Matt Slick Live

The following program is recorded content created by the Truth Network.

Live if you want. You can give me a call. All you got to do is dial 877-207-2276.

I want to hear from you. Give me a call. All right. And, oh, I just remembered I got to get up on Clubhouse. I'm not used to doing that, but we're going to be moving that, I mean, broadcasting there simultaneously too.

Hopefully, that will all work, get in there in a sec. Hope you all had a good weekend. I had an interesting weekend, and, wow, interesting. Wow. Oh, there we go. So I did have an interesting weekend, and I was opening up just now Clubhouse, and there's a title of a room that said, New Argument, Jesus Never Resurrected.

People are always trying to attack the Christian faith. I just saw it. That would be something I would do. I would go in and work on answering them and stuff like that.

That's what I do. Well, anyway, there you go. Hopefully, that's all working fine, and the Lord can bless you. We don't have any callers coming in right now, but we do have an email. I just keep thinking about that room. I keep thinking about it. I'll get to it in a sec. We do have an email.

If you want to email me, and you don't want to call, but you want to get an email read on the air or whatever, comment or question, all you've got to do is just dial. I mean, I'm really focused. Sorry about that. I've got so many things going on, even at the beginning of the show.

Just email me, info at karm.org, info at karm.org, and we can check things out. So, yeah, that room. It's interesting. I can't help it. I just can't help what I do. I love what I do, and believe it or not, I'm kind of weird. The weekends, I almost don't like Sunday. I mean, it's fine. Sunday's great, but I don't work on Sundays. I purposely just don't. I kind of leave that off the queue, and I can hardly wait until Monday starts so I can start working again.

Now, isn't that strange? Oh, man, it is, but I do enjoy what I do for a living and just make an inching towards the goal progress with the videos. Now I've got to figure this out. I have to shoot video 16 by 9, which is landscape, and then I have to convert it to a phone because we're going to be putting them up on TikTok and Instagram and things like that, and called YouTube Shorts. We're going to do all kinds of stuff, put it on Rumble as well, but I think everything is in place first. I got most everything, and now I'm sitting there going, oh, man, so I have to, you know, I wish I had two cameras, identical two cameras, and I could shoot one camera sideways and one camera horizontal so that I could do a simultaneous recording on them instead of doing videos twice. That would be nice. But don't have that.

Only have one. So what we're going to do, I've got to figure out how to shoot in 4K, go into the video editing program, and then see if I can learn how to frame stuff in different landscape, portrait, all this stuff with a 4K, with all that kind of thing. So I've got to teach myself this stuff, and I've got to teach myself how to go in and out, zoom in and out and all this stuff inside of post-production. In fact, I did troubleshoot today as I was doing some video work. I was doing a test, and there was a hum in the sound. Like, what is wrong now? It's just ridiculous. I could write a book and all the things that have been difficult, and long story short, after a bit of troubleshooting, I found out that it was one of the lights.

So I had to replace a light with another kind of a light, and then the hum went away. I'm almost there. I am almost there. I've got everything in place except for this one last thing now, the landscape versus portrait.

How to shoot on one camera so both can be done at the same time. Now, that's not easy, but I'm doing it. I'm trying.

Man, I wish I had a million dollars to buy another camera and make it easy. That's what it is. Hey, if you want, you want to give me a call, all you've got to do is dial 8772072276. So I hope you all had a good weekend.

I did have a good weekend. Let's see, so what we have going on in Clubhouse. And also, I think I'm going to get Discord going, and we'll see how that goes as well, see if I can get both of them running at the same time and get feeds into those things. What we're trying to do is get as much of the information out as possible. That's really an important thing for us Christians to do is get the truth of God's word out there as much as is possible. We want to be able to promote the gospel and the defense of the Christian faith, and I am extremely privileged to be able to do that full time.

I'm so thankful to the Lord how gracious he has been to allow me to do something like that. So when I open up different rooms or I go into something like Clubhouse, which is for the phone, and there's millions of people on it apparently, there are people who just create rooms. I'm looking at different rooms, alien abduction, probability, no, it's dead. Let's see, where was the other one? PhD service with Prophet Michael. Wow.

Who entered the room? Let's see. Experience the prophetic. And there's another one.

These are the kind of stuff that floats around. All this kind of stuff is interesting. How the law of Moses points to Christ. Let's see. And Jesus is not a Muslim.

How about that? So there's all kinds, oh, look at this conversation with the prophets, Perry, Barnes, and Moozon. You know, that really irks me. We get these guys calling themselves prophets or prophetess, and they go on these rooms. I go and I listen to them sometimes, and they don't know what they're doing. A lot of times they don't know biblical theology. And I'm like, oh, man, they're getting that wrong. And they're a prophet of God. I'm like, golly, stop. People exalt themselves so much. That's how I view that. And there's something they'll say, the apostle so-and-so is here for you. I'm like, who are you guys? Maybe the apostles and the prophets can get together and they can talk.

How mentally ill do you have to be to use a clubhouse? That's a room. Who is Allah? Judaism? I was looking for the other one that said that Jesus was not raised.

And so I saw it, but I guess they closed it. So the resurrection of Christ is one of the most fundamental doctrines of the Christian faith. Jesus rose from the dead in the same body he died in. It's a critical doctrine.

If you deny that he rose from the dead in the same body he died in, you can't be a true Christian. Now, it's not to say just ignorance. If you're ignorant, you don't know. That's different.

Ignorance is different than just open denial. We don't want to have you openly denying who Jesus is and what he's done. But he rose from the dead.

He did. And he rose from the dead in the same body he died in. And we will too.

It's going to happen to all of us. And the damned will go to eternal conscious torment, not this annihilationism stuff. And people may not like that, but they call up and challenge me on it if you want. We've had some good discussions with it lately on that topic. So, yeah, Jesus rose from the dead.

And what I'm interested in is the different ways that people attack who Jesus is. It's really surprising. It kind of reminds me a little bit of the kinds of people that do crimes. My wife and I will watch these crime things. She likes crime stuff. So we watch these crime things a lot.

And that's okay. But you see these people, and some of them are so evil. The things that they do and they think and how they lie.

We'll watch these car crashes on TV because we have cameras in our cars. And so you'll see how people lie. It's like it's nothing.

There's a lie about, no, you back into me and all this stuff. People do it all the time. And there are so many different kinds of people who just don't have the Lord, don't know what truth is, don't care about truth, who are working just to better themselves financially. They're so selfish. To me that's really interesting. It really is. I understand it.

It's a depravity of man. And so you get these rooms in different venues like on Clubhouse or PalTalk or Twitter or Facebook. You get these different places and they will attack who Jesus is. They just don't like him.

That's interesting. People say that he didn't rise from the dead or he's not God in flesh, and they work hard for that. As I say to people, you work hard for your damnation. And that's what's going on. But Jesus Christ did rise from the dead.

If he did not, then Christianity is false. Let's get to James from Ohio. Hey, James, welcome. You are on the air.

Hey, how's it going? Nice to meet you. I have a question in regards to evangelizing. Sure. My question was, if you know how Christ spoke to sinners and was here healing and saving sinners, how do we stand if, say, we were to go to like maybe a pride parade or a club or something, like there's darkness there but we're trying to evangelize, but we're putting ourselves kind of like in the fire to then be scorned? Is that for us too?

Yes. I mean, is that something that we should do or should we wait till it comes? Or with evangelizing, do we go out and then seek where you know where death is around or where evil is around or where these things are? Well, what I would say is you go where the Lord directs you and you go where the sinners are.

Sinners need to hear the Gospel. And just because there are these so-called pride things doesn't mean that we can't go and stand out there and have signs. Now, the thing about these so-called pride festivals that want tolerance for everybody, they're often very violent. They are very... Yeah, I see it on YouTube, social media. Yeah, they're aggressive and violent and foul and they want tolerance for them, but they show no tolerance for anybody else.

So, yeah, it's something that needs to be done. Last year here in Boise, Idaho, they had a pride event, just horrible. And so I went, and a lot of Christians were there, and I went inside and just walked around and just asked questions, you know. Like there was this bank that was there and representing, you know. And I said, so you guys approve of the pride?

And they go, oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. And I said, so as a bank, you approve of people who they have sex with. Is that what it is? That's what you're about? That's true, yes. And they, well, you know, I said, but that's what it is.

And then are you for this for the children also? And I started asking these tough questions and, well, you know, and then they didn't want to talk anymore. And all it is is these businesses are just succumbing to the loudmouths in the pride, in the alphabet mob. They just, the alphabet mob is organized and loud. And so people listen to them. And the Christians do nothing. The Christians just turn around and walk away. And so they get trampled on.

But nevertheless, so what I did there was I joined some Christians on the outside and started preaching. And the cops were about 30 feet away. So we were safe because the cops were there and people were filming. So they weren't going to get physical. But they did get in our faces and yell and scream and try and drown us out so that we couldn't exercise freedom of speech.

So people don't realize that this kind of thing is going to continue and it's going to get worse. So what do we do as Christians? Well, I say if the Lord calls you to do something like that, then do it. If he doesn't, then don't do it. It's not for everybody. And I would say don't go by yourself.

And I would say go with some friends and have cameras on because it might be possible that you get struck, you get hit, and you want it filmed so you can bring a lawsuit. Oh, hold on. I've got a break coming up, okay? Hey, folks, you want to give me a call?

Call for open lines 877-207-2276. We'll be right back. It's Matt Slick live, taking your calls at 877-207-2276.

This is Matt Slick. All right, everybody, welcome back to the show. We have four open lines. Why don't you give me a call, 877-207-2276. I want to hear from you.

Give me a call. All right, let's get back to James. Okay, James, there we are. So you answered pretty much on that point. If you have more emphasis to give, I would appreciate it. I have one more question to ask you, and that was, God has a plan for his whole creation and everything we're doing, and so with God's plan, when people choose to do, in people's choice, what is your insight on God's plan and man's choice?

Well, both are true. So when this question comes up, I jump straight to Jesus. Now, Jesus is God in flesh. He has two natures, a divine nature and a human nature, and the attributes of both natures are ascribed to the single person. So Jesus, the one person, had the attributes of God and the attributes of man.

That's what we call the hypostatic union and the communication of the properties. Okay, that's a real fancy doctrine really fast. But the thing is, Jesus had free will. He was able to do whatever he wanted.

He's God in flesh. He had free will. But yet he said he could only do what he saw the Father do, and he could do nothing. It was an initiative, and he came to do the will of the Father, and the will of the Father is that he lose none of also whom he's been given.

And so there's a lot of these verses like this. So the question I then turn around and try and ask somebody is, well, do you agree that Jesus had free will? Yes, he did. Did he come to do the will of the Father? Yes. Did he say, not my will, but your will be done?

Yes. Well, then Jesus had free will, and it was in harmony with God's determination and predestination. They both work. Now, explaining them how they work is not that easy sometimes, but I can try if you want.

I can get into some analogies and some explanations, but they both work. So man's free will is part of God's plan, though, as well. Absolutely.

So it is. Okay, that's what I was asking, because I was thinking that if God has a plan, a new believer that comes and says, you know, God has a plan, and it's ordained, so whatever it is I want to do with my life, God has his plan for me. But it's my choice that you choose salvation versus the way of the world. Well, he works the salvation in you and enables you to freely choose. He grants that you have faith in him. That's Philippians 1 29, and Jesus says this is the work of God, that you believe on him whom he has sent. So your believing on Jesus is the work of God.

Yet you're free, and you're the one who does it, too. So God, he moves the heart of the king where he wishes it to go, Proverbs 21 and 1, and we're born again not of our own will, John 1 13. So there is this mystery of how our freedom and God's sovereignty work. Most people say that they're not compatible, and so they opt for what's called libertarian free will. That definition of libertarian free will is the idea that a person is free to do, an unbeliever is free to choose good and free to choose bad.

He just needs the right information, and that's it. Now, that's a simplified version. There's variations in that, but that's what they teach. It's unbiblical, but that's what a lot of Christians teach anyway. They have free will. Otherwise, you can't have predestination if it's like you say, man.

So they don't think very deeply in these things. So anyway, libertarian free will is the idea that people are not restricted by their sinful nature but have the ability to freely choose between good and bad, and they can accomplish either one, and then they can do either one. It's called libertarian free will.

The problem with it is that it's unbiblical. Free will is not described or learned or defined by our nature but by God's. God is the standard of righteousness, of purity, and all that is good and all that is true. We must define free will in a manner consistent with God's nature. If we were to say that libertarian free will is the kind of free will that only deals with man, well, then that's humanism.

We're only looking at man's values. Well, wait a minute, but we're made in the image of God, Genesis 1.26. So if we're made in the image of God and we have free will, then you have to look at God's free will and how it relates to our free will and define it, free will, such that it includes God. But what they'll do is they'll say, well, free will means the ability to choose between good and bad. You can do good, you can do bad, you can choose which one, and you make that choice. That's what free will is, the libertarian sense. But that doesn't work with God because God can't choose to do good and bad. He can only choose to do good. So our view of free will is skewed from the very beginning.

It's just not biblical. So I define free will as the ability to make a choice that's consistent with your nature but is also not forced upon you. So consistent with your nature. An unbeliever is a fallen creature, and he is a slave of sin. So he is enslaved to sin, and that's his nature. So therefore he's going to make sinful choices. That's what's consistent with his nature. God is holy. What is your take on God's plan that he has for you?

Like, let's give an example. Jonah in the well. When God has his plan that is meant for you to do and you're ordained to do, he will make sure that you take on that and make it happen. So with Jonah in the well, if you can give me a reference to then and now to explain, like, when somebody tries to backslide or go astray from what God's free will, what's your choice, and then God takes you from your decision and has you fulfill his will.

Well, this gets more complicated. We make choices, and if we were to say there's a perfect will that God wants us in and an imperfect will. The perfect will of God would be that I not say that thing to my wife in an hour and a half. That's not nice. But the imperfect will is I say that not nice thing to my wife in an hour and a half.

So let's just say I choose to do the latter, and I say something not nice to my wife. Does that mean God's will is thwarted? Because nothing can occur that God has not ordained to occur. Now, ordination does not mean direct causation, but that it is part of his sovereign plan and works within his sovereign plan. He simply knows the outcome of all situations and all people's choices.

And he works, let's see, around, through, with, and instead of all of them in his super-sovereign intelligence as he can bring things to bear. So when I say that thing in an hour and a half that's not nice to my wife and that God didn't want me to say that, then I repent an hour later, whatever. Let's just say that happens. Is that surprising to God?

Of course not. Are we going to say that God did, oh, I didn't know he was going to do that. Oh, man, I can adjust my sovereign plan from eternity past.

It doesn't work like that. God goes, yeah, yeah, I don't want you to do that, but you're going to do it. Then it's like saying, but God says, okay, let me back up. There's what's called the decorative will of God. God decrees let there be light. Then there's what's called the prescriptive will of God. Thou shalt not lie. Then there's the permissive will of God. He lets you lie. So the prescriptive will of God is he doesn't want you to do something, like a moral thing, but his will is to let you do it. So he has this double kind of a will. He's not psycho.

It's just we're looking at stuff. It's like, okay, so God wants you to not do something, but he'll let you do it. He wants to let you do it. Like a parent with a child, I don't want you to do that, but I want to let you do it if that's what you're going to do and you're going to suffer the consequences because this is how it works.

So we can have that perfect and imperfect will of God in that sense and that's what's called the prescriptive and permissive will of God, and he's still sovereign over both. We've got another break coming up. Do you want to hold on? My last comment, and I'll let you take care of... Hold on, we've got a break. I love it, man.

You're speaking good things and you're answering all the questions I have. We've got a break, baby. I've got to put him on hold.

Hopefully he hears me that we're on break. Hey, folks, we'll be right back after these messages. Please stay tuned. It's Matt Slick live, taking your calls at 877-207-2276. Here's Matt Slick. All right, everybody, welcome back to the show. I hope you're having a good time listening.

We have four open lines. If you want to give me a call, 877-207-2276. James, we had to take a hard break there, buddy. Are you still there?

James, maybe he left because I don't know if he knew that was taking a break. Let me give you a few more seconds. No? Okay. Hey, folks, we have wide open lines.

Why don't you give me a call, 877-207-2276. We've got people in Discord right now and they're chatting. That's good. Coming through live and clear.

Really appreciate that. We also have in the Cloud... No, Cloud. Clubhouse server going and we've got people in there too, so that's good.

Praise God. We also have... Let's see. We have... Oh, man. We have it on Rumble being broadcast and we've got a lot of people there. How many do we have there? Almost 60 people in there. So a lot of good stuff.

And if you want to give me a call, all you've got to do is dial 877-207-2276. So let me talk about this issue of libertarianism. So we talked about it a little bit... As you know, I like to teach a little bit of theology, a little bit of logic about dealing with the Christian faith. Now, there are different and two main kinds of free will that are theologically or theoretically described. Now, when we discuss the issue of free will, we want to say that it's something like the ability to make willing, voluntary, and uncoerced decisions of choices free if it is consistent with a person's desires and not coerced.

Now, that's really interesting because your desires are going to emanate out of your nature. So God is holy. He's only going to want to have good desires. But an unbeliever who's a slave of sin, Romans 6, 14 through 20, the hater of God, doesn't seek for God, Romans 3, 10, 11, and 12, is by nature a child of wrath, Ephesians 2, 3, his heart is desperately wicked and deceitful, cannot be trusted, Jeremiah 17, 9. When we've got someone like that, that's their nature, then they're only going to make free will choices consistent with that nature.

They're going to be rebellious against God. That's what's going to happen. That's how it has to work. That's the logic of it. Now, compatibilism is the idea that human free will and God's sovereign providence are compatible with each other, hence the term compatibilism. It means that the person acts according to his desires and that God is not thwarted and his plan is not altered by this.

These desires are consistent with a person's moral nature. Therefore, it is a position that man's free will is restricted by his sinful nature and as a result, he can only choose what his sinful nature will allow him to choose, which means he will not choose God of his own free will. So this is talking about the unbeliever. It is the unbelievers' free will. This is really important, the unbelievers. Free will is restricted by his sinful nature.

The regenerate person is different because the regenerate person has the Holy Spirit working in him or her and is guiding. So this is what compatibilism is. It's a big issue. It's a really big issue. And I'm really surprised that some top thinkers that I'm aware of believe in libertarian free will. I'm really shocked that they shouldn't do that.

It's bad news. But nevertheless, let me quote. This is from plato.stanford.edu. Compatibilism is a thesis that free will is compatible with determinism because free will is typically taken to be a necessary condition of moral responsibility. Compatibilism is sometimes expressed as a thesis about the compatibility between moral responsibility and determinism. So that's why some people say determinism, but determinism has a kind of a stringent connotation. Now, connotation means an emotional kind of a definition, not a literal definition.

Connotation is more the implied emotional content and other things. So let's get over to libertarian free will. Libertarianism is the position that man's free will is not compatible with God's sovereign decrees and election. It also states that human free will is not completely restricted and incapacitated by the sinful nature in that he is not enslaved by sin such that he can only choose sinful things. And that he can freely choose to accept or reject God despite his enslavement to sin given the right circumstances or the addition of prevenient grace. Now, I call prevenient grace kindergarten theology.

I've been doing that for years and it offends people, but hey, if you want to go behind the school, we can talk about it. Fine. So I don't explain why. But libertarianism is the view that man is not compatible, that man's free will is not compatible. So libertarianism wants to say that the human free will is not restricted by his sinful, the unbeliever, is not restricted by his sinfulness. And there are libertarians within Christianity who will say that God can't even know your free will choices because if he knows your free will choices beforehand, then how could you be free?

All kinds of people work all kinds of things to just paint themselves in a corner. Let me explain a little bit more. So they'll say, well, if God knows what you're going to do, then are you free to do something different by the time you're going to do it? And that's a question, but it's a non sequitur.

The non sequitur, I mean, it doesn't logically follow. And I try and point it out, I say, look, if God, if you're going to make an assert event at exactly noon tomorrow and you're going to do something of your own free will choice and that's what you've determined to do out of your own nature, right? They say, yes. If God knows you're going to do that, does that mean him knowing you're going to do it means you can't have any other choice but to do it? How does his mere knowledge of what you're going to do restrict your freedom from being able to do it? And they'll say, well, I can't change my mind. Yes, you can change your mind. God would know that you change your mind ahead of time. Whatever you decide to do, God already knows.

What's wrong with that? And people, they are so willing so many times to demote God and exalt themselves. My free will, my free will is so strong, is so good that salvation is up to my free will. The atonement of Christ is applied when I believe and when I choose and therefore it's applied to me by my choice. Humanism is alive and rampant, rearing its ugly head in the Christian church but the Christian church is so familiar with ugliness in so many ways that it doesn't recognize how bad it is.

It's just comfortable. And so what I try and do is offer theological precision. I'm like a theological surgeon and I'm not boasting here but the more you know about theology, the better you can divide between truth and error. Theological precision.

You need to be a theological surgeon. If this belongs in and this is cancerous and this is bad, get it out. We've got to operate. And that's what's going on here, you see. So I said, pre-V integration. Let me tell you about this again.

Let me go with libertarianism. It's the people who say that a person, let me clear my throat, that a person, whether a believer or unbeliever, is simply free to do whatever he wants and some will say that God can't know those and it gets into open theism and some other heresies. But nevertheless. So let's restrict our discussion to the issue of the unbeliever for now because we're going to get too complicated. So the unbeliever, the Bible says, is a slave of sin, a hater of God, doesn't seek for God, can do no good, is dead in his trespasses and sins, is by nature a child of wrath. Ephesians says all this. So all kinds of verses talk like this. So if that's the case, then how is libertarian free will possible when they say in libertarianism that an unbeliever is able to choose between good and bad.

He just needs the right information. It doesn't make any sense. It's unbiblical.

And yet Christians hold to this position too. And I scratch my head. What are you doing? Stop doing that.

Stop thinking like that. Well, they don't like the idea of man's incapacity and they want to say that God, ultimately they want to say God doesn't have the right to choose who's saved. And I say, well, where'd you get that out of? The book of Second Moronicals?

Now give me a break. God has the right to do with his creation as he desires. Read Romans 9, 9 through 23. It doesn't mean what you say it means. Oh, let's go to town. We'll analyze it.

Let's go take a look. You know, and I've done that a hundred times over the years. So one of the questions or one of the issues that a lot of Christians will sometimes say is, well, God gives prevenient grace to the believer, to the unbeliever. What prevenient grace is, is the grace that it precedes. Prevenient grace. It's a grace that comes before and it enables a person to become kind of a neutral vessel where they then are able to make a choice. Because sometimes the libertarians recognize total depravity, that the sin has touched all of what we are and that it's a restrictive effect upon the unbeliever. And so they'll say, well, God, I see that in scripture. I see it so we believe in prevenient grace. It's the grace that God works on individuals to get them to, you know, be that choice and that equal place. So it's up to them again to be able to choose. It's kindergarten theology.

And the reason it is, is because, well, wait a minute. We have Bob and Frank, they're identical twins in every way. They even marry identical twins on the same day. They work at the same place.

They're identical everything. They both go to a church. Bob believes and Frank does not.

And I'm going to ask him, why? Why does one believe and another one does not? And they'll say, well, that's their free will. Why does Bob's free will enable him to believe and Frank's does not? What is it about the free will? Is it not God who made their free will?

Or are you saying that their free will is independent of God? What are you saying? And they don't have answers at this point. They don't have answers. And I'll tell you what the answer is.

After the break, there's the music. Hope this is interesting. If you want to give me a call, 877-207-2276. Folks, we'll be right back after these messages. Please stay tuned.

Welcome back to the show. I'm having conversations in different chat rooms in the break in Discord and on Clubhouse talking to a Sunni Muslim about proving that Islam is false. Allah is a false god. I can talk about that if you guys ever want. I don't talk about Islam very much.

Maybe I should do that sometime, just kind of do a thing on Islam and why it's so bad and why it's dangerous and things like that. And it is. It's a false religion. All right, now back to libertarianism. Okay, so this issue of prevenient grace. So they say that God, what he does is he enables someone to get to that place of being able to freely choose. So what they want, what's primary to them, is man's freedom.

That's why they have to invent these things in order to have man's freedom be the case. It's not God's sovereignty they're looking at. It's not the truth of who God is, that he ordains whatever shall come to pass, because he says in Ephesians 1-11, he works all things after the counsel of his will.

All things, your free will choices. But there are some who will say that God doesn't know the future, called open theism. And open theism is heretical. It says that God does not have exhaustive knowledge of all things. Open theism says that and that the future is open.

Well, here's a problem with that. If the future's open, then how would God know what sins in the future anybody would commit? Because he can't know every free will choice, right? Well, then he wouldn't know exactly what sins that so-and-so might commit on whatever particular day. He might or might not commit it, right? Well, then how could he impute those sins to Christ on the cross? He doesn't know what sins they are. This is a serious thing, because whenever you have a doctrine, you always have to compare it to God's nature and the work of the cross.

Just go there. How does it affect there? Like soul sleep and annihilationism. If soul sleep is true, then the human nature goes to sleep upon death. Then upon Jesus' death, the human nature of Christ went to sleep and there was no activity there.

How then is the hypostatic union not damaged? That's a whole other question. So you see, there's some issues there. There's another view called Mullenism within Christian camp.

Now it's a more sophisticated view. Mullenism is the issue of looking at counterfactuals. A counterfactual is something that would have occurred under different circumstances.

You know, Jesus says, Woe to you, Chorazin, for if these things that happened in Sodom and Heaven happened here, they would have repented. And so he said, this is counterfactual. It's not a fact that is extant, but something that would have occurred under different circumstances. And Jesus knew about this. So what people will do is they'll take counterfactuals and they will say, well, counterfactuals mean that in Mullenism, Mullenistic theology, Mullenistic philosophy, that God takes into account the counterfactuals of what you will do and then brings about his decisions.

And he's able to do all of these things because he knows all things actual as well as potential. He knows all counterfactuals under different circumstances, and he picks the best world to bring about his will within the infinite realm of counterfactuals. So this is what Mullenism basically says, basically, all right? And so there's a problem with that as well. Because Mullenism presupposes, the Mullenistic theological perspective, presupposes the idea that a man's free will in a counterfactual sense includes the ability to act in a manner contrary to his own nature. What I mean by that is they'll say the unbeliever can choose Christ under the right circumstances, as if the circumstances, like prevenient grace, need to be applied to an individual to bring him back to that place so that he's then able to choose. And it's the same thing as libertarian free will except in a Mullenistic counterfactual housing or clothing. So it's the same problem that libertarian view faces, and it's problematic.

The simple view is this. Look, man's free. He's free according to his own nature. And if you're a sinner, you're unsaved, you're only able to make those free will choices consistent with your sinfulness.

That's what it is, okay? This is why God says, you cannot come to me unless it's granted to you from the Father, John 6 65. You cannot unless God grants it. Doesn't say, if you try really hard with libertarian and prevenient grace working through you, then you'll be able to make it, make the right choices. That's not what it says. It says, you cannot come to me unless it's granted to you by the Father.

That's what it says. How then is anybody going to say that future counterfactuals are taken into account by God to decide what he's going to do? Now, it's a problem in itself, too, because it threatens certain aspects of aseity. Now, that deals mainly with his nature, but what about God's omniscience? Is his omniscience, this gets complicated with the omniscience of counterfactuals and actuals, and he chooses which ones based upon foreseen freewill events. The foreseen freewill events in libertarian freewill include sinners being able to choose Christ of their own nature, of their own freedom, where compatibilism will say, nope, we can't do that, according to scripture.

A slave of sin, a hater of God, doesn't seek for God, does no good, things like that. The Bible says that, and that's why the Bible says that you can't come to Christ unless it's granted to you from the Father. You can't come to Christ unless the Father draws you, John 6 44. And then there's God grants that you believe, Philippians 1 29.

The belief is in Christ, John 6 29. And it grants that you have repentance, 2 Timothy 2 25. You're born again, not of your own will, John 1 13. God causes you to be born again, 1 Peter 1 3. These are the verses that the scriptures teach, and this is why I hold to what I do, because the Bible teaches these things.

And you have to be able to harmonize. People told John 3 16, man, God's love the world. Well, my first question is, are you setting scripture against scripture? Are you saying, well, I understand what you're saying about these verses, but let's counter it with John 3 16.

God's love the world he gave has only begun so that whoever would believe in him. See, whoever there means he had the ability to do that. And I say, where does it say that in the text? It doesn't say that in the text.

Well, then what does whoever mean? Well, it doesn't mean that it's not in the text. They say, yes, it is.

It's right there. And I said, no, it's not. And they'll say, yes, it is.

I say, no, it's not. It's not there in the Greek. The New Testament was written in Greek and John 3 16, what it doesn't say, whosoever or whoever, which is the Greek word host.

It's a rough breathing mark over the Omega and a Sigma host. What it does say is, all the believing one. That's what it literally says, all the believing one. So whoever is actually in the Greek, all the believing one. But it's not whoever. And we just don't talk like that. So they say whoever.

And that's fine. But the thing is, people just assume that if it says whoever, it means it just means you have the free will ability. It doesn't say that. Whoever believes. Well, why do they believe?

Because God grants that they believe. Romans 1 29. To you, it has been granted to believe. Now, it has been granted is what's called the aorist passive indicative in the Greek. Aorist, passive indicative. Aorist means past tense. Passive means it happened to you. Indicative means it's a fact. Aorist, past tense, passive, you receive the action.

Indicative, it's a fact. It has been granted to you. It was done. This is how it happens.

You believe because God granted it to you. That's how it happens. That's what's going on. Oh, people don't like it when I bring that out. But that's what the Greek says. When you take Greek, I had four and a half years of it in college and seminary. And I'm telling you, you have to learn another language when you're learning the language of Greek.

You've got to learn things like genitive, dative, accusative, dative of means, genitive of absolute, prepositions, you know. It just goes on. You have to learn.

Yes, oh, man, it just goes on and on and on. Anyway, the thing is, you learn a lot of things and you learn about the language and structure of things. And why things are done certain ways and what they mean. I really enjoyed that aspect of learning Greek.

And I'm very rusty at it, but I have a lot of tools and I remember a lot about it. So, you know, I can weave my way through the forest of Greek and get out where I need to get going. Here's the thing. God is the one who's a sovereign king, not you. Prevenient grace is not the solution. Prevenient grace isn't the solution. Open theism is not the solution. Mullenism is not the solution.

Libertarianism is not the solution. The solution is simple. God's sovereign. You're free.

But you're only free because your nature permits. And God must change you, make you born again, and you can believe. It's up to God. And when he gives us to you, you freely believe.

And praise God for his mercy. Let's get to James from Ohio. James, welcome. You're on the air. Amen.

Amen. So I spoke to you earlier and you answered all my questions. I listened to your sermon.

Your response was lovely. And it just came to a question that I had previously that I wanted to get across. And so God did not create sin. Right.

And so does he allow us to be afflicted by sin so that he can then show us his glory and magnificence? Well, how about this? Are you still there? I want to make sure. Yes, I'm here. Okay.

So I'm going to offer something. And it answers it, but it doesn't answer it at the same time, depending on how you receive it. So Jesus says the greatest act of love is to lay your life down for your friend, John 15-13. And God is love, 1 John 4-8. And before the creation of the universe, the greatest act of love could not be manifested.

But it is when there's a fall. So we fell in Adam. And in that fall where sin entered the world, God entered the world, the world of sin, which is contrary to his holiness. He permitted it in the world and he entered in and it killed him. Sin killed Christ. Sin in the Pharisees, in the Jews, in the Romans. And so the sin that killed him dies with him, so to speak. Now he became sin, 2 Corinthians 5-21. But the thing is, and he bore our sin in his body, 1 Peter 2-24. But I wanted to personify it in the sense to say that sin killed him. It was something that was allowed by God in the world, and yet it was also the means by which sin is removed.

And sin is taken care of. It's kind of an interesting play on words, but that's how God is. So it's his will in his permissive sense that sin entered the world. It's not in his prescriptive sense. In the prescriptive, thou shalt not lie.

But that's prescription, prescriptive will. So he allows it, or his permissive will, sorry, he allows people to sin. His prescriptive will is do not lie, but he allows people to lie. So both are aspects of his divine will. He wants you to be perfect and pure, but he allows you not to be. He allows you to rebel against him. And he uses the rebellion of mankind as a means of forgiveness.

By becoming one of us in that law, within that sinful world by which we are then redeemed. Okay? That help? Thank you. Did that make a difference? That help?

Yes, yes, it definitely does. Because I speak to a lot of my brothers and sisters in Christ, and there's a lot of these topics that come along with questions and conversations that needs to be spoken on and heard. Not all of us are fully doctrine and spiritual. Let me interrupt you, because we've got ten seconds. I just want to interrupt you and say this. We've got ten seconds before the show. If you email me and you get a bunch of guys together, I'll come in on the speakerphone and answer questions. Okay?

Just off right now. There's the music. We've got to go. But I'm serious. I'll do that.

It'll be fun. Can you give me the email? Yes. info at karm.org.

C-A-R-M-I-N-O-R-G. info at karm.org. Okay, brother? God bless. We've got to go.

There's the music, everybody. May the Lord bless you. Have a great one. God bless you.