. It has a present-day prophet. That's what the Jehovah's Witness teaches as a present-day prophet. And so, when we look at these things, we see false religious systems proclaim that they have a single head, which reminds me of Roman Catholicism and the pope. They have their representative who then proclaims the things of God.

This is a formula for error, for heresy. If the scriptures themselves are not the final authority, but you have prophets and apostles, then you have a problem. I have not seen or read in any of my research in the New Apostolic Reformation, I've not seen or read where any of the authors, or anything I've heard, if you're watching videos, I've not seen one of them say, let's take this ideal revelation, whatever it might be, this word that's supposedly from God, and let's critically examine it to the final authority of scripture. I've not seen that happen. What I do see happen is the scriptures support their position, and then they're not to say anything in contradiction to scripture, and then just believe them. That's a problem. And they want to release the Holy Spirit. They want to release what God can do in the Holy Spirit. And this is a problem. They are the ones who put themselves in power.

And I don't see much difference in this respect with the Roman Catholic Church, which is authority to do what it wants and release what it wants in power. All right, there's the music. We have five open lines. I want you to give me a call. 877-207-2276. We'll be right back. Be safe. It's Matt Slick live, taking your calls at 877-207-2276.

Here's Matt Slick. All right, everyone, welcome back to the show. For some strange reason, we don't have any callers right now. We've got one person coming in, but it's a slow day.

That happens sometimes. Give me a call, 877-207-2276. I do want to talk about something else after we get to this caller. Let's get on here with Laura from Utah. Laura, welcome here on the air. Well, hello.

Hey, Laura. I figured I would call in and talk about how much fun it is working for CARM. Well, you know, we did talk about that, or I did mention people who call in who do work with CARM.

They can tell us they want to do that and call in and say, this is what it's like. Because I don't know, if you want to, go ahead. The mic's yours. Well, I figured we needed a caller.

Well, can you get closer to the mic? Okay. How's that? Better? A little bit better. Okay. Go ahead.

My name is Laura. I've been working with CARM, well, since maybe for a couple of years now. I do all the SEO and help field with schools. What's SEO? What's SEO? SEO is search engine optimization.

That is so everybody, all the browsers, the search engines can find our articles that Matt has so wonderfully wrote that I only have to edit every once in a while. Well, good. And you use tools, I know, to do that, so that's good.

You know, we have Grammarly and things like that. Yep. Well, good, good, good. Yes, it is really good. Do I treat you okay?

You do. It is such a blessing to work on the team, and it's really filled my life. I love to do ministries, and this has just been a true blessing for me.

I'm disabled, so I have the time, but there is very much spiritual attacks that happen, so everybody needs to be aware of that. That's for sure. But there's victory in Christ.

He's already won. That's right. So I know you enjoy doing stuff, and you and Charlie work together, and you help out in the SEO, the search engine optimization stuff, and also in the social media area. You guys do a lot together. Oh, yeah, I forgot about that. It just seems like my life is CARM.

You're not the only one who said that. Your predecessor, she lived for CARM, basically. Diane, she was a great woman. She passed away, and it looks like the Lord has raised you up to help out, too. So, you know, no big deal, but we got to meet in Salt Lake. We've met a couple of times now, haven't we?

Yes, we have. And it wasn't too traumatizing? It wasn't so bad. You were nice in person.

Yeah, that's right. People are afraid of you. They go, I don't want to meet you. You're scary. That's why I've had ladies say that to me. You're scary. I don't want to meet you. But I'm a nice guy.

And then they go, yeah, you're right. You are a nice guy. So that's good. You really are. And, yeah, actually, I can just say for all of you who watch on social media during a live show, Matt actually is skinnier and taller than you would think. Really?

That's not something I would have thought you would have said. So, yeah, skinnier and taller, okay. I guess the camera adds a few pounds, doesn't it? All right.

It does. I was surprised. They saw you, and I was like, oh, dang.

Yeah, you don't look, yeah, you look a lot skinnier. Anyway, I was just going to say. But I'd add that in and make you laugh. Well, let me ask you this. Let me ask you this. Is it my humor come through when we met and stuff?

You know, because people don't know. I have a lot of fun, usually at other people's expense, but that's okay. Oh, you do. You do.

And you don't relent from bothering me either. That's right. Well, good. I'm glad.

But you're still there. That's good stuff. You do a lot of good work. We appreciate it. We really do.

And I appreciate being able to, like I said, work for you, work for the team. And if that didn't scare you all out there, email Matt at info at calm dot org, because we've got a lot of needs. Yeah, we do. I'm actually developing a list of things that we need, but they're kind of esoteric. We need some people with some specific abilities or willing to learn a few things. Like, for example, one of the things is how to work AdSense from Google and then manage it, because it's going to take a lot of work if we implement it.

We've got to do that. So one of the things we want to do for the website, but there's just a lot of stuff. And I'm editing a book and I plan to write another one, and then writing articles, doing research on the NAR, doing impromptu debates, doing outlines. I'll be teaching tonight on the Trinity, and I'm adding three, four, five pages to the outline. So it'll be about 25 pages that I'm going to hand the group tonight and say, here's the final product, here's everything. And I've got concepts and ideas and scriptures and categories and everything listed out. It takes a lot of work.

No complaints. It's just what I do. And so I'm always busy, always working. Is today the last Trinity Bible study?

Yep. But what I want to do next week, I'm going to tell them, is I want them to, we're going to review it next week. So I'm going to hand them all this information and say, review it, and then come next week and we're going to just talk about the Trinity and what you've learned.

And I want people to articulate what they've learned, because I gave them an awful lot of information. Not that I want them to remember every detail, but there are some pretty sophisticated concepts that came along with the doctrine of the Trinity, and I want to get through some of these things to see what people think. And then I want to do something similar with the person of Jesus. So I started working on, I call it a paragraph, on the person of Jesus, just like I did a paragraph on the Trinity, and it was 500 words. Tonight we'll go through the final, fifth segment of that, but I want to do something on the Trinity as well. I mean, it's going to be on the deity of Christ, with the hypostatic union and communicatio idiomatum, and the heirs of eutychianism and monophysitism and the dietheletism, and representation, presentation, federal headship, imputation, penal substitutionary atonement, all kinds of stuff get into things, and the eternal covenant nature of which he is a part.

And there's all kinds of stuff to talk about with respect to Christ. So there you go. Yes, there is.

Yes, there is. Well, sweet. Well, I will let you get to other callers.

I just thought I would call in and spread the good news. All right, Laura. Well, thanks a lot. Well, God bless. Okay. All right, let's get to another person who works with Karm, Joanne from North Carolina.

Joanne, welcome. You're on the air. Hey, I just thought that I'd call and talk about the prayer team. Okay, because I know that you're the one who runs the prayer team on Karm. Yeah. So tell us about it.

Sure. First of all, I want to be sure that everybody understands that it's a privilege and an honor to pray with them. And I want to tell them that they don't need to worry about anything not being confidential it is.

Their emails don't go out to others. I do have several that respond to them and I always send those comments to the people that have requested the prayer. But we really have prayer warriors on the team right now, including me.

There's 18. And it's just a blessing. The address, of course, is prayeratkarm.org and I've already done it today because... Can you hold on, Joanne? We've got a break. Oh. We've got a break and we'll get back to you. All right. So hold on.

And then we have, actually, Charlie on the line as well pretty soon. Let's get back. Oh, I hung up on her.

Joanne, sorry. I hung up, called back. Hey, folks, 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. All right. Welcome back to the show, bottom of the hour.

Okay, Joanne. Glad for calling back. Actually, I hung up on you. You hung up on me. Yes, I did accidentally.

Don't do it very often, but I actually hang up on people sometimes. But it would be me. It's okay. So you were talking about the prayer chain and you got people who pray. How many people are there now on the prayer team?

Including me, there's 18. And I got an email recently from a man in another country who said that he was interested and I told him to please pray about it. And after he had prayed that there's questions from Carm that people are vetted. And so, you know, I always say, take your time. I feel like you need to take your time and pray. And so he may get back with us and he may not. But anybody is invited that, you know, to let me know and to go through the vetting process.

After they've prayed, I prayed a long time before taking it. And there is truth into you will be attacked when you're in a serving position. You know, attacks do come. Yeah, it's true, but it's worth it and people survive. It is. It is.

And my computer broke and then we were gifted with a new one. So there's been more blessings than attacks. That's right. And there's no prayer request that is too small or too large. I don't want to cry for our Lord.

That's right. I feel so weak when I cry. But when I talk about the Lord, I do. Nothing is too big or too small for our Lord to do.

And we want him to have his will. And so everybody is, anybody who feels red, please pray about it and email me at prayer at darkprayer.com.org. And I'll send you the vetting questions and then Matt, of course, Flick, not my Matt, has the final say-so after prayer and discernment, I'm sure.

Any questions? A lot of people are volunteering. A lot of people are praying. And we want to minister to the body of Christ and help people come to Christ and stuff like that. And so you're perfect for that. And it works out nicely. Thank you. So there you go. Thank you. All right.

And I did try another job that I got fired at corn. Yeah. Well, yes, some people are gifted in some areas and not in others. And that's all right. You do it well in the prayer thing.

That's right. Praise God. Well, God bless.

And I've already done the prayer request for today because we're having bad weather. And I was afraid we were going to lose power. But I don't know if you've seen where one of the teachers that was killed in the Texas shooting, her husband passed away today from a heart attack. And they've left behind four children.

And Bill cannot say that he had heard there between the ages of seven and eleven. So that we really need to be praying about so much. There's so much to pray for. I mean, we could pray 24 seven and still not get it all said.

Yep. My wife and I pray each night before we go to bed. And last night prayed and lifted up this country and asked for a revival to come through. As these tragedies occur, they want to take away our rights.

But no one ever looks at the issue of the heart. Fifty years ago, people had guns and more guns than now. And they weren't these school shootings.

What's changed? It's not the guns. It's the people. And they ignore that fact. Well, a gun can't kill somebody if it's lying on the table.

That's right. Bad people are the ones who use it. The leftists say, well, we take away the weapons. Well, it just so happens that there's more killings with hammers than there are guns.

And more people are saved by guns than are killed by them. But none of this- The people that- Mm-hmm. I'm sorry. That's all right.

It's the lag. I'm not talking over you. It's all right. It's okay.

The people who are the evil ones, they're going to get a weapon if they want it. That's right. So I don't think that banning guns is the answer, but that's just my opinion.

I didn't call to give my opinion. Yeah. That's all right. It's just that family needs all the families. I mean, can you imagine? It's horrible. You know, that's my granddaughter's age, those children that were killed. Yeah.

And I just praise God that she's homeschooled and she gets to go to bed at night at home. Yeah. You know?

Mm-hmm. And I'm seeing so much on Facebook, people saying all these little angels. And I don't say anything, but they aren't angels.

They're little precious children who have lost their lives. But, you know. Yeah. Well, that's stuff to pray about. And we pray for those people.

And my wife and I prayed for the surviving victims and the families of the victims. Yes, sir. Yeah.

You know there'd be PTSD. You know. Oh, yeah. Their whole lives are affected from here on. Yes.

Yep. But God, only God can get people through this. Only God can get, well, I sound like Pearl. Amen. Only God can get us through anything. That's right. Yeah, that's why we need to pray.

But God, I deserve help. You know? Mm-hmm. We all do.

Mm-hmm. So I just praise him and I thank you for letting me be a part of CARN. And I'm thankful that the Lord is using me in some little way. Yeah. And I hope that all the glory goes to him, honor and glory. Amen.

Yeah, I wouldn't call it a little way, but I get what you're saying. So praise God and thanks for being a part of CARN and helping out. Okay. So there you go.

You are certainly welcome. All right. Okay.

Give my love to Ani. Okay. God bless. Thanks.

All right. Now let's just jump over to Charlie from Washington. Hey, Charlie, welcome. You're on the air.

Hey. I'm glad to call in during the show, but I'm even more glad that Laura and Joanne called before me because those two ladies, I'll tell you what, if I get the privilege of shining their shoes in heaven, I'll be happy. Laura helps me when you aren't available to help me with the technical stuff. And if I ever need spiritual refreshment, just a conversation with Joanne will do it every time. She just recharges my batteries for me. So I've been glad they called ahead of me because they are doing some important work that isn't really, we don't, we don't promote or, you know, openly talk about it, but I'll tell you, they're vital and they're a blessing. And I'm so proud to have them as sisters in the faith. So, but for me, I like to do well, I watch for characters that are out of place in our chat during the live streams, characters that are less than polite, you might say, and either need timeouts or need to be banned.

But mostly, I'm happy to say those are few and far in between. And so my work there is, is not to pressure pressure, but I do like to put in topical links when people call in and have a topic, I've got a pretty good hand at the thousands and thousands of topics you've written on. In fact, I've got a couple of cheat sheets that I've shared with Laura to popular topics where there's an article title and, and link that can be popped right in when they're talking about it while you're still on the phone with them. And hopefully people in the chat will see it. Or if somebody is watching the podcast and sees it go into the live chat stream, and if I have a chance, I'll even flash it on the screen.

They can stop and pause their podcast and write down the link and they can go off on their own and open their Bible and study that topic for themselves. So it's a service I try to offer during the stream. And I like to be challenged if people call in more with more questions. I'll tell you what, there's 100 people that never seek to call a radio station to answer, to ask a question, but they'll listen to it for sure. I know I'm that way. I don't like calling in. Just, I like to hang around with you after the show's over and socialize in the stream yard where you invite people to come in and you're not under a radio broadcast time pressure.

You can relax a little bit and take your time with people. So that's enjoyable too. So anyway, I'm... A lot of people don't realize you're the one who got me to apologetics.

You read me that quote from Joseph Smith where he both said he did more than Jesus to keep a church together. That was 42 years ago. And we've been friends ever since. Wow. Isn't that something?

Long time. Well, I'll post a link to the very thing I gave you. That started you out. Go ahead. Okay.

Well, we've got a break. Do you want to hold on a little bit? No.

There's always more. Are you done? No, that's okay. I'll... Bye. Okay. Okay, Charlie. All right. Hey, folks.

You have four open lines. If you want to give me a call, 877-207-2276. Whatever you want to talk about, give me a call. We'll be right back. Welcome, Carrie. You're on the air. Hi. I have a question. I've been kind of fixated on the doctrine of election recently.

And just learning more about it. And it has me wondering if everything is... If the names of the elect are written in the Book of Life before the earth was ever created, what role does our praying have? Why do we bother praying? God ordains the means.

Can we change it? God ordains the means as well as the end. So he wants us to pray for lots of reasons. One, it's a glory to him.

Two, it helps us and it changes us. And three, it's one of the means by which he has proclaimed that he works his will. It's almost like saying he ordains our prayer to influence him from the foundation of the world. There's some toughies there. Can you say that last statement again?

It's like... Can you repeat that? Yeah, it's like saying that God has ordained from the foundation of the world that our prayers influence him. Because the Bible says the prayers of a righteous man accomplish much. Well, that means that they accomplish much with God.

But here's the question. How can they accomplish with God anything if it's already set, so to speak, from eternity? And that's a question we don't know how to answer. We just know that there is an interaction. And when we are in Christ, then our prayers are filtered through Christ to the Father. And because of that, they're, so to speak, purified. And they are through the mediatorship of Christ. So we don't know if, for example, Christ is the one mediating our prayers and then asking the Father more for what he desires to be accomplished because of our prayers.

It gets pretty enigmatic, but these are some of the issues we kind of talk about and wonder. And then we can also say, well, we just don't know all the answers. We just know that the more we pray, the more things are affected. The more we pray, the more people get saved, the more we preach the gospel. And yet, at the same time, all of it is ordained by God after the counsel of his eternal will, Ephesians 1-11. So there's a paradoxical mystery, how it works. And he doesn't tell us, and that's okay. All right. I'm kind, do you have time, is there a caller waiting? No, no there isn't.

Go ahead. I'm kind of disturbed at how few churches will touch the doctrines of election and predestination. It's as if churches are afraid to tell people the truth.

I don't know if that's it, but that's how it appears. Yeah, it is because one of the dangers of teaching this stuff is to upset the congregation, who has a humanistic mindset. And that they don't want to teach often things that are going to be too difficult. Sometimes the pastors really don't believe in election predestination to their fault.

The Bible definitely teaches it, they need to believe it and teach it. That's just what it says, and I'll be glad to debate anybody on these topics. But the thing is that a lot of times the congregation is, it can cause problems because by bringing the issue up you have a whole bunch of other questions they're going to deal with and no disrespect meant to the wonderful men who are pastors and elders, but a lot of times they're just not very trained and learned in those specifics to be able to answer a lot of those questions.

They're not knocking them because they have jobs, they have families, but people like me who can do this full time, it's a different thing. And so I can see why they kind of shy away from some of these things because it can cause problems. But then the question then becomes, do we want to shy away from something because it might cause a problem in the congregation? And the answer is, well, no. Not if it's biblically sound, not if it's biblically taught.

The job of the pastor and the elder is to teach the truth and to refute error. And the Bible clearly teaches God elects and chooses. I don't see how anybody can get around it. It's what it says, I know. And for those of us who are aware of those verses, we're treated like outlaws and black sheep in the church for believing them.

It's ridiculous. Well, trust me, I got acquainted with that. And then I scratch my head. It's like when you're in the minority believing something, you start to question, well, am I wrong to believe it? But we're not.

Well, you know me, we've met before, and I hear him on the radio and stuff like that. You know that when I encounter people who don't agree, I don't just say, oh, they're idiots, they're stupid. I listen to what they have to say, but because I know a lot of scriptures and issues related to these things, my job then becomes, my desire then becomes to educate them and equip them in biblical theology. And there are some people who are doing that in a lot of ways. And we need to, particularly as pastors, teach this stuff. And it needs to be done because it's biblical.

And to move away from it is to adopt humanism. And so when you hear the phrase, like you hear a pastor say, oh, I'm not going to water it down, what do they mean when they say that? Is this one of the topics that, does that apply to this topic?

Yes. There are lots of pastors who will water down predestination, and they'll say things like God looks into the future and he knows who's going to pick him. So he decides to show favor to them based on what he knows. That's watering down the truth. And it becomes a misrepresentation of the truth.

That's one of the ways. Or they'll water down... And that's why... Sorry, go ahead. Let's see, another way they water things down... Oh, I was just going to say, that's... We have a delay.

We have a delay. Go ahead. I was just going to say, I was just going to say, that's why I'm trying a different church, which happens to be right across from where we now live, and it's a Reformed church, and it's almost like God has this red blinking light, you know, carry, go here.

So we're going to give it a shot and we'll see how it is. What church is that? It's, let's see, what is it called, Faith Community Bible Church on Eustick. It's near Eustick and Five Mile. And they're Reformed. I think someone else I know just talked about it, and coincidentally, I was on the phone a few days ago with someone who I hadn't talked to in a while, and they said that's where they were going.

I believe that's where it was. I actually thought about that church. Okay.

So maybe I'll go check it out sometime, too, if they're Reformed, and see what they had to say and do. Yeah. Yeah. Maybe you could pastor there.

I think they only have one head pastor, and it's got a huge gathering. Well... I realize that's probably why. Yeah. Maybe on the spot, maybe.

Yeah. Anybody who would have me as a pastor has got problems, particularly since my last name is Slick. You can't trust me. So there's a lot of problems there, but yeah, I would love to be able to preach someplace locally. I miss preaching. I would love to be able to guest preach occasionally here and there.

It's a real pleasure, but I don't get to preach very often anymore, and it's okay, just a time in the season for things. But I'm sure it's a good church. I've heard good things about it.

I'm going to go check it out, I think. Okay. Good.

I think I will. Okay. Yeah. Awesome. Well, thank you so much. All right.

Well, thanks a lot, Carrie. Appreciate it. All right.

You're welcome. Take care. Okay. Well, we have no open calls, no callers waiting, and that reminds me, because I was thinking about talking about something. Now, incidentally, I'll be teaching an advanced study on the Trinity tonight, handing out a huge file, and some other stuff I may add to the existing file on the internet, depending on how much I get done today. In fact, I'm working on it during the breaks. I multitask all the time. One of the things I want to bring up that's on my mind is I was listening today, I went to the gym and worked out, trying to work out, keep myself in shape.

And I put my headset on, and I just work out, and I listen. And I sometimes go into Christian chat rooms and different venues, and I listen. And there's some people that I'm aware of who are very good apologists, and they know how to ask the right questions. They know how to present truths to people.

And yet, at the same time, I was appalled by their behavior. And I want to talk about it, because what the Bible says is this, Colossians 4, verses 5 and 6. This applies to all of us who witness, who deal with people who are unbelievers. This is what it says, conduct yourself with wisdom toward outsiders, making the most of the opportunity.

Let your speech always be with grace, as though seasoned with salt, so that you may know how you should respond to each person. And then another verse that I think is very important is 2 Timothy 2.25, 2.24, and 2.25, and 2.6. And it says in 2 Timothy 2.24, 2.25, and 2.6, it says, the Lord's bondservant must not be quarrelsome, but be kind to all, able to teach, patient when wronged, with gentleness, correcting those who are in opposition, if perhaps God may grant them repentance leading to the knowledge of the truth. And they may come to their senses and escape from the snarl of the devil, having been held captive by him to do as well.

And the reason I'm bringing this up is because in my circles, I encounter a lot of brilliant individuals who know far more than I, are far more intelligent, they are far more articulate, and I learn from others. I don't have all the answers and I always need to be grounded and to be shaped and I'm so grateful for the Lord's work and so many others. However, too many of them I'm encountering lately from the Christian perspective are simply mean and rude and condemning.

And I don't get it. Aren't we as Christians supposed to represent the Lord Jesus Christ who is patient and who is kind, who is long-suffering? You know, when I have my debates and disagreements with atheists, for example, and I ask a question, if they're not exactly answering the way I think it should be answered, I just wait, see what they say. I write down what they say and then I tackle what they say. And I say, well, you know, I don't think you really answered the issue I was raising.

Can we go through that again? I try and be as polite as possible and it doesn't raise an ire from them so that they are then resistant to the truth. Sometimes I wonder that, you know, are we really trying to win friends for the Lord Jesus Christ?

Excuse me, are we trying to do that or just trying to win an argument? Anyway, it's been on my mind today after hearing what I think is the abysmal behavior and the conduct of Christians in some rooms. And if you're a Christian and you dialogue with unbelievers, remember to be patient. Remember not to be quarrelsome.

If you blow it, we all blow it, I get it. But the goal is to not be quarrelsome, but to be kind and to be able to teach and patient when wronged. And when someone wrongs you, just be patient. And with gentleness, we're to correct those who are in opposition.

Gentleness means to take time and to show love and grace. This is what we're called to do as Christians, to the unbelievers. And notice what it says in 2 Timothy 2.25, if perhaps God may grant them repentance leading to the knowledge of the truth. What's interesting is that the admonition here, the Lord's bondservant must not be quarrelsome but be kind to all, able to teach, patient when wronged. With gentleness, correcting those in opposition, if perhaps God may grant them repentance. There's a connection between our behavior and God granting them repentance, and we should not associate those two things, it's a concern. We as Christians need to be cleaning our own house first, don't we? Well anyway, there you go folks, by God's grace, we're back on here tomorrow and we'll talk to you then. So I hope you have a great evening, may the Lord bless you, we'll talk to you tomorrow by His grace, God bless, bye. Your program, powered by the Truth Network.