Matt Slick Live

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Disclaimer, offer not available to the regenerate. Sitting in for Matt Slick on MattSlickLive, Matt will be back, Lord willing, Monday. However, he's asked me to finish out this week, sitting in for him, where you can call in with your questions to MattSlickLive at 877-207-2276, that's a toll-free number. If you have questions about the Bible, and religion in general, the cults, the occult, Christian theology, the topic of apologetics, which is the Christian's obligation to give answers, reasonable answers, for the Christian faith that they hold to, that's the idea of CARM, C-A-R-M, the Christian apologetics research ministry.

This is the focus we have on defending the faith. So you're welcome to call in with your questions to toll-free, 877-207-2276. This is March 1st for the podcasters who might be seeing this later, or listening to this later, March 1st of 2023. And so we'd like to kick off with a question here that we have on the line, and from—okay, it seems like I'm back, there's a glitch, I'm told it might be on the other end of my connection, that's what I suspect, because the guy that knows best has indicated that to me. So Rudolph, hopefully you can call back and we'll get to your question until then. Let me try to put someone else on the air if I'm there, and it's a question from Mike. Let me put him on. Hello Mike. This is Charlie Spine. How are you there?

Mike in North Carolina. My question is, what evidence is there that Domitian persecuted Christians, because here in North Carolina where I live, I mean, that's the prevailing thought, is that Domitian was a great persecutor of Christians, and I can't find any evidence to that effect. Yeah, persecutions in the Roman Empire generally went on in some form or another through the entire Roman Empire. The Caesars of Rome were to be worshipped by the Roman citizens as God in flesh, okay? This is something that would be denied by the Christian faith, and Christians would worship and fellowship sometimes in deep secret. They would go into the catacombs where we have evidence of them hiding because of the dangers of being publicly known as a Christian and identifying with Christianity, and that atmosphere of persecution was maintained even into Domitian's reign. But Domitian himself said he didn't want to be called a god.

The people that were around him, when they would write letters and stuff, would put that in there, you know, your Lord and God. But even Domitian himself said he did not want to be a god, and Domitian was basically in conflict with the Roman Senate, even his contemporaries. Now the persecution of Christians under Nero, the secular writers of that day said that Nero was a persecutor of Christians, and even detailed it, but Domitian does not seem to fall into that category. I mean, there was a paranoia to his personality, but a lot of it had to do with his conflicts with the Senate, because he basically ended corruption in Rome. He was a great believer in the family, he was a stickler for ethics, and he went after the Senate and the Senators, and finally in the end it was the Senators that had him killed.

Domitian's efforts were very laudable, he tried to end corruption, he tried to end different things that he saw as flagrantly in error amongst the Romans, he didn't completely accomplish his task, and you're right, the persecutions that might have took place under Nero on a horizontal level were of no comparison to Domitian, but nevertheless, the persecutions were maintained and continued, even though he didn't finish the job, so to speak, of cleaning Rome up the way he would like to. Good evening. I've got an echo on my phone, I hear my own voice. Oh, I thought that was your, you know, I thought that was from the head, your head, but that's okay.

It was a joke. Go ahead. Anyway, my question is what, and churches, one thing I noticed, the churches I've been to in the past, that you always find a bunch of women with a bunch of kids on them, and then if you're a single guy, when you're first doing a church or something, automatically the preacher or a kind of pushes women on you, that's not my responsibility to take care of these women's kids and these women that are problems from the divorce, from the past. Why should I pick up these women's issues or other?

Wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, hold on, hold on, Alberto, Alberto, can you hold on a second? I don't know what you're getting at, I don't know what your question really is. My question is why, is that right for pictures to do that and church members to do that, to push these divorced women with kids about all this baggage and issues, what's that worth it pushing on us single guys? And then they claim that God told them that God's will and all that. Yeah, yeah, when people say God told me or whatever, you know, you can just basically put that in the garbage. It's very rare that God ever really speaks to these people. I have two instances in my entire life where I believe the Lord actually spoke into my heart about two different things, and just two in 41 years.

But you know, it's about fellowship and some other stuff. But here's the thing, people say that kind of stuff, it has to be confirmed by others. If he says the Lord told me that you're supposed to take care of this woman, hey, well then say well I'll wait and see the Lord tells me that too. And a truth of something is confirmed by two witnesses, not one. And so you can just use that one. But we don't know what the situation is with divorces and things like that, but you know, if you go to church, the church is supposed to take care of the widows and things like that, so they should, it just depends on what extent and different circumstances, that's all.

Okay. Yeah, because he's like, for example, if you bring somebody else in the church who's single, automatically two women can say, oh, she didn't tell one, that ain't the one for you. They have to put a person one day who they want on you, if they're friends, or they got divorced with kids, they'd probably divorce wife with two different kids, two different husbands.

Then they say, oh, she's a good one, well yeah, why did she divorce wife with two different daughters and two different husbands? Well, that's between you and God. If you're, you know, you think the Lord's calling you to something like that, then that's between you and God over a long period of time. But the pastors shouldn't be up there saying, the Lord told me that you're through this and that. They shouldn't do that.

Okay. Oh, yeah, but I've been to a church, deacons, the church ladies, the pastors, ah, I mean, they all kind of push on me. I had a problem, then they're kind of, they're always telling God told me, and they always say that their deacon, their evangelist son comes, confirms his proposal, because I know the deacon is his father, the deacon's supposed to come, is what they're doing. But here's what you do.

When you go to church, put your shirt on backwards and wear your shoes on the wrong feet, and then twitch every 30 seconds. They'll stay away from you. Okay? Okay. All right, you'll be fine.

Listen to the word and just twitch every 30 seconds and wear your shirt backwards. And don't worry, you know, all of a sudden, you'll be fine. Okay? All right? All right. All right. Thank you.

Okay. That was awesome. It's Matt Slick live, taking your calls at 877-207-2276. Here's Matt Slick.

On Matt Slick live, you'll find our homepage at carm.org, C-A-R-M dot org. Sorry for the technical glitches, but I think we're back in business now. And the calls that I had waiting, it seems that they dropped while I reracked things on my end, so I apologize for that. But let me finish off a story that I may or may not have started in telling you some of the early activities while Matt and I were cutting our teeth on apologetics. I think I told you of the swap meet ministry we had, which was at a local drive-in theater where people rented the spaces between the outdoor speakers and the speaker poles, and it was like an open-air flea market, and we would rent a booth from time to time. One of our encounters resulted in an unexpected—I'm sorry to say unexpected—result, but the result was positive, nevertheless.

I'm sorry to say that I should have expected the result, and let me tell you about it. We had a couple of people come by, young people that were newlyweds, actually, and I'm not sure they would allow me to share their name 35 years later, but I'm going to take a chance, Brett and Shay, and these two young people were studying with Jehovah's Witnesses, and they had their baptism scheduled for the next weekend from when we were talking to them, and we witnessed to them and tried to explain to them that what they were getting involved with was a non-Christian cult, and we showed them why. We showed them much of the material that we developed into what you can now find on CARM, as far as resources in how to witness to Jehovah's Witnesses, how to answer their objections, how to show them where they are off in their theology, and to hopefully win them over to being faithful to the Word of God.

That's where it's at right now. The members of the Watchtower Bible and Tract Society are sometimes called Watchtowerites, because there's a great deal of mind control that goes on in that cult, and the mechanics of it is described in our article on CARM, our Jehovah's Witnesses Watchtowerites. You can go in there and you can see the methodology that's used, and it's a common thread through many cultic religions and cultic movements. But these young people were ready to go and get baptized and finalize their commitment to the Watchtower, and Matt was at one end of our little rented space, really out of earshot to me, and I was on the other end, and as he was talking to the young lady, I was talking to the young man. And the young man was listening, he was attentive, and from what I could tell, secondhand, so was the young lady, and then the young lady came over to talk to me as the young man went over to talk to Matt. And they switched, and I witnessed to her with the Word of God and pointed out things to her, and she was nodding affirmingly that, okay, I understand that and I understand this. And she says, you know, I've got the wrong Jesus in the Watchtower, I need to accept the real Jesus as my Lord and Savior.

I said, yes you do, yes you do, and would you like to do that right now? And I prayed with her, and her heart was, from what I could tell, extremely sincere. And while Matt was still talking to her husband, I says, now that you've come to the Lord and your husband is flirting with his final commitment to being a Jehovah's Witness, there might be some friction.

In fact, you can expect some friction from him, as long as he holds to that error. So I want you to understand that you've taken on something that might be difficult for you. Okay? She understood and she accepted the prospects of it, and we walked over to Matt, who was standing there with the young man, and we were all together at that point. And she said, you know, Brett, I have something to tell you.

He goes, I have something to tell you. He says, I just accepted the real Jesus Christ as my Lord and Savior. The Jehovah's Witnesses have the wrong one, and she was beaming with excitement.

And I just did the same thing, you know? And they were almost in tears, and we were almost in tears, because the Lord had blessed our feeble efforts on our part so mightily that these two young people, newlyweds, were starting off their marriage and their relationship with something even better than the marriage relationship. They were starting their marriage off with the Lord as one in Christ, and now why I say I look back with some embarrassment is, why didn't I expect such a thing to happen? I mean, Matt and I work long and hard to witness to people that are hostile to their faith, and I'm telling you, we should more often remind ourselves and hold ourselves in expectation that the Lord's going to work in just such a way. He did there and was gracious enough, the Lord was gracious enough to show us the results of it. So not only were they blessed and they moved forward in the Christian faith, for Matt and I, it put a huge breath of wind in our sails, our ships of faith as we sail along in our walk with Christ. It moved us forward to the point that when we recall this story with each other, it inspires us again and again over and over, and that wind comes up and moves us forward. It's just such a blessing when you can be a part of that, and hopefully the resources of CARM that Matt makes available free will enrich you and prepare you to meet the challenge of the cults, to meet the challenge of those who object to the faith and may be hostile to it, so that you too can be used to God to bring people to faith.

We just praise God for that. There's also another, as the calls aren't here right now, let me take a chance and give that number out again. Hopefully they can come through. That toll-free number is 877-207-2276, and we have a break coming up, so if you can call in 877-207-2276, we'll be happy to take your call. It's Matt Slick live, taking your calls at 877-207-2276, here's Matt Slick. Sitting in for Matt Slick, and Matt Slick is finishing up a wonderful tour of the Holy Land and sent back some messages and some snapshots and short video clips that tell me he's going to have some wonderful things to report from that trip.

Right here at Matt Slick live, we're here for the rest of the week, sitting in for him, and we have open lines that you can call in, and you can drive the topic live. Call and participate at toll-free number 877-207-2276, and of course we welcome those people who would have a mind to support CARM, and if the Lord has put it on your heart to support CARM, if you found CARM and its resources valuable to you, then you can express your appreciation with a donation to CARM, which is easy to do. You just go to CARM.org slash donate, or you go to the homepage and you'll find it, I think, in one of the bottom banners or menus, there'll be a place you can click to donate to CARM. Of course, we appreciate all your donations. Matt likes to hope to encourage people to give a regular amount, a recurring amount, something like $5 a month or $10 a month, and something that's not too outrageous, as you hear some of the other ministries falsely claim, that the more you plant, as far as a seed faith goes, the more you'll get back from God in the manner of finances.

No, no, no, no, no, no. We love to, as the Bible puts it, we love to invite people to give cheerfully and of a cheerful heart. If you can't give with a cheerful heart, then you need those finances more than we do, but we do appreciate your gifts as you cooperate with us in offering a gift to the world, and that's the gift of salvation through Christ. So those who participate, we dearly appreciate what you do, and if you're not in the position to partner with us financially, please pray for us, and pray for the ministry of CARM, because great things are being done, and we'd like to report those to you as we move forward.

So thank you so much for your support. Now there was a call on the air that got dropped during my little technical glitch. It was from a rather faithful caller, I enjoy when he calls in, it was Rudolph, and he had a question about the Ten Commandments. So if you're listening, Rudolph, we have some material on CARM, as far as articles go. One that I think you'll benefit from has the title, What Are the Ten Commandments?

And it goes through them and picks the topic apart pretty well. We've also got a sister article that goes with it that I think you will find valuable, everyone will find valuable. What commandments did Jesus give us?

Ah, that's another question entirely. In this article, it's too long for me to go over it with you here on the air, but it has 31 different items it mentions that can reflect some of the commandments Jesus gave. Of course, the first and greatest commandment, Love God with all your heart, soul, mind and strength and love your neighbor as yourself, is a commandment Jesus repeated from Deuteronomy, I believe, which he said hangs all the law. So the Ten Commandments and all the other 600-plus commandments you find in the Old Testament would hang upon and get their support from that one commandment Jesus gave to love the Lord your God with all your heart, all your soul and all your strength and love your neighbor as yourself. It's interesting that we say, upon this hangs all the law. It's an interesting and powerful statement when we run into people who are what we've come to call legalists, people that believe that in keeping all those 613 laws of the Old Testament that they somehow store up or gain points toward their salvation or maintain their salvation by performing in accordance with those laws. Jesus does away with that way of thinking. The way of thinking that we're to adopt is faith in Christ alone and what he's done for us.

Okay? He's done the works necessary and those works are able to cover us superbly and eternally, believe me. So our works might be in our gratitude.

We might try to honor him in thankfulness because we should act according to the good instructions found in the law, but not as a matter of salvation, but as an expression of our appreciation and our following his wants and needs and guidance for us with our life here on earth. So I hope that's helpful, Rudolph. I think those two articles will give you a good jumping off point on answering whatever your question was that unfortunately got dropped during a little hiccup here. So anyway, we've got another question coming in online and it's going to be, if I can get to it here, it's going to be from Mike in North Carolina. So Mike in North Carolina. Are you with me? Yeah, I'm with you. Oh, good. Somehow we were involved in that hiccup.

My secondary question is this. If there is little to no evidence of Diocletian, he was a tremendous persecutor of Christians, but of Domitian, persecuting Christians, isn't it bearing false witness to accuse him of that? I mean, wouldn't that be equivalent to me saying, Abraham Lincoln owned slaves, when there's little to no evidence, or no evidence, to back that up? If I said that about Abraham Lincoln owning slaves, I'm bearing false, even though he's dead, I'm bearing false witness against him.

Yeah, I think what you're mixing is giving Rome blame, since he was the emperor, and giving him personal blame. There were things that he personally was against, just as Abraham Lincoln, who you mentioned, was against slavery. But slavery was conducted under his administration, and he did his best to get rid of it. But there's no doubt that the country and the corporate collection, as you will, of the states, there were states that did practice slavery, and condone it, and encourage it, and were very energetic in that evil way of living. But you wouldn't blame Lincoln in any way other than he happened to be in office at the time, and it was under his administration.

So the persecution of Christians has been constant throughout the world, in some form or another, in every culture, and is still ongoing now in many cultures. So the idea of associating him with the persecution of his time in connection with the Roman Empire is not illegitimate, but to acknowledge his desire to get rid of this stuff and to become more ethical is something to applaud him for, just as Lincoln, unfortunately, conducted his business for a time under slavery. He did his best to get rid of it, and did a good job. Domation didn't finish the job, but his efforts, you might look at as honorable.

Right. And so I think it's time for us Christians to quit putting such emphasis on, because what I hear is that Domation was a great persecutor of Christians, that he banished John to the island of Patmos, which I find kind of hard to believe, since John would have had to be in, how old, what, 95 or something? Do you know why that was done? Do you know why that was done in the Roman Empire? Because they boiled him in oil, and that didn't work. So they got him out as far as they could from a public view in public ministry.

So that is a persecution of a very difficult type, in my view, to banish him that way, just because they found it difficult to kill him. Thank you so much for your call. I'm thinking that, oh, we're on a break? Welcome back to Matt Slick Live. We encourage you to participate with Matt Slick Live, and participate with our ministry at karm.org, at our website karm.org.

You'll find a lot of helpful and useful tools there. And if you'd like to see more ways, and many other links to participate on KARM through our variety of social media outlets and streams, you can go to KARM and type in KARMS social media. And you'll get a link to our social media page, which will show you many, many ways to participate with us, and to contact us, and to engage with us, and have conversations with us there. Matt likes to take questions. Sometimes during the show, when the calls slow up, he'll take questions at an email address called info at karm.org—short for information—info at karm.org.

While he's away, I'm letting those questions stack up for him, so that he can tackle them on the air for you, or perhaps even answer you with a personal email, if it's something that is outside of the—what would you call it—the topical things we cover on the air. Anyway, so you can get our links to apologetics, which include, on the website, you'll see you can learn about the Christian faith and how to defend it. You can do so by seeing the KARM online schools. There's three schools that are online for you—the School of Theology, the School of Apologetics, and the School of Critical Thinking.

They all blend together into one another just marvelously, and anyone by itself independently is of great value, as far as I'm concerned. And we offer those schools, and Matt often tells his audience—and I'll tell you the same thing—the schools do cost money, but it's rather nominal, in my view. But if you are unable to swing the cost of the schools, Matt will normally and regularly does allow people access to them and gives them an account free of charge.

So if you're hurting financially and you'd still like to take advantage of those schools, which we recommend, go ahead and contact us or go to the links that will set you up to access those schools and take advantage of those things. Now you're invited still, in this last segment, to open your Bible and call in. I like it if you call in with your Bible open, because then we can be on the same page and we're talking about the same topic, and a toll-free number to do that is 877-207-2276. Yesterday there was a call from a delightful lady that had questions about approaching her fellow classmates in a Bible class on what kind of control might the devil have over us. I neglected to mention to her that not only, as I said yesterday, can he throw obstacles in our way and try to divert us and get our attention away from the Word of God and away from Jesus—he's very practiced at that. There's a couple of other things that we need to acknowledge, too. The world and the flesh—you've heard the phrase, the world, the flesh, and the devil. These are the things that we sometimes struggle against. I left out the world, which is plenty capable on its own of appealing to us in an illegitimate sense, or asking us to act in a sense that's contrary to Christianity.

The world has stumbling blocks, okay? You don't even need the devil involved, as far as that goes. The world, the flesh—I'll tell you what, the flesh is another. Independent of the world and independent of the devil, the flesh has traps for us, too. More than likely, the world and the devil will present a temptation to our flesh, frequently, to get us off the path. But the Word of God says that there's no temptation that has come to us that God has not given us a way of escape.

Now here's the thing for Christians. Some people who don't have a walk of faith, who don't know Jesus Christ, are trapped and stuck in the web of either the world, the flesh, or the devil, or all three in combination. They're stuck there without an escape. It's only through Christ and faith in what he's done on our behalf that we have that escape.

Our responsibility is to look for it, okay? When it comes upon us, and it seems overwhelming sometimes, or challenging, you can count on the fact that there's a way of escape, and God has provided it. So in those times, you just say, Lord, please, by your Holy Spirit, guide me into finding that escape. Illuminate to me what that escape is, Lord. Show me that door out of this problem I've run into with the world, the flesh, or the devil. And he promises that that's what he provides for you and me as faithful followers of Jesus. I'm not going to tell you how many times I have to look for that escape, because that might be embarrassing. And it might be embarrassing for you too, but I guarantee you need those escape routes that he provides just as much as I do, and as we walk together in faith, we can help each other recognize just what those are and just how he would have us behave, either independently or together, to his honor and to his glory. So neglecting those two things from our question yesterday was my fault, and I was trying to be brief, but I wanted to expand on it, because these are important topics in everyone's walk with Christ, and we shouldn't ignore them, and we shouldn't be unprepared. Okay? And in that, we're coming up, I'm looking for callers that's toll-free to MassLip Live.

Call in at 877-207-2276. I've promised as best as I could to share with you a wonderful testimony from a lady whose baby was born at less than two pounds, I believe, and who has survived to this day. Almost three years ago, a lot of our prayer partners from Carmel have prayed for her, and she has become and blossomed into a delightful little girl. I went and got to see her and kind of intimidate her with my beard and everything at church and a Bible study.

She at first played coy, like little kids do, and shy, and then she kind of opened up and smiled for me, and we got some good pictures with her. But I've invited her mom, on short notice, it seems, to join us, and I hope to have her join us on air and testify of the great work that God has done in the life of her young baby, and hopefully, it'll build you up in the faith to know that God does have a hand in our affairs, and we need to continue to appeal to him to take a strong hand. Now, there's a couple of topics that I wanted to also address, but we're running towards the end of the show.

It would be more convenient for me to get a call. Slick has a lot of archived shows, and thanks to the Truth Network, they've archived over 500—I think it was over 600—the last I checked the Truth Network and their various broadcasting or broadcast platforms. It's been a delight to see that so many are archived there for people to go back and see topics that were covered in the past and to hear the answers and to see the references to follow to find your own answers to those topics. We also have, for your edification, I hope, the cut-and-paste information on CARM. The cut-and-paste information is a section that has different topics—Islam, Roman Catholicism, Jehovah's Witness, I think Christian Science is included in there, some other aberrant movements. In the cut-and-paste section, it's offered for people to use in online conversations, chat rooms with people, different venues where you need a quick reference and a quick source of documentation, and these cut-and-paste sections allow you to get a quick reference and a quick bit of documentation and paste it into your conversations in those venues.

It's free to use, okay, and I suggest that before you use them, you might want to visit the CARM page that is titled, Why? Internet Apologetics and How to Use This Section, and that describes to you the roadmap of how to use the cut-and-paste information, a very valuable source that I go to from time to time, even now, having been to it hundreds of times. Now, there's also other resources you can join on CARM, and since we don't have any callers, I'm going to tell you that Matt has written several books available on Amazon. You put in Matt Slick in Amazon, and you'll see a variety of books he's written. One is an adventure type of novel. One is a spiritually-oriented novel, The Influence—I've almost remembered it by its original title, as you put it out. Now it's The Influence, and it talks about battles that can go on of a spiritual nature.

Of course, it's a work of fiction, but he does work into it in many, many, many scriptural and biblical themes that you will recognize if you're a Christian—you'll recognize them right away. And I hope you go there and sample those. But as we're coming up to the end of this show, you might want to return tomorrow at this time window. It seems we've got the glitches worked out, and we'd love to have you call in to Matt Slick Live. Thank you so much for listening today, and we hope you have no peace until you make your peace with Jesus Christ, okay? Thank you.