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 CARM.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. All right, everyone, welcome to the show. You're listening to Matt Slick live, and today's date is December 14th, 2023.

Man, this millennium is just flying by. Hey, if you want to give me a call, all you got to do is dial 877-207-2276. And we can talk. If you are interested in emailing me instead of giving me a call, all you got to do is direct your email to info at CARM.org, info at CARM.org. Just put in the subject line, please put something like CARM question or CARM comment or something like that so we can get to them. I've got a bunch of radio comments and questions. Now, as we get closer to the time of Christmas, generally the calls just start failing off. And that's okay. And just so you know, in fact, that reminds me, what's our schedule going to be?

Let me get it. So there'll be no, next week, next week, Thursday, Thursday and Friday, being no radio. And then on the 25th and 26th, you know, no radio. So, and then January 1st, you know, we won't be live. We'll be taking a few days off.

So there you go. And I hope you all have a great Christmas, too. Now, if you have questions about Christmas, you can give me a call. And if you're new to the show and you want to know what this is about, I'm a Christian apologist, which means I defend the Christian faith, and I attack things like atheism, Mormonism, Jehovah's Witnesses, Christian Science, Unity Baha'i, Islam, Roman Catholicism, Eastern Orthodoxy, and anything and everything that does not agree with the scriptures, the Word of God. Because the Trinitarian being is the one and only necessary being who is the necessary precondition for all intelligibility. All events, all facts, all truths trace their origin and their context back to the uncaused chain who is the Lord God himself. So without the Christian worldview, you can't make sense of anything.

Yeah, quite a bold statement. So if you want to talk about that or something else, whatever you want to talk about, that's fine. You can just give me a call, 877-207-2276. And I just want to remind you that we stay on the air by your support. And if you are so interested in what I had to say, or maybe not so much interested in what I had to say, or you think I'm obstreperous, but not obsequious, that would be good, then you could, if you want to support us, you just go to karm.org forward slash donate, karm.org forward slash donate. And we ask $5 a month, $10 a month, or larger if you want, and everything you donate will be matched. So if you start up with $5 a month, it'll be counted for the rest of the year, that'll be $60. And then we have a matching funds drive person who's going to just take that 60, double it, there it is. And it's in our account, it'll be that. So if you give a one-time gift of 20, then it'll become 40. That's what it is.

So very easy, very good, very nice stuff. And you can always cancel it whenever you want. But we are asking for a little bit of support, $5 a month, I think it's good, or $10 a month.

I think $10 is good. Because if we have $10, and that's not very much for people, it really does help us to create a budget. And we do have supporters that we have to support. We have people, excuse me, we have people, we have a guy in Nigeria, we have a guy in Malawi.

Those are both in Africa. We have a guy in Turkey, a guy in Brazil, a guy in Colombia. And they run different aspects of the site. We have a lot of people who help us out, you know, and we had Ernie on yesterday talking about the social media. We have Laura who does SEO. Maybe she can call in some time and say, I can ask her what she does.

But I think it's kind of fun to do that towards the end of the year anyway. And I know Laura's listening now. If she wants, you want to call in right now, I can just say, what do you do for CARM? And then we'll get Charlie to do that, and maybe we'll get some of the missionary guys to call in as well. So if you want to do that, Laura, if you don't, that's fine.

Because some people are intimidated by radio, but I don't think Laura is. It would be. Anyway, there you go. Hey, look, what I think I'm going to do now is get to some of the questions. That's a good question right there that's come in. Joanne asks, does God love equally?

You mean people. Does he love people equally? That's a good question. I don't know how to answer that one. I don't know. I mean, would it be possible he loves Jesus more than us, than individuals? I don't know.

It's a good question. Now, I do know that there are people that God hates. And that's Psalm 5, Psalm 11-5. He hates all who do iniquity. He hates those who love violence and things like that. And so I would say in that sense, no, he doesn't love everybody equally.

That there's not an equality of love given to everybody, but just God. I mean, just that's why I'd say that. Let's get to another one. Let's see. Matt, can you read this on the air?

So choose this. I'm writing a paper titled, what are the claims of presuppositional apologetics? It should be presuppositional apologetics. I would like to call and make clear, and that was on December 5th. So he's already called, but let me go through this.

Not only what presuppositional apologetics claims, but also how those claims are expressed if I am not accurate on either thing. Appreciate the correction. We already went through that. And we kind of discussed it. Let's just move along. Oh, it's the same thing. Let's see. Thaddeus. I suppose, wait a second.

Wait a second, that doesn't look like it was already answered. Let's see. Talk about contradictions. Why do people do what they do is sometimes between them and God, but apparently, I wrote that. OK, now he says, OK, I'm just trying to catch up the context.

It's a multiple response email. I suppose the left and right thing, the left and right thing is interesting symbolism. Oh, and that's in the judgment seat. A lot of people don't know this, that on the judgment of God, those on God's left are condemned, and those on God's right are saved.

And it's just a theme that a lot of people are not aware of. And notice that when Jesus, with the disciples, I forgot exactly where, but they were fishing. They weren't catching anything. And he says, cast your net on the right side of the boat. And they did, and they caught the fish.

153, I think that's what it was there. That's in John 21. So it's just a thematic consistency. So anyway, he goes on, as for taking events in the story, literally it still seems odd that the criminals would have an instant turnaround from mocking Jesus while on the cross.

Matthew and Luke still feel like separate story accounts. Well, why? See, when someone says, it feels this way, I don't think that way, it still seems that way.

Well, not to knock that. People are entitled. But those are the statements that make things kind of weak. Because it's like saying, I just feel it.

Well, not to disrespect someone for their feelings, what they kind of imply or intuit. It's just that those don't make something true or false. And so it certainly is possible that on the cross, because the one on the right is the one who repented and turned to Christ and said, remember me when you come in your kingdom. And the one on the left kept mocking Christ. And so on the left, he was damned. On the right, he's saved. So this is another example of left and right, judgment seat and the judgment of God, because that's where sin was judged on the cross. Now remember, they weren't just up there for five minutes. And then they died.

And so it was a quick turnaround. Now the one on the right may have seen Jesus and heard Jesus in his forgiveness. The one who was on the right may have very well have heard things about Christ. And there he is being crucified. And there's this guy right to his left. And this guy was on Jesus' right. And he's looking, and he's hearing him for hours up there. And pain has a way of softening you up, just like our trials and tribulations soften us up and make us turn to Christ and make us turn to God. Well, it would make sense that this guy's up there for a few hours and thinks you're getting really bad. Because I mean, you're crucified.

It's already really bad. But getting even worse, and he realizes death is impending. This guy, he's heard so much about. And there he is. And he's forgiving people.

Remember me when you come into the kingdom. It makes perfect sense at that point to say that that is the case. I have no problem with that whatsoever. All right.

Let's see. What is your opinion of the claim that the Gospel of Mark originally ends at chapter 16, verse 8? My NRSV Bible indicates the oldest of the manuscript in Mark, while it is later manuscripts that add extra verses onto Mark and make the ending more satisfying. It seems to be scholarly consensus. But what are your thoughts?

Well, let me get to that. This is, I'll spend a little bit of time on this, the ending of Mark and this issue. So Mark 16, 9 through 20 are debated scriptures. Later manuscripts seem to add verses 9 through 20. In other words, they're not found in the earlier manuscripts.

Now, why is that important? And what does this mean, earlier or later manuscripts? Well, let's just say that the Gospel of Mark, when it was written, let's just say, just for the quick argument, not to debate this, let's say he wrote it in 40 AD, just say 10 years, roughly 10 years after Jesus died. Let's just use the date 40.

All right. So how was it written? It was written on what's called a codex. Now, a codex is a page. And they didn't have binding like we did.

They kind of did, but we have it better. But at any rate, pages. And one of the theories is that the ending of Mark after verse 8, this kind of was lost. I'm going to read the last two verses, not of Mark 16, 9 through 20, but Mark 16, 7 and 8.

That's what it says. But go, tell his disciples and Peter, he is going ahead of you to Galilee, where you will see him just as he told you. They went out and fled from the tomb after trembling and astonishment had to grip them, and they said nothing to anyone, for they were afraid. And then that would be it. That's the end of the Gospel of Mark.

Well, it doesn't seem like a very good ending. Oh, they were afraid. So this is why some scholars think that one of the last pages was just lost in the original document, and that a later scribe then added some version there.

And I'll get to that. And it says, another version is, and they promptly reported all these instructions to Peter and his companions, and after that, Jesus himself went out through them from east to west and was the sacred and imperishable proclamation of eternal salvation. So that's a few late manuscripts and versions contain that paragraph, usually after verse 8. So there are different endings of Mark that are attributed to Mark. And so it's debatable. And this is the biggest textual issue in the New Testament. This is it.

This right here is the biggest one. Now, what is the true ending? What I think is, I suspect, this is just my opinion, and I'm just going to say this because it's nothing more than my opinion. I am not qualified as an expert in this issue of historicity, a biblical examination of historical documents.

I'm not qualified to say anything authoritative. But I can say, well, I think this, and I could be wrong. But you take it with a grain of salt. What I suspect is that the longer ending, which I'm going to go through a little bit, was the basic kind of ending that was there but was probably lost in the last leaf of the codex collection of Mark, and that a scribe from memory tried to write it back in and edit that.

That's what I suspect happened. And the reason I say that is because in this pericope, the last 11 verses of Mark 16, I'm going to read it to you. And this is what it says. And I'm going to comment on it. It says, and we've got a break coming up, so we won't be able to finish it until after the break. But here we go. Now, after he had risen early in the first day of the week, he first appeared to Mary Magdalene, from whom he had cast out seven demons.

While, oh, she went and reported these things who had been with him while they were mourning and weeping. And I've got to keep reading, because after the break, I'll get to Mark 16, starting at verse 11, and then make some comments about some stuff why I will never preach out of this ending of Mark. So please stay tuned. 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, 877-207-2276. Now, I was going through the ending of Mark. I'm explaining to you why I won't ever preach out of it.

I don't trust it as being authentic. Now, I'm not knocking the Bible. The Bible is fine. This is just an area of textual criticism that I've studied enough that I have problems with that ending and won't preach out of it. So as I was saying, I'll just start again at verse 9. Now, when he had risen early the first day of the week, he first appeared to Mary Magdalene, from whom he had cast off seven demons.

She went and reported to those who had been with him while they were mourning and weeping. When they had heard that he was alive and had been seen by her, they refused to believe it. Now, check this out. This is verse 12 of Mark 16. After he appeared in a different form to them while they were walking along with the country, he appeared in a different form.

Now, that's a problem. Jesus appeared in the same body he died in. This is by the prophecy of 1 Corinthians 15, 35 through 45. And Jesus said he would raise his own body, John 2, 19 through 21. So it's not the case, then, that he appeared in a different form.

We don't want to say that. We want to say that he appeared in the same body he died in. And this very fact of what it says, that he appeared in a different form, that's problematic.

And I just don't go for that. I don't believe that that's correct, and I think the textual variant is one of the reasons I won't preach out of that. So what I'm going to do here is I'm going to do something here, I'm going to show the verse on the screen here a little bit, and I'm going to just add this to my, I should have done this during the break, I wasn't thinking.

But I'm going to do this right now, where I can share the screen, and what I'm going to do is go to that window right there, and I'm going to share it and add it so that I can show what it says. So there we go. So like I said, after he had appeared in a different form. And no, he did not appear in a different form. So it goes on, it says, they went away and reported it to the others, but they did not believe them either. Afterward, he appeared at 11 themselves as they were reclining at the table, and he reproached them for their unbelief and hardness of heart, because they had not believed those who had seen him after he had risen. And he said to them, go into all the world and preach the gospel to all creation. He who has believed and has been baptized shall be saved. Now this is something a lot of cults use to try and say that baptism is necessary for salvation.

And that's one of the problem verses in here. But it doesn't logically necessitate that baptism is part of salvation, because it says he who has believed and has been baptized shall be saved. But we could also say he who has believed and goes to church will be saved.

He who believes and reads the Bible will be saved. But you see, the problem here is that the kind of implication, some people could say, means that baptism is necessary for salvation. Which it's not, because we're justified by faith, Romans 5 1, Romans 3 28, Romans 4 5. And we're justified by faith when we have faith, not when we get baptized. Baptism, I know about 1 Peter 3 21. I can go on all these verses and everything.

So that's a problem. And it says, these signs will accompany those who believe and my name will cast out demons. They'll speak with new tongues. They'll pick up serpents. And if they drink deadly poison, it will not hurt them. They'll lay hands on the sick. They will recover. So then when the Lord Jesus spoke to them, he was received up into heaven and sat down at the right hand of God.

They went out and preached everywhere while the Lord worked on them and confirmed the word by the signs that followed. And even when I read this, it just doesn't sound like the normal style of Mark. That's my subjective opinion. So I showed you that there's a problem in Mark 16, verse 12. It's pretty different form. Well, there's something else that you can't see. I remember reading this in a book that discussed this. And a Greek scholar said there are 17 words in these 11 verses, Mark 16, 9 through 20, 17 words that appear in those 11 verses that do not occur in the rest of the entire gospel of Mark.

So that's very interesting. And he said that they were non-Markan words used in a non-Markan sense. In other words, it confirmed to me that this is the style of a different writer, and I think the scribe.

That's why I think that. And the scribe was just trying to repeat what he knew and what he understood and wrote it down. And it became probably a marginal kind of an entrance, I mean, of an ending. Like, they probably knew it was just an addition by a scribe.

And it gradually was just lost and then refound and say, here's an ending, and things like that. So 17 non-Markan words in a non-Markan sense. That means that 17 words appear in those 11 verses that don't occur in the rest of the gospel of Mark. And that's a little suspicious to me.

So that's why I won't preach out of the ending of Mark 16, 9 through 20. That's not to say that the Bible's not trustworthy. Of course it's trustworthy. I believe it's trustworthy.

It is trustworthy. But it's just a fact that these kind of textual variances stuff occur. Another one is in 1 John 5, 7. It's called the comma Jehanium. And it is the three that bear witness, the three are one.

The Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, these three are one. And that appears in later manuscripts as well. And then the woman caught in adultery in John chapter 8 appears in different locations of different manuscripts. So some think it might be just a later additional thing as well. Those are the three biggies in the New Testament.

That's it. But statistically speaking, when I've read, the New Testament's like 99.85% textually pure. And there's a little bit of variation that occurs, I just told them to you. And this is because it really happened. The Bible really was written. It really was done. And so people really did copy it.

It happened in real time. All right, let's try this one, just nobody's calling. If you do want to call, 877-207-2276.

Oh yeah, that's right. This is a review. This woman says, do you have children? Your radio show last evening was sad. You walked out of a service because there were children present? But the person, I'm going to review this. The person doesn't understand why I left a service. I was talking about a certain service I was in a few weeks ago, and I just left on this sermon because the preacher wasn't sticking to the scriptures.

And he was just doing a surface level examination of the word, and then did a nice long intro with the story, and then went to a book, started reading out of the book, and just spent time in this book. I just get tired of this. I want the scriptures.

Give me the scriptures. So that's why I just said, I'm done. I'm not going to stay here and just listen to this. I get aggravated. And it makes me mad that people are being fed, in my opinion, too often, being fed mamby-pamby sermons.

And that's just me. My opinion. Am I mean? Maybe. Am I a little uppity about it?

Perhaps. But I'm not the only one who's having problems with preaching nowadays in a lot of churches. Now, I know some good churches. I know some good preachers, some local guys here.

And Josh Bales is great, and Randy Reems is great. These are guys I know locally here and stuff. And they're good preachers. And Chad Prigmore is a good preacher. These are guys I just know personally.

I'm not really good with names. There's a lot of good people and stuff. But when I get back, I'll explain why I don't like to have kids in a service.

For me, if you like it, great. I'm going to tell you why I can't handle it very well right after we get back from the break. We'll be right back. 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've got to do is dial 877-207-2276. All right, I was talking about why I don't like it when children are in congregations.

This is just my opinion. It is because I have a hearing disorder. And I have very loud tinnitus in both ears. And I blew my ears out when I was younger going to nightclubs back in the day. And so I have like 80 decibel.

It's very loud in both ears all the time. And it's 100% of the time at that level, all of the time, it never goes away. And I have hearing aids. And it helps.

It's kind of weird how it helps, but it does. Tinnitus doesn't go away, or tinnitus, as they say. And so because I'm also autistic, in that I have Asperger's, therefore I get distracted by certain kinds of sounds. Because my brain has to produce sound and ignore the sound while I'm listening to a sermon. And so if there's children in there who are clicking on something, banging on a book, making little noises, my brain can't process all those sounds at the same time. And I get very distracted. It's called getting overloaded. My brain can't handle it.

Most people can, because they don't have all this extra stuff to deal with. And that's why I don't like children in the service, because I can't handle it. I'm not knocking it. That's fine.

That's good. There's nothing un-biblical about that. It's just that's just my personal experience.

And it's a difficulty for me. So I'm not able to enjoy a sermon when there's kids around me that are noisy. And I've been in churches where they're banging on their little books. They're banging on stuff. And mom and dad don't do anything.

Or they're like, mom, dad. I'm like, come on. And so I just can't handle it. It's just me. It's me. It's not you. It's me.

And that kind of a thing like that. All right. Now, I think we've got callers coming in. But they're not activated.

At least one of them isn't. And so I'm a little bit confused. Oh, there we go. There's Brady from Utah. Brady, welcome. You're on the air.

Hey, thanks, Matt, for taking my call. I was just listening to you talking about that Mark 16.13. And just had a question. To me, I'd always understood that to be referring to, as far as he's taking out a different form, to Luke chapter 24, verse 13 through 16, about him walking on the road to Emmaus with the two men. And they didn't recognize him. It says their eyes were holding.

I'm wondering if that's the same case. And that they potentially, not that he was in a different form, but that the spirit didn't touch them. And they didn't know that it was Jesus, per se.

Right. Their eyes were beholden from seeing him. And they didn't recognize him until after he broke bread.

The breaking of the bread is really important. Because it may have been that at that point they would have seen the holes in his wrists. And because the garment that he'd been wearing would have been long, it went down to the hands a lot. So the dark, the dust, they wouldn't have seen it. But he broke bread.

You've got to rip it, and you've got to tear it. So they gave it to him, and they would have seen the hands. Oh, it's you.

So that's just a possibility there. But the issue here is, in Greek, it's a different form. It's metamorpho. And meta, or actually I think it's two words. Meta, different.

And yeah, meta and morphe. So if I don't like this, show that on the screen. Let's see if we can do that. There we go. And so when I see this, this is in a different form. Well, form of what?

His body. Well, that's not how it was. And as far as Luke 24 goes, he was still in his resurrected body, because that's just what the prophecy is. So there was no difference of form there. And that's why I get what you're saying out of Luke 24. But it's not, it doesn't convince me. Yeah.

OK? Didn't Mary not recognize him when he first appeared to her at the tomb as well until he, under the green light, in his Yes, let's put some context on it. It was early in the morning. The sun is just rising.

Which doesn't mean bright. It could mean that the sun had just broken the horizon. There could have been trees.

There could have been hillside around there that could have had shadows. Plus, you had to remember that Jesus retained the crucifixion wounds. So in the dusk, his face was beaten.

And his beard didn't rip from his face. So who's this guy right there? Well, it would have made sense that he would have been a follower of Jesus, because he had a lot of followers. Would it make sense to her that maybe someone was going there to visit the tomb just like she was? And then she realized who it was.

It was him. It would make sense if you put the flesh and blood on it that way. Make sense? Yeah, it seems to make sense that there's two accounts right there that we actually know that it was Jesus. Whereas in that Mark account, it may just not have been like the right word used in terms of form.

That maybe he had a beard or didn't have a beard, or his appearance was different to where they didn't recognize him at first until he spoke with them or broke bread with them or something like that. But like I said, it's metamorpho and metamorpho. And so it's just a different format. No, it's a form of his body.

No, he was in the same form, his hot body. That's what it is. And in the 17 non-Markan words and a non-Markan sense, that makes me nervous. So that's why I won't ever preach out of it as authoritative.

I can reference it and say, well, this is what it says here, but, and I've done that in some of my articles when people refer to it. But that's it. So there you go.

OK, yeah. Well, you're awesome. Thanks for taking my call. Have a good one. You too, man.

Thanks a lot. All right, all right. I don't think we have anybody else waiting. Now, I've got a request from someone to do a little thing on the now and the not yet. Let's see if I can pull it together. What the now and the not yet is biblically.

The now and the not yet. Hold on, I'm going to turn my throat. And then I'm going to take a drink of water.

Hold on, because this is nice glass here. I like this, as you can see. All right. So the now and the not yet. We're getting it ready. All right, hey, thanks, Ernie, $5 from Ernie in the chat.

Rumble rant, really appreciate that. The now and the not yet is an aspect of Christian theology that deals with the things that are not yet, but are said to be now. It's kind of a weird concept. So for example, in 1 Peter 2.24, it says Jesus bore our sin in his body on the cross. Well, he bore our sin, but I didn't exist 2,000 years ago when Jesus was on the cross and bore our sin. So for him, it was now, but for me, it was not yet.

Yet, my sin was imputed to Christ back then. So this is a manifestation of the now and the not yet. There's a sense of time that is not really present, but is considered to already be settled. And that's an example of it.

Here's another example. When you go to Romans 8.29, it says, and these whom he predestined he also called, and these whom he called he also justified, and these whom he justified he also glorified. Now, what's interesting here is that each one of these words is in the past tense. So predestined is the past tense, and that God predestined us. And you can go to Ephesians 1.4, the Foundation of the World. And he called us. He calls us forth.

He brings us to him. John 6.44, John 6.65 for that. And those whom he called past tense he justified. Now, justification's a legal declaration of righteousness. You can go to Romans 4.1 through 6 for that.

And notice this. And those whom he justified he also glorified. And this is what's interesting, is that to be glorified is talked about in 1 Corinthians 15, 35 through 45 in the glorification of our bodies, in the Resurrection, which has not yet happened. So we can make a very good case here that this glorification that's being spoken of is dealing with the future Resurrection and is spoken of in the past tense. We are guaranteed a Resurrection because of the Resurrection of Christ.

So for us, it's not yet. But yet, at the same time, it's already guaranteed. And another thing is 1 John 5.13 says, these things are written so you may know you have eternal life. So I know that I have eternal life. But yet, at the same time, my body is decaying. And my body is dying. And then one day, my heart will stop.

My breath will stop. And my soul will go be with the Lord. And then I'm going to be later glorified and resurrected. But I know I have eternal life. But eternal life is also sometimes spoken of in the fullness of the Resurrection.

But I know that I have it now, even though the fullness of it is not yet. So this is what the now and the not yet is dealing with in Scripture. It's a nice concept. It's really helpful. And if you can understand it in certain areas of Scripture in Bible studies, it makes things make more sense. And so I have to say to people, more better when you understand certain areas of Scripture when you get the concept of the now and the not yet. So there you go.

Praise God. All right, we have nobody waiting. If you want to give me a call, it's easy to do. 877-207-2276. And oh, there's the music.

Oh, there we go. Hey, and if you want to get back here for the last segment of the show, just please stay tuned. Or if you want to give me a call, 877-207-2276. Or you can email me, info at karme.org, and just put in radio question, radio comment.

One of those in the subject, and I'll check it out. May the Lord bless you. We'll be right back. It's Matt Slick live, taking your calls at 877-207-2276. Here's Matt Slick. All right, everybody, welcome back to the show. We have nobody waiting. So what I'm going to do is get some more emails and questions and stuff like that.

But if you want to give me a call, all you got to do is dial 877-207-2276. And by the way, just to tell you, we have a good group of people that kind of follow us in varying chat rooms and stuff like that. And we broadcast the show live in audio to Clubhouse. And it goes in video out of Rumble. It also goes out to Facebook and some other.

Maybe they can list the places down there in the private chat of the other places where it goes out to live. But the idea is we're trying to reach out as much as possible. And I just praise God for the ability to be able to do this.

And I'm thankful to those people who help keep Karm running. In fact, Charlie, hey, listen to me, Charlie. I want you to call me up on the air here. I'm seeing him. And don't you tell me, I want you to tell us what you're doing for Karm.

Because I figured we'd kind of do that toward the end of the year. I'm going to get Laura here too. So Charlie, why don't you call me? Arnie's calling, but you haven't called me yet, have you, the past few days, right? That's right.

Well, give me a call. And by the way, Charlie is the guy who read me the quote so many years ago, 43 years ago, that started me studying Mormonism. And it was the quote where Joseph Smith boasted he did more than Jesus to keep a church together. And he says, no, Peter, John, Paul, Peter, nor Jesus has ever done such a work as I. The followers of Jesus ran away from him, but the followers of my followers never went away from me yet.

And it upset me so much that I ripped the paper out of his hand. I said, who said this? And he said, the Mormons, or Joseph Smith.

I said, well, who's that? And he said, the founder of Mormonism. And that started me studying Mormonism. And I've learned a great deal about it. And I'm good friends with Bill McKeever and Eric Johnson, who are world-class experts on Mormonism. I mean, I'll just tease them and say, I taught them everything I know about Mormonism, which take about five minutes.

And then they, it takes hours to teach what they know about it. They're great guys. And so we've got a nice section on Mormonism. And I don't see Charlie on yet. Let's get to Marsha. Marsha, welcome. You're on the air. Hey, Matt. How are you?

I'm doing all right, just hanging in there. So what do you got? So I have a question.

And I also have a challenge. So my question is, I know that you're a continuation. Do you believe that all of the apostolic gifts are still good for today?

Or do you feel like there's some limit there? No, I say all charismatic gifts are still around for today. When people say apostolic, that's different. Because then they mean an apostle is for today, which I don't affirm.

I believe the charismatic gifts, speaking in tongues, word of wisdom, word of knowledge, prophecy, these all are still working in the church as a whole. OK? OK. That's what my position is.

So what about saying, like, I'm sorry, say that again? I have biblical reason for it. I can give the reasons.

But go ahead. So would you consider things like people being slain in the spirit and stuff like that be a part of that? The only occurrence of slain in the spirit I know of is in 1 Corinthians 5, or Acts chapter 5, excuse me. Ananias and Sapphira were killed. The Holy Spirit slew them, slain in the spirit. This idea of just falling down the ground, shaking, and all this stuff and going crazy, I don't see this being biblical. So I don't affirm it.

OK? But that's where I guess my issue is. See, a lot of people, there's a psychological phenomenon that people like to release themselves emotionally in front of a group for approval in a group. And a lot of times what's expected is people to act funny.

And they'll do that. And it's just a phenomenon that occurs. And it occurs at different levels in different cult groups. Now, that's not to say that Christians who do this are cultists.

But there are instances of this kind of a thing that happens a lot. Now, I was in Melodyland, which is across the street from Disneyland in Southern California. And Melodyland is no longer there. But I remember going up forward to get slain in the spirit. I didn't know what was going on. I was still young in my theological studies.

And there's about 10 or 12 of us, 12 of us, I don't know, 15, whatever. And I was about in the middle of this group. And the pastor would lay his hand on the forehead of each person.

They would fall back. It was being slain in the spirit, right? So I remember thinking, OK, hey, get to me.

Do it. I'll go down. That's OK. And I still remember this very clearly. The person to my right, because the pastor guy was coming from my right towards me. And so the guy next to me, I watched him. He was fidgeting, smiling, and kind of jumping up and down with excitement. And the pastor guy got to him and put his hand on his forehead. And the guy threw himself back. I could see the action of his own throwing. He went back, and he was smiling, looking for it. And he went back, and the guys caught him. I still remember that.

I could tell. The guy did it to himself. So the pastor then gets to me. He puts his hand on my forehead. I just stand up.

I'm not resisting. It's like, OK, he does it again. He does it again. He leaves, and he goes on to the next person.

And that person falls. I'm the only one standing. And so no one said anything to me. But it's like, if God's going to do this, I'm going down.

If it's him, well, OK, I just waited, and nothing happened. But I believe in the charismatic gifts, OK? I wasn't going to just eagerly throw myself down on the floor and flop like a fish out of water because I want some experience, OK? All right? OK. So I came out of a charismatic church where they wanted to teach us to speak in tongues.

So I guess that has affected my thoughts about it. You don't do that. That's ridiculous.

I'm going to teach you how to speak in tongues. Yeah. One of the things they can do is just say, got to buy a Honda. I've got to buy a Honda. Got to buy a Honda. Got to buy a Honda.

Got to buy a Honda. And they'll just start saying these things. Say, you're speaking in tongues.

It's ridiculous. These are amateurs who don't know what they're doing who caused ascension and confusion in the body of Christ. Speaking in tongues, biblically speaking, is speaking in a language that is there for the purpose of promoting the gospel and or for a prayer language. But you don't teach somebody how to do it. What you're doing is teaching them how to just manifest some phrases and some syllables.

If you're going to speak in tongues and it's documented in the world, speaking a language you don't know for the purpose of that God wants to work through you, that's fine. OK. And he can certainly do that. But so much of this is just fake. All right. OK. All right. So I'm doing a little more research.

Hopefully, somebody put some links up so I can go find those. Yeah, being slain in the spirit, look in scripture for it, and where does this teach you how to speak in tongues? That's not what the Bible says. When the Holy Spirit came on them, they spoke with tongues because the spirit was there.

No one had to teach them how to do it. It's ridiculous. These are charlatans doing this stuff.

I think that made me a little biased because of that experience. Yeah. And people can become very duped, and they can become emotionally drained. They can have stress in their life.

They need a release. There's a lot of psychological emotional factors that go into this. But remember, I'm not knocking the charismatic gifts. I affirm all of them.

I do. I affirm all of them. But they must be done biblically.

And I don't see churches doing that now. OK? All right, Marsha?

OK. OK. So I have a challenge. So tomorrow is my birthday.

I'm going to be 57, feeling pretty old. And I want to make a donation to Carm. So I want to match anybody else's donation.

So up to $1,000, anything that comes in between now and midnight tomorrow for my birthday, I'm going to give you a gift. Wow. Well, praise God. OK. I mean, if someone does, it'll come in.

And I can ask my wife if whatever's come in. And there you go. OK? We'll let you know.

And it will be a great birthday. All right, thank you for everything that you guys do. All right. Well, thank you. God bless. All right, that's Marsha.

She's pretty awesome. And let's get to Charlie. Hey, Charlie.

You only have like three or four minutes. Hey, buddy. Oh. Well, here I am. I'm glad you mentioned the boast of Joseph Smith that got you going. In fact, I just posted the link to that article about that boast if people want to read it.

OK, so we only have a little bit of time. So tell me what it is you do with Carm, because people need to know. Go ahead. Well, I post as though I'm you into the social platforms during the show. Looks like Carm is posting links to articles and the topics that people call in on. And that's me doing that. I was accused once of being a bot, because there was a bot doing that job.

And that was a nice accusation, though, to be compared with a bot, because my technical knowledge is shallow, as you know. I like that. And I do other things. I kind of bounce naughty people.

Of course, Laura and Ernie helped me do that. If naughty people sneak through, well, I just get rid of them. And sometimes you take them on.

Yeah, that's true. So what do you do with Hootsuite? You do something with Hootsuite, too, right? Well, Hootsuite, every other day, I publish at least five articles. But on the days I post five, I post three articles that you've written in the past. You've got thousands of articles that people might not know it, thousands of articles on different topics on Carm. And I send them out, three a day, so people can look at those and then go to the article and get some deeper understanding of the topic. They can take their time, not like when we're rushed on a radio broadcast, under the time constraints of a broadcast.

They can run over there and just spend their time. And I often do myself. I go, I search your website for something, and it hooks me in. And I start going from article to article to article and got my Bible open, and I'm thinking, yeah, yeah, yeah. I read that, and I'm glad I read it again, because, yeah, I see some more. It's a very valuable thing to do. So that's why I encourage people to take those topical links and run with them.

Get your Bible open, check them out. And if you're interested in a topic, all in, because the topics that are called in are what drive the show. So it's a color-driven show. I love it. Yeah, you do a good job of it, too. So you help with the social media by posting something that gets scheduled and goes out. You're in here during the radio show posting links, and you help bust people who are just obstreperous twits.

So that's very helpful. And during your last call, I posted two articles that you've written regarding being slain in the spirit. What's it mean?

What is it? Because those are good questions that that lady had. And I appreciate the people that have questions like that, because it gives me a chance to go to work and dig this stuff out as quick as I can.

Well, there's the music. So we've got to get going. But thanks a lot, buddy. Appreciate you, man. Appreciate you. Thank you.

Man, really fast. OK, God bless. Hey, Mr. Kitt, thanks for the $12 rant.

And Donitis, $50. Wow, thank you very much. And may the Lord bless you all. And by his grace, we'll be back on there tomorrow. We'll talk to you then. Have a great evening. Another program powered by the Truth Network.