Truth Talk Live

Hello, this is Matt Slick from the Matt Slick Live Podcast, where I defend the Christian faith and lay out our foundations of the truth of God's Word. Your chosen Truth Network Podcast is starting in just a few seconds. Enjoy it, share it, but most of all, thank you for listening and for choosing the Truth Podcast Network. This is kind of a great thing, and I'll tell you why. Where pop culture, current events, and theology all come together.

Speak your mind. And now, here's today's Truth Talk Live host. Robbie Dilmore here for today's Truth Talk Live, powered by the Truth Network, and buckle up, I'm telling you.

We've got a wild ride today. I'm so excited, I really am, about all that we are covering today. In the first half of the show, we have a very, very deep question that was brought by a listener in Richmond, and he's with us, and we're going to ask that question in the second half of the show.

We've got a live report from SRN at the Iowa caucuses, and again, both are going to be helped out by my good friend and attorney, Adam Draper, who's also at the Pacific Justice Institute, and so a lot to talk about today. But first off, this question, and again, this is a live show, so it is our prayer, it is our hope that you would call in and help Eric out with his questions. It's a very deep question.

I personally love the question. I've been thinking about it since I heard about it this morning, and so honored to have you on, Eric, and so I'll let you ask your question so that the listeners can kind of begin to ponder this with you. Well, thanks so much, Mr. Dilmore. I very much appreciate being on the radio. I'm very honored. This is the first time I've ever done anything like this, so just hopefully, you know, bear with me.

This is my question. If humans cannot fully understand the mind and motivations of God, is it therefore possible that inconsistency in the Bible is part of God's perfect plan to bring people together in the study of the Word? Wow. You took a little different angle on it for me. Well, I was trying to polish it up in the last hour, so just thinking of essentially how I would basically encapsulate my current question, and I'm just trying to figure out if people say that the mind of God is different than the mind of humans, and we cannot understand what God understands, then it's quite possible that God's interpretation of perfection may actually be different than humans' idea of the concept of perfection. So my original inquiry was, is there anything in the Bible that explicitly states that contradiction is not allowed? It's always been an oft-quoted statement by leaders in the religious community that a perfect document would not have inconsistencies.

But that presupposes the human definition of perfection, and so that's really where my question is at this point. Yeah, I absolutely love it, Eric. And one of the things, as we talked about it earlier today, that one of the questions that this came—rose from was the idea of the Levitical covenant that said that you would be receiving this covenant is that you'll have the offerings as Levites for an eternal covenant, right?

And how is that still in effect, that since there are no longer offerings at the temple, that they're still getting offerings and those kind of things, and that idea within that. So with that in mind, you just heard what Eric had to say, and, you know, Eric is trying to—like we all are, in my opinion—trying to get, you know, closer to God and understanding Him more, and I love the new angle that he put on it. Like, some of these questions, like the genealogy of Jesus between Matthew and Luke, you know, how do you exactly reconcile that? Well, you know, I don't know how many good Bible studies I've been to on that very subject that really did do exactly what Eric said, drew people closer together. But my good friend Adam Draper is here, also an attorney, and also a philosophy kind of guy. And so, Adam, you know, tell us your thoughts as you hear Eric's question.

Oh, well, it's—Eric, thanks for the question. It's near and dear to my heart, and I think it absolutely does draw us into contemplation as to what God, you know, was really like. I would sort of flesh that out a little bit, if you don't mind, because this is how I started thinking about this issue. So, you know, the Bible does say that there is no change in God in whom there is no variation or shadow of turning. And yet, as I think you alluded to earlier, Moses changed God's mind, and Mary changed Jesus' mind. And so the question is, well, huh, if there isn't any change in God, how did you change His mind? Without getting into the weeds too quickly and trying to give you a very straightforward answer, it would be, yeah, I think you're right. I think that we do misunderstand the nature of God, or at least we don't have an understanding of His totality.

And what I would direct you to is, there is a rabbinical notion of simsum. And what that is, is that, well, hmm, so God is light, and He is infinite, and He is omnipotent, and He's omniscient. On the other hand, He doesn't experience change, but He did create us, in whom His relationship with us sort of requires change. So how do you look at that? The idea is that He made creation as a sort of a pocket within eternity, and then He withdrew the totality of His perspective, of His perfection from that, but He left within it a certain indicia of His presence, and that within this pocket, there is all kinds of possibility of change, and that the question itself then gets turned into, hmm, so if you don't look at this, if you look at this in a completely Western thought, you end up with, well, can God make a rock?

If He's omnipotent, can He make a rock that's so big that He can't pick it up? You end up in word games. So I really love this, and I'm looking forward to talking to you about it some more.

Unfortunately, that music means we've got to go to a break. Eric, we're going to be back with more, but we would love your thoughts, and that's why this show is live. We need your calls. 866-348-7884. 866-34-TRUTH. This is the Truth Network. Welcome back to Truth Talk Live. Today we are really having a lot of fun.

I hope you are. We're talking with Eric in Richmond, and he's got this fascinating question about God's perfection, and, you know, the essential contradictions that lead to, interestingly, a close relationship between us that are studying Him, and those kind of things. And so I have Buskman in Ohio wants to weigh in on the whole idea.

Buskman, my favorite jokester from Ohio who talked about not seeing that well. Isn't that you? That is me, Mr. Gilmore, and thank you so much for that package. That was so awesome. I got it the other day, and I was just like, I was just blessed. I mean, it was just so cool. It's a really sick joke book, and I plan, Robbie, to go through all of them, and you know I'm going to storm, brother, in my database. I knew that. Yeah, I've got the t-shirt.

I'm going to wear it someday when you call so you can see it on Facebook or something. So I was very intrigued by that question that our friend has called in, and first, before I would like to address it there, Mr. Gilmore, is he looking for something that compares we Christians to the holiness of God? Or is there something else? So if the question could be asked again, I would like to address it, because I think I'm going to go in one direction, but it might be another direction based on that. All right. Well, Eric, you had a chance to hear what Adam said, and you heard what Buskman said.

If you wouldn't mind, rephrase it for Buskman. All right. So basically, is it possible that inconsistency is allowable under God's idea of perfection? That's the idea in a nutshell. That's what I'm basically trying to hash out. God's got Adam.

Okay. So my question would be to find where our common ground is. Are you speaking from a biblical standpoint, Adam, or is it just a world view? He's God. I'm a sinful man or a sinful woman trying to understand the things of God.

So is it starting from the human perspective, or are we starting from the biblical perspective, brother? And his name's Eric. Adam is my guest.

It's in the studio. Eric, I'm sorry. That's all right. That's all right.

Go ahead, Eric. I was asking the question as I was trying to understand what it was that God required of us. So it was more – it wasn't the logic in general that I was then applying to the Bible. It was my study of the Bible and trying to understand it, which initially prompted the question, which does take root, of course, in the more general abstractions of logic.

Okay. So for Christians, at least for me, Adam, or Eric, I'm sorry, Eric, I start straight from Scripture. Probably like you, I had questions about who is this God.

I hear him talked about there are several religions among humanity, which one is right. And at some point in my walk on human existence, I kind of delved into a few of them and weighed, logically, probably like you, sir, what seems the most logical, what seems the most fitting. And honestly, honestly, Eric, when I started reading the Bible for itself on its own merits, and it was early in my walk with God, and I used the King James Version because my grandfather was a big fan of the King James Version.

So I was like, okay, I'm going to start with what Grandpa. And it's kind of a strange book to start with, but the very first book, Eric, I read from cover to cover, which is within the 66 books, there's actually 66 books in our Holy Bible, was the book of Ecclesiastes. And I don't know if you've ever read that book.

It's 12 chapters long, but it's very depressing. I thought as a human, this is very depressing, Bussman. And because it's just, you know, when you read through it and you see what Solomon wrote as a person living on planet Earth, I was like, there's got to be more to God than this, you know, this, this, you know, depression. Well, I've moved on, Eric, to the New Testament. I said, okay, who is Jesus? I hear a lot about this Jesus person. And a fellow Christian at the time, he was a pastor, a local pastor, a Baptist pastor. He said, Bussman, read the book of John. And as just a person that just wanted to read the literature and let it talk for itself, I read through the book of John. And when I finished what John had wrote in 20 chapters, I realized, wow, there are three other accounts of this man.

And guess what, Eric? I ran into exactly what you're talking about. Inconsistencies, but it was honestly, my friend, it was in the logic, it was into, I started thinking, well, how could have, like one of them, one of the stories that's dealt with in the Gospels is a demon. Well, one Gospel writer said it this way is the way it happened.

But then the other Gospel writer, Eric said, it was this way that happened. And I, like you, started thinking, okay, there's inconsistency. So if the Bible is supposedly written by God, he's obviously an inconsistent God because this account is different, not consistent, with this account.

So I started coming up with those same questions. Well, after I started delving into like historical and other foundational truths that you do not get from just reading those pages straight out in a Bible, in my King James Bible, I saw where the inconsistencies were actually not inconsistencies, but they were actually different true accounts. And I started realizing, okay, John didn't record this part, for instance, but Matthew did.

So when I started looking at that, I started realizing there really isn't any inconsistencies here, just one writer wrote some information and the other writer wrote more information. And it took me a while, Eric, to put away the function of my human sinful self to say, well, obviously God's not consistent, I can't trust him, let me move on to another religion. And then what happened, and this was very supernatural, the Spirit of God revealed, I mean the author of the book, Eric, entered me and I was able to understand when I would go and talk to a pastor or a teacher who obviously had more knowledge of this book than I did, and he was verifying... Oh, Busman, I'm afraid that music means we've got to go to a break and we've got a whole bunch of other stuff, but I loved your story and there's a lot of input right there. When we come back, we're going to hear more from Eric or from Adam, and I appreciate your call so much today, Busman.

Keep up the great work. We'll be right back. Welcome back to Truth Talk Live today. I don't know about you, but I've loved this discussion with Eric, who's calling in from Richmond with his question about God's perfection, allowing for contradiction that perhaps draws us closer to him and closer to each other. However, that may work, but I didn't want to just leave you right there, Eric.

I know we've got to go to Iowa here in a minute. We've got Joey calling in with some update from there, but I really wanted Adam and you to further your part of the conversation just for a few minutes to help settle this a little bit more. Not settle it because it can't be settled, but perhaps to give more insight for both us and the listeners. Go ahead, Adam. Yeah, Eric, one of the things I wanted to make sure that I said to you was thank you so much for the question because from my perspective, you're not wrong. Okay.

I'm not saying that. So I'm just going to offer this. In Exodus 3.14, it's the case where Moshe is talking to Yahweh. It's at the burning bush. And he goes, you're going to send me down here into Egypt.

Who am I supposed to tell them sent me? And I'm going to go ahead and read that verse in the Orthodox Jewish version. And it says, And Elohim said unto Moshe, Echecheh, asher echecheh, I am who I am, is the translation in English.

And he said, Thus shalt I say unto the children of Israel, Echecheh hath sent me unto you. Now, the interesting thing is, so we translate that into English poorly as I am who I am, or I am that I am. Where literally, if you go and break it down, literally what he said was, I will be what I am becoming said, tell them I will become.

What? Well, how is any, if God can't change, how is he becoming anything he's not already? And the answer is, yeah, duh, it's right there, right in the middle of that. I mean, there, there is your, there's the issue. So we, it is, yes, a matter of perspective.

And I don't mean Holy Heisenberg principle Batman. What I'm saying is right there in the middle of that is this, okay, there are two things going on here. One, there's me in my totality, and then there's me in the middle of my experience with you, which is why I created you, man.

Right in the middle of that relationship with us, that's what I want. And in the middle of that relationship, I'm not limited. See, I limit myself in the middle of this to become what I am becoming, but I'm not becoming anything I'm not already.

I am, you and I are becoming something together and I'm allowing it. Now, what does that do to our perspective on contradiction? It throws contradiction into a whole new light. And to me, I don't want to just belabor this and just throw this at you, but this is the entire perspective of why it's to be carnally minded is to be in enmity with God.

It's a spiritual thing. And so from the perspective of Yeshua, there's a story where Nicodemus comes and he says, what do I have to do to be saved? And Jesus says, you have to be born again. And he's like, what, what, I have to reenter my mother's womb?

And Jesus said, no, no, no, you're a doctor of the law. You don't understand this. You won't understand this if you don't understand. You can't understand any of it if you can't understand this. That which is of spirit is spirit. That which is of flesh is flesh. And when we're looking at this, of course, we have to come at it at that perspective. And the perspective is, well, we don't know the totality of God. He is unfolding himself to us in the middle of this relationship. And then I'm becoming in him something that isn't already.

Come on, that's awesome. And it ends with, there's a book of John, 1 John 3, 2. It says, when we see him, we become like him because we see him as he really is.

Well, it means now we're not seeing him as he really is. So I love your question. I didn't come remotely close to doing it justice. And I'd love to continue to have this conversation with you. But it seems to me that the beginning of trying to give a response to you that might be helpful would be there. Well, I appreciate it. I very much do. And I think the key to everything is to understand context, scope, and how you define your term. Spoken like a good lawyer.

I was trained by the best. I'm a lawyer too, so I get you. Technically, I haven't paid my bar dish last year, so I'm qualified and tired.

But as soon as I pay my late fees, I'll be back in good standing. But that being said, essentially, my overall conclusion to your point about how could an unchanging God change, the way I would reconcile that is it's not that God has changed, but as an example, let's say you had a toll booth. And the toll booth has a specific, unchangeable algorithm. And if you put a penny in, it'll take the penny and it'll come back out because it doesn't accept pennies.

But if you put a quarter in, it accepts it. So the toll booth never changed. God never changed. But the interaction with God changed. And as a result, based on God's overall algorithm, it's a different result depending on a different input. So as a, and I know I have to wrap this up very quickly in the interest of time, but I was thinking about the faith of the Canaanite woman. And Jesus said, I was sent only to the lost sheep of the house of Israel, to which he replied, even the dogs eat the problems that fall from their master's table, to which Jesus answered, Your faith is great.

What'll be done for you is your desire. And I'm thinking, God did not change. The only thing that changed was the presentation of faith to an unchangeable algorithm. So the woman changed.

And when God's mind has been changed in the past, it has been presenting different information for God's unchangeable algorithm to interpret and then reply to. I love that. That's awesome. I'm in total agreement with you.

I love the way you think. I think, you know, he's got, that's a beautiful way to express what you've been telling me for years, actually, Adam. It really, really is. And I love, you know, the deep discipleship that's in that. And so I applaud you, my friend. And yes, we are going to have some more conversations, Eric, I promise you.

We'll get it together soon. Thank you so much for participating with us, for sending the question to Truth Network to begin with. We're honored and honored to have you on, my friend. Well, thank you so much for taking my question and speaking with me about it. And yeah, any time in the future, if you'd like to speak about it further, I would be happy and honored to. Thank you so much.

Absolutely. God bless you, my friend. Have a great week. Thanks, Eric.

How fun was that? Like, wow. So we got Joey Hudson is in Iowa. And it's cold up there, Joey.

What's up, man? Yes, it is cold. That's an understatement.

You know, a guy from South Carolina, I'm not accustomed to minus 14 degree weather. And that's what we have experienced here for the past few days, particularly at night. But I got to tell you, it did not distract from some of the folks showing up last night at the caucus meetings. The turnout was a little lower than normal. But still, there was an enthusiastic crowd at the caucus that I attended, which was just outside of Des Moines. And they had combined three different precincts. So it was a pretty large crowd of about 500 people who gathered there.

And the weather did not seem to affect them at all. And so, you know, from your perspective, a faith perspective, Joey, and Joey is sort of a legend in that Greenville, South Carolina area. We're so honored that you would be on with us today. But from a faith voter's perspective there in Iowa, you know, how are you feeling based on what you saw? Well, and Iowans, there's been a lot of discussion over the last couple of months leading up to last night's caucus meetings. Faith is an important part in Iowa.

Most people, I don't know the exact number, but most people in Iowa identify with a particular religion. And the pastors up here do not hesitate to talk about politics from the pulpit. There's both President Donald Trump, Governor Ron DeSantis, Governor Nikki Haley, all of them were really recruiting pastors to be part of their team.

And between the three of those candidates who came in the top position last night, they had literally hundreds and hundreds of pastors around the state of Iowa who had signed up to be part of their team. So let's kind of look at the overall results from last night. Donald Trump won, as expected. I don't think there was any question as to whether or not he would win. I think the question was, well, by what margin? A lot of the polls were showing that he would break 50 percent, which, by the way, is a record. No presidential candidate has ever won, has even come close to breaking that 50 percent mark.

He got 51 percent last night in the finals. Governor Ron DeSantis and my former South Carolina Governor Nikki Haley were battling for second place. Joey, I hate to jump in here, but that music means we've got to go to a break. So maybe you've got a question for Joey, or you want to call in with your comment, 866-348-7884. We'll be right back. Welcome back to Truth Talk Live, and we're having so much fun today.

Wow, what a great question we had for Eric, from Eric in the first part of the show. Now we've got Joey Hudson live in the Iowa caucuses, and we still have my friend Adam Draper with the Pacific Justice Institute. And Adam, you have a big stake in all this, right, as the Pacific Justice Institute is clearly going to take part in whatever happens either way, right? Yeah, we are the largest legal entity that only defends religious liberties in America.

And Brad Dacus started this thing, and it's just gone crazy, but obviously, yes, we're looking at what's going on in Iowa. And I would just say, why would all of these ministers be interested in that, except that, I'm just going to go ahead and say it, we're experiencing persecution, and a real attempt to keep ministers in particular from being able to speak the gospel and the truth in the public square. You know, we're fighting this out in the courts, we ended up with it over and over again in the Supreme Court, so how is it that we find ourselves with a favorable Supreme Court that's actually defending our liberties at this point, but that Donald Trump appointed two pretty good justices who are helping defend our liberties now, and I say helping because it's by far not done yet, and obviously, this is extremely important to all of us who are out here defending religious liberties. Right, because we all saw what happened with Roe versus Wade, and that was a result of justices being appointed, and your votes back then all counted for something, they're still counting for stuff, right, Joey? Absolutely, and I want to add to that, our religious liberties are under siege, and I think you're exactly right as far as why these ministers feel like they have to be involved. You know, whether you like Donald Trump or not, as a person of faith, you have to appreciate the fact that he appointed federal judges who will defend our God-given right to assemble, to worship God, and were it not for those federal judges that he was able to appoint and get confirmed, it's pretty scary where we may be today.

Well, here's the question I have, I imagine. Joe Biden and the Democrats are feverishly trying to appoint as many judges as they can, and you know the type of judges that they will appoint, so the reason this election is so important this year is so that we can get the right people, because we have some wonderful organizations out there who are working with churches and pastors to defend their right to preach the gospel, you mentioned Roe v. Wade, I mean that's a landmark case there, protecting life, but if we allow the liberals and the left to take over the courts again, they're going to do it, and we're going to get back to a place that we don't want to be. Right, it's so important that we vote, but here's my question to both of you, Adam first. So my big question, you know, and again, I'm not an expert in all this stuff at all, but how in the world, because all you hear from the media, and I never watch the news myself, but my wife has it on from time to time, there's no way, I mean he's going to be convicted of 14 different felonies before the election, how can he get through all that and still be elected president, Adam?

Oh, well that's an easy, that's a softball over the plate. I would like a softball, because if anybody else is like me or just out there, you're hearing all this stuff, he's a criminal, he's a criminal, well how does he get elected president if he gets convicted all this time? The Constitution doesn't say anything other than that you have to be a particular age, you had to be born in America in order to be president, and those are the things that are listed for you to be president, is it possible for the people to vote a convicted felon to be president? Yes. Oh really?

Oh yeah, I think they probably assumed that people wouldn't do it. And then you can be removed from office by Congress because you have engaged in acts of high crimes and misdemeanors, but barring veto, then you don't get removed, which is why it's interesting all these other conversations we're having about immunity of the president, what he was doing while he was president, stuff like that. That's a fascinating issue, but yes, he could be elected and then he could pardon himself. Well I'm so glad I threw your softball at him. How about you, Joey? I'm glad to hear that, because I've never heard anybody go on the air and say, well hey, I didn't know you could be president and still be a convicted felon. Did you know that, Joey?

Well actually I did, but I want to add something to that though. In Iowa last night, Donald Trump won 55% of people who identify as evangelical Christians, and he has consistently had the support of the faith community. The closest one, of course, Governor DeSantis had 24%, Governor Haley 13%. The interesting thing though, particularly with Nikki Haley, is that people who, and she campaigns on the fact that she is pro-life, but she had a large number of people who identify as people who believe that an abortion can occur at any time who came out and supported her, which is a bit of a mystery of how that could happen and what that means. Yes.

Yeah, that's fascinating. Well the other question I know is on every, well, I don't know if it's on everybody's heart, but I imagine there's a lot of listeners that are like me, like, man, how do we know we're going to have integrity in this particular election? How do I know that it isn't rigged?

Are you feeling anything up there in Iowa, Joey? Well, you know, Iowans do it right as far as their caucuses because they all came together, as I mentioned, the caucus I went to had three precincts, so when they listened to candidates, and then they divided up into three groups in the building, and they literally had paper ballots. So you were handed a paper ballot, you wrote who you wanted to vote for, and then you dropped it in a box. Now, that's not how they do their general elections, but my response to that is this. I hope and I pray that since all the troubles that we had a couple of years ago that the state legislatures, and I know in South Carolina we certainly have, have taken a hard look at what went wrong.

There was a lot of gray areas as we went into the election, and they used COVID as an excuse to do things that they knew was wrong, but it wasn't in black and white in the statute, so they did them anyway. And I would hope that the state legislatures, and I know a lot of them have, have passed election integrity laws that are going to protect us from things like that happening again. So Adam, is that a softball as well?

You know, I want you to be able to hit it off the bar. Well, I'm actually going to answer this one. I'm a member of the Forsyth County Board of Elections, so I'm going to be careful about what I say.

Okay. But what I would say in the state of North Carolina is if you wanted to commit fraud, if someone were to hire me and ask me, I've got a bunch of money, how would I commit fraud? How we register in the state of North Carolina is a very interesting prospect, and I'll just say this because I can say this as a matter of fact. There is a man who registered to vote and using my address this past August, okay? So I went to our local board director and I said, well, this guy, how do we get him off the list? We're supposed to have list maintenance. You wait around two years, and if he hasn't voted in two years, then you can challenge that and have him removed from the list. Okay, it's got to be better than that.

Or I could challenge him once he's voted, but not before, and that has to do with a decision that was made in federal court recently. Really? So without belaboring this, if the way that we do early voting, okay, in the way that we do write-in ballots, if you know, if you happen to know a bunch of people who have registered who are, and you happen to know that they're not going to vote, you could vote for them, okay, and is there a way of knowing who hasn't been voting? Well, yes, there is. Okay, do we have all this?

Is it available online? Well, yes, there is. If you have a bunch of people that are available to you that you can go say, I'm going to go register at the time and I'm going to vote, and this can't be contradicted, do you have a pretty good chance of success on that? I would say theoretically that there is, but I do need to say this, in Forsyth County, we're not seeing that.

I haven't seen it, and I would also add this. I hope that what would happen is if we did something like that, that we would see some circumstances where people came in and tried to vote because they made a mistake about who wasn't going to vote, and they said, hey, somebody voted for me, and we're not seeing that either. And I've had this conversation over and over and over again with every member of the board and the board itself directly going, we need to make sure that this is safe.

I do think that there is an issue, and I do think that we need to get to the bottom of it, and I'm not even going into the crazy amount of data that's come in in Arizona, in Michigan, in Wisconsin, and in Georgia about fraud, about the misuse of ballots, particularly mail-in ballots, particularly ballots where you can, they just arrested a lady for dumping ballots in Connecticut. Also, just unfortunately, we've got just a couple minutes. I want to jump in and say a couple things. I know both of you would heartily agree that there's never a more important time to vote than this. In spite of all that shenanigans, right? That's right. Your votes really can overcome any amount of fraud that goes on.

If you vote, somebody else is not voting for you. Right, right. And then pray. Absolutely. Yes, prayer.

Prayer is the strongest thing you have at your disposal, right? And then obviously your vote. Well, thank you both so much. Joey, great to have you on again. Adam, you're my buddy. I love it. And thank you for listening. Oh, you guys make all the difference.