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1:57
This is Undaunted Life of Man's Podcast.
2:01
I'm your host Kyle Thompson.
2:02
Let's get into it.
2:03
Mark Hitchcock, you're here.
2:05
You're in the studio. It finally happened.
2:07
Here I am in Flush.
2:08
Yeah, now I've been asked about this quite a bit,
2:10
because I get a lot of questions about where I go to church,
2:13
and what does the church believe, and how do you end up there,
2:16
and we'll get into some of that.
2:18
But everyone's super curious if they're not familiar with your work,
2:21
or if they're not really in the world of eschatology and times too much.
2:24
They're like, who's this guy, and like, because you've been my pastor
2:28
for really got to figure out when I became a member.
2:30
But I think it was six or seven years or something like that.
2:33
So there's a lot of people that are pretty excited about this,
2:35
because they're like, I get to see them preach,
2:36
and I get to see the YouTube videos,
2:37
but I don't normally get to see kind of like the chill sitting at the table kind of a thing.
2:42
No, it's good.
2:42
Yeah, I mean, it's a great opportunity just to talk,
2:44
and for me to get to know some of the folks that listen to your podcast,
2:49
and for them to get to know a little bit more about me,
2:51
and the church you go to.
2:53
And so I think we're going to be a lot of wide ranging topics today,
2:56
so a lot of different things.
2:56
That's great.
2:57
I look forward to Ella.
2:58
I love this kind of format.
3:00
I don't get to do it often enough.
3:01
Right.
3:01
Well, I mean, the first place to kind of start would be,
3:04
I'm always curious, like, if people go into the military,
3:06
or if people go into ministry or something like that,
3:08
like, what was the thing that kind of ended up there?
3:11
Because a lot of people are like, well,
3:13
I wasn't five years old thinking I would be a green beret.
3:16
And a lot of people, I wasn't 10 years old sitting there in school,
3:18
daydreaming about being a preacher someday or something like that.
3:20
So for you, like, what was kind of that pathway that took you towards ministry?
3:24
Well, I grew up in a great Christian family,
3:26
at a great church.
3:27
My pastors were all from Dallas Seminary.
3:29
And so I really learned a lot about the Bible when I was growing up.
3:32
And there was a time I remembered distinctly,
3:35
when I was around 12 years old, 12 years of age,
3:38
a pastor was there and was preaching about people kind of being called the ministry.
3:43
And our church wasn't an emotional kind of a type of a church,
3:46
and I'm not that kind of a person.
3:47
We had people, when everybody kind of had their heads back,
3:49
kind of stand up, and I did.
3:51
And it was real, and I knew it was real.
3:54
But then from about 16 until I was about 22,
3:57
I didn't really live for the Lord at all during that time.
4:00
And so all of that just kind of got washed away a bit.
4:02
And I was at Oklahoma, I went to Oklahoma State,
4:06
and then I was in law school.
4:07
I went to law school to be an attorney at Oklahoma City University Law School.
4:12
But when I was 22, there was some dramatic things happen in my life,
4:16
that my life did a whole 180 at that point in time.
4:19
And I began to study the Bible with this old guy in Oklahoma City,
4:22
down in downtown Oklahoma City.
4:25
And just through all that period of time, the Bible and studying the Bible and learning about it
4:31
just began to kind of eclipse everything else.
4:33
And it was really some time after that, after my wife married a lawyer
4:37
and ended up with a preacher, so I kind of just got to bait and switch from her.
4:41
But it just became clear.
4:43
I mean, it was a thousand percent clear that that's what God wanted me to do.
4:47
And so we moved to Dallas, went to Dallas Seminary for three years
4:51
and then came back to Faith Bible Church.
4:53
But that's just a real short story about how it happened.
4:56
But it was one of those things where God just began to call me.
4:59
And it just became a hundred percent clear, a thousand percent clear.
5:02
That's what God wanted me to do.
5:04
And I've never looked back since then.
5:05
I'm not a lawyer anymore.
5:07
I still have my license or whatever, just I'm all in.
5:10
Well, so if you, I mean, share whatever you feel comfortable sharing,
5:13
but I know that there's a lot of people, I mean, I've talked to
5:16
hundreds, if not thousands of men at this point about, okay, what was the thing that
5:20
woke you up, whether it was to salvation in Christ to begin their, you know,
5:25
to get their justification to begin their sanctification journey or whatever.
5:28
Or just, you know, what I tell people is I became a Christian at the age of 15.
5:32
And then I feel like I had delayed sanctification, like, because I tried to like read the Bible for
5:37
myself and I wasn't really being mentored or discipled.
5:39
And I didn't really even know how to ask.
5:40
And I'm just, you know, a punk kid, you know, trying to make everyone laugh in school.
5:44
And, you know, I feel like the sanctification process really was delayed until I was more
5:48
so late twenties, early thirties.
5:50
And then at some points, like, okay, I gotta, I gotta be a big boy.
5:53
Like I can't just be looking around for people to feed me.
5:55
Like I have to feed myself.
5:56
So like, what was it at 22 where you're just like, okay, we kind of have to burn the ships a little bit.
6:02
Well, became a believer at five, watching Billy Graham on television.
6:05
It was real.
6:06
And there's no doubt about it.
6:07
So I remember I was telling neighbor kids about how to become a Christian.
6:10
Well, you know, at that age, you're not doing it to like gain, you know, notoriety or some people,
6:14
you know, that it's innocent at that.
6:16
It's beautiful.
6:17
You know, I mean, I was really, it was very real to me.
6:18
God was real to me.
6:20
But like a lot of people, I started working out a lot, lifting whites a lot and went to Oklahoma State,
6:25
hung around a bunch of people there.
6:26
And I don't blame them for my problems, but, you know, I was still seeking out guys.
6:30
The guys I hung around weren't none of them were believers.
6:32
And, you know, just didn't live for the Lord at all during that time.
6:36
Even when I decided to go to law school, I really wasn't looking for the Lord at that time.
6:41
I was engaged to be married.
6:43
And if I'd gotten married, it would have been an absolute unmitigated disaster.
6:48
God saved me from that.
6:50
So, you know, there's a lot of things that happened during that period of time.
6:54
But it was one night I was, I'd been out.
6:57
It was, it was New Year's Eve.
6:58
Well, this wasn't a New Year's resolution.
7:00
It just happened to be during that time.
7:01
I was, I was house sitting for these friends of mine.
7:03
This guy was a lot older than me and his wife.
7:05
And I'd been out real late at about four o'clock in the morning.
7:08
And I was there in their, in their house and their bedroom.
7:12
And I mean, it was, it's, it's nothing like this ever happened to me before after.
7:17
Just a powerful sense of God's presence came over me.
7:20
And I just realized I don't want to go on living the way I'm living.
7:24
And I, it was Romans 12 1, you know, beseech your brothers by the mercy of God.
7:30
Present your body, a living sacrifice, you know, which says it's your only reasonable service
7:35
of worship.
7:35
In other words, if Christ died for me and he rose from the dead,
7:40
the only reasonable thing for me to do is to give everything to him.
7:43
It's the only rational response.
7:46
But that was the, yeah, I've been saved for years.
7:48
I had grown some in my earlier life and knew a lot about the Bible,
7:51
because I've been in a great church, had great parents, had Bible stories every night,
7:54
but sidelined all of that.
7:58
But it was a dramatic thing.
7:59
And I mean, that next day at lunch, I had, it was Sunday, it was the next morning,
8:04
I didn't go to church, whatever, I met with a buddy of mine for lunch.
8:07
And I told him, I said, my life's going to be totally different from now on.
8:11
And he made a really good statement, which actually was profound.
8:13
He said, we'll see.
8:14
And I thought, I said, no, I said, that's a good statement.
8:17
I said, we will.
8:18
I mean, because, you know, anybody can say stuff.
8:21
He said, we'll see.
8:21
And it was just, it was dramatic.
8:24
I mean, and in God provided this old guy in South Oklahoma City that loved the Bible.
8:28
And I met him every Friday night for about three years.
8:31
We studied the Bible for about three hours. That was God's providence arranging all of that.
8:35
And so anyway, it was during that time, then I got married and decided to go to seminary
8:40
after that and all those things.
8:42
But, you know, it's one of those things where God just kind of comes and invades and pervades
8:46
the influence in that room and the atmosphere.
8:49
And it was real.
8:49
I mean, it was a powerful experience I'll never forget.
8:52
It was my Romans 12-1.
8:54
Well, I laid it all out there, gave it all to him, and I never looked back.
8:58
Well, so I'm curious for you, because when you talk to kids now, I say kids, young adults
9:04
that are wanting to go into seminary, the conversation seems to be around,
9:08
are there any seminaries left that aren't very left wing or haven't gotten into some
9:13
very crazy ideologies or really, you know, apostate philosophies or something like that?
9:17
And so I'm curious, I guess, you know, both sides of the equation, when you were trying
9:22
to decide which seminary to go to, like, how did you make that determination?
9:25
And then I guess, you know, we can extrapolate that out to today, you know, decades after you
9:29
went to seminary, the struggle that a lot of fervent Bible believing young men
9:33
that want to serve the Lord and learn the Bible.
9:36
Like, you can't just like throw a dart at a map anymore and be like, I guess I'll go to that one.
9:40
No, you're right.
9:40
It's true.
9:41
Well, what happened for me is I was, Sharon and I were married then.
9:46
She'd married the lawyer.
9:47
So then I, but so the first time I broached the topic with her, I said, hey, I think God's
9:52
leading me to go to seminary.
9:54
Now, when we got married, I had told her, I said, I don't know what God wants to do
9:58
with my life, whatever he wants to do, I'm going to do it.
10:00
Well, you know, she heard that kind of what, you know, okay.
10:02
Well, then when I came in and told her, I think God wants me to go to seminary.
10:05
Well, her parents at the time lived in Chicago.
10:07
They lived in Galenel in a Western suburb next to Wheaton outside of Chicago.
10:12
So it was a good seminary up there called Trinity Evangelical Divinity School,
10:16
which by the way, just recently closed down.
10:18
They had, they kind of went, they kind of went and joined with the school in Canada.
10:21
A lot of really good seminaries are really, are really having problems.
10:24
So I was going to, I thought you all go there because her parents are there.
10:28
And they didn't really know me very well.
10:30
I'm leaving being a lawyer to go to seminary.
10:32
And you heard her dad at that time, he's, he's had a real turnaround in his life.
10:37
It's been wonderful.
10:38
But at that time, he wasn't really excited about the whole thing.
10:41
He didn't know what to think about me.
10:42
So that well, at least if I go there and we live by them, it'll make it a little bit easier.
10:45
So we kind of talked about that and her, she and her, Cheryl and her mom talked about it.
10:49
But then one, one night when I was praying, I knew 100% God wanted me to go to Dallas seminary.
10:55
My pastors had gone there, HA Ironside had helped found that seminary.
11:00
His writings had a profound influence on my life.
11:02
Jay Vernon McGee, go through the Bible radio got, he went there.
11:05
All the Bible teachers I respected had went, had gone to Dallas seminary.
11:10
So then I had to tell my wife, you know what, we got to go, we're, we got to go to Dallas seminary.
11:15
It's where I have, we have to go there.
11:17
So we, we moved down there in the, in the summer and in July of 1988.
11:24
And about a month later, her mom calls her on the phone just hysterical.
11:27
She, you know, Cheryl thinks somebody's died or something, whatever.
11:30
And her dad has, has had an opportunity to get transferred to Dallas.
11:34
So that was kind of a beginning for them of being able to see, you know,
11:38
maybe God is, isn't in this thing after all.
11:41
But the decision to go there was really because of that.
11:44
Because you know, in the Bible, it says, every man after he's taught will become like his teacher.
11:48
And it's very important who you listen to, who teaches you.
11:53
And I had some men there at Dallas seminary.
11:56
I didn't know some of them when I went there, but I knew who, who knew who Dwight Pentecost was.
12:00
I knew about Dr. Walvard.
12:01
But my favorite professor down there was Dr. Stanley Toussaint.
12:04
He went to heaven just a few years ago.
12:06
But when I studied with those men, I thought about that a lot.
12:10
Who, you know, whoever is your teacher, you know, be careful who you listen to is your teacher,
12:14
because you're going to be like them.
12:16
And I'm like, I'm going to be like these men.
12:18
And these are the men that I wanted to be like.
12:20
I wanted to model my life and my ministry after them.
12:23
And I think a lot of people, a lot of young guys don't think about that.
12:26
Yeah.
12:26
In fact, I just at DTS, I teach at Dallas seminary now and hybrid classes and all.
12:32
And we had a young man yesterday.
12:34
We had an exam, an oral exam for him going into his PhD program.
12:38
And he came to Dallas Seminary from another school that he was at.
12:41
It was totally apostate.
12:42
And he'd gone there and he didn't.
12:44
He wasn't very, had his eyes very wide open about things.
12:47
When he went to this place, he was like, I'm in there thinking, what in the world is this place?
12:52
And so you're right.
12:52
I mean, there's a lot of apostate seminaries out there.
12:57
And you know, Dallas Seminary is a good place still.
12:59
Southern Seminary, you know, it's one of the Southern Baptist schools is very good.
13:02
You know, there's several others out there that are good.
13:05
But by and large, many seminaries of even the good ones have ceased to exist.
13:11
They've been shrinking.
13:12
It's it's there's a there's a real issue out there because, you know,
13:17
the seminaries are the pipelines in the churches.
13:20
Sure.
13:20
And when these, when these seminaries go apostate that they're going to feed pastors
13:24
out of these places that go in and just basically corrupt churches.
13:28
Well, so I guess I'm curious because you've been able to see this happen,
13:32
whereas like, you know, I'm I'm turning 40 this year and so I haven't been really
13:35
paying attention to seminaries all my life or something like that.
13:38
But then when you hear about some of the things that are being taught,
13:41
some of the professors that are being highlighted or some of the things that they're,
13:45
you know, espousing in the classrooms, it's like, how?
13:47
Because you just in your brain, you think seminary, you know,
13:51
flowchart Christian good, right?
13:53
Like that's basically what you think.
13:55
But I can't really wrap my mind around how something like this happens,
14:00
because it's one thing to just like, oh, you know, cultures, you know,
14:03
it's going way more left wing and the Overton window is shifted.
14:06
And there are things now that are just kind of like settled culturally,
14:09
like gay marriage and abortion.
14:11
And most of that's just kind of settled.
14:12
So it would make sense for people that don't have like a stalwart,
14:16
like foundation in the Bible and wanting to stick to it that they would drift leftward.
14:21
But that just seems like too simple of an explanation.
14:24
But I also don't want to swing to the other side mark and be like, well,
14:27
there's the various group of they out there, this nameless faceless cabal of evil people
14:32
that are out there, like, you know, trying to influence all these different things.
14:36
So the country turns communist and everything goes to,
14:38
goes hell in a hand basket.
14:39
So it's like, I don't know exactly where to fall.
14:41
So I'm just curious, like, what do you think is the most,
14:43
the more reasonable explanation for what we're seeing?
14:46
Well, you know, it's happens to every seminary.
14:48
You know, Harvard was founded in 1636 by 1700.
14:52
Somebody goes and founds, they found Yale and Princeton and these other schools,
14:55
because Harvard's gone liberal.
14:57
Liberalism back then was deism and it was unitarianism.
15:01
They weren't Trinitarians anymore.
15:03
They, you know, they believed there was a God.
15:05
They didn't believe Jesus was God.
15:07
Didn't believe the Holy Spirit was God.
15:08
So unitarianism, deism, infected those schools early.
15:12
You know, and then Yale's founded, then Princeton's founded,
15:15
then, you know, each one of these schools in Princeton really stayed fairly strong
15:19
and solid until the early 1900s.
15:22
You know, BB Warfield was there, Hodge, I mean, it was, it was a tremendous place.
15:27
Actually, Dallas Seminary, where I teach, where I attended and teach,
15:31
Dr. Lewis Barry Shafer and some other men found that that in 1924
15:35
to be the Princeton of the West.
15:37
Okay.
15:37
So that was, you know, but then Princeton went bad and Westminster Seminary
15:42
was founded up in Philadelphia and a lesson of the faculty from there went to, went to Westminster.
15:48
So seminaries like human beings have a lifespan.
15:53
Churches have a lifespan.
15:55
And you see it all, you see it all the time that, you know, all of academia,
16:00
people are attracted to academia that are, that are usually bright people.
16:04
They're free thinkers though.
16:06
They want to kind of make their own way.
16:07
They want to blaze their own trail.
16:08
They don't really want to necessarily believe what people believe before them.
16:12
And there's just kind of an erosion over time of them wanting to be kind of novel
16:17
and come up with new ideas that just slowly fades away.
16:21
And Dallas Seminary had its 100th anniversary last year.
16:23
And that's a long time for a seminary to remain committed to inerrancy,
16:29
to the deity of Christ, to salvation through Jesus Christ alone.
16:34
It's, that's a long time.
16:35
It, that's a really long stretch for a school.
16:38
So I'm, I've been blessed by that.
16:40
There's a few other places around like that, but not very many.
16:43
Yeah, it's just a slow process of a few people getting in there who are very bright.
16:50
And it's, it's just, it's the same errors over and over again, you know, I mean, you know,
16:56
basically the, the Unitarian view, you know, in, in Harvard and Yale and those early schools
17:00
and denying the deity of Christ is going all the way back to the Aryan heresy in the early
17:05
church, why they had the council of Nicaea to fight against Aryanism.
17:09
Now Jesus isn't God.
17:11
He was a created being. So it's just these same errors that Satan, I believe, you know,
17:15
Satan is in working and demonic forces, working to bring in this false teaching into these schools,
17:22
then to be the channel down to churches.
17:25
And it's a landslide of apostasy out there today.
17:28
I mean, it's, it's terrible in most seminaries.
17:31
What's going on?
17:32
One of the things interesting when you bring up, you know,
17:34
creeds or confessions or any of those types of things,
17:36
some people think, oh, people found out that what they were teaching was,
17:40
you know, it was bad. So they had to do an updated thing where it's like, yeah,
17:44
yeah, what the Bible says, but no, what we decided at this council or what this,
17:48
it's like, no, no, there was heresy that was rising up in certain areas,
17:51
going back to the first church in the first century.
17:55
And so these councils and these creeds and different things were responses to that to bring
17:59
everyone back to biblical doctrine, to core biblical doctrine.
18:03
And so like one thing as, you know, the forging table right now,
18:07
we're going through the book of Romans, you know, we're about to record on probably the end
18:11
of Romans five and then beginning of six. I mean, we've been in Romans for months.
18:15
It took us like two and a half hours to get through Romans one one, right?
18:17
So that's like, that's how much we're dragging through this.
18:19
It's not quite what Piper did, but I mean, we're close.
18:21
And there's the stuff that I thought was in the Bible.
18:25
And then there's what's in there.
18:27
And then you have to reckon with what does the text say.
18:29
So did you have any moments like that?
18:31
We had like a DTS where you're like, okay, I've been in Christians since I was five,
18:36
you know, I'm not a scholar yet. That's why I'm here.
18:38
But wow, I thought the Bible said this or taught this.
18:42
And now you just kind of get smacked by the reality of scripture.
18:45
What did you have any of those moments when you were going through seminary?
18:47
Not really. I mean, the main thing for me going to seminary is, you know,
18:51
I had learned a lot about the Bible study with this friend of mine.
18:54
I was teaching some classes back to the church I was at.
18:57
And you're kind of a fish, you know, a big fish and a little pond.
19:03
Yeah. When you go down to somewhere like DTS, you become a very little fish and a really big pond.
19:08
And you realize what you don't know.
19:09
So I thought I really knew a lot about eschatology.
19:12
I'd studied prophecy, a whole lot Bible prophecy with this old guy I knew.
19:15
And when I got down there, I realized I didn't really have the foundation
19:20
underneath. I knew a lot of things, but I didn't really understand.
19:24
So that's what it was for me was just realizing how much I don't know.
19:29
And really now, even I know a lot of the professors at Dallas seminary,
19:33
they're friends of mine. And a lot of these guys are siloed off on very area,
19:36
different areas, man. I mean, they know a certain topic. I mean, just unbelievably.
19:42
When I'm around those guys talking to them and I'll ask them questions about their area to help me,
19:46
I realize I sit there and think, man, what I don't know is just unbelievable.
19:52
So that's, that's what I come to all the time. The more I learn, the more I realize how much I don't
19:57
know. It's just, you know, the well is so deep. And that was the thing to me that just struck me.
20:05
Well, I get into these conversations with these guys. They're like, yeah, yeah, the Bible. I mean,
20:08
I got it. And then they kind of like mumble what, you know, they mumble something from the Old
20:13
Testament. They mumble something about the cross or the gospel or whatever. And then the same thing
20:18
for me is one of the most humbling things is when you run into an expert in a field you didn't know
20:24
existed. Or you run into somebody that is basically think of like black belt level in some obscure
20:30
topic that you didn't know was even a thing. And you're just like, okay, like my understanding
20:35
of the planet is a dot, like in the rest of the planet is the surface of kind of what we want to
20:40
know, which kind of gets into, you know, everything. And we'll get into some different areas right
20:43
now. There are a lot of topics that people have like elevated to, you know, primary, they're not
20:48
secondary doctrines or tertiary doctrine. You know, I think of young earth, old earth a lot, because
20:54
I get asked all the time mark all the time to have a debate on this show with young earth, old earth,
21:00
or to give my full throw to opinion and all of the reasons why I believe what I believe. But I
21:05
just don't find it to be that interesting personally, because it's like we can't know for certain,
21:11
like scientifically speaking, we can't observe the creation of everything. But I guess, if you
21:18
want to talk young earth, old earth, we can, but it's like, I feel like a lot of people will take
21:22
something that's secondary or tertiary and make it their primary thing where like, because I've
21:26
been told, because I'm old earth, that if I don't believe that the earth is young, that I don't take
21:31
the Bible seriously. And I don't think God's word is sufficient to explain things and all that. And
21:37
I'm like, well, I also can't use the Bible to say who the 16th president of the United States is,
21:40
or how to make TNT. But I can use it to like describe whether or not what the president did was moral
21:46
and whether or not I should use that TNT on like a children's school or something like that. So,
21:51
like, did you, have you ran into any of that really like with DTS or even into your ministry,
21:55
where people are like, Hey, yeah, but this is core doctrine. If you don't believe it, you're wrong.
21:59
Well, no, I think there's a few of those things that are out there, kind of in what I would call
22:03
like conservative evangelical Christianity, the, you know, creation, you know, old earth, young earth,
22:08
you know, it comes to Bible prophecy, you know, whether people are pre-trib or, you know,
22:12
their post-trib. There's, there's different areas of theology when you come to soteriology or the
22:17
doctrine of salvation, you know, Armenianism versus Calvinism. There's a lot of people that have
22:22
their tests, kind of for what they would consider orthodoxy, you know, you have to believe these
22:26
certain things. And really when you boil down what you have to believe to be orthodox, it's pretty,
22:33
it's pretty concise, really. You know, for instance, I like eschatology a lot, but you know,
22:38
an orthodox or a biblical eschatology, you believe Jesus is coming back, there's going to be a
22:43
literal resurrection, there's a final judgment, there's a literal heaven and hell. Those are kind
22:47
of the four main pillars of a biblical eschatology. Now we, we talk about all kinds of things around
22:54
those four issues, but someone's orthodox in their understanding of the end times if they believe
23:00
those, those four things. It's the same way with creation. The bottom line is that God created
23:06
everything that exists. You know, how did he do it? When did he do it? We people debate that,
23:12
but everybody who's a Christian is going to agree that God is the creator of the Bible says that
23:16
over and over again. That's why we're accountable to him. That's why we're responsible to him because
23:21
he's our creator. But you get into a lot of these different points that people want to elevate to
23:26
a, you know, an issue of really almost whether someone's really a Christian or not, or whether
23:30
they're liberal or not, or all those kinds of things. You know, I've got friends that disagree
23:34
with me on all kinds of prophecy issues. I got friends that are are minions. I got friends that
23:38
are charismatic and you know, I'm a cessationist. And you know, I got friends that disagree with
23:42
me on all kinds of, of that stuff. And we don't make it a big issue. We fellowship about the things
23:47
we agree on. But a lot of people want to elevate all kinds of issues. And I think sometimes with
23:52
people, there's can be a sense of elitism in that a little bit. You know, I know more than you do,
23:58
or if you don't believe think the way I do, then you're not. Because I'm on this team and I'm right.
24:01
Yeah. So, you know, I think it can, it can be that and people have a lot of different motivations
24:06
for those things. And there are hermeneutical issues involved in this. I mean, obviously,
24:10
if someone's using just consistently bad method of interpretation that's leading to a lot of wrong
24:15
interpretations, they need to go back and look at how am I interpreting these texts, you know,
24:21
in, in scripture. And that's a, that's a real, that's really the key issue in many ways is,
24:26
is our, our hermeneutics of how we're understanding what the Bible is saying is going to lead us
24:31
into certain conclusions. Hey guys, real quick. You've probably heard me say it a bunch of times
24:36
on this show, but I think potentially the biggest societal issue that we face in this country
24:40
is fatherless homes. And beyond that, I know that there are a lot of fathers with sons that do not
24:45
know how to lead them into manhood. But one of the problems is that men in our society and churches
24:51
are able to recognize that there is a problem, but they currently lack the tools to begin
24:56
solving it. I don't want boys falling through the cracks while men and churches struggle figuring
25:01
out next steps. That's why I want to introduce you to kids outdoor zone. Kids outdoor zone or
25:07
KOSZ is an outdoor adventure ministry that provides boys with men as mentors to help direct and
25:13
train them in outdoor skills and guide them to becoming a godly man. The KOSZ vision is for every
25:20
boy, whether they have a father in the home or not, to have a man or a group of men to help him
25:24
navigate the masculine journey into manhood and a relationship with Jesus. KOSZ groups help boys
25:31
learn biblical masculinity, outdoor skills training, how to discern God's call in their lives and
25:36
much more. KOSZ groups usually meet one Saturday a month. The mentors lead the boys in prayer
25:41
and the expectations for the day. And then they get to learn some sort of a life skill that will
25:46
help the boy as he grows into a man. This could be everything from learning how to build a fire
25:50
or a shelter, working on an engine, fishing for food, shooting a firearm or a bow, traversing
25:56
different terrains, cleaning an animal and on and on from there. Afterwards, the mentors take the
26:01
boys through heart training that introduces a scriptural basis for the life skill that they
26:05
just learned. Then the boys get some time to individually reflect on what they've learned
26:09
and they're certainly a lot more. But man, it just has such a big impact on these boys.
26:14
It's time to invest in the next generation of young men. Guys, this is your call to action.
26:20
Start a kids outdoor zone group at your church by signing up at kidsoutdoorsone.com.
26:26
That's www.kidswithanessoutdoorsone.com. There's a big red bar going through the middle of the
26:34
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26:39
what's been happening. Let's make a difference now. Again, that's www.kidsoutdoorsone.com. Sign
26:47
your church up to lead a K-O-Z group today. The way I look at it is I saw this great clip.
26:53
This was after the great John MacArthur died, but it was John MacArthur, R.C. Sproul and some other
26:58
people on this stage. John MacArthur and R.C. Sproul very famously will spar back and forth.
27:03
They seem to always do it somewhat tongue in cheek and ingest and out of love for one another.
27:07
But R.C. Sproul and this was towards the end of his life. He's got oxygen in and all that type of
27:11
thing. With John MacArthur right there on stage, he just goes, here's the thing about John. I think
27:16
he may even call him Johnny. He's like, here's the thing about John. If he and I disagree on
27:21
a subject matter, but I can take him to the scriptures and show him that his position is wrong in an
27:28
instant, he will change his position. Now, this is John MacArthur we're talking about. So I'm not
27:32
assuming that there were a whole lot of opportunities to where I was like, hey, you're just clearly
27:36
wrong on this thing, on this secondary tertiary doctrine. But R.C. Sproul was like, this has happened
27:41
constantly. And R.C. was basically like, this is good for me to see, because there's a humility in
27:47
that you can't know more than what is revealed there about what is in the Bible. And I just want
27:53
to kind of have that posture of humility as well. And so even getting back to your D.T.S. stuff,
27:58
so you get through seminary and then you got to go out and get a job. And so I guess people just
28:04
assume you go to seminary and then the best seminarians that I'm going to the best churches
28:08
or the best situations or whatever. I don't think people really understand how that works. So at
28:12
what point during your studies where you're like, okay, I got to seek out a congregation or I got to
28:17
seek out a job where I'm like an understudy to somebody or what does all that look like?
28:21
Well, when I was at seminary, what I thought about was going ahead and getting my PhD,
28:24
because I wanted to teach at a school. I didn't know how that was going to work. But
28:28
I came in March of 1991 and spoke at a church that had come out of the church I grew up in. I
28:37
grew up at a church called Metropolitan Baptist Church and it wasn't Baptist. And
28:40
Faith Bible Church, that's where I pastor now, came out of Metropolitan Baptist Church. And that's
28:46
where I grew up. Like it was a church plant? Yeah, it was a church plant up in Edmond. Yeah. And so
28:50
they'd had a pastor there for about 10 years and he was retiring. And so they invite, I knew some
28:55
of the people there that had found it at years before. So they, when I was finishing seminary,
28:59
they didn't have anybody preaching there because Russell McKnight, the pastor there, had retired.
29:04
So they had me come one Sunday in March and I spoke at the church. Actually, it was the first
29:09
Sunday they were in the building, the new building that our church is in there on that property.
29:13
It just happened to be. So I preached in that building at our church the very first Sunday.
29:17
He christened it. There you go. I christened it. So I spoke there that week and then they kind of
29:23
started talking to me about whether I'd be interested in coming there and being a pastor there. So it
29:27
was all God's providence working that out, about 150 people there. And so it took quite a bit of
29:33
time. And in October of 91, we came there. I came there. My wife and I did. I came there as their
29:38
pastor. So it'll be 35 years is coming October. So that's how I ended up there. Just do those
29:44
connections I had with those folks. And, you know, it's, you know, it was slow go for a long time.
29:51
You know, a lot of, you know, small churches like that, there's a lot of struggles. I tell everybody,
29:56
I've been at the same church now for almost 35 years, but I've pastored five churches,
30:00
five different churches. Because you know, when a church is a hundred people, it's very different
30:04
than 250 and 250 is very different than 500. 500 is very different than a thousand or 1200.
30:11
And then, you know, 3000 is really different than 1500. So it's kind of interesting. I've
30:16
been in the same same place, but it's been five different churches. I've pastored over all that
30:21
time. So that's how we ended up there. And then after I got there in 91 and 96, five years later,
30:27
I went back and started working on my PhD. And those back, you know, back then you couldn't do
30:31
stuff distance and all that they didn't have all that. So I had to fly down there every week.
30:35
And we fly down and take classes and all of that. And it took me eight years to finish that
30:42
PhD. And then I started teaching down there, Adjunct. And then now I'm a faculty member down there at
30:47
DTS. But kind of that's how we ended up there. And we've built on the building about five different
30:53
times you've patched on that things more more times than I could ever imagine. But it's, you know,
30:58
it's been a wonderful place to be. I think, you know, God brought me back to a church where I did
31:03
know some of the people. It was a church. It was came out of the church I grew up in. It's in the
31:08
same area. You know, people are people wherever you go. But I do think if you're in the area where
31:13
you grew up, you know, a little bit more about the culture and, you know, into Oklahoma State,
31:18
you know, about OU and you know, about the rivalry on I just know about things. So, you know, God brought
31:23
us back here to Brack to Edmond and we've been there ever since. Well, so I'm even curious because
31:29
there are people, because I'm in whatever the content creation space, but there are people that
31:33
can really, really write content. They can write amazing content. But when it comes to delivery,
31:40
it's not very good. And there are people that are really good at delivery. But the stuff that they
31:43
write is garbage. And it's a very special thing when you can have someone that can write and deliver
31:47
something. So even going back, like, okay, here you are, you're preaching at the first
31:53
Sunday in this new building of Faith Bible Church, which is kind of like your pseudo home church.
31:56
Like, are you nervous? Are you a polished speaker by this point? You know, it's no big deal. Like,
32:02
you know, because here I'm getting to watching 35 years later kind of do your thing. But like,
32:06
what was it like in the early days? Was it rough? Were you, were you, you know, doing well from the
32:09
beginning? Well, you know, yeah, I was nervous back then. I still get nervous now. I mean, a little
32:15
bit, you know, for I go preach to me, if you don't have a sense of, of some awe or something over
32:20
you, when you get up to open God's words, something's wrong. And every, I never ever want to go up
32:25
there, just cavalier. I got this, you know, kind of whatever attitude, you know, Charles Spurgeon's,
32:29
he used to go up the steps to the church. He pastored every step he would take you. So I believe in
32:34
the Holy Ghost. I believe in the Holy Ghost. You know, it was a sense of he was dependent,
32:37
you know, upon God. So I've tried to, tried to maintain that, but I was, you know, I was nervous
32:42
back then. I'd spoken, I taught Sunday school classes. When I was at Dallas Seminary, I taught
32:47
a class Sunday school class at Prestonwood Baptist down there, Jack Graham. He's a great pastor there.
32:52
I taught a class there for a couple of years. So, you know, I was used to getting up in front of
32:57
people and really this church wasn't much larger than the class. But, you know, the thing that I've,
33:02
the thing that's changed over time really for me, though, I think mostly in preaching is what I did
33:09
at the beginning that I look back now. I didn't think of it at the time. I gave a lot more content,
33:14
but some of the content was not necessary. Okay. You know how that is is that you can,
33:20
you can tell people everything you know about something, but maybe there's things that you're
33:25
telling that don't really contribute that much to the message. Sure. And so what I've tried to do
33:32
over the years, I think I'm better at now than I was then is knowing what do I need to tell people
33:37
and what do they really not need to know that will kind of almost too much information can almost
33:42
get where people lose the main thrust of what you're trying to say. Right. So, I think early on,
33:49
that's kind of what I did. And that's a good default. Hey, it's always good to get people
33:53
a lot of information, you know what I mean? But I think when you're trying because the goal of a
33:57
sermon is not just to pile information on people. The ultimate goal of a sermon is transformation.
34:03
It's for people to be transformed is when they hear God's word. Now, they have to learn things
34:08
for that to happen, but it's not just information. Yeah. And so I think I've learned, I've tried to
34:13
learn better how to balance the information and the other things and the transformation and all
34:19
of that. I'm better. But yeah, it was, but it's been a massive learning experience. And there's
34:24
there's people at our church that were there when I got there in the beginning. And every once in a
34:27
while, when I see them in church, I'll actually just thank them and say thank you. Thank you for staying
34:32
here all these years and listening to me. Yeah, I mean, you know, going through just letting me
34:37
practice all these years. They call it practicing medicine or practicing law, you know, you practice
34:42
preaching. And anyway, I'm very appreciative for the people who've done that. But yeah, no, it was,
34:48
you know, I mean, it was good enough to really call me to be their pastor. But I don't know how
34:52
many other guys they were actually looking at or candidates they have. But you know, God in His
34:56
providence gets you where He wants you to be. And that's what I've always had confidence in in my
35:01
life. I knew that that's where God wanted me to be. And I've known that ever since.
35:04
So let's even talk more about your, your style, because everyone's got like a different preaching
35:09
style or public speaking style. Some, some people are a little bit more transcription. Some people
35:14
are more, you know, they just want to kind of go off the cuff and just kind of like do, you know,
35:18
get a feel for the room and they may take a hard left turn or whatever. And you know,
35:22
I kind of do a little bit of a hybrid thing myself. Like I have a pretty good idea of where I'm going
35:26
to go. But if I get on a heater, I'll just follow that for a second and come right back to, you know,
35:30
to the main road. And so I know you've likely changed your style a lot over the years. But you're,
35:36
you know, your style now is it's fairly certain the type of style that we're going to get. And with
35:44
the biblical exposition with stories that basically undergird the overall gospel message that you're
35:49
trying to make. And there's always a gospel pitch or plea at some point during that.
35:54
So how long do you feel like it took you to kind of get into that groove or you kind of found like,
35:58
okay, this is my voice. This is my style. This is the way God wants me to bring this information
36:02
to the flock. Well, I think I had it at the beginning, but just been tweaked a lot like I
36:07
mentioned in those areas. I think, you know, you don't know one wants to, I mean, no one should
36:12
want to be a preacher where all you do is tell stories. Because I heard somebody described that
36:16
as a skyscraper preachers, you know, just one story on top of another, you know what I mean?
36:20
You don't want that. You want content. But I think nowadays, especially in our culture,
36:26
people are so distracted with gadgets and with things that if you get up there and just give like
36:32
50 minutes of information, a lot of people are going to lose them at some point in time. You know,
36:38
that now there's a lot of like, I like to hear 50 minutes of information. It's fine, you know,
36:42
because I'm a Bible teacher and I like that. And there are people who do. But I think the best
36:47
way to communicate is to give people good information. But with information, there's illustration and
36:53
there's application. And so I think I've tried to learn how to blend those things together better
36:59
where people are engaged and want to listen and hear what you have to say. And they'll, you know,
37:06
there's people at every level on a Sunday morning at the church I pastor, there's people that don't
37:11
know Christ. So I want to give them the gospel. I like to call what I do evangelistic exposition,
37:16
okay, because every week I want to, yeah, I want to do that, you know, Spurgeon used to say,
37:19
wherever whatever passage you're in preaching, at some point in the message, make a beeline to
37:23
the cross. I mean, because that's there's people there that need Christ. And even if people are
37:28
believers, it's good to hear the gospel again. I love hearing it. So there's people there. There's
37:33
people that are that are pretty new Christians, baby Christians that can't really take too much
37:38
information. You know, kind of they can't take a lot of meat. Then you have people that are really
37:43
mature believers that really can take a lot of information. And so you think about the task of
37:48
preaching, you're going to go up there in a Sunday morning. You got lost people that they can't even
37:53
understand the things of the Spirit of God. You got baby Christians. You've got people kind of in
37:57
between. You have really mature believers. How in the world can you craft a sermon that meets all
38:02
the needs of all those people? And the answer to that is it's impossible. So what you do is you do
38:07
the best that you can thinking about all of that. And then it's like, you know, when the when the
38:11
disciples brought the bread to Jesus, they bring it to him and he breaks it and feeds the crowd.
38:16
Every week you got to go to Jesus and say, Jesus, here's here's my meager, you know,
38:20
five loaves and two fish. Now you take it and you feed this multitude. I can't do it.
38:24
Because there's no way the greatest speaker in the world can't figure out how to meet all those
38:29
needs, but the spirit can. And what you're saying, the spirit can be applying to each person's life
38:35
there and having it ring true in their life and whatever area they need it in. So I realize that
38:40
dependence, I do the best I can to hit all those areas and those people to give them something,
38:46
but it's an impossible task. Yeah, I mean, even before I go and speak, you know, I'll get little
38:51
nerves as well, but then I just remind myself, like God has me doing this thing. He has equipped me
38:58
for this exact moment that I'm about to go do this thing. That is, you know, my bread and butter,
39:02
where there's a microphone on my face and I'm on a stage delivering a message. But then I always
39:07
want to be sensitive to like God, you know, like I've got the mouth, but you're going to be the one
39:12
that gives the words that are going to go through my brain and out my face hole, like let it be
39:16
honoring to you. And you know, I always am sensitive to the fact that there are people in my audience
39:21
that are not Christians as well. And I always want to make sure there's some sort of an invitation
39:24
or, you know, pointing to the cross as well. But even like, in a podcast, like if I'm doing an
39:30
interview or a solo episode or something like that, I've got an idea of the journey I want to take
39:36
people on because they're giving me their time that they cannot get back. And there's got to be
39:40
some sort of narrative art to the thing that I'm saying, because if it's just me bludgeoning them
39:44
with information or like, you know, half hearted and half thought out opinions, that's not particularly
39:49
helpful. But then you talked about kind of the modern moment that we're in, where it's a lot of
39:53
personal anecdotes or like preacher stories, just with a little bit of Bible. And it's almost like
39:58
my joke is it's like, well, it's a TED talk with a little bit of Bible sprinkled over the top so
40:01
you can keep your tax exam status. But it's basically life lessons that are done in a church setting.
40:06
And I just don't know how supremely helpful that is. Well, actually, you and I, a month or two
40:13
back, my son and your grandson are on the same basketball. I say basketball loosely,
40:17
because he's a five year old. So there's not a whole lot of basketball happening, even though
40:20
your grandson can shoot pretty good. And you and I got to talking and you made a statement that you
40:26
made several and I want to go back to the evolution of the church as well, in terms of numbers.
40:31
But you talked about a lot of modern preachers, like even in our area, the entire ministry is
40:37
based off of their personality, how funny they are, how bombastic they are, like how quotable or
40:43
tweetable, what they say is whether or not this is going to go viral. And then you just basically
40:48
looked at me and said, that's not what I want to do. Like, I'm not going to base the entire,
40:52
you know, my shepherding of a particular flock that God has entrusted me with based on my personality.
40:58
And so I guess I want to kind of like get a little bit more on that because there are,
41:02
there are young guys in this audience right now, praise God, that are going to eventually go
41:05
into ministry. And then they see these ministers on YouTube or on Instagram or all that. And it's
41:10
all these big quotable. And it's just very much so ends up being like this cult of personality kind
41:16
of a thing. But I assume that you would caution against that. Well, yes. And you know, that's one
41:21
of the things actually in my life, I've given thanks to God for a lot. I don't have a lot of real
41:25
personal magnetism or charisma. I mean, you know, I don't, I'm not trying to be falsely humble. But
41:30
you know, I'm not this some people really have that. And if they have magnetic, but if they have it
41:35
and they can channel it in the right way, it's it's incredible. You know, like, I mean, I think
41:39
some of the great preachers, surgeons, these people probably had that, you know, but but the problem
41:44
is like, I've told my wife many times, I have to study the Bible. And primarily at our church,
41:49
we go through books of the Bible, we'll do, you know, a little topical series between we're doing
41:52
Ephesians now. I plan next fall to do first Thessalonians. We did Exodus last year. You know,
41:59
set that's kind of our stock and trade is just exposition of these books of the Bible, which by
42:02
the way, that keeps you off of hobby horses. Yeah, you just you just whatever the next passage is,
42:07
is what you talk about. But, you know, I'm glad because I have to study and have something to say
42:15
because I can't get up there and just rely on on that. Because I've seen guys that can do that
42:20
and they're good at it. And I wish I had a lot of what they had, really, but but then on the other
42:24
hand, when I see what they do, I think, you know, I can't rely on that. I have to have something to
42:29
say. Like, I don't really, I'm not the kind of person I don't enjoy never having joy just being
42:34
up in front of people. I'm actually my personality is more introverted. I love to get up and teach
42:40
the Bible. Other than that, I really don't care about ever being in front of people. It's just not
42:44
a, you know, I don't ever think about that. But I love to teach the Bible and do that.
42:50
So what you've got to do is be yourself. Don't try to be like the, you know, this guy or don't
42:55
try to be like that person. Really, what preaching is it's God's message coming through a human vessel.
43:01
And you listen to a lot of different preachers that comes through them in different ways.
43:05
And different people may find a different preacher more attractive to them because of their personality.
43:12
And that's good. You know, hey, I really like this guy. This guy, you know, he may be doing a good
43:16
job, but he just, I don't know, it doesn't, it doesn't fit their personality as much. But, but,
43:20
but you don't want to try to be what you're not. I think if, if I were to try to be a big
43:24
extroverted, you know, preacher up there and you know, pacing back and forth and doing all that,
43:29
it wouldn't take people very long at all to think this guy, that's not him. But you don't want to
43:35
take a guy that is a very, you know, exuberant, charismatic, you know, magnetic type of a guy and
43:41
just have him just stand behind a pulpit and just, you kind of think, what's this guy doing this
43:46
doesn't fit? So you want to be yourself and that the goal is not to be impressive to people. It's,
43:53
Mark Deaver has a book on the Old Testament, the message of the Old Testament. One of the
43:58
better quotes I've ever read. He talks about Saul, King Saul, says that Saul was impressive,
44:04
but he says David was impressed. He was impressed with God. So the goal in sermons or whatever we do
44:11
in all of our life is to be impressed with God, not to go out and try to be impressive. And I think
44:16
that's, that's the human nature. We want to be impressive, you know, to people. And I think if
44:21
we're impressed with God and are faithful to what he calls us to do, that that's what's going to
44:28
really have power and be effective over time. Well, that's such a good reminder, because again,
44:33
it's very easy to get wrapped up in who you are when you're the person that's been invited to
44:41
maybe get paid to speak in front of a group of people. And they expect you to burn it down. Are
44:45
they expected? Because again, I'm invited to come to speak at a lot of men's things, a lot of men's
44:49
conferences. And I tell them, I'm like, look, my style is burn it down and walk away because I
44:52
don't live here, right? So like you, but y'all got to be ready. Y'all, y'all have to be ready to
44:56
catch some of these guys because hopefully Lord willing, there's some salivations. There are some
45:00
guys that rededicate their lives, not like in a church camp kind of way, but actual rededication
45:04
or refocusing of their life on the Bible, you know, headship over their household or whatever,
45:08
you guys got to be ready for that. I don't live here. I can't do that for you. But again,
45:12
now if someone's like, man, you're a really good speaker in my head, I'm like, oh, I missed it.
45:17
I missed it because that's the point is not to prove to you that I can speak words, right? In a
45:22
way that's either funny or entertaining or something like that, because if I talk to you for an hour,
45:26
or if I talk in front of you for an hour, and that's what you came away with is, man, that Kyle,
45:31
he's a gifted speaker, a talented speaker, it's like, okay, I'd rather have that than not have it.
45:35
But man, that wasn't the point, like, because maybe if they're talking about the manliness
45:40
of the God, man, Jesus, right, or maybe talking about the importance of a foxhole of men as my
45:46
pastor buddy, Joby, that you met a couple of years ago, Matt Toters, right? These are guys that will
45:50
destroy someone else's private property to lower you down to the feet of Jesus. And I'm desperately
45:56
pleading with you to have those guys in your life and to be one of those guys for someone else.
46:00
And then if you're just like, yeah, man, you're, you're really funny. I'm like, shoot, like, I got
46:03
to do something a little bit better. But I do want to talk more about, because you brought
46:07
something up and you and I talked about this, because, you know, I've been doing this podcast for,
46:12
this is nine years going on nine years, the ministry for 10 years. And so I've evolved quite
46:17
a bit on my stances, and I've also been very openly critical of individual pastors or individual
46:23
ministries for how they're approaching ministry or church. And there's an open debate, not just
46:28
right now, just like for, you know, basically since the beginning of the church of how are we to do
46:33
church? Who is the church for? Is the church for the saints? Or is the church, you know,
46:37
an evangelistic tool to bring in non believers? Is it both? Well, how much 60 40 75 25?
46:43
And I mentioned this to you and you and I want you to kind of flow off of, you know, the way I
46:48
set it up, but it's like, okay, are there churches out there that are really good at getting people
46:54
in the doors? That is basically what they do. They get them in there. They get them whipped up
46:59
emotionally because of the kind of the concert and the, the really, you know, fun 30 minute talk and
47:05
all that. But then maybe there is an actual heart change, a gospel realization in that person,
47:11
whether they raise their hand and get counted on the annual report or not. And then there are
47:15
churches that basically will take those people after they, you know, keep getting milk at that
47:21
one church for any length of time, they eventually graduate to a church that is going to, you know,
47:26
equip them better to be a disciple or to take them further in their sanctification journey.
47:31
But just generically, Mark, when you look at the landscape of church and even how faith Bible
47:36
has decided to do church, like what is the point of the church? Should there be many different kinds
47:41
of churches for many different kinds of people? Or is there kind of like enough? You got to kind
47:45
of do it this way or you're not really nailing it. Well, you know, go to Acts chapter two, you got
47:49
the first church and on call, you know, by first Bible church of Jerusalem, you know, tells them
47:54
what to do there. The first thing is is they devoted themselves to the apostles doctrine and
47:58
teaching. That's a very first thing. It's mentioned there talks about evangelism. It talks about
48:02
they were generous and giving. They took the Lord's Supper, you know, mentions all these different
48:07
things. And so to me, the elements of what we're to do in a church are in the New Testament,
48:14
a word, we're to celebrate the Lord's Supper. By the way, this is a real hobby horse of mine.
48:18
A lot of churches nowadays never take the Lord's Supper. Right. Or it's just over to the side.
48:23
It's just over. You just pick it up on your way in or whatever, which unbelievers may be taking it.
48:28
You know, an unbeliever might take the Lord's Supper in our church as well, but I've told
48:32
them not to before they do it. You know, they just walk in people, you know, the Bible says examine
48:37
yourself before you do this. So you don't just walk in and pick up a, you know, bread and cup and
48:42
take it. I mean, there should be a solemn time in the church. And Jesus said as often as you do
48:47
this, there's a lot of large churches and ever take the Lord's Supper. They don't do baptisms
48:52
really in the services. Maybe it's often the youth group or here or there. And so I think there are
48:58
certain things in a church that you have to have. You have to have elders. A local church is a group
49:03
of believers that meet in a place under the leadership of elders, of leaders who celebrate the Lord's
49:11
Supper, baptism and the teaching of God's Word. I mean, that's the definition I would say of a local
49:17
church. So a lot of these churches today don't have elders. Yeah, they just have kind of a, you know,
49:22
a commission or a group of counselors. Like a committee, like a board of directors kind of thing.
49:26
Yeah, and some trim of the churches now, these large churches, they just have some of their
49:29
friends that are pastors at other churches that are their elders, you know, kind of the guys they
49:32
consult with. Well, there are people in that church. So I think to me, and this is my opinion,
49:39
and I don't want to be harsh about this, but a lot of places today that are churches, they're not
49:45
really New Testament churches. Because if you read 1 Corinthians 14, it's describing what's
49:51
happening in a church service. And over and over again in that passage, and guys can read it this
49:56
week, it says, let all things be done for edification that doesn't edify. If it edifies, and word edify
50:02
means to build up. So my understanding from the New Testament is when the churches, you know,
50:08
there's a difference between the churches scattered and when the church is gathered.
50:12
When we're gathered on the Lord's Day, the purpose of the church is to build up the saints for the
50:17
work of the ministry. That's the purpose of a gathered church. Now then we scatter and we go out
50:23
and we reach unsaved people and we minister to people and help them and do all those other things.
50:28
But I think that a church, when it comes together to gather together, if its main goal or purpose
50:35
isn't to edify the saints to go out and do the work of the ministry, then I don't think it's really
50:41
a New Testament church. And I think there are a lot of places like that today. Now can God still
50:46
use those places if there's someone up there who's giving the gospel and telling people to be saved?
50:51
Sure he can. You know, God's not confined by us having everything right. And I wouldn't say I'm
50:56
not ever would claim at our church we're doing everything right. I think God kills us the things
51:01
to do in different cultures. You know, some I've been to other countries when they got, you know,
51:06
they preach for an hour and a half. You know, their service is two or three hours. You know what I
51:09
mean? People here to have, you know, being uprising. But that's the way they do it. And they'll sing
51:13
20 songs or, you know, all these different things they do. Our services at our church are pretty
51:18
streamlined. I think there's three things we do. We praise, pray and preach. So we have some prayer
51:24
in there. We have some praise to sing and then there's preaching. And then once a month we do
51:29
the Lord's Supper and we do baptisms on a regular basis. But those are the things that we think
51:34
that we're called among. Of course, people are giving at church and there's all kinds of things
51:38
that are happening. But in discipleship and all. But still when you're gathered, it's to edify the
51:44
saints because pastors and teachers and evangelists and others are to equip the saints for the work
51:51
of the ministry. So Sundays, the Lord's Day is a day of equipping the saints for the ministry. Now,
51:57
obviously, like I said earlier, I give the gospel every Sunday because I know there are
52:02
people there who aren't saints. I mean, Jesus had 12 followers that followed him for three years.
52:07
And one of them was lost. So I know in any group of any size, there's lost people there. So I always
52:12
want to tell a lost person there how they can come to know Christ. But that's not the focus of the
52:17
message. It's just something that should always be able to be worked in and brought in very easily.
52:22
So I don't talk about that a lot and there's churches out there. There's some here in Oklahoma
52:28
City that have a totally different view of ministry than I do. And I don't go around bashing them
52:33
because if someone asks me, you know, what do you think or about, you know, I'll be glad to tell
52:38
them. But you know, sometimes some of those churches are really large and it can sound too
52:42
like a pastor like myself, like to criticize them at sour grapes or jealous or whatever. But I can
52:48
honestly say before God, I would rather pastor a church of a hundred people and be following what
52:55
the Bible says a local church should be than pastor a church of 10,000 people that's not.
53:01
Because I'm not going to stand before the Lord someday. His first question isn't going to be,
53:05
well, how many did you, did you have on Sunday? It's, where are you faithful in doing what you're
53:10
doing? Now, I do think if you are faithful, there should be a numerical growth. I mean, unless you
53:14
live in a, you know, maybe a really small community where there's not an opportunity for that, people
53:18
should be drawn to that. But that's, that's the purpose of the church. I think when we gather together
53:24
and I think that's being missed widely by many places today. Well, yeah, I think a lot of pastors
53:29
have a lost sight of, you know, the writer Hebrews tells us that they're going to have to give an
53:32
account to God someday for how they shepherded their flock, not for how many followers they had
53:37
on Instagram, not for how many people did the live stream and not for how many buildings they
53:41
built or something like that. But I'm curious like, okay, so you have churches that do church a
53:46
little bit differently, things that may be not super indicative of what would be taught as a new
53:51
testament church. But there's got to be a line to where it's like, okay, they've crossed from,
53:56
they, they're not really doing what the Bible prescribes to, no, this is a synagogue of Satan,
54:01
right? So now we're, we're getting into your territory and a revelation, but it's like,
54:04
what is that dividing line or what should people look for? Because I, you know, Mark, you know,
54:09
people look at me as a shepherd and I try to be as very, I try to be very clear on the show and in
54:15
my responses to men and all that, I am not your pastor, nor am I a pastor to begin with. Like
54:21
Joby, who's a mentor of mine, he's like, how you're, you're a prophet, not like,
54:24
tell in the future, but you're the guy speaking truth, the power, you're equipping people on how
54:28
to push back darkness and culture with different philosophies and all that. But you have not been
54:32
given a specific flock to shepherd, but you do have an audience that listens to you. So you should
54:36
steward that well. But I try to tell these guys, they'll describe their churches to me. And some
54:41
of the things their pastor is saying, and I'm like, dude, you're not a church. Like you're at a
54:45
synagogue of Satan and you can't go back there. Like you can't take your wife, you can't take your
54:50
kids, you don't go back to Sunday school, you Irish goodbye, you just leave, you just get, you know,
54:54
get out of dodge. What is that dividing line? What's that point to where like, okay, it's not
54:58
y'all are just making some unfortunate mistakes to streamline what you're doing, but you're
55:02
synagogue of Satan now. Well, I think there's, there's two different kinds of churches out there
55:07
that are not good. One is there's churches that just flat out teach false doctrine. You know,
55:11
they deny the duty of Christ. They don't believe the Bibles and the inspired word of God. They may
55:18
not believe Jesus is coming back in the future. And there's all kinds of just things that they
55:22
openly hold to that are contrary to, to scripture. But then there's another kind of church that's out
55:28
there. It's not what they're saying that's wrong. It's all the things they don't say.
55:32
So in other words, you go there and you may go there for a year and they tell you how to have a
55:38
better marriage. They talk to you about, you know, work, they talk to you about, you know, how to have
55:43
a better sex life. Just, you know, all these, these practical things, and all those are part of the
55:48
Bible. Like in Ephesians, we're getting ready to come to Ephesians five here, diverse 22 here
55:54
in the next couple weeks, you know, husbands, wives, children. I mean, that's all there when you
55:58
expos it the Bible. But that's, they just talk about all of that. And they just talk about everybody
56:05
there as well as if everybody's kind of in the same boat. They'll say, you know, God wants to
56:10
bless you this year and God wants to, you know, God's going to bless your life this year. I'm like,
56:14
well, a lot of these people in here, God isn't going to bless their life this year. But first of all,
56:18
they may not even know him. And God's going to bless your life if you're blessable. If you're
56:23
doing the things that God's calling on you to do, you may have a good life this year, just because,
56:28
you know, you're doing some things right, you've saved some money or whatever, but it's not necessarily
56:32
God's blessing. So a lot of them, they just, they kind of lump everybody together and they'll just say
56:38
all these things about the whole congregation that's there. I'm very careful to say things often like,
56:43
you know, I'll make a statement about the Bible and I'll say, if you're a believer in Christ,
56:47
in other words, there's a qualification here. You have to know Jesus for this to be true of your
56:52
life. So they just make these blanket statements about everybody. And if I'm sitting there listening
56:58
to that at some point in time, I'm thinking, no, that's not true. I'll hear pastors, you know,
57:01
sometimes say, for everybody here today, you know, 2026 is going to be the best year of your life.
57:07
And so this and this and that will, for a lot of those people there, this is going to be a hard
57:11
year. Right. Your spouse is going to die. What are you sitting that person up for?
57:14
Yeah, you're going to get cancer. Now, God can see you through all of that. He will see you
57:20
through all that. If you're a believer and you're trusting him, but it doesn't mean it's going to
57:23
be your best life. So they're saying all these, those kinds of things, but a lot of churches,
57:28
they never, ever give a clear presentation of the gospel. They'll, they'll, they'll talk about the
57:34
gospel, but they'll never tell you what it is. So those churches, to me, their error is in what
57:40
they don't say, rather than what they're saying that maybe is wrong, but they're just leaving out
57:47
the core of Christianity, which is telling people on a very regular basis, you know,
57:53
you're lost, you're separated from God. And the only hope you have is in Jesus Christ.
57:58
And if you go to... Why are they, why would they, that seems to be the point, like, I guess,
58:02
why would they leave that out? Are they scared to do it? They don't want to seem judgmental? Are
58:06
they dumb? Some of them don't, some of them aren't believers. You know, when people ask me about
58:10
moving to a different place or send me emails about a church, this seems so elementary. But the
58:16
first thing I always put there is say, make sure the pastor is a believer, a true believer in Christ.
58:20
I mean, there's pastors out there all over the place. I know them all over Oklahoma City. I mean,
58:25
who they are, what churches they're in, they're, they're lost. Yeah, they've been attracted to
58:29
ministry for social reasons, to, you know, just to help people. You know, I mean, there's people that
58:35
are, you know, that are LGBTQ, they're transsexual, they're pastors, you know, of churches that are
58:43
lost. So that's the most important thing I always say, if you have a pastor who's a believer in Christ,
58:49
God's going to be working in that person's life. Yeah. They're going to save some, they're going to,
58:55
they're going to say things at least somewhere along the way. They're going to be teaching the
58:58
Bible and saying some things that are correct. I think a lot of these people are lost. I think
59:04
a lot of them may be a believer, but they don't really want to study the Bible. They think it kind
59:09
of turns people off. If you get into too much detail, they don't want to be controversial.
59:13
They think that really the best thing they can do is just kind of help people. A lot of these
59:17
self-help topics and all of that. So I think a lot of them may have, you know, altruistic motives,
59:22
you know, they're wanting to help these people with all this. And their view kind of is, you know,
59:25
doctrine is kind of divisive and it's deep. It's too profound for people to understand. So
59:30
I'll just kind of help them with their everyday life, you know, problems. There's an old guy I
59:34
heard years ago say, you know, you have a lot of churches, you have a mild-mannered man standing
59:39
up in front of a lot of mild-mannered people, teaching them how to be more mild-mannered.
59:43
And then that's kind of what it is, you know, just, it's just how to, how to live, you know, a better
59:49
life. You know, one of the things I thought about years ago is you take the young people at the
59:53
church, at Faith Bible Church, I've gone and spoken to them a lot and interacted with them.
59:58
These kids are smart. Yeah. You know, they're taking calculus, they're taking chemistry. I mean,
1:00:02
they're taking physics. I mean, they're way smarter than I am that they've, you know, I've forgotten
1:00:06
anything ever learned about any of that stuff. They're bright. And so a lot of pastors are like,
1:00:11
well, now I don't want to get up and use words like justification or sanctification and get into
1:00:15
all this stuff. I'm like, these kids are smart. Yeah. And the parents are smart too. But all you
1:00:20
got to do if you use a word like justification, just tell them what it means. And then most of
1:00:25
them after you tell them wants, they're pretty smart people. They'll remember what it means or
1:00:28
sanctification or all that. So it's this kind of dumbing down we're acting like that the people
1:00:33
in our churches are too stupid to understand these things. And really, even if you're not some
1:00:39
highly formally educated person, a lot of the people, the smartest people I've ever met,
1:00:44
are not formally educated people. They're bright. And people want to know, they want to know truth,
1:00:50
they want to know why should I believe this? What do I really believe? What does the Bible say about
1:00:55
these really important topics? And I think we're preachers who don't systematically teach the Bible
1:01:01
are robbing their people. But I love what Donald Gray Barnhouse said years ago about
1:01:06
treat teaching through the Bible like he did. He said, if I don't teach through the Bible this
1:01:11
way, he goes, I'm robbing my people. But he says, the worst thing I'm doing is I'm robbing myself.
1:01:17
Because he said, the person who gets blessed the most by me teaching the Bible like I do is
1:01:22
myself. And so I'm the greatest beneficiary of my own study that I do every week. I don't tell
1:01:29
people 10% of what I've learned. So I'm the beneficiary and I don't want to rob my own life
1:01:36
of the opportunity to be transformed by God. Because when I'm studying for these messages,
1:01:42
God is transforming me. And then in turn, he can use that to help transform other people. So
1:01:48
pastors who don't do that, that's my greatest sadness when I go by churches and I know where
1:01:54
it's not happening. I'll think to myself often that pastors robbing himself of the opportunity
1:02:00
for his own life to be transformed. When I think, I think you're spot on because I'm pretty sure
1:02:05
I told you this, but this would have been 2023 or yeah, I think it's 2023. I get to the end of the
1:02:12
year. It's December. I kind of, I'm evaluating what's happened that year and you know, looking
1:02:16
forward to the next year. And I had read 54 individual books for preparation for interviews for the
1:02:23
podcast. Most books I'd ever read in a calendar year, some people read over a hundred, but I'm a
1:02:28
slow reader. It's kind of hard for me. My comprehension is not great. And so it's a slog for me really.
1:02:33
And these were serious books. I mean, between 200 and 500 pages, like these were these were full-on
1:02:37
books. And I felt so good about myself. I was, oh man, I'm satisfied because man, look at all this
1:02:43
I've done and look at how great the interviews turned out. I am the man. And immediately, it was
1:02:47
like God took a, you know, frying panache, bong, right up against the side of my head. And the
1:02:52
question I popped into my brain was, how many books of the Bible did you read this year? And
1:02:57
the questions got worse, because not only did I not read 54 books of the Bible, I didn't read 54
1:03:02
chapters of the Bible. I probably didn't read 54 pages of the Bible that year. And I was just like,
1:03:07
uh, hold up. Wait a minute. This is a disaster. Like, I should have not read any of those books.
1:03:14
I should have just been, you know, investing in this, you know, the Bible's not technically a book.
1:03:17
It's a library, right? But yeah, I mean, I should have been investing in this library books and I
1:03:20
was investing in the other one. Now, some of those had scripture in them, right? They had passages
1:03:25
in there and some of them were devotionals and, you know, some of them were expositing certain
1:03:28
passages or whatever. And that's how the forging table started, where me and three other laymen,
1:03:33
typically members of faith Bible are going through books of the Bible, going through, uh, you know,
1:03:39
chapter by chapter, hour by hour is how we've approached everything up to Romans, but we've gone
1:03:43
through Genesis and Nehemiah and we've done some Psalms and Proverbs and we did the book of Matthew
1:03:48
and then we went into Acts and the benefit I get from the personal study leading up to that,
1:03:54
because I told the guys that come and do that, the sit down, this isn't a performance. Yeah,
1:03:59
there's lights and, you know, expensive cameras and microphones and like, there's all the things,
1:04:02
but you're not performing for anybody. I want to show men around the globe, hey, we're doing Bible
1:04:07
study as real dudes and you can do that too. And same thing with the daily blade, which, which you
1:04:12
just did, which, you know, I got so many positive, you know, compliments and, and, you know, comments
1:04:17
about that, the amount of prep that I put into those lessons and the amount of prep that you have
1:04:22
to put into a lesson that can be truncated down to five minutes is substantial and almost no one
1:04:26
will ever get to experience or see that information except for you. And I just think that that's like
1:04:31
so tremendously valuable and a great message to anyone listening to this. Going back to,
1:04:37
I got asked this question because my wife, I asked her before and I was like, Hey, if there's
1:04:41
some you wanted to ask Mark, you know, what would you, because I was like, I was joking with her
1:04:44
beforehand. I'm like, I don't get nervous to talk to people, but I feel like I'm talking to like
1:04:48
this combo of my boss and my dad. That's like coming in here and I just don't want to look like a fool.
1:04:52
But she was like the very first thing she thought of it immediately. She's like, how does Mark have
1:04:58
so many stories? Like every sermon you do, you sprinkle in these, these anecdotes, these stories,
1:05:04
and they're not like preacher stories. A lot of them are historical or Hey, there was this preacher
1:05:08
back in the 1600s that said and did this. Do you got a book somewhere that you won't share with
1:05:12
anybody? Like, do you because you have more stories than like an old southern grandpa like you just,
1:05:17
they just kind of come out of you. So where do they all come from? Well, you know,
1:05:21
something I learned years ago when I was a boy growing up in church, a metropolitan church, you know,
1:05:26
at Dallas seminary preachers, a lot of guys that would come in and preach a really good,
1:05:30
really good preacher, some of the better preachers of the day would come in. And I noticed when I was
1:05:34
a young guy when I'd be sitting there listening, if when a guy would just tell any kind of a little
1:05:38
anecdote or a thing like that, it would kind of the anecdotes and those things are like the windows
1:05:43
of a house. You're kind of in this house with no windows. You're you're hearing the Bible taught
1:05:48
and all of a sudden an anecdote or an illustration is like a window that opens up a like, I see how
1:05:54
this applies to life where I see how someone back in church history, how this applied to their life,
1:06:00
and I want to be like that. That's an example of what I want to be like. And one of the things I
1:06:05
noticed early on in preaching, my self preaching is you can be preaching along. And you can tell,
1:06:10
you know this when you're talking, you can tell that audiences with you, right, or when they pull
1:06:14
back or not, like I've gone to churches where you can tell the people aren't used to really studying
1:06:18
the Bible. Yeah, and you kind of open the Bible and you're doing what you're doing. You're kind of
1:06:21
looking out these people are kind of dead, you know, they're not used to this or used to something
1:06:25
different. But whenever you say something like at the beginning of, you know, like the other day,
1:06:30
when I was whatever, everybody looks up there, or you say something like, you know, this reminds
1:06:36
me of this of a story, you know, of this thing, everyone looks looks back up there. And I know
1:06:42
well enough myself, others, people's minds wander a bit. And stories and illustrations in sermons
1:06:49
should never ever be. And I don't ever want to use them for this. They're not filler.
1:06:53
You know, they're not just, hey, I just got to throw something funny in here, but they're not
1:06:57
filler. They need to have a purpose within within the sermon and fit within what you're doing. You
1:07:02
know, a good sermon is going to have a beginning. You're going to have an ending to it. It's going
1:07:06
to make sense all the way through. But but I feel like it's very important to illustrate Jesus,
1:07:11
you know, told parables. I mean, you know, you know, a man so on seed, you know, and he probably
1:07:16
pointed over to a hillside where there's a guy over there. So in the seed and four different kinds
1:07:20
of ground it falls on. Well, they all know about that. So it's important to do it. But get into
1:07:24
your main question over the years, I just I try to read a lot. And I've keep a file on my computer.
1:07:31
I've got all my books. I don't try to put it all into file, but I'll put in there like under
1:07:34
certain topics, you know, you know, HA iron side, you know, commentary on Ephesians page 31,
1:07:41
you know, so then I know where to go find that, that thing that I have. But I'm just reading that
1:07:46
week as well on that topic a lot. I've got a really good friend of mine in California named
1:07:51
Philip de Corsi. He spoke into our church before. He's my closest friend in ministry,
1:07:57
actually, Philip and then Jonathan Murphy took over for Chuck Swindall down at Stonebrier
1:08:02
church in Frisco, Texas. He's my other closest friend in ministry. My two closest friends,
1:08:08
they're both from Northern Ireland. Yeah. Now they both have the good accent. So they're good
1:08:11
to listen to man. They're like adds to the presenters. Yeah, makes them sound better.
1:08:17
But Philip and I are great friends. I just talked to him this morning. We talk all the time and he
1:08:21
and I help each other too. But not every week, but a lot of weeks you'll send me a text and say,
1:08:26
Hey, I'm in whatever, you know, if you anything that you really have good on this topic, you'll
1:08:30
send my way and we do that back and forth. So I love that because that doubles our reservoir.
1:08:38
Right. Because both of us have studied a lot. We kind of try to do the same thing.
1:08:43
So I've got a ton of books that I bought over the years. One of my favorite guys is Robert
1:08:49
James Morgan. I quote him a lot at church, but he's got books like on hymns. He's got books on
1:08:54
devotionals of church history, something that happened on every day of the year in church history
1:08:59
that's famous. These old stories of, you know, tremendous saints and what they went through and
1:09:04
how God used them. I just all kinds of books like that that I have that I read. And I read them for
1:09:10
my own personal enjoyment. But any book that I read, I do what I call I mark it up. I mark it and
1:09:17
then I go and reference what is in that book in my file of where I can find later a story or an
1:09:24
illustration or a quote about a certain topic. But I find that those quotes sometimes are just
1:09:30
thrilling to me. You know, some guy in church history, what he's done or what he said. I try
1:09:35
not to use as many personal stories. A lot of guys I hear every story is about themselves,
1:09:42
you know, their wife, their children, their family. That's fine. And if there's a really good one,
1:09:47
I had a great one a few weeks ago about my grandson was over to us and woke me up in the
1:09:50
middle of the night, you know, staring at you. You know, that was a good one. But I find that
1:09:56
preachers that do that all the time. Sometimes they don't, they're not reading enough other
1:10:01
material. So it's just everything's about their life. And it kind of can sound a little self-centered.
1:10:06
You know, in Paul said, we don't preach ourselves, but Christ crucified. And so I never want to be
1:10:11
a preacher that just kind of sounds like you're up there talking about yourself all the time.
1:10:15
Because there's so many great stories from great saints of the past that are, I mean,
1:10:21
there are a million times better than a dumb story about my life, you know. So you want to
1:10:26
work those things in together a little bit. And if there's a great story about your own life,
1:10:30
but one of the things you always want to avoid is every time you tell a story from your own life,
1:10:35
you don't always want to be the hero of the story. In other words, sometimes tell a story
1:10:40
about yourself or when you failed. So it's not you're up there every week. And these people are saying,
1:10:45
man, I could never be like that guy. You know, he's just every story. He's witnessing the people
1:10:49
every week. And you know, sometimes when you're talking about yourself, you need to be transparent
1:10:54
and tell about a failure or a doubt in your own life or an anxiety or a fear. So the people can
1:10:59
realize, you know, that guy's a real person. And he struggles just like I do. And he has,
1:11:04
he has the same resources available to him. And if he doesn't avail himself of those resources,
1:11:10
you know, inherently, I have no more spiritual ability or power than anybody else, not
1:11:14
than any other person in our church. What I have in me is the dependence on the Holy Spirit.
1:11:21
Right. If I do that, there's power, there's energy. If I don't, then I don't have it either.
1:11:27
But people sometimes just think if you're a pastor, you just kind of inherently
1:11:31
this kind of more godly person than other people are. That's not true.
1:11:35
Well, I mean, so when you self-deprecate, some people do that as kind of like a faux humility
1:11:40
thing. They can, yeah. But whenever I share stories, whether I'm speaking or on the podcast,
1:11:45
if it's a story that has me in it, it's either me throwing me under the bus because of something
1:11:50
so stupid that I did or said, right? Or if I'm in the story and I had a part in the positive
1:11:56
outcome, I'm pointing to the positive outcome or the person that in, you know, experience the
1:12:02
positive outcome as opposed to, look at me, I'm this grand doctor and I was able to do all these
1:12:07
things. But I do it for the similar reason to where it's like, because I tell people all the time,
1:12:12
please do not put your faith in me. Don't put your faith in your favorite podcast or pastor,
1:12:15
athlete, politician, anything like that. Put your faith in Christ because all these, the rest of
1:12:20
these people are going to let you down at some point and it's basically guaranteed. And so,
1:12:23
but I do, I mean, I know you don't need any book ideas because you've released about $11
1:12:26
billion up to this point. But book idea, we could do like, you know, Mark Hitchcock's Almanac or
1:12:31
something like that. And we just have like all of your stories. And then what it'll just be hyper
1:12:36
linked to the book that they have to go by and like the page number has to go on to. I mean,
1:12:39
my friend Philip, of course, he has, he has a system that's just, I think just massive.
1:12:46
He's got probably 10 times what I have. But still, even with all that, like, you know,
1:12:50
he talked to me this morning and said, Hey, I'm finishing up whatever if you got anything on the,
1:12:54
you know, so we help each other and Jonathan the same thing. He's starting the book of Jonah.
1:12:58
He told me in a while, I said, well, hey, I preach Jonah a while back. So I sent him a lot of my
1:13:02
stuff on Jonah. And it's not no one's plagiarizing. You're taking and making it all your own stuff.
1:13:06
But it's good to have see what other guys have done, how they've thought it through. Actually,
1:13:10
my friend Philip and I in California only twice a year, but sometimes Christmas and Easter will
1:13:15
actually do a certain work on a sermon together. That's different. You know, we both work on it and
1:13:20
just kind of help each other. But I was telling my wife, she said, well, you guys need to be careful
1:13:24
people to think you're plagiarizing. I said, well, we can't be plagiarizing. We preach at the same
1:13:28
day. I mean, you know, so anyway, we have fun kind of doing that. We'll get the same topic and
1:13:33
kind of work on it together. So it's a fun thing for us to do to kind of help each other.
1:13:37
All right. Well, let's let's also go back to you talked about the evolution of the church,
1:13:41
because I thought was so interesting. Whenever you told me like, look, Kyle, I've been at the same
1:13:43
church, but I've pastored five different churches, you know, 150 people. And now, I mean, what's what's
1:13:48
faith Bible at now? I get asked that quite a bit like, well, this will cut the last couple weeks.
1:13:51
We've had about close to 3000. I think we're actually a couple weeks ago, about 3100. I think last week,
1:13:56
about 2,900. So it ranges pretty much, you know, you get down Sundays. Now are down Sundays,
1:14:01
2,500. So it's 25 to 2,700 to about low 3000s every week. But what's amazing is we have all these,
1:14:08
these retirement homes. There's almost a 1000 people in retirement homes that they're gathering
1:14:14
together and people from our church are going there. And the thing that staggered me, and I wish
1:14:19
it wasn't this way in some ways, but the live streams on Sunday mornings. I wish a lot of those
1:14:24
people were there, but we don't have room for them. So yeah, you know, well, so I'm actually
1:14:29
curious about that, because a lot of people made declarative statements like, look,
1:14:34
church online is not church. Okay. So if you're not infirmed, right, if you're not like in the
1:14:40
hospital, or, you know, you have all your limbs have been broken recently, and you can't go or
1:14:45
if you're sick, or, you know, you're afraid of getting sick and bringing that home to someone in
1:14:48
your home that is, you know, sickly, that you have to gather with, with the saints in person.
1:14:55
But like even looking at how that goes, you know, because I was at Faith Bible when it hockey
1:15:00
stick, right? So I don't know if that would have been 2021, 2022. So yeah, I was right in there about
1:15:04
22. I think the addition was added to the building and it was a major field of dreams if you build
1:15:09
it, they will come because it basically filled up immediately. And I remember talking to Connie
1:15:14
and some of the folks over in the kids area, they're like, we're adding five or six new whole
1:15:19
families to the nursery every week. And it was just like, what is going on? And a lot of people
1:15:25
were leaving other ministries and other churches in our area, because I think 2020 broke some people
1:15:31
or at like some scales fail off of some people's eyes, they realized what kind of teaching and
1:15:35
leadership they were under or lack thereof. And then they wanted something that was a little bit
1:15:40
more meaty, not as much milk. But like, what, what were the growing pains like? Because you know,
1:15:44
you're growing as a church, while society is changing, while the internet becomes ubiquitous.
1:15:50
And then smartphone, super computers and people's pockets, more computation power than, you know,
1:15:55
the technology that took the astronauts to the moon. And then you get into this whole world to
1:15:59
where it's like, well, if your church doesn't have like a live stream or a church online, you know,
1:16:03
people aren't going to be as interested. And it's almost like, how do you navigate each one of those
1:16:08
doublings as a church and remain faithful as the pastor and the elders?
1:16:13
Well, you know, like for myself, I'm doing the same thing I did 35 years ago, you know, I'm kind
1:16:17
of a rut kind of guy. I'm not a real I'm not a great visionary. I'm not a guy that, you know,
1:16:22
I just love to study the Bible and teach the Bible. That's what I do. That's what I've done at our
1:16:25
church. The two things I like to do study and teach the Bible and meet with folks in our church,
1:16:29
and we're trying to encourage them. So I'm doing what I've been doing. And I think you're right,
1:16:33
in 2020, 2021, a lot of things happened. A lot of people realize what wasn't happening in their
1:16:38
churches. But one of the things I'm so glad about is when all that happened, we had just moved
1:16:43
into this new sanctuary. We'd only been there like a month and all this happened, but we had the
1:16:46
live stream capability. We didn't have it very, very good before. So that was gone in again,
1:16:51
in his providence, you know, had us ready to do that. And so, but then a lot of people got used to
1:16:57
that whenever we came back from COVID, one of the first sermons I preached was in Hebrews chapter
1:17:02
10. Don't forsake the assembling of yourselves together as a matter of some is. I'm encouraging
1:17:07
one another to do it all the more as you see the day drawing near. If Christ's coming back,
1:17:11
be in church. So I'm calling people back. But there's various reasons people don't come.
1:17:18
At our church now, it's crowded. It is hard to get in and out on one road. I mean,
1:17:23
I realize some of that people should still do it. But we've got some things in the future we're
1:17:29
trying to do here to help alleviate some of that. But it is a benefit because I do know there are
1:17:34
people who watch for a while and then they come, you know, they don't want to test you out, see
1:17:39
what you're about. There are a lot of people that are older that are at our church. There's always
1:17:44
people every given week that they're, you know, we probably have 5,000 members, about 3,000 are there
1:17:50
every week. Well, a lot of people that aren't there, maybe they're out of town, they have a child
1:17:54
that's sick. And so the live streams, a tremendous tool for them to be able to keep up with what we're
1:17:59
doing, even if they're at home. But what you don't want is just people that just stay home every week.
1:18:05
And that's what they do. And I think there's a lot of that today. But you really can't control that.
1:18:11
I mean, you just you encourage people to be there and to be involved and to be a part of what's
1:18:16
happening. And you know, you can't really control what people don't do. A lot of those people maybe
1:18:22
have never even been to our church. I don't know who they are. But you know, I'm glad for the
1:18:27
technology. But with all this technology, there's a downside to it as well. It can make things so
1:18:34
convenient that people aren't there with the other believers and don't know what's going on in
1:18:38
people's lives or not sacrificing and all of that. So it's a difficult problem nowadays in our
1:18:46
churches. I think one I think it allows for people to check a box because I remember I had a job with
1:18:52
Major League Baseball in 2012. I was in New York City and I knew it was just like a contract job.
1:18:56
So I'd be there, you know, maximum of nine, 10 months. And so I kind of did the church online
1:19:01
thing. But there was no gathering in New York. If any of you guys have lived there, if you visit
1:19:05
there, you're too distracted by pizza and Times Square and whatever. But when you live there,
1:19:09
you're in this city with these five boroughs and millions of people. And if you run into a
1:19:15
Christian, you're like, Oh my gosh, I found the other one. Like that's how it feels, how it can
1:19:19
feel in that city. And there are faithful preachers in New York City doing very good work there.
1:19:23
But it's just so easy to check a box and remain anonymous, especially if you're more default,
1:19:30
introverted, you don't really want to get out and meet new people. You're at that kind of stodgy
1:19:34
era in life, which for some people, it happens at an earlier age. Like, I've told my wife,
1:19:38
even in my 30s, I'm like, I want to be new friends, right? I got a bunch of people that need stuff
1:19:41
from me and want stuff from me. Like, I don't want any new friends. I don't even have time for my
1:19:44
actual friends. But I feel like it's about at this point that we need to go ahead and pull the roof
1:19:50
off of something that we need to discuss. Because I get asked about our Calvinism,
1:19:55
reform theology, Armenianism, I could ask about that a lot. At this table, this group has
1:20:02
fought and debated and the different questions I could ask on both sides. And some people have
1:20:06
gotten mad and had to come back and say, Hey, sorry for what I said, like that kind of thing.
1:20:11
And there's kind of been these knockdown dragouts. I get sent stuff all the time from people in my
1:20:15
audience, depending upon what side they fall on. And they're like, you know, even every now and then
1:20:20
whenever you hit something very clearly, that's part of tulip, there will even be people in our
1:20:25
Sunday school that are shocked, like appalled, like I didn't know Mark believe that. But then
1:20:30
there's other people where they're like, wait, where does faith Bible land on tulip? And so for
1:20:34
tool for those that don't know, so T is total depravity. You as unconditional election, L is limited
1:20:40
atonement. I is a resistible grace and P is perseverance of the saints. Boom, did it. So I guess,
1:20:46
first of all, if you would like to even define those for us in the most generic way possible,
1:20:51
but then I've heard different things like, Oh, Mark's a solid four and a half or maybe he's four,
1:20:56
but he can be convinced of five. And but you know, is there a difference between what you believe
1:21:01
personally versus what the church, you know, espouses as part of our core doctrine or teachings? But
1:21:07
we need to go ahead and get into that because a lot of people have been asking. So here we go.
1:21:10
Yeah, you know, the five points of Calvinism, you know, that was all hammered out back in the
1:21:15
Senate of Dort, you know, back in the Netherlands in the early 1600s. You had Jacob Arminius,
1:21:21
who was, you know, remonstrating against this Calvinist teaching that had kind of come along
1:21:28
in that time through Calvin and through others. And so they, you know, they meet at Dort in the
1:21:31
Netherlands and they hammer out now they didn't, they didn't have to look back in. It's just kind
1:21:35
of these, they were reacting to these kind of five points of our many that Arminius had.
1:21:40
But yeah, you know, they're in order there. And I'm what's called a four point Calvinist. So I'm
1:21:47
two up, you know, I don't believe in the L. But again, what I'm trying to do, I don't want to be,
1:21:52
I don't want to be someone that just slavishly follows some system. You know, if there's parts of
1:21:57
a system that I believe are good and are biblical, I want to hold to those. But if there's a part of
1:22:02
it, I don't believe biblical, I'm not going to hold to it, just to hold to hold to some manmade
1:22:06
system. But but it starts with total depravity, because here's a very important point to me that
1:22:12
I've made over all the years, your anthropology determines your soteriology. So what I mean by
1:22:18
that is your view of man of humanity determines your view of salvation. In other words, if humans
1:22:24
are so fallen and so depraved that they'll never make a choice on their own for God, then God has
1:22:30
to make the first move. But if there's some glimmer of light down inside of humanity, it's left there
1:22:35
where we have a, you know, some type of a will or a free will or whatever term people want to use
1:22:40
for it, then a man can make the first move himself or a woman can. So your view of humanity determines
1:22:47
your view of salvation. And so total depravity teaches that people are fallen and the word total
1:22:53
means every part of us is fallen. It doesn't mean that every person's as bad as they could be. I mean,
1:22:58
everybody's not running around, you know, raping and killing and pillaging. So we're not everybody's
1:23:03
not as bad as they could be. We're all as bad off as we could be. So we're bad off. Every part of
1:23:09
us are mind or will or emotions. Every part of us is fallen. And so if my will is fallen as well as
1:23:17
my mind and my emotions, then my will will never make the choice for God left to itself. That's
1:23:23
what total depravity means. That my will is tied to my nature. And my nature is to reject God. And
1:23:30
so in my will, I'll never make that choice on my own. You know, a lot of verses that support that.
1:23:34
I mean, you going through Romans, you know, there's none who seeks after God, you know, no, not one,
1:23:38
you know, that means left to ourselves. And we're not going to go into that, you know,
1:23:42
Ephesians chapter two verse one, we're dead and trespasses and sins. Well, you know, you don't go
1:23:46
down to the funeral home and go start trying to teach a corpse about, you know, mathematics or
1:23:52
something. I mean, they're dead. So if you really believe people are dead and they're separated from
1:23:57
God. So that's where it starts with total depravity. That's your anthropology, your view of man.
1:24:01
Well, then if you believe in total depravity, then you believe that God has to make the first move.
1:24:07
That moves you to unconditional election. That God made the choice for me that I would never,
1:24:12
that I wouldn't make for him. And that it's unconditional in the sense that it's not conditioned on,
1:24:17
you know, that God thinks I'm a good person or, you know, that he knows I'm going to make a
1:24:21
choice for him. It's totally not conditioned on anything within me. God just simply chose me
1:24:26
because he chose to do so. Well, then, then the next was limited atonement. Limited atonement,
1:24:32
sometimes called particular redemption, teaches that then Christ only died for the elect for those
1:24:38
that he chose. And that's the one point that I don't agree with. I think Christ made a universal
1:24:43
provision, but only those who are elect will receive the good of that. And it's based on different
1:24:49
verses like in, in 1 John 2, 2, it says about Jesus, he himself is the propitiation for our sins,
1:24:56
not for ours only, but those of the whole world. Well, the whole world, they're the only other
1:25:00
time a whole world as used in 1 John is in 1 John 5. I think it's verse 19, or maybe it's verse 20,
1:25:06
where it says the whole world lies in the wicked one. Well, the whole world there means the whole
1:25:11
world. So if he was a propitiation for the sins of the whole world, then that means everybody.
1:25:16
In other words, he made a provision for everybody. I'm over in 2 Peter 2, it's talking about false
1:25:23
teachers there. And it says they even deny the master who bought them. So Christ bought or paid
1:25:29
the price for these false teachers. That doesn't mean they're going to be saved, but he paid the
1:25:33
price for them. So I think the Bible teaches a universal provision of salvation, even though Christ
1:25:39
will only save the elect. Now, people say, well, why did he die for people and make a provision that
1:25:44
he's not going to save? I don't know. I just think that's what the Bible says. And then the eyes,
1:25:49
irresistible grace, or irresistible call, which means that if God has chosen someone before the
1:25:55
foundation of the world, that God will, at some point in their life, call them and draw them to
1:25:59
himself. And when he does that, that call will be irresistible. In other words, they won't resist
1:26:06
it. They'll want it. You know, like for instance, in Romans chapter 8, you have, you know, whom he
1:26:14
foreknew, he predestined. And then it says, whom he called, he justified, and whom he justified,
1:26:21
he glorified. It was called the five golden links of salvation. God foreknew us, he predestined us,
1:26:27
he called us, he justified us, and he will glorify us. So it's interesting, notice there's no seepage
1:26:32
there. It says, everyone that he foreknew, he predestined, and everyone he predestines, he calls,
1:26:38
and it says whom he called, he justified. So if you get that call from God, you're going to be
1:26:46
justified. In other words, you can't resist it. So when the gospel goes out, you know, I kind of
1:26:51
Sunday morning when I give the gospel to the crowd, that's the general call. I'm just telling
1:26:56
anybody there, if you're here today and you've never accepted Christ as your Savior, you need to do
1:27:00
that. That's a general call, but some people there will get the special call. In other words,
1:27:05
down in their heart, the Holy Spirit will be calling them and drawing them to Christ. And it says,
1:27:10
whom he called, he justified. So when you get that call, it's over, man, you're getting, it's like
1:27:16
Saul on the road to tarsus on the road to Damascus. He says, Lord, who are you and what do you want
1:27:21
me to do? You know, I mean, this guy is going to go kill Christians. I mean, it was an irresistible
1:27:26
call. And then the P is perseverance of the saints. It's defined differently in some ways,
1:27:31
but the way it's come today, really what it's come to mean is not that you and I will persevere to the
1:27:38
end, but it's that God will persevere. In other words, God will persevere in keeping us. And it's
1:27:44
kind of synonymous with what's called eternal security, or you know, some people call it once
1:27:48
saved, always saved. But again, they fit together because if I'm totally depraved and I can't make
1:27:53
the first move, God in eternity pass chose me. And then in time, he calls me to himself. And if the
1:28:00
work is all of God choosing me and then calling me, then it's something I can't lose. Because I
1:28:05
didn't do a bunch of good stuff to get it. So I can't do bad stuff and lose it.
1:28:09
And there again, what happens though, with most people is on this issue is everybody goes to
1:28:15
proof texts. You know, what about this verse? Well, there's a verse over here says, whosoever will,
1:28:19
well, this verse over here says this, but I think you have to look at it in a larger scope of
1:28:24
just what what are what is a human being, a lost human being able to do? What will they,
1:28:31
how will they, how can they respond to God? And it says in 1 Corinthians 2 verse 14,
1:28:36
the natural man doesn't respond to the things of God, they're foolish to foolishness to him.
1:28:41
And then it says, he cannot comprehend them. Then just say he won't, he can't. So if he can't,
1:28:48
then somehow his comprehension has to be moved upon for him to want to desire that. So I think
1:28:54
when you start out with humanity and what is a lost person, how bad off are we, that determines
1:29:02
a lot of what you'll believe about these other things. And then when you get like the perseverance
1:29:05
of the saints or, you know, once saved, always saved or eternal security, you know, you think
1:29:11
about this, if someone can lose their salvation, when we get saved, there's a list of dozens of
1:29:18
things that happen. You know, the Holy Spirit comes and lives inside of you. You're born again,
1:29:22
you're regenerated, you're positionally sanctified, you're justified. I mean, you can just go on and
1:29:28
on of all the things that happen. And think about the idea then, if someone can get unsaved,
1:29:33
they have to get disinherited of the Spirit. Their sins that were disimputed have to be imputed
1:29:39
back to them. They have to be unjustified, unsanctified. The Holy Spirit's got to be pulled out of them.
1:29:45
And then you say, well, then if they come to the Lord again, then they can get saved again.
1:29:48
Well, then they're going to get re forgiven and reborn again and re justified to me that
1:29:54
the Bible never presents salvation like that in any way. It's, it, it's whom he foreknew,
1:30:00
he predestined, he predestined, he called, whom he called, he justified. And it says,
1:30:04
whom he justified, he glorified. And it's in the past tense, glorification is a done deal.
1:30:10
Right. So if I've already been, if glorification is a done deal, I can't get lost along the way.
1:30:15
One in Romans six, you know, talks about if we're buried with Christ and his death,
1:30:20
we're also raised with him in his resurrection. And so it's like, if you were dead and then
1:30:25
raised to life, it kind of goes back to that. Okay. Do you die again for the opportunity to be
1:30:30
resurrected again, it becomes a little bit of an issue. But when we get into some of the objections
1:30:35
and my goodness, we have spent years going through some of the objections here and I've listened to
1:30:39
ours, Mark, hours of debates. And here's the thing about those debates, it'll be three hours.
1:30:44
This guy bringing his stuff, the other guy bringing his stuff. There's no agreement. Everybody,
1:30:47
the audience is super confused and nobody leaves happy. That's, that's how basically all these
1:30:51
things turn out. But the, the main, there's not really a main one. There are a lot of ones that
1:30:56
even still bother me, even though I would, I'm trying to do better about just submitting to what
1:31:00
the Bible says, regardless of how I feel about it, right? Like I put myself below whatever the
1:31:05
Bible says. But the irresistible grace I'm haunted by the great C.S. Lewis's quote from
1:31:11
Mayor Christianity, where he basically said, I'm paraphrasing that a world full of automatons is
1:31:17
not a world worth creating. And so he was talking about the, you know, the presence or the existence
1:31:22
of love, a robot cannot love, right? I mean, people are talking about AI right now, they're
1:31:27
trying to like inject AI with like morality, because like if it's going to give you like,
1:31:32
financial advice, like a fiduciary would, well, there has to be some sort of recognition of morality
1:31:36
and right and wrong. But as of right now, AI is a sociopath, it basically can't take emotions,
1:31:42
it can feign emotions, but not actually have them. And so that's the struggle with the irresistible
1:31:47
grace part is it's like, Oh, okay, well, you have no choice in the matter, because there is some
1:31:52
interplay between the sovereignty of God and man's free will and decision making nerves.
1:31:57
But with irresistible grace, it seems like there absolutely is not any free will. And that's still
1:32:02
a sticking point for me in my brain that I can't, I don't have a hermeneutic for how I could,
1:32:06
you know, understand it myself, much less explained into somebody else.
1:32:09
Yeah, like what I would say is we have a will, but it's not a free will, because, you know,
1:32:14
free will, I can't make myself run a four, four, four, eight or bench press, you know, 500 pounds.
1:32:18
I mean, you know, a lot of things I can't will myself through my will isn't free to do whatever
1:32:22
I want. There's a will. But my, my, you know, Martin Luther wrote the bondage of the will.
1:32:29
And so that's the question is, what can my will do? What will a will of a lost person?
1:32:35
What is that will able to do? Now, lost people can, you know, will to go to medical school,
1:32:41
or they can will to do well in school or not, they can will to, you know, drink too much,
1:32:46
or they can, you know, will to wear whatever kind of clothes they want or drive whatever kind of
1:32:50
car they want. So people have a will to do all kinds of things. But the question is, will it,
1:32:56
will a person ever exercise their will to choose God on their own without him having acted first
1:33:04
upon them? You know, even Arminianism, classic Arminianism believes that there's something called
1:33:11
Provenient Grace, that God has kind of worked in every person and given everybody the ability
1:33:17
to make the choice. So even classic Arminianism doesn't just believe that man just has a free will
1:33:24
on his own. They realize that God, that they would say that God has worked in every person's
1:33:29
life, proviniently, then to give them the ability to make a choice. But I don't think I don't even
1:33:36
believe in the Provenient Grace. I just think that people that are lost, they'll never make the
1:33:41
choice for God. That's how fallen we are. In other words, when Adam fell, his nature fell,
1:33:48
and when it went in with that part of that fallen nature is his will became
1:33:52
in bondage to that fallen nature. And so a lost person will just never, they'll never come on their
1:33:59
own. Now they may have interest in spiritual things. I mean, maybe all kinds of these. They may be a
1:34:04
pastor, but they'll never have that desire. And what I would say about Irresistible Grace is,
1:34:10
it's kind of like, you know, Saul on the road to Damascus. I mentioned that earlier, Acts chapter
1:34:14
9, he's going along, he's going to Damascus to basically, you know, kill and prison Christians.
1:34:20
And the radiant resurrected Christ appears to him. And he says, you know, Saul, Saul,
1:34:25
you know, why are you persecuting me? And Saul's questions, it's two questions. And I will say,
1:34:30
these are the two questions every person needs to ask, Lord, who are you? And what do you want me
1:34:34
to do? Those are just two questions. But there was no resistance, zero. You think you'd say,
1:34:41
wait a minute, you know, I've been, who are you? But I mean, it was like, when Christ is revealed
1:34:46
to the heart of a person, God opens him to see who he is. They'll never resist whom he calls,
1:34:52
he justifies. In other words, that call is a call that's irresistible. There's a general call.
1:34:58
People can reject the general call, but that irresistible call, whom he called, he justified.
1:35:04
In other words, everybody that gets that call gets ultimately justified. And so I think
1:35:09
that's the difference, you know, that I would say in that, but clearly people have a will.
1:35:15
And God's sovereignty is true. And both of those things are true. People are called upon to believe.
1:35:22
But you know, I think that underneath that God is working. But we never want to, again, act like
1:35:27
people are just automatons. I don't know how it all works. But I do know that if God didn't come and
1:35:34
work in my life, I believe 100%. If God had not come when I was five and I heard Billy Graham on
1:35:39
television, and I go back in my room in there and accepted Christ, if God hadn't opened my eyes
1:35:46
to that and called me, I never would have done that. And I wouldn't have done it to this day.
1:35:52
Well, it's even even in your answer there, like, you know, you say, you're watching the thing on
1:35:56
television, and you go back to the room and accept Christ. I do. People will key in on the word. Oh,
1:36:02
so you are the, you know, the cage stages, right? The cage stage Calvinists are going to be like,
1:36:05
you didn't accept anything. What are the best acceptor of all acceptors ever, right? You're just
1:36:09
the best acceptor. So even in the language, we kind of get tied up. But I will say as a father,
1:36:15
right? I have a five year old son and a three year old son. This is where stuff, you know,
1:36:20
with election really, really bugs me and bothers me. And that's the stuff that kind of keeps me up
1:36:25
and I because I think all of us, you know, there's the language of, you know, what's that one more?
1:36:29
I think all of us as, you know, Bible believe in Christians, there's like that one person
1:36:34
that they're, you're just worried about their salvation. Sure. You want them to be saved.
1:36:38
I have some people like that in my family that I call country music theology. They think because
1:36:42
they were born in Oklahoma, they were baptized as a kid. Grandmama and grandpappy went to church.
1:36:48
And when they listen to music, it's country music. And when they vote, they vote Republican and God's
1:36:52
pro all that stuff. So you get to go to heaven. And so there's like that country music theology
1:36:56
part of it. But then there's no push duo. There's no transferring your faith from yourself into the
1:37:01
finished work of Christ on the cross at Golgotha. And you know, you can say the gumba, the gumba,
1:37:07
the gospel, you can mumble the gospel. You know things about Jesus, but you don't know Jesus,
1:37:14
right? So you have a head knowledge, but not a heart or soul level reality.
1:37:17
It's folk theology. I call it folk theology. Yeah. And it's, but when we get into election,
1:37:23
I'm worried about our James or Eli and even count us like, don't be worried about it. God loves
1:37:28
them more than you do. I'm like, well, I'm sorry. I love them too. And so I get to be worried as well.
1:37:32
Are they elect or are they not? How can I know that my job is to put as much gospel
1:37:37
kindling around them and, you know, make sure they're in church, make sure they do want to make
1:37:42
sure they're even in schooling, they're getting scripture, make sure that this household is
1:37:46
ordered in the right way that guy would have it so that when the Holy Spirit, you know,
1:37:50
tosses the match that there's plenty of kindling to where it just goes right up and there's no
1:37:54
question. But then at the same time, there are those people that are not raised anywhere near
1:37:58
a church. They're one of the fastest growing churches in the world is in Iran where there's
1:38:02
no street preaching, right? There's no evangelical churches welcoming people in and, you know,
1:38:07
but these people are being visited by Jesus in their dreams. And so I know that there's a whole
1:38:12
out out there mark that I don't understand, but on the election side, that's what really trips
1:38:16
people up is why am I elected, not my brother? Why is one of my kids elected, not the other? Why is
1:38:23
my mom-elect, but not my dad? And they're trying to find some sort of an explanation
1:38:28
that is satisfactory and nothing satisfactory. And to the hardened Calvinists, they're like,
1:38:33
well, stop trying to get any satisfactory answers. That's not your job. Like God,
1:38:36
deal with it. And you just you just go on from there. But again, when you're alone at night and
1:38:41
you're just sitting there staring at the ceiling, waiting to fall asleep. And you're just afraid
1:38:44
for the salvation of your kids. It's stuff like this. It's just racks your brain.
1:38:47
Yeah, no, yeah, I thought everybody's thought about that. I've got seven grandchildren, you know,
1:38:51
right now. And I, but you know, when I look at the, look, you know, I always look at it from the
1:38:56
other side. And I saw if someone's an Arminian and believes it's, it's up to human choice and
1:39:01
their will, I say, well, okay, you've got a guy who's born over in Saudi Arabia and his father's
1:39:06
in a mom, you know, over there and whatever. Well, does that guy is, let's say free will's true?
1:39:11
Does that guy have the same opportunity that I did, you know, growing up in a family where
1:39:16
my parents loved the Lord and read me Bible stories and took me to a church? So even if
1:39:21
it's free will, you'd have to say, I ain't fair. Yeah. You know, and so, you know, because one of
1:39:27
the arguments against, against sovereign election is what's not fair. But like you said, and people
1:39:32
have different personalities. We all know that some people just kind of, we just kind of believe
1:39:37
stuff easier than other people do. They're not, we use the word gullible, but I mean, it just,
1:39:40
some people, you know, and other people question everything and maybe they're extremely bright.
1:39:45
And that's actually a stumbling block. They want to understand everything.
1:39:48
Yeah, it was for C.S. Lewis.
1:39:49
Yeah. So, you know, you look at that. And so I say, you know, the fairness argument can go either
1:39:55
way, really. And so, you know, it comes down to, you know, what can a person, what will a person do
1:40:02
left of themselves? And I have to honestly say this, when my boys were younger, I thought the same
1:40:06
thing. And I think, think about my grandchildren, but I, but I would rather have God make the choice
1:40:14
than them. I've been around my, I watch my kids growing up. And I want, I mean, God, I would say,
1:40:22
God, you know, I have no confidence. They'd ever make the right choice. I don't know if they would
1:40:26
or not. But if you, if you make the choice for them, I got to leave it with you, you're sovereign,
1:40:31
you're sovereign over the human heart. And God loves to save households of people.
1:40:36
Never noticed that through the Bible. He saves Noah and his family, you know, the households and
1:40:41
the Passover, you know, they've gathered together there, a lot, you know, it takes a lot, his daughters
1:40:46
out with him and his wife, you've got, you know, got, you know, in Acts chapter 16, you know, the,
1:40:54
you know, the Philippian jailer, you know, you'll be saved in your household. So I've always just
1:41:00
take comfort in that, you know, God loves my family. God saved me. And I trust God that He's
1:41:05
going to save my family. And I've said this in church before, you probably heard me say it. I prayed
1:41:11
it two or three nights ago. I said, God, all I own, as one thing I ask about my family, it's my only
1:41:16
prayer ever pray for them almost is be as good to them as you've been to me. It's all I ask. Right.
1:41:23
If you'll be as good to my family as you've been in my grandchildren, as you've been to me,
1:41:26
I can die a satisfied and a happy man. God's been so good to me in my life. And so
1:41:32
I don't ask for anything more than that. God just do that, do that for them. And I leave it in His
1:41:38
hands. But I look at my little grandchildren right now and think, man, I would much rather
1:41:41
God make the choice for them than the airline on them to make the choice. And that's just a practical
1:41:47
thing in my own mind, I think, through it. Well, Mark, even with the goodness of God,
1:41:51
here's another question that's come up. And I've heard what I find to be a satisfactory answer. It was
1:41:56
one given by John Piper when he was referring to Romans one. But before James, we had, we had two
1:42:03
kids that we lost. And it was just rough. And as a man, you can't really fully experience it,
1:42:09
right? Because the first time you're, you're told the stats, ah, you know, one and five first
1:42:13
pregnancies and then, you know, miscarriage, not a big deal. But two in a row, then the stats kind
1:42:18
of start getting a little wonky. And then it's like, you're trying to support, but you know,
1:42:23
you don't know what to do. And so, you know, Kelsey and I have four kids, not two. But then I think
1:42:29
about the babies that die in utero, whether naturally or VL, abortion, babies that die very,
1:42:36
very young. I haven't talked about this in my Sunday school, by the way, I call them Sunday
1:42:41
school classes. I'm not hopping on the ABF bandwagon. We can argue about that later, but in my Sunday
1:42:45
school class. And I talked about this story over in the UK, where there was this gay couple that
1:42:51
was fostering a boy, small child, I think it was 18 months old, two years old, fostering to adopt
1:42:57
him and they literally raped him to death. And the worst possible scenario. And with where I was in
1:43:05
my, you know, learning journey on stuff in the Bible and you have formed theology and different
1:43:09
things like that, I was like, what if that 18 month old two year old baby was literally tortured
1:43:16
to death and wasn't elect? And then, you know, there's an argument made about the age of accountability
1:43:22
and how that's different for other people. What about people that are have some sort of mental
1:43:26
retardation or some sort of like issue where they're their brain for however long their their life is,
1:43:31
their brain doesn't function like other people's brains do like they don't really even have choice,
1:43:38
like they're just their synapses are firing and their body's just responding. And again,
1:43:42
that's another thing I don't really have a great explanation for. And so I don't want to give cold
1:43:48
comfort or the wrong direction to somebody who's like, Hey, we just lost a baby. What does that
1:43:52
mean for their salvation? Hey, our two year old died in an accident. What does that mean for her
1:43:56
salvation? Like, because I've gotten those questions and I've been left without a sufficient answer,
1:44:02
not just just for them, but I couldn't even go back to the Bible and say, Hey, this is this is the
1:44:07
passage that gives me hope. Yeah, you know, that's a different there's that's a difficult question.
1:44:11
There's a lot of mystery in the Bible about a lot of things. You know, I have no problem myself
1:44:17
believing that those who die that can't meet the condition to believe, you know, they can't believe
1:44:24
that they can't understand they can't grasp it that they're elect. You know, you have David,
1:44:30
you know, you've heard the passage back in Samuel, you know, he sins with Bathsheba,
1:44:34
little baby dies, that little baby died. And David, there's crying out to God and he says,
1:44:38
you know, he won't come to me, but I'll go to him. In other words, David has a hope he'll see that
1:44:43
baby again. He's like, well, how would David know that? You know, I mean, you know, how would he know
1:44:48
he's going to be with that baby? So he has that hope that he's going to see that child. I mean,
1:44:52
Jesus several times in the gospels, yeah, they brought little children to Jesus. I love that
1:44:57
statement. He says, the kingdom of heaven belongs to such as these. Yeah. And he even talks about
1:45:02
their, their angels. He talks about the angels of these little children. So some from that,
1:45:06
you know, get this idea of guardian angels. But you know, it's beautiful because adults,
1:45:12
children don't need to become like adults to go to heaven. Adults need to become like children.
1:45:17
We need to become simple. You have to become a theologian to get saved. You have to become a
1:45:21
child. And so there's, there's those few passages, kind of those inklings that are there. And so I
1:45:27
have no problem myself believing that those who die who can't meet the condition to be saved,
1:45:33
that they're the elect and people say, well, they didn't believe whatever, but God's not letting
1:45:38
people into heaven whose sins weren't paid for. He died for everyone's sins, I believe. So
1:45:43
he died for the sins of everybody. And so their sins are paid for. They just weren't able to meet
1:45:49
the condition that's required. They weren't able to repent and go through. Yeah, they can't,
1:45:53
they can't meet it. And so I don't have a problem with that myself. That's, that's what I,
1:45:59
that's what I believe. And again, I don't want to, if the Bible said something different and that,
1:46:04
that didn't comfort people, I think I would have the courage to tell them that. I, you know, again,
1:46:08
we don't want to just say stuff because it makes us feel better. But I, I really believe that that's
1:46:12
what the scriptures would bear out. So, you know, and I think too, just about, about people everywhere,
1:46:19
I think about young kids brought up in these foster homes, maybe that have something happen,
1:46:23
like what you talked about, but live and, you know, their whole life is really, I think about
1:46:27
the way I was brought up and think about where they're, what their background is, you know, God knows
1:46:31
every person. He knows everything about us. He knows what we've been through. He knows what our
1:46:35
abilities are, our capabilities, all of our fears and all those things. And God factors all of that
1:46:42
in somehow in His sovereignty to accomplish His purpose and His will. Because I think about that
1:46:48
a lot, I mean, two parents that loved me, cared about me, gave me the gospel, had me watching Billy
1:46:53
Graham on a Thursday night back in 1965 and took me to a wonderful church and all of that.
1:46:58
But, but I also know too, you do much is given, much is required. And so all of us here that are,
1:47:04
you know, fellow shipping here today together, we have, we have a lot of expectations on us that
1:47:10
we need to rise up and meet. When I think as well, and we've kind of talked about it tangentially
1:47:15
throughout this conversation, but the concept of baptism, even recently I got into a, not heated,
1:47:22
but it was a, it was a healthy, sort of debate on the essential nature of baptism as it is
1:47:29
concerning salvation. Right. So this person, they're so teary, so tearyology is, they're from a tradition,
1:47:35
church, Christ tradition, that said, if you are not baptized, you, you cannot be saved.
1:47:40
They do not see baptism as a work. And, you know, we were just kind of talking back and forth,
1:47:45
and we were probably both doing a little bit of proof texting. And, you know, I asked about the,
1:47:49
you know, the thief on the cross, like was Jesus lying about that dude being in paradise? He was
1:47:53
going to be kind of shocked to wake up in hell after all that. They didn't take him down off the
1:47:56
cross and baptize him, but they said, Hey, well, the, the gospel hadn't, wasn't the gospel yet,
1:48:00
because Jesus hadn't died yet yet. He wasn't resurrected yet. I was like, okay, I'll see the point.
1:48:04
But the, the conversation ended when I gave this example, I said, let's say you and I are hanging
1:48:11
out, and I see my neighbor out in his front yard, and we both go over there and we share the gospel
1:48:15
with him. And whether he was held down by the Holy Spirit and forced to accept it, or whether he
1:48:19
accepted it on his own free will and cognizance, you know, cognizance or whatever, he says, yes,
1:48:24
I'm going to give my life to Jesus. All that we all celebrate. We hug. There's tears, all the
1:48:27
things. And then we go, Hey, hop in the truck. We got to go to the nearest church of Christ or
1:48:31
the nearest, the holiest water. And we got to dunk him immediately. We get team boned at an
1:48:37
intersection right outside the church. All three of us die. Do me and you get to go to heaven,
1:48:41
because we were both baptized, because I did my believer's baptism in a Baptist church. But several
1:48:45
years before that, I was dunked in water at a church Christ. So I'm covering on my basis here.
1:48:50
Does that person go to hell? Because they didn't make it to the water in time.
1:48:53
That's when the conversation ended radio silence. And so I've gotten, you know, a derivative of the
1:48:59
same question before, like, Hey, what are the boxes I need to check? These are the highly
1:49:03
conscientious people. What are the boxes I need to check to ensure that my salvation took, right?
1:49:07
That I actually did it right. And we always come back to what I considered to be the work
1:49:13
of baptism. And there are the passages where it's like, you know, repent and be baptized. And there's,
1:49:19
there's this baptism element that is attached. My understanding is that baptism is the first thing
1:49:24
we are called to do as believers to show an outward expression of an internal reality. And if you are
1:49:30
a believer in Christ and you are not getting baptized, that you are sinning by doing that. So
1:49:36
that's my understanding. Feel free to correct the record or give your position or even the
1:49:40
church's overall doctrine on the essential nature of baptism. Well, you know, I think a lot of Bible
1:49:45
churches, non-denominational churches don't put enough emphasis on baptism. We've been baptized
1:49:50
in tons of people at our church because we part of membership, but our church is you have to be
1:49:54
baptized. And so we're getting all these people that haven't been. And so it's, I'm excited about
1:49:59
that. But you know, churches of Christ, it's called baptismal regeneration, you know, is what
1:50:03
it's class we can call. They have about five passages in the New Testament that they go to.
1:50:08
One of them is actually they go into Mark, you know, he believes and is baptized as life. But
1:50:13
that's in the ending of Mark that probably wasn't originally part of Mark's gospel. It's a whole
1:50:17
other issue. But in John, John three, you know, Jesus said, you have to be born of water in the
1:50:22
spirit. They'll take water there to be baptism, although that's not the context. They go to Acts
1:50:27
two, 38, says, you know, let each one of you be baptized for the forgiveness of your sins, you know,
1:50:33
in the name of Christ. They go to I think it's Acts 22, 16, it says, arise and be baptized for
1:50:39
the forgiveness of your sins. They go to Titus three, five, which talks about he saved us not by
1:50:45
works of righteousness, which you've done, but according to his mercy about the washing of regeneration.
1:50:50
So they take the washing. Anytime they see water or washing, it's always baptism. But like there,
1:50:55
the washing of regeneration is not the washing that produces regeneration. It's the washing that
1:51:00
comes from regeneration. In other words, when we're regenerated, then we're washed. And then so
1:51:07
those are kind of, and then they go over to first Peter three, verse 18 to 20, where says and talks
1:51:14
about Noah and the flood, and it says, and baptism now saves you. But then the very next passage is
1:51:19
baptism now saves you, but it says, not the removal of dirt from the flesh, but the pledge from a
1:51:24
clear conscience to the resurrection of Jesus Christ. So even in that context, it says, baptism
1:51:30
saves you, but it's not, it's not the removal of the dirt from the flesh. It's not just getting in the
1:51:33
water. It's the resurrection of Christ. And it says it's from, it's your pledge from a clear
1:51:38
conscience. So when you were baptized, you made a pledge of your faith in Christ. So that's what
1:51:43
saves you. So, but the issue is here's again, you go back to these things. It's interesting.
1:51:49
There about 150 places in the New Testament where it says that we're saved by faith, either the
1:51:55
word believe or faith, it's bestowo translated different ways. 150 times, that's all that
1:52:00
stated, it's faith. And John's gospel, it's about 99 times. But, and then those are all dead clear.
1:52:08
I mean, they're nothing added. But then what you have is people that come along and they'll say,
1:52:12
well, we've got these five passages that add baptism to being saved. Now, here's a very basic
1:52:21
method of Bible interpretation. Always explain the things that are controversial in light of
1:52:26
the things that are clear. You don't explain all the clear stuff in light of something that's,
1:52:30
that's unclear. So if you've got 150 places where it says, you know, just, you know, believe in Jesus,
1:52:37
you trust in Him, believe whatever. And then you got these five over here, we ought to try to
1:52:41
explain the five in light of the 150 rather than the 150 in light of the five. And all five of those
1:52:48
passages, when you look at the Greek text, and it does require that in some of them, they're easily
1:52:55
explainable and made consistent with the 150. For instance, in Acts 2, 38, you'll be baptized
1:53:01
for the forgiveness of sins. And, you know, let, let each one of you be baptized for the
1:53:07
forgiveness of your sins and the whole, and then you'll receive the Holy Spirit. If you put the parts
1:53:13
together that fit together, it's, it's in the passage, it's saying, let each one of you repent
1:53:18
for the forgiveness of your sins and be baptized, and then you'll receive the Holy Spirit. So if you
1:53:25
put repent and the forgiveness of your sins together, which match each other grammatically in Greek,
1:53:31
it's repent for the forgiveness of your, of your sins, and then let each one of you be baptized,
1:53:36
and then you'll receive the Holy Spirit. Well, that fits the rest of the New Testament.
1:53:40
So it's a, and the other thing is what you're doing is, you know, when he said, well, you know,
1:53:46
that was before the gospel, when that, the thief on the cross. So then what they're telling us is
1:53:52
that after the thief on the cross died, he could get saved just by believing in Christ,
1:53:57
but then after the death of Jesus, we have to do something more than he had to do.
1:54:02
Right. Oh, in the Old Testament, you go all the way back to Genesis 15 verse six, Abraham believed
1:54:08
God and was credited to him as righteous. Right. That's it. That's echoed in Romans. Yeah,
1:54:13
echoed in Romans over and over again. So, so what they're saying though now is we have to do more
1:54:17
than Abraham did. I got to add something. So salvation's always been the same from the very
1:54:22
beginning from Adam to Abraham all the way through the Bible. It's by faith alone, and God's word
1:54:28
alone and whatever the content that they knew because see over time, obviously the content of
1:54:35
what people believed has changed. Adam Abraham didn't believe in Genesis 15 and Jesus of Nazareth
1:54:40
who died and rose again the third day. He didn't know about that, but he believed the promise that
1:54:44
God gave to him of his descendants and what would come and how God would redeem the world through
1:54:49
him. He believed that. And so it's always been the same all the way through the Bible. So to me,
1:54:54
people that believe in baptismal regeneration, it's weird because now they're saying that actually
1:54:58
in the church age, in this age now we're having to do something more to be saved than people had
1:55:04
to do in the Old Testament. It's the same all the way through from Adam to the last person that's
1:55:09
ever get saved. It's going to be by trusting and believing in God's promise. That's the way it is.
1:55:14
So, you know, it's it's unfortunate that they're brought up in a tradition that that's hammered
1:55:20
into them in about five verses, but they take the 150 and they'll say, well, it's implied in those
1:55:26
other passages. I'm not I'm saying if I'm telling somebody how to get saved, I'm not leaving anything
1:55:31
implied. Right. I'm telling them, here's what you got to do. And if baptism is part of it,
1:55:36
it should be there every time, you know, that you're told, you know, they told the Philippian
1:55:40
jailer, Paul does what she must I do to be safe, believe in the Lord Jesus Christ, you'll be saved
1:55:45
in your household. Now they were baptized when they went there that that evening, you know, that
1:55:48
was after the fact. He didn't add that as part of the qualification for being saved.
1:55:54
What I think is, well, that that's actually very helpful in terms of, okay, you have all these
1:55:59
verses over here. Let that explain some of the other verses that give screen to anyone that's like,
1:56:03
hey, let the Bible interpret the Bible, which, you know, a lot of people and I've made the argument
1:56:07
that seems rather circular. Like I wouldn't let the biology textbook prove the biology textbook,
1:56:12
right? You know, you know, in terms of like, I prefer to not think of myself as a highly evolved
1:56:16
champ that, you know, figured out language, pants and fire at some point along a line or whatever
1:56:21
to get to here today. But that does actually the last two things that we've talked about, baptism,
1:56:26
salvation of children, that's been a sticking point for a lot of people like, oh, wait, you
1:56:30
got saved when you were five? Like you, you don't know anything at this point. You can't even be
1:56:34
trusted to make your dinner at this age, you know, much less be able to, you know, determine, yeah,
1:56:39
I was saved at this age. But I do know faith Bible Church does not baptize any children until I
1:56:44
think it's eight years old. Yeah, we like can be a. Well, so you take us to this arbitrary. Yeah,
1:56:49
it's arbitrary. And you know, because at 18 were adults, but there are people that are 18,
1:56:53
they may as well be toddlers. And then there are people that are 18 that have been well on the
1:56:56
path of maturity for years and years. But what is it just for even the people at Archer said,
1:57:01
don't know like the reason like why even if someone experiences a salvation at the age of five,
1:57:06
would we wait to baptize them until they were eight? Well, there's two schools of thought on
1:57:10
this large schools of thought like John MacArthur, if I'm not mistaken, I think at his church had
1:57:15
to be 12. Charles Spurgeon wouldn't baptize until it was either 16 or 18. Because what a lot of them
1:57:22
want to avoid is, and it's a good, it's a good thought is, you know, you do have people that make
1:57:26
a profession when they're younger, and you know, don't understand that isn't real. And you want
1:57:31
some time to go by for that to get solidified in their, in other words, that they really are,
1:57:36
you know, I believe that their parents can even look at their life and say, you know, this person's
1:57:39
giving evidence that they're really a believer. And that there's a lot to that, I think, of we don't
1:57:45
want to baptize people and then send them off thinking that they're good, good to go and they're
1:57:50
lost. You know, we can't really control that, but still we want to help in every way we can.
1:57:54
But then, so there's actually been people come to our church that actually have, you know,
1:58:00
kind of challenged me, why are we baptizing kids that are, you know, eight, nine and 10 years of age,
1:58:04
you know, do they know what they're doing and they ought to be older and whatever. But so there's
1:58:08
the other side of it. If someone is saved, like I was saved when I was five, I didn't get baptized,
1:58:14
I was like about about 10. I'm sure I was scared. I didn't like being up in front of people. I saw
1:58:19
that. But at some point, it became overwhelming. I knew God wanted me to do it and I didn't want
1:58:23
to disobey. But if you have a child that gets saved, you know, at five, six, seven, eight years of age,
1:58:30
and they say, I want to be baptized. You know, I want to follow Christ. It's what He's commanded
1:58:35
me to do. Well, who am I then to say, well, no, we're not, we're not going to baptize. We're not
1:58:39
going to baptize you till you're 10 or 16 or 12. To me, I'm holding back their sanctification.
1:58:46
Now, we've said it at eight just because we did have a lot of kids at six and seven
1:58:53
that were coming in and their parents would bring them in. And you talk to them and they may be a
1:58:57
believer, but they're not able to articulate it very well. You know, you'd ask them about things
1:59:02
or you could tell it was just parroted stuff. And so we said it at eight because I don't want to,
1:59:07
I don't want to have a child that gets saved at six and six and seven, and I want to be baptized.
1:59:12
You keep telling them you got to wait for four more years and you're almost quenching the spirit
1:59:16
in their life. But we said it at that because we felt like that was a time when at least we felt
1:59:22
like a lot of kids at that point are starting to grasp things and they've had a little bit of time
1:59:27
for to think about this where there's real in their life. So that's what we do. Again, I wouldn't
1:59:32
write that down as gospel if somebody wants to wait till they're 10 or at some point or if people
1:59:36
want to baptize kids when they're five or six. You know, if they really believe they're a Christian,
1:59:41
but I know that people that make people wait till they're like 12 or something like that,
1:59:45
it always bothers me because I've had, we've had kids in our church that are six and seven years old
1:59:50
that really want to be baptized. I mean, and they're, they're serious and they want it because they
1:59:56
know it's what God wants them to do. And I'm like, so I'm going to withhold that and tell them,
2:00:01
now I want you to be disobedient to God, you know. But if you tell a kid, you've got to, hey,
2:00:05
maybe let's wait one another year here, you know what I mean? And tell you that edge. But actually,
2:00:10
there's a few kids, we break that rule for them. I mean, if it's that clear, you know,
2:00:15
and the people that are talking to them, we'll actually do it a little bit earlier on that. But
2:00:19
just kind of a general line that we've kind of placed there.
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promo code undaunted to get 10% off your order. All right, Mark. So we've been waxing poetic
2:02:10
this entire time just talking about things that are like secondarily important or whatever. Like
2:02:15
none of this has been important. Everything's been coming to this moment because you did something
2:02:18
a few years ago that was not a fan of, okay? And I've been waiting until this moment to start this
2:02:23
confrontation to your face. But say that's someone ingest. So this would have been before,
2:02:28
or it had been mid-term. So this would have been 2024. So it's the Sunday before the mid-term
2:02:34
elections. And we had some local stuff and there were some ballot initiatives and then there were
2:02:39
some like statewide stuff, national stuff and all that. And so you get up and as part of your
2:02:43
introduction for your sermon, you said, hey, remember this week on voting day on whatever,
2:02:51
vote biblical values. You took a pause and then you went into the sermon and I go,
2:02:56
what? Vote biblical values because I'm very pessimistic. And I just think, well, most people
2:03:03
aren't reading their Bibles. And so there are people that can think that abortion is okay or
2:03:09
gay marriage is okay or transgenderism is okay because of something they think is in the Bible
2:03:14
or because of some perverted version of the Bible. And I don't know that pastors should
2:03:20
necessarily be putting a ballot up on the screen saying, if you are a Bible believing Christian,
2:03:24
you will vote this, this, this, this, and this. It should look like that where you're going to hell.
2:03:29
But I remember feeling like I was like, oh, no, I know how dumb I can be. And I'm like,
2:03:35
there are people in here that are dumber than me. And I'm like, if they hear vote biblical values,
2:03:39
they don't know what that means. Because one thing that I mean, James Tallarico right now is a guy
2:03:45
who's going to probably be running for Senate as the Democratic candidate down in Texas. I think
2:03:49
he is a legitimate shot of taking a Senate seat in Texas. Very articulate guy.
2:03:54
Yeah, incredibly articulate. Good looking handsome guy. Like you just believe what he says. Now,
2:04:00
when you if you were to read a transcript of what he says, it kind of goes back to the debate
2:04:04
between like Nixon and JFK. If you listen to it, you thought Nixon won. If you watch it,
2:04:08
you thought JFK won because, you know, JFK magnanimous personality handsome guy, Richard Nixon kind
2:04:12
of had the five o'clock shadow thing going on. Not exactly a good looking fella. But a guy like
2:04:17
James Tallarico can make stuff that is absolutely like Genesis three serpent esque sound great.
2:04:26
And if you're low discernment, or you have a low like biblical wisdom, you might be like,
2:04:32
that guy's got a point. And he really doesn't. And so I just remember being like, I think there
2:04:38
should have been a little bit more of a robust understanding of like, look, when I say biblical
2:04:42
values, I mean, you can't support a candidate that wants to increase the ability in this state
2:04:48
for people to kill their unborn children, for instance. And again, everyone can kind of have
2:04:53
their pet political projects on people really big into taxation or foreign policy or whatever.
2:04:58
But it's those things that directly affect sure, you know, moral issues. Yeah, the moral issues,
2:05:02
not a tax as you pay or whatever. People can debate that stuff. Yeah. So ultimately, Mark,
2:05:07
what do you have to say for yourself? I've been like sitting here in this anger for years. Okay.
2:05:11
What I the way I look at stuff at our church is I've been again, I've been there, you know,
2:05:15
for 35 years, I think, and again, I can be wrong about this. But overall, I think I have a pretty
2:05:22
good sense of where the people in our church are. I mean, I know from talking to people,
2:05:27
there was a couple, there was a few years ago, there was a few Democrats in our church,
2:05:31
because they told me they were now they were old time Democrats. Blue dog Democrat. In fact,
2:05:35
one of them was named Franklin Delano and say his last name, but his parents here, he's born
2:05:39
back in the 30s, you know, I mean, so. But the church, our church, being where it is and all that,
2:05:46
99 point, something percent of the people in our church are either Republicans or independents.
2:05:52
Yeah. I mean, now there's a lady that I know that she's online all the time. My wife shows me stuff,
2:05:57
who's very progressive in a lot of her views about different things. She actually sent me a deal the
2:06:01
other day, and I responded back to it. Nice lady, but just, you know, I'm very, you know, she's very,
2:06:07
you know, has ability, she thinks to, you know, tell me what she thinks. Well, I tell her back,
2:06:12
you know, which I know it's forwarder to me. I can give her a piece of time.
2:06:15
Which I find is weird that she goes to our church kind of anyway, but my, but I feel like at our
2:06:20
church, you know, with the way we teach the Bible, I've spoken on the abortion topic before, I've
2:06:26
talked about, you know, homosexuality, I talked about it just a few weeks ago in Ephesians, you
2:06:30
know, very, in a very clear way, and sexual immorality and sexual immorality and all of that. I feel
2:06:36
like we do that enough that people in our church know that if I felt like that there were a lot of
2:06:41
people in our church that were really confused about who they're going to vote for. I mean,
2:06:46
I think I could say, I mean, I think I could tell you on every different ballot that's there,
2:06:50
probably where 95, who 95% of the people in our church are going to vote for. I think that now,
2:06:56
I could be wrong, but I think with what we talk about and what we do at our church,
2:07:00
I don't think there's hardly anybody that would come sit in our church, you know, week after week,
2:07:05
who's a very progressive thinking person. Now, there's, there's this one lady, she's an older lady.
2:07:11
I think she does a lot of it to get attention kind of or be different. But anyway, nice lady,
2:07:16
she's a believer, but she has a lot of interesting views. But, but I just don't think they would be
2:07:22
there because I know people before, like when I even made the statement, I wasn't there the week
2:07:28
after Charlie, the week that Charlie Kirk was assassinated. I wasn't there that Sunday and Jay
2:07:33
prayed and had his prayer, but then I was gone speaking somewhere else. But the next week when I
2:07:37
got back, I made some comments about that at the beginning, right? Well, there was a guy that was
2:07:41
there who says, Hey, we've been visiting the church and we've loved it and whatever we've been coming
2:07:45
for about, you know, a couple of months, but he told me the reasons why he thought that was really
2:07:49
bad. What I said, but he said, I'm glad because that way we kind of know what you think about stuff.
2:07:54
And that way, you know, we kind of opened his eyes to kind of what we believe about things,
2:07:58
which, well, it was fine. I thought it's good for him to find out now rather than two years from now
2:08:02
or whatever. So, you know, there are always going to be people like that. There's always going to be
2:08:06
people that want you to say more. There's probably a lot of people who have started, you know, preached
2:08:10
a whole sermon on it, you know, more. There's people that want you to say less, but I try on these things
2:08:15
to, you know, think through knowing our people. If I was just at a church, I didn't know what these
2:08:21
people believe, say biblical values. And I'm like, well, have these people don't even know what that
2:08:25
means. I think most of the people in our church, they sit there regularly that are members. I think
2:08:30
they know what that means. So that's why I feel like I can leave some things unsaid a little bit more,
2:08:36
not up to being as much detail. So I think I know where the people in our church are on some of those
2:08:41
issues. Yeah. But you know, I think it's a good point though. I mean, nowadays with all that's out
2:08:46
there, it's not bad to just even like on that statement there, if you just you could elaborate
2:08:50
for one more minute and kind of hit the things, you know, one of the big issues.
2:08:55
Well, I think a lot of people as well, I think some people look back on some previous elections,
2:09:00
maybe even local elections where they were like, she, we have X number of people in our church. If
2:09:05
I had spoken up about this mayoral candidate who's a psychopath, like this woman's now in office,
2:09:11
and we're gonna have to deal with that, we're gonna have to deal with that as her. She's our
2:09:15
local magistrate, right? And we're gonna have a Romans 13 like coming together in this moment,
2:09:20
very, very shortly, probably. If I had said something from the pulpit specifically using names,
2:09:25
we could have swayed an entire election. Hard to do. I don't know that there's a pulpit big
2:09:29
enough in the US to sway, you know, a United States level election or something like that.
2:09:32
But with those local elections, yeah, definitely tell people, hey, this is a big consequential
2:09:38
election of who's elected. Yeah, we had a mayor here locally that several pastors and I went and
2:09:42
met with because we had the pride month a few years ago, they celebrated that here in Edmund.
2:09:48
We went and talked to him about that and told him we didn't want him, we didn't like that.
2:09:50
The next year, you didn't do it. Right. But it was that was a real interesting meeting with him.
2:09:55
He was very defensive and all of that and I won't go into it. But anyway, it was,
2:10:00
but you're right. I mean, I didn't want that guy to be reelected, you know, because of that.
2:10:05
We'd never had that in Edmund and it's just kind of like, look, you know, just everybody's,
2:10:09
well, we want these people to feel welcome at Edmund. Like everybody's welcome in Edmund.
2:10:12
There's nobody here in Edmund that's being persecuted. Yeah, nobody's being persecuted,
2:10:16
embraced. Different races live here. This place is fine. Someone can be gay and nobody shares,
2:10:21
you know, persecuting him, whatever. But to try to do those kind of things and elevate that issue,
2:10:26
we thought it was wrong. And so, but no, I agree with you actually have a man in our church who
2:10:31
stepped up and ran. He's on our city council now in Edmund, which is really good.
2:10:34
When I think that's, that's the encouragement because I tell people the 24-hour news cycle
2:10:40
combined with social media, combined with kind of the rage cycle, like a buddy of mine who goes
2:10:45
to the church. He's actually one of the main reasons why we went there. He was like,
2:10:48
the other day I spent 30 minutes on Twitter and by the time I was done, I was ready to go to war.
2:10:52
And I wasn't for sure exactly who I was going to be fighting, but dad, I mean, I was ready to go to
2:10:56
war. I was bloodthirsty because he was getting like ginned up in like half the people he may have
2:11:01
been responding to or looking at were bots, you know, from Iran or North Korea or Russia or
2:11:07
something like that. And I mean, I will get these horrible DMs on Instagram and other places
2:11:13
from these people without, you know, a locked down account and it's not a normal person's picture
2:11:18
in there. And it's just these horrible things or these threats. And I'm like, do I really want to
2:11:22
give my brain space and my time over to arguing with a robot? Because some Iranian dude is like,
2:11:28
Oh, I got him. He's arguing with me now. And then it's like, how long can I keep him engaged in this
2:11:32
to get him to go crazy? So okay, that was sufficient. But now I also got to see there's a debate
2:11:37
from the forging table that I guess you were going to settle here. Okay, all right. All right,
2:11:42
we go all the way back to Genesis. We've got the word in the ESV, which is right in front of you
2:11:47
as serpent. Okay, that is who is talking to Eve. But part of the punishment, right, what is that?
2:11:53
Genesis 315 or whatever is that on his belly? Yeah,
2:11:56
Ronald's belly. Why would that be a punishment? If you never had arms and legs. So what I think,
2:12:03
if I had to stake my claim, I think that Eve was talking to a dragon. She was talking to a big
2:12:09
lizard with wings. Every single people group on the planet, there are cave paintings and all kinds
2:12:14
of things where they depict these winged reptiles flying all over the place. And I'm just like,
2:12:18
okay, did everybody have the same like fever dream? Or did they actually see these things and
2:12:22
kill these things? Like, I don't know that nights were going up to the top of a mountain and slaying
2:12:26
it to, you know, protect the villagers or whatever. But I honestly don't think it was a serpent
2:12:31
as depicted in almost every piece of art or things like that. And even again, I'm not putting a whole
2:12:37
lot into AI, but there are people that will put things into these AI video things and say,
2:12:41
take these passages and make video and what it creates is a winged reptile, a dragon. So for
2:12:47
once in all, for all of humanity, Mark, you have to help us know, was it a serpent? Was it a snake
2:12:52
or was it a dragon? Well, here's one to answer the second part first, whatever it was, it would
2:12:56
have had to been on taken under the arc if it because these people seeing these dragons are even
2:13:01
after the flood, you know what I mean? So it would have to have been taken after that period of time,
2:13:05
which it seems like whatever it was, was upright. And then, you know, it goes down on its belly and
2:13:12
dragons don't really go on their belly, you know what I mean? After that. So what I think it was,
2:13:16
it was, it was what we would call a serpent that may have looked different than that, but it was
2:13:21
upright because obviously, again, you wouldn't curse something to be on its belly if it wasn't on its
2:13:25
belly. But here's another thing to add to this. It's fascinating. Eve doesn't seem shocked that
2:13:30
it talks to her. Right. I mean, that's interesting because I mean, this is pre-fall, so she doesn't
2:13:36
even know to be scared of this. Right. So but it's, but you know, she did that other animals talk,
2:13:42
you know, we don't, we don't know. It didn't seem odd to her. And it seems that Adam was there with
2:13:47
her too, as well, because it says when she aided the fruit, it says she gave to Adam the man who was
2:13:52
with her. Right. So I always had the idea. Adam came walking up later. Hey, what's going on here?
2:13:56
He was there the whole time and watching this thing seeing what's going to happen. So it's some
2:14:01
kind of upright creature. Now, I don't know that the creature could talk on its own, but I think
2:14:07
Satan came and embodied that creature. And so there's a, there's a punishment on that creature
2:14:13
that's there. But behind that is Satan because obviously he goes on down and says, you know, his
2:14:18
seed will, you know, can be against your seed and the seed of the woman's going to crush the
2:14:23
head of the serpent. So obviously he's talking about what's behind the serpent. I think ultimately
2:14:27
is Satan. So I don't think the, I don't think this dragon or this serpent or whatever is actually
2:14:32
Satan, I think he embodied a creature that existed that maybe it was the wisest of these creatures,
2:14:38
you know, we're kind of seen as a, you know, like we did, we'd see a dolphin or something like that.
2:14:41
So it was elevated. But whatever, you know, he says from that point on, it would crawl on its
2:14:47
belly. So the problem with making in that dragons that people saw later is is dragons didn't crawl
2:14:53
on their bellies after that. You know, it could be that dragons were some type of, you know, residual,
2:14:58
you know, dinosaurs or something. Because, you know, if there's dinosaurs before the,
2:15:04
before the, before the flood, they're taken under the ark. Now, you know, you have to take a full
2:15:10
grown Tyrannosaurus or a full grown brontosaurus and take small ones or whatever on there. And then
2:15:14
they would grow, then many of them died out, but maybe some of them didn't. You know, and so you do
2:15:18
have these creatures. You have, you know, in the book of Job, you have, you know, Leviathan that's
2:15:22
mentioned and, and you haven't, you know, the, oh gosh, oh, what's the, what's the other creature
2:15:29
that's mentioned there at the end of Job? It's the sea creature. Yeah, well, there's Leviathan.
2:15:35
Anyway, some people think it's like a hippopotamus or whatever. Oh, yeah, like a rhino, like the
2:15:39
forest rhino or so, you know, there, there may have been some creatures backed in that then over time,
2:15:44
you know, because there's people down in New Zealand in places of, you know, claim to seem pterodactyls
2:15:48
and all kinds of things throughout history. And of course, you have the whole yetis and the snowman
2:15:53
monster. They're so fun. They're still trying to find them out there. Yeah, they're trying to find
2:15:57
all that stuff. But, but anyway, I mean, but it was some creature. Yeah, that was upright that,
2:16:01
that Satan embodied and talked through that Eve didn't find it strange in Adam that it was talking.
2:16:06
And, but, but I don't know again, if he, if he says right then, hey, you're going to be on your
2:16:11
belly from now on. Yeah. Didn't that wouldn't have been a dragon after that? Because dragons
2:16:17
aren't on their belly, but it could have been a dragon before that. Okay, so what I'm hearing,
2:16:22
if we had to stamp it and make t-shirts, are we team dragon? Well, before, but at, but once,
2:16:29
once the fall takes place, fundamental change of was a fundamental change because it has to go on
2:16:34
its belly after that, which is not what a dragon does. So from that point on, it wouldn't have been,
2:16:40
you know, what we would consider to be a dragon after that. But again, I think dragons and some
2:16:44
of this stuff, because there is so much of it out there could have been leftover creatures,
2:16:48
you know, that died out at some, you know, future time, you know, whatever. So.
2:16:52
So I'm probably, I mean, as we're getting towards latter half of this podcast, like,
2:16:57
we could spend the rest of the time on this subject. I don't necessarily want to,
2:17:00
but just briefly, we mentioned well earlier in the conversation about young earth, older.
2:17:04
Yeah. And I think a lot of the debate breaks down between like, how big of a gap of time is
2:17:08
there between Genesis one one and Genesis one two? Like before you start getting into the literal,
2:17:14
like days, as some people call them literal 24 hour days, as we experience them today.
2:17:18
And for me, being more persuaded on the older side of things, I don't, I don't buy
2:17:27
because I've heard the argument of like, Oh, yeah, the dinosaurs never actually existed there.
2:17:31
The fossils were put in the earth to test our faith and different things like that. I'm like,
2:17:34
I don't know about that. But it's just like, why would God give us things like science,
2:17:39
which is not at odds with Christianity science just helps us determine how God did stuff and
2:17:44
how God is continuing to do stuff. Why would we have the, the, the means to which we could
2:17:49
evaluate and judge and observe what God has created, but all of the, all the numbers to be off somehow
2:17:57
or or something like that. And so just in general, if you were to put your flag in one camp or the
2:18:04
other in terms of, you know, young earth where it's, you know, 6000 years old, because we did the
2:18:08
genealogical math. And here's the day we came to and we went and saw a big boat in Kentucky. And so
2:18:13
this is a determination we've made versus someone else that's like, Hey, I just don't see an issue
2:18:17
with God being able to create this over the long period. No issue with the Big Bang. If there's a
2:18:22
Big Bang, there's got to be a big banger. Time, space and matter had to have a, you know, couldn't
2:18:26
happen in a timeless, spaceless, immaterial way. So boom, this is what happened. It probably happened
2:18:31
a big long time ago. And even, you know, Genesis, there's a book called Genesis in the Big Bang. I
2:18:36
think it was a book back from like the 80s or whatever. Chapter two of that book says, if you
2:18:40
think the earth is old, or if you think that the earth is young, you actually are saying the same
2:18:45
thing, it depends on which prism you're looking at time through. Are you looking at it from the side?
2:18:50
And here's the arc of how, you know, light goes through the universe or stuff that I can't fully
2:18:54
comprehend or understand. But if you also say it's young, well, yes, you, you know, or you're old,
2:18:58
it all kind of connects. And so where would you say you land on that? Well, first of all,
2:19:03
just a couple of things. It can't be like 6,000 years old because, you know, that's you're looking
2:19:07
at 4000 BC at creation. That's Bishop Usher is a Scottish. He put it 4000 for BC. I think it was
2:19:13
October 23rd, 4000 for BC yet it figured out. Well, you know, we have things from ancient
2:19:19
Sumer in places like that 5, 6000 BC, you know, I mean, this isn't based on, you know, like radio,
2:19:25
you know, carbon dating. It's just, this is just, you know, going back through king lists and things
2:19:30
like that. So, you know, it's got to be at least eight or 10,000 years just because you have Egypt
2:19:35
and Sumer and these ancient cultures, there's things back there, 5, 6000 BC, you know, in that
2:19:40
period of time. So you're getting a larger number. So you have to, I mean, those things have to match
2:19:44
up. Also, it is interesting to me that you have in the book of Genesis after the flood,
2:19:51
you have full blown cultures in the areas where it were kind of the cradle of civilization, Sumer,
2:19:59
kind of all that area. So a lot of this stuff fits historically. But my view of the six days of
2:20:05
creation, I take, I take Genesis one, one is more of a heading in the beginning. God created the
2:20:09
heavens and the earth. And then he's describing then after that, how he does it. Right. You know,
2:20:15
the earth was out of form and void. In other words, he makes a matter. He makes time in the
2:20:20
beginning. You know, God does this. You have time created. He created the heavens and the earth.
2:20:24
That's matter. You have space then being created. And it's telling us how God did it. When you have
2:20:30
in the Bible, you know, evening in the morning of the first day, when you have numbers like that,
2:20:36
an evening and morning, it implies literal days. So there's different ways to see this. Some see
2:20:43
those days as ages, you know, ages of time. Others would see those as what's called revelation
2:20:49
old days. In other words, God in a 24 hour day revealed to Moses what he did. In other words,
2:20:57
it's not what he actually did in a 24 hour day. He's just revealing to Moses on day one what he
2:21:02
did. And then day two, he reveals to Moses more of what he did. So they're revelation old days.
2:21:07
They're not real 24 hour days. So you have day age. Each day is an age. They're revelation old days
2:21:14
or they're literal 24 hour days. You know, one of the problems of 24 hour days is you have the
2:21:19
first day before you have the sun and the moon created. But of course, I'd say, well, God knows
2:21:23
how long a day is. That's not a huge problem. But I take those to be literal, literal 24 hour days.
2:21:30
It seems to me the most straightforward way to see it. I don't think the earth is 6,000 or 8,000
2:21:36
years old. I think it could be 20,000, 40,000, 50,000 years old, something like that.
2:21:41
I don't think it's billions of years old because I think the earth though was
2:21:46
and so like you said earlier, we have general revelation is God's creation. That's just as valid
2:21:52
as special revelation. It's been called God's big book and God's little book is big books creation,
2:21:59
his little book is the Bible. And there's no conflict between the two. But I think that God,
2:22:04
when he created the heavens and the earth, there was a big bang. God spoke these things into existence
2:22:10
and placed them in where they are. But you think about, you know, it says about the stars. I mean,
2:22:16
think about this looking about night, it says, and he created the stars also. It's like an afterthought.
2:22:24
But if he created the stars and put them out way out where they are to begin with,
2:22:30
it would look a lot older than it is. In other words, if you just take a big bang and then, you
2:22:37
know, just get the speed of light, just come 86,000 miles a second, you know, going out,
2:22:42
then you come out about, you know, 13, 14, 15 billion years old because the universe is about
2:22:48
somewhere around 30 billion light years across. So you take the radius of that and about half of
2:22:53
that. So, but if God put those stars out there, you know, far and they're keep, then they keep
2:23:00
going, then you would, it would look older than it is. Just like, when you know, God seems to have
2:23:07
created things fully mature. He made trees. He made animals. He made Adam. So if someone would
2:23:14
have walked up to Adam and said, Adam, how old are you? And he said, well, I'm a day old.
2:23:18
You know, I was created yesterday. We said, well, man, you look like you're 30 years old to me or
2:23:23
whatever. He looked, he was an adult. I take it. Say, he had children soon after that.
2:23:27
So I think that it was created with the appearance of age now, because people will say, you know,
2:23:32
kind of why did God do this and kind of deceive people, you know, to think in its real old when
2:23:36
it's not. But I think the evidence is there. If you read it, that he's not deceiving as he's
2:23:41
telling us, look, I made a man and he was fully grown. I made a tree and it was fully grown. It
2:23:45
probably had rings in it. So it probably looked like it was, you know, 200 years old. It was a day
2:23:50
old. So I think the universe was created with the appearance of age fully mature. So it looks
2:23:56
older than it is. And I think some of the dating, you know, methods that people use don't take into
2:24:02
account the flood and some of these other things that have happened. And I'm not enough of a scientist,
2:24:07
you know, to be able to figure all, you know, carbon 14 dating and how all of that stuff works.
2:24:12
But that's the way I take it. But it's not again, like you said earlier, there's a lot of people I
2:24:16
know, man, they'll go to the mat over. If you don't believe in six day literal creation,
2:24:21
about a 10,000 year old earth and you're like an unbeliever, you don't believe the Bible.
2:24:25
You know, Bruce Waltke is a man that I had the highest respect for. Old Testament scholar.
2:24:32
I've got his commentary on Genesis, which is tremendous. But he believed in theistic
2:24:38
evolution. He believed that God started everything. But evolution was the process that God used,
2:24:45
which is really what really what Darwin believed. If you read Darwin's first edition origin of the
2:24:50
species, he believes that God got it started because he wasn't stupid enough to think it just
2:24:55
came out of nowhere. Right. But then he believed that God got to go on. That humanity had an original
2:25:00
male female pair that that led to the propagation of the star. Yeah, well, Darwin didn't believe
2:25:05
that. He believed in ever, you know, it evolved. And so did Waltke. But the problem with that is,
2:25:10
the problem of that is you have one Matthew, one man, you'll Adam sin came into the world.
2:25:14
If you have all these lesser forms of being coming along, then where did sin come in?
2:25:20
You know, what happened to the people before this guy that sinned? Right. So you have to start,
2:25:24
I think, with two people, you know, two, it can't be some evolutionary process with humanity.
2:25:30
But I'm just saying that I had the most utmost respect for Bruce Waltke. I'm down at Dallas
2:25:35
Seminary. There are all kinds of different views about creation. The department I'm in,
2:25:40
most of the people in there hold to a six day, you know, literal younger earth. But there's one
2:25:45
of the professors that's kind of retired now that didn't. And he was very dogmatic about his view.
2:25:51
But so even in a place like Dallas Seminary, there are a lot of different views about that.
2:25:55
The bottom line is God did it. God created the heavens and the earth, created man, created a man
2:26:00
and a woman through one man, Adam sin entered into the world. Those things have to be held in place.
2:26:06
But that's, but, but I, because evening and morning of a day, there'll seem to be days, I don't think
2:26:10
they're revelation days. I think they're real days when God did these things. I just think it
2:26:14
looks older than it is because it was created with the appearance of age. That's the, that's the way
2:26:20
I come to it. To me, it's the simplest way in my mind to understand it all.
2:26:24
Well, in the Christian apologist and philosopher, William Lane Craig, he said in recent years that
2:26:28
he looks at Genesis as he calls a mytho history. And I'm pretty sure I'm summarizing what, what he
2:26:34
believes, but he believes in theistic evolution that, because he's trying to explain all these
2:26:42
scientific discoveries of, of lower hominids or primates or something like that and the different
2:26:47
skull, you know, structures and things like that, to be like, at some point, God decided this
2:26:54
pair of primates will be the first humans and would be sentient issue becomes as he was supposed
2:27:01
to, like, as we see, described in Genesis, Adam was created from the ground and the Ruach of life
2:27:06
was, was breathed into his nostrils. But, you know, William Lane Craig says, well, yes, but, you know,
2:27:11
he got technically created everything and every being that way. So that would still be an accurate
2:27:18
statement. And then, but obviously if the Eve part of the pair already existed, well, then she
2:27:23
couldn't have been taken from Adam's side and been created, you know, whole cloth out of Adam.
2:27:27
And so that's, that's part of the thing. It's another one of those things where it's interesting to
2:27:31
read about hear other people discuss and debate, but it's when you start to elevate it to this,
2:27:36
this top tier issue. But I do want to transition to talking about in times eschatology type stuff,
2:27:41
but I want to do it through the beginning to the end, right? So we're going to take care
2:27:45
of all the different things. Alpha Omega over here. So, and, but the bridge I want to want to go
2:27:50
through is, you know, talk about people making tertiary things primary. When we look at the AI
2:27:57
revolution, AI combined with quantum. And when you listen to someone who actually knows what all
2:28:03
those things mean, and they talk about how it's going to gain sentience, it's going to have its
2:28:08
own language, we won't be able to turn it off. Obviously, you're very familiar with the, the
2:28:13
text of revelation, you know, aliens, extraterrestrial life forms of some kind from other galaxies with
2:28:21
technology or whatever, you know, a UFOs and what UAPs and all these things.
2:28:28
There's a lot of things that seem to be kind of like combined together. The claim is that AI
2:28:34
is the antichrist. It's not going to be an actual person. It's going to be this artificial intelligence
2:28:38
once it becomes sentient, and it becomes its own God. So there's a whole lot in there. And I know
2:28:44
you've done a lot of thinking and writing on in times issues. But here we are just now. I mean,
2:28:49
every two months, AI seemingly shifts in a way where it's not even recognizable to what it just
2:28:55
looks like. And when you have government officials, even in the Trump administration,
2:28:59
basically saying, yes, we can confirm that they're an unidentified aerial phenomenon that are not
2:29:04
of this world. And then they just move on with the press conference. I'm like, Hey, hey, whoa,
2:29:08
whoa, back, back up, back up to that thing. We said there's aliens. Can we talk a little bit
2:29:12
more about that? And people are like, yeah, there's aliens. They're demons. They're part of the 30
2:29:16
angels that fell with Lucifer and they're keeping watch on everybody. And so anyway, help us kind
2:29:20
of clear it up a little bit, you know, in the best way that you know how. Well, the alien thing,
2:29:24
I don't want to get off on that too long. We go fun. We go out to New Mexico every year in our
2:29:28
vacation, we got to read docile. So so we go through used to you had to go through through
2:29:33
a Roswell, right? We go around it now, but you had to go out and there's these museums down all this
2:29:37
stuff. So I mean, I'll just tell this story real quickly. So I got really fascinated by all this
2:29:41
stuff. And you know, going through there thinking about, you know, 1947, this Roswell incident and
2:29:45
all that. So I, I go out to the crash site, I leave my wife and two young kids at the mall in Roswell
2:29:52
and drive out there to meet this guy named hub corn, who owns the land out there. He owns it.
2:29:57
He owns like 200,000 acres or something his family does. And it's just unbelievable. But he owns
2:30:02
the land that that crash site's on. So I give him like 50 bucks or something at some price he
2:30:07
wants. And he would drive on. He's got a spittoon in his car and a couple of pistols laying around.
2:30:11
Yeah, he drives me way out there to this deal might not enough ever be heard of again. But anyway,
2:30:16
we get out there. And I mean, I recognize it all from pictures I've seen this debris field there,
2:30:20
this Arroyo that's there. Well, when I'm there, I mean, I think this is surely the providence of God.
2:30:26
This van drives up me right in the middle. I mean, literally the middle of nowhere.
2:30:30
This van drives up and all these guys get out with all these cameras and all this stuff. And it's
2:30:34
a they're they're from LA. They're a group from a show called Strange Universe that goes and looks
2:30:39
at all these different weird phenomenon. They're out there to film on the site about this event,
2:30:44
1947, Roswell and the whole deal. Well, there's this older guy that's just standing over there by
2:30:49
himself. And I would kind of few feet away from him. So I went over the head of Kansas state ball
2:30:54
hat on. So I went overnight, I said, what are you doing here? You know, obviously didn't fit in with
2:30:59
these guys. He said, well, my name's Frank Kaufman. I said, Frank, how you doing? I said,
2:31:03
what are you doing here? He says, I'm one of the four original guys that were out here that first
2:31:07
night, this saw this crash site. I said, really? He said, and he's only one still alive of those
2:31:14
guys. So I start talking, he starts telling me the whole deal. I talked to him for an hour,
2:31:18
tells me the whole day of everything he saw. I asked him at one point, I said, Frank,
2:31:22
could you guys been drinking the night before you? Whatever he is. No, man,
2:31:25
what did you ingest? And he said, you know, we had to keep quiet about this forever. He goes,
2:31:28
I'm said, he was, he died about three or four years later. He was the last guy alive. And he told
2:31:33
me, he said, you know, I've been quiet all the time. He goes, I got nothing to hide now. And so he
2:31:37
told me all about he, there's this, there's this some kind of a little craft. And he says, you know,
2:31:42
it's not a balloon. It wasn't any kind of plane that existed. It wasn't anything I've ever seen.
2:31:46
Talks about these beings, you know, there were like four of them. One of them's dead inside,
2:31:51
one's dead outside, one's like half in and half out alive, partly alive. He's describing this whole
2:31:57
thing to me. I'll talk to this guy for an hour about all that they got out there and what all they
2:32:00
did. And you know, the other other guys get out there and get them out of there. And then they come
2:32:04
out with the deal that it's a weather balloon, you know, that you have the picture on the paper,
2:32:08
you know, and the whole deal. And I mean, you know, that was one of the most fascinating
2:32:12
conversations I've ever had. And I believe it was God's providence. Come out in the middle of
2:32:15
nowhere and meet this guy last living survivor of this place. But I, you know, my view has always
2:32:20
been that, you know, 95% of UFO stuff people see are naturally explainable. You know, it was all
2:32:26
kinds of stuff people see. But there's about a 5% of this thing that you can't explain. You know,
2:32:30
something's going 1000 miles an hour and then it makes a right turn. Tic-tac shape goes from sea
2:32:35
level. And then it goes back. But the other thing about these things is they don't come from outer
2:32:39
space. They just come in to our time space continuum and then they go out. You never track what they
2:32:46
never tracked it from all while this came from, you know, I hear and then came by the moon and then
2:32:50
it's coming into here. They're here. And then they're not here, which is fitting with demons
2:32:56
because you know, the only other created intelligence in the world other than humanity is it's angelic
2:33:01
beings. Good angels aren't going to do this to be deceiving. So I think it's a way to get people
2:33:07
focused on these things, believe in your life on other planets, which supports evolution.
2:33:12
Right. And all of that and, you know, naturalistic evolution. And so I think all of that is part of
2:33:18
a matrix of events here at the end just to confuse people, distract people. Then you've got, you've
2:33:24
got AI, you've got all this stuff that's happening. And I mean, the world is set up for, you know,
2:33:30
the beast system, the anti-Christ system, unlike any time in history and people in the past could
2:33:35
never have even imagined, you know, the deception and all that's happening. I mean, you know, I know
2:33:40
this is on the news all right now with this, you know, with this Nancy Guthrie, you know, they're like,
2:33:45
you know, everybody's got a everybody has a doorbell camera. Right. You got your phone,
2:33:50
you know, they got, they got, you know, the flock, flock cameras, you know, when you go to it,
2:33:56
they have license plate readers. I mean, I'm surprised that the song this thing yet, but I mean,
2:34:02
you just think in a case like this, just how you're being watched every moment. Right. I mean,
2:34:07
they know everything that you're doing. And it's only going to become more because, you know,
2:34:11
Bill Gates and others are saying that, you know, the phones, the thing of the past, you're going
2:34:15
to have a temporary tattoo. Yeah. And this tattoo is going to be, you just buy a wave of your arm.
2:34:20
You're going to be able to do everything. You don't even have this device anymore. It's right there
2:34:24
on you or put a chip in the base of your brain. You won't have to think anymore. The information
2:34:28
will just be there. So it's just, you know, it's actually it's going so quickly that we're back to
2:34:33
Bible. You know, all of man after the flood was gathered at Bible under under one man's rule named
2:34:38
Nimrod. And God says, I'm going to go down and confound their languages because nothing's going
2:34:43
to be withheld from them. In other words, that people are all together, they're going to be able
2:34:47
to come up with everything. And the whole race will be corrupted immediately by whatever everybody
2:34:51
else comes up with. So God scatters humanity. And we've gone through the centuries and the millennia
2:34:57
through from tribalism to nationalism to back to globalism. And the whole world's going to be
2:35:03
together again in the end. And we're going to have a new Nimrod of the Antichrist. And you look at
2:35:09
our world today, I mean, I look at the world and think, how long can it be until the Lord comes
2:35:14
to humanity is not even what he created us to be. So to me, we're back to that Bible moment.
2:35:20
Nothing's going to be withheld from them. And so God scattered for time, but we're back there now.
2:35:28
And we're going to talk about singularity. When the machines know more than all the combined
2:35:33
knowledge of humanity, we're in the season of singularity now, exactly when we crossed
2:35:42
that line, who knows? Musk said the other day, there's no reason to save money. He said, don't
2:35:47
save money. We'll need savings. The machines will do everything for you. You're not going to need
2:35:51
any money. So he said, go spend all your money. Don't have any savings. I mean, it's just all the
2:35:57
implications of all this stuff, you know, people all their life working hard to save up all this
2:36:01
money. But you think of all of that of how one person who's able to somehow get control of this
2:36:08
can have the kind of control the Bible speaks of that the Antichrist will have in the end times.
2:36:14
It was totally unimaginable. Really even, you know, we would talk about one person
2:36:18
control in the world 30 or 40 years ago, but there still were a lot of cracks in that kind
2:36:23
of really many ways, not anymore. You know, it's going to be a total one world global
2:36:29
economic, political, religious system where everybody's going to have to worship the Antichrist
2:36:35
as God or face death. Well, Marcus, you know, soon in the Bible, but also a student of history,
2:36:41
every single generation since Jesus thought that they were living in the generation where
2:36:49
Jesus was going to come back. They could point to things that were happening within now. Obviously,
2:36:53
they didn't have the ubiquity of the internet knowing what's happening halfway across the globe.
2:36:57
They barely knew what was happening in their own area, but they could point to things that
2:37:01
were occurring and they could take it to Old Testament, biblical prophecy, and also to the
2:37:06
revelation that was given to John at Patmos in every generation's thought that. And so when I
2:37:13
hear people today saying those same things, or even those that are bold enough to make a prediction,
2:37:18
give at least giving us a year, if not, you know, a date in the time of that date during the year.
2:37:24
But it does seem to feel that way, even though there are some things that would seemingly take
2:37:31
years that have not occurred yet, like biblically speaking, but you know, you see these things
2:37:36
about the red heifers were taken to Israel and you see all these things happening with Gog and
2:37:41
Magog. And well, hey, that was actually this modern country in that modern country. And we're
2:37:44
about to see those two people collude on a new currency or whatever. And so for me as somebody who
2:37:50
is in the news cycle, I'm trying to stay up on everything so that I could help give guys some sort
2:37:56
of a way to think through this as a masculine biblical man. The end time stuff, like I've
2:38:02
joked openly that the book that we will never do on the forging tables revelation, because I just
2:38:07
no one gets it, no one understands it. It's crazy. Or it's like, what we will do is we will all take
2:38:12
several years off and we'll just bring you here and you will talk to the camera by yourself and
2:38:16
explain revelation detail by detail. But like, how do you help someone understand that revelation
2:38:21
isn't scary? It's weird, but it's not scary. It's actually helpful. And then when you start getting
2:38:26
into the game of predictions and whether or not we're actually in those end times or we're just,
2:38:30
you know, yelling at the sky like every generation has. Well, you know, first of all, you know, when
2:38:34
you look at our world today, the one thing that's different today that never existed before is 1948,
2:38:40
May the 14th Israel became a nation, a modern state of Israel has been regathered. Well,
2:38:44
these end time prophecies have to do with the nation of Israel. I mean, they have to do with
2:38:48
the regathered nation. So things couldn't happen till then you were 80 years into that now. And so
2:38:53
that's it. That's the super sign of the times, I believe. You know, you've got, you know, again,
2:38:58
the globalism that we see all these things that are happening. So there it's a convergence of things
2:39:03
that are taking place today. And again, I always say when someone sets a time for Christ coming,
2:39:07
you can be sure that's not the time nobody know. They don't know. It's like I'll see you the day
2:39:10
after. Yeah. But you know, when the book of Revelation, though, you know, it says, you know,
2:39:15
it begins, you know, the the apocalypsis of Jesus Christ, the apocalypsis means to uncover
2:39:20
something or take the veil off. So it's not a book that's supposed to be veiled or covered.
2:39:24
It's a book that's supposed to be uncovered. So obviously, if it's supposed to be uncovered,
2:39:28
it's the apocalypsis of the uncovering that Jesus gives to us, then it can be understood.
2:39:34
In the third verse, he says, blessed is the one who reads those who hear and those who do or heed
2:39:40
the things that are written in this book. So there's a special blessing that's the only book in the
2:39:46
Bible that has that blessing. It's called the blessing book to the people that read and hear
2:39:50
and understand and do what the things written in that book. Well, if you can't understand what it is,
2:39:55
then how are you going to be blessed by it? So the idea that it's an apocalypse, it's an unveiling,
2:40:00
and that it's a book that brings blessing means that it can be understood. And so a lot of symbolism,
2:40:07
but all of the symbols refer to something that's literal. In other words, they're not just a symbol
2:40:12
of nothing. If I were to say to you today, my dog last week kicked the bucket, well, you would
2:40:17
know that my dog didn't go literally kick a bucket. It's a phrase that he, you know, a dog died,
2:40:22
but it's a symbol. It's a metaphorical statement, but it refers to something literal. So that's
2:40:28
what you have in the book of Revelation is a lot of symbolic language, but it's referring to things
2:40:32
that are literal. The difficulty with the book of Revelation, though, is there's four different
2:40:38
main approaches to when it's referring to. You know, "preterists," the word "preter" in Latin
2:40:44
means "past." They think at all, almost all of it, or most of it happened back in AD 70,
2:40:49
with the destruction of Jerusalem. It was "storists." They say it's being fulfilled between the first
2:40:54
and second coming. So it's all, this whole age, it's all being fulfilled. It's ongoing.
2:40:59
Idealists, they say it's just all about the ongoing battle between the church and the world.
2:41:04
It's just kind of all symbolic, but futurists, like myself, take chapters four and following
2:41:09
to be literal future events that are going to take place on the earth. And that was the view that
2:41:15
the early church held of the book of Revelation. They were futurists. They saw this as things that
2:41:21
were going to happen in the future. So there's a lot of ins and outs about chronology in the book
2:41:25
and what different different symbols mean and all of that. But ultimately, when you get to the end of
2:41:30
chapter 19, Jesus is coming back to the earth. And there's a kingdom, there's a new heaven,
2:41:37
there's a new earth, there's a new Jerusalem. So I guess you could say in some ways, the theme of
2:41:43
the book is Jesus wins. And basically you've got Genesis 1 and 2, the Bible's a story. It's a long
2:41:52
story. Genesis 1 and 2, you've got a garden and you've got a perfect beginning. Revelation 21 and 22,
2:42:00
we're back to the garden again, this garden city. And we have a perfect ending. In between,
2:42:07
you've got Genesis 3 with the fall and all the whole mess. You've got the promise in Genesis 3, 15
2:42:13
of this coming Redeemer, the whole Old Testament's building up to His coming. He comes, that's the
2:42:18
climax of the story of the Bibles, the death and resurrection of Jesus. Today, the world is being
2:42:24
prepared for Christ coming. We're getting citizens who are going to be in that kingdom when Jesus
2:42:28
returns. And then the culmination of history is going to come back and He's going to make
2:42:33
everything right and He's going to make it like it was, was intended to be in the beginning. And
2:42:38
just as Adam was to rule and reign over God's creation, Jesus is going to rule and reign in
2:42:43
the end. He's going to be the last Adam. So it's a story that comes full circle. And me,
2:42:49
there's a beauty to that. Everybody understands story. You get people a bunch of facts,
2:42:53
I may not remember it, but you can see how this story, and that's where it's headed.
2:42:57
And so whatever people believe about the book of Revelation, almost everybody who's a Christian
2:43:02
believes were headed to that perfect ending. Everything's going to be right. The last Adam's
2:43:07
going to come and do what the first Adam failed to do. We're going to rule and reign with Him.
2:43:12
And we need to be living now in a light of that. So whatever else people believe about
2:43:16
Revelation, I hope they can at least grasp that. Those are driving nuts when people call it
2:43:21
revelations. Oh, yeah, that's one of my pet peeves. Yeah, the revelation of Jesus Christ.
2:43:26
Right. There was only one, there wasn't multiple. You know what also drives me nuts is when people
2:43:30
say Psalms 131, this and that's like, no, no, it's suffering to it. But we don't do that with
2:43:35
proverbs though, because we are referring to Psalm 4 verse 10. But we don't say proverb,
2:43:41
we say full on proverbs. Yeah, that's true. Yeah, that's true. That's, yeah. But you know,
2:43:45
I think with, with Revelation too, though, the other problem with it, they'll call it the revelation
2:43:49
of St. John. Right. It's the revelation of Jesus Christ, which God gave Him to show to His servant
2:43:56
John, you know, through the, through an angel and then to His servant. So it's not the revelation,
2:44:01
it's not revelations, and it's not the revelation of John. It's a revelation of Christ to John,
2:44:07
but it's not the revelation of John. So that's another pet peeve I have.
2:44:10
All right. We can get into more if you want to give your whole list, everyone on the internet,
2:44:14
that shouldn't be a problem. Those are just the ones in the first verse.
2:44:17
Okay, fair enough. Well, we can get into the others later. But I did have a specific question
2:44:20
about how Jesus is described in Revelation, because obviously we have Jesus here on this planet,
2:44:25
you know, there's, there's the spectrum of Lamb of God, Lion of Judah. People love to talk about
2:44:30
Lamb of God. It's kind of easy to understand, easy to cuddle with, Lion of Judah, a bit scary.
2:44:34
So Jesus comes back. He's got eyes like fire, his hair is, you know, wide. He's got a head with
2:44:39
many crowns, a sword, his mouth tattoo on his leg, like all things. This guy's terrifying,
2:44:43
right? The horse, the whole deal. My question is the blood on the robe. Okay. So robe, dipped in blood,
2:44:49
in those types of things. Is that the robe? Is that blood from the cross? Is that the blood of
2:44:55
the enemies of God that are slain in the final battle? Like, I've heard different things, but
2:45:03
I guess in my world, I haven't found a ton of explanation on that, but for whatever reason,
2:45:07
that's the one in my brain. I was like, where did the blood come from? What blood is it?
2:45:10
Well, he's returning. So he hasn't really judged them yet, you know, have the blood. But
2:45:15
I think that it's prefiguring what he's getting ready to do. In other words, it's going to be
2:45:20
bloody. I mean, yeah, because you go back to chapter 14, says, you know, he's going to say,
2:45:25
he's going to, I mean, this is powerful. This is powerful. I mean, we read over these things,
2:45:30
it says he's going to tread the winepress of the fierce wrath of God, the Almighty.
2:45:35
And it's pictures like stomping grapes in a vat. And it's coming up on him. And it says,
2:45:42
his garments, you're covered in blood. So I think it pictures when Christ comes back,
2:45:46
what he's going to do to his enemies. Because in that scene there, he's not coming back there as,
2:45:53
you know, the Savior, he's already, he's already done his work of salvation. He's coming back there
2:45:59
in Revelation 19 to judge. So I think that the blood on his garments there speaks of its prefigures.
2:46:04
He's coming back to destroy the Antichrist, his armies, all those who are resisting him. It's a,
2:46:11
I mean, those, some of those scenes in the book of Revelation, they're fearsome scenes.
2:46:15
Yeah. And they ought to, I mean, they ought to cause us to wake up at our life now and thinking,
2:46:19
you know, that's, that's who I'm going to face someday. You know, and I need to make sure that
2:46:23
I'm right with God and the way I'm living. Well, gosh, yeah, these people are like, well, yeah,
2:46:27
when I, if God's even real, like, once I get up there, I'm going to give him a piece of my mind.
2:46:30
It's like, you'll do nothing. Like you will do nothing. You won't be able to say anything.
2:46:34
You'll be on your face. As we wind do a close here, again, I'm kind of opening up some big subject
2:46:39
matters here toward the end. So we're just kind of flying over them. But, you know, as I've been
2:46:43
reflecting in the last few years of the show, you know, I've talked a lot about kind of the
2:46:46
woke stuff, LGBTQ plus revolution, some different things that are happening culturally, where those
2:46:51
things come from, you know, Frankfurt School, Karl Marx, all those things. And I almost feel like
2:46:56
I've got distracted by who, if we were to line up all the great dragons that are against God and
2:47:02
culture, all those different things. Ultimately, it's not any of that stuff I've described. It's
2:47:06
Islam. And so if we even go back to Abraham, it's which child did he take up on the hill to
2:47:12
sacrifice? Was it Isaac or was it Ishmael? Well, Christians believe and Jews believe it was Isaac
2:47:19
and Muslims believe it was Ishmael. And from there, we have this splitting off in separation that
2:47:24
gets us to what the six of the seven century when Muhammad talks to who he thinks is what Gabriel
2:47:30
in the cave, more than likely it was, you know, a dark angel, a demon that was giving him the
2:47:36
special revelation, if he wasn't just making it up himself. And then when you look at the works of
2:47:42
anyone that studied the totality of the Crusades, like someone like Raymond Ibrahim, where you look
2:47:46
at the warfare that has just been constant between Christians and Muslims since the six or seventh
2:47:53
century, and all the things that have happened. But then you also look at, and again, I don't know,
2:47:58
I don't want to put too much into symbols. But when you look at the four horsemen of the apocalypse,
2:48:01
right, you got the black hell or the red horse, the pale horse, and red horse. Yeah. Well, pale,
2:48:09
I guess the word used there is more describing like an opaque green of some kind. That's the word
2:48:14
chloros, chloros like chlorine or green, yeah. And then you look at every flag of every Muslim
2:48:20
country in the Middle East right now, what are the colors? It's green, red, white, and black. It's
2:48:26
just like, and so like, I'm trying to understand because ultimately, this is a salvation question,
2:48:32
when it comes down to Christians and Muslims, Muslims need the saving grace of Christ. If we
2:48:37
actually believe in what we say, we are not to fear Muslims, we are to share Christ with them. But at
2:48:41
the same time, with not Muslim extremism, Muslim fundamentalism and terrorism, the concept of
2:48:48
taqayah, which is where Muslims are taught to be deceptive to people to pretend like they are
2:48:52
Christians, to pretend like they've assimilated only to plot on their enemies on the infidels later.
2:48:58
How do you see Islam as it pertains to what we see revealed by John with revelation?
2:49:07
Yeah, I don't think the four horsemen there, I think the writer on the white horse, you've got
2:49:11
Jesus later in chapter 19, he comes on a white horse. I think this is a false messiah
2:49:16
because there's a clear parallel between Revelation 6 and Matthew 24. Matthew 24, Jesus gave his
2:49:22
outline at the end, and he starts out with false messiahs, false messiahs and false
2:49:27
Christ. Well, you have the Revelation 6 right on a white horse. He says there'll be wars and rumors
2:49:32
of wars, nation against nation and kingdom against kingdom. That's the red horse. It's all in blood,
2:49:37
it says he takes peace from the earth. Then you have the writer on the on the black horse famine,
2:49:42
you know, there'll be famines and earthquakes in various places. And then, you know, massive
2:49:46
death, you have the writer on the fourth horse. So those are parallel to what Jesus is saying.
2:49:50
So I don't think those have to do with Islam. It's false messiahs, there's war after war, there's
2:49:55
famine after famine, there's these disease and death. It kills a fourth of the people on the earth. So
2:50:00
that's kind of why I see the four horsemen. But I do think Islam is a major player because
2:50:06
you mentioned alluded earlier, Ezekiel 38 and 39 Israel when they're back in the land, they're invaded
2:50:12
by a coalition of nations, 10 proper names are listed there. Four of them are modern day Turkey,
2:50:18
Meshach, Tubal, Gomer, Togarma, Persia, as modern day Iran, Libya is modern day Libya or Putt is
2:50:25
Libya, Akush is Sudan, northern Sudan is a Islamic nation. And those are kind of the far enemies,
2:50:32
so it could include the others in between. In other words, it's kind of given the outer ring,
2:50:36
the inner rings included. So I think Islam plays a key role in that because of their
2:50:40
vehement hatred for Israel. I mean, it's just a totally irrational hatred for Israel and for
2:50:45
the Jewish people that they want to destroy. And Satan's the ultimate anti-Semite. He's energizing
2:50:50
this. You know, God made promises to the Jewish people. And Satan is trying to make sure that
2:50:57
those promises are not fulfilled, that the covenant's God mates. He wants to wipe them out. And he's
2:51:02
energizing enemies. That's where global anti-Semitism comes from. He's being energized by him. So I think
2:51:08
Islam does play a key part in that. But you know, when I look at the church today, and you know,
2:51:14
referred earlier, you know, trans stuff and LGBTQ stuff and all these different things in Islam,
2:51:19
I think the biggest, the biggest problem for Christianity today is not on the outside,
2:51:25
it's on the inside. You know, Vance Havernor, the old country preacher used to say the problem is
2:51:30
not the woodpeckers on the outside. It's the termites on the inside. And now there's a lot of woodpeckers
2:51:36
out there, you know, on the outside. But the termites on the inside, we've talked about this
2:51:41
earlier within churches, within seminaries, progressive Christianity, people that just don't
2:51:46
really believe anything, that they just use the Bible, they use all the statements of Jesus
2:51:51
loving everybody and all of that. But then they have a totally warped view of God and of Jesus.
2:51:57
I think that's the biggest danger that we face today is weak woke pulpits, where people are not
2:52:03
being taught anything. And so people are susceptible to all these errors and all these isms and all
2:52:10
these things that are out there because they don't know anything. They don't know the Bible,
2:52:14
their pastors don't know the Bible. They may not even know the Lord. And so it's the term, you know,
2:52:21
the letters to the seven churches in Revelation, there was there was stuff on the outside,
2:52:26
but most of it was there on the inside. It was the termites on the inside. You've got the church
2:52:30
at Sardis, they're dead. You got Laodicea, they're self-sufficient, you know, and they're rich and
2:52:35
have need of nothing. It's all this stuff of the false teaching at Pergamum and at Thyatira.
2:52:41
Really just a couple of the churches really kind of mentioned stuff on the outside,
2:52:45
you know, the church of Ephesus, they've lost their first love. So this is kind of Jesus' final
2:52:50
word to the churches, to the church, those seven letters. And you look at what's going on there,
2:52:55
and it's what we see today. So I'm concerned about all those things on the outside. I watch a lot
2:53:00
of news like you do probably more than I should. I'm probably callous enough. A lot of it doesn't
2:53:06
bother me maybe too much, you know, jaded enough. But I really do think that that's the thing,
2:53:10
and that's why we've got to really be diligent and vigilant about the churches that we have and
2:53:17
the pastors that we have. And I would say to the men who are out there that are pastors who are
2:53:22
listening or men that are in churches, man, if your pastor believes the Word of God is saved
2:53:30
and all that, do all you can to encourage them to help them because you want that to stay strong.
2:53:35
And don't let the termites do their damage.
2:53:39
Right. So as we end up here, you want to go ahead and make a prediction for when Jesus is going to
2:53:42
come back? You want to give us a time and date? Well, you know, I'm 66. I hope it's in the next
2:53:47
20 years. I'd rather go by the upper taker than the undertaker, you know, so I mean, that's my
2:53:52
prayer. I just, I just pray it's in my lifetime. You know, it's all I pray. It'd be nice to do
2:53:57
an end run on the grave. Okay. Very good. Well, hey, Mark, obviously I'm very thankful for your time,
2:54:02
but just ultimately I do want to just commend you for the work that you've done with Faith Bible.
2:54:07
You've been a tremendous encouragement and teacher to me. And you know, I look back even on those
2:54:12
early years that I went to Faith Bible and I'm just like, Oh, I could have taken this part of it
2:54:16
more seriously or I could have invested more in our Sunday school class or anything like that.
2:54:20
But it's just anytime someone asks me where I go to church or they have me describe it because
2:54:25
when people look at me and all that, they're like, I bet you go to the most aggressive church.
2:54:29
There's probably a metal band playing and you know, the, the, the guy doing the sermon's probably
2:54:33
got a leather jacket on going crazy. And I'm like, what I tell them most of all, and this has got to
2:54:37
be a tremendous compliment to you and the staff and the elders is I go to a church that is very
2:54:42
healthy. It's like it's not an inch deep and a mile wide theology. It's very, very deep.
2:54:48
You can see that there's a lot of people with gray hair and a lot of young families and a lot
2:54:52
of people in between. And I think that speaks to y'all's leadership and how you've shepherded
2:54:57
this flock. So very, very thankful for that very thankful for you. But that's all for me. Is there
2:55:01
anything else you want to get off your chest? Well, no, I'm just grateful to be there. It's been a
2:55:04
tremendous blessing to be there. And, you know, again, like you said, you know, like you said earlier,
2:55:10
for guys that are out there that are thinking about being pastors or call to do it just and
2:55:13
everybody, whatever role that God's called them to, you know, be your, be your sanctified self,
2:55:19
you know, let God use you and your gifts, your abilities, your calling. Don't try to be somebody
2:55:24
else. Don't try to do what somebody else does. I just allow God to use you allow the spirit of
2:55:28
God to fill your life and use you and, and you know, we preach last Sunday, you know, to make the
2:55:33
most of the opportunities the days are evil. So let's do that. Seize, seize the day of what God's
2:55:38
given us in our families, our marriages, our churches, our businesses, whatever it is and,
2:55:42
and be found faithful every day. Amen. Thanks again for coming on Mark. You're welcome. Thank you, man.
2:56:03
We love you so much for being here and we love you so much for coming on Mark.
2:56:07
We love you so much for coming on Mark. We love you so much for coming on Mark.
2:56:11
We love you so much for coming on Mark. We love you so much for coming on Mark,
2:56:13
and we love you so much for coming on Mark. We love you so much for coming on Mark.
2:56:17
We love you so much for coming on Mark. We love you so much for coming on Mark.
2:56:21
We love you so much for coming on Mark. We love you so much for coming on Mark.
2:56:25
We love you so much for coming on Mark. We love you so much for coming on Mark.
2:56:29
We love you so much for coming on Mark. We love you so much for coming on Mark.
2:56:31
We love you so much for coming on Mark. We love you so much for coming on Mark.
2:56:35
We love you so much for coming on Mark. We love you so much for coming on Mark.
2:56:39
We love you so much for coming on Mark. We love you so much for coming on Mark.
2:56:43
We love you so much for coming on Mark. We love you so much for coming on Mark.