Matt Slick Live

The following program is recorded content created by the Truth Network. Today is January 31, 2023, the last day of January.

This year is just slipping by already. Hey, if you want to give me a call, all you have to do is dial 8772072276. If you're new to the show, this is a Christian talk, call-in kind of thing where we ask difficult questions, or they do, or try to, whatever, try and answer them, and all kinds of stuff that we discuss. If that sounds interesting and you want to participate, you can give us a call, 8772072276.

Also, if you want, you can email me a comment or a question at info at karm.org, info at karm.org. And what I can do there is, if we get to it, is read it on the air and then answer it. That's the idea.

It's real simple. And if you want, you can also join us in the chat experience. There's a lot of good – I'm going to fix something here. That's right. Oh, I'm so busy. There we go. Okay, that's going.

And there, now they can hear it. All right, if you want to do in the chat room, you can go to the KARM home page, karm.org, and on the right-hand side you will see a picture of me with a radio thing on, and then you click on that and the links that you need will be there. And there you go. There's a lot of good people in the chat.

We have 20, 30, 40, 50, 60 sometimes, and good stuff, good people. So there you go. All right. Let's just jump on the phone. Let's go to Herb from Raleigh, North Carolina.

Herb, welcome. You're on the air. Hey, Matt. How you doing today? Let's see. Busy, and then I was a little bit more busy before that, and then before that I wasn't as busy but just busy.

That's how I'm doing. I understand. Well, look, I found something on YouTube this morning that confirms a lot of what I've heard you talk about on your show. I don't know how you find it, but if you go to YouTube, there was an article on there about probably 10 or 15 minutes long evaluating Joel Osteen, George Myers, Benny Hinn, and several other preachers I was not familiar with. It was like four or five or more on there, and they were saying exactly what you had been saying for a long time.

Yeah. They were not preaching biblical. No, they're not.

I want to see that. No, they're not. They're not preaching.

Joyce Meyer, as far as I'm concerned, is a flaming heretic. She has, I can read your quotes, too, within that video and audio, but I want to start doing those kind of things, too. I need help.

I need a lot of stuff. I work so hard so much just doing stuff, but it's one of the things you want to do. Let me tell you this, buddy. On talking about her, someone addressed to her what things had been said about it, and she kind of turned it around like, well, if I say it doesn't come out right one day, it all kind of blends in. She kind of avoided it and tried to explain it in a nonsensical way, I thought.

Yeah, she's a heretic. But I just talked to people. I thought of you right away. I saw that.

I got to tell you that right now. Yeah, she is. She's a false teacher, and if she wants to talk to you about it, that's fine.

Here's the thing. All she had to do is just repent of certain things she said and said, look, I was wrong, and move on. And I've not heard any repentance from the false things she's teaching, like Jesus stopped being the Son of God, which is flaming heresy, or Jesus was born again, or Jesus paid for his sins in hell, went to hell in our place and was tormented, and if you don't believe Jesus went to hell, you cannot be saved. We're called little gods, and she's not a sinner anymore. The host of hell was literally on Jesus and was laughing, and she gets revelation knowledge. Plus, if she's considered a pastor or an elder of a church, that's unbiblical.

So it's just bad. Well, in this article, they took each preacher and did like a two- or three-minute study of them on their saying, this is what they preach, and they showed examples of them saying what they're saying they preach, and showing that what they're preaching is not biblical. Each one they took probably two or three, four, I don't know, just a few more minutes, a few minutes of time to document what this person was saying, to confirm what he's saying, exactly what you've said.

He was greeting a toy with you and what you have said. I thought you'd get a kick of somebody else that thinks you're right. Well, I don't know if they agree with me, but if you know your doctrine, you can find these guys. You can just listen and find their heresies.

You know, years ago it happened. It just gradually happened over a couple of months, or something like that, where I was able to then put theology into a gigantic mosaic in my mind. I could understand how the Trinity related to justification, imputation, marriage, end time.

I could relate the hypostatic union to the nature of the priesthood of Christ. I mean, all these things, it's like, oh, I see how they're all interrelated. And I'm teaching a Bible study, and I'm teaching people how to do this. And the reason I'm bringing this up right now is because when you have this mosaic of biblical theological perspective interwoven in the tapestry of truth, then you can start seeing very quickly what is an error outside of that tapestry, outside of that thing.

And it's not just me. It's what the Scriptures say. And when you know how to relate them, and I can quote the Scriptures and do this, I'm not saying I'm great or anything, but when you do it for over 40 years, you figure things out. And Joyce Meyer, she couldn't argue her way of a white paper bag. And Joel Osteen, he said Mormons were Christians. I mean, what?

Where did you get that? God came from the other planet, and there's a goddess wife? That makes a Christian? It's not Christian. So there's a lot of problems.

There's a huge problem. And just to make it even worse, the Bible says there's going to be a great apostasy that will then lay the foundation for the arrival of the Antichrist. And so more and more, I'm believing that I need to equip Christians.

You need to know what to watch out for, and different scenarios and different things to watch out so that they're not duped. And then people say, well, wait a minute. No, we're going to get pre-Tribulation raptured out of here. Don't put your hope in that, because I can knock a lot of holes in that very easily, a lot. I can present something that just knocks, it just doesn't work. And so I want Christians to be prepared for the persecution that's probably going to be coming.

And I want them to know. Well, let me ask one other quick sort of related thing to that. I've heard it said on the Antichrist, we don't need to be fooled. We have to make sure we don't get the mark from the Antichrist. How will we know?

How do you know if you think this is correct in what we're doing, the decline of all gods? I don't know the details. I can't remember the details about that, but they say you just don't be fooled by the Antichrist. If you do, you will not go to heaven.

I might be exaggerating some, but that's what I'm trying to ask, because I don't understand it completely. Right. And the Bible says whoever receives the mark.

Yeah. And so let's see if I can find that in Revelation. Yeah, Revelation 14. And it says, let's see, the smoke of the torment goes up forever and ever. They have no rest day and night, those who worship the beast and his image and whoever receives the mark of his name. So I'll go to Revelation 13, 17, because it says he provides that no one will be able to buy or sell except the one who has the mark, either the name of the beast or the number of his name.

And so what is that? But his name is 666. And what that means, I'm giving a lot of information, you didn't ask this, but in Greek, and in Hebrew, when you write letters, letters are also numbers.

We have A, B, C, 1, 2, 3. They only have one set of characters for both. So when you write a person's name, you're also writing a set of numbers. And so a total of his name is 666. It's either going to be in Hebrew and or Greek. And that will be a designation. So anyway, whoever receives that mark, what it apparently means is that you are willingly submitting to the lordship and control of the antichrist so that you can buy and sell and you can eat. And if you don't receive it, you'll end up starving to death. You're going to be beheaded. And here's something to think about. Some people think the antichrist might be Muslim.

I've not learned that or studied it yet. Muslims are known for beheading people. I wonder if the Muslims won't be used by the antichrist to get rid of Christians who won't take the mark.

That would make sense, yeah. It's so many things going on now that's so scary. And I know that's the big thing. People keep saying it's getting to the end of time. Things are going to get worse.

Of course, no one knows for sure when Jesus is coming back. All the signs seem to be pointing that we've just made. Yeah, we're getting closer. We're getting closer. And I'm 66 and I don't know how much longer I'm going to live.

We live long in our family, but into our 80s and 90s. So who knows? Maybe I'll see the arrival of the antichrist. And if I suspect the antichrist is there, then I'm going to have to run to the hills. Literally.

Literally banning everything. Go ahead. Well, I'm 66, too. You're age, too, 66. And I think a lot of the same things that you talk about, you say what I'm thinking a lot of days because I listen to you every day.

Every day. And you've taught me a lot. And I get more and more interested as I keep listening to you. And I say, let me write that question down. Then I'll forget what I wanted to ask you. And I say, I have to remember it again before I call you again.

But this stuck out this morning about this online. Well, Matt, thank you so much. As always, God bless you. And I hope your wife steadily gets better. I pray for your daughter.

I understand that situation there. I do keep you in my prayers. I pray for you and your family every day. And I wish you nothing but the best. Thank you. And God bless.

Well, I appreciate that. God bless, brother. And thank you. Yes, sir. Thank you for your time today.

Thanks a lot. Or keep praying. Okay.

And keep listening. Yes, sir. All right. God bless. Thank you. Okay, thanks.

All right. It was heard from Raleigh, North Carolina. I hope to get out there sometime. I've been on the radio out there for a few years now. Never been out.

Never been out there, you know, passing through or something like that in Atlanta Airport. But I would like to be able to get out there and speak in a few churches and visit some people. I think it would be fun. But, hey, you know, how many people want to have a guy come out whose last name is Slick and who teaches Reformed Theology and Deprescatology?

It's just not—it's like, hey, Pastor, yes, can we have this guy out? He does radio. Okay. Matt Slick. Slick? Yeah, that's his real name. And he teaches Deprescatology.

What's that? Well, it's that we're going to—things are getting really bad and that we're going to go through it. You know, I can just see him going, we're not having that guy preaching. Everybody will leave. And I get to see that happening.

Oh, you know, it's just probably what's going to happen anyway. So there you go. Let's get on the air with Laura from Raleigh, North Carolina. Laura, welcome.

Hi. Have you all got the speaker here? Can you hear me all right?

Yes, I can. Oh, there's the break. Can you hold—sorry, Laura, can you hold on? Stay by the bell. Okay.

I like that. Hey, we'll be right back, folks. Please stay tuned. Four open lines, 877-207-2276. We'll be right back. It's Matt Slick live, taking your calls, at 877-207-2276, here's Matt Slick. Hey, everyone, all right, we're back on the air. Four open lines, 877-207-2276, all right, let's get back on the air here with Laura. All right, Laura, welcome. I'm not able to access you on the computer, but, oh, well, I'll watch the rewind. I've called, I've said this a lot of times, it's like, I've gotten, I had COVID a couple weeks ago, I'm getting to the question, or more of an agreement.

I was in the hospital last night, and they saw I had a stroke or whatever, didn't know what's from the shot or from me getting COVID, the time release death stat, yeah. And I've been trying to tell people, like chickens, little cats running around, and with my sign, and it's, okay, my question is, how do you, when people are pulling back, how far do you put, I mean, the Holy Spirit is the only one that can reach others, and we are just a foot, you know, foot soldiers, a foot man, but when do you know to pull back from trying to tell people, I mean, I can feel it rumbling, I was always, I'm a writer, and I was always told to care what you say around Laura, you know, since there's just, and not in that, but I have always been that way, I'll dream about something the next day, but now, as if he has been a believer, it's, I can't hardly catch my breath, I'm seeing so much. So what's your question, though?

What's your question? Okay, well, you're on the end. So my question is, at what point do you pull back from telling other people what's going on? When they take a swing at you, when they take a swing at you, that's one of them, they threaten to kill you, lawsuits, let's see, have you swatted, like I've had to, it's just subjective, you know. People don't want to hear, they don't want to hear, for an example of what you're talking about, I'm online a lot, and talking in chat rooms, and I see in one venue the same atheists, and they're always trying to destroy Christians, and I go in there, and I'll destroy them, and they don't like that, of course, but they're always trying to work against Christians, and so, you know, after a while, you say, I'm done with you guys, you know, I've given you answers, and you refuse the truth, and so you just move on, and you want to waste too much time with them, you want to start doing what's best for the, you know, reaching others. It just depends, it's just different times.

It feels like I'm watching that, and by following his babe, what he tells me, it's so much easier I've noticed, well, most of the time in my life now, but it's like I'm seeing people like they're just heading right, like a car going right off the cliff, man, and I'm like, no, don't go. They're not gonna listen. Oh, I'm cool. No, you know. They're not gonna listen.

They will. What our job, see, you don't understand, our job is to evangelize, not to get people saved. We don't do that. We tell them about Jesus. That's our job.

We give them the gospel message, and God works with them, through them, to open up their hearts, and that's what we have to ask for, and so when I'm evangelizing, I will often take a moment and pray, Lord, give me the wisdom and the words to speak and open their hearts to believe, because it's God's work. Now, we don't know how it all works with all the interaction of humanity and our wills. I just don't know, and I've thought through this a lot over, for years. I don't have it figured out. I'm not going to, so I just trust God, do my best, and that's it, and that's all you can do. Did you just say you don't have it figured out, and you're not going to? Yeah, I don't want my wife to hear that, though. I didn't know if I heard you, because that's what I, yeah. I wanted to think I know everything.

But thank you so much, and I listen to you as well, as the gentleman called in, and wish your daughter well, and also your wife. I don't know, and I don't need to, but God knows, and from spirit to spirit, I think the world of you is. I really do, and I know I'm in a long line, but we know the deal. We know the deal, and we will not lose hope. No, we won't lose hope. It may get rough, but people don't understand, they don't understand something that Jesus said, and it's not talked about, but Jesus said, pick up your cross and follow me.

Yes, sir. It's what we're to do, and it doesn't mean I'm looking forward to persecution. I don't want it, and I don't want it for anybody else. It says here in Matthew 16, 24, if anyone wishes to come after me, he must deny himself, take up his cross, and follow me. Whoever wishes to save his life will lose it, whoever loses his life for my sake will find it.

What is he saying? I'm talking about losing your life for following him, and here's a question. Why is it he doesn't intervene and stop the persecution? He doesn't. Yes, but, you know, yes, that's right, he doesn't stop it.

He allows it to come to us, so it's a critical thing. Like I was saying earlier, there is no rhyme or reason why we won't, I mean, that's not a, I don't, you know, would that matter anyway, but we're talking God. I mean, I'm like, yeah, we all try to figure it out, but don't we, because it's just, it's so unworldly, and in all my life I tried to leave this world in one way or another. I didn't want any part of it, you know, it was me, so now, it's just so cool, Romans 828, man, Romans 828, God bless you, good night, you're welcome, good night, all right. Wow, hey, we have four open lines, if you want to give me a call, all you have to do is dial 877-207-2276, all right, what I'm going to do now is, I'm going to look at info at karme.org, we have nobody waiting on line, and I want to see if, let's see, we've got people listening, if you want to, you can email me for a comment or a question at info at karme.org, all right, okay, look at all this, I've got so many things to go with, in that account I have 208 emails, that's low, so hey, that's good.

So okay, you know, I've got an email, I'm going to read this and see, some thoughts on Christianity and morality, so you were okay with your daughter doing something, something, I can't read what it is on purpose, because she did something, something, okay, and okay, you and the, we aren't different, what, you advocate women being, what, you know, it's really interesting here, I can't even read, I'm just going through it, there are people that are just demonically inspired, the illogic that they use, the hatred, the vitriol, the lack of clarity, accusation, mockery, disdain, it's, and I've been encountering this more and more, wow, yeah, and then this person is, oh wow, I can't even, it's just amazing how bad it is, and it's vitriol, and it's from a woman, when women get as bad as men, you know how bad things are, hey, we have five open lines, give me a call, 877-207-2276, we'll be right back. It's Matt Slick live, taking your calls at 877-207-2276, here's Matt Slick. All right, and welcome back to the show, we have wide open lines, if you want to give me a call, 877-207-2276, that's interesting. And let's see, I'm going to get some of the radio, the questions people are sending in. One person says, I was wondering how can you support that God gives you free choice without the multiverse theory and without using string theory? So that's the email, all right, so I'm going to just go over this a little bit. So what we have here is someone who is asked a question, and the question is vague at best.

They don't explain what they mean by multiverse theory, because there are more than one theory regarding multiverse, and string theory, which has to do with physics and quantum stuff, and what about the string theory. And so sometimes people don't realize that they are sending emails without having thought them through. This reminds me of something I heard about Abraham Lincoln. There was a battle where if the North General, and he had sent an order to the, whatever general it was, to move across a river or do something and attack the enemy from the south, and that if he'd have done that and beaten them, basically the war would have been over. It was one of those rare strategic moments, and Abraham Lincoln knew it, and he gave this direct order for this guy to go do this, the general, and the general didn't do it. And he, apparently the general, I think this is how the story goes, maybe someone who knows the story can call me up and correct me, but I think what it was was the general knew the men weren't capable of doing it because they were beyond exhaustion, and to go over would have just been useless.

They could not do it, they had nothing left. And so he didn't do it, because the general's decision was if we do this, for what I understand, if we do this, they'll die, they get drowned, or they're not even able to fight right now. So Lincoln found out about this, and what he did was he wrote a letter to him, just reprimanding him. And what Lincoln did was not send it, he let it sit for two or three days, until he had time to think about it. Then he reread that letter, and he wrote a different one.

And instead of condemning him and threatening his position, if I remember correctly, how it went was, I suppose that if I had been in your shoes, I would have done the same thing. And the point is, I think people ought to think about what it is they're writing. So I have a speech recognition program, and I do emails, and I did voicemails today, and finally I'm figuring out how to get things done, and I'm catching up on voicemails. And you know, I use my speech program, and I have things written out, template style and certain things, and I'll go in and I'll look at it, make sure it's okay.

Now if it's just generic information, that's okay. But if it's to rebuke or correct somebody, it needs to sit for a bit. One of the reasons is we need to be gentle, and we need to be clear when we speak to someone. A gentle answer turns away wrath, I forget where that is in Scripture, but it's in there. So anyway, I'm reminded, all that reminded is reminded, see how do I say that, the sentence that the emailer wrote reminded me of that, of an example of, you should let it sit and come back to it later and see if it makes sense.

Because this did not make any sense, you know, and that's just it. All right, let's try this one. Okay, oh okay, that's right, that's good for the wedding piece. Okay, back to that, I'm just so busy. We have been reading Acts, oh I know, hey Matt, how you doing? And several chapters, oh that's right, we talked about that on the Holy Spirit, I did speak on that, let me delete that one. And here's something, oh that's something else, that's not going to work.

All right, so there we go, I think that's about all we've got. All right, now Carrie writes in, does God have an appointed time for each elected individual when they get saved? Yes he does. Did he predestinate to happen on a particular day or time?

Yes he did. You have to understand that in Ephesians 1-11, God works all things after the counsel of his will. All things after his will. All things when people get saved, not get saved, what day they get saved, everything. It's all worked under the will of God.

People may not like that, but that's just what it is. You've got to understand that there is a God, you are not him. There is a sovereign king who knows all things and works all things after the counsel of his will, not yours. And he considers your will and works your will inside of his will, just as Jesus, God in flesh, said not my will but your will be done. Sometimes what people do, the Christians, they don't realize that when they complain about the idea that their own free will is what the final arbiter is between truth and faith, they're elevating themselves above Jesus.

They don't realize how they're doing it because Jesus says he can do nothing except what he saw his father do. John 5-19, John 5-30, John 8-29, these three verses talk about this issue of Christ only doing the will of the Father, only what he could do and see the Father do. And so Jesus is God in flesh and of course he has free will. He willingly submitted and therefore he could only do what the will of the Father was. He came to do the will of the Father.

But that's the case. You notice what people do here a lot of times is they'll say, no, God wants me and my free will, it's about my free will. That's not what Jesus said. It's not about my free will, Father, because that's arrogance, that's pride. They need to emulate Christ and as Jesus says in Luke 22, 42, he says, not my will but your will be done.

Jesus was the exemplar of what it means to be humbly submitted to the will of the Father. And when it says God knows all things, 1 John 3-20, and he works all things after the counsel of his will, Ephesians 1-11, we have to understand that as Christians this is simply how it is. We can pray. James 5-16-17 talks about the prayers of a righteous man avail much with God.

We can, I don't know how it works, but apparently there's an influence with God. I'm not going to get into the logical conundrums and puzzles that are associated with that, but that's what the scripture says. It's okay to plead ignorance, it's okay to say I don't know, and that's fine, but we have to understand that God is a sovereign king. When Christians start realizing this more and more, when they start realizing how great he is, not how great we are, then false teachers like Kenneth Copeland, Joyce Meyer, Joel Osteen will be less supported.

I remember this years ago, the book The Shack, everyone was carrying it, was reading it, everybody loved this book and I read it and did an analysis on it and it was actually teaching heresy, not just a little bit of literary license, no, it was teaching heresy and really bad stuff and I was shocked how bad it was and I have an article on it. And I remember seeing the book being carried by Christians all over the place and I remember saying this is just a designation, a demonstration of how little Christians know. They know so little about biblical theology. I'm not saying you have to be able to do all this like a degreed person, that theology is not what we need.

Yes it is, yes it is. Absolutely it is what we need because theology is the foundation of what our truth is. And it says, the Bible says, I urge you upon my departure from Macedonia, remain on Ephesus so that you may instruct certain men not to teach strange doctrines, not to pay attention to myths and endless stuff like that and deceitful spirits and doctrines of demons. You see, Paul says in 1 Timothy 4, 1, the spirit explicitly says in the latter times some will fall away from the faith, paying attention to deceitful spirits and doctrines of demons. What are the doctrines of demons? Well one of the doctrines of demons is taught by Joyce Meyer.

And I'll show it to you right now. What Joyce Meyer said was that, let's see, he could have helped himself up until the point where he said I commend my spirit into your hands. At that point he couldn't do nothing for himself anymore, he had become sin. He was no longer the son of God, he was sin. Now that is a doctrine of demons and I'll just say it clearly, it's a doctrine of demonic origin, because to say that Jesus is stopping the sin of God is to destroy who Jesus is.

And this is just, it's a horrible thing. And she said Jesus was born again, and here's another one, she said, this is in the most important decision you'll ever make by Joyce Meyer, second printing, May 1993, page 35, he became our sacrifice and died on the cross. He did not stay dead, he was in the grave three days. From that time he entered hell where you and I deserve to go legally because of our sin, he paid the price there. Now that is a doctrine of demons, because Jesus paid the price of our atonement on the cross. First Peter 2.24, Colossians 2.14, that's what it says.

So when you know your doctrine, then you'll recognize the doctrine of demons and you won't give support to those who teach it. All right folks, we'll be right back after these messages, please stay tuned right back. It's Matt Slick live, taking your calls at 877-207-2276, here's Matt Slick. Everybody welcome back to the show. If you want to give me a call, all you've got to do is dial 877-207-2276, let's get to Ernie. Ernie, welcome, you're on the air. Hey Matt, can you hear me okay?

Yes I can, hey Ernie. Hey buddy, there is a person in the chat who asked a question, it's Lana Allen, she would like for you to comment on the wrestling match between Jacob and the Angel in Genesis 32, 22.24-30. It almost sounds like Jacob prevailed, so she's curious on that one. Yeah, because God let him prevail, that's all. There's a representation, a Christophany most probably, and the wrestling is typological of how we are to wrestle, so to speak, in prayer and other things, but here it's just God allowed him to prevail, that's all.

It's like I'd wrestle with my three year old daughter and then she beats me. There's reasons I'll let her do that, that's all that's going on, no big deal. That's Ernie who works with us on the social media end of Karm, good guy, and he puts up with me. Sometimes that can be difficult because my autism does kick in, we had a conversation and he and Laura and me a few days ago and they speak the same language and I couldn't follow them, like wait a minute, we're not done with this one issue, because I do one thing at a time and then I go through, and so anyway it's what it is.

And let's see, I'm going to try a test here, okay, because we're talking about the Angel in Genesis 32, we could also talk about theophanies that occur in the Old Testament, we could discuss the issue of the Plurality Study, and this deals with the nature of who Jesus is in the hypostatic union in the incarnation, but was he present in any sense before the incarnation, and then we can get into the issue of how that relates to the propitiatory sacrifice and the propitiation of 1 John 2.2, and so we could talk about all kinds of stuff and then ultimately get into the issue of the Trinity, and how is it that the Trinity is represented by Christ out of Hebrews 1.3, and then he's seen in the Old Testament in the pre-incarnate sense. So the reason I just said all those is because Charlie in the chat room, what he does is he pastes links to whatever I'm talking about from the Karm website, he pastes them in, so I wanted to see how many I could get in in like 20 seconds and see what he does. He probably just gave up, he goes, uh, so for me it's fun, you see, I like doing that kind of stuff, I hope he's smiling at least a little bit, because I said during the break I said, hey I'm going to talk about 10 different things in 100 seconds and see if he can keep up. You know, Mike, in my humor, it's usually at the expense of somebody else, but sometimes at my own, you know, I don't mind. All right, let's get to Steve from Winston-Salem.

Oh, there you go, Steve, you're on the air, buddy. All right, what do you got? Oh, hey, how you doing? Hey. Thanks for taking my call. Mm-hmm.

So what's up? So my question is about, my question is about church structure. Our church has deacons only, and I guess we've totally left off in the office of elder or bishop. My question is, is that biblical and should we look to change it?

All right, let me ask you some questions, okay? Is there a pastor? Yes, there's a pastor. Yes, okay, there's a pastor. How old is the church, roughly? Uh, 100 years. Okay. And how old's the pastor?

120, 130? You know. But he's been there. Different Baptist. Okay, he's been there for a while, right?

A few years? Uh, yeah. All right. Well, how many people are in the church, roughly?

350 to 400. Okay. All right. It's a Southern Baptist church, if that matters to you. Well, a little bit. So were there elders, and then for some coincidental reason, most of them just left all at once, or you know, either died or had to get a new job someplace and moved on. Has that happened?

No, I don't think our church has ever had that particular office. Okay. Then they're wrong.

Okay? They're wrong. They should not ignore the scriptures, okay? Right. So, if you go to Titus, Titus chapter 1, it says, to Titus, no, in verse 5, Titus 1, 5, For this reason I left you in Crete, that you would set in order what remains and appoint elders in every city as I directed you.

Now, let's talk about this. Because to appoint elders in every city. So it doesn't necessarily say it has to be just in a church. But what I'm going to do is put this together and go to 1 Timothy 5, 17. And the elders who rule are to be considered worthy of double honor. Now, this is a pastoral epistle. So what Titus is doing, I mean what Paul is doing, is giving him instruction on elders. And so he says, the elders who rule well are to be considered worthy of double honor, especially those who work hard at preaching and teaching. So if there's a pastor in that church, then automatically that's an elder.

It's automatic according to the scriptures. So you have at least one elder, and that's the pastor. Now, as deacons, let me ask you, are the deacons, are any of them female? They're all male at the time. Okay, have there been female deacons?

There have not been. I don't know that we'd necessarily be opposed to it, but I don't know that for sure. Alright, let's see then. Okay, so what I'll do is read you what the Bible says about deacons, alright? And we go to 1 Timothy 3, 12. Deacons must be husbands of only one wife, and good managers of her children. So can a woman fit that bill? Uh, no. So then deacons can't be women. Simple. Okay.

There you go. So now, just to be a little bit fair here, what does sometimes happen is they want women to be used in churches, and I agree they should be, and they'll sometimes give that title of deacon to a female, and this is problematic because the Bible says deacons must be husbands of one wife, and what the Greek is there is andrasmios konikos, and it's really a man of one woman, or a husband of one woman, one wife. That's how it's translated.

That's fine. That's a good translation. And so, a female can't fulfill that, so they should not be called deaconesses.

They could just be called something else, you know, the help committee, or helper, or whatever assistant, or whatever. Now some people might think, well that just is ridiculous. Well, okay, it's ridiculous then just to cross 1 Timothy 3.12 out of your Bible. To which verses will we submit, and which ones will we not submit to?

We have to ask. And it says in 1 Timothy 3.8, it says that deacons must be men of dignity. Now we can get into this, but there's some stuff with the Greek gender and things like that. And it says that these men, and the reason they, well I won't get into it now, but it's the males. They're the ones that are supposed to be in these positions in the church.

Now some might say, well no, that's just cultural norms, you don't have to submit to it anymore. And that's when I go to 1 Timothy 2.12, and I'll show it 12 and 13. Paul says, I do not allow a woman to teach or exercise authority over a man, but remain quiet. For it was Adam who was first created, and then Eve, and that's what he's saying here, it is tied to the created order, Adam was first created and not Eve. So there's so much I could talk about this, I'm not going to get too deep into it, but Paul is telling us how to behave in this context, and he's tying it to the created order. And then that was 1 Timothy 2, chapter 2, verses 12 and 13, and we go to the next chapter, verse 15, 1 Timothy 3.15, he's giving instructions on how the household of God, how someone is to conduct himself in the household of God. He's saying, this is what we're supposed to do.

Now people may not like it, but oh well, that's what it says. And so let's say they say, well what I'm going to say, go ahead. Well I was going to say, so our deacons, well I see the role of deacon as a service role, sort of. Yes, yes. If I can say it that way. And in the office of elders, you know, more of an oversea or administrative or things like that.

But I think some of the issues come in when, because we don't have a body of elders or that office, that the deacons get saddled, I say, with a lot of other administrative responsibilities, I think, at the cost of their servant role. Which is where I'm... That's why we're not, right. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. You're right.

Because if you're the pastor, doesn't the Bible say to have elders? Then why are you not following it? Right. Because that's something. Right. Yeah. Well I've thought that for a while, because the church that I came from years ago had that office and that's just the way we were structured and this church didn't.

At first I didn't question it, but now I'm beginning to. Right. So read 1 Timothy 3 and it'll tell you about the elders and the... Sure.

Sure. Actually it says the overseers and the deacons. 1 Timothy 3. The word overseer there in the Greek is episkopos, which you get the word bishop, and it's male. And then it goes into deacons. So now the overseer or the bishop and the elder are used interchangeably, just so you know, in Titus 1.

So that's why some think they're the same office, just once an elder is an overseer, but just using the trine like that. Okay. Okay. Well, you know, we've been established for a long time and I just feel strongly about this. So, you know, I don't want to open a can of worms, but at the same time, I want us to be biblical in our structure, in our, you know, I guess I'll say the management of our church body, if that's the word. So I just feel like it's worth bringing up and, you know, we'll discuss.

Good. Just studying Titus 1 and 1 Timothy 3. Those are the main chapters. You go to my website, look up women pastors and elders and get more information. But those are the things you need to speak about, get the scripture and say, this is what it's supposed to be. And it says deacons will be, you know, husband and wife, why do you have female deacons?

And it's contradicting scripture. Right. Simple. Right. Right. We have no time.

We have like five seconds before the music is going to start. So can you call back tomorrow? Okay.

I can. Thank you, man. I appreciate it. All right, man.

God bless. All right. We've added time there. Call back tomorrow. All right. Hey folks, we're out of time. May the Lord bless you and by his grace, we'll be back on here tomorrow and hopefully we'll talk to you then. So have a good evening. God bless.