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. Hey everybody, welcome to the show. It's me, Matt Slick. Listen to Matt Slick live. See, today is March 27th, 2023.

Just thought a 327 was a good engine back in the day. Hey, if you want to give me a call, all you have to do is dial 877-207-2276. And we just got two week ding on YouTube for medical misinformation. I guess that's because last week I quoted the CDC. And I guess you're not allowed to do that.

I guess you're not allowed to directly go to the CDC website and directly show the information from the CDC website. So that's what I did. I think in the after show I did that. And I think that's what it is. We have some haters who don't like what I do on the radio and on the web.

And they think that they know better and that we're not allowed to go against the lockstep movement that people have to the COVID stuff. So yeah, what I did was I went to, in the after show last week, I went to the COVID website, the CDC website. I just showed from their statistics.

I didn't do anything. I just showed what they do. It's how you do this. And I said, see, this is how many deaths are related to this and that.

And that's the other thing I did last week. And I think, Laura, if you could type it in what they said, been banned from YouTube for two weeks. And if we do it one more time, it will be banned permanently. So I don't know what that means. Does that mean the Karma account, the YouTube account?

I don't know. So just to let you know, we're over in Rumble. We're going to Rumble a lot. So because of censorship, we'll be moving to Rumble. And you can go to Rumble. That's what we do here. Let me go right there.

rumble.com. And yeah, let's see. You got some stuff going. So it's a lot better over there. And anyway, there it is. So I'm looking at it right now.

Hey, if you want to give me a call, all you have to do is dial 877072276. One nice thing about Rumble is that you can do rants. Rumble rant. That's where you donate a little bit. You got to sign up and do all that stuff. But you can do that. Now we don't have that many watching on Rumble right now because it's a new platform.

It's not as popular as YouTube. And we get it. But we are going to be moving over there.

We're recommending others go over there too. In fact, I was talking and talk with Bill McKeever last night. Last night. Last night. Yeah, it was last night. No, the night before. I can't remember. Saturday night. Saturday night.

That's right. Because I was down in Salt Lake City. I went down there over the weekend. I was down there.

Let's see. So I wasn't on Thursday. Friday. I had to drive down Thursday. And I was going to be at a high school thing on Friday with Eric Johnson. I stayed with Eric and his wife, Terry.

Terry's awesome. I think she's smiling right now as I'm waving. She listens to me every day.

That's what I hear. Poor woman. And she's such a sweetie too.

She's a sweetie. And so what happened was we went there for the retirement thing for Sandra Tanner. Now, if you don't know who Sandra Tanner is, she's in her 80s now.

And Gerald passed away, I don't know, 15 years ago, whatever it was. And she's probably the number one expert on Mormonism in the world. She has done such great research and incredible stuff at Utah Lighthouse Ministry. And I've had the privilege of meeting her several times.

And we went to Israel about six years ago together. And I like to help the ladies. I like to help the people who move slowly and at the end of the pack. What I'll do is I'll stay back there.

I did it this last time I was there earlier this month. And just stay with the people who need help. And I just hold onto my arm and we'll walk up the hill together. And so I did that with Sandra. So we got to know each other a little bit better then.

Sandra is awesome. And we had this retirement thing at a church on Friday night and then Saturday over at Eric and Terry's. She was there too with a smaller group of people.

It was a lot of fun. And then Saturday evening we had dinner with Micah and Ed Romine, who I call Romaine Salad. And Rudy and Laura. I'm embarrassed, I can't remember Laura's husband's name.

Every time I hear it I go, oh yeah, that's right. And we had a good dinner and maybe Laura will tell me the name and get his first name in there. We had a nice dinner at a Thai restaurant there in American Fork. And then on the way home I went and stopped at Bill's house. Been a couple three hours there and then drove back yesterday. And what was interesting was it was really, really bad snow. We were doing 20 miles an hour on the freeway there in the 15.

You could only see a quarter mile at best. And we did that for quite a while. Took a while to get back. And that's right, Terry. That's right, Terry. That's right, Laura's husband. Terry's a great guy.

I like him, he's a nice guy. Eldered the church there with Rudy, who's a pastor. And so we had a good meal, good time and talked to Bill and his wife Tammy and drove back and a lot of snow. Snow squalls and the whole bit was weather.

I like weather, I enjoy it. Anyway, that was it. Carrie. Carrie, that's right. Carrie.

Okay, got it. I'm with names. Hey, if you want to give me a call, all you do is dial 877-207-2276. I want to hear from you.

Give me a call. All right. All right. I thought we were banned from YouTube. How come we're on YouTube? No, we're not. We're on. I don't know what to run. What are we on?

Facebook, Twitter, Odyssey and Rumble. Let's get to Chuck from North Carolina. Chuck, what's up Chuck? Hey, Matt.

Well, the ducks, the ducks are up, I guess. Wait a second. I want to get your take on it. And it has to do exactly with Christianity and the sovereignty of the individual.

You know, like the priesthood of the believer. You're muffled. You're muffled.

Hold on. Chuck, Chuck, you're muffled. It's hard. Chuck, Chuck, you're muffled. Okay, okay. He can't hear me and I don't know if the connection is very good, so Chuck, I got you on hold because you're very muffled.

I'm having trouble understanding what you're saying. Okay, I'm going to hang up on him because he can call back because it was such a bad line. I think he can hear me. It's a bad connection. I don't know what's up. Chuck, call back, okay? Please call back. Sorry about that, but that's just a bad connection. It happens.

Alright, so Chuck, call back. Now, on Fox News, I'm looking at a Christian school massacre suspect identified as transgender. Police found a maps manifesto. There's another shooting, of course. We're at a Christian school, apparently. Interesting.

Why would someone go into a Christian school and shoot people, get more information about that? And that has happened. It's unfortunate.

Please pray for those people and for the perpetrator because that person needs prayer as well. Yeah, so let's see. What else? Oh my goodness. Wow. Alright. Alright, alright.

Now we'll try this again. Chuck, you're back. Yes, sir. This is Chuck back from Burlington. Do you hear me, Matt? Yes, a better connection now. Alright, what's up, man?

What do you got? Do you hear me okay, Matt? Yes, I said yes. Do you hear me? Do you hear me?

Yes, but you know, I've got bad hearing and I'm okay. Anyway, what I was saying before was the reformation and with Christianity before that individual faith in Christ gives you the preacher, the believer and that gives you the individual, not the collective. We're going to the collective. We're losing Christianity. I saw a bad statistic on Newsmax today, like 39% don't think religion is important to anyone.

You know, 29% don't care about having kids anymore. It's terrible. But anyway, it's the collective and then, you know, studying Hitler and Stalin, they believed only in the collective, the collective will. Right.

So that's why you're getting banned. You're not allowed to have your collective will, your collective belief. Excuse me, your individual belief. Because of the individual, the priesthood of the believer. I believe it lies in that. Am I wrong?

Well, I can't say you're wrong or right here. The thing is that Christianity is under heavy attack, but there are a lot of Christians in America. And I think what's happening is the goats that are intermingled and the sheep are leaving. And so the overall population is down of churches, but there are a lot of good believers. I know I was at a church on Friday night for the Sandra Tanner thing. Just a great number of hundred, couple hundred people who just love the Lord.

Great people. There are a lot of good Christians out there, but we're not unified. We're not unified and the Biden crime family is in charge and they're selling our country down to the Chinese and the borders are open and the debacle of exiting Afghanistan and the things that are happening in our country. It looks to me, it's my opinion, it looks like a concerted effort to destroy us from inside.

Yeah, it looks like our country and empire is falling. You know with homosexuality we started going down to hell like on the Greece pole. Well, yes, in history, homosexuality is one of the common factors that arises before a nation falls.

Not in every case, but here's how it is. You know, if you have a country where you have a common faith, a common morality, a common direction, there's unity and strength. In order to destroy a country like ours, you can't destroy it externally because we're too strong militarily speaking. So you have to go internal and the thing to do is to destroy religion and destroy the nature of truth and set people apart and against each other and undermine any ways of unity. You have to get control of the media, which is the mainstream media is just leftist, get control of the schools and you have to discredit churches and this is what's happening and Christianity is being undermined and a lot of Christians in churches don't know what their faith is. In fact, just as a side note, I regularly will encounter Christians and ask them basic Christian doctrine questions and most of them don't know the answers.

Basic. We go to churches for years. And so, in my opinion, this is a warning that the pastors aren't teaching what they need to teach.

In fact, let's just say that in the past year, two out of three churches that I've gone to, the pastors have preached moralism and not biblical Christocentric cross-centered theology. But they've been, you know, lots of illustrations and then after you've made sure that the people are entertained enough, then you get to the text and then it's moralism. So this is what I've encountered and it's bad. It's bad. It's all over the place. Hey, we've got a break coming up. Hold on a minute. We'll get going.

Hey folks, we have four open lines. If you want to give me a call, 877-207-2276. We'll be right back, please. Stay tuned.

877-207-2276 is Matt Slick. Hey 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 back on here with Chuck. There we go. Hey Chuck, welcome. You're on the air. Yes sir, Matt, and I'd like to say one thing. I saw part of the Trump rally this weekend on Newsmax and he might be crucially unacceptable of him and he's a lot better than the alternative. Well, yeah, the Democrats, you know, as I've gone over before, the Republicans aren't much better, but the Democrats are the party of slavery and Jim Crow laws and KKK and yeah, it's bad and they're full of lies and stuff.

I just saw a news clip. Chuck, Chuck, Chuck, Chuck, Chuck, you're constantly, the phone. Okay, Chuck. Okay, I had to hang up because Chuck, I'm trying to get a hold of you, but there's just not a good connection. The phone's going in and out and I'm with you, man. It's bad news, but you got to call back, get a better connection. I don't know.

It just happens like that. So I don't know where he was or if he's traveling or whatever, but Chuck, sorry about that, man. Call me back.

Okay. Let's get on the air with Connie from Utah. Hey Connie, welcome.

You're on the air. Well, honey, Matt, I, I'm always excited when I get a tune in. I love to listen to you and listen, I heard you talk about a retirement party for Sandra Tanner and I would have loved to be in on that. I came down just for one of the first times I ever went to her shop there and met her.

But before that, I think she had COVID and I got to meet Eric Johnson as a previous Mormon. And I'm really happy to have met him and he put me in touch with a couple of folks that I could have learned from and you know, to further my Christian journey. But anyway, talking about unification, where do I find out about all this? Because when it comes to the end times and Christians need to be unified and Christians need to, you know, I'm just, I'm just so concerned, like a lot of us are about what's going on in the world and we see what the Democrats are doing to us.

And, you know, there's a lot of good people out there. And I just heard you say something about unification. And I thought, how can we, how can, how can we be more unified as Christians?

Well, it's easy. I mean, they need to, all the Christians and the pastors and the elders need to start having meetings with other churches and just make sure that the pastors are praying together and working together and focusing on the essentials of the faith, not the differences. So, you know, I'm Presbyterian and I could work with a Baptist. I know some people who don't hold the Presbyterian perspectives and yet they love the Lord.

We can go witness together. This kind of thing needs to be promoted. But another thing that needs to be promoted is the cost of discipleship. And a lot of pastors aren't really talking about it.

And unfortunately what's happening in a lot of churches is that instead of the church being outward oriented, it's inward oriented. It's take care of the people and see what we can get from God. You know, babysit the Christians and how do we get more? You know, how do we get more money? How do we get more of this? How do we get more comfort?

How do we get more prosperity? And this unfortunately has been promoted out into third world countries, which I've got people who've come back from there and said it's all over the place. It's because it appears of the sinfulness of flesh.

And so God's not going to bless people when they're doing that. And how many sermons have you heard about picking up your cross daily and following after Christ and the cost of what it might mean to follow after him? Have you ever heard such a lot? Well, yes, I'm happy with my congregation. I really am. And we recently had a theme study for a couple of weeks on what's going on with this transgender movement. I mean, I was really proud of our pastors that they brought that forth and thought, you know, a biblical view on this and how we respond to loved ones and things like that.

So yes, I do. And I am. I'm looking for pastors to kind of stand up and to give us guidance in those kind of areas. So I am happy with my church. But I'm sad to hear about a prosperity gospel and those kind of things are just horrible.

God's not up there just as our little genie, just waiting for us to rub the lamp and say, give me this and give me this. Give me this. It's servitude. It's all about a servitude attitude. Right? Right. Yeah, picking up our cross and following after Christ and being more like him and, you know, to be other centered. And unfortunately, the Christian church lives here in America, lives in a very, a very comfortable environment.

And that's good. But the thing is that with a comfortable environment, we've become lackadaisical. We're not really relying on prayer and meditation on God's word and things like that. And so we have a lack of unity in the body.

And we could do a great deal if we were unified. I mean, this transgender idiocy, you know, which is being, for example, the stuff where they have drag queens that just perverted. And they go and they teach children in public libraries. What if you had people going in teaching children in public libraries teaching about Christianity? Oh, we can't have that because separation of church and state.

But you can have sexual perversion being taught to our children. It's just, it's ridiculous. The Christians need to stand up and say, we've had enough of this and they need to march. They need to be very vocal. But they don't because they might lose something, you know, and risk something. We've got to risk. I'm sorry, but we do.

I know what it means to risk. We've got to do it. Yeah, absolutely.

I agree. I mean, what do you take up your cross and follow Jesus? Or do you live with what you have, your home, your family? You know, I, thank God, haven't lost my family because I left, you know, a work-based church. I pray for them daily. But like I said, I'm so grateful that I didn't lose my, not that I know of, that I've lost some of my family. I mean, they still accept me. They tell me they love me. I still have a relationship with them.

But yeah, I agree. I just was wondering about how we can stay unified as just in your community, I guess, with your pastors and just standing up for Jesus, I guess. Well, yeah, you know, I would like to do an experiment where they allow me to preach at a church for six months every Sunday, just to see how many people leave. Because I'm half joking, but half joking.

Oh, yeah, people would leave because I don't, I have no desire to tickle anybody's ears. I have the desire to honor my Lord. And just as the text says, let's go through the text. And that's it. Wherever we're at, that's what it says. You don't like it. That's not my problem.

Here's what it says. And I'm not saying a lot of pastors don't do that. But, you know, I would just think that if I were to take over a church of 1000 people, that within six months, it'd be down to 500. That's just my opinion. Well, I like it.

Of course, I don't have 500 friends either. Well, I appreciate that. You know, how long have you been out of the Mormon Church?

Oh, I never really took it seriously. When I left home, I, you know, I still... It's Matt Slick live, taking your calls at 877-207-2276. Here's Matt Slick. Hey everybody, welcome back to the show. If you want to give me a call, all you gotta do is dial 877-207-2276. Okay, Connie. All right, you're back on the air.

Sorry about that. All right, so you're telling me about how long you've been a Christian. I think it was or something, right? Well, yes, thank God. It's like I said, I never really, it never really took for me. And I have one Temple Mormon brother, and actually I married a Temple Mormon. I just, I figured there's a distinction when you're a card carrying Mormon.

But my husband called once. I remember I recently, we brought him, I say we, maybe spirit, brought him to Jesus a while back. Yeah, he's still fighting some demons, but that's here nor there. But yeah, I actually went to some kind of other kind of cult thing, but at least I learned the word. I learned the Bible for a little while, the way ministry. And I don't know what ever happened to them, but at least it got me to read in the Bible. And that's what I pray for some people. Just read the Bible by themselves as a child. And somehow God brought me out of a terrible life I was in.

He said, this is not the life I have for you. And I started going to a Baptist church and from now I'm in a non-denominational, wonderful, wonderful place years, years, years later. Praise God. I'm glad to hear it. Thank you.

Yes, that's right. Praise God. And not a church, but praise God for his mercy and grace in you. Good for you. I am part of his church. Yeah. Praise God. So yeah.

Unification. I would love to be in the loop. Give Sandra Tanner my love. I'm so glad for the work she's done. Yeah, she's great. I've known her for years and she's awesome and just an incredible, knowledgeable person on Mormonism. And she was telling some stories Saturday night at the Johnson's house about some stuff with the salamander letter and some other things. She was telling us how that went.

And it was just good stuff to hear her talking and stuff like that. So enjoy it. All right. Yeah, well, thanks. I'm glad to have talked to you.

All right, Connie. Well, thanks for listening. Appreciate it. All right. Take care. God bless you. You too. God bless.

All right. Hey, let's jump on with Travis from North Carolina. Travis, welcome. You are on the air.

I cannot believe you talking about you. I just I was just like a few hours ago released from prison and I've been in there five years and I was listening to your show. Just it was absolutely a godsend for me to go to prison and get to hear you. I got me to my faith and I quit believing for a long time. I was raised in church and I just left. I got into drugs and gangs and stuff.

And I just I was in Raleigh, North Carolina, and I was listening to the show and it was on commercial. So I flipped down and I heard you talking. And I wasn't once I heard it was a God thing, I wasn't going to I wasn't going to stay on there. But then I heard you like do your thing where somebody was arguing and there's been really a person you hung up on him. And I was like, this might be all right. And there was a question that had been lingering in my mind for so long.

If somebody would just answer this question, maybe it wouldn't make me a Christian, but it would at least open the door for me. And the very next caller that came on asked the question that had been in my mind. And I looked at my radio like I get sprouted ears.

I'm like, no. And then it just all made sense. And I started listening.

But I've been away from that area for about a year and a half now. So I've been able to listen to you. And I was I've been praying for you.

I hope everything's going good with you and Miss amique. And I just you've helped me so much, man. Wow. Well, you know, the glory goes to the Lord.

Praise God. And yeah, so you just got out, you said, what, a few hours ago? A few hours ago, and you was the first person I wanted to call. Wow. Well, praise God, I appreciate that.

I called the I called the number on the car website, and I left you a voicemail. I'm not sure if you got it yet. But uh, yeah, well, you have to do catch up voicemails. No, go ahead. I have to catch up. Yeah, I enrolled in a couple like correspondence Bible courses and stuff while I was in there.

And I just tried and start teaching myself Greek and I started reading and I started studying and I'm just I've gotten really I'm in the truest sense of the word. I'm a slick eye. Well, okay. Is everybody everybody listening to this? Matt has not paid me for this. This is not nobody to pull me up.

This is true testimony. Oh, well, I appreciate it. I know you probably got to call it. I will be a consistent caller. You'll be hearing from me a lot. I got a lot of questions.

That's fine. Here's my concern, man. I want you to know what it's like. I did nine years of prison ministry, talked to a lot of the guys on the inside, and a lot of guys on the outside and, and once I got out and, you know, you just got to get in. I hope you have a good stable place to stay and a good church you can go to.

Those are really important. My mom and dad's helping me out. In a couple months, I'm going to be actually moving my parole to Ohio. I got into a culinary school up there and they pay me while I work. It's education.

It's that. But I'm going to be trying to do an online seminary or something, try to get into seminary somewhere online while I'm doing that. Good for you. Like youth ministry to help kids and help teenagers and people start to stay out of it and stuff. Well, you know what? I actually know a guy, I won't say his name, but I know someone who did felony time and he's now a pastor. The church I'm going to this weekend, the pastor, uh, uh, he, um, he was real bad and struggling out on drugs and he's a pastor now. I don't know if he ever did sign up, but he, uh, he's a pastor now. He's a pretty good dude. Good.

Well, I remember the pastor that I know, we were talking about this once and I said, so what was it that you did? And he looked at me and he said, that man is gone. That man is dead. I don't talk about him anymore. Good enough. I never forgot that was a good answer.

That's right. And he says he serves the Lord and he's willing to die for the Lord. So, you know, praise God, man. I'm going to try to start the third grade awakening, man. Well, uh, we, uh, we need something like that. Just get on your knees and start praying, man. And that's what's needed. All right. Okay, buddy. I'll get to my question.

If, if I might squeeze this one in here, if you think it's too long of an answer or something, you can skip by this and I'll try it another time. But how might we go about bringing something before legislation? Religion is my definition of belief that is held to that, um, you know, that you, that you fervently hold your life to. And so they say we can't preach religion in school, but they're preaching evolution and humanism and naturalism. Why can't we teach creationism?

Science does not support evolution in the least. I'm, I'm, I understand what you're saying. And, um, I don't know the legal stuff. So you'd have to pray, ask God to open the right doors and talk to the right people and see how things can go.

Cause it's a big issue. And you never know how things work, but I'm just a theologian. And so I don't know the political system and how to get at something before the courts and all that kind of stuff.

You have to find people who are trained in that area and lawyers and stuff. Okay. I listened to Bishop Jackson too on the radio. He might know something about that. Um, I'll get my question for you.

Um, let me get everybody up. Um, so this limited atonement thing, I'm with the total depressed, be the irresistible grace of perseverance of the saints. The unconditional election was another one, but I'll get that one on tomorrow. But the limited atonement thing, I've been told for so long, Christ, God, God will not, from what I understand, correct me if I'm wrong, God will not send somebody to hell for their sin. They will send them to hell for not believing in the atoning sacrifice. Nothing like that's in scripture.

Nothing like that. See, people are judged for their sins. They're not judged because they don't have sin, but because they have sin and not believing in Jesus is a sin. Because Jesus says in John 14, one believe in God, believe also in me.

He's commanding it. This is what is all which is obligatory. People are obligated to believe in the true living God and in Christ. So it's all an issue of sin. So people who say that kind of a thing are not very theologically adept.

Sorry, but that's what it is. So limited atonement theory is the idea that Jesus only legally bore the sin of the elect, though his blood is sufficient for all, but only the elect had their sins atoned for specifically. And then people say, well, no, you have to believe to apply it.

No, you don't. The application of upon belief is of justification, not propitiation. The atoning sacrifice is a propitiatory sacrifice. It removes the wrath. It removes the punishment.

But that just means that's removed. And then you're justified, which is credited with righteousness, when you believe they're different. So one is propitiatory. One is justification.

Propitiation occurred at the cross and is finished there. And justification occurs when you believe they're different. People don't know the difference often. Okay. Make sense?

Here's a break, buddy. We got to go. All right now. Call back again. Okay. All right, man. Thanks a lot, Travis. Good stuff.

I love hearing that. Good, good stuff. Hey, we'll be right back after these messages. Hey, everybody, welcome back to the show.

The last segment of the hour. If you want to give me a call, all you got to do is dial 877-207-2276. Let's get to Sue from Utah. Sue, welcome. You're on the air. All right.

Thank you, Matt. I went to a Bible study the other day and usually were, you know, right in the words in the Bible. And this time, they talked. They had a Bible study that was led by Joseph Prince.

Yeah, bad news. Have you ever heard of him before? Yes, he's a he's a I would never trust Joseph Smith, Joseph Smith, Joseph Prince. He is a word of faith teacher. He's a word of faith teacher. So faith is a force. Yeah, word of faith, name it and claim it.

God wants you healthy and wealthy, things like that. Okay. We were trying to tell them that, you know, we read like popped up right away. And, you know, these friends have been listening to him for the last few years.

And we've tried to tell them that same thing that you just said. Is there anything in Scripture that or anything that you've seen on his website that I can tell them? No, I don't have anything specific written on him. I don't believe, of course, written so much stuff.

I can't remember. A lot of the times I've written like 5000 articles. But I can tell you that I would avoid George.

Joseph, I mean, Joseph Prince, but avoid them. Okay, because you can find a lot of stuff, you can find a lot of stuff on the web. And maybe there's so many things I'm working on.

I'm actually trying to develop a video, I'm going to do an experiment with a specific video on something. And I have to teach myself some concepts and some ideas. But there are lots of sites out there that will list out the specific doctrines. When I do look, here's the thing I don't like about a lot of other websites, sorry, but this is just me, that if you're going to find out what they teach, and stuff, I want to see a link to what it is they say.

In a bullet point area, so you can see exactly what the heresy is. But a lot of sites, you got to read through a bunch of stuff to find out what the problem is. So, but they are out there.

They are out there. All right. So stay away from Prince. And, and I don't think I have anything on him. You know what, I gotta check. I have so much stuff that it's hard to tell. Let's see. Let's see. I'm gonna just look.

Preachers and teachers. I have everything on him. I'm looking through stuff.

I got all this stuff I haven't even released yet. And nope. Nope, nope, nope, no, I don't. It was kind of like Hypergrace, you know, where, where, you know, you don't have to do anything to, I mean, you know, I mean, I know Jesus is our Savior, and our good word for Hokey Rags, but he's like, you know, name it and claim it, you know, you try to heal yourself, whatever it is that you can have it, prosperity or wealth or whatever. Mm hmm.

Yeah. And that's the heresy is it's not it. It's part of what I was talking about earlier in the show is that what churches are preaching now is that God, God wants to make you healthy and wealthy. And that's who says so.

And they take verses out of context. And this is just, it's horrible. It is. It's horrible. Yeah, it is. So I'll need to do.

You're welcome. You know, and I wish I better information for you. But he's a positive confession word of faith guy. Bad news.

It is bad news. Okay. All right. Well, God bless. You're welcome so much. God bless you. All right.

All right. Let's get to Joe. Joshua from Tennessee. Joshua, welcome. You're on the air.

Hello. Can you hear me? Yes, I can. Yes, I can.

What do you get? So I believe that none of us are good people. I think by our deeds, I think you're all wicked by our deeds. I think all of us have fallen short of the glory of God.

And none of us are righteous by our work. And I was speaking to a Catholic about this. And he ripped this verse out of context. That is Matthew chapter 12, verse 35, which says, in the New American Standard Bible, the good person brings out of his good treasure good things. And the evil person brings out of his evil treasure evil things. Now obviously, Jesus can be saying that the person is good by their deeds, because there's overwhelming scripture. Because there's overwhelming scripture that states otherwise.

So I'm wondering if you could put this in the context for me and what exactly Jesus is talking about. It's just talking about a general goodness. We have a level of goodness on a human level.

So if an atheist is walking behind someone at an airport, a man reaches in, grabs his keys or something, and money falls out, and the atheist is behind him and says, Hey, sir, you know, he dropped your money, and he helps him out. On the human level, we say that's a good thing he did. On the God level, of course, it's not. So that's all that Jesus is talking about.

Because he's talking to the Jews about fulfilling righteousness, doing those things according to the law. And so yeah, you're good in that respect. But he's not saying that they're good in their nature and their essence. That's all that's going on. Okay? Okay, okay. So he's just bringing the word good down to our level.

Yeah, yeah. And that's fine, because Jesus is down to our level. He's a man, and he walks and got hungry and, you know, to sleep.

And that's all that's going on. So when a Catholic says this, you say, Yeah, you're right. You know, it does say the good fruit, a good tree brings good fruit, but you don't become a good tree by bearing good fruit.

The fruit is the result of the nature of what it is. So you do good because you're regenerate. God's granted us good works. And that's what this says in Ephesians 2, 8, 9, right? And, you know, we have been saved unto good works. I forget what the verse is. So there's a verse that talks about this.

Oh, here it is. For we are His work, which is created in Christ Jesus for good works. That's Ephesians 2, 10. So we are to do certain things. And these things on that level, yeah, they're good, you know, so that that's what it is. But they're not salvific.

The Catholic thinks that is the knowledgeable Catholic in Catholicism will believe that these things are salvific, that the good works help them in their salvation, which is also false, of course. Okay, you're on the right track. But just got to learn a little bit more about how they word things, let's just say.

And so yeah, there are good things that people can do on the human level. When you get into the ultimate level, when only God is good, and no one does good Romans 3, 10, 11, and 12, all are evil. Then you ask, you can talk about the two different senses in which goodness can be obtained and understood.

That's what's going on. Okay, yeah. So I always thought it was a strictly, the word good biblically was strictly in the sense of perfection, essentially, in the eyes of God. And when we're declared righteous, all of our sins are washed away. There are none of our sins in His sight. They are forgotten. Well, the word good is the Greek word agathos.

And what I'm going to do right now, it's number 18, because it starts with an alpha, the letter A, and it's used 102 times. And so the word good is going to have a semantic domain, a range of meanings. In Matthew 7-11, Jesus says, if you then, being evil, know how to give good gifts to your children.

Well, how can you be evil and know how to give a good gift? So He's juxtaposing things here, and He's talking about, well, you're evil in your heart, but you can still do good things with your children. So Jesus is not talking about the ontological necessity of goodness as a standard of God's character.

He's talking about the people and the levels that they're at. And that's what He's doing there. He says, how much more will your Father give in heaven, give what is good to those who ask Him? And, you know, He went to this verse of Good Tree, as you talked about, and someone said to Him, teacher, what good things shall I do to inherit eternal life? And this is Matthew 19-16. And Jesus doesn't say, you're not good. He says, well, why call, you know, what's good?

You know, why call me good? Only God is good. And He says, keep the commandments. So what Jesus is doing is saying keeping the commandments is a good thing on the human life. But it's not what saves us.

And the cults, false religions like Eastern Orthodoxy and Roman Catholicism, what they'll do is combine good works with faith and or their rituals, baptism and sacraments or whatever it is, combined with faith in order to be right with God. And that's where the error is. That's what you got to separate. Okay. Okay. All right. I'll make sure to, you know, look more into the semantics of what Jesus was talking about and the usage of good.

Thank you, Matthew. Yeah, it's, it's called doing a word study. And see, now here's a good example of something.

You talk to a Catholic, a Catholic gave you a challenge, and there was a point to what he said. So now what you need to do, I would recommend is you get your get a way of writing these things down. I use outlines. And I use word and I use outlines. And so you write down the word good, and research it. How many times is it used in the New Testament? What's the Greek word?

And just find different places where it occurs, and then find a range. And not that you have to use that again later, but you might. Because people don't realize, this is my theory about how God teaches us, is that he gives us the mortar to place the bricks. The mortar is the truth of who he is, and what his word reveals. The brick is a little truth thing that you might learn, like the word good. And people, what they do, a lot of people what they do a lot of times, in my opinion, is they don't pay attention to what God's teaching them through these little things. God has allowed you, for example, to, as an opportunity to grow in your understanding of the word agathos in Greek, good, and how it has a semantic range and different meanings and different levels.

Well, you could write that down. That's one brick and a foundation of truth. And in a week, you might talk to somebody else and or something else, or you might just have an impression of a prayer or hear a sermon and something stands out. And it might be God bringing you to study something else.

And you put that in your notes. That's another brick that's in this foundation. And as you keep record of these things, and you start seeing what God is doing and how he's teaching you through these little inter, they seem unrelated things throughout your life. After a while, you start seeing the foundation that he's building has a certain structure that you are going to be familiar with. For me, it's my foundation of logic, apologetics, and stuff, philosophy and things will be different than yours.

And so that's what I believe is that God teaches us and he uses circumstances to expose our ignorance and that we should take that opportunity to learn from that ignorance, plug that hole, put that brick in place, and then keep going through life and see what God is putting in place so that we know how on what to stand, the makes sense. I hope it does. It does. Thank you very much. Sure. All right, man. I'm thinking I'll try to bless you.

Give it to God. God bless. God bless. All right. So you know, folks, that's, I hope I made myself clear. I really talked about that analogy very much.

So it's not very polished. But I think a lot of people don't realize is that God is working with them and teaching them little things. And they don't seem to study the little things that God wants them to study. They kind of ignore them and go on. I think if you were to study the things that he brings up, that over a period of time, you'll start seeing what God's doing.

They'll start learning new things. And the foundation of truth that's based on these tidbits of truth, things that he's exposed you to, is a work that he has for you personally. And I think it's something to pursue, and something to welcome from God. So there you go. I should be hearing the music right about now. And I don't. But I guess that's because we're off the air, I'm assuming for the next bit here. So there we go. All right. Another program powered by the Truth Network.