Matt Slick Live

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The Truth Network Podcast is produced by Truth Network Podcast is produced by Truth Network Podcast is produced by Truth Network Podcast. And the mature men didn't run, they walked, they spoke slowly, they considered their options, they were wise. And so he's considering his options, and he is not rushing, and he is making sure things are right. So the reputation of the landowner is always there, and this is important because in an agrarian society, if he is found to be wicked, then people aren't going to want to do business with him. So his reputation is critical in this culture, far more than it is with us.

Because, hey, like when I say go to another store, go over there, I don't care. But there, that's different. The word would get around in the culture. And if his reputation was destroyed, it would be destroyed on several levels, economically and theologically, because the people who owned the land, the Jews, were under the law of God, under the Mosaic law, and they were obligated to do what was right before God. So for a landowner to become wicked or cheating would mean he not only was dishonest, but he was turning his back against God. So the ramifications of something like this in a culture like that would be absolutely humongous. And he could lose his livelihood, his family, be destitute, all kinds of stuff.

All right, okay, now. So the manager goes out and says to these people, hey, reduce your rates. What's going to happen among the people who worked the land? They're going to rejoice. They're going to say the landowner is great. The landowner is awesome.

He is wonderful. They don't know that the manager is the one who's being deceptive. They think that the landowner is the one who's being so wonderful and so great. So the people are going to have a celebration. It's just what you would do.

You have reasons to celebrate. You might buy a confatted calf or get some extra wine and have a celebration and praise the great name of the landowner, et cetera, et cetera. What's the landowner going to do once he finds out that the guy's been lying? Now he's stuck. Because now, if he says no, whatever you owe me originally, pay it now.

Well, it's going to cause a, well, let's just say a modicum of depression and anger to rise up among the people. And so the landowner is stuck. He doesn't want to appear as though he was incompetent with this manager that would reflect poorly on him. It would make the manager look bad.

What if the manager said no? This is what he said. Now he's got another problem.

So he's really stuck. So Jesus says, and he's praised. He's praised him. His master praised him in verse 8, unrighteous manager, because he acted shrewdly.

Now notice what he says here. For the sons of this age are more shrewd in relation to their own than the sons of light, than the Jews. The sons of even just the unbelievers are smarter than you Jews. I say to you, make friends for yourselves by means of the wealth of unrighteousness so that when it fails, they will receive you with eternal dwellings. What he's saying here is the issue of salvation, eternal dwellings, is so critically important that even if you have to be unethical to get in, at least that's a smart thing to do. They're being smart about what's happening for their future.

You're not. That's the whole point of what's going on, okay? Okay, so are you saying salvation is that important to gain it by whatever means, similar to like finding a pearl and buying the land because the pearl's there kind of a thing? Exactly, because he's trying to designate how important it is. Now this is not the way we would think.

Wait a minute, no, just believe and you're okay. What he's doing is talking to covenant people, covenant Israel, who's going to understand this parable in the cultural context. He's not speaking to the Gentiles.

He's speaking to the people of Israel because he was sent only to the lost sheep of the house of Israel, Matthew 15 and 24. So he's addressing them in a manner that they will understand, and what he's saying is, by the way, this unrighteous steward, he's a smart guy. He took care of himself.

He took care of himself. And the unbelievers are smarter than you are about this. You're so stupid you're not even getting what is critical about inhabiting and finding eternal dwellings.

You better do whatever you can to get in. That's what he's saying, even if it's not even the right way. Well, there's only one way through Jesus, but that's not what he's saying, as though there's another way to do it. He's simply emphasizing the importance and the criticalness of this whole issue of salvation, and you better get in, because eternity is a long time to be wrong, okay? Okay.

Make friends for yourself from the wealth of the unrighteous so that when it fails, they will take you into the external dwellings. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. Okay, good. I don't want to take up too much time. It's a tough one, but that's what's going on there.

It's a radically different way of teaching that Jesus used. Okay? All right, man. Yeah, thank you so much. All right, buddy. God bless. Hey, folks, we have two open lines, 877-207-2276.

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Alex's greatest passion is fueling any Christian's faith and giving all the stuff needed to do the same. Truth for a New Generation Podcast at truthnetwork.com. Okay, I'll be right there, guys. Hey. Oh, Deb, come on in. I thought you were the radon test guys.

The who test guys? Didn't you see the paper Sunday? The Surgeon General issued another warning. Oh, like the cigarette warning?

Exactly. Only now they're saying radon causes lung cancer. For non-smokers like us, radon is the number one cause of lung cancer. You're kidding me, right? I have a smoke-free home and my family can still get cancer from radon?

Yep. That's why the Surgeon General says every home should be tested for radon. But I don't smell any radon in my house. No, nobody can smell radon.

It's odorless, colorless, and tasteless. It just comes up from underground and seeps into your house. Oh, great.

No, no, hey, it's no big deal. Even if they find high levels of radon, it can easily be fixed. My brother just had his house fixed. Now, that's the radon test guys. So, how did you find them? First, you go to the EPA website. Learn more. Visit the EPA at epa.gov slash radon.

That's epa.gov slash radon. Mommy, I'll get it. Oh, I'll be right there. Me too.

If you love them enough to listen to them practice the same song on tuba. Please be done. Over and over and over and over and over. Then surely you'll check nhtsa.gov slash the right seat to make sure they're correctly bundled in the back seat.

Sounds good, honey. Check today at nhtsa.gov slash the right seat. Brought to you by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration. It's Matt Slick live taking your calls at 877-207-2276. Here's Matt Slick. Everybody, welcome back to the show. If you want to give me a call, 877-207-2276.

Alberto, welcome. You're on the air. Yes, you know the famous Calvinist scholar Wilberforce? Wilberforce?

Wilberforce, yeah. He died. Somebody told me that he wasn't sure if he was going to heaven or not. He himself wasn't sure that he was going to enter heaven. I don't know.

So part of the Calvinist, part of the Calvinist security, but he's a famous scholar, Calvinist scholar, so basically he's trying to learn to elect. Well, what you're hearing, it's hearsay. You don't know if that's what he actually said. And without documentation, you know, I wouldn't put much credence in it. A lot of times people will tell me things, they'll say, well, where's the documentation for that? And they don't have it. And not that I want every documentation for every single detail, but it's like, okay, can you show me?

Well, I just read it someplace. Well, okay, maybe it's the case, maybe it's not, but I just tell them, I say, look, if you don't have any way to really look at it so we can look in the context, see what's going on, you really can't comment about it. And so what if he didn't have assurance? What does it mean?

If it's the case, it means he was struggling in some areas. That's all. Okay. Mm-hmm. All right.

I just wanted to know. All right. Thank you. You're welcome. All right, buddy. God bless. Bye-bye.

All right. Hey, let's get on the air now with, let's see, Jonathan from Washington State. Jonathan, welcome.

You're on the air. Hey, how's it going? It's going, man.

It's going. What do you got, buddy? You had a question about Calvinism.

Okay. And I know you did how it relates to free will. I know you say there's like three parts to the free will or different types of will.

Can you explain that? From God. Theologians, what they've done is they've looked at the will of God and his actions and they've kind of categorized things. They said, look, over here we see God's decorative will. That's what they call it. God says, let there be light. And boy, it just happened.

He decreed it by his command. There it is. And then they see, he says, don't make idols. Don't lie. Don't steal. You know, so they call that the prescriptive will. It's a prescription.

This is what you're supposed to be doing. Well, to do these things and don't do that other stuff. So that's called the prescriptive will. But then he says, don't lie. That's his prescriptive will, but he lets you lie so that he wills it in himself. He wills to let you lie.

It's his will to permit you to lie. So, you know, I want my daughter to clean up her room when she's little. My will is that she clean up her room, but it's also my will to permit her to not because I'm not going to force her and everything, you know. And so it's called prescriptive and permissive. God prescribes one set of behaviors but permits people to do something to the contrary of what he prescribes because they have free will. Okay.

Okay. And with the permissive will, since God knows everything, wouldn't he already know what decision we would make when he created us? Yes, that's correct. Mm-hmm. So wouldn't that mean everything is already predetermined?

There's a yes and a no to it. This is where we get into the mystery of how God works. God knows all things.

And everything that comes into being can only come into being by his decorative, I like to say direct or indirect will. He knows whatever decisions you're going to make and you're the one making them. He just knows it. And there's reasons we can get into why he knows. But you're certainly free to make decisions and he knows whatever choice you're going to make ahead of time.

That's because he's God. Mm-hmm. And you're free at the same time. Okay. Right. Okay. I was wondering if you could relate Calvinism to like the Old Testament and the New Testament because I've heard people say or even ask like if God changed his mind like with the New Testament, didn't he change his mind?

No. No, he didn't. He, for example, prophesied that the Gospel, I'm thinking of Galatians 3 to 8 where Paul quotes Genesis 12 to 3 and calls it the Gospel because God says, In you all the nations shall be blessed. And in Zechariah 12 to 10, God says, They look upon me whom they have pierced. And that's Jesus, God of flesh, who's pierced. Jesus came to fulfill the law, the Old Testament requirements. So, in Leviticus 8, Numbers 4, Exodus 29, in these chapters, that's where the necessities for entering into the priesthood were prescribed for the priest.

Well, Jesus fulfilled them. He was 30 years of age, verbal blessing given. He had to be anointed with oil and sprinkled with water.

That's what the prescription is. And he's a high priest after the order of Melchizedek. So, it's not like God's different. No, he's harsh in the Old Testament and gentle in the New.

He's harsh in the Old Testament in that he guarded the nation of Israel and wiped out nations who were ultimately in the service of the devil as the devil was moving them to come in and destroy the people of Israel so that the messianic line would be destroyed and Jesus would not arrive. So, God protected the nation of Israel. And then once the Messiah came, crucified, rose from the dead, ascended into heaven, now we don't have to worry about that. Now we are told to fulfill the Old Testament law. And so Jesus says the greatest commandment, he quoted Deuteronomy 6-5. And he quoted that in Matthew 22-37 when he said, Love God with all your heart, soul, mind, and strength. And then he quoted Leviticus 19-18, which is love your neighbor. He quoted that in Matthew 22-39. He says in the next verse, verse 40, these two commandments are all the prophets on the prophets. And so then you go to Luke 24-44 where Jesus talked about what was bearing witness of him and the law of the prophets and the law of the prophets and the Psalms. And so the Old Testament and the New Testament are interrelated.

They're not contradictory. In the Old Testament, there was the covenant of law, let's just say that generically. But in the New Testament, we're under the covenant of grace.

There's a lot of yes and no's in it. I'm not going to get too deep into it because there's ways of defining terms and getting into more theology. But we're now under this covenant, it's called the New Covenant, where God has written his law in our hearts, Jeremiah 31-31.

This is what's going on. And the New Covenant is ratified with the death of Christ. That's Hebrews 9, 15-16. So they're integrated and Jesus fulfilled the Old Testament. Okay? Make sense?

Yeah, that makes sense. And so would you say that, because people would ask, like, why didn't God just already come with a fulfilled law? Would you say, like, the old covenant had to happen or the new covenant is fulfilled? Well, God's ways are not our ways.

And me, because I'm slick, I like things quick and slick, I would have done it in instead of six days, six seconds. Now we're all in heaven, let's have a good time. But I'm not God. And God has his ways of doing what he wants according to what he sees fit. And he doesn't tell us why, it's just how it is. So he works through people, through history. And I think part of the reason is we're created in his image, told to take dominion over the earth, male, female, children, sin. The Messiah's got to come where he enters in, and all this took time.

And so he works through history. Okay? There's the break, buddy. Yeah. All right, man. Okay. Okay, God bless. Okay. Talk to you later. Yeah. Hey, folks, you want to give me a call? 877-207-2276.

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All right, everyone. Welcome back to the show. If you want to give me a call, we have two open lines, 877-207-2276.

The next longest waiting is Jay from Ohio. Jay, welcome. You're on the air. Hey, Matt. How you doing? Doing fine, man. Hanging in there.

What do you got, buddy? Good. Hey, I had a question on the NRSV Bible.

A buddy of mine about a year ago gave me a NRSV Life with God study Bible. Have you heard anything about that? No. I'll hear stuff generally when it's a proper, and the NAR is just a new revised standard. It seems pretty good.

Right. So this one has deuterocanonical books, and that's actually why my buddy gave it to me, because we were talking, and I was interested in just reading them. I understand they're not canon, but just wondering if you had heard any feedback on that or anything. I was flipping through it, and I see the contributors to the front of people who wrote the commentary, and it looks like they're all Protestant. So I was wondering if it was like a Catholic study Bible or what, but it doesn't seem like it is. Well, I know what the RSV is, or revised standard version, but I don't know anything about the new stuff or revised. So someone could take a text like the RSV. I think there's copyright issues so that it's super old, so therefore it's free.

Like King James is public domain, so you can take that and put it into a book in a Bible, and you can do commentary notes on it, and then make it the Matt Slick commentary using the King James. So the NRSV is that kind of a thing. So I'd look to the contributors and see. I don't use the RSV. It's old. I'd say it's 150, 200 years, something like that old, and it's fine. It's just because old doesn't have to add. But when was the NRSV?

Well, let me put it this way. When was the RSV written or translated or whatever it is? 1952, I stand corrected. Oh, that's the E. Yeah, that's the RSV.

1952, so I stand corrected. And then probably what is the case with the NRSV that was done in 1989, first published by the National Council of Churches, and the National Council of Churches makes me nervous. Okay. Okay. I'm not familiar with it. Yeah, it's a partnership of a bunch, about 40 or so, council churches that get together and stuff. Okay. Yeah, so I need to do a research. It's a brief thing.

Is the National Council of Churches good or bad? Do I understand? No, it's not. Okay. But here's the thing. It doesn't mean that just because it might be problematic there doesn't mean that the NRSV is bad.

What it would do is just do translation comparisons and things like that. Check it out. Okay.

Cool. Yeah, and do you know by chance if that, what was it you said, the Council of Churches? The National Council of Churches.

Do you know if it's like, are they involved with the Roman Catholic Church at all, or is that like an ecumenical thing or something? I don't know. Let me see. Christian faith groups.

I'm looking up some stuff to see if it gives a list, and I can't see any particular list. But now I'm curious. Now I'm really curious to see. So I'm going to have to do some research on that.

Cool. I've been using an ESV study Bible, and I really like that. I like study Bibles a lot.

I like to have the commentary and all of that. But this one doesn't seem quite as like theologically rigorous. It's more based at like the disciplines of faith, I guess, is like the concept of it. So that, along with being deuterocanonical as well, I was just wondering if maybe this is like a Catholic edition of a Bible or something like that. Because I do believe that Catholics use the NRSV like pretty prominently as well. They use the Dewey-Rains, and they use the Revised Standard. I think that's what they use. Revised Standard.

Okay. So now I just found a list of the National Council of Churches. Episcopal Church, Community of Christ, that's not good if it's who I think it is. Yeah, that's LDS. It's a cult. Episcopal Church, bad. Evangelical Lutheran Church, ELCA is very liberal. Greek Orthodox is in. That's bad.

But you see, just because. But then look, then there's the Orthodox Church in America, and that's another bad one. The Patriarchal Parishes of the Russian Orthodox Church. Then there's the PCUSA, and that's really bad.

And then the RCA, which is pretty decent. So the Swedenborgian Church of North America. Oh, that's a cult. And then the United Church of Christ is a cult. United Methodist Church is not technically a cult, but it's so liberal that you really can't trust much of anything. And Metropolitan Community Church, which is LGBT.

Hey, they're in there too. Okay. No kidding. Wow.

That's quite the ecumenical counselor. So of course, that's Warning Flex. And so now, having seen that, my recommendation is be very wary of that, because if the members of those groups wrote stuff, I'm not really going to trust them.

It's just me. Sure. I appreciate that. I get skeptical about it too.

Like I said, my buddy gave it to me just because it has the Deuterocanonical books, and I was just interested in just reading them in general. Yeah. We're both reformed. I have one form. Oh, do you really? Okay. Cool.

Yeah, and he just had it. He had it for some class he did at some point, and they were studying that stuff and whatever. We're both reformed. I got a pretty light grasp on some of the cults, but I'm aware of some of the stuff. So like you said, it just kind of threw some flags, and I'm just curious if you had ran into that at some point.

No, but now you got me intrigued. So I'm taking some notes into my list of questions I have to go through. There's 15 there, and there's how many? There's 68 there, and then I got another list of what's going down at the bottom.

That's not as big. It's only 663. So I've got about 750 questions I've got to get to. Is that all?

Yeah, and then that's not even counting the over 50 people I'm supposed to analyze. Right, yeah, there's a lot of, oh, you mean aside from the... Oh, yeah. What I need, here, I'm just going to say this. People could pray for this. What I need, what the ministry needs is a million dollars dumped in the bank so that we can hire researchers to get an office the whole bit and just do videos, write articles, and just knock this stuff out and develop courses and all kinds of stuff that we can... Yeah, man, I would love to see that progress.

I would love to see that for Karm. I've been following you for, oh, gosh, probably six months or so, and I've just really, really benefited from it. I'm in Ohio, and Truth Network was just recently... Well, actually, I don't know if it was Truth Network in general, but I just heard you on Truth Network on the radio, and my understanding was like a recent broadcaster. They had just come over to our station or whatever, so I definitely appreciate you guys. Well, there's a lot of good guys on the radio network. I know the owner. He's a great guy, and the reason I'm on is because Hank Hanegraaff went rogue and joined the East Orthodox Church, and so a lot of churches... Yeah, I heard about that.

Yeah, he went rogue. So a lot of stations just said, forget it, and so I got contacted by different networks saying they wanted me on. Well, this is the only one I could afford, because people don't realize, we pay to do this. We pay to do it.

It costs money out of Karm every month, and it's not cheap, so that we can give information out and answer questions. Sure. And a lot of radio people, they get paid to do their stuff, but I don't, and Karm doesn't, and she doesn't, so we do need that support, you know? Definitely, yeah.

No, I'd pray that for you guys for sure. I'll include that. I know how much you do personally and all that, so it would be a blessing to get a load off your shoulders too, I'm sure. Oh, man.

Yeah. I've got new responsibilities. I started a doctorate degree program.

I don't know how far I'll get into it, because I just don't know what the load's going to be. My wife's health is deteriorating, and I have more responsibilities in Karm lately, because we lost a guy who couldn't pay him enough, and he had to go down to ministry and praise God. Oh, my gosh. So we have extra responsibilities, and so it's just a coalescing of a lot of stuff.

So I'm working a lot and very hard. All right? It's okay.

Yeah, it seems like it. Yeah. All right, buddy.

There's a break. Got to go, man. All right? God bless. Okay. Hey, we'll be right back after these messages, and we'll get to Martin right after this.

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What is dedication? My biggest fear in the middle of my addiction was that my kids wouldn't have a father. I overdosed on heroin and I lived. And I started thinking, you know what?

This isn't my story. My desire to change had finally outweighed my desire to stay the same. I felt powerless for so much of my life. It's important to me that my kids are empowered to truly believe that if they can think it, they can do it. I definitely had to become a better man to be a better father. For the first time, I finally feel like I'm exactly where I should be, where I want to be.

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Here's Matt Slick. Everybody, welcome back to the show. If you want to give me a call, it's real easy.

Call 877-207-2276. Let's get to UW Martin from North Carolina. Martin, sorry for the long wait, but hey, you're on the air. Hey, brother Matt, how you doing? Doing all right, man, by God's grace. Hey, and what were you saying about AKA Bible Answer Man? Because that's how I got to listening to you because I used to listen to him and it disappeared. Right, and the reason is because he left Protestant theology and went to the East Orthodox Church, which teaches theosis, becoming like Jesus, almost to the point of divinity, participating in the energies of God that make you able to do what's necessary over a long period of time in order to obtain your righteousness before God.

So basically, it's a false gospel. Oh, wow. That's sad to hear. Yeah, it is. Yeah. That's why I'm on here. Oh, okay. So now when I go for a walk on the treadmill or I jump on the bike, I put my phones on, the earphones, and listen to you because you come on right after I get home from work. Well done, man.

I appreciate it. Yeah, but I wanted to ask about, is Matthew 11, 18, 19, is that, do we just get exactly what it says from it or... Yeah. Am I reading into it? I don't know. He's saying that John came either eating or drinking, and they say he has a devil. So we know he ate and drunk.

You don't live long. Yeah, what that phrase is meaning is he's not a glutton and a drunkard. He came eating because they would often have parties where there was a lot of food. He was going to eat and drink. And the wine that they would often drink and have beer and stuff like that, really, the wine was diluted, so they had to drink all day in order to get a buzz, get drunk. And sometimes he did have harder forms of liquor, a strong drink, which is prescribed, believe it or not, in Proverbs 31.6. But this is just a phrase that John the Baptist wasn't out there being a glutton and drinking booze and stuff like that. He wasn't having normal stuff. He was eating honey and locusts and drank water out there in the desert.

Okay. So then 19, so then could we use that to say Jesus did drink a little wine? And how do we know it was wine? Yeah, sure he did. I got cut off there.

How do we know it's what? Maybe he lost him. So let me just keep going. So this is a very interesting verse, Matthew 11.19. And so what it's talking about here is Jesus is speaking of himself. The Son of Man came eating and drinking. So he would go with those people who were sinners. He would go to where they were. They would eat and have meetings where they would eat and he would be there.

Not every time. And they would be having drink. And I believe he drank. I believe he had alcohol. He wasn't a glutton and he wasn't a drunkard. But he would have wine just with people. I don't see any problem with that at all. Now a lot of people believe in the blonde hair, blue eye, Caucasian surfer Jesus. Yeah, right. And they would say that, well, the blonde hair, blue eye, Caucasian surfer Jesus would never do anything like that. He's always really nice. He wouldn't drink any alcohol because that's bad.

Well, why is it bad? Jesus' first miracle is making alcohol. Right.

So anyway, so the idea is that the exaggeration that the enemies will use. He wasn't eating and drinking. Jesus is using the same phrase. Eating and drinking about John. Eating and drinking about himself. And so he's a gluttonous man and a drunkard. A friend of tax collectors and sinners.

And so, well, wait a minute. Why would they accuse him of that? Because he was with them. He went with them. He talked to them. And I often wonder, would Jesus be accepted in a lot of churches today?

The people he hangs around with. Yeah, you never know. That's true. Yeah, because this is in red. This is the red letter. So it's supposed to be his words, right? That was wrote down, quoted, whatever. Uh-huh. Yeah. That's what it is.

You see him talking. Right. Now, Jesus said it's not the healthy who need a physician. It's the sick. And the people, the sinners, were sick. It was sin. And he spent time with them.

He spent time with them. That's right. That's what he told the Pharisees, right?

Since they said they are well and they don't need them. Yeah. That's right.

That's right. Okay. So I have, personally, off of this, I have no problem going into chat rooms where unbelievers are.

I've been in chat rooms where they talk about LGBT. They're pro of promotion. I'll go into these rooms.

I'll listen. And sometimes I'll volunteer information, try and get a conversation with them. They need the gospel.

They need the light. And so we need to... That's true. That's the only place, that's the only time you're going to be able to talk with them, right? Go where they go, where they are, right? That's right.

You don't remember what's on the internet. No, because I go to a bar, and you know, here in the South, all bars have food, have meals like home-cooked restaurants. You know, you got collard greens, and you can go into any bar here and have collard greens and black-eyed peas and cornbread and, you know, so they're open later than the restaurant. And one of the bartenders that I go to on like every Thursday, I go and he says, I notice every chance you get, you bring up the word and, you know, the people, whoever's sitting beside you. And he was like, you're making me feel bad because I feel like that's what I should be doing, he said, because I'm a Christian.

So now, when I go, me and him would talk out loud and, you know, we'd look for any word to bring up the word, and now he talks with me instead of me just talking to him by myself, you know. Yeah. Well, you know what? That doesn't bother me at all. I mean, I think it's kind of cool what you do.

Because, you know, Bodyville would say, no, Matt, you cannot encourage a guy to go to a bar. Well, and you're witnessing, you're sharing the gospel. Would Jesus do something like that? Apparently, since they said he was a gluttonous man, a drunkard, a friend of tax collectors and sinners. Well, they were not going to, you know, flat out make something up about him. They're going to say, hey, see what you're doing?

See how bad you are for hanging out with them? He was doing it. All right, he was doing it. So yeah. That's right. And he once met a guy and he told me that his ministry was to go to bars and to witness to people.

Wow. And a bar in Southern California doesn't have food like that, generally speaking. It's a bar. Oh. And sometimes those bars aren't real sanctified. Let's just leave it at that.

Okay. And he was raised in that environment because of his dad. And it's a weird story. But at any rate, he said he would just go in and he'd sit down, grab a drink, and he would just sit there for two, three hours. And he just had, he'd milk one thing and he wouldn't get drunk or anything like that. And he'd wait for people to show up and he's praying and he's asking. And he said, he said, he goes, Matt, he goes, you're one of the few people I can tell that I do this.

I said, okay. And he said, you'd be shocked. He said, you'd be shocked to know how many people who go to church, uh, are Christian, supposedly Christians, and stop going.

They're now going to the bars and drink. And he says, what are you doing here? And they go, well, what are you doing here? He goes, I'm here for you. And uh, you know, and he talked to them and they go back to church a lot.

They go, you know what? That's great. He just witnessed it. So, Hey, that's not for me though.

I can't do that. You know? So yeah.

Yeah. And I, and I wouldn't advise and I wouldn't buy the Christian that was a alcoholic in his car. You are, are you the kind of person that you take one drink and then you got to continue a, that you can't stop at one drink. I've never been that type of person. I never was a big drinker. So drinking don't even, yeah, I had, I had a, you know, my, I grew up stepdad, you know, knocking us around, you know, and everything.

So I never, uh, yeah, I never got into that cause I've seen what it did to him, but yeah, but they got great. Yeah. The dinner is just as good as a restaurant food.

And I guess I, I guess I should say not a dance dance type bar versus a club where it's just T it's all TV and TV music over the phone. And yeah, you just reminded me, I did a debate with two atheists in a restaurant bar in Dallas, Fort worth area about five, six years ago. Oh yeah. That's my room. Yeah.

I'm born in Dallas. Yeah. And so they, they actually, I said, Hey, Matt, go do this debate.

You gotta understand that it's, it's, it's a place where they, you know, a lot of people come in, they have a stage and they have, they do all kinds of stuff and bar and people drink and they, and I said, okay, that's where the unbelievers are. Let's go. So, uh, yeah. That's it. Okay.

So I did a debate there and a lot of people showed up. All right. Wow. Okay. All right.

So God bless you keep up the good track work. Okay. All right, buddy. Okay. God bless.

All right. Let's see. Next longest. Whoa, man.

That's a long time to wait. Rebecca. Are you making over half about a half hour?

Salt Lake City. You're on the air. Maybe she's not, maybe she got tired.

If Hitler was still alive, would Jesus forgive him? Depends. That's a question worth getting into, but we'll do it right now. Let's get to, let's see, let's get to Cindy from Ohio.

Cindy, welcome you on here. Can you hear me? Okay. Yes, I can. Okay.

Wasn't sure if I had to close out clubhouse app or what. Okay. Um, I'm sure you get asked this every year. Um, just wondering your thoughts on, uh, trick or treat.

Well, um, the negative side is that there's a lot of occult stuff involved and we Christians should not be involved in anything occult. On the other hand, it's really cute to watch the kids come to the door and I love it. Every every Halloween I get candy. My wife thinks I'm, but she just looks at me, she goes, I can't believe you enjoyed so much.

I do. I just jump up to the door and enjoy the children in their outfits because for them, that's all it is. They're just getting candy. They're having fun and I enjoy it, so I look forward to that. So can a Christian celebrate in that sense? Sure. You know, we had our kids, we dressed them up and my wife and I did, we took him to trunker treat.

It was a church gathering and they had a parking lot and they had a bunch of cars that had their trunks open and in a, in a U shape thing in a parking lot and the kids would go around to the cars and get candy and that way it was a safe environment. So you know, it just depends and we don't want to dress up as demonic things and put our kids out like that. But there's a concept in the scriptures in first Corinthians 10 and can we eat meat sacrificed to idols? Yes, we can. We're free. We're free to do that, but we don't want to stumble anybody else. We're free to be able to celebrate and dress our kids up in Halloween costumes and little bunnies and they go door to door and get candy, but we don't, but we have to be careful at the same time. We don't want to stumble anybody in our freedom. And so for each person, each Christian, it's between that person and the Lord.

Okay. Well, let's do the same thing. I grew up, I F D independent fundamental Baptist for anybody who doesn't know what that means.

And we did the same thing. We had a trick or treat at the church and that sort of thing. And I always told my children, you're not going to dress up as anything evil.

And so now I do the, you know, I put gospel tracks and baggies with candy and have some for the kiddos and some for the adults and that sort of thing. But there are always those extreme friends who say you shouldn't even do that. That's their judgment. Have them call me. Sorry to interrupt you, but we're out of time. We're out of time.

There's a music. I'm sorry. Call back tomorrow. Let's talk some more.

Let's talk about your friends and stuff. Okay. Sorry. We're out of time today. Hey folks. Sorry about that. We ran out of time. If you want, you can call me tomorrow. By God's grace. And hopefully we'll talk to you then have a great evening. I am powered by the truth network.