Matt Slick Live

The following program is recorded content created by the Truth Network. It's Matt Slick live. Matt is the founder and president of the Christian Apologetics Research Ministry, found online at KARM.org. When you have questions about Bible doctrines, turn to Matt Slick live. Francis taking your calls and responding to your questions at 877-207-2276. Here's Matt Slick. All right, everyone, welcome to the show.

It's me, Matt Slick. I hope you had a good Labor Day weekend. I did, had a lot of fun working.

Yeah, that's what I do. And so, I worked on stuff and let's see if we do it. We didn't do anything. We didn't have any company over. We didn't go anywhere, just one of those kinds of things. I did ride my bike a little bit, had fun there, and got to annoy my wife a little. And by the way, please pray for her.

She really does need it. All right, so we have, let's see, four open lines if you want to give me a call, 877-207-2276. Now, I will be preaching in Provo, Utah, on the first Sunday of the month, next month, October.

So, just let you know that. If anybody wants me to stop by or come to a church since I'll be down there, I may go down there Thursday night because I have a friend, you know, I stay with Bill McKeever and or Eric Johnson. They're great. We're going to have Eric Johnson on tomorrow, as a matter of fact, Eric Johnson from the Mormonism Research Ministry. He and Bill McKeever run MRM.org. These guys are experts.

They are great. And is it, wait, what is it? No, it's not tomorrow. It's a week from tomorrow.

My bad. Okay, so it'll be on the 13th. Eric Johnson will be on the radio with me. We'll be discussing his new book and Mormonism, and you can ask your best, most tough questions.

And it'll be good stuff. So, all right. Oh, wow.

Today is Tuesday. Wow. You know, I'm getting my cell phone mixed up. I got so many things going on. All right. Like I said, if you want to give me a call, 877-207-2276. And if you do want me to come back and speak at your church or do a Bible study or something like that, stop by around a few days before, a few days after, just let me know. I can arrange my schedule. I'm going to drive down because it's only a few hours away. I'll be staying with Bill McKeever. And just let me know. Just contact us at info at karm.org, I-N-F-O, info at karm.org, C-A-R-M dot O-R-G. And there's something else I'm trying to remember, but I can't remember what it is.

So I guess it doesn't matter for now. Why don't we just get on the air with Rudolph from Raleigh, North Carolina. Rudolph, welcome. You're on the air. Yes, sir.

I have to read my calling because I don't know if you remember, but on Friday, a gentleman called you and told you about the Mandela effect. And he asked you about, um, the wolf and the lamb and all that. And the reason why, my question is, should we read scripture as scripture is written? Because I've called you about that before too. Yeah, we should read it for what it says. Okay. The reason why I'm saying is, I'm sorry.

No, that's okay. There are different styles of writing in there. And so, uh, if it's poetry, we understand it to be poetry. If it is, um, if it's poetry, it's poetry. If it's history, it's history. If it's doctrine, it's doctrine.

You just kind of, you know, understand the flow of what's going on and try and, and, um, uh, read it in the context and the style that's going on. Sometimes people will take, uh, you know, poetry and say, poetry is therefore the doctrinal, yes and no, depending on which part of the poetry, because you could certainly have absolute truths inside of poetry as well, or songs like the Psalms. So there are certainly truths we can learn there and I'm not negating it that way. Uh, but there are, um, a hole in the hole about is pure fiction. And so we want to understand that that's a context of fiction. There's prophetic utterances. There are many styles of writing in the Bible, and we just try and understand them for what they say, what they are. Not a big deal.

Yes, yes, sir. And like I said, I called you about that because people always say, and I'm going to give you an example, because people always say, of course, the entire, the entire, um, passage in Isaiah, it's in there twice about the, because it's always been the wolf and the lion. And the reason why I started looking at it is because when I read it, um, it says something different than what I had thought was in there. And one of the, um, great reason why I know it's like that and people, people hear stuff and they just see things over and over because they used to hear it. And I'm gonna give you the one example. Um, separation of church and state. And I used to believe that was in there.

And then when I start going and looking and reading the constitution, guess what? It's never been in there, but people say all the time, it's never been there. That's right.

They do. And that's what that thing with the lamb and lion is. And what I knew, you know, right. You know him, right? You know who he is. Yeah.

Okay. He said the exact same one day and I was like, when I was sitting there listening, I said, I can't believe it. He came there because, I mean, he's a big time guy, he should know, if I know, he should know. So why is this thing the lion and lion? And now I'm saying that it's a metaphor about peace.

Yeah, it is. Well, it's really important that we know what. What if people don't say what if we didn't, because they'll start seeing things out on our own. That's right.

That's why, um, one of the additional schools I want to develop for CARM is a school on how to interpret scripture and go through all kinds of exercises so people can understand what's going on in the Bible and what's going on in the scripture and go through all kinds of exercises so people can better understand. Okay. But yeah, it's a necessity.

A lot of people make mistakes in that area. So you're right, buddy. All right. Okay.

Man, when that comes, you know how you don't like, you know how you don't like how to talk about clatter and it irritates you that Mandela makes me feel the same. Okay. Yes. The, the flatter stuff. Yes. It's like, it's so stupid.

I know that Mandela thing bothers me the same way. Anyway, you have a good day and thanks for talking to me. God bless you too. You too, man. God bless.

All right. That's Rudolph and, uh, if you want to give me a call, we have four open lines. 877-207-2276. Let's get to Justin from Ashland, Kentucky. Hey, welcome, man. You're on the air.

Hey, greetings, Matt. Longtime listener. I really appreciate what you do as the minister in outreach. Um, I had a couple of questions that maybe, uh, I figured you could, you could assist me with. Um, tomorrow, um, at my church, which is an Armenian church, um, and I'm a, I'm a Calvinist to hold to the five points of Calvinism and, uh, so I'm going tomorrow. We, we do a, it's tough because we're doing Christian history and right now we're on the reformation and, uh, that my pastor was kind of quick to go over what John Calvin and Luther did impact, um, the history of, of, of this, this thing. And, um, and so we said, Hey man, like, hold up, let's talk about this. Let's talk about what John Calvin and Luther and the history of this really dig into this.

So what he's done is he's given my brother who also is reformed a chance tomorrow to break down, not just the acronym of tulip and you know, what the meaning is behind that. Um, but the whole aspect of Calvinism and reform theology. And so I wanted to ask you, we only have an hour and I'm assuming that he's going to present his Armenian thoughts. So I would probably say we only have about 20 or 30 minutes, uh, to, uh, present, uh, Calvinism.

And so I was asking, I wanted to ask you, what would be the best avenue, uh, to pack all five of these, these points into 30 minutes or less? It just depends what you want to do, but I would definitely do total depravity. Total depravity will undermine a lot of the Armenian presuppositions because when someone understands that our human free will is restricted by our sinfulness, that the unbeliever is not just willy nilly free, independent of his fallenness and enslavement of sin, because the Armenians will teach for the most part, most more Armenians, 98% will teach that it's just up to our free will and, uh, that the unbeliever has the ability to simply believe all he needs is the right information that's not biblical and in the slightest. So what I would do if I were you is really study total depravity.

Total depravity, if you want, what you can do is you can email me at info at karm.org. And what I'll do is I will take a section out of my, um, my notes that I have. I've been developing for years on, uh, reformed theology and I'll just cut and paste it and put it into an email and send it back to you. And you'll have an outline form of the five points along with a scripture supporting it with objections answered. It's very useful, very valuable in my opinion.

And, uh, that'll be, uh, helpful. You need to understand though, that, so think about things this way. Reformed theology is God centered. Armenian theology is man centered. Now people might say, that's not true. Yes, it is true.

In reformed theology, God is the standard of holiness, the standard of righteousness, the standard of freedom, the standard of everything. And so therefore nobody is able to truly, uh, well, let's put that way. And so I heard you, I heard a sound in your background. It really distracted me.

So you're doing something in the background. I'm sorry. I apologize. Yeah. No, I was putting a headphone back in, uh, in this case. Apologize. Okay. Yeah, no, it was, uh, cause it sounded like the instapot that I have downstairs. When I opened the lid, it was like, wait a minute. It's what they did.

It's what they did is, uh, my headphones clicking into the charger. All right. And so, uh, so reformed theology is man. See, it really throws me that reformed theology is God centered. Armenianism is man centered because in Armenianism salvation is, is ultimately dependent upon what man does, what man's choices are. And they presuppose that man is the center of his own freedom. Man is the center of his own choice. Man is the center of, of, of whether or not he believes or not. That's it.

All right. And reformed theology says, Nope. God is the one who grants that we believe. Philippians 1 29.

That belief is in Christ. John 6 29. He causes us to be born again.

1 Peter 1 3. He appointed us to eternal life. Acts 13 48 and chose us for salvation. Second Thessalonians 2 13 and grants that we have repentance. 2 Timothy 2 25.

So you see, there's a difference here. This is the main thing. Reformed theology is God centered. Armenianism is man centered. Period.

Those are the ultimate, uh, focal points. Now the Armenians are going to say, well, God can't arbitrarily pick somebody. He doesn't do that.

They have a lot of objections, but the objections don't relate to the scriptural issue and the understanding that needs to be had. So, uh, there you go. Okay. So you can, like I said, you can email me. No, I'll cut and paste a lot of stuff to you. Okay. Oh, we got a break. So hold on.

Yeah, um, what would be right now? It's Matt slick live taking your calls at 877-207-2276. Here's Matt slick.

Everybody. Welcome to the show. We have three open lines. If you want to give me a call, all you got to do is dial 877-207-2276. Let's get to Justin. You still there? Yes, sir. I'm still here. All right. Okay.

We had a break there, so kind of had to cut it off. So did I answer that enough or, or you have enough info? Yeah, you did great because of course I want to unpack each track, each acronym and explain, uh, the stance of Calvinism. But like you said, like what happens is, uh, through my own personal experience with people is they'll have, you know, we'll have four point Calvinist or three point Calvinist and they'll say, well, my issues with limited entitlement or, uh, unconditional election or whatever it is. And really the issue isn't those it's actually the sovereignty of God. It's just the issue of man being totally, totally dead in his tent.

It's not that, uh, limited atonement is the issue or that the election is the issue, the issue that you do not view God as a complete sovereign God. And so that's, like you said, to focus on the T and, you know, if they give me more time, Lord willing, I'll get into the other acronyms, but like you said, to focus on total depravity. Yeah, that's right. Yeah.

Because we're man-centered and, uh, that's what you want to do. Absolutely. So, um, if you would email me at info at carmen.org, I can just return email you a bunch of information.

I mean, uh, carmen.org just email me and, uh, I'll get it to you. Okay. Trust me.

You're gonna love it. I appreciate it. Thank you.

Thank you so much. I'm going to call you and I'm going to talk about presuppositional, uh, really interested in studying Dr. Greg Boston and then wanting to learn eventually how to do presuppositional apologetic. Yeah. And call back if you want. We'll talk about it.

Could we have somebody in line and we only have open lines. So you could call back and we can talk about presupp. It's easy. It's powerful.

It works. All right. Yeah.

Yeah. Thank you so much, Matt. All right, buddy. God bless.

All right. That was Justin from Ashland, Kentucky. We have four open lines if you want to give me a call. 877-207-2276.

Noel from Virginia. Welcome. You're on the air. Hey, Matt. How are you doing? I'm doing fine.

Doing fine. Thanks. So what have you got, Noel? So, okay. Um, predestination.

So, no, sorry. So my question is why, other than that it's a command from God, why preach the Gospel if God already has preselected individuals for salvation? Because he ordains the means as well as the ends. We do not know how it works that God ordains what he does and who he does.

We simply know that when we pray more, more people get saved. And yet God is behind all of it and in control of all of it. Because nothing can occur outside of the will of God.

So God either wills it directly or indirectly for certain things to occur. And so in our freedom in Christ, we are able to pray. And because our prayers are sanctified through the blood of Christ, the Father hears us.

And we intercede, this gets tough here at this point. When we intercede for somebody, the ordination of God's work in us to intercede for somebody brings that person into salvation. And yet we're freely doing the intercessory prayer on their behalf. And so God ordains what we freely do, not by forcing us, but in his ordination, which is another topic. And he brings about whatever he desires. And so some people say that God knows what we are going to do.

And so he reacts to what we're going to do. Now that's kindergarten theology because it's not very deep. And it's very elementary and it doesn't answer some of the deeper questions. So what I try and tell people is that even our free will choices are ordained by God. And yet they're still free.

People often don't understand how that can be the case. I take them to Jesus and I say, was Jesus God in flesh or is he? And they say, yes. So if he's God in flesh and he is human and divine, I ask them, did Jesus have free will?

And they'll say, well, of course he did. But Jesus says he could only do what he sees the Father do. He didn't come to do his own will but the will of him who sent him. And so there's a lot of verses like this, John 5, 19, John 5, 30, John 6, 37 through 40.

And so there's these verses. So I say, but Jesus from all eternity was predestined to do whatever the Father had him do and yet he had free will. That's called compatibilism. Compatibilism says that human free will and God's sovereignty are compatible. Libertarianism says, no, they're not compatible. No, they're not compatible and what they do is they elevate man's freedom to such a degree that, hold on a sec. There we go.

They elevate man's free will to such a degree that the sovereignty of God is restricted and that's not what we want to do. All right? Not what we want to do. Okay? Right. Okay. Okay, that really explained it, that really does explain it because of my own free will I want to pray for those who do not know Christ but at the same time God is completely in charge of that person's election or not election.

Because he said that there's vessels of wrath and vessels for mercy. Okay, do I have? Go ahead. I was just going to ask if I had Tom for one more question or if you have people waiting. No, we don't have anybody waiting so go ahead. Okay, this one's a little more personal.

Can being unequally yoked dim the light on your walk with Christ? Yes. Okay. It can. So when you say can, that means is it in the realm of possibility? Well, of course it is.

Right. Okay, because I've been struggling recently actually with like worldliness and it's tough. It is tough. Are you unequally yoked? Yes, he claims belief but there's just it's not and I would love to talk to you sometime like if you had a phone number I could call but I don't want to do that here but it's really hard.

What I would do if I were you is to study 1 Peter 3 and because it says in the same way you wives be submissive to your own husbands so that if even if any of them are disobedient to the word they may be one without a word by the behavior of their wives. Women kind of generally fail to understand that if you say it once to a man, we're done. Thank you, got it. And if you continue to go on and on and on about it, it generally doesn't work. So what the advice here is just live it the best of your ability. Let him see it. That will work on him and that's what it is.

But also you need to be praying and have others pray for him as well. All right, there's the break. All righty. Okay, Noel. All right. All righty, thank you.

All right, well God bless. Hey folks, we have wide open lines, five open lines. Give me a call at 877-207-2276. We'll be right back after these messages. It's Matt Slick live, taking a call at 877-207-2276.

Here's Matt Slick. All right, welcome back to the show. We have five open lines. If you want to give me a call, all you got to do is dial 877-207-2276.

That means we have nobody waiting. I did a Patreon video today and I do Patreon, but I did talk about something interesting and I wanted to share it here as well because I think it's really important that people understand the ability to witness to Muslims. And so, there's a lot of information out there on Islam and I really do think that people need to witness. What I'm going to do is give you two things to look at and I think I need to really focus on this and get people to understand, get people to see and just learn how to deal with Muslims. So, what I'm going to do is read you some stuff out of the Quran and I'm going to show you how to use the Quran in order to demonstrate to them that Islam is false. It's real simple to do and all you're going to do is go to Surah 482 and this is what it says in Surah, this is in the Quran, Surah means chapter. So, 482 is, do they not consider the Quran, had it been from other than Allah, they would surely found therein much discrepancy. So, in other words, if there is any discrepancy in the Quran, it's not from Allah.

Real simple. And I show this to them and I say, do you agree, if there's any problems in the Quran? There are no problems in the Quran, they say.

I go, really? Okay. So, what I'm going to do now is show them another verse and it's Surah 86 verses 5, 6, and 7.

Surah 86, 5, 6, and 7. Now, let man but think from what he has created, he's created from a drop, emitted, proceeding from between the backbone and the ribs. So, what this does is it demonstrates that a man's seed originates in the man's chest and of course, that's not correct. Now, I can go into detail quite a bit in here, but I don't want to do that because varying people in the car listening, coming from school and various things, but the point is that there are problems with the Quran.

You've got to understand something. The Quran claims to be the very word of God, the very truth of God, but it isn't. Islam is a false religion and the Quran is false.

And we can prove all of Islam false. Prove it by using the Quran. See, if the Quran is true, then Islam is false. If the Quran is false, then Islam is false. Either way, Islam is false. If the Quran is true and it says, hey, if there's any discrepancies in the Quran, it's not from God. If it's true, then we find a discrepancy, then it's not from God.

It's real simple. But if it's not true, well, then you can't trust it anyway. So, Surah 86, 5, 6, and 7. Surah 4, 82, that if there's any discrepancy in the Quran, it's not from Allah. And Surah 86, 5 through 7. And that is where Man's seed is formed, in his chest.

And of course, that's not the case now, is it? So, there you go. Quick and slick. I wanted to share that with you.

I got little things like that I can show you in other areas too. All right. Let's get to, let's see. I think that's Kit from Arizona or Arkansas. Not sure. Welcome. You're on the air.

Are you there? Arizona, not Arkansas. Arizona. Okay.

It's gonna be AZ there, but I'm getting on the guy. I've got this question for you that was given to me right when you went on the air. And so, you know, Moses had people that handled lesser questions and then the greater questions went to him.

So that's what I'm doing with you. If you don't believe in the Mormon church anymore and you're a member, do you think that you should write a resignation letter? And if so, how long should you wait to hear back from them? Well, in my opinion, you should write it right away and give them the gospel.

Give it to them why they did that. And actually, I'm curious to know what Eric Johnson would say. We're going to have him on a week next week. Eric Johnson wrote a book, I've got it in my hand right now, introducing Christianity to Mormons.

And so it's when Mormons leave their church, they don't know what the truth is. And he did a great job here. Eric does great work. And he's writing about the introduction of Christianity to Mormons so they can understand what it is. It's 250 pages-ish, a lot of notes, a lot of good stuff in there.

Eric does a great job. And so I'm going to ask him that question as well. But nevertheless, I think that they should write it very quickly. I think they should give the reasons why it is and send it off as a get-me-off-your-role call, your roles and things like that, and if they don't respond quickly.

But I don't know what the internal mechanism is of Never Mormon, how long it takes. So I think there's an expected time frame, if it doesn't, to write them again. If they don't do it again, I don't know what to do at that point. But that's something we could ask Eric about when he gets on the air next week. Yeah, just so you know, that's what I told him to do. I mentioned Mormonism Research Ministry and said, talk to Bill McGeever.

He answers the phone, or Eric Johnson. This is their sort of thing. And I wouldn't know. I told them in 1979 that I didn't believe in it, and then they accused me of not living up to their standards themselves. They didn't play fair with me anyway. But this guy's upset because he hasn't heard back from the church.

And I just don't know why that would be a big deal. I mean, I'm sure they're not happy dealing with people that don't believe in it. Well, the Mormon Church is the true church. You know, it's the true church. It's not about Jesus, it's the true church.

It's not about Jesus, it's the true church you've got to belong to. And so to say that Mormonism is false is to attack their organization. It's like a sports team.

You know, if you're really loyal to a sports team and someone attacks your sports team, you get very defensive automatically, regardless of whether it's true or false. And that's what it is. It's not the Lord Jesus, it's the sports team. It's the religion team of Mormonism. And so they're given over to it. They believe in it. They think it's true. They think they've a testimony that's from God.

It's not. They have all these, you know, feelings and all this stuff. And so that's why. And in Mormonism, they're not going to want to reduce their roles officially any more than they have to. They want Mormonism, the team effort of making it look good, successful, and victorious. And that's what they're doing.

So I would suspect that. Yeah, one thing I do know is they don't like to create a record that somebody left the church because they didn't believe in it. They always want to excommunicate people or, you know, something moral or something like that. And so if you tell them you don't believe in it, they leave you on the rolls or something like that, unless you demand to be taken off the rolls. And then sometimes they do it.

Sometimes they don't. In my case, they accused me of all sorts of ridiculous stuff that I wasn't doing simply because I told them I didn't think I had to go through the temple to get to Jesus. You know? Well, you're right.

I've had many people tell me that when they left Mormonism, they were accused of adultery, fornication, lying, theft, all kinds of stuff. It was a character assassination. Now I'm going to tell you a story. I haven't recounted this in a while.

It's a bit of a story, but it's really interesting. And so I met a guy and we got talking. We ended up having coffee together. He's an ex-Mormon having coffee. And so he was telling me what happened to him. And it was tremendous as in how badly the Mormon Church treated him. He was a devout Mormon who asked his Bishop a question or two about the origins and history of Mormonism. He told me he wasn't doubting anything. He just wanted some answers. And the Bishop told him, don't ask any questions. And that confused him. He said, well, why can't I ask any questions?

And it started the ball rolling. People saying, oh, he's doubting Mormonism. He says, no, I just want to know these answers. And it became more and more of an issue.

All right, I'm going to mute you because I've got stuff in the background. And so what happened to this guy was his father died. He had to go out to an Eastern city in Idaho here.

And he was out there for, I don't know, two, three, four weeks, whatever it was, taking care of business, taking care of the father's estate and things like that. And he was driving back and called his wife, hey, I'm coming home. And she said, don't bother. And what?

Don't bother. Well, he did go home and there were a bunch of suits waiting for him. And there was another man who his wife ended up marrying was there.

The Mormons were there. They presented him with legal work saying that, I don't remember all the details, but it was like, the house is no longer yours. The cars are no longer yours. The back and counts no longer yours kind of a thing. And you need to get your stuff out of the house.

You need to leave right now. This is what happened to him when he came home after taking care of his father who had died. The guy looked at me and his, I could see the emotion and the pain and the suffering. He said he had $2,000 that was just in a, he had $2,000 cash. And so he didn't have a car, didn't have a place to stay.

And he had a Mormon job, a job with Mormons. And we'll get back from the break here. I'll tell you what happened.

I'll tell you what happened, but I'll continue till the break. He contacted a very good, close Mormon friend of his and says, look, I've got $2,000 cash. I need a car.

Would you sell me that one car that you have that you're trying to sell? And his Mormon friend said, yeah, sure. No problem. I get it. So he gave his Mormon buddy the cash and the Mormon kept the cash and the car.

This is what happened to him. And we get back to the break. I'll tell you a little bit more. And hey folks, if you want to get a call, all you got to do is dial 877-207-2276. We'll be right back after these messages. It's Matt Slick live taking your calls at 877-207-2276. Here's Matt Slick. Welcome back to the show. Let's get on the air with Elijah from Philadelphia.

Welcome, buddy. You're on the air. Hello. Hello. How are you?

Hey, Matt Slick. How you doing, sir? Doing all right, man. Hanging in there, buddy.

What do you got? Yeah, um, I called to ask you, uh, what do you think about Romans 2 13? Because I saw a debate between Kelly Powers and son Janice a few days ago. And son Janice, you know, he kept, he kept saying to Kelly, uh, uh, you know, stay here in Romans 2 13, stop going to other scriptures and all that stuff. So, so I just wanted to get your thoughts on that. I think it says that, uh, we're, we're justified by works or something like that.

Yeah, I understand. And what Paul the apostle is doing is, is, uh, important to understand the context. And so Catholics routinely take this out of context. So you have to understand in, uh, the book of Romans, Paul begins in chapter one by, uh, just introducing himself and various issues. And he goes into the nature of the gospel. Then he goes into the judgment of God upon the unbelievers.

This starts in verse 18 of chapter one, the wrath of God is revealed against, uh, from heaven, I guess, all ungodliness. And he has reasons and judgments, reason and judgment. God gave them over because of this, uh, because of the exchange, the glory of God.

For this reason, God gave them over as the, as, and this reason God gave them. So what he's doing is he is speaking against the sinfulness of the Gentiles. Now in verse in chapter two, therefore you have no excuse. Everyone who passes judgment for in that you judge another, you condemn yourself for you who judge.

Practice the same thing. Now, what's important is we go to verse 17, but if you bear the name Jew and rely upon the law and boast in God. So this is important contextually. What Paul has done in chapter one is condemned the Gentiles and everybody. The Jews are going to be looking down their noses and say, yeah, we have the law and we know, because that's what he says in verse, uh, chapter two, verse 17. But if you bear the name Jew and rely upon the law and boast in God. So he's saying you're the, cause that's what he's addressing. And if you say this, if you bear the name Jew, so he's talking about that. Now in, in back to chapter two of verse one, therefore you have no excuse. All of you who pass judgment in that, that what you judge another, you condemn yourself. You're doing the same thing. Now he's got, he's focusing on the Jews.

He's focusing on what's going on there. He says, verse five, because of your stubbornness and your unrepentant heart, you're storing up wrath. What he's doing is saying, you Jews are hypocrites. You say you have the law, but you don't live it.

You're the same when you're saying, yeah, you're the ones who are doing it and you're going to be saved. He says in verse 12, verse 11, there's no partiality with God between Jew and Gentile for all who have sinned without the law will perish without the law. And all who have sinned under the law will be judged by the law. He's telling them that there's going to be two groups of people, those without the law and those with the law. The law is the mosaic revelation of the law for it is not the hearers of the law were just before God with the doers of the law be justified. So Paul is addressing here the hypocrisy of the Jews saying you're condemning them. You're mocking them, but they're the ones who are doing the law. They're doing it.

You're not doing it. They're going to be right before God, not you. Now people will say, well, wait a minute, is Paul actually teaching justification is by the law?

If Sejanus, and I know who he is and any other Catholic wants to talk about this, I'm going to say it's a doers of the law justified, right? So is faith necessary? If they're going to say, well, faith, yeah, they have to have that. Well, where is it? Where's it mentioned in here?

What's he saying? Because the Bible says, he says in Romans 3 28, he says, we maintain that a man is justified by faith apart from the works of the law. We're not setting scripture against scripture. We're understanding that what Paul is doing in this pericope is he is rubbing the Jews nose in it. The ones who do it are the ones who are right before God. You're not doing it.

That's what he's saying. And you're not doing it. Your standard is you got to do the law. Yeah, you can be justified before the God. If you do the law, you can be, if you can do the law, but nobody can. The problem isn't with the law.

The problem is with the law keeper. Nobody can keep the law, but he says the doers of the law be justified because what he is doing is he is bringing to their understanding that the Gentiles are doing those things that you aren't even do, because notice in the next verse for when the Gentiles who do not have the law, that's the formal codification of the law under the Old Testament, they do instinctively the things of the law. These not having the law are a law to themselves in that they show the work of the law written in their hearts, their conscious bearing witness, and their thoughts alternately accusing or else defending them on the day when according to my gospel, God will judge the secrets of men through Christ Jesus. So what he's doing is he's showing that both the Jews and the Gentiles have law. The law that's written on the heart of the Gentiles, they often do better than what the Jews who have the written law of God, that they're going to be just and you're not going to be just because they're doing it and you're not. That's the whole point, because what God often does is he uses the standard that a person asks about himself, not about himself, but he himself asks as a standard. So for example, when the righteous, self-righteous law keeper, the scribe came up to Jesus and said, what good thing must I do to be saved? He says, okay, keep the law.

Are you doing it? No, you're not. Because what God does is uses your own standard to judge you by, and that's from Matthew 7-2, as you judge others, you'll be judged yourself, as Jesus says. So the principle is used by Jesus and it's used by Paul. So you Jews, you're failing to keep the law, but they are, and they're going to be judged that way.

And that's all that's going on. It's not saying that they're justified before God by their works, because no man is justified by the law by their works. We know that. The Bible clearly teaches it.

So if Sujanis parked on here and he failed to understand the whole of the context there and he failed to understand how it relates to other verses, then he's just a typical Roman Catholic. Okay. Yeah.

Yeah, that was a good explanation right there. Yeah, that's all that's going on. And I'm going to be starting my Bible study. I finished James on Thursday night, and this Thursday I'll be starting on the book of Romans. People have asked for the book of Romans.

It's going to take about a year for me to go through. And I'm going to do it a bit differently. What I'm going to be doing is just putting a time frame up there, you know, an hour, and I'll just go as far as many verses I get through in an hour. And the introduction verse will probably take us a half hour. Romans 1.1, there's a lot in there. Paul, a bondservant of Christ Jesus, called as an apostle, set apart for the gospel of God.

So Paul, bondservant, Jesus Christ, called, apostle, set apart, gospel, and God, eight things right there we're going to examine just in the first verse. And go with that. I'm going to lay it down. Anyway, I hope that helped.

And I'll be going through Romans 2 again also. All right? Yeah, do you want me to call back tomorrow, or do you have somebody else waiting? We've got two people waiting if you want to call back tomorrow because we're almost out of time. All right, buddy? Okay, I'll call back tomorrow. All right, man, God bless. All right, let's get to Mark from Florida. Mark, welcome. You're on the air. Hi, Matt.

I'm actually returning a call, a libertarian caller. I had a question, last week, I asked a question, and it was at the end of the program, I ran out of time. It had to do with, can you be a Christian and have homosexual feelings? Yes. And I think the answer, yeah, you gave us yes.

I took some time to think about that, and then I had a question, how does that fit with Romans 1, 26 through 32? If you need time to take a look at that. I know, I'm quite familiar with it. Yeah.

And I'm not trying to stump you or do anything like that, I'm just examining the scripture and looking at it, and, you know. Sure. So let me, because we only have like four minutes, I want to make sure people understand what I mean when I say, can you have homosexual tendencies and still be a Christian? The answer is yes. Can you be, can you have lustful tendencies and still be a Christian? Yes. Can you have a tendency for self-preservation at the point where you want to lie and still be a Christian?

The answer is yes. The thing is, the tendencies and the temptations are different than carrying them out and working with them and using them to your advantage, or for self-satisfaction. We can be born with varying tendencies and failures in our hearts, and yet we struggle against them because we know they're sinful. So the, we're not born pure, and when we're born again, it doesn't mean we're pure and all of our sinful tendencies disappear. What it means is that once we're regenerates, we then war against our sinful tendencies.

We still have them, and it can be a variety of them, and that's what my point is. So can you be a Christian and still have homosexual tendencies? Yes. Can you be a Christian and still have lustful tendencies?

Yes, you can. But that doesn't mean it's okay to have homosexual tendencies. But that doesn't mean it's okay to have them. It means that you're struggling with them, and you're laying them before the cross and saying, Lord, I'm still struggling with this. I don't want to be struggling with this. And you, you know, that's what's going on.

All right. Now, verses 26 through 28, right, of Romans 2? Romans 1. Romans 1, that's right. So for this reason, God gave them over.

What's the reason? Verse 24. Therefore, verse 25. For they exchanged the truth of God for a lie and worshiped and served the creature rather than the Creator. For that reason, God gave them over to degrading passions, for their women exchanged a natural function, for that was unnatural, and the men the same way.

So we're talking about lesbianism and homosexuality. And just as they did not see fit to acknowledge God any longer, God gave them over to a depraved mind to do those things which are not proper. This is a judgment.

It's the only judgment I'm aware of in Scripture where if you commit it here in this life, God gives you over to it now. So what the cause of the judgment is, is in verse 25, they worshiped and served the creature. And in 26 and 27, they gave themselves over to homosexual acts and passions. They participated in it. They gave themselves into it.

That's what they did. And that's the problem. So if a person has homosexual tendencies and he's warring against them, he's not doing what Romans 1 is talking about. Okay?

So there's a rejection to begin with that hence justifies Romans 1, 26, 27, and 28. You've already dismissed God altogether, and now he's given you over to the... Okay. I got it now.

I got that. They're worshiping and serving the creature. They're idolaters. And God's giving them over to it. Okay. They've lost the fear of God, basically. Right. Gave them over to their degrading passions. And then if you go on, the final verse, because we're almost out of time, verse 32, and though they know the ordinance of God and that those who practice such things are worthy of death, they not only do the same, but give hearty approval to those who practice them. If you say, yeah, go for it, pride, let's do it.

Hey, let's get out there in the public and show it. That's what's going on. That's what's happening. That's that judgment upon them. They have been judged by God.

That's what's going on. So they're even being tolerable of it, saying, it's okay. Not only okay, but they promote it.

Hearty approval to those who practice it. Got it. Okay. Got it. All right. Got it.

We're out of time, buddy. All right, man. Thank you. All right. God bless you. Okay.

Hey, folks, we are out of time. May the Lord bless you by his grace. We're back on the air tomorrow. And hopefully you'll be listening. So have a great evening, everybody. We'll talk to you then. God bless. Bye.