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. Welcome to the show. It's me, Matt Slick.

Today is December 1, 2023. If you want to give me a call, all you have to do is dial 877-207-2276. I want to hear from you. Give me a call. On Fridays, a lot of times, I do hate mail.

I have a hate voicemail I'm going to play, but I can't play all of it because this woman just cusses just a little bit. What I'll do is I'll tackle that. I'll tackle that.

Oh, no wonder. I've got to go this way. Sorry about that. Now I've got the right setup. Okay, good. If you want to call me, 877-207-2276. All right, all right, all right, all right, all right.

Let's see. What am I going to do? I think I'm going to do some hate mail because I do like hate mail, but we're getting low. Sometimes, people dare me to do love mail. I don't feel good about it because it's like, it's so great of you, but I might do some love mail anyway because people like it.

I've been told, please do some of those every now and then as well, so maybe I'll do that. What I'm going to try and do right now is I'm going to try and play a hate mail. I'm going to have to cut it off at a certain point. Let's see if we can get this playing. Hold on.

Yeah, I'm just wondering if you both have actually figured out what the Bible really does say, or did you still want to stand on that stupid idiotic garbage, that one verse in one scripture, in one sentence, which indicates 75% of the eternal word of Yahweh Almighty. I got to cut it off at that point because she starts to cuss. I hope you could hear that. If you could hear that, let me know. Could you hear that okay, Charlie?

Sound good? All right, so there was no return number, no way to communicate with her. She didn't say what it was that I did wrong. It's like, hey. I get a kick out of different hate mails and emails, particularly when they say things like, you're so stupid, you're wrong about everything. That's it. Well, come on, give me something more than that.

At least, I'm going to say this, at least a lot of the atheists, when they communicate to me their disapproval of stuff, they will often, what they'll do is give me a reason why. You said this and I disagree because, okay, I can deal with that. But when a Karen comes up and just sits there and then yells and screams and blocks the number so she can't be returned, doesn't say what the issue is, just doesn't like it, that's kind of wimpy. It's a Karen move, you know, and it's unfortunate, but that's what it is sometimes. So, hey, there you go. I enjoyed that.

I think that's a first. Have you ever done voicemail hate mails? Because sometimes I'll get, I don't get any voicemails very often.

I mean, with hate mail in them. That's interesting. Anyway, hey, yeah, let's see, let's see, let's see.

Okay. And you know, and that reminds me, I do get stalkers every now and then. Every few years, two to three, I'll get a stalker. And I've got some stories about stalkers. And almost all of them have been women, except one guy. It was one guy. In fact, I'm going to tell you a story about this one guy.

And this is true. This is like a hate mail Friday. Okay.

December 1st. Well, you know, I'll introduce you to something. This really happened.

This is not, I'm not making any of this up. I had on my forums, a written debate done with an atheist and the atheists on that, our forum, our CARM forum, what they did was they got really snotty. And I said, no, no, no, no. It said between this guy and I, and, uh, I told the, uh, the, the, um, the people, the atheists, you know, be nice, be nice.

And they, they wouldn't do that. And so I told the administrators who, you know, watch this stuff. I said, let them continue, let them continue to get bad only in this forum that I'm discussing stuff with.

And so they did, they got really, really bad. And the topic I was discussing an atheist was with, was morality, what's right and wrong, good and bad, and things like this. And he never addressed any of the foul insults that came from the atheists. And I eventually got, took a list of things that they had been saying. And, uh, and I said, what do you think of this, this, this, and this from your, your fellow atheists and that he couldn't deal with it because they were really bad. And I said, you're just being a hypocrite.

I mean, I just busted him. And, uh, then I told the, uh, the mods, you know, I said, go ahead and administer the rules to everybody like, like we do fairly. And they, a lot of the atheists got banned. Well, what happened as a result of it was they decided to create a ministry against Karm and this one individual who, uh, let's just say it made him look really bad. He decided to make a ministry against Karm and, uh, he did this and I got to tell you this story. Okay. There's several parts of this story. And so he started a website and the goal of the website was to, and a talk forum and an inner talk forum. The goal was to destroy the Karm ministry for real.

All right. That's one thing. Well, about a year before that, all that occurred, um, a friend of mine told me about, and I told this story before the radio, but here we go. A friend of mine told me about an atheist, uh, Satanist, actually a Satanist, a woman who's lesbian.

And, um, she hated everything about Christianity and her daughter was murdered and, uh, in her front yard. And my heart broke and I said, let me talk to her, you know, and, and I did, I ended up talking to this, uh, Satanist woman for about two hours, except she did 99% of the talking. I just listened. I didn't witness to her. I didn't say anything to her.

I just listened. And I, you know, I've lost a son and I said, it's just horrible. I'm just sorry you're going through it.

That's basically all I said. I just sympathize with her pain and suffering. Well, she actually thanked me for, uh, her, my concern for her and for not being a preacher at her at this terrible time. And, uh, I said, well, you know, you're welcome. I said, I just, I just wanted to be there and let you know.

All right. So this anti-Karm atheist ministry had different people at different levels that they would trust to work with them to destroy the Karm ministry. And there was a top tier inner circle. She was in on it.

She was in one of those in that one circle. She contacted me and she said, though, I think you're full of crap and all this stuff and you're bad and you're this, I don't agree with this and that. She said, at least you have the right to do what you're doing. And I don't agree with him trying to destroy your ministry. Talking about hacking, uh, bringing, uh, false accusations, lies. It was really bad. And, um, so this is like hate mail on steroids. Right. And so, uh, one of my friends, uh, who lives in the East coast, a woman, they were saying that she and I were fooling around.

I'm on in Idaho and she was out there in the East coast. It's ridiculous. The husband wanted to find them and sue them. And it was just, it was getting out of hand. And, uh, what this, this, uh, Satanist woman would do was tell me what approaches they were going to use to destroy the ministry, to hack it, to overdo this, to flood the emails, to do whatever it was, uh, to attack the servers, to get to DOS attack. And so she would tell me and she says, but I don't agree with you, but I, but I'm going to help you. And, and I never told anybody, uh, when this ministry, this so-called ministry was alive.

I never told anybody about this. Right. So what had happened was, is I'd get this heads up information and I would tell it to the service provider who would then put in certain blocks and take care of everything. And they were just beside themselves, not able to, uh, to do any damage to the ministry. And they just couldn't figure it out. It went on for like a year, year and a half, two years.

All right. Well, having done all of that and, uh, and the like, um, we implemented, I'll tell you two things. We implemented in the forums where the atheists were, who were really the obstreperous, vitiparous type. And what we did was, uh, we, we put them into a, a, a system called miserable users.

So that instead of banning them for their pejoratives, what we would do is we would, uh, let them stay on, but we put them into this one segmented program. And what would happen is they would get on 50% of the time without a problem. And 30% of the time they would get a 404 not found error, or 10% of the time it would just, uh, just rotate.

The cursor would, you know, just blink. And then the circle that you're getting in was loading, please refresh the page. There were these various things that we could change the percentages and what things were happening at different times. So there wasn't any regularity. And so we put these atheist guys and girls, they were really bad.

I mean, if they're just talking, disagree, that's okay. But we, the ones who are really problematic, we put them into this thing. And it took them a year, a year to figure it out what we were doing to them. And someone did, they finally figured it out. That's, that's called this and that, and that's what they're doing because, and, uh, oh, they didn't like it. But we, we had so much fun laughing about them. I re-booted my computer, I re-stored it, I rebuilt it, it's still doing it.

It worked for a few days and we're cracking up. So anyway, all this is going on and, um, this is battle, you know, it's battle. And, um, and so I guess before I tell you the final part of this, before the final part occurred, another Satanist was trying to, was threatening my family and I. And, uh, was threatening to kill my family and me and all this stuff. Well, the feds got involved and, uh, we, you know, FBI got involved actually, and found out that it was out of the country, threats coming out of the country.

And so the police knocked on that person's door and that really upset this person saying, you know, uh, you know, I'm going to get you and I know Satanists in your area and they're going to, uh, they're going to kill you. And, uh, you know, it was really this kind of stuff going on. And it was one of the few times when the map system in the internet was wrong because we had my PO box and somehow they got my address and they would put it into a map program and send me an email, this is where your house is, this is where we're going to come and get you. And it was wrong. The map system actually got it wrong, which I'd never said it was right or wrong.

It just was wrong all the time. So the, the first Satanist I mentioned actually heard about this and attacked the second Satanist and defended me against the other one. This is all true. So I had a Satanist trying to threaten to kill me. Another Satanist who didn't like me and what I stood for, defending me. And she was working in an atheist group who's trying to destroy the Karm ministry and she's feeding me information. And, uh, you know, it's just too good to be true, right? Well, there's more. I get a phone call around Christmas and my brother who was in Missouri called.

I have a brother in Southern California at the time and went to Missouri and I'm in Idaho. And, um, he calls me and he goes, hey, do you know so-and-so? And it's the atheist guy causing all these problems. And I go, oh man, this guy, blah, blah, blah. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

And, um, I said, why, why, why are you asking? He said, oh, he works for me. And to my utter shock, the Lord had arranged that this guy work for my brother the whole time. And, uh, it was just a stunning revelation. We couldn't believe that it was the case, but it was. And so, um, my dad was living with my, that particular brother had to go out.

My dad was, health wasn't very good, went out and saw my dad and also went into the, into the work and met this guy. And, uh, I threatened him, uh, without, I just threatened him by a posture, leaning forward, like take a swing at me kind of a thing. And he backed off and that was basically the end of everything. It all collapsed after that.

Isn't that interesting how God works? Hey, 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. If you want to give me a call, all you have to do is dial 877-207-2276. All right, let's get on the air with Alberto from Georgia. Alberto, welcome. You're on the air? Yeah. Good evening, Matt Slick.

My question is, you don't know where Abba, what talked about, you know, Abba Father. So we as children should approach God as children so it means I could jump on God's lap, pull his hair, kiss him on the cheek, he could throw me up in the air, probably traveling at a speed of light, you know, going, you know, building light uses per second, fall back on his lap again, run around. Wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, hold on, hold on. How'd you get to the speed of light, uh, with what? He throws me up in the air. God's so powerful, he could throw me in the air. I could be flying at the speed of light. I'm down into space.

You know what I'm saying? So he could throw you at the speed of light. He throws me up in the air. Okay, let's get to a question here.

I'm not sure where you're going with this. My question is, my question is, okay, so we as little children, can we just jump on God's lap, pull his hair, kiss his cheek, run around in front of somebody's lap and all that as children? Jump on his lap and pull his hair? Uh, no. Yeah, because we're God, because he's our father, we're his little children, so we just jump on his lap and pull his hair and kiss him in the cheek and run around his lap and all that. No.

As children? Or you have to turn on certain reds? No, no, no, no, no, I keep saying no. I keep saying no. Okay. Uh-huh. So, no. We don't sit on God's lap, pull his hair, kiss his cheek. Mm-hmm.

Okay. So why aren't we God's children? We don't have any father, any? Yeah, but he doesn't change our diapers either.

Okay, so how far do you want to carry this through? Okay, so he's the father in a different sense of what you're kind of talking about. So, it's just an issue here of relationship, a closeness, but we have to be very careful in our casual attitude to God.

All right? Uh-huh. So our reverence towards him, right?

You know that? Always with reverence. Always with reverence. Correct. Always. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Okay. Yeah. Okay. Another thing, how come they put these Christians to be singing in church?

You know, what a mighty God we serve. Yeah, they're scared to go to the witness or them clown-infested areas when these young people are killing each other in neighborhoods and gangs. Wait.

Hold on. You're hard to understand sometimes, okay? Because remember, my hearing's not that good. I said my question is, a lot of Christians sing, what a mighty God we serve, but they're scared to go out to the neighborhoods and witness at a loss or the gang-infested areas that we're crying at.

Yeah, it's easy to say, what a mighty God we serve in church, but you have to prove that mighty God you serve and he truly is the God of the Bible. It's just your imagination and your mighty God only. You know what I'm saying? So what's your question? What's your question? That's my question.

A lot of people say, what a mighty God we serve, but they're scared to go out to the communities and witness for the loss or the clown-infested areas that when these young people... That's not a question. That's a statement. That's a statement. Well, okay, my statement then.

Okay. So why if the... Okay, that's a statement.

That's my statement. So what do you think about that? Well, I don't... There are people who are afraid to go out and witness and evangelize, and I think it's a job of the staff on church, the ministers, the pastors, the elders, to equip them how to go out and do that kind of a thing and provide opportunities for them.

Okay? But nobody quits in me, never. I just go out and do it. I just go out and step out in faith and that's it. Well, some people are more bold.

Some people are more bold and have more confidence, and so they don't have as much of a problem doing that, and others need to be helped along more. They're just different people. Okay? That's all that it is.

That's not the big deal. Okay? Yeah, I understand you gotta be prepared and all that, but I mean, I don't got time to waste, time to be prepared. I just go out there and witness. Boom, boom, get my papers. Good for you. I go to the neighborhoods.

I go all over. I don't got time to wait. The day of salvation could be the last day on earth, so I don't got time to wait. Some people say, oh, I gotta earn their right to witness to them. I don't got time to earn their right. I could be there the last day they see me. God brought them my path, and that's the only time that night God used me to witness to them right then and then. I don't got time to earn their right to witness to them.

I just go witness to them. That's it. Yeah. Well, like I said, different people have different callings, and not everybody's gifted in the same areas you might be gifted in. But the overall job of the ministry is to equip the Christians for the work of ministry.

That's what they're supposed to be doing and not babysitting them all the time. Okay? All right. All right.

Keep it a great word, Matt Slick. Okay. Thank you very much. All right.

And we pray for the other demons, all these satanic forces that fall on the wayside. All right. Excuse me. I agree.

We got to be praying. Absolutely. All right. Thank you. All right. God bless. Bye.

All right. If you want to give me a call, three open lines, 877-207-2276. Let's get to Jay from Ohio. Jay, welcome. You are on the air.

Hey, Mr. Slick. How are you doing? Doing all right. Hanging in there. Good, man. Hey, I had a question on Jude, verse 9.

I'm sorry. Yeah, Jude, verse 9. Michael, the archangel disputing with the devil over Moses' body. What is that about? It's about them disputing over his body. They had a dispute. Okay. So you want to know what the dispute was or why? Yeah. Okay. Well, it doesn't tell us.

Okay. So there are theories about why this dispute occurred. Basically, it comes out of the idea of idolatry. Could you imagine if the body of Moses was somehow preserved and the Catholic Church, for example, had it? And then all the monies and the temples or it's going to be the cathedrals built around it and all the worship and everything touching the body of Moses to go into idolatry. And this is believed to be the main reason. That's what I affirm.

Unless someone has better information, that's fine. It looks like Moses was incredible in his ability to give the law and perform miracles right in front of people. So if he were to die and the Jews had him, they would have become idolatrous. Just as the serpent lifted up in the wilderness, there's plenty of accounts that the Jews became idolatrous. They started bowing before it. And so the Catholics and Eastern Orthodox, the same thing, they're going to bow before it because they like tradition, they like relics, they like this, they like that.

And they want to touch them. When I was in Jerusalem earlier this year, we went to the Church of the Holy Sepulchre. And another time, the previous trip I was in, like six, seven years before that, we went to another place.

I forgot the location. But it was a place where Jesus was and there was a stone and legend has it that Jesus was on that stone. And in the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, there was another rock. And it was the one there. People were touching it and kissing it constantly because they want to touch what Jesus touched. And they would bow before him and reverence these things. It happens and it's false.

It shouldn't be done. Hey, folks, we'll be right back after these messages. Please stay tuned, Jay. And we'll be right back after these announcements. It's Matt Slick live, taking your calls at 877-207-2276.

Here's Matt Slick. All right, buddy, welcome back to the show. What we're doing.

I guess we lost our color. We're talking of all things. Every now and then I mention what we do in the chat during the break. And sometimes the discussions are really good. Not this time. And somebody's talking about bugs and roaches and stuff like that.

And so people are comparing stories and I was just writing at the end of it. Back in 22, there was a wasp in our house right there in the summer. And I thought, where'd that thing come from? Maybe open the door, one gets in behind you, comes in. And all of a sudden another one, and then another one, and another one, and another.

And we're like, what is going on here? And so they would go to the windows and they would go in by the windows with the light. And so I took care of them.

I vacuumed them with a long vacuum hose. It's the only way to get rid of them. And it went on for a few days. I'm trying to figure out where they're coming from.

And it was bad. I killed like 30 of them in the house. And well, my wife's condition, you can't have her flinch and be in pain.

She's already in enough pain. So I sat there and I started studying where they were kind of coming from and ventured toward them. And I discovered a small hole in a window frame that was designed into it, and it was just big enough for them to crawl out of. And what was happening is there was a hole that had developed at a joint outside.

The house is like 17 years old at the time, 18 years old. Just a little bit of crack, that's all. And they had gotten in there. And that's it. They were coming up through the wall and up into the house that way. We just had a pest guy come out.

He cleaned it out, sealed it up, and it was done. You know, we have dumb stories sometimes in our chat. You got to join us. It's fun.

Let's get to Ed from Roanoke, Virginia. Welcome. You're on the air. Hey, man. Slick, how are you doing? Doing all right. Doing all right. It's kind of a whatever Friday right now. We're just all over the place, so just having fun. So what do you got, man?

I get my Slick picks tonight. It's been a while. I've been working pretty hard. Well, okay. We'll see if we can help you out here, accommodate you. Okay.

So what do you got? Philippians two says, Let this mind be in you, also in Christ Jesus, for being a form of God. And then he says, Wherefore, God hath highly exalted him and given him a name which is above every name. That's the name of Jesus. Every knee shall bow and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord. So how literal do we go with God has given him a name above every name? Is that even above Yahweh, above Jehovah? Okay. The Jews often spoke in exaggeration. All right.

All the world was taxed. Okay. And in Jude three, for example, or is it Jude four? Let me read it to you. Jude four, it says certain ungodly persons who turn the grace of our God into licentiousness and deny our only master and Lord Jesus Christ. So the Father is not our master.

Or we could go to, for example, Revelation 19, 12. His eyes are a flame of fire on his head or many diadems of Jesus. He has a name written on him which no one knows except himself. What, God the Father doesn't know?

Well, of course he does. So the point is that in the context of what's going on, it's not talking about every name above even Yahweh's name. And people say, well, that's what it means.

Well, not necessarily because I can show where exaggeration hyperbole is used scripturally. And that's all that's going on in here. That's point one. Point two is the name is not understood the same way our names are. Like my name is Matt. Okay. Or Matthew. All right. But in the Indian, American Indian culture, it's, hey, where is running bear?

Well, he's with, you know, I don't know, flying hawk or whatever. And so their names had a meaning to them. And that's the same thing in Jewish culture. So Methuselah means when he dies, it will come. Noah means peace. Nathan or Nathanael means to give. And Abram means father of many. Abraham means father of a multitude. Isaac means laughter. So the names mean something.

Incidentally, when you go to Genesis five, there's a genealogy between Adam and Noah. And you take the names, put them in English, you get a sentence to point it to mortal men's sorrow. The blessed God will come down when he dies.

It will come bring it to the despairing hope. So God has this thing about names. Now, also, it says in Isaiah nine six for a child be born to us, his son will be given to us and the government will rest on his shoulders and his name will be called Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God, Eternal Father, Prince of Peace.

So we go, what? His name should be Bob. Shouldn't his name be Jesus? What do you mean?

His name is Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God, Eternal Father, Prince of Peace. Now, if you understand the American Indian style of naming and you kind of carry it that way over here, you go, oh, the name carries characteristics of the person. And that's what's going on. You remember the movie Dances with Wolves? Well, that was his name, Dances with Wolves. And the girl's name stands with a fist. All right, so here we go. All right, so he's given him the name, which is above every name.

What's going on here? Well, he's given him a name that includes everything that he is and has been and will in his character and essence. We can go back to Isaiah 9-6 and say, well, that's the name. We could say that.

I'm not saying it is, but we could, because I'm not saying it's exactly what's required here. And he's talking about the holiness of the name of the Lord Jesus Christ, because in Matthew 1-21, his name is Jesus. And so that's the name of Jesus, because what it says in verse 10, every knee will bow. So the name of Jesus is that name specifically given that is greater than all the other names, not Yahweh, but he's talking about those in the context of every knee will bow before them, those in heaven and on earth, et cetera, et cetera, and that he's the one. He's not talking about Jehovah or Yahweh himself. He's talking about all the created order because they bow. Okay?

I need a lot of information there. Okay. All right.

I like your pop culture reference stands with a fist. Yeah, that's interesting. That's right.

Pretty good. That's right. My wife calls me doofus with a mouth. You know, so there's another name to go with, you know. And so, you know, I mean, how do you like that one? That's like you laughing at hate mail. I know the same thing.

I love hate mail. So you got me cracking up. So there you go.

Oh, boy. Well, I was at work in the morning and some guys got on the subject of Jesus. And this one gentleman was trying to say, well, this is how I see it. And, you know, no one is seeing God the father. So, you know, Jesus can't be God because, you know, I have a father. I have a son and my son looks like me, but I'm not he's not the father.

He's not me. So, you know, so he was sort of trying to explain, you know, in his own way how, you know, Jesus couldn't be God in a sense, I guess. Right. Well, a lot of times it's just a matter of just more knowledge, more information. And I've had the privilege for decades now of being able to just study and answer questions like that.

And in fact, you know, like someone, you know, Alberto, he said, can we call God the father Abba? I don't know if I've written on that, but I put it in my note of questions. I think of questions do.

And so, you know, it's it's just work. And that's a and what you just asked is another good question. You know, let's see. Let's see. And Philippians two, nine.

OK. Is Jesus name above Yahweh? OK. And it's a good it's a good question. A good thing. And I can write about it. So when I do that, what I'll do is look at all kinds of instances of how this is and that is. And I learn stuff.

I get the privilege of being able to do that. So a lot of people don't. And so a lot of times they just give answers that, well, they're they're less informed.

I'm not saying they're stupid, just less informed. And so before Abraham was I am, was he using God's name? What was he using when he said before Abraham was I am? That's what he was doing.

Johnny 58. And they want to kill him for saying that. And so why is he going to say that? Because they knew. Yahweh was using the name of Yahweh. What was he using? Well, you see, here's the problem in.

Interesting issues related to this. Now, what we have is the Greek. Now, did Jesus speak Greek? Most probably. Yes, it was the language Franca.

And he probably spoke Hebrew, Aramaic and Greek and maybe Latin. We don't know. But I'll get back to this in a break. I'll talk about why this is important about him saying I am. OK, hold on. Hey, folks, right back after these messages, please stay tuned. All right, everybody, welcome back to the show. Let's get back on with Ed from Roanoke.

You're on. Are you still there? Yes, doofus with a mouth. I am.

So funny. So about, let's see, I was going to talk about, oh, now I forgot what my trade of thought was. I am. I am.

Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. And so Jesus says, I am. Now, why would they get mad at him? If he was speaking Aramaic, which a lot of people say was speaking Aramaic, that might not have done much, but might have. Because even if he was speaking Greek before Abraham was, I am, they would have got upset. If he was speaking Hebrew and said before Abraham was, Yahweh. And but when he said it, but we understand Yahweh as the form of the name. But in Hebrew, it's actually I am. So when he says I am, whichever language it is in the context of before Abraham, they understood what he was referring to. So that's why they want to kill him, because he's claiming to be divine. Before Abraham was, I am.

Not I have been like the Jehovah's Witnesses translated as, but I am. And they want to kill him. So he used the name Yahweh.

Well, I'm not saying he did. I suspect he just spoke in Greek. There.

That's what I think. All right. I'm going to get rolling back to work.

I appreciate my slick fix tonight. All right, man. Well, God bless. Have a good one. Okay. Have a good weekend. Hope I can hear you read some more hate mail sometime soon. Yeah, well, I need some more hate mail. I'm getting low. I may have to unearth some old stuff.

So we'll see. All right, brother. God bless, man. All right. Thank you. Okay. All right.

All right. Let's get to Mike from St. Petersburg, Florida. Mike, welcome. You're on the air. Thank you, Matt.

Appreciate. I heard you last week. I didn't know who you were last week.

And I saw your your debate with Cobain, you know, the Eastern Orthodox guy. And I thought you did a fantastic job. And I understand your position. I couldn't have done as well as you did.

I've been studying it a long time. But I didn't understand his position. You kept trying to pin him down with biblical responses. And I don't know why he didn't answer your questions. Can you sort of elaborate a little bit to me what your feeling was on that?

And do you know anything about I'm sort of investigating the you know, he's on with Jay Dyer a lot. And I'm trying to understand what their position is. But they it's hard. It's hard to figure out anyway. So I'll just let you sort of tell me what your impressions were and if you could educate me a little bit on this. I'm actually oh, by the way, that was a wonderful, cordial debate. I just enjoyed that. Anyway, I'll shut up.

All right. Well, so the East Orthodox Church is not Christian. It is old, but it teaches a false gospel. And so having boldly said that, I'll explain some stuff. Now, justification is is the legal declaration of righteousness, according to the Bible.

It's it's an instantaneous legal thing. You go to Romans 4, 1 through 5, Galatians 2, 16, 2, 21. You go to Romans 5, 1, Romans 3, 28. I mean, I know the topic very well.

I've debated it a thousand times. All right. So the problem with Eastern Orthodoxy is they don't have a central, universal, systematic theological position. And what you have to kind of do is keep taking your stick and beating around the bushes where they dwell. And then what flies out, you catch and you put together and find out what they're teaching. So what I'm going to do is, let's see, I can I can I have the quotes. I have quotes. Oh, I thought it was right there at the quote on the process of salvation. But basically what it is, I have quotes directly from Eastern Orthodox people in his.

Let me say I can find this one word and I want to read them to you. Yeah. Salvation summary. And here's so these are different ones. I don't know if Dyer said one of these or that guy said one or whoever, whatever.

But these are some of the things we'll get into it here. One person said this. And I wrote it out and read it back to him. I said, is that right? He said, yes. Now there are different qualified Eastern Orthodox people who I got information from.

Here's one. Adam lost a proper relationship with God through his sin. Jesus restored the ruptured relationship through his resurrection. Therefore, by participating in the energies of God, that's the graces that lead to good works. You slowly become divinized, being made more like Jesus ontologically. And in this process, become justified. OK, it's heresy. All right.

Here's another one. We will participate in the energies of God that will deify us. It means becoming like God, identical to what God is, except in his essence. The identical things are things like immortality, glorified state, which is energized by what God is in his operations. He sustains us in our glorified condition. When Jesus became flesh, he deified his human flesh. The uncreated energy of light. This is how they talk. OK, it's hard to pin them down.

Here's another one. God is working in and through you to do good works, which are perfecting your faith in God. These same works purify your faith, and the purified faith then brings theosis and Christlikeness by which righteousness is obtained. It is the grace and true faith of Orthodoxy that achieves theosis. So another one says that it's living sacramentally, which means participating in the sacraments. Sacraments such as the holy mysteries of baptism, chrismation, Eucharist confession, etc. You've got to participate in those to achieve salvation.

So what's going on here is in Orthodoxy. This is what it says about justification from orthodoxbridge.com. Justification is accomplished at baptism, the point where a person is granted forgiveness of sins and placed in a right relationship with God. And it is maintained through a life of obedience to God and confession of sins. It is accomplished at baptism, the sacramental instrument by which sins are forgiven and is maintained by confession of sins. So having read all that, you can see there's not a very precise thing, but you can tell what their teaching is, that you obtained salvation justification through baptismal work and the participation of the sacraments. And through all of this, you maintain your position with God through your good works. And at the end, you hope to be justified before God. So that's what I was getting out of that was that you can't have assurance of salvation like we do.

Correct. Okay, and you know, I'm attracted to the doctrine of theosis of deification, because it does seem that it says we're being made Christ-like, but that seems to be more what we call progressive sanctification rather than some sort of waiting for a justification. Does that line up in your thinking at all? Yes, that's pretty accurate.

But I would recommend that you distance yourself from the false teachings of the Eastern Orthodox Church. Theosis, as one of them said, is to become like God ontologically, which means in his essence. I asked this guy, are you saying like God ontologically in his essence?

He said yes. But another one says not in his essence, so they contradict each other. So you've got to understand that what Adam said is, excuse me, what Satan said to Eve in Genesis 3 is, you'll be like God, knowing good and evil.

And so in, okay, actually, let me do this too. So in Mormonism, for example, you can become like God. And so the idea of theosis is becoming like God, except then they'll say, but you're not like God in his essence, but you're like him in these ways. Not just you and I are more like Jesus, you know, just not lying and not stealing and being honest in our hearts and things like that. That's not what they're talking about. They actually participate in the energies of God and then become God-like, but without the essence.

It's self-deification. Have you read any Michael Heizer by any chance? A little here and there. And you've got to be careful of that guy and with the Council of the Gods, okay, out of Psalm 82. Okay? Yeah, yeah. I thought that was kind of a lot of fun to investigate, but I read his book anyway, and he seems to be saying that the theosis we arrive at is being Christ-like in his body, in his resurrected body as a man in heaven, that kind of thing. Does that strike you as kind of weird or anything?

No, no, no, no. That's fine. Jesus is the firstborn of creation and the firstborn from the dead resurrected.

We're going to follow after him in our resurrected bodies. That's true. Okay. You need to stay away from the issue of theosis because it has a broad range of meanings, and it can be misused.

If you start accepting the word and term the way the EO is using it, and when you find out they're using it in another way, you're going to be more apt to be deceived. So let me read something out of all things. The catechism of the Catholic Church, and it says this in paragraph 460.

I'm only going to read the last half of it because we're running low on time. For the Son of God became man so that we might become God. The only begotten Son of God wanting to make us share in his divinity assumed our nature so that he might make men gods. What they're doing is talking about this thing called theosis, becoming godlike. Whenever you say, I'm going to be like God in a lot of ways, don't say that because it leads to a brainwashing to the idea, I'm going to be like God. The EO talk about it in the form of theosis.

The paganism of Catholicism talks about it in 460. Mormonism says we're going to become God. Satan said you'd be like God.

It's all about our self-exaltation. We are not going to be like God, not his ontology. The only thing that we're going to have is called the communicable attributes of God. He loves, we can love. He hates, we can hate. He thinks, we can think.

So we have those attributes, but they're the communicable attributes. So we're going to be resurrected, and we're going to follow in Christ's footsteps. You'll never hear me saying, I'm going to be godlike.

You'll never hear me say that. I need to be Christlike. I know you're out of time here, but I couldn't figure out the difference between the essence and the energies and all that. It just doesn't seem to jive with me.

Well, good. The energies, think of them as the actual energy that's emanating from God as a form of grace that then works in your soul and in your body to make you more like God. Energies. So some people call them graces, and this is one of the ways that the Catholic Church talks about the graces of God, as though grace is a substance. In fact, in the Catholic Church, paragraph 1999, the grace is infused into the soul to make you more like God, to make you other things. What does it mean then to participate in the divine nature? I know you don't have much time to answer that.

I recently wrote an article on that, and what it's talking about is simply participating in the communicable attributes of God and sanctification and becoming more like Christ. That's all that's going on. All right? All right. So there you go. Stay away from Eastern Orthodoxy.

They are slick in that they know how to make things sound good, and then they'll go to their church fathers and they'll quote them, and they do it very selectively. And I want to debate these EO guys again. Okay?

It's a non-Christian, it's a false religion. Okay? All right.

That debate caused me to sign up for your channel, so thanks. Bye. Good. Good. Well, praise God for that. All right. Hey, there we go.

And Mike's gone, and there's the music, so I've got to get out of here. May the Lord bless you. I hope you all have a great weekend. I hope this December is a great December for you. May the Lord bless you, and by His grace, we'll be back on the air on Monday, and we'll talk to you then.