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Wow, what a time to be alive. There's so much going on. Um, and it's good stuff, man. There's good stuff. There's light shining in the dark. So, um, welcome to the Friday Q and A. I'm Mike Winger. I'm going to help you learn. I hope to think biblically about everything. And we're expanding everything to mean everything here in this ministry. Um, and today we're going to talk about a tweet or a post on X from Zachariah Zachary Levi. Sorry. And this is going to be a respectful analysis of a very thoughtful post that he put up. Even though there's disagreement, this is not a roast of the man. I actually think he's intelligent, thoughtful, appreciate that he shared what he thought publicly because we need religious dialogue in public spaces. That's a healthy, positive thing.

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So I'm going to talk about that. But I think what he said connects to new believers so much. And I know I need to plug in my thing for anybody who's, like, thinking he didn't plug in, turn on your. I need to turn it on. But, um, what he said connects to new believers, and that's what today is. A special new believer doubter and skeptic Q and A. I'm only taking questions that represent those three groups, New believers, doubters, and skeptics. Those are the only questions I want today, only questions I will receive today. So please focus on those questions. I know some of you try to get questions in all the time, and, uh, I'll tell you more about that later. It's going to sound real boring at the beginning of the video, but let me plug in the counter real quick. All right. I am wearing pants. I'm always wearing pants, guys. Don't worry.

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All right, down, down, down, down, down, down, down.

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All right, question number one.

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Number one, what are Zachary Levi's beliefs about the Bible? And really, a lot of people's beliefs about the Bible are represented in the things that he said. So we're going to get into it right now. Let me put the first one on your screen.

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I know it's small. You guys can zoom in if you need to. Yes. If you're on YouTube, you can Zoom in other platforms maybe, but I'm going to read it all to you word for word so you don't have to worry about that. Okay? He says. He says the following.

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Um, he's replying to somebody. I didn't get the reply. I didn't screenshot that. But this was, like, months ago. This is not a Recent post. But he says. Greetings, uh, David, while I can appreciate where you're coming from, as I once believed that as well, I don't think it's as cut and dry as that.

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And in fact this is one of the many reasons I find myself having different opinions from mainstream Christianity.

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This is about how, uh, the nature of scripture, the nature of the Bible, like should we really believe this is like God's infallible word. He says, as I'm sure you know, second Timothy was a personal letter from Paul to Timothy. Argument number one.

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Okay, you know what, I really need to show you guys the passage he's referring to. So 2 Timothy 3:16 and I'll put it on your screen. All scripture is breathed out by God.

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That's the main thing here. Now there's extra stuff here. It's like it's profitable for what does it do? For teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness. And the result of all scripture is that the man of God may be complete, equipped for every good work. This is like a reformation principle that I believe in right here. The sufficiency of scripture not, not sufficient for every truth and reality. No, sufficient for uh, teaching, reproof, correction, training in righteousness. That the man of God may be completely equipped for every good work. Amazing, beautiful claim. But when it says all scripture, Zachary is going to be like, hey, what does it mean by all scripture? He thinks that me, or at least thought maybe he's changed his mind. You know, he's a thoughtful guy who um, knows what he's thinking right this minute.

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But, uh, he was posting here on this uh, X post that that all scripture may not mean the New Testament and maybe we've misunderstood this thing and the transmission of scripture through time. So there's three pages here of thoughtful stuff as you guys are loading your questions in the live chat. And guess what? I'm going to try to take more than 10 today. We'll see how long I can handle going. I want to take more than 10 if possible. So it's 10 Qs with Mike, but it's going to be like hopefully more. I want to handle as many as I can handle today from new believers, skeptics and doubters. I can't wait to see your guys questions.

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Um, don't feel weird about asking a hard or challenging question at all. They're very welcome. Okay. So he says, as I'm sure you know, Second Timothy was a personal letter from Paul to Timothy. Argument number one. The only scripture at the time of Its writing was that which was found in the Torah and the Old Testament teachings.

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That's argument number two. When Paul writes that all scripture is God breathed, he can't possibly be referring to what he's writing in the moment or any of the New Testament for that matter. He had no idea any of these various testimonies or letters would much later be canonized into what would be called the Bible and thus considered Scripture. Okay, there's so much there. I'm going to take each paragraph one at a time.

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Very thoughtful, like this is not fake praise or something like that.

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Zachary, you brought thoughtful, intelligent, meaningful criticisms and I like to respond to those and I hope everybody get something out of it. So uh, as I'm sure you know, two Timothy was a personal letter from Paul to Timothy. Uh, it is true it was a personal letter. Um, but the fact of it being a personal letter, I don't think that this weighs in on whether or not it was scripture.

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Right. Uh, it's an apostle. It's uh, a personal letter, but it's also an apostle of Jesus giving Timothy instructions for the whole church and teachings and doctrines. And you can see that, you know, like, if you read on, like I charge you in the presence of God and of Christ Jesus, who is to judge the living and the dead. There's doctrine, there's a, there's an authoritative proclamation. He's making preach the word and he's telling them how to do the Christian life. It's full of like really specific details like that.

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But um, personal letters can be scripture. So uh, Zachary, you grant that the Old Testament was scripture at this time and we have all kinds of content in there that a huge variety of stuff. We have like a love poem in Song of Solomon and that's part of scripture. And we have like a message from a mother to her son.

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Right. In Proverbs, I think it's 30 or is it 31? I, I always mix up the numbers of things. But um, right there I think it's Proverbs 31. Um, maybe. Anyways, this, it's, it's ah, the words that Agur's mother told him and they're recorded and she just says my son. She's just talking to her son and it's recorded there as scripture.

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And we have other things like this in scripture. There's all kinds of like, variety of genre of writing in scripture. So personal letter I don't think is invalidating anything. Um, Paul was doing this as an apostle and so it's elevated to his apostolic Authority, because it's about running the church and how his, one of his major, like number one guys, you know, Timothy's going to conduct himself. Then you said the only scripture at the time of its writing was that which was found in the Torah and the Old Testament teachings.

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Um, that's true.

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Well, okay, it's sort of true. It's sort of true. There's another layer I'll add to this, which is that we have to ask the question, when did the New Testament writings become Scripture? And you seem to operate from what is very common, very common. Even scholars will sometimes say this, that it became scripture when it was canonized much, much later. And you say this here. Any New Testament, for that matter. He, uh, had no idea any of these various testimonies or letters which would later, much later, be canonized into what would be called the Bible and thus considered scripture. So the idea is that it wasn't considered scripture until, you know, 150, 250. You know, whether you're looking at the Muratorian canon or if you're looking at the Council of Nicaea, which didn't actually, it's a big myth online that the Council of Nicaea decided which books would go in the Bible that wasn't. They didn't approach that in the council at all. But we have earlier discussions of the nature of those things. And I won't get into the whole naughty mess of it. I have a video on how we got our New Testament. I'll link it down below. It's like a. Maybe it's three videos. I'll link some stuff down below about how we got our New Testament in detail.

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But we have to think of it like this. I'll come back to this in a minute. There's two canons. There's two uses of the word canon.

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There's canon in like the ontology or the nature of the Bible that just pretend. Didn't say ontology, if you know what that means. Doesn't matter. The nature of the Bible, like, what is it canon in that sense? Scripture was scripture the moment it was written, because scripture is the revelation of God through man. And so they write as they're moved by the Holy Spirit. That's what we read in the text of the Bible is that the concept of what they mean by scripture is not Scripture is whatever a council dictates belongs in the Bible. But it's rather when a man is moved to write out what God is inspiring and, and it's for all people, for all time, that is going to be Scripture from the moment that it's written. Meaning when Jeremiah wrote Jeremiah, that was when it was Scripture. Not like, uh, the Council of Yamnia or something like that, where there was, like, Jewish discussions about that. And I know that's a complicated topic, but not at those other things. It was Scripture already.

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So that second use of canon is about the canon of the Bible is what we recognize as Scripture. What do we say when we think this is the Bible?

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So when you distinguish between our recognition of Scripture versus the actual Scripture itself, you find that before we recognize it as scripture, it's already scripture. So if 2 Timothy is ever going to be Scripture, then it's Scripture the moment that it's written, whether the author knows it or not. It is in the category Scripture.

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Yet there's New Testament evidence, first century evidence, that they knew they were writing scripture. So Paul, his writings are referred to by Peter of all people, as Scripture. Peter actually calls it Scripture.

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You can check this out, look it up, google it on your own, do some little bit of research here. It's super cool.

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Peter, writing in the first century, recognizes it as Scripture. Paul recognizes the teachings we have, um, in the Gospels as scripture. And we see actually the earliest, earliest publicly known examples of Scripture are two things. The four gospels immediately received as scripture in the church. This goes back as far as you can tell. And it's just those four and no others. And then the writings of Paul are recognized as Scripture. And then there's discussions about, like, what else is Scripture. But they're only trying to argue what do we think is the Bible, not what we're deciding is the Bible. You get the difference? It's our infallible list of. Of, Excuse me, our fallible list of infallible books. Hey, we're trying to figure this out. And we trust that God has directed and guided that. All right, I could talk a lot more about that, but I want to move on. So hopefully you understand that concept there. When, um, it says the only scripture at the time was. So maybe Paul. Let's hypothesize that Paul did not know that he was writing scripture in 2 Timothy 4.

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Let's say that Revelation had not yet been written. Let's say that, um, maybe the Book of John was not yet written and other Hebrews was not yet written. So the implication is that 2 Timothy 3, 16. Can't, when it says Scripture, be referring to those New Testament books? But, uh, I would push back on that and offer a different interpretation of this verse when he says all Scripture is God breathed or is breathed out by God.

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He's using the term scripture, I think, in a different fashion. I don't think he's using it. When he says all scripture, he means all of the books of scripture that we recognize. I think he means there's a categorical term called scripture. And anything that is scripture is breathed out by God. That's the nature of what Scripture is. And therefore, anything in the future that we discover later God has given us is scripture that also is breathed out by God. Because all Scripture is breathed out by God. Like, if I said all humans are mortal, that doesn't just mean the humans that already live or that have lived in the past that I know of. I mean, it's like categorically part of humanity to be mortal. That's part of how we are. We need to be given eternal life somehow by Jesus. Apart from that, we're mortal by nature.

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And so, um, this is a categorical thing, not a historical thing. All scripture categorically. All right, let's read on. This is such a great tweet. I've been saving this in the banks on my computer forever to talk about it someday. Which is not to say you go on.

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Um, not to say that God didn't breathe new revelation and wisdom m through Paul and many other disciples that we now have the benefit of reading and learning from. Which is interesting, because I agree with you there. And if you say that, then that gets you pretty close to thinking that, okay, so Paul has a category called Scripture, and God did the same thing, a scriptural thing with them, and breathed out. So then the New Testament would have the same authority as the Old.

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In fact, you say Paul's Epistles are some of the most powerful books in all of the New Testament, in my opinion. Great man. See, I appreciate that you appreciate that and that you're actually looking at the New Testament and you're seeing value there, even if we don't agree on all the other things. Good. That's awesome. But I believe that it's an overreach to use 2 Timothy as grounds to suggest that the Bible is completely incomplete, infallible. Um, and the reason why infallibility comes up is because usually the argument goes like this. The Bible can't be in error.

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It can say so and so said something and the thing was a lie. But the Bible is not proclaiming that thing. It's just quoting a person. But it won't itself have any errors. And the idea is because, well, if God guided it and breathed it out, and God would not Deceive. God would not lie. God would not. More importantly, God would not make errors. And so therefore, the Bible is without errors. So we go from the perfection of God to the perfection in the truth of Scripture.

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And I think that, um, there's a strong case to be made for that. I think it's a pretty strong case. Um, I think it was RC Was it Sproul who said, I believe in the inerrancy of Scripture because I believe in Jesus, not that he believes in Jesus because he believes in the inerrancy of Scripture. So you draw this not from, oh, the Bible declares that it's inerrant, so therefore it is. It's more of a theological argument of Jesus.

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Like, the Bible's at least accurate. Maybe you say it's not inerrant. It's accurate about Jesus.

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And in that accuracy about Jesus, he clearly holds to inerrancy of Scripture, um, the word of God cannot be broken, and other various things he said. And so you go, therefore, that's another argument. You can argue from the nature of God through the nature of Scripture, therefore it's inerrant, or the teachings of Jesus, to the nature of Scripture, therefore it's inerrant. Two different ways to argue for it. But you can still be a Christian and not hold to inerrancy. As controversial as it is for me to say that there's plenty of Christians that don't hold to inerrancy or, uh, infallibility. I think that they're more prone to falling into unbiblical beliefs because of this. But they do exist, and they don't always fall into all those other hazards. But they do exist, and they are still my brothers and sisters in Christ.

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Then you go on.

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The Bible contains numerous contradictions and translational errors, especially since it's been translated more than any book ever. It was compiled 500 years after Christ died, and when compiled, left out numerous other legitimate letters and scrolls that didn't fit the chosen narrative closely enough, so they got scraped or scrapped.

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Uh, plenty of powerful people have used and abused it for centuries, and I've no doubt even manipulated it to serve that end. This is where I would encourage you to do some research on this topic. More on your own. Um, these are common things to hear people say they're not true. Now, the Internet, of course, is a precarious place. You're going to hear people defend these claims. I've spent a lot of time working on it myself. You can look at the canonization of the Scripture. You can look at the transmission of the New Testament texts. I'll link videos below where I unpack my understanding of that. And maybe that would help for people who are interested. But let me walk through this line by line. So the Bible contains numerous contradictions.

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I disagree. Um, I've looked at the contradictions over and over again. I have videos unpacking supposed contradictions. I don't think there are contradictions in the Bible. So I'm going to push against that. But I'm going to push against it with tackling them one at a time and really unpacking them. Then there's translational errors. Um, there can be translational errors, but this is not. This is to say, um, so like the Passion translation is a very bad translation of the Bible. It has a lot of errors in it. But that doesn't mean the Bible itself is errant.

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You just don't use that translation. You look for a faithful translation. You go to the esv, niv, New King James, King James, go to the csb. You can compare multiple translations, but these are more reliable translations.

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Um, but yes, translations, you can have errors. That doesn't mean as a whole that we would say that the Bible in its very core is full of errors. But you said this then. Especially since it's been translated more than any book ever. This is actually a very positive thing about the Bible. People often imagine that the Bible was translated like this. Like, here's the original. Then we translate it into a new language. You know, we translate it into, uh, Aramaic. We translate it into. Because there's a little bit of Aramaic, but most of it's not. We translate it into something else, Latin. Then we translate it from, say, Latin into. Into something else. And then we go from that to something else and then another translation. And finally you get it in English. And if that's how it was brought down to us, I would agree. Like, how do you trust this? I'm literally reading a translation of a translation of a translation of a translation of a translation. That's a disaster.

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That is not how we got our Bible. Here's how we got our Bible, okay? We get the original manuscripts.

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They're copied. Yes, they're copied, but we have lots and lots of copies of them. So we can take the Greek and Hebrew copies and we can compare them amongst each other to confirm what the most likely original reading was. And we can be very, very confident about our Bible now about what it originally said. Then we take those original languages, mini copies, we have them translated into lots of languages. It's Translated into Gaul, it's translated into Latin, it's translated into Spanish, it's translated into all these different languages even at the time.

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And so you grab the Coptic and you grab the, the different manuscripts that you've got. And instead of like, I have an English one that's like the ancestor of, uh, 50 different languages, I instead have all of these available. Now I know what the Latin translation of this was, and I still have some Greek manuscripts I can look at. I know what the later new King James or King James translation was. And then 400 years later, I still have that along with all the other translations. We have this incredible wealth of knowledge about how the Bible came to us and what it has said throughout time. And here's an example.

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The, uh, Isaiah scroll was found, uh, in 1940s, uh, or when was it, um, anyways, when the Qumran caves were discovered, right? They basically, they found this scroll of Isaiah that was like almost a thousand years earlier than the oldest copy of Isaiah in Hebrew that we owned, that we had a thousand years. So we have here a thousand snapshot of a thousand years of transmission through time.

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And it was so remarkably identical that it just stopped the critics in their tracks, uh, reasonable ones anyways. And this is something you can look up on your own. You can see Isaiah 53 is a great chapter where it's core to who Jesus is, his prophecy about Christ, and the, uh, overlapping similarity is so identical that it, it's very encouraging about transmission of the text over time.

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We have tons of research on this and guys like Bart Ehrman you may have read Zachary or others you may have read. Bart Ehrman is not a good source on this stuff. It's not that he has a bunch of wrong beliefs. It's that, uh, he instills wrong beliefs in others. So if you're going to watch him, I'd recommend watch one of his debates with like Dan Wallace or somebody else, because Ehrman will write a book misquoting Jesus by the end of the book. You think we have no idea what Jesus really said?

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Bart doesn't even believe that. Okay? This is what his work does to people. But it's. I don't know, man. You call it marketing or call it.

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I just call it marketing. Um, but his actual opinion is that we do actually have a really accurate record of what the New Testament has always said.

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It's like extremely accurate. So you got to be aware of. It's a messy, tangled web of different things. Not only that, but spiritual attacks where Satan does want to Keep people from trusting the word of God.

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Read on. Okay, um, then you said, uh, um, the Bible was compiled 500 years after Christ died. That's definitely not accurate. Um, the real history of the transmission of the New Testament, of the gathering of the text, is complicated, but it certainly is not what people think. Powerful people compiled it for their purposes. That is not true at all. Um, you said plenty of powerful people have used and abused it for centuries. 100% agree, which is why we need to know what it says, so we can't let it be abused. And I've no doubt even manipulated it to serve that end. That's where I would disagree. Um, the manipulation of Scripture has not been successful. We have the authentic meaning of the text in front of us today, especially in English, in many translations. But more than that, two main contributors of the New Testament. This is really interesting. You said this despised each other and completely disagree with what the other was saying. Paul and James were not friends.

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They were rivals. Brothers in Christ, perhaps, but not friends. They vehemently disagree with each other to the point where Paul found out that James was still preaching circumcision in order for people to be saved. Paul railed against him so hard that he basically said, what you're teaching is so wrong, you should just go all the way and cut off the whole thing. Paul did say something like that, but it wasn't to James. Let's look at what we actually read about historically about Paul and James, because I don't know where this has come from, but check it out. Um, Paul says, After 14 years, I went up again to Jerusalem with Barnabas, taking Titus along with me. I went up because of a revelation and set before them, uh, though privately, before those who seemed influential, which includes James, the gospel that I proclaimed among the Gentiles in order to make sure I was not running or had not run in vain.

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The issue of circumcision comes up specifically in this meeting. James is there, Paul is there, and he tells them, I tell people they don't have to be circumcised to be saved. That's one of the things Paul says.

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And he says, even Titus, who was with me, was not forced to be circumcised, though he was a Greek. Yet because of false brothers secretly brought in, who slipped in to spy out our freedom that we have in Christ Jesus, so that they might bring us into slavery to them, we did not yield in submission, even for a moment, so that the truth of the Gospel might be preserved for you. Now, you might think, is he talking about James there, but he's not. And from those who seem to be influential now he's talking about the leaders. What they were makes no difference to me. God shows no partiality. Those I say who seemed influential added nothing to me that included James. On the contrary, when they saw that I had been entrusted with the gospel to the uncircumcised, as Peter had been entrusted with the gospel to the circumcised. For he who worked through Peter for his apostolic ministry to the circumcised worked also through me for mine to the Gentiles.

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When James.

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Sorry, bouncing around. When James. Now James comes up specifically.

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And Cephas and John, who seemed to be pillars, perceived the grace that was given to me. What was their response? And this is an important phrase. They gave the right hand of fellowship to Barnabas and me. That we should go to the Gentiles and they to the circumcised. That doesn't mean that they go and tell everyone to go. Paul's like, I'm going to go tell all these Gentiles they don't have to be circumcised. And James is like, right hand of fellowship, brother. Go for it.

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Now, you might think, well, maybe there's an error here. That's what Paul says. Is that really true?

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Well, in Acts 15, we get a recounting of the first council in Israel, uh, in the new church. The first time the leaders get together and they have a big debate over a big important issue. And guess what part of the issue is, should gentiles get circumcised? This is the same thing that Paul was talking about. The same issue is being addressed here. And I won't read the whole giant chapter. But basically, they have debates and they get up and Paul speaks his part, Right? Peter speaks his part. Um, uh, excuse me. Uh, yeah. After Paul and Barnabas, they know small disagreement and argument with them, then Peter gets up and he tells the story of Cornelius and how he gets saved. I think he talks about it here. Um, at any rate, at the very end of all of the argument, James pops up. Um, where is it?

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Let's see.

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I'm going to find where James pops up here.

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Um, okay. This is where Peter stands up and he's arguing. Hey, let's not make a stumbling block for them with all this stuff.

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And, um, the assembly falls silent. After they finish speaking, James comes, and it seems like James is bringing the final verdict here. And what does he say about all these issues? He says, brothers, listen to me. Simeon That's Peter, right? Has, uh, related how God first visited the Gentiles to take from them a people for his name. And with this the words of the prophets agree, just as it is written. After this, I will return and I will rebuild the tent of David that has fallen. I will rebuild its ruins, and I will restore it. That the remnant of mankind may seek the Lord and all the Gentiles who are called by my name, says the Lord who makes these things known. Uh, these things known from of old. So there's Gentiles to be called by his name. Therefore, my judgment is James judgment. He says we should not trouble those of the Gentiles who turn to God, but should write to them to abstain from things polluted by idols and from sexual immorality and from what has been strangled and from blood, not circumcision. We're not going to trouble them with circumcision. And the entire law of Moses. James was opposed to those things. Peter was opposed to those things. Paul was opposed to those things. Total agreement, Total agreement here.

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And then he goes on, he says more, but then they write a letter making it clear, hey, some people came, uh, to you guys, and they troubled you, and they're telling you you got to be circumcised and all that. Yeah, no, you don't have to do all that stuff. And so read Acts 15. Check it out. It's kind of long. And I know this, you know, I don't want to go on too, too long, so. Beautiful stuff. Um, yeah. When Paul was writing about people who should cut off the whole thing, he did say that, um, and it's because there were these judaizers who he considers false brethren, which he considered James to be a true brother. And they gave each other the right hand of fellowship, and they confirmed we both have the same gospel. He's not talking about those guys. He's talking about false brothers.

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All right, let me read on in what your, uh, post was here. And yet we are taught both of their writings as equally correct, equally applicable to our lives. And I would agree with that. I do teach that James and Paul different, both entirely correct. I have a video on that. I'll link it down below. How did James teach justification by faith and Paul teach, or James works and Paul teaches justification by faith? I have a video I'll link down below talking about that. But that simply cannot be true, you said. Not when they're preaching opposite tenets and clearly contradicting each other.

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That is a misunderstanding there, and I hope I can I, um, hope this is clearing it up, which is absolutely fine in my book because I don't think God ever intended us to blindly believe that the Bible was some kind of magical, inerrant text that should never be questioned.

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Um, I would never believe the Bible is a magical text and I wouldn't want to blindly believe that it's inerrant or never to be questioned. I would want to say I have lots of evidence, fulfilled, um, prophecy, evidence for God fulfilled, prophecy in Scripture, uh, typology of Christ throughout the entire Bible, the death and resurrection of Jesus, the establishment of the early church, um, the nature of what the Bible does say about Scripture. So that isn't the only thing. It's not just the Bible proving the Bible, but it matters that the Bible's like, here, I'm going to tell you the future. And then you ask the Bible what do you say about what you are? And it gives you descriptions of itself as being the word of God and accurate and believable. So that's an eyes open belief. That would be how I would put that.

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Then you go on. This is towards the end here. In fact, I think it is one of the great fallacies and tragedies of modern Christianity. This idea that the Bible must be entirely infallible or else it's somehow not still an incredible gift, an instrument of God's majesty and love and that anyone who even dare question these things be labeled a heretic.

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I agree with that so much. I'm, um, going to read it again and I want to say I don't know if I would elevate it to the great fallacies and tragedies of modern Christianity. I wouldn't say that, um, I don't think it's that big of a thing. But here's what I totally agree with, that this is a wrong idea. This idea that the Bible must be entirely infallible or else it's somehow not still an incredible gift, an instrument of God's majesty and love.

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I totally agree with that. There are believers who are Christians who go, I just don't hold to the infallibility of Scripture. Now I think that that's an error. But they're not heretics. They're not from that one view, they're not heretics. Now I'm going to get response videos. People are going to make a video because I said this. You're wrong, Mike, they are. But no, you just simply say, I don't think the Bible is infallible, but you hold to the death and resurrection of Jesus and you hold to the core tenets of the Christian faith and you're just, I think you're wrong on this. But it doesn't automatically make you some kind of heretic. And you can still see the incredible glory and goodness of God. There is, however, a slippery slope that is sometimes a true slippery slope when you believe that the Bible is infallible and it starts to give you the ability to just use your intuitions to decide what you will believe and disbelieve in the Bible. Brian Zond is a good example of this. He's a, uh, well known, relatively well known pastor who does this very much with the Scripture. He, he's just like, oh, the Bible's wrong there, the Bible's wrong there, the Bible's wrong there. Greg Boyd, uh, I don't know if he would say he disagrees with infallibility. He's a Christian. He's been a champion of the death and resurrection of Jesus in a wonderful way. But he's an example of a guy who has, I think, slippery sloped where he'll say, like, sometimes I use my, understand this is my words, not his. I use my understanding of what I think the cross stands for as a way of disagreeing with the Bible. And this is the thing. M. Maybe you don't believe the Bible is infallible. Anybody out there, but, but can I put forward this possibility to you, this consideration?

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Whatever the Bible is, it's more reliable than you.

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And if you were to simply get there, that would be a healthy place to be. If I believe it's this incredible tool of God's beauty and majesty in the world, can I simply say the Bible while I. This is not my words, but while I may believe it's infallible or it's not infallible, maybe there's some errors or something, I definitely think it's more reliable than me.

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I would actually be better served believing everything in the Bible with, if this is your view, the occasional error, than I would using my intuitions to reshape Christianity so that I might actually be inventing a Jesus of my own design, a God in my own image. Because, um, what else are you going to use to reshape the Bible? You're going to use something and when it comes to historical truth, you can look at historical scholars or you could talk about that, but, but when it comes to like theological beliefs, you're going to end up using your intuitions or somebody else's that are certainly not as reliable as the word of God that you acknowledge. Is God's word. So you should be, uh, in a practical way, everybody should treat the Bible as if it's infallible, even if they don't, in fact, believe it. That's my contention. Last paragraph.

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All that said, you said, I still believe it to be one of the most powerful and transformational manuscripts and ever brought forth into the world. Amen. Awesome. I appreciate that you do have that view and you see that value and absolutely 100% agree with that. It's taken a lot for people to even admit this in our culture today. And you would take flack and get shots because you made this post because people would say you were too Christian in it. Actually, people probably in some of the circles you've traveled in. So I'm proud of you for it and thank you. Um, and I believe God has obviously had his hands all over it, all over it, in order to do just that. Its pages are full of truth and wisdom and instruction that have changed the world and my life with it. And for that I'm eternally grateful. And I just want to applaud you there and say I sorry for publicly coming out and just having all these disagreements. It's, uh, not meant to be rude in any way, shape or form to anybody. I just thought it was such a good chance to talk about important things.

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So lots of agreement and also lots of disagreement there. That's question number one, Zechariah. Zachary Levi's beliefs about the Bible, maybe they've changed since he posted this. He seems, uh, like a guy that's not afraid to change his mind. So who knows what he's thinking now. That was months ago.

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Um, all right, we're going to go to your guys questions in the live chat. Let me just pull up that from me. So new believers questions, doubters questions, skeptics questions. That's all I want today. That's all I want today.

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And, um, I'm just waiting for this login to be successful.

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Um, we probably have a whole bunch of questions already loaded. Let me see if we've got.

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Okay, we don't have all of them loaded, so we're still accepting.

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We're still accepting questions if you guys want to put them in right now. I think we're still accepting. All right, question number two. Anonymous question.

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I know if I believe the gospel is true, but don't feel any witness of the Spirit. What does that mean?

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I'm trying to trust with my whole heart.

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Great questions. A new believer question. You're like, man, people around me, they seem to Have a sensation from the Holy Spirit, like a witness of the Spirit that they don't have or that I don't feel like I have. Um, now, this can be caused by a few different things. Um, one of them, it could be caused by a misunderstanding of what the witness of the Holy Spirit is.

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So you're in worship and you see someone and they're just emotionally overwhelmed, and you're like, I'm not getting that. So maybe I'm not really a Christian.

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That is not the witness of the Holy Spirit. Now, maybe the witness of the Holy Spirit is wrapped up in them being emotionally overwhelmed, but I don't think that's quite what's meant. So what is the witness of the Holy spirit?

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Um, Romans 8.

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Uh, let me get there.

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Um, one of the things that witnesses is the Holy Spirit witnessing in us is this. And this is, like, not talked about too much. He says, you, however, are not in the flesh, but in the Spirit. If in fact the Spirit of God dwells in you.

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Um, this is like talking about the difference between living that life for myself and kind of a worldly life. A life where I'm in bondage to my flesh versus a life where I'm led by the Spirit. Now, led by the Spirit doesn't mean I'm driving down the street and the Holy Spirit goes, turn left.

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God can do that, of course. But that's not what Paul's talking about. That's not the primary thing led by the Spirit, he thinks, because he talks about it in Galatians, like the fruit of the Spirit. Love, joy, peace, patience, gentleness, goodness, faithfulness. Um, self control is kindness that I get in there. I've got multiple translations of that passage in my brain. So they get mixed up. But, yeah, those kinds of qualities. So we're talking character qualities that are inspired by the Holy Spirit, who is holy. He's holy, and he's in you, and you're being led by Him. So you're led into things like forgiveness. You know, when Erica Kirk says, I forgive that man, that was her being led by the Spirit, I believe. Um, an example of that kind of thing. You're led into righteous things. You start caring about God's stuff and God things. And that is one of the ways in which you see the Spirit working in your life.

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Then he says, anyone who does not have the Spirit of Christ does not belong to him.

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But if Christ is in you, although the body is dead because of sin, the Spirit is life because of righteousness. If the Spirit of him who raised Jesus from the dead dwells in you. He who raised Christ Jesus from the dead will also give life to your mortal bodies through his Spirit who dwells in you. In other words, this is so cool, so much theology here. The Holy Spirit is called the seal. S, wait, S, E A L, the seal. Um, you know when there's like a, uh, uh, you lock something in, it's like this is sealed, this is guaranteed. That's kind of the guarantee, the terminology seal or guarantee of our future resurrection of our salvation is the Holy Spirit in you. So, yes, it is. The indicator of a true Christian is that you have the Spirit. This doesn't mean you have to speak in tongues. This doesn't mean you have to have emotional overwhelming experiences. It doesn't mean those things. But it does mean that you look at your life and you see a change. You look at you before salvation and you after, and you see that you care about spiritual things, that you care about honoring God and loving and serving God. And these are actual priorities to you. And they're driven from within you because you have the Holy Spirit in you, impacting your life.

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So, um, let me, uh, read a little bit more about this from Romans 8. So then, brothers, we are debtors. Not to the flesh, to live according to the flesh. For if you live according to the flesh, you will die.

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But if by the Spirit you put to death the deeds of the body, you will live. For all who are led by the Spirit of God are sons of God.

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That's an indication that you're a Christian, is you see the leading of the Spirit. You look at your life before Christian to after being a Christian, and you see the difference. You see the Holy Spirit leading you. Not turn left here. No, no leading you. Like, forgive your dad.

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Uh, forgive your neighbor.

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Go and love this person who doesn't love you.

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You see the spirit leading you into. Set aside. Stop looking at pornography. You see the Holy Spirit leading you. You need to lay your life down for your spouse. You need to submit and yield to your husband. You see these things.

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The first one was for husbands. Lay your life down for your wife. Self sacrifice for your wife. Yield and submit to your husband. And that's the Holy Spirit leading you. That's a beautiful thing. It's an evidence that you're a child of God. For you did not receive the spirit of slavery to fall back into fear, but you have received the spirit of adoption as sons by whom we cry. Abba, Father.

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And then we get a specific. Now this means I am, I have a relationship with God, I, through the Spirit, through Christ's work, I can call out to God as my father. I have a relationship with him now. And one of the things that hit me when I got saved, I was like junior high and very, uh, ungodly and messed up life and stuff like that before that. But first, uh, heard the gospel, received it, that instant fact that God was my father, at least for me, was a very present reality that I was never alone. I remember walking to school after getting saved and I just felt like I'm not alone. God is with me, he's my father and I have a relationship with him as a son and father.

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And that was hugely life changing for me.

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It filled a gap for sure. Um, but it more than filled a gap. It provided me with a relationship with God.

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Then it says, the Spirit himself bears witness with our Spirit, that we are children of God. That's what you're talking about. How does the Spirit bear witness with me?

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And if children, then heirs and heirs of God and fellow heirs with Christ, provided that we suffer with him in order that we may also be glorified with him. So yeah, there's a cross to bear.

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But this thing, the Spirit bears witness. And you might be reading this going, where's the example? How does the Spirit bear witness that I'm a child of God? I think it's simply saying there's a reality for Christians is that you are children of God. And when you see in your Spirit, in your awareness, you are simply aware of the fact that now I am a child of God. That is a work of the Spirit in your life. Now Satan can lie to you and tell a non believer, I'm a child of God too. But the Holy Spirit doing it in you, coupled with the real Gospel, coupled with the fruit of the Spirit in your life, is great assurance in your life of salvation.

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If you do not have this, do not despair, don't give up or become weak and curl up into a corner. Instead, read the Scriptures, go reread the book of Romans, nice and slow, pray about it. Try to make sure you understand the Gospel of Jesus Christ and read it till you understand it, until you understand it and trust in it. And I believe that you will receive as you trust in Christ, you will receive this witness of the Holy Spirit that you are in fact a child of God. And you pray for it. And you ask God, help me to be aware of my relationship with you and what it really is. And it's a spiritual thing that happens. So I can't just teach you into it. Um, but you can seek the Lord and walk into it.

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Well, he'll walk you into it. He'll bring it for you. Okay, we're going to go to question number three.

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Question number three. And this is coming from Corey Allen, who says, my dad is an unbeliever, but acknowledges God's existence through creation. He believes that God created the world and then abandoned it. How can I help him show that God is still with us today?

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Great question, man. Um, if someone was to come to me, be like, Mike, I believe that God created the world and abandoned it. I think the first thing I would do is ask them why, um, how did you come to that belief?

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What are the reasons that you believe it? And I'd start, and as they talk. Because usually people don't just give you lists of reasons. They'll just talk and talk. And as they're talking, I'm listening to pick out the actual reasons. Reason number one. Reason number two. Reason number three, if they have them at all. Well, I just don't think there could be this much suffering in the world if God was still involved.

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Um, uh. Or maybe there isn't a reason. Maybe it's just like, I just feel that way. So you unpack that and you go, so maybe you don't have a reason there. It just kind of feels like intuition tells you, be gracious. Talk to him about it. Find out the reasons for what he believes. Because sometimes you try to change someone's mind, but you don't even know why they're believing the thing that they're believing. And then it becomes more difficult, and it's like you can end up off target. Find out why he believes that. Um, then when you find that out, you can compare that to things like examples of God working in history.

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So, um, you could even do it with your dad's life, very personally. You could be like, dad, have you ever had a time in your life where you went through a horrible season, but later you saw great fruit? You were like, man, I'm grateful for what good came out of that hard time.

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And then you say, couldn't that be God working in your life?

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And it's a very personal thing because there's connected to a real story that he's gone through, you know? But you can also do it through scripture. You can say, I can show you that God has worked. Let me pick one prophecy of the Bible. Let me really learn it well, and show it to my dad. I've got videos on this. I have a video series called Evidence for the Bible, it's like, I don't know, 19 videos or 20 videos. And it's evidence for scripture to show that God is working in reality. Any proof of scripture is proof that God works today, that God has worked in human history.

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Um, Jesus, his death and resurrection would be proof that God has actually worked. So you could bring arguments for the death and resurrection of Christ. You can talk about the relationship you have with God, and you can say, dad, I know God's working today because he's literally working in my life. Did you not see the difference when I came to Jesus, that my attitudes shifted, that I was a better son, a better person because of Christ? God's working right now, today, and you just start piling these things on, and hopefully you break down the barriers. Sometimes people have an ulterior motive for thinking God's not working. Because if God doesn't do anything today, then I don't have to do anything with God today. Does that make sense?

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And that may be what's the underlying motive here. And for that, you just preach the gospel?

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Yeah. You've sinned, you've lied, cheated, stolen, lusted. You've sinned. And you'll stand before a holy, righteous God one day and he will judge you in your sins. And Jesus came and he took that sin and punishment. He suffered that wrath on the cross that you deserved so that you could be forgiven. He rose from the dead as like, a big promise of eternal life to the world for those who trust in him. But you can't work your way to heaven. You can't be good enough because all of us have sinned and failed. And you just start preaching the gospel. Because sometimes that's the real thing. There is a statement like that can be resistance to the truth of the gospel.

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All right. Lahak l, a H a Q says a common objection I hear is why should I worship a God I don't like? And you said, thank you. Love your channel. Thanks, man. Appreciate it. Um, why should I worship a God I don't like?

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Imagine for a second if you had a married couple and the husband marries the wife, and years down the road, he's like, I don't like her.

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I just. I don't like her.

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Why should I? Why should I care about a woman I don't like? Why should I be kind to a woman I don't like? Why should I share a home with, raise kids with?

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I don't like her. You're saying you just don't like her, so you want to disconnect from that moral commitment that you've made. This till death do us part, the promise, the vow to love and cherish and to take care of, and all this because you don't like them. I'm just going to say that's an incredibly childish thing.

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What about your parents?

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I know I should honor my parents, but I, uh, don't like them.

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I know I should obey my parents, but I don't like them. I know I should pay my taxes, but I don't like them. I know I should obey the laws of the government, but I don't like them.

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It's baby talk.

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It's baby talk. Now, I guarantee you the response will be, oh, but I have good reasons for not liking God. But let me pause them on that for a second. Say, let's just tackle the I don't like him statement first.

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If God is real and he created you, you should worship him.

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Like that's a moral truth. It's not a like, I feel like it kind of truth. But I would say that the real reason you don't like God is because you are currently in rebellion to God. Now, that's going to not go over well, but it is absolutely true. And maybe you need to throw the cold water on somebody sometimes and they sit with you and they get mad and then later on maybe they get the point.

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Um, but yeah, so this will lead you down the discussion of all the things he doesn't like about God.

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And you can talk about those things, but avoid red herrings. Just the very phrase itself.

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I don't want to worship God because I don't like him is childish, immature. And you don't do this in other areas of your life. Or if you do, you're a lame citizen and you do not help your community and you don't productively work with society. I quit my job because I don't like it.

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I don't like it. I don't like it.

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Childish. Okay, number six.

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Uh, five. Number five.

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Um, from B. Who says, why am I accountable to God for sin when I was born with a sin nature? Shouldn't a loving God provide the basic remedy for creation when they had no choice in being created or their nature? Yeah, this is a great question. All right, let's tackle this.

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All right, I'm getting going here. I'm just warming up. We're just warming up for today. Just getting started. Barely going. It's gonna be a 17 hour stream. I won't stop till tomorrow.

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I won't stop till the rapture on October 6th. That's an inside joke, guys. There's no rapture on October 6th. Um, okay, number one, why am I accountable to God for sin when I was born with a sin nature?

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This, um, is tough in the sense of I find it hard to change people's minds on this subject.

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I think I have truth on the subject, but I don't know that I have persuasive power. And this is the case for lots of things. We've all, you know, even if you disagree with me on this, you've all been in the shoes where you're trying to convince somebody of something that's true. But you're, no matter what you say, you're not sure what the, you don't have that leverage, that persuasive leverage to shift their mind on this.

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So I'll answer it anyways, but I'll just admit that this may be inadequate, uh, in your ears, um, for those who disagree. But at least you can try to understand. You can say, I could restate Mike's position back to him. At least if you can get there, I'll be happy because I feel like that's a big win. So why am I accountable to God for sin when I was born with a sin nature?

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Um, there is a sense in which, if I was to create a robot that purely robot, that, um, was designed to cause harm.

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Now, this is not my analogy for what God has done. This is an analogy for something different. God has not done this. He's not created robots designed to do harm. I don't believe that at all. I think you have free will. But let's suppose I did. Let's, worst case scenario, I create a robot that is actually evil.

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No matter what you say about the creator, you actually do have to destroy the robot.

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Right?

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Um, uh, what I'm saying is even if it was created to be that way, it still is that way and you still have to deal with it. Okay, that's a harsh reality, but it is a truth. It's a moral truth.

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Um, now I would, in that case, just destroy the robot. I wouldn't punish, uh, it for its sins. I would just destroy it. And God doesn't do that. He punishes us for sins. This is a different thing. This is. The analogy breaks down really quickly if you move it out of that tiny little point I was making.

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But when it comes to human nature, we have different analogies than really that because we're not robots. We are free will agents making decisions on our own. And what I will say is this. You were Born with a sin nature, but you are judged for the sins you commit.

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You are born with a sinful nature, a, uh, fallen nature, that's true. But you are judged for the sins you commit.

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You are a free will agent. You are not trapped in sin apart from your free will.

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Individual sins you've committed, you've chosen to commit those sins. And you can think that in reality, this is what you've done in your life. It's what I've done in my life.

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Uh, embarrassing things, sinful things that I've done in my life, full well knowing they were wrong and just did them anyways. And at a very young age, not understanding right and wrong as well, maybe knowing what I should and shouldn't do to some level, but sometimes just doing things and then they're evil. And it just came so easy to me and natural to me. But because of this element of free will, we're not just, I do things I want to do, and that's all I am. We're complex creatures. So I've got spirit and I've got. Even when I'm unsaved, you, uh, still have a spirit.

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You've got your body, your spirit. You have temptations, you have understanding, you have will. You have awareness of right and wrong. There are times where those who are not saved restrain themselves from evil. They actually hold back from doing evil, showing that they can, but they always end up sinning. You're going to be judged for those sins. Now, when this rubber meets the, uh, road, probably the hardest piece of this, and I don't think I'll satisfy many people who are asking, but at least seek for clarity here.

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The hardest piece of this is the idea that somehow my condition I'm born in is two things. It's connected to Adam and Eve and decisions I didn't make. And also, I was not consulted about how I would be created. Okay, those two things, I'll take them separately. The first one, my connection to Adam and Eve, I feel like it's not fair, but I have a really hard time. And I want to really zero in on this. Expressing clearly why it's not fair.

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Like, I look like a combination of my mom and dad, you know, when I look in the mirror. I didn't used to see it when I was younger. The older I get, the more I look and I go, I see my mom and my dad in my face.

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There's a part of this sort of, uh, attitude that I think is not healthy in us, where we, as kids, we look and we're thinking like, it's not fair, it's not fair that I look this way or that way. I mean like, I don't care. I have no issues with how I look. But I'm speaking to like this idea of how you could respond to those observations. That's not fair.

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Or some guys like you lose your hair and you think like, it's not fair. I was just born with this gene I, ah, got from my parents. And you want to blame them. And then they can blame their parents. And they can blame their parents. They can blame their parents. There's aspects that are out of our control that we might call unfair, but there's nothing unfair about that. I don't think there's nothing unfair about that.

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This is why I feel powerless to help some people, because I don't see the force of the objection. So maybe I'm not bringing a good enough answer. There's other Christians that would probably provide better answers. Please keep asking Christians if my answer doesn't help you. Okay, I don't know everything.

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I don't pretend to, um, but I don't see the force of this. Adam and Eve are our actual ancestors.

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They make a decision as the representatives of humanity and the progenitors of humanity. And then we experience results from that decision, but not just from that decision, but from our free will choices to sin. And that is what we're actually judged for.

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I don't think that's unfair. I don't see the unfairness in it.

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There's something I'm not getting maybe about the. Or maybe it just isn't unfair and there's nothing to get.

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I hope that you'll consider that.

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I know this. I would not want to stand before God and say I would have received Jesus and free forgiveness of my sins. But I thought it wasn't fair that I had the fallen nature as a result of Adam's sin. I thought that wasn't fair. So I actually rejected you. And I would say that's crazy. That's really foolish. You're not going to be in hell thinking, I was right, I was right, I was right.

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You're just going to be thinking, what was I thinking? Why did I allow my love of sin to blind my eyes so hard to the love of God.

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God who loves me, who gave his son to die for me. Because guess what? Jesus, he represents us all too. Just like Adam represents us in the garden, Jesus represents us on the cross and he goes and he takes the punishment for your sin. And his holy and righteous nature goes to the cross, gets covered in your sins, and then he comes out squeaky clean because he's never done anything wrong. And he walks up to you with your sin nature, and it's as though he takes this white righteous robe and he puts it on you. He goes, I'll give you my righteousness. You won't even earn your way to heaven. I'm going to give you my righteousness. Just as you inherited sin nature from Adam and then added your sins to the mix, I've taken all that on myself. I was born in human body. I took on Adam's sin nature.

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I lived a perfect human life. I never committed sin. Those two things did not affect me, did not spoil, uh, me. And so he comes into humanity, he bears our sin, and then he takes that righteousness, that he has earned perfect righteousness as a human, not just as the divine right, but also as a human. He's earned righteousness there. And he gives it to you, clothes it with you. And so if you're going like, I feel like what happened with Adam was unf and I'll be like, man, well, then you should run to Jesus because he's going to clothe you in his righteousness. And he's the second Adam. He's the last Adam. He is the one who's going to solve the problem for you. So, yes, I'm preaching the gospel to you, and yes, you should put your faith in Jesus if you don't have that already.

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Number six, Muffin man.

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I do not know the muffin man, but yet here he is.

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How can I defend second Kings, chapter three when skeptics use it as an example of Yahweh being beaten in battle by another entity in driving the Israelites out despite them being prophesied to win. Off the top of my head, I am not immediately familiar with this objection.

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Uh, well, I'm going to risk just reading the passage and hoping that it stands out to me and that maybe things I've learned in the past come back. I may or may not have an immediate answer to give you here, but I'll try.

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Um, so let's read. You said 2 Kings 3. Well, we're just going to read the chapter because you didn't specify any verses at all.

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Maybe you need the whole chapter. But it's always good to give verses because on stream it helps me to put those on screen. Um, in the 18th year of Jehoshaphat, king of Judah, Jehoram the son of Ahab became king over Israel and Samaria. So this is when there's, uh, you know, the split kingdom, right? So different leaders. And he reigned 12 years. He did what was evil in the sight of the Lord.

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Every king of Israel ended up being evil. The northern kingdom that split from the southern, they all of them ended up being bad. He did what was evil in the sight of the Lord, though not like his father and mother. For he put away the pillar of BAAL that his father had made, which was good. Nevertheless, he clung to the sin of Jeroboam, the son of Nebat, which he made Israel to sin. He did not depart from it. Now, Misha, the king of Moab, was a sheep breeder, and he had to deliver to the kings. I'm, uh, starting to remember this passage now. Delivered the king of Israel 100,000 lambs and the wool of a hundred thousand rams. But when Ahab died, the king of Moab rebelled against the king of Israel.

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So King Jehoram marched out of Samaria, and, uh, at the time, and mustered all Israel. And he went and sent word to Jehoshaphat, king of Judah. The king of Moab has rebelled against me. Will you go with me to battle against Moab? And he said, I will go. I am as you are. So we're of one mind, of one purpose. My people as your people, my horses as your horses. Then he said, by which way shall we march? Jehoram answered, by the way of the wilderness of Edom. So the king of Israel went with the king of Judah and the king of Edom. And when they had made a circuitous march of seven days, there was no water for the army or for the animals that followed them. So they've already got a problem. Uh, moving militaries is actually really tough. It's really tough. And it often, uh. That is the problem. They say an, uh, army marches on their bellies. Right.

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All right. Um, then it says, uh. Then the king of Israel said, alas, the Lord has called these three kings to give them into the hand of Moab. And Jehoshaphat said, is there no prophet of the Lord here through whom we may inquire of the Lord. Then one of the king of Israel's servants answered, elisha, the son of Shaphat is here.

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Who poured water on the hands of Elijah.

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Um, Elisha. Yeah, okay. And Jehoshaphat said, the word of the Lord is with him. So the king of Israel and Jehoshaphat and the king of Edom went down to him. And Elisha said to the king, and what do I have to do with you? Go to the prophets of your father and to the prophets of your mother. Okay. I want you to notice the antagonistic nature of Elisha. Why? Because he knows these guys are losers. They're often rebelling against God. They're not honoring the true king of Israel, God Almighty.

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And so he's like, uh, ah, what do I have to do with you? Go to the prophet. You go listen to the prophets you like. You don't listen to me anyways. You don't want to follow the true God. Right? Remember when Elijah, my. My predecessor, you know, did Mount Carmel and slaughtered the false prophets and all this? And you guys were like, yeah, we should kill him for it, right? This is. Yeah, but the king of Israel said to him, no, it is the Lord who has called these three kings to give them into the hand of Moab.

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And Elijah said, um, let's get that in a second here.

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Scroll down.

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And Elisha said, as the Lord of hosts lives before whom I stand, were it not that I have regard for Jehoshaphat, the King of Judah, I would neither look at you nor see you. Remember? Because the king of Israel. Bad dude.

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But now bring me a musician. And when the musician played, the hand of the Lord came upon him. And he said, thus says the Lord, I will make this dry stream bed full of pools. Full of pools. For thus says the Lord. You shall not see wind or rain. But.

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But scrolling down here.

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Um. But that stream bed shall be filled with water so that you shall drink you, your livestock and your animals. This is a light thing in the sight of the Lord. He will also give the Moabites into your hand. And you shall attack every fortified city and every choice city and shall fell every good tree and stop up all springs of water and ruin every good piece of land with stones. The next morning, about the time of offering the sacrifice, behold, water came from the direction of Edom till the country was filled with water. When all the Moabites heard that the kings had come up to fight against them, all who were able to put on armor, from the youngest to the oldest, were called out and were drawn up at the border. And when they rose early in the morning and the sun shone on the water, the Moabites saw the water opposite them as red as blood.

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Uh, or right here. This is the blood. The kings have surely fought together and struck one another down. Then Moab to the spoil. So they get misled, they're deceived. They think that the armies fought amongst each other and killed each other. And now they're going to steal all the supplies. But when they came to the camp of Israel, the Israelites rose and struck the Moabites till they fled before them. And they went forward, striking the Moabites as they went. And they overthrew the cities.

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And on every good piece of land, every man threw a stone until it was covered. They stopped every spring of water and felled all the good trees till only its stones were left in Kir Haraseth.

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And the slingers surrounded and attacked it. When the king of Moab saw that the battle was going against him, he took with him 700 swordsmen to break through opposite the king of Edom. But they could not. Then he took his oldest son, who was to reign in his place, and offered him for a burnt offering on the wall. And there came a great wrath against Israel, and they withdrew from him and returned to their own land.

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So the tricky part is the end, right?

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What does this mean? I remember reading an article on this once. I have no memory of the article, so I'll answer what I can. Um, this king took his oldest son. He was going to reign his place, and he offers him as a burnt offering, clearly not to the God of Israel. Clearly not to, uh, you know, something like that. Um, and then you know it's a false God. Uh, offering your son like that. Some would say, well, Abraham offered his son, didn't God?

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You're actually inverting the story of Abraham. Abraham was kept from offering his son. God rejects the Israelites actually giving their sons. Um, he tells them, your sons belong to me. He has claim on them as God Almighty, but he doesn't say, offer them to me. He's like, you shall redeem them. You'll offer me a lamb or something else instead of the son. Even Jesus, when he was born, they brought an offering, the offering of the poor, two turtledoves over into the temple to offer when Christ was born. This is, in a sense, for a number of reasons, but for one reason, it's to undo this practice, this pagan practice of sacrificing your children.

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The Jewish prophets, the prophets of Israel, they would come from God and tell people not to ever offer their kids. This is not to the God Almighty. This is a pagan king offering his son as a burnt offering to a pagan deity.

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And there came great wrath against Israel, and they withdrew from him and returned to their own land. Now, I know, at least I think, um, that's the end of that story. But I think other translations handle this slightly differently. Let me see if I can get there. Um, this Is new King James.

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Here we go. Um, then he took his eldest son, who would have reigned in his place, and offered him as a burnt offering upon the wall. And there was great indignation against Israel. So they departed from him and returned to their own land.

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Niv.

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Um, uh, the fury against Israel was great. They withdrew and returned to their own land.

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If there's a controversial way to do it, RSV will probably do it. Or the nrsv.

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Now, uh, it's basically saying the same thing. We check one more nrsv. Oh, no, never mind. That's gonna take too long to get it to the right spot. Okay, so what do we make of this? Um, here's the facts. We have. Uh, we have God did what he said he would do. The accusation against this. I'll read your question again for everybody who got lost in all the details there. Um, you said, how can I defend Second Kings, chapter three, when skeptics use it as an example of one Yahweh being beaten in battle by another entity in driving the Israelites out? Um, and false prophecy, because you said they were prophesied to win. Um, so I'm going to actually say the prophecy did happen, but they won and then lost.

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Elisha told them, okay, God will be with you because of Jehoshaphat. I'm going to even talk to you. God will be with you. You're going to overcome them. That didn't mean you will always forever overcome them and the tide of battle will never change.

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It didn't mean any of that. Um, so it was fulfilled. I think the prophecy did happen. But then the question of whether or not Yahweh was beaten in battle by another entity, that's a lot of assumption. I'll put this verse on your screen again. We looked at a bunch of translations. Where does it say Yahweh was beaten by another entity?

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That is something that is presumed in the text or presumed of the text. The guy takes his son, offers him as a burnt offering. There came great wrath against Israel. From where?

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From where?

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And notice it doesn't say.

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This is important. It doesn't say the wrath came against the three Kings. It doesn't say the wrath came against Israel and Judah, who were two different kingdoms, both with military there fighting together. It says wrath came against Israel.

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Here's how I would interpret it.

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God's blessings and approval of Jehoshaphat and of the southern kingdom and the things they've done that have more honored God than the northern kingdom, who had, like, erected a false altar and was really evil. And, um, every king they had was evil. God blessed them to give them victory in the battle. But then. And it happened at the same time as this burnt offering there. God does not have. Maybe. Here's the interpretation I would add. Yes, I'm adding interpretation here. My view, he does not have a hedge of protection around Israel, even though he does currently have one around Judah. Israel and Judah are working together. They get victory because of Jehoshaphat, because of God's blessing on them. But there is no protection for Israel. So when this guy offers his son to an actual demonic entity, that evil entity does attack Israel. Great wrath against Israel. But it's not even said to be the entity's wrath. This might be God's wrath against Israel because God will often drop the barrier and allow Satan, just like Job, except Job was innocent. But in this case they're guilty. He'll drop the barrier and allow the enemy to attack them. And it corresponds with a real spiritual battle. This guy offers his son.

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Evil demonic entities, empower their military or however, attack, attack Israel, and God allows it to happen. Well, was it the wrath of this false God, uh, you know, demonic, this demon basically, or was it God's wrath?

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That's up to interpretation. Either one or both.

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Um, but that's how I would view this passage. I think that fits better with the overall theology of the Old Testament. I think it fits better with the flow of the passage. Again, it highlights Israel as the one for whom wrath came, not Judah, even though it was distinguishing between Israel and Judah earlier in the same passage.

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There's my thoughts on that.

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And, um, I'm sure there's always more to say, but we're going to go to the next question.

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So question number six. Seven, seven, seven.

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Nate says, I converted just over a year ago and had some success evangelizing to my community. Libertarians, Uh, I read the New Testament working on twice. Where can I do evangelicals?

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What can I do to evangelize better, especially to libertarians? That's a really interesting question.

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So I guess I don't immediately have special tips for libertarian evangelism. Although it's a very good question. It's great to leverage the things people care about as a way of bridging them to the gospel of Jesus Christ. I think it's a good thing to do. Um, yeah, that is a good thing to do.

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I don't know if I.

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I don't know. I'm just now for the first time thinking about this question, so I feel like I shouldn't Set you on a path that might just be reckless. But I will say something. Uh, what can you do to evangelize better? Uh, I would watch Ray comfort videos on YouTube. Their YouTube channel is called Living Waters. It'll be easy to find. Type. Living Waters will pop right up. And he will over and over and over again have conversations where he bridges people over to the gospel of Christ. Does he do it perfectly? Nobody does it perfectly. But he will give you tools that are very, very practical, where you can use the law to show people sin, to drive them to the Gospel of Christ, and boldly and graciously and lovingly speak the truth of that gospel. There being an example I think you could learn from, or you could even read one of his books. Hell's Best Kept Secret is a good book, um, that you could look at. I don't know if it's even still available, actually. I think it is. It should be. All right.

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Number eight.

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Number eight, Alpha X says, I heard this question. In my group, God is considered the most high. Thus Jesus, whom is God, is the most high. Thus, why does Jesus claim that he has a God above him in Revelation 3:12? All right, we're going to look at that passage, Revelation 3:12.

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This question shows you the precarious nature of syllogisms. There's a lot. Syllogisms can be good. You know, these, like, point A, you know, if this and that, then this, right, that's like a syllogism. So you've got. There's this fact and this fact. And then therefore, I have this argument. And here the argument would be a challenge to the deity of Christ.

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Um, so Revelation 3:12.

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The one who conquers, I will make him a pillar in the temple of my God.

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Never shall he go out of it. And I will write on him the name of my God and the name of the city of my God, the new Jerusalem, which comes down from my God out of heaven and my own new name. He who has an ear to hear, let him hear what the Spirit says to the churches.

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Jesus has a God. There's literally no way around it.

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But does that mean he is not God?

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That he is not the most High?

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That's where we get the doctrine of the Trinity.

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Jesus is not the Father, he is the Son. And so the Son and his relationship with the Father, especially due to his incarnation, he comes, unlike the Holy Spirit, Like, I don't know if. I don't know if the Holy Spirit was speaking in first person, if the Holy Spirit would ever use the phrase My God.

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Because of the nature of the relationship between the Father, Son and Spirit. I don't think prior to the incarnation that you would have Jesus referring to my God. Now, I could be wrong on this. It's just my understanding of things. Okay? I don't think that that would be the case. I think it's due to the Incarnation. So Jesus is God, but as a true human, truly God, truly man. And so he's capable of saying my God. But it's also possible to say he is God because of the doctrine of the Trinity, or at least our understanding of the very nature of God and his relationship with himself, that there's Father, Son, Spirit. The Father is not the Spirit, Spirit's not the Son, the Son's not the Father or the Spirit. But there is only one God. There's one God. Existing in three persons is like maybe one of the best English words we can think of to try to describe this amazing reality of who God is based upon the revelation of Scripture. But revelation also affirms this. So in Revelation, you get this. Yes, Jesus refers to my God, but revelation also loudly and confidently proclaims that Jesus is actually God.

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So, um, let me see if we can quickly find some of the passages. Revelation, chapter one, it says, you know, uh, this is a revelation of Jesus.

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And m.

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Ah, let me find. I'm scanning here. Um, he says, so great. When I saw him, I fell at his feet as though dead. But he laid his right hand on me, saying, fear not, I am Jesus speaking. He uses an I Am moniker which has significance in itself. But he goes, I am the first and the last.

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That connects to Old Testament scripture where God is talking about Himself.

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Himself.

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Um, uh, Isaiah 41:4, right? I am the first and the last. I am he that is God. Clearly referring to Himself.

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Clearly referring to Himself.

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I am the first and the last. Beside me, there is no God. There's only one God, and I'm the only one. It's on your screen. You can kind of see it there. Isaiah 44, 6.

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This is Isaiah 48:12. Listen to me, O Jacob in Israel, whom I called. I am He. I am the Father first, and I am the last. And what does he say to John? He says, fear not, I am the first and the last. The living one. I died. Behold, I am alive forevermore. I have the keys of death and Hades. These are deity. This is God speaking. But it's Jesus. And even translations are bold enough. The ones that use red letters to put these in red letters, because it's clearly Jesus talking here.

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Revelation does this over and over again. Revelation has some of the strongest, boldest statements of the deity of Christ in the Bible.

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And it's the same book where Jesus says, my God.

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So here's what your doctrine has to do as a Christian. You have to go, jesus has a God, yet he is God, and there's only one God. You have to incorporate all of these. And the doctrine of the Trinity does do this.

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And oneness does not do this. Oneness, Pentecostal, um, does not do this.

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Right. That doesn't work.

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Oneness can't say that Jesus is God and has a God because the personages don't stay intact in that doctrine. So, yeah, we're forced into the doctrine of the Trinity. The Bible forces you there. And this is a good example of that.

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Question number nine. Robbie Miller asks, hey, Mike, I'm so grateful for your ministry, and I'm super grateful that I get to do it. Robbie, it's wonderful, and I'm glad that you find benefit in it. Uh, I'm a new believer. I used to be a jw. I gave my life to Christ a few years ago. But sometimes I wrestle with doubt. Does that make my faith incomplete?

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Not remotely.

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Wrestling with doubt does not make your faith incomplete. You may continue to wrestle with doubt for years to come. You may always wrestle with some degree of doubt. And you are totally okay right now. I'm not saying it's fun. Okay. Nor am I saying that necessarily wrestling with doubt is always healthy, because sometimes, depending on how it's hitting you, it can be actually harmful.

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But that doesn't mean you're not a Christian. And we have an incredible story in the New Testament that tells you this very clearly, I believe so. Um, let me, um.

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There's a couple different stories, actually, that confirm this to us. But I'll think of one real quick.

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Um, let me find the passage real quick.

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So it's in the Gospel of Mark, and we have it in, um, chapter nine, verse.

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Back up a little bit. Put it on your screen. Here, uh, here's a whole story just for you, brother. Okay. Um, okay. Verse 14. When. When he came to the disciples, he saw a great multitude around them and scribes disputing with them. This is Jesus. He came, uh, immediately when they saw him. All the people were greatly amazed and running to him, greeting, greeted him.

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And he asked them, the scribes, what are you discussing with them? Um, then one of the crowd answered and said, now, here's the thing they were arguing about. They're all bickering about this thing and debating and trying to discuss it. So it's turmoil because of this teacher, I brought you my son who has a mute spirit. And whenever it seizes him, it throws him down. He foams at the mouth, gnashes his teeth and becomes rigid. So I spoke to your disciples that they could cast him out, um, but they could not. He answered him and said, o faithless generation, how long shall I be with you? How long shall I bear with you? Bring him to me. Then they brought him to him. They brought the son to Jesus. And when he saw him immediately the spirit convulsed him and he fell on the ground and wallowed, foaming at the mouth. So just this manifestation of a demonic attack right there in front of everybody, Jesus right there. The demon seems to be triggered by the presence of Jesus, but we see this, uh, in other places as well. In the Bible, demons just like actually triggered by Jesus presence, um, or by the presence of a believer sometimes.

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So he's foaming at the mouth. Verse 21. So Jesus asked his father, how long has this been happening to him? And he said, from childhood. And often this is it, uh, this is a clue that it wasn't just a natural ailment. Right? If you're like, how do you know if it's demonic or just natural? It says, and often he has thrown him both into the fire and into the water to destroy him. It's strangely self destructive. He's not just randomly having these seizures or attacks. It's like they happen at the most dangerous moment, like he's the target of an attempt to destroy him. But if you can do anything, have compassion on us and help us. If you can do anything. Now this guy is understandably doubting. He literally sat there while the disciples tried to cast this demon out and failed.

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Sorry, someone's calling me.

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The disciples tried to cast the demon out, failed. Nothing happened.

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And he saw that. And so when Jesus shows up, he's understandably doubting and he goes, if you can do anything. But he's still reaching out. I still am here. And here you are. And it's you. This is you, Jesus, not just a disciple, this is you. If you can do anything, have compassion on us and help us. And Jesus emphasizes what he says if, right? So his if it changes from whether Jesus can do it to whether or not the guy can believe.

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So he says, if you can believe, all things are possible to him who believes. Meaning you can have access to me helping you if you just believe.

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Now. Immediately the father cries out, and you're going to be so encouraged by this. The father of the child cried out and said with tears, lord, I believe, help my unbelief.

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The wisdom of God to include this in Scripture, to bring comfort to the hearts of so many believers who struggle with doubt, but yet they do still believe, but they struggle with unbelief.

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You say this, lord, I believe, help my unbelief.

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We're not talking about blind faith where you just have believe for no reason. No, I don't believe in that.

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I'm saying we are humans who have psychological complexity and we can experience doubt for all kinds of reasons. You can be doubting the Lord because you're just feeling down that day.

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We're just humans that are complex.

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He had reasons to doubt his child suffering all this stuff and them trying to help. And his child comes to Jesus, and literally in the moment, his child falls over and he sees this demonic attack happening and nothing's fixing it. And then he's right. At that very moment, at a very, very hard moment, you would probably struggle too.

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He goes, lord, I believe, help my unbelief. And to prove that Jesus is okay with that kind of faith, I believe, help my unbelief. He heals the Son. When Jesus saw that the people came running together, he rebuked the unclean spirit, saying to a deaf and dumb spirit, I command you, come out of him and enter him no more. And the spirit cried out, convulsed him greatly, and came out of him. And he became as one dead. So that many said, he is dead right now. His body was at peace. He says, uh, this convulsion, all this intensity is gone. But Jesus took him by the hand and lifted him up and he arose. And when he came into the house, his disciples asked him privately, why couldn't we cast this demon out? And if you want to know the answer, you got to go open your Bible to Mark. Mark 9, 29. That's right. Go open your Bible, turn the stream off and go read the Bible. All right.

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I don't blame you. Go for it, man. That's better than whatever I'm going to say.

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Um, yes, you believe. Help your unbelief. Go for it, man. Stick there. It's okay. It's okay. Don't psychologically freak out because you have doubt. It's okay. It's okay. Yeah, just choose faith, walk through it, and occasionally pick one of those doubts. Pick one really specific one that really matters to you and chase it down and do research and really think it through and get to the bottom of it because you'll often find it just disappears.

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All right, number 10, question number 10. This comes from isirname John 18. All right, you ask my daughter, who's 13, believes that there may be a higher power, but doesn't believe in Jesus. I'm m trying to figure out how to reach her in an effective manner. What advice can you offer?

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Well, uh, okay, I will not have all the wisdom on this. So just one person to another, um, at the age of 13, one of the better things you can do is find other people for other people to tell your daughter the thing that you're trying to tell her.

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Right?

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That's just human. It's human nature. Especially in the culture we're in, we're not really going to honor your parents culture. And so finding other people who can say the thing to your daughter that you've been saying all along, that can be really helpful. Um, maybe, um, and especially if they're young or if they're just someone who you think, oh, I know my daughter, she would maybe find this person, someone they can listen to. So spend some time on social media and find accounts and stuff like that that maybe you can send to her and say, hey, I really want you to check this out, watch this video and tell me what you think about it. I also would encourage you to make sure that you interact with your daughter in a way you'll have to think about this, but in a way that keeps communication lines open and doesn't shut them down.

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The way in which you handle yourself in those discussions can make it harder next time you want to talk to her about it and you don't really want to do that. So just be clever and thoughtful about how to keep those communication lines open. Seeking to understand her is really, really important.

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And also, if possible, this is what's always in my mind whenever I deal with young people who have a bunch of objections to Christianity or Jesus.

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I always want to know what their influences are.

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Who are you listening to? Because if I go listen, because often they can't articulate all the reasons, but they're in their head somewhere but they can't say it out loud. But if I can go and listen to the person that's influencing them. So if she goes, well, yeah, I saw this video. This influencer said this. If you can go and listen to it and think it through and then you can really target exactly what her thought process is. But there's other stuff too, man, you could pray with your daughter, why don't you just say, hey, I'm just going to pray with you before you go.

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Pray with you tonight before you go to bed. Just pray God's blessing, protection over you. Um, you want to treat her in a way where Christianity is a open door for her to walk through, not a disappointing bar that she's failing to reach.

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Um, and at the same time, I do not mean here that you don't talk about sin. You should talk. You should definitely. That is the gospel you're talking about. Whether she believes in Jesus, like, thinks it's true. And that's something to approach with like apologetics and reasoning and things like that. But there's another layer of this which is just the gospel itself, recognizing that sin is actually bad, that there is a need for divine justice in the world, and that she will stand before God. And so you should definitely be talking about that too. But these are all generic answers and I hope you find some aid in them. All right, Jordan Tiger has a question, says, and he's from a skeptic here. Um, and let me just double check. We do have. Okay, look, I've got, we're full on, on questions today, so if you're still putting them in, I'm just gonna tell you I don't want you to waste your time doing that, like, because it can be disappointing. We can never handle all the questions. That's just nature of reality. But, but we're full up on questions today. So question number 11, Jordan Tiger says, why is there such a great amount of suffering that animals need to go through? Wouldn't a good God create it to where the animals didn't have to suffer and still feed us?

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Oh, like we could eat but without animals having to suffer. Like wouldn't. Like there'd be like a hamburger tree or. I mean, I'm just being silly, but something like that, right? Like vegetation would produce, or you would have animals designed in a way where they do not suffer. And so it would be like no big deal. You know, it'd be the, uh, Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. Sentient pig creature who's like, oh, would you like a piece of my flank?

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Um, although then we have. You have the challenge of eating something actually truly sentient and with a conscience and self awareness and all that other stuff. But, um, okay, let me try to approach this question a couple different ways. Uh, for you as a skeptic. First off, I respect the question. Um, it is a challenging question.

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Animals go through a lot of suffering and uh, some people think, well, we need to provide them with some sort of recompense in the afterlife. Like maybe animals are brought back the new heavens. This isn't my view, but I've heard Christians say this.

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According to the Bible, this is like this whole world, all of human history is stage one. And then we enter into stage two, which is eternity. And I don't mean heaven disembodied in the presence of Christ. I mean new heaven, new earth. God himself dwelling on the earth with mankind doesn't mean he's walking around a physical body. Jesus may, yeah, have a physical body, but, uh, the Father, the spirit, just permeating, like, fullness of joy and glory and what old Christian, uh, scholars and writers and stuff would call the beatific vision. Like when you experience the fullness of God and the face of God and you're experiencing as much joy as you can possibly experience, ongoing, uh, forever on an actual physical world. New earth, which means walking around and traveling. And look, there's a tree, there's a mountain, and there's realities.

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So that's the actual biblical vision for eternity is a new heaven, new earth, not just sort of up in the clouds. By analogy, um, some have postulated, well, maybe this new earth will involve those animals being actually brought back, that every animal soul will somehow be brought back and receive some recompense. Like, yeah, you suffered, but now what you have is so much better than all that.

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Um, I don't personally go down that road. I don't think we can establish that biblically. It's a lot of conjecture. You could say it's a possibility, but then you've got issues like you realize how many animals there are. Like, that new earth would have to be really big. It would be way bigger than any earth we've already experienced. Um, and I think the Bible implies that animal souls, when they die, they cease to exist. That's what I think is implied in scripture. That's my own position on it. As much as, you know, I'd like it, my pets could exist.

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This issue is further compounded with the fact that in modern society, we have a humanized understanding of animals or anthropomorphized understanding of animals. We just do automatically. I grew up watching cartoons of talking turtles. You know, we grew up with, um, arms of an angel being played while we watched animals suffering in cages.

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Right? You guys know what I'm talking about. Those are old enough to remember this. Um, the arms of an angel. It is like this dog, and you're crying. We grew up in a culture Check this Out. You have to acknowledge your cultural milieu, right? In a culture where a person on a movie, in a movie could murder an innocent person, but if they shot the dog, everybody flipped out, right? If you killed the dog, everybody flipped out. I remember talking to, uh, another high schooler who. She said she was Christian, right? But she was struggling with some worldliness and some unbiblical thinking, and she was really for animals, which is pretty common.

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And she said, I asked her a question to kind of get at her worldview, right? I was only like 19, 18 at the time, and I was not in high school anymore, but she was. And I asked her to get at her worldview. And I said, if I was starving and I was going to die, unless you killed an animal, a pet, a dog or something to feed me, like, if I was literally like, hypothetical scenario, the only thing is, I'm either going to die or you're going to kill this pet to feed me, what would you do? And she goes, well, I wouldn't kill the dog. And I said, that's a problem with your worldview, right? But she grew up watching Rescue Rangers or whatever.

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We've anthropomorphized animals a lot. And the modern thing of having pets. I have pets. I have cats. I love my cats.

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I actually think I like dogs better than cats. Guys. I have cats because I'm not the only person in the house here. My wife wanted a cat, but I love the cats. Um, um.

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The cultural moment we're in is we are somehow inundated with anthropomorphized versions of animals. We have a pet culture where we often do anthropomorphize our pets more than is realistic. Not that they don't have concern for us, especially dogs, right?

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Not as much. Cats, they like when I'm around.

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They don't care about me as much as I care about them. It's reality. Um, and then you've got, uh. We're disconnected from farming and what it takes for humans to eat so that we just have prepackaged meat. And we're disconnected from those realities. And. And so we're not accustomed to them and we react to them poorly, uh, without wisdom, I think.

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I think those are all elements. We also have a godless culture, secular godless culture, which gives us an impression that we have humans as merely advanced animals.

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So really, there's just degrees of difference between me and an animal. And so all of this causes me to see the animal suffering from a skewed and distorted perspective. I think and this is just a theory, and I haven't checked it all. So I'm curious to know the answer to this question.

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Is it true that arguments about animal suffering have never been as prominent or effective as they started to be in the 20th and 21st centuries? Because I don't know if in the 1700s, when the German skeptics were doing all their stuff, if they even leaned on animal suffering.

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I'm not sure that they did. Only in a culture where there's incredible abundance, where you're disconnected from the farming it takes for you to eat your stuff, or you have anthropomorphized pets and cartoons, uh, and you have a culture that responds to the killing of a dog with more extreme rage or irritation or sense of injustice than they do the killing of a human in that culture.

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The animal suffering argument is powerful, but most humans throughout history would probably not have thought it was very powerful.

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Even skeptics, I imagine.

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Now, if you have a non Christian worldview or a non biblical worldview, if you reject God's existence, you not only still have all the same animal suffering you're worried about, but you're missing elements here. You do not have the distinction of image of God versus animal.

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And so you are the same as them effectively, which makes their suffering even worse in your eyes.

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Um, so that makes the problem even bigger in that worldview. But you don't have God having a purpose, intent or plan for how to spin this towards good in some way. So whether the animal experience is good or not, you literally don't even have good coming out of it at all. There's no guarantee of final good. In fact, we're all just headed towards eventual suffering and annihilation. And that's, uh, everybody. That is the worldview of the godless.

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It's all going to end in screams.

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You have all the suffering, but you have none of the salve. You have all of the pain, but you have none of the pleasure of eternity.

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So that's something to absorb.

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Is that reality? I think that pragmatically that matters a lot. Because if I actually had that atheist view where I thought reality was just, it all ends in terror and screams. If I thought that that was true, I wouldn't sugarcoat it and romanticize it. The truth is I wouldn't convert anybody to atheism. I wouldn't. I would just keep it to myself because I'd be like, the truth is actually really a bummer. I hope more people are at least religious because they're going to have A more hopeful and joyous life than I will, because I can't lie to myself about the reality. The existential despair of an atheist world. I cannot lie to myself about that.

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That's craziness. Um, now you want to cling to life anyways because it's all you got. But man, that thing, that's all you got is just so much darker. On atheism, you don't have any inherent value.

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You don't have any inherent purpose.

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You don't even have inherent morality and truth.

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Um, for those who follow with this, I'm just going to say it in one sentence and I'll move on. So don't worry if this doesn't make sense.

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Platonism does not ground morality moral. Platonism seems I cannot wrap my head around that philosophically, like saying, yes, I think this is true. I think that it doesn't work. So, wow, how bleak that view is.

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So Christianity, it comes in and says, yes, there's all this suffering in the world, but let's distinguish between humans and animals as two very different kinds of things. You are human made in the image of God. You are an eternal soul inhabiting a mortal body.

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Well, you are also a mortal body. Your body is you, but it's not all you are. You are not just chemicals firing and all this other thing. Moral truth is an actual, real thing. And then I look at the problem of animal suffering and I. I have a couple responses. Now, all that to say this.

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I, as a Christian, look at the problem of animal suffering, and I think that's still a challenge to me.

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I don't entirely know how to answer it. Okay. I do know that I can say that God is working all these things together for good.

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I do know that even an animal suffering in the middle of nowhere for seemingly no reason is part of an overall man. This may seem too complicated, but I'm just going to spit it out. Part of an overall system of how God has made the world that allows us to have things like scientific discovery and predictability and testability. And if we didn't have, like, yes, there could be a forest fire that burns animals out in the middle of nowhere. Um, and that may seem to be purposeless, but if fire didn't function consistently, we couldn't send rockets to space or have combustion engines. If God just randomly suspended the laws of physics to prevent suffering all the time, we would actually lose a lot.

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Me, um, randomly bumping into something in the middle of the night. And then I go, what's the point of that? God and it's like, well, because gravity has to work or else we're going to have a lot of problems.

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Inertia has to be in place or else this whole thing isn't going to function like it should. So there are reasons to allow sort of strange, seemingly purposeless suffering that maybe we haven't considered and we could talk about that, but.

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And people could argue, well, animals don't feel suffering the way that humans do. I don't know how animals feel suffering. I'm not going to postulate on that right now. Um, in the end, I'm genuinely satisfied by saying, lord, I know you're good and I know you will work things together for good, and that we were heading towards a glorious eternity, though we have temporary suffering in this world, including animal. I also know that man is made in your very image. And, and I won't look at that dog and think that it's like an image bearer of God suffering because it's not. We are objectively more important, more valuable.

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Right. More morally superior than animals. That is a real Christian reality that I think is under expressed. So it may not help you. I hope those things help you. Jordan, I pray as a skeptic that you would not let animal suffering keep you from the gospel of Jesus Christ and the forgiveness of your sins and the eternal joys of heaven, and that you'd be like, well, I don't see why animals suffer. I think you could just be like, I'm a Christian and I don't understand why animals suffer as much as they do. But, you know, there's things I don't understand and just leave it at that. Not a good reason to actually reject the gospel of Christ. Although in modern culture people think it is partly, I think, because they've sort of been brainwashed by the stuff that we've been seeing in media and our disconnection from, uh, how we're actually getting our food and all that other stuff.

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All right, number 12.

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Anonymous question. How can I tell if God answered my prayers or if an outcome is just coincidental? Many Christians say God has spoken to or guided them. Without evidence, how can such claims be tested objectively? All right.

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Uh, in many cases you cannot tell, and it's okay to not tell. Here's the thing. I'd say you don't have to know the answer to that question to move forward.

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I prayed for this thing, then it happened.

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Was that God?

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It's okay to say, I'm not sure, or it's okay to say things like, I think so, but I Could be wrong.

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And to not have a definitive answer like, that was the Lord for sure? Um, there's this sense of uncertainty that we sometimes see even in scripture with people where they do things. They're like, let's see what the Lord does. And there's other times where God seems to speak clearly. My general. You're like, how do I test claims with evidence?

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If you think it's the Holy Spirit guiding you, it's easier to test those claims because you can do the thing that you believe God's guiding you to do, and you can watch and see what happens. Don't let your whole faith stand or fall on this. Right? You know, God's true Christianity is real. The gospel is true, regardless of whether you are hearing from God or from yourself.

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But I would say on the outset, before I think something's of the Lord, I should have a very strong conviction that it's from God.

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And then when I go forward and think it's from God, I should watch and see what happens to confirm whether it was from God. Why? Because I want to learn the lesson of whether I'm actually hearing from God or not. Because plenty of people follow their own hearts and think it's God. Lots of people do this. It's not a very healthy thing, leads to a lot of harm.

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Because guess what? One day your heart tells you it's okay to divorce my husband.

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I remember one guy told me he was at work and he was. I don't know why, he was really irritated with the music. It was secular music being played at his workplace. And he says he felt the Holy Spirit. Tell him, I give you permission to quit because of the secular music they were playing on the speakers at his workplace.

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And I remember hearing that, and my immediate thought was, that just seems so foolish. Um, if God told you yes, then you should. But I really think the man just didn't want to work.

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And he dressed it up in the Holy Spirit and quit his job.

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I was like, what are you doing now? How are you making money? You have a wife and kids. How are you providing for them? And he was like, I don't know. We'll see what God does. And I thought, I don't think you're Abraham being called out. I think you're a guy that got irritated and couldn't tell the difference between your heart and the Holy Spirit. Still a Christian, but that's not healthy.

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So you test it. In that sense, the proof is in the pudding. Um, if a prophet comes and says, God says this, and then you Find out God didn't say it. There's consequences. That means something. So if you think those spirits guiding you and nothing happens to confirm it, especially if that happens repeatedly, it's not the Holy Spirit. That's your own heart.

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So, yeah, I'm sure there's a better answer to that. More layers. I hope I give you something fruitful.

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Ray Tesler says, how can I convince my brother that God does not condemn us to hell and that it's our own free will that puts us there? He has stopped talking to us due to his belief that belief he has.

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Oh, um. In a sense, it's both. Right.

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Um.

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Think of it as a courtroom thing.

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When the judge drops the gavel and he goes, I sentence you to.

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You've been convicted of such and such. I sentence you to, let's say, the death penalty.

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In a sense, the judge condemned him to the death penalty. Like, God condemns us to hell, but the reason he condemns us is because of the actions we've done. We've put ourselves in that place. We've done it to ourselves. So we, um.

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Was it like Obi Wan? You've done this to yourself.

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That's the truth. And you can get mad and you can rage against God.

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I'm sorry to use a Star wars analogy here, uh, but I know David Wood's gonna mock me for this, which I look forward to seeing. But the, um, fight between Obi Wan and, um.

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Uh. Anakin Darth Vader, right? He's like, you know, I've got the high ground. It doesn't really make a lot of sense, but he's got the high ground. He's like, don't do it. You know? And he's like, you underestimate my power. And he jumps up and he slip, slip, slap. And all of a sudden, he's a little short guy, you know? And, um, he looks up and says to Obi Wan, I hate you.

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That's what you're describing. I think it's the same thing.

352
01:38:58.000 --> 01:39:06.000
Um, God says, don't do that sin stuff. And you go, well, I'm going to do it. And he goes, I'm going to judge you for it. And he goes, I hate you.

353
01:39:06.000 --> 01:39:36.000
Okay, well, this is just a person that is in deep rebellion against God. They're in rebellion against God Almighty. It's the height of foolishness, the height of utter foolishness to ever think you can shake your fist at God and be in the right. He is God. He's the grounding of truth, the grounding of morality, the Grounding of goodness. And if you find yourself in opposition to him thinking you're wrong and I'm right, it's the easiest thing in the world to go. I don't know how I'm wrong, but apparently I'm wrong because I'm disagreeing with you.

354
01:39:36.000 --> 01:39:38.000
And that's what I'm seeing here.

355
01:39:38.000 --> 01:39:41.000
Let me read, uh, your question again to really get this across.

356
01:39:41.000 --> 01:39:50.000
Um, how can I convince my brother that God does not condemn us to hell and that it's our own free will that puts us there? He has stopped talking to us due to that belief. He has.

357
01:39:50.000 --> 01:40:34.000
I think that you could go through some scriptures that talk about how God judges us and that Jesus says, like, um, um, every word. You'll be held accountable for every word. So what are you being held accountable for? The things that you chose to say. You could show him that verse. You could talk about where he says, the servant who didn't know and he did evil, he'll be beaten with few stripes like you did evil. So you're still. But if you knew and did it, you'll be beaten with many. That is, you're going to suffer more greatly because you knew what you were doing was wrong. That we will stand before God, and for every action we've done, we will be held accountable. It's accountability. Like, you did it now you're accountable. Now. If you look at God and go, well, you're condemning me to hell, and I hate you.

358
01:40:34.000 --> 01:40:47.000
This, uh, is just a heart that wants to sin and does not want God and is making up reasons to hate God. You're Darth Vader yelling I hate you at Obi Wan. And he's thinking, all I wanted to do was save you from this fate.

359
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Everything I did was to try to save you from this fate. But what you're doing is so evil, I have to stop you.

360
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God is righteous when he judges. He is good in his wrath. His wrath is perfect and holy, not mine. When I get angry, I tend to veer into ungodly wrath. God is perfect and just and good in his wrath. I hope your brother comes to see this. And I would say probably the biggest thing you do is pray for him, preach the gospel to him. And, um, yeah, he may not talk to you, and that's okay. That's his choice. He's sinning against you, and you could tell him that. I can't believe you're my brother and you won't talk to me. I will talk to you. Even though we don't agree with each Other, but you're so full of anger, it's really evil.

361
01:41:32.000 --> 01:42:09.000
Maybe just tell him the truth. Number 14. Elie says, I have a Muslim friend who's struggling to understand the Trinity and asked how God can be three things all at once. And how can he be crucified? Can you explain in a way so a Muslim will understand? You know who's really good at this is a brother who passed away from cancer, was a godly Christian named Nabil Qureshi. And he wrote a book that you should get, like, for the ongoing conversations you're going to have. Um, um, it was called. Is it Seeking Allah, Finding Jesus? I think, yeah, I just found it. Seeking Allah, Finding Jesus.

362
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This book, you should get it.

363
01:42:13.000 --> 01:42:15.000
Here's why.

364
01:42:15.000 --> 01:42:21.000
He doesn't just write this book as a guy trying to convert Muslims, which is what I would do, right.

365
01:42:21.000 --> 01:43:15.000
He, um, writes the book as a Muslim walking through the path he took to start to understand that Jesus was legit, right? That he should be a Christian. He also talks about the Trinity in there, but he does it from a way that it makes sense to a Muslim because he was a Muslim. And so he's, uh, answering and asking the same questions that your Muslim friend is answering and asking. So get the book. Seeking Allah, Finding Jesus by Nabeel N A B E E L Qureshi Q U R E S H I and check that out. I think it would be tremendously, uh, helpful for your outreach to Muslims. And, uh, generally speaking, Muslims, I think, as a general rule, when they're coming against the doctrine of the Trinity, uh, I think what they're going to do is they're going to misunderstand the doctrine, so they'll misstate it. So they'll come against modalism, or they'll come against tritheism, one of those things. They won't come against the actual doctrine itself.

366
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They usually reject it. And you can use internal things like, um, uh, I'm just going to throw this out. So people feel that watch the stream, but aren't going to read the book that you get something from this.

367
01:43:27.000 --> 01:43:33.000
Um, the doctrine of the Trinity, Uh, first you have to get clear what it is.

368
01:43:33.000 --> 01:43:41.000
Ask the Muslim, what do you think the doctrine of the Trinity is? And just let them talk. Don't interrupt them, let them talk. You really got to start there, I think.

369
01:43:41.000 --> 01:44:03.000
And if you're not going to read Nabeel and get his even better advice, find out what they think the doctrine is, and that way you can pin it down, because otherwise meaning will change over time. Because they'll just have objections, but they won't be grounded in a whole understanding of the thing. Another thing you can do is um, talk about the love of God.

370
01:44:03.000 --> 01:44:19.000
So only with the doctrine of the Trinity can you logically ground the love of God. So in eternity, God is love. Scripture says, if God is love, who is he loving before creation?

371
01:44:19.000 --> 01:44:51.000
He's alone. If he's alone, there's no one to love. Love is inherently selfless. There needs to be an other for you to show love. You can just love yourself and be like, I am love. How do you know I have unimaginable love for me and I'm the only thing in creation that doesn't feel like it's really communicating love. That's Islam, right? But inside Christianity with the doctrine of the Trinity, you have the idea that God is love because he's Father, Son and Spirit. There is no point in eternity when God is alone.

372
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He is tri personal. And so love can coexist. There can be a selflessness inside of God's very nature. And that's just like a really cool element to get people to go, wow, there's like a value in the doctrine that I didn't previously understand.

373
01:45:05.000 --> 01:45:25.000
Um, Muhammad back in the day, it really looks like he did not know much. I don't think he read the New Testament or the Old. I think he interacted with people who were um, Christians and Jews and he learned some stuff from them. He seems to have been aware of some gnostic non Christian gnostic writings because of the stuff he writes about Christianity.

374
01:45:25.000 --> 01:45:36.000
There is clear indication in Islamic writings that Muhammad seems to think the Trinity was the Father, the Son and Mary.

375
01:45:36.000 --> 01:45:39.000
I kid you not, Muhammad was just ignorant about this.

376
01:45:39.000 --> 01:45:51.000
Father, Son, Mary, that seems to be what he thought the Trinity was. So again start with defining it, then you can go on to defending it. Most of the argument will probably in the definition range.

377
01:45:51.000 --> 01:45:53.000
Alright, let's go to the next question. Number 16.

378
01:45:53.000 --> 01:46:13.000
Anonymous question. Are street healings real? Can Christians pray for strangers who report relief from pain and illness? Um, yeah, Christians do. They pray for strangers who report relief from pain and illness. But atheist, uh, Darren Brown has produced similar results. Are these miracles or psychological effects?

379
01:46:13.000 --> 01:46:54.000
Okay, I have several things to say about this. First off I have a video where I go through some of these healing videos and I'll link it down below. It's years old. I talk about Todd White in there and I demonstrate how he does his trick. Darren Brown tried to show how they do the leg lengthening trick. I actually think Darren was getting this wrong, at least when it comes to Todd White. And I offered, I think I was the first person to ever say it, that what he was doing was he was moving people's legs this way. Because if you have someone's legs here, I'll put my elbows on the counter so my elbows won't move. Like someone's hips being on a chair. And if you take them and you hold them slightly off to one side, you'll notice else did like this. You'll notice that, uh, one hand's longer than the other, just like one leg could be. And then you very slowly move and you don't have to move very far before they're even again. Right.

380
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So, you know, Todd White would sit down, he'll grab your legs and they're slightly over the side and then move them over and you barely notice it because he always has them sit. Usually sit in chairs, if possible. And he lifts their legs up off the ground.

381
01:47:06.000 --> 01:47:10.000
He's always holding their legs and manipulating them. Right.

382
01:47:10.000 --> 01:47:12.000
This is a gimmick.

383
01:47:12.000 --> 01:47:19.000
God can lengthen a leg. And maybe God even has in the past. I've heard reports of people saying he has. I don't know. I don't know.

384
01:47:19.000 --> 01:47:26.000
But if you have someone sit down and you pick their legs up off the ground and you have to hold their legs, you're probably faking.

385
01:47:26.000 --> 01:47:32.000
Okay. So I'm very skeptical about this stuff. Okay. Me and Darren Brown are actually going to agree on a lot of these things.

386
01:47:32.000 --> 01:47:42.000
That being said, uh, I have heard reports about God miraculously healing people during evangelism that I think are true.

387
01:47:42.000 --> 01:47:52.000
And they don't typically happen on camera, which a skeptic could go, of course, Mike, but listen, I'm not trying to use it as proof for Christianity.

388
01:47:52.000 --> 01:48:02.000
Then you could laugh at me or mock or whatever. I'm not saying God healed this person. I have no evidence. And you should believe because of it. I'm not saying that that would be. You could mock me for that.

389
01:48:02.000 --> 01:48:48.000
But on a personal level, I interacted with many. I've interacted with tons of charismatics. Listen to their stories, Tell me about this, tell me about that. And sometimes not usually. Sometimes it's a story where somebody reportedly gets healed during a, ah, prayer for salvation, during that moment when they're hearing the gospel and they stay in the person's Life. And so five, 10 years later, they're like, yes, he was truly healed. It lasted. But if it's healing where I see that it could be faked, it probably is being faked. Right. Like you get the legs off the ground you're holding with your hand. Probably fake. If it's a healing where it could be explained by adrenaline and by hype, then there's what? There's a good chance that this is adrenaline and hype, but that does not deal with all healings. It just does not explain them.

390
01:48:48.000 --> 01:48:52.000
But, um, a guy online right now who's really big on this is Daniel, uh, Adams.

391
01:48:52.000 --> 01:48:59.000
Tons of fake healings, manipulations, staged gimmickry. It's disgusting, it's sick, it's evil.

392
01:48:59.000 --> 01:50:10.000
And he definitely does this. What if, though, in the midst of someone coming to someone like Daniel Adams, who I don't trust, I don't trust him as far as I could throw the planet Earth. Um, but let's say that someone came to him and there is someone who really believes in Jesus and they're looking for healing, and he goes and he prays over them in Jesus name. And at that moment, their faith is going. They're like, I am trusting in Jesus. I believe in him. And what if God, one time out of a thousand heals somebody at that Daniel Adams event? You know what Daniel Adams would do? He would parade that person around forever as proof that all of his other fake miracles are real. So it is a total tangled mess. As soon as you enter into the realm where people are trying to get clicks and views for miracles that they're doing on camera, it is just rife with fakery and lies and deceit. Benny Hinn. Absolutely. All this stuff where they go around and they make a big show of somebody and they tell someone, you're going to be healed tomorrow, and then this tumor is going to fall off your head and never does. The guy never shows up again. We never find out about him again, and he's just left traumatized and spiritually harmed and probably delusional, thinking he was healed. Oftentimes it's craziness.

393
01:50:10.000 --> 01:50:12.000
So are there street healings?

394
01:50:12.000 --> 01:50:48.000
I think there are sometimes. I think, however, that these multimedia ministries that focus on street healings, everyone I've looked into was fake. But I've talked to individual Christians who've had legitimate, what seemed to me to be legitimate experiences of evangelistic, real, true healings from God. And I praise the Lord for it. And I do not assume it's false. Um, but I prefer if they've interacted with the person days later, weeks or months later, and not just in the moment, because then even they can't tell between adrenaline and a real healing in some cases.

395
01:50:48.000 --> 01:51:30.000
Sometimes it's literal. Like I have physical immobility and it's like real radical change or a physical injury that you can see healed in the moment. But if it's like my pain has gone away. Adrenaline is famously good at getting rid of pain temporarily. Um, so that one is pretty, um, suspect if you see it happening. All right, let's move on to number 17. Lilies and sparrows says I'm in a faith crisis. I shared my mental health struggle with my discipler and at the next study they called mental illness a fallacy. I walked away and struggle. If it's all real, you probably should get away from that Bible study and stop talking to that person.

396
01:51:30.000 --> 01:51:32.000
That would be my counsel to you.

397
01:51:32.000 --> 01:51:38.000
Uh, lilies and sparrows. Sorry. Um, this is the wrong person to help you.

398
01:51:38.000 --> 01:51:41.000
Okay. You have a mental health struggle.

399
01:51:41.000 --> 01:51:47.000
Um, mental illness is called a fallacy.

400
01:51:47.000 --> 01:52:18.000
I don't think you can explain all of the mental struggles humans have with chemicals or with spiritual things. I think there's, it's a combination of the two. And so anybody who wants to eradicate the other one. If you want to make mental illness always a chemical based problem, you are eradicating the spiritual realities people are going through. And that is a very big problem. Right. Jesus helped. Jesus healed the demoniac whose guy's cutting himself, he's in chains. He breaks the chains, he goes out, causes problems, he heals him. And as soon as Jesus heals him, casts the demon out. He's sound. He's in his right mind. His mind was healed too.

401
01:52:18.000 --> 01:52:34.000
Spiritual reality. But there are also realities that we have physical chemical issues. When you don't eat enough, you go through strains. When you are working too hard or you go through really high stress environments for long periods of times. You can get like a PTSD type experience.

402
01:52:34.000 --> 01:52:53.000
And sometimes it helps to just talk to someone else who's gone through stuff and learn tools to overcome your struggles you have. And not over spiritualize it. Because we are spirit, but we are also body. We are both. That would be my counsel to you. If you're going to get help from somebody, you like it to be people who understand that truth that we have a physical body as well as a spirit.

403
01:52:53.000 --> 01:52:58.000
It's not all just spiritual, it's not all just physical.

404
01:52:58.000 --> 01:53:11.000
So that'd be my counsel to you. Do not let that person weigh on you. Um, mental illness is a fallacy. They say, um, prove it. Where in scripture does it say this?

405
01:53:11.000 --> 01:53:14.000
Well, Jesus healed the demoniac.

406
01:53:14.000 --> 01:53:53.000
Does that. Let's be slow down here and think. When people who say stuff like that, they don't usually slow down and think right. They just preach louder, just be real with you guys. That's what they do. Um, Jesus healing one person and it results in them being of sound mind. Does that mean that everybody's mental issues are therefore they require a demon to be cast out? Why is it when, um, in the psalms we read about the sorrow of soul that people are experiencing in psalms and they just cry out like, lord, I need your help. I need your help to overcome this. My soul is downcast because of the troubles I'm experiencing. And I'm experiencing anxiety, depression, these different things.

407
01:53:53.000 --> 01:54:36.000
And I'm going to choose to trust in you. But I don't see a demon being cast out. I just see I have mental struggles and I'm going to work on my mentality with those things. Read Philippians 4. It's going to give you. I think it's 4. It's going to give you. Think on these things. Think on these things. It's going to be a list of things to think on that will help your mental health, that you deliberately spend time thinking about that stuff. I'll link a video below just for you about mental health and how you can. It's not the full solution to all mental problems, but how you can have better mental health based upon Philippians 4. So I'll link that video down below just for you. I hope you'll take a look at it. All right, question number 18, winding down here towards the end. This has been an extra long stream and I have a phone call in two minutes. Oh, I'm going to be late.

408
01:54:36.000 --> 01:54:45.000
18 new believer doubts. Can you explain how David would be in heaven when he knew one wife was God's design, but was living in continuous sin?

409
01:54:45.000 --> 01:54:52.000
Um, and you give several verses here. I'm not going to look them up just for the sake of time. Um, one wife is God's design.

410
01:54:52.000 --> 01:55:15.000
I have a video on polygamy, like what to do if a polygamist gets saved. And it's a complex issue. If you don't think it's complex, it's because you're not thinking about it very deeply. But I like read a, uh, dissertation type paper that was on missionaries who were doing evangelism in African communities where there's polygamists who get saved and they're really confronted with. Here's a guy, he's got three wives, he's got seven kids, they have different moms.

411
01:55:15.000 --> 01:55:25.000
If we tell him to leave two of the wives and keep the one the kids are now illegitimate. The wives are now in poverty.

412
01:55:25.000 --> 01:55:44.000
But Scripture says that this was a wrong arrangement to start with, and he cannot be a church leader because of what First Timothy says. So how do you handle it? And, um, yeah, um, in the end, uh, if a polygamist gets saved and the wives are content to stay in the marriage, my counsel is that that's up to the woman.

413
01:55:44.000 --> 01:55:54.000
And then if she leaves, he's in basically regular adultery because he's a polygamist. So she has grounds to leave if she chooses to. So it's a decision of the woman, not the man in that place.

414
01:55:54.000 --> 01:56:06.000
Um, that's not feminism, guys. That's just me carrying out my logical arguments. I'm not a feminist of any stripe. Um, I see my series on women in ministry where I go against all that stuff.

415
01:56:06.000 --> 01:56:24.000
Um, but, yeah, David. So David still had sin in his life that he dealt with, even to the point he was dead. But was he in, um, like, a sin that would mean you are not covered by the grace of Christ? I don't think so. Okay, I'm sorry. That's the short answer. Um, but I'm out of time. Okay. Number 19.

416
01:56:24.000 --> 01:56:35.000
Danielle Rivers. Can you have blind faith and not believe certain parts of the Bible or have a different view than people who know way more about it?

417
01:56:35.000 --> 01:56:44.000
I could read this one again, Danielle. I'm sorry, but the way it's worded, I'm struggling just to quite understand it. Can you have blind faith and not believe certain parts of the Bible?

418
01:56:44.000 --> 01:56:58.000
I mean, you can have blind. Some people have blind faith. I don't, um, I don't want my faith to be blind. I want to have faith when I don't have sight, but I don't want to have blind faith. Whereas if the reasons for my faith are, I have none.

419
01:56:58.000 --> 01:57:03.000
Um, but when I'm struggling through darkness and difficult times, I want my faith to strengthen me and push me through.

420
01:57:03.000 --> 01:57:11.000
Um, but can you have blind faith and not believe certain parts of the Bible? I mean, you could have blind faith and be, uh, a cult members. There's plenty that do.

421
01:57:11.000 --> 01:57:16.000
You could be a Jehovah's Witness who has blind faith in the Watchtower and the governing body.

422
01:57:16.000 --> 01:57:23.000
So I guess the answer will be yes. Um, or can you have a different view than people who know way more about it?

423
01:57:23.000 --> 01:57:35.000
Ah, in that sense, in principle, you can always have a different view than people who know more about you than a subject. And you may still be right. You don't have to know the most to have the right view. But knowing more is generally helpful in coming to truth.

424
01:57:35.000 --> 01:57:59.000
But sometimes Farmer looks out and he goes, I, uh, just look at creation. I'm like, clearly God made this. And then some scientist is like, brilliant, brain the size of a planet, and he's working, uh, on how black holes might explain the origin of the universe so that you can say it happened without God. It's silly. It's silly. So yeah, that can happen. All right, Next question number 20. Wesley Jones.

425
01:57:59.000 --> 01:58:13.000
Christians tend to pray for healing of their loved ones when they're physically unwell enough so that there should be a statistically measurable difference in health levels. Do we see it?

426
01:58:13.000 --> 01:58:24.000
I would agree with this in principle. Like going into it, not even I don't know of any actual results of these kinds of studies. So I have no information about that.

427
01:58:24.000 --> 01:58:43.000
Let me answer it this way. I agree with you that it seems wise to think that if people with Christian family members generally receive more prayer, then if prayer makes a difference, you would expect more healing in those people.

428
01:58:43.000 --> 01:59:41.000
Um, the challenge of course is prayer studies. It's a very controversial area. And studies themselves are, it's challenging to research studies. Like imagine when, when the gay agenda stuff was first really being propagated and they had studies to prove that there was a genetic connection to people being gay, same sex attraction. And there was a number of studies that are just bunk, um, that were done poorly. The results didn't pan out the way they wanted. Sometimes people, there will be studies don't come from nothing. It's an organization that pays money for people to do a study. And they are doing the study because they're motivated to get certain results. That's how it's always often done. And then they do the study, they get the results. And sometimes orgs will actually bury the results of the study. You can think of the flat earth community, they actually did some tests to prove their flat Earth theories. And when those tests didn't work out, they pooled resources and they didn't work out. They were just like, we don't want to talk about this.

429
01:59:41.000 --> 02:00:05.000
So I don't know about the prayer studies. The ones I've looked into, I haven't looked into one about this in particular. The ones I've seen in the past, they seemed sketchy to me. They seemed as though the parameters of the test were designed so as to obscure specifically Christian things. Um, and so they weren't useful to me because I'm not going to be like, but a Buddhist was praying for you. Did you get healed? To me this isn't very important or relevant to the discussion.

430
02:00:05.000 --> 02:00:30.000
That being said, if for some reason the statistical anomaly was that it is the same people get healed at the same rates for non believers and Christians alike. Um, the problem for me as a Christian is that my faith in Christ is not based upon the ratio of people that get healed. So when this, if it shows that it's just not happening at all, I don't think it would show that if it was a fair test, but let's pretend it did.

431
02:00:30.000 --> 02:00:38.000
This isn't actually my faith is built on some pretty strong pillars. Okay. And one of the pillars is not.

432
02:00:38.000 --> 02:00:44.000
God heals Christians at a statistically higher rate. Like that's not one of my pillars. So it doesn't affect the pillar of my faith.

433
02:00:44.000 --> 02:00:49.000
If anything, it would be a soft argument towards the cessationist view of things.

434
02:00:49.000 --> 02:01:00.000
Soft argument towards a cessationist view of things. But it's an extra biblical argument on a theological principle. And so I apologize if I'm just using words that end up not connecting to you. Yes, I'd expect it.

435
02:01:00.000 --> 02:01:10.000
Don't know if I can trust the results of the tests. It's just hard to get the bottom of the reliability of tests. And final answer. It would not shake my Christian faith if I didn't get what I expected.

436
02:01:10.000 --> 02:01:38.000
Um, good question. Thank you for it. I appreciate it. Wesley, bonus question, final thing. And I'm all done for today from Jada Ojeda, who says, hi, Mike, I've been watching you since the Roman series. That was quite a while ago and I'm glad to hear it. It's my four year wedding anniversary and it'd make our day if you gave us a shout out. Sorry, this isn't relevant to the stream. Alfredo and Jada. Well, shout out to Alfredo and Jada. I don't know if I've ever said shout out before. I'm sure maybe I have, I don't know, seem like me.

437
02:01:38.000 --> 02:01:45.000
Um, but hi, Alfredo and Jada. I'm grateful you've been watching for so long and I pray that the ministry has benefited you.

438
02:01:45.000 --> 02:02:04.000
The ministry is not to get clicks or views or anything online. It is to have a real world impact in your life that impacts your kids, that impacts your church, that impacts people you touch. And so I love getting to hear about the impact of the ministry in people's lives because that is the whole point.

439
02:02:04.000 --> 02:02:10.000
That's the whole point. So God bless you guys. Happy anniversary. Four years.

440
02:02:10.000 --> 02:02:14.000
If you do it well, if you really are seeking the Lord, both of you, it's just going to get better.

441
02:02:14.000 --> 02:02:25.000
It doesn't mean it won't get hard. You'll have especially challenging things that happen in life. But there's something about the two. The two are still becoming one. Um, ongoingly, in a sense.

442
02:02:25.000 --> 02:02:29.000
In a sense, in the biblical sense, it's mostly just a thing that happens instantly. But.

443
02:02:29.000 --> 02:03:08.000
Yeah. Anyways, that's it. That's all we got for today. Thanks, guys. I will give you more updates later. This video is too long. I gotta go. I'm supposed to be on the phone with somebody and I have to go apologize to them. So let's pray. Um, Lord, we ask for you to be driving the skeptics, the non believers, the doubters, um, all of them closer to Jesus Christ and the new believers, stronger and stronger in Jesus Christ. Even through this video, through this ministry, may you be glorified. May people know the truth and the hope, the peace and uh, the comfort that there is in your word, the holiness of God, the fear of God, the reality of judgment and the grace of the cross. In Jesus name, amen. M.

444
02:03:08.000 --> 02:03:34.000
Amen.