But what I have a more serious problem with are the young Earthers that want us to deny what we know from science.

And as a result, they want us to ignore scientists when they tell us things like take a vaccine for the pandemic, and guess what?

The science supported not getting the vaccine.

Over six minutes later, we heard her say this.

Now you don't want to even talk.

So, you know.

Well, because it's because you've brought up a topic that I was not prepared for.

If I had known that this was going to be the topic, I would have brought facts and figures with me, but I did not know that this topic would come up, and so I did not bring any facts and figures with me, and I'm not prepared to defend that position.

But you brought these topics up.

I didn't.

Well, okay, you're right.

I did.

This is Apologetics Live to answer your questions.

Your host from Striving for Eternity Ministries.

Andrew Rapaport, Foreign.

We are live, Apologetics Live here to answer your most challenging questions that you have about God and the Bible.

Because here at Apologetics Live, which is a ministry of striving fraternity, we can answer any question that you have about God in the Bible.

I am that confident that no matter what question you have, I can answer it.

Just remember one thing I don't know is a perfectly good answer, but it is something you can always come in, challenge us, give us your questions.

If you have serious questions or if you're interested in a debate.

We're going to get to that in a moment.

But the, the, if you do have questions, you can go to apologeticslive.com scroll down to the duck icon.

From there, you'll be able to join us.

Just got to give permission for your.

At least your microphone.

We'd like to see your pretty face.

But, but you can join us and ask anything.

Enjoy.

When we have folks come in, if you'd like to leave comments, usually people go to the YouTube channel, the Striving for Attorney YouTube channel, and from there the comments come in a Facebook.

I forget which face.

Some of the Facebook things don't come in.

So before we bring them on, just get to a couple of things.

I, I did play the, that intro was with Godless Grandma.

And I told Matthew before we went live that I was playing that because that was the, the last attorney that we had on the show.

Our guest is a.

Or an attorney or is he, he refers to a reformed attorney.

We'll, we'll let him explain why.

But before we get to something in the news.

I'm going to announce that this has nothing to do with our guest.

Okay.

I can't control the news cycle.

I would have brought this up regardless.

But the, the Roman Catholic Church, Pope Leo, the.

What is he?

The Pope Leo the 14th?

I think he, he has come out and, and basically said that the term for Mary as co redemptrix or co redeemer is not helpful.

And so they're going to stop using that terminology.

And so.

There.

The issue though is, is have they changed any of the meaning of the word co redemptris or not?

That's really what we end up seeing is because.

And I'm just going to read some, some quotes from my own book.

What do they believe?

I think the strongest argument when we look at Mary as, as co redemptrix is in the latest Catholic Catechism, paragraph 1172, which says, speaking of Mary, that Mary is, quote, inseparably linked with the saving work of her son, unquote.

And so that is the reason we end up saying she's co redemptrix because it ties her in the redeeming act of her son.

There's other passages that we could, we could talk to about that, but I think we want to make sure we have more time for our guests.

But you, you may be seeing that in the news that there's a change in the language.

Notice what I said, though.

It's in the language.

As far as I read, they're not changing any of the, the meaning of Mary's role in salvation.

They're, they're saying that the, the language of it is causing.

Has been an issue of theological debate and caused confusion.

And so it's a changing of language.

And so one of the things I always want us to think about is when, when people say they're, they're going to change a position is to look to see if the position actually changed or just the language changed.

And in this case, it sounds like this is a, a change of the language and not the position.

So, Dan, I don't know if you followed any of this at all.

I'll mute while you unmute.

No, I, I haven't.

This is the first time I'm hearing it.

Okay.

Yeah, it was, it was, it was kind of big news.

But you probably don't study.

You probably don't get Roman Catholic news that often.

Not usually.

Yeah.

Well, with that, let us bring in our guest, Matthew McCorter.

And let me, let me take the banner down.

Matthew, can you hear me?

I should check That I can.

Okay, I'm gonna, I'm gonna remove the, the bottom thing just so people could see how your name is spelt.

Because when you explain to me how to pronounce your name.

McWh O R T E R was the last thing I expected was McCorter.

Yeah, I, I, There was no Q in there at all.

Yeah, I don't know where it comes, but people have called me Matt McDime and MacNickel.

Yeah.

So let me, let me give folks a little bit of a background on who Matthew is and why we're doing this.

In a previous show we had Israel Wayne was on.

And when Israel was on, shortly after that, someone from, I, I think Matthew's publishing company reached out to, to Israel and ended up saying to Israel, hey, would you, would you like to debate Matthew McWhorter and his, his, the, the email actually is a picture of him, a picture of an empty chair.

And over it says, debate me about the Bible.

Which any regular listener here knows.

That got my attention.

I said, yes, let's do that because that's what we love to do here.

And so he is, I'm just going to say he, he was previously a lawyer.

I'll let him explain why.

He says he's reformed, which may seem weird because he's actually Roman Catholic.

So he, he argues that he's not a Roman Catholic apologist attacking Protestantism, but that he is.

He, he believes that in a.

His background being a lawyer, that he looked at the evidence for the different Bibles, meaning the Catholic and Protestant ver of them, and he felt that the Catholic one was better supported by evidence.

And so that's going to be the topic of that.

He's now a retired corporate lawyer.

He is a former professing atheist.

He says former atheist, but folks here know why I add the word professing?

Because I don't believe there is such a thing as an atheist.

There's only those that profess to be an atheist.

But what we are going to talk about.

You agree with that?

Okay, good.

I do, yeah.

He has a book out called Canon Crossfire and he is the author of it.

And so it is his, his journey in coming to viewing the apocrypha as part of the original canon.

So with that, Matthew, welcome to Apologex Live.

Thank you.

Glad to be here.

Glad.

Glad you have my on.

And so why am, however, getting my own voice back?

Do you know how to stop that?

I will try since I can.

Let me make sure.

Oh, okay.

Let me turn echo so we'll see if that turns off.

I turned off your Echo or turned on your Echo cancellation.

All right.

Oh, no, it comes back in a little delay.

Sorry.

I don't know what happened when I, When I went out.

It's like everything just went haywire.

It was so good beforehand.

It is.

Oh, you know, this is the problem.

The technology always works great until you hit the.

Until you hit the go live button.

So.

All right.

So why are you a reformed lawyer if you're a Roman Catholic?

So I meant reformed in the sense of being a bank robber.

So being a lawyer just.

It twists your mind how you think, how you see the world, and, you know, to retire was just such a wonderful break from all of that.

So.

For me.

Yeah.

So.

All right, let's.

Let's get a little bit before we get into the, the book and more of.

Because I think this is going to be more of a discussion, not so much a debate, though, you know, we could.

I mean, your book's 500 pages long.

You know, I, I went through it quite quickly before the show because I only had like a.

A week to go through the book.

If we were having a formal debate, I would go through it and check all your sources so that it would take a lot more time.

So I figure we'll do more of a discussion, and if you, if you want an actual formal debate, we could, we could, I could put the time into doing that, but give us some background on, on who you are, a little bit of what your.

Your, you know, what your background is, what brought you from a professing atheist to study the.

The Bible and come to the point of the position you have that the Roman Catholic version of the Bible is the actual canon.

So if I'm going to talk for a while, I may.

Although actually with you muted, it seems like it's working.

So we can keep.

I'll keep my headphones on then.

I was going to take them off and try to talk, but it works.

So my name is Matthew Mark McWhorter.

My mom actually named me after the Bible.

And what happened was that I was working.

I just had not been raised religious.

We didn't pray, didn't go to church, didn't anything.

We're nominally Catholic.

My grandfather had been Catholic, actually.

So I went through the ceremonies, mumbling things as a kid, but we didn't go to church, didn't read the Bible, didn't know what it was all about, didn't care.

So I.

To what you were saying about being an atheist.

I, I was just a very shallow, non caring person.

Like it wasn't really an atheism that was well thought out or anything.

And like you, I wonder how someone could have thought it out real because it doesn't seem to be that logical once I looked into it.

But at the time that's what I would have said.

I was I then, you know, work was going great, life was going great, I have some major medical problems and I start wondering about my bucket list.

And because I was named after the Bible, I said, well, I should probably read that thing.

At the time that meant nothing more to me than the western novels that my grandfather had left me that I had always said I would read too.

So it was just to read them.

But once I started reading them and I if anybody out there is in the position I was not knowing much about the Bible, start with the Gospel, start with Matthew, Mark and read forward.

That will explain why you care about the Old Testament etc.

And it was fascinating reading.

I was very interested in it.

But I started wondering whether it was true.

And as part of wondering whether it was true, you know, I pick up the books, Case for Christ by Lee Strobel, evidence that demands a verdict by Josh McDowell, etc.

I start reading them.

And I'm also at the same time trying to figure out which Bible it is that's supposed to be true.

Because once you get outside of the New Testament, the Bibles differ completely.

Orthodox, Protestant or Catholic.

And then, you know, even within the New Testament you have different translations, you have completely different Bible commentary.

So I picked up Bible commentaries.

I own over 100 of them from virtually every different denomination.

Reading it from all different sides, you know, I just was exploring this fully and I realized there was a bit of a problem in connecting these two issues that I was trying to decide at the same time.

Is Christianity true and what is the true Bible?

And that's where the canon crossfire comes from, is realizing that when a Protestant effectively says to, you know, these, there are these extra books the Catholics accept, but the Protestant admits that's that would be the legal term, admits that those books don't have enough evidence for them to be authentically apostolic, then, well, that's the standard of evidence, right?

You have a pile of evidence for those books, whatever it is, and they don't meet the criteria to be fully apostolic.

Well then the question is, can we pull that back into the case for Christ and compare the evidence for the New Testament books, the books that we rely on to prove that Jesus Christ rose from the dead Compare those two and see what happens.

And two things quickly became clear to me.

Number one is that people don't recognize that crossfire that, as I call it, between those two people are saying a whole lot of things that he shouldn't be saying because it's the same evidence that they're talking about in two different cases.

And in one cases, they're telling you it's way too little and came way too late.

In the other case, they're telling you there's plenty of evidence and it came early, and it's actually the same evidence.

The second thing is that for whatever reason, I think people didn't take this case for Christ all that seriously as a case.

No one really went all the way to find all the evidence.

And so I actually had to do that.

I went all over trying to find a book.

I just wanted to read what all the earliest Christians ever said about these extra books.

It turns out they said thousands of things.

I went out, researched.

It took me years.

I assembled it, put it together for people.

And as I was doing all this work, it occurred to me, I have to get this out there.

You know, no one should ever have to do this work again.

I want to get it out there for people.

That is really what my book is.

That's the core research that I did.

It's available for anybody that you can get up the speed in a very quick fashion and find out what everybody ever said about these books in those earliest years of Christianity and make your own choice.

I, of course, explain to you what my choice was and all of that, but the core of that book is that research.

And then most of the rest is me explaining to you why I spent so much time doing all that.

All right, so if you could.

Because, you know, by the way, nice placement of product placement.

You got it on both your right and left side.

I just have a blank wall right now.

Yeah, yeah.

I kind of have them in the.

In the logo.

I. I used to just have books behind me.

So Dan is.

Dan is holding his book up over his shoulder.

The advantage of having a long arm.

He can hold that up and it all the way against the wall, and he's probably six foot from the wall.

So get.

Let's.

Let's.

I mean, it's 500 pages.

Obviously we can't get through all of it.

But.

But let's.

Could you give.

Just give an overview of your.

Your research, what.

What's in your book, and then.

And then maybe we could start, you know, taking a look at individual pieces.

Of it to Discuss Absolutely the 500 pages.

Don't let that scare you.

That is me backing up what I say.

I don't ask anybody to trust me or take my word for it on anything.

So about half the book is me explaining what the evidence that I'm going to show you is and why it matters and analyzing it, etc.

Half the book is the actual quotes from the fathers, etc.

And I'll tell you what all that is in a second.

But that's the actual stuff for you to read.

Make your own decision if you want to.

To, you don't have to.

You could rely on the narrative that I'm saying.

But, you know, being a lawyer, I back everything up.

So I give you the actual quotes from people.

And then the third level is I actually give you the citations to go out and find what I found and I show you how I found it and what I did.

And in particular, there are databases to show you that I found everything or that I, you know, I look for everything or a reasonable search was made because, you know, you could otherwise hide evidence.

And I don't want to be accused of that.

So I show you how to do all of that.

So what I was looking into were basically three questions.

So we have these books, they're additional books that Catholics have, Protestants don't have.

Number one is I wanted to know what do the Jews say about these books?

So not what do Christian scholars say about them, but what do the Jews actually say about it?

So I literally quote just the Jewish Study Bible, the most basic piece of Jewish scholarship in the English language.

You know, good, reputable book from 40 Jewish scholars.

What do they say about this stuff?

Second prong of it is, what does the Bible say about these books?

And what, when you're analyzing that, that's illusions or other references that the Bible, the New Testament makes to these books, people generally acknowledge they exist.

What I did was I found, as I say, I own over 100 Bible commentaries, mostly Protestant.

I searched through them for places where Protestant scholars are telling me that the New Testament is referencing one of these books as a way of saying something.

And I show you that, I give you the quote.

I do it differently for different books, but for about, for most of the books I give you, I'm giving you the full text of this apocrypha, this additional book that the Catholics accept.

And in that, I am annotating it with the words from the New Testament that are thought to be referencing that.

And you can see what that is and make Your own decisions about whether that's a real reference or not.

But there are hundreds of those, and I, I show those to people what they might be, and then they can make their own decisions.

The third prong, as I was saying earlier, is I wanted to know what every Christian ever said in the first 450 years.

The cutoff.451 A.D. is the first real schism in the early Church.

So I tried to avoid the schism.

So cut off at 450 and just look for what everybody ever said.

I did a complete search.

I use the Biblia Patristica database to go find things and I show it to people.

So again, I'm giving you the text of the Apocrypha for most of these, and then I'm annotating it either with New Testament quotes, references, or with whatever a father might have said in the early church as a way to give you some context in other cases, for other books.

For example, there are two.

Two books I compare.

One is one Chronicles, which is a book of the Protestant canon.

The other one is one Maccabees, which is an Apocrypha.

I just put them side by side and show you what every father in the first 450 years said about either book.

And you could read all those for Siroc, which is a very long book.

It's like 50 some chapters to 52.

I can't, I can't give you all of Siroc.

So what I do is I actually just give you the New Testament text and then show you how you know Paul's first epistle to the Corinthians, all of the different references he makes to all of the Apocrypha for you to, like I said, look at and see whether you agree with them or not.

So it's, it's a comprehensive look at those three prongs.

What did the Jews say, what did the early church say, and what did the Bible maybe say about it?

All right, so make sure I'm.

I clicked on Dan.

There we go.

So, and Dan, just let me know.

I was trying to type this in the chat.

Let me know if you, if you want to just.

Since we're going to try to mute ourselves, just either raise your hand or shoot something in the private chat if you want, if you want to jump in.

So, okay, the.

There were two things that your book did come.

Your deal with was the account with Susanna, which is part of the Book of Daniel.

And for some Protestants, they may not even know what books are.

When we say the Apocrypha you made a case that Susanna is part of Daniel and basically when mentioning Daniel, that it would claim that Susanna's included in it.

But when.

Well, I guess my, you know, the biggest issue that I'd see is, you know, my study of like for the Council of Jamnia, you know, didn't include the books that the Catholics would have in the Apocrypha.

And that's the, that would be as, as far as we know, the.

And Matthew.

I'm just going to mute you while I'm talking because your, your condensing mic is picking up.

So we're just, we're just going to have to play with the mute unmute each of us.

Sorry.

So.

So, yeah, so the, the Council of Jamnia is the earliest we have that I know of, at least of the Jewish rabbis giving us their list of the canon.

For folks who don't know Gemini, I think in your book you said it was 90 AD.

I, I believe it was closer to 70.

What, what Jewish people would say is 70 CE.

I think you had it in your book.

I thought I, I thought I had saw that.

But either way, the Council of Jamnia was the earliest.

Now could there have been earlier ones, folks?

Yes.

When we deal with ancient literature, we have to realize that the, the materials used for, for books or scrolls doesn't last well, especially in a desert environment.

And so we don't have lots of Earl.

The further back you go, the less we're going to have.

And so that's one of the beauties, by the way of the Dead Sea Scrolls, because that gave us a lot of it was they were preserved.

But, and we were able to get much earlier.

For example, the Book of Isaiah, we got a, an earlier copy by a thousand years.

And so for those who argue that, oh, the Bible's been copied, well, the Isaiah from a thousand years prior was the same as the Isaiah that they had before.

But in the, in the Council of Jamnia, they affirmed the, the 24 books of the Old Testament canon.

Now, by the way, Old Testament canon is not going to be the same as in a Roman Catholic or a Protestant Bible.

The way we would have the Old Testament there, it was broken up differently.

There was, there wasn't first and second Kings, there's Kings, there's not, you know, first and second Samuel, there's Samuel.

So those are in one book.

You, you basically had just the prophets.

And so it's, it's the, all the prophets together.

So there, that's why there'd be fewer books and that's why they're, they're also going to be ordered differently, by the way, so.

But what, what they didn't include, and this would be my question for you, Matthew, is I, I don't know if you know how much you looked into jamia and whatnot.

It looks like you're trying to dig up some, some research.

A good lawyer, he's got all his files right there, pulled him up.

So, you know, with the Council of Jamnia, why do you think that the rabbis there did not include these books in, in their list of books?

Yeah, so I actually don't really deal with Jamnia in the book that I wrote because Jamie is disputed by some.

So I rely more on deal with Josephus.

Yeah, that's right, you do.

You did mention it that it was disputed and I probably want to dispute that, but.

Exactly.

But yeah, that's right.

The first thing to understand, every single thing in this topic is disputed.

No dates are agreed.

I mean, it's just crazy when you try to look into this stuff because, because, I mean, dates are a huge part of this of like, did things evolve over time and you have scraps of paper.

People really are debating whether they're from the first century of the sixth century.

Right.

I mean, it's, it's insane.

So you have to take things with a grain of salt and be someone open to them.

So that leads to a couple of things.

Just as a lawyer looking at this, number one, as a lawyer looking at it, the connection between the Jewish canon, whatever it was, and Christianity is something you have to prove as the Protestant trying to argue that Christianity is, is true.

Right.

And so one element is, well, okay, if the Jews at Jamnia didn't accept Susanna and the church did accept Susanna, then the early church is just not connected to Judaism.

Right.

It's not as connected as you're sort of assuming or presupposing that it is because you have the Christian mindset that you know, from Judaism that's.

To Christianity that is actually in a case would be something you've got.

And that element is actually a really serious problem with Susanna because there is literally nothing in the early church that is anti Susanna.

And as a result it.

Susanna is like a real thorn in the side of some of these narratives or these arguments.

The thing about Susanna, though, is it is also a very isolated piece.

It is a story about Daniel's childhood, the prophet Daniel.

So while it is very problematic, you might be able to just say, well, that's a pimple on my beautiful.

You know, otherwise, you know, otherwise thing that it's not, not that important.

The second thing, again, just as a lawyer looking at it, you, you have this debated evidence on each and every issue.

What, like Jamnia, like Josephus, like Susanna, etc.

In a real case, all of that waits till the end.

Everybody, you present all of the evidence first, then you have your closing arguments at the end and you're not really making a decision when you say, well, this is going to be the Christian canon, whatever it's going to be.

You're not making a decision about Jamia that is a piece of the puzzle.

But you're not make, you're not basing everything on that one issue, one thing.

So you sort of just punt the decision on Jamnia until you've seen all of the evidence at the end.

And that comes through a couple times when you read like, for example, Josh McDowell's evidence that demands a verdict, he will dismiss the illusions in the Bible.

He'll say, well, there, you know, these books were never quoted in the Bible in the New Testament.

They were only alluded to.

Yeah, I mean, that might be true.

It's, it's debatable.

In a couple instances, there might be some quotes, but putting that aside, it doesn't really matter.

You, the opponent still gets to introduce all of the illusions and the decision is made at the end.

Not, you know, there's still evidence with, you know, even if they're not as conclusive as a quote would be, there's still evidence, they still get to be presented.

They're still part of the puzzle.

And that's just something to bear in mind if you really take this case concept seriously, is that while we might fight and argue over Jamnia, that's not really what we're talking about.

That, you know, the final decision will be.

Jamnia is a piece of that, not the whole entire reason that we're debating.

Right.

Yeah.

And I would say, I mean, my thinking with this is going to be, I think Jamnia does become important because the question in this, in the, for evidence.

Right.

Your, your argument is that the, the, the burden is on me to, as a Protestant, to have to prove that these books should be added.

Where I would argue that the, if you look at Jamnia, you look at the, the.

Even the Jewish Bible today, the, the.

I would say that there's no evidence that these books were part of the Jewish canon.

They were part of the literature.

Fair enough.

But remember, my position is a skeptic position.

Say that again.

I missed, I missed what you said.

It's not a what position, it's my position's a skeptic.

So to me, you have to prove the Christian New Testament, etc.

So it's not me arguing that these books should be part of it.

It's me saying you have to prove that the Christians actually held to the Jamia camp, not the Jew.

Well, I would.

Yeah, but see, this would be the thing is that if we're.

Well, actually, let me, let me back up.

Let's return to Gemini in a moment because I should start with this.

How in your mind, how, what, what is the canon and how did we get the cannon?

So this is actually the part that comes like a thousand steps from this, this investigation that I was doing.

Right, because there's, what is a canon?

Why would I have a canon at all?

And, and some of the answer that is sort of technological, that people wanted to decide what books would fit in the physical Bible book, the codex that would be created in a couple hundred years after Christ, because at the time of Christ it's just a pile of scrolls.

Right.

And the debate over whether you should have a canon, who gets to decide?

A canon is just a huge piece of this.

But it's not this simple evidentiary thing that I'm trying to look at in my book or do it.

But it is something that everybody has to decide.

So a canon is sort of like a ruler.

It is the ruler that you measure everything by and it determines in this case what goes into the Bible.

So the canon is a list of books.

Those books go in the Bible.

Everything else is out of the Bible is kind of the canon cause.

And how would, how would the canon be determined?

So I think for any honest review of the past, it has to be a standard of consensus.

What was the consensus among the Christians?

If, you know, the Catholic Church would say that it formally adopted a canon at Trent, 1500 years after Christ.

Protestant churches, I believe, would say that they adopted a canon earlier when they, they had their own decisions made, you know, slightly earlier as part of the Reformation.

But otherwise it's a.

It.

You might be stuck in a position of saying we didn't have a real canon in say 400 AD.

If you're not just going to go by consensus because we don't have unanimity, we don't have an ecumenical council covering all of Christianity determining it.

So for me, the standard of what is the canon at any given date is the consensus of what the Christians at the time, time accepted.

Okay, so you say the Christians before there were Christians, did the Jewish people have a canon.

The Jewish Study Bible would say it had.

And I, I think this is kind of similar to what you were saying earlier.

It, it.

There's a core group of books that clearly people were accepting on the edges and where that ends is what had not been determined.

And the Jewish Study Bible would say it wasn't determined until later in the first century after Christ.

Yeah.

And just keep in mind for folks who may not know, the Jewish Study Bible is about 40 different authors or translators that worked on it, but they're not all from an orthodox position.

Okay.

You have Orthodox, conservative.

And remember, Conservative Judaism in Judaism is liberal and then they have Reformed.

Reformed Judaism is very, very liberal.

So they, they have the full gamut.

So yeah, I, I do bring question of that.

But I want to ask again though, like, so, so when, when.

Because I'll give you my argument.

I believe that when Scripture was written, it was recognized as scripture at the time.

My, my.

A proof text that I would give would be the fact that when Paul is writing, Peter refers to Paul's writing as scripture.

Okay.

So he's, he's gonna specifically call it Scripture.

I think it was recognized at the time.

So I would argue that the canon, when Moses wrote Genesis, that was canon.

It was recognized as God's word at the time and accepted as such.

And that's why I go back to, that's why jamnia is to me does become important because what do, what do the Jewish people.

What was the canon?

What was the accepted canon before Christianity?

I don't want to rely on what the, A lot of what I, what I saw in your book was relying on the early church fathers a lot.

And I'm looking at, as you said, the consensus.

But the consensus of what was it prior to the Christians?

And the consensus I would say in Judaism is that it would not include these books.

So you're saying the early church was wrong.

And if the early church was wrong, that means you know as to what again, this is an evidentiary review as to what was handed down by the apostles, not what came from Jews.

You're saying the early church evidence in the, when you're talking about the New Testament, you say you look to the early church to, to show you what was authentically handed down by John, by Paul, etc.

So for example, you know, two.

Two Peter would be one is to be.

I can't remember if the reference you're talking about comes from two Peter or one Peter.

But you know, two Peter has a body of evidence.

A group of the earliest Christians who say this is authentically from Peter.

This is why we accept it.

If you compare that evidence to the evidence for one of the apocrypha, Baroque Baruch is clearly better evidenced than to Peter.

And I show that in a chart in my book.

I, I walk through it.

The argument that the Jews really did have a settled canon falls short when you're trying to prove that the, that the Christians are correct, that the evidence for from the early church is authentic, authenticates the Gospels, etc.

If you're saying that the Jews had a settled canon and that that's what the apostles taught, we see the early church teaching something else.

We see the early church being mistaken.

And then you have a question as to why somebody would accept the ruling of the early church or the, the evidence from the early church as proof that you have the true gospels and eyewitness testimony that you claim to have rather than just say, well, they were mistaken about that too.

Well, when you say mistaken that again, that gets debatable.

Right?

Because the fact would be is I think that we end up seeing is like, well, I'll quote a friend of mine, Matt Slick, he jokes, my church father can beat up your church father.

The church fathers were not as clear on a lot of theological things.

But just because a church father quotes something that's from, you know, know, the apocrypha doesn't make it scripture.

I mean, Peter, sorry, Paul will quote from a Cretan.

That doesn't mean that, that Cretan is scripture.

The Book of Mormon would quote from scripture.

Actually it doesn't.

For folks who may not be familiar with the Book of Mormon, the Book of Mormon using Elizabeth Elizabethan English.

And the only time it seems that Joseph Smith got the these and thou's and things like that, right was when he was quoting the King James Bible.

But just because he quotes the Bible doesn't make the, you know, doesn't make the Book of Mormon scripture.

Right.

Yeah, but the early fathers said much more than that.

They, they wrote Bible commentaries, you know, scriptural commentaries, line by line commentaries on apocrypha.

They preach sermons on apocrypha that had been read at church as, you know, as scripture.

We have some of those sermons.

We, you know, there's other evidence on top of just those occasional citations that you seem to be referring to, those citations also exist.

They are evidence, they're something.

Whether they're enough to convince you or not, you know, that that's up to you.

But there, but there are, you have to look through all of it to See really what else they were doing.

And that, that was part of my, my research was to find it.

And as I say, there's entire scriptural commentaries on it.

There are sermons on it.

There's other evidence that, you know, provides a stronger indication that they truly accepted something in Scripture.

Another one, they built a basilica to the he, you know, there's the saints of two Maccabees back in Antioch, which is the, the, you know, the two Maccabees and the woman with seven sons are martyred by Antiochus, and in his city, Antioch, they build a basilica to it.

Like that.

That's a lot of money.

They spent money on their saints, etc.

You know, what you want to make of that's up to you.

But the point is that the early church did do things that were far more than just an occasional reference, like you're talking about, like a Paul to a poet.

Exact, for example.

They're also different in kind.

They're different in number.

And as I say, you can take a look at what they said about 1 Chronicles and 1 Maccabees and just see what everybody said on the, on each book and make your own determination.

Dan, I think you had, you wanted to jump in here.

Yeah, the, the one comment that I, that I had as I'm listening, you know, we say, you know, that some of these references appear in the New Testament or, you know, elsewhere and, you know, maybe in the Old Testament even.

But the, as far as I know, there's no place in Scripture where the, what we now consider the apocrypha is ever referred to as, you know, it's never introduced as saying it is written right, or God, thus says the Lord.

Or there are, there are, sorry, there are two possible ones that, that might dispute that.

One is the one Enoch reference in the Epistle of Jude where it is called prophecy.

And there is another which doesn't seem to appear anywhere in the Protestant canon.

And so then it's a question of what it's alluding to.

And it might actually be alluding to wisdom, the Book of Wisdom or, or the Book of Shirak, I can't, can't remember which.

But there are at least two that are somewhat disputed on that.

But yes, that is true.

There are other books of the Protestant canon that are not referred to that way.

And there is also nowhere expressed a ironclad, you know, rule that only if it's referred to that way would it be that, that, that's.

Would it be accepted as Old Testament scripture.

So while you could apply that Rule yourself.

There's no guarantee a judge would apply that rule.

Right?

So you have a reference for that Enoch, that Enoch reference you were talking about.

Enoch is, is in Jude, is in.

The epistle of Jude, right?

Jude 1:14, which says, But Enoch and the seventh generation from Adam also prophesied about these men saying behold, the Lord came with many thousands of his holy ones.

But it never says, you know, according to Enoch, you know, it doesn't, doesn't seem to give the indication that it's scripture, right?

Just.

Well, he prophesied.

But even Saul prophesied, but he was not a prophet, right.

The Holy Spirit came upon him and he prophesied.

Even Ananias prophesied that it's, it's expedient for one man to die for the country.

There are for the whole nation to perish.

Right?

Yeah, but this is a prophecy in writing, in a pre existing writing.

And there's only three such instances where something is called a prophecy that's in a pre existing writing.

The other two are accepted as scripture.

And then there's this one.

What you're referring to is what more of a verbal prophecy, right.

That wasn't part.

Wasn't written out by that, allegedly by that prophet.

Again, it's, it's up to the people to decide what they want to do with it.

But you have, you know, I'm looking for it, but it's the one where Matthew says thus it would be written that he was a Nazare.

He would be called a, a Nazarene, for example.

Okay, so it's like Matthew 1 or 2.

2, 2, 23.

That it might be fulfilled that which was spoken by the prophets, he shall be called a Nazarene.

And if you look in any book of apologetics that's trying to explain what that is, they will quickly jump to possible references in the Old Testament.

Even though it says it's spoken by the prophet and not, you know, it is a, you know, they immediately realize that something that is spoken by a prophet should be found in the Old Testament.

Right.

You know, it's just, it's a question of whether you're being consistent and whether that really is the ruler.

Well, it wasn't a pro.

It was prophets.

Right.

So.

So it wouldn't have to be.

I mean, if that's the case, it have to be in multiple, multiple cases.

You know, I.

This one is a challenging one because where mo.

You know, a lot of people that will argue is that this is a prophecy that he wouldn't have his hair cut he wouldn't touch anything dead, wouldn't have any wine.

Because that's what the Nazarene.

The Nazarene pro.

A covenant of.

Trying to.

Trying to.

I'm trying.

I'm drawing a blank on what it's called now, but Saul had done up.

It's a vow.

That's it.

The Nazarene vow.

But it, that can't be what this is referring to because it's, it's speaking specifically of a city.

Right.

So there.

So even as my understanding.

And I, I don't study the Apocrypha, I've read through them several times, but I don't believe there's anywhere in the Apocrypha that refer to him being a Nazarene.

From the city of Nazareth.

Yeah, that as it is.

My point is that you look to Scripture, you don't just say, well, that, that's just.

Somebody said that it's nothing.

I don't expect to find it anywhere.

You expect to find it somewhere.

You go looking and trying to analyze the question.

And that implies that when you see a reference to one Enoch as a prophecy, that you would expect to go look for that somewhere too.

And we do find it in a book.

And then you say, well, no, no, no.

Just because it says prophecy, I'm not.

That doesn't mean I go look for it in, in the actual written prophecies.

Yeah, but you're, you're saying that we would find this in the Old Testament.

Do you have a passage in the Apocrypha that says that he'll be called a Nazarene?

No, no, no.

I'm saying when I grab the Apologetic Study Bible or some other, you know, resource to try to figure out this question and analyze it, it points me to Scripture.

It doesn't say, oh, just because they said it was prophecy doesn't mean it's.

It's going to be found in the Old Testament anywhere they actually look.

Look for it.

They go looking for it somewhere.

Given that they go looking for it somewhere, why then when we see somebody referring to one Enoch as a prophecy, do we not then look.

Go looking into that book and assume that that book's part of the Old Testament?

Well, because I think the difference there would be.

When we look at.

If you're referring to the Jude 14, it's just referring to Enoch the seven we know which Enoch, the seventh generation of Adam prophesied.

It's not saying that that's the book of Enoch.

In fact, 47 words.

Well, here becomes, you know, so I would argue that you'd be hard pressed to have a book pre flood that survived that long, that that's actually from Enoch.

Now what I, what you could have is that this is something that God has revealed through time that people memorized and, and passed down.

Okay.

God might have given it to, you know, to peel to say because this is, we all, the only reason we know that this is what Enoch is said is because scripture said it, not because the book of Enoch said it.

You could have the book of Enoch writing someone writing as if they were from Enoch and that this would happen to be what people knew Enoch had prophesied.

So they got to include that.

I mean that.

Right.

If we're looking at evidence, we have to look at the possibilities with that.

But, but this is, this is stating that this is not admitting to the Book of Enoch.

It's referring to what the, the man Enoch said.

Right.

If that's your standard, a huge number of alleged references to the Old Testament don't qualify because they also will say as Jeremiah said.

But you then claim that that is a reference to the book of Jeremiah, but it just says Jeremiah or as Hosea said, or as somebody else.

It's fair point.

The consistency is the point that I'm trying to stress in this, that people, when they are arguing that Jesus makes a reference to the Old Testament, they are open to the fact that, you know, as I say Hosea said something means a reference to the book of Jose.

And you, you analyze the whole thing in that context.

Here you have the same thing.

It is, it's 47 words.

It's not a minor quote.

You will see people who say, well, a couple of the words are slightly different.

Well, okay, let's go back and look at all those quotes to the Old Testament because almost none of them actually match.

They, you know, they will usually be a paraphrase or slight, you know, changes made in part because we assume people are doing these things from memory, but you know, it won't be exact and we say it's a reference to it.

So it's, it's that consistency that I'm trying to stress that people need to apply between these two situations.

Because when you're trying to prove, you know, that Jesus declared his divinity when he said I am, for example, well, I am, as an allusion to the Old Testament, how do you judge what, what he was doing and why do you pull back the pull forward?

I should say the words of the Old Testament into your analysis of what he was saying in the New Testament Isn't that the same thing that would occur with these other red references that are, to these books that are not part of the Old Testament.

Yeah.

So I mean, I think part of the thing is that I would argue for the consistency.

The burden of proof is on you for the fact that Jewish people never accepted these books as part of the canon.

So for thousands of years it was.

Never sung that way.

Remember, this is the case for Christ.

You're trying to prove that you have the true authentic Gospels etc.

And what I would say is if the Jews had a settled canon, the more clear result from the evidence is that the Christians were just screwed up from the very beginning as to what was handed down by the, you know, Jewish apostles.

Right.

But that they misunderstood what they were getting from the apostles.

They did it wrong and we have no reason to trust them on the Gospels.

No, I wouldn't say at all.

I would, I would say no different than I would quote different books.

As I, as I preach.

I, I read the scriptures, I could quote different men.

That doesn't me quoting it as a, I'm not scripture, I'm not authoritative.

If all the evidence, you might have a point, but it's not all the evidence.

There are, as I said, there's scriptural commentaries, there are sermons.

There's other evidence as well.

There are canon lists.

There are other things going on that include these extra books and raise a higher level of concern as to whether or not there are certainly evidence that they accepted these other books.

And then that raises a higher level of concern as to whether or not we could trust them if they were wrong.

Yeah, but those early church fathers, some of them even denied the deity of Christ.

So the issue is that they're not authoritative.

I mean, the one thing with the book, your book was, it seems you can correct me if I'm wrong.

It seems you rely heavily on the early Church fathers, which I'm going to state this is for folks that may want to pick up your book and read was interesting because most Roman Catholics will make an argument that the Church gave us the Bible.

And I did not see that I could be wrong because I read it quickly.

I did not see you make that argument.

Yeah, this book is really, I'm for, you know, you should forget that I'm Roman Catholic.

This book is at the stage that I was skeptic looking at this and saying, if you're trying to prove to me that Christianity is true and that the church, Church that the gospels that we have were handed down by the apostles to the earliest Christians, who handed them down, you know, generation after generation until we got them.

I want to compare that evidence and see how it works.

So my point is that when you say for example that they, you know, they, they weren't trustworthy, they believed some strange things, etc.

In the early church, that is a reason not to trust the gospels that were handed down.

I'm not making an argument based on the early church that you should accept these books, although I do personally.

But you know, my point is that if you're trying to prove Christianity, the early church is your evidence.

And now you're telling me that the early church can't be trusted.

Well, yeah, see I guess you and I would have a different foundation than there because see if I want to prove Christianity, I'm going to go to God's word.

Now you're probably going to say but how do you know what's God's word?

Exactly.

Right.

But, but, but you're, but to see, I would say to rely on the early church fathers and ignore Jewish history is to ignore the very consensus that you said we should look toward.

Now I, again it's.

If the Jews say that, great, that means the early church was wrong and that means that I have serious questions about you on the New Testament.

Okay?

But it only means some of the early church fathers were wrong.

Wrong, not the early church, because it, because they're not.

There were many of the early church fathers that didn't hold to the apocryphal.

Books being, I understand, I compare them side by side.

I'm showing you that.

I mean some of this is numerical, right?

You can count fathers, you can do this, you can compare the candle list, you can do through it.

I believe that if you tell me that there was a consensus on the New Testament, I can take that evidence, whatever it is that forms that consensus census, compare that to these books and these books can beat that.

So for example, as I was saying, 2 Baruch has more evidence than 2 Peter, for example.

In addition, when you look at what the evidence is and who it is, Baruch is evidenced by Irenaeus who is the star witness for proving that we have the right four Gospels.

Right?

He is the first person to testify to the, what was called the four four fold Gospel.

He's the first witness for that.

And he's also the witness for Baruch.

You know that, that if he's wrong on Baruch, why would I trust him on the four gospels, for example?

And that's the point that I'm trying to make is this Crossfire that occurs because as people are trying to dismiss this evidence from the early church on these extra books, they're actually bashing some of the evidence that they're relying on in the case for Christ as they try to prove these other, you know, the canonical books.

But.

Oh, Dan, you moved your.

Did you want to say son or.

Well, it seems to me that there's like, I think you said, Andrew, that, you know, there's a really heavy emphasis placed upon what the 1st century, 2nd century, 3rd century, 4th century believers believed or, you know, that maybe believed and taught.

And I think that's, that's instructive.

But I think we should be really, really careful about how much weight we put on it.

Because let's, you know, let's remember that, you know, even in the first century, before 100 A.D. probably we have heresies creeping into the Christian church.

Right.

So there were believers who were, there were guys who are running around teaching that you had to be circumcised in order to become a believer.

The Jews had to become circumcised first.

Right.

Or the Gentiles had to become circumcised first.

Hence Galatians.

Right.

We had proto gnostic beliefs sneaking into the church first.

John, you had Jude writing about there were some who have crept in unawares and have perverted the Gospel of Christ.

Right.

So I recognize that these aren't talking about canon issues, but the thing that concerns me is that the over reliance upon extra biblical writings, people who are not writing under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit and using that as a lever to kind of decide, you know, okay, well, we should accept this because a whole bunch of people wrote about it.

So it seems it's, you know, if scripture itself doesn't attest to it, I think that really, seriously, you know, it knocks it down quite a few pegs in terms of, you know, how much we should be, how much faith or trust we should put in that document.

Document, right.

Well, except that you're assuming what scripture is, right.

As we were saying earlier is the question is what is Scripture in the first place?

And the real, the question that I'm addressing is this, handing down of those scriptures, the evidence for that, that, that the early church is the evidence, not so much of this, these theological issues and did they, were they committing heresies, etc.

But of the.

I got this from the apostles that claim that this is being handed down, that, that the book of Matthew is authentic.

For example, Matthew seems to copy Mark.

Half of half of Matthew is contained in Bar.

I I would, I would disagree with that.

I actually would argue Matthew was first.

I actually would too.

Yeah, but, but the point is that what we're.

When you're trying to talk to a skeptic or someone else, you're going to have to have some sort of proof of.

No, these are two separate apostolic traditions, right?

That one is not copied from the other.

Mark is not an extraction from Matthew, and Matthew is not a copy of Mark.

Or even if they were, they're just authenticating what's in the other document and otherwise preparing it for a different audience.

All the explanations we would give.

But you have Matthew and Mark, you have Luke, who was, you know, we claim as a.

Was an apostle of Paul, who we claim was an authentic piece of Christianity, not just an interloper who intervened.

That really comes through the early church saying even though he had been a persecutor, even though he didn't walk with Jesus, he is considered one of us and one of our leaders and apostles, etc.

That is early church evidence.

And the question is, just what is that evidence and why would we rely on it to trust that we have the four real eyewitness testimonies that we're claiming we have in this case for Christ and I?

To be very clear, Irenaeus wrote a book called the Demonstration of Apostolic Preaching.

He is fighting those heresies and arguing and claiming that he has received certain documents from the apostles.

And those documents include the Fourfold Gospel and Baruch, for example.

And it's that element that he has.

He's authenticating five documents there.

And we're saying, you know, if you're arguing that Baruch is not authentic, you're arguing that he was wrong or mistaken about Baruch.

Well, if he was, then why would a neutral judge accept the four Gospels?

Yeah, and I guess I would say, yeah, he's wrong because he's not authoritative as God.

I mean, the point being is the burden of proof is on why these early church fathers suddenly make the canon that no Hebrew had accepted as canon.

I mean, for 1500 years you had the Hebrew Bible that had been, you know, I mean, it progressed, right?

I mean, from Noah.

But these books were never seen as canon.

They were never seen as scripture.

It's only the early church fathers where you're starting to, to see that.

And, and by the way, I don't know, you know, I mean, when you look at that, there's actually two versions of the early church fathers.

I don't know if you're aware of that, but there's there's the Catholic version and the Protestant version of early church fathers.

I use the bibliography.

Yeah, so, yeah, but, so the, my, my point is, is that, you know, is I'm going to look at the evidence.

If the Bible was accepted as scripture at the time of its writing, as you said, the consensus then the consensus of the people for 1500 years was that these books were not part of Scripture.

And it was only 1500.

Well, not really 1500 because some of those books are within the last four or five hundred years before Christ.

So, so some even less.

I mean Maccabees for example is about what maybe 170, 200 BC to.

That's the range Daniel might extend to that period.

Well that's actually, that's one that, yeah, Daniel, Daniel and Isaiah liberal scholars would argue are much later or they'd actually argue that it was written by multiple Isaiahs because they're trying to address the issue of the prophecies and it's because they don't accept the supernatural nature of the, the, the canon.

And so say again, same with Matthew.

Yeah, right.

Yeah, well they, they would, well that's where they, the liberals would say Mark wrote and then Matthew copied and, but.

Well, in Matthew fake the prophecy.

Yeah.

And I mean that's where the Dead Sea Scrolls become very valuable for folks who feel may not realize because when we found the Dead Sea Scrolls, what you end up seeing is you, you have a copy of Isaiah and that copy of Isaiah that we had was after Christ.

So when we find the Dead Sea Scrolls, we find a copy of Isaiah that's a thousand years earlier prior to the events that happened.

And the importance of that is.

And the same with the book of Daniel.

So what that does is that puts it before the event.

So it puts Daniel mentioning Greek and Rome prior to those countries being a big empire.

I mean when, when to a period where they wouldn't have been much of a country.

So, so that is.

So I get that the liberals do that, but my, my, my, I guess challenge to you Matthew is the consensus from the time of Moses up until the time of the early church fathers was that these books were not scripture.

I get that there's debate with the early church fathers, but as we said, the early church fathers did have some other theological issues.

So do we trust that the early church fathers, do we trust God's people throughout time for that consensus?

Or do you trust neither, because that's the case for Christ.

Right.

We're arguing to a neutral judge that that doesn't presuppose that, you know, Christianity is true or Judaism is true for that matter.

And therefore, you know, what I'm trying to address is that person, that judge that we're trying to convince is going to make an evidentiary based and not presuppose that the Jewish canon is the Christian canon or was the Christian canon handed down by the apostles, etc.

If you're going to be able, if you're going to argue that you had an ironclad Jewish cannon and the evidence from the early church shows that the early church didn't accept it.

Why would a judge turn around and accept the evidence from the early church claiming that the New Testament really did come from the apostles rather than just concluding that they were were fakes, that they came later, that they aren't authentic.

Okay.

It helps if I unmute myself.

Yeah, I'm not used to having to keep muting and unmuting.

Sorry.

No, no, no.

Disaster technologically.

So it's my fault.

No, no, no.

I don't know.

I don't know what happened in the beginning and I just clicked.

But actually, you know, now would be a good time.

Let me take this time to do, do a slight break so that we can give a word from our sponsors.

So that'd be a good thing to do.

I usually do better transitions, but that said, let me just say that I hope that this discussion is not putting you to sleep.

Dan looks like he's still awake.

But in case Dan is starting to nod off there, which he is, I encourage Dan to get himself a good mypillow because he.

Well, okay, I wonder what size pillow Dan would actually need.

And he's got to have those California king size beds because he's seven foot tall.

Dan, do you need like the.

I know they sell the king size pillows at my pillow.

You probably need the, like an extra larger.

You probably use the body pillow for your head pillow, I bet.

No, I've got some kind of bamboo pillow thing.

I don't know what it is.

My wife got it.

So.

Hey, I gotta duck out, so.

All right, a great discussion.

Thanks, Dan.

Thanks a lot.

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So, so Matthew, I, I guess the, the, the thing that I'm thinking as I just think through it when I look at the canon, there's there's two things that I, I would see is was it accepted as scripture at the time?

And a second thing is, is it.

Does it have any contradictions?

And I guess one of the areas where I struggle with, with some of the, the books of the Apocrypha and I, I'm.

I'm drawing a blank.

You May remember it's either first or second Maccabees that the Catholic Church would get the idea of that when we die we're not going to go straight into heaven or hell.

You're saying Second Maccabees.

So, and you can give me a reference once, once I use it.

But the, you know, the whole idea of purgatory, this idea comes from second Maccabees.

I would argue that, that teaching contradicts not only the clear teaching of Scripture but even the very words of Jesus Christ when he says that today the thief on the cross would be in paradise and that we're in the New Testament, we see that is pointed to man wants to die and then, then the judgment, not after some period of time a judgment.

So I, I would see that as a contradiction of Scripture.

And there's others that we, if we were to actually have a debate, I'd probably bring up.

But do you, do you see that there's contradictions or issues between passages like that?

So.

No, on several levels.

Number one, just as a lawyer anytime and I don't care what the topic is, I say the same thing when I see skeptics etc arguing.

If you see a contradiction, just hire a better lawyer.

You know, we'll, we'll explain it away.

It's not hard.

And I actually in my book I have a little side discussion where I, I, I took an online website and where it listed its contradictions and show them.

If you give me the right rules that are contained in, you know, the Apologetic Study Bible or Gleason Archer's Encyclopedia Bible difficulties.

If you give me the basic rules that Protestant apologists use to defend against contradictions in the Protestant canon, I'll, I can make that work for any other document, including these documents.

So I, it's just, you know, you can talk yourself into a contradiction or away from a contradiction anytime you want.

The real question is cons.

Is, is less the contradiction and more the conceptualization of that as a basis.

Right.

It, you know, if you have a canon within a canon concept.

Was that Luther?

I can't remember who had the canon within a canon.

But you could then say, well look, the New Testament is given and therefore I'm going to look for contradictions in the others.

But if you're, you're not going to have the canon within a canon concept, then it's you, you don't have one.

You don't have a rule by which to judge the others.

So that really ends up being a bit of a presupposition as to what your scriptures are and you know you can theologically you could agree to that.

But I, I personally, if you're telling me, well these things conflict, therefore they're not scripture, I would say that that doesn't work for me.

Just hire a better lawyer and we'll will get around that.

The other thing I would say on Two Maccabees, for example, on, on the dead and there's different aspects that come in as you say, you know, about purgatory, etc, but 2 Maccabees actually involves pretty clear prayers for the dead, for example.

And Two Maccabees is a historical document.

It is describing a historical era within Judaism.

Etc.

It is evidence for what the Jews at the time believed in.

And you know, people, Christians sometimes again just not being consistent between two arguments.

When you're arguing with a skeptic about something like say the massacre of the innocents in the book of Matthew where the babies are put to the sword by Herod, they'll say, well they're skeptics will say there's no evidence for that.

Well that's wrong.

The Bible itself is evidence.

It shows you something.

Well, Two Maccabees is the same as the Bible.

It is a written record of historical events and it involves the Jews praying for the dead, for example.

So that is something that people sometimes don't aren't fair about when they're analyzing things.

Yeah, I mean, look, I mean you're joking with the lawyers.

I, I've, I've said on this show before that the, the, the reason most Jewish people become lawyers is because we're trained to debate.

And, and, and lawyer.

Being a lawyer is the only job you get paid to debate.

So did you, I mean Jewish, I mean Jewish rabbis.

I've, I've shared with this many times on the show.

The, the Jewish rabbis will, will find loopholes and things nowadays, right?

They'll, they'll look for a way.

If you, if you read through the Talmud, you, you'll see there's lots of, they're trying to get around God's law.

So I, I mean I, I would, I would though say there is now.

You would disagree.

But I, I think that when you have Maccabees talking about that there is, there's a period, there's something between heaven and hell.

The time period I, where in Maccabees is that?

Let me, let me, if, if you're familiar with, let me look it up so we can read it.

Do you know, off hand for me.

To have two Macabees in my Book.

Say that again.

Two Macabees is too long for me to include the whole text, so I don't have it.

Okay.

All right.

Y. Yeah, I, I would have to.

I, I have, I have it up.

But, but I mean, it's 15 chapters, so I don't know exactly where it is.

But.

Yeah, but I mean, that's where, you know, and this is something that we could probably, you know, if we ever did a debate, maybe we'd probably get into more detail on is to, to look at some, some of the things that I would argue is, is going to be contradictions.

Because if it's contradiction.

Right.

This is.

So we, for example, I think it was last week, we, we.

I addressed issues of Islam.

And, and so what the, the issue there is that Islam has a clear, A, A clear issue of a contradiction when it defines the Trinity in the fact that it refers to Trinity as the Father, the Mother and the Son.

Because that's clearly not the definition of the Trinity.

Right.

And so that becomes an issue that I would see as a, a contradiction of definition.

There's a difference as, as you're saying Matthew that's accurate is, you know, someone says one, there was one leper that comes to Jesus or there were 10 lepers that were healed by Jesus.

Well, that doesn't necessarily mean it's a contradiction.

If 10 are healed and one came back, then that's not a contradiction.

Right?

But if it's a definition where it's saying, you know, for example, Jesus is saying that the, the moment you die, then a judgment comes, or the moment you die, then you go into paradise and, and a book says no, there's a period in between that would be an issue.

And, and I mean the, the, the canon of the, the canon, including the apocrypha, was never, that I understand in the Catholic councils and whatnot were.

They weren't accepted as canon until the Reformation.

So I, I've always seen it as response to the Reformation.

So if, if the early, like I would argue that the early church didn't see it as canon.

Now I think that you're, you're arguing different, you're saying that there are different lists of canon that were at church councils that included these books.

Do you know offhand, and you may, you may not know it offhand, but which councils would those have been?

So there are many councils and some of them, the evidence is very debated, though there's three early ones that I just personally just kind of ignore because the evidence is so debated.

I mean, we talked about Everything's debated in this context.

But these three are really debated.

There are three later ones.

They are 393 A.D. 397 I think, and 419 A.D. they are in North Africa.

They're the three North African councils and they adopt a canon of the Protestant canon plus these additional Catholic books.

They're also, when you're talking about the, the word canon etc, they.

I believe the word canon is only finally adopted at an export ecumenical council at Trent.

But that is the word canon.

The actual scriptures are accepted at an earlier council, I think 80 years before Martin Luther is born at the Council of Florence, for example, they are stated as the Catholic Church accepts these books.

Etc.

So there is evidence of this set of books going all the way back.

It's really that gets into the whole question that we were talking about earlier of what is a canon?

Why would you have a canon who determines a canon?

So the official Catholic canon, canonization of the canon is.

That occurs at Trent.

However, the list of books and the acceptance of these books actually can be shown to go back further.

It's really just a question of how far back and how universal it was.

Okay, so let me.

What I want to do, I want to try to get some of the, some of the comments that folks had.

And so some are going to deal with our topic, some don't.

Jesse Heller is saying the early church fathers are not authority Scripture is.

I think I know what your answer is going to be.

This.

But how would you respond to that comment?

Yeah, I, I can understand if we were arguing over the canon itself as to, you know, why would we follow these guys?

Why not?

Etc.

Again, that gets into the whole question who makes decisions, how they're made, etc.

But the early church is evidence.

That is the point that I'm making that they are the evidence of what the early church accepted.

And when you are trying to argue to a non Christian that we do have four authentic gospels from people who walk with Jesus, etc, you are relying on the early church to build that case.

You know, the Gospel of Matthew doesn't say it comes from Matthew.

The Gospel of Luke does not, you know, identify Luke as an apostle of Paul's.

It's, you know, a disciple of Paul's.

Etc, you're relying on the story and the narrative that the early church has and that, that it handed down to you.

That is evidence.

And they evidence the apocrypha as scripture.

So when you say that the early church is not the authority scripture is.

Well, the early church is what identifies what the scriptures are at least as to what they are claiming was handed down by the apostles.

You could, you know, you are entitled to self authenticate if you want to just assume your list of scripture because you like it etc, that that is something that people claim they can do.

It just has.

That's not an evidentiary review then that, that's a decision you made, not a, a decision based on the evidence.

Yeah, but I think, I think one of the things though we, and we're, we end up going back to this.

Right.

But you have some of the early church fathers who would deny the deity of Christ.

Right.

So there, so I don't see.

I, I guess the, the difference I would have is that I, and I think this is where the, the, the essence of the debate is is, would be between you and I. I'm going to argue that I'm relying on, on the Bible and not script, not the early church fathers.

And you would push back and say but how do you know that which Bible is the Bible?

Because you would say you need the earlier church fathers.

My pushback then is going to be well you, you need the, you know, you need the, because the, the, you're relying on the early church fathers and not the Jewish leaders for 1500 years.

Right.

So again for your argument for consistency I would push back and say that the, you're, you're saying well we, we can't just know the Bible, we have to look to early church fathers but ignore the Jewish leaders for a thousand years before that.

Again, as a skeptic, it's a perfectly fine or you know, as a neutral judge, it's a perfectly fine answer.

The early church was dead wrong on the Old Testament and dead wrong on the New.

And that's what you're trying to prevent, right?

As you're trying to argue that Christianity is true.

And my point, you know, as part of this crossfire etc is that the claim made that the early church was wrong about the Old Testament makes it very hard to then have a judge rely on and say well okay, you do have authentic eyewitness testimony of this man rising from the dead.

Etc and it's that evidentiary proof that I'm focused on and that the case of Christ is focused on.

I think I would say that you're sort of self authenticating the what scripture is and then using that as your basis for argument which kind of works when you're among Christians.

But when you're trying to convince somebody to accept your scriptures as true.

I, I don't know that that works well.

And, and I think this, this may be the, the rub of where you and I disagree.

So because I would say I, I see with that, I would argue that if we're going to be neutral, you have to rely earlier you, you have to rely on, on the, the Jewish leaders and what they accepted as the scripture.

You can't say that they denied books of scripture, but it was all of a sudden the early church fathers.

But I think there's a difference in the way we're approaching it.

Maybe you're approaching it, if I'm hearing you correctly, trying to answer a skeptic to prove the Bible is God's word.

Hold on, let me unmute you.

Go ahead.

Yeah.

100.

That was me, right?

I was that skeptic.

And that's exactly what I started seeing when I was looking at this was, okay, I'm a skeptic.

You're trying to convince me that Jesus Christ rose from the dead.

And here you are bashing your own evidence.

Whenever I turn to look at this second question that I'm asking, which is what is the true scriptures?

Right?

And it's that comparison that I started noticing of like, well, guys, this isn't working for me as a skeptic.

Your attempt to prove what the scriptures are is contradicting your attempt to prove, prove to me that the New Testament is authentic.

Okay, so here's where I think we're different.

I think you're, you're trying to prove to a skeptic that this, you're trying to prove that to the skeptic.

Christianity by the early church fathers using Scripture, where my starting point is that the, the skeptic is not a skeptic.

He knows God exists.

He knows God's word is true.

He denies it.

He suppresses that in unrighteousness.

So I would take this.

Romans, Romans, chapter one, starting in verse 18.

Let me just read a bit.

And I'm reading out of the New American Standard in 1985, 1995 version.

It says, for the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men who suppress the truth in unrighteousness.

Because that which is known about God is evident within them, for God has made it evident to them.

For since the creation of the world, his invisible attributes and eternal power and divine nature have been clearly seen being understood through, through what has been made so that they are without excuse for even because they, they knew God.

They did not honor him as God or give thanks to him but they became futile in their speculations and their foolish hearts were darkened.

And so I would.

I. I guess you and I probably approach this differently.

See, I don't approach the skeptic as if he doesn't know God or that or God's word.

I approach them as they know it.

They're suppressing it.

So.

So I don't.

I don't feel the burden to bring God into a courtroom and try to prove God exists or to prove the Bible.

I have two presuppositions, axioms.

God has spoke.

God exists, and he has spoken.

And so I don't prove either one of those.

Those are things that are the.

The absolute starting point we have to start with in a conversation with a skeptic is that they already know God exists.

They already know God's Word.

And.

And that, I think is probably where you and I would end up differing, is that you would.

No, okay.

No, no.

I. I actually agree with you.

However, go back in time.

I didn't invent this.

Right.

Lee Strobel wrote the Case for Christ.

He's the one who sold 5 million books.

And I disagree with Lee Strobels.

Yeah, see, I would disagree.

I would disagree with Lee Strobel because I'm.

What would we call is, a presuppositionalist.

Lee Strobel would be more of an evidentialist.

He's going to argue, look at the evidence, and the.

The evidence is going to prove God.

And.

And so the problem I have with that is.

And I think this you're going to agree with because you've.

You've said it a couple times.

You're.

You're a good attorney.

You understand this.

But you.

You give me evidence and.

And you convince me.

Okay, you're right.

But I go and follow someone else, and.

And I go listen to a Bart Ehrman, who you quoted in your book.

That horrified me.

But Bart Ehrman just.

I mean, you quoted him.

But Bart Ehrman denies the deity of Christ.

He denies Christianity.

Oh, but.

Yeah, but I rebut him.

Yeah.

But.

But the thing is, you can find someone that.

Okay.

Someone else gives me better evidence.

Well, I'm gonna go follow that.

I.

There's.

I. I say.

I think what you're saying differently.

Number one, I can prove leprechauns if you'd like.

You know, like, leprechauns have evidence, a thousand eyewitnesses.

Right.

You know, what do you want?

Like, it's only a pile of evidence.

So that is kind of my answer to Lee Strobel's.

Book is.

That's great.

But now what?

That's where I get into the Phil.

What I call the philosophy.

Which is where you're coming from.

Right.

The philosophy, the theology.

It is the combination of this isn't just wishful thinking.

I have good evidence and a good argument over here, combined with the philosophy of this makes way more sense of the universe than anything I was ever taught in all my reading of philosophy, psychology, etc.

That's what, it's the combination of the two that really triggers it.

Right.

But I, I'm certainly not the, the sort who says, well, G. Lee's Strobel says there's evidence and now we're done like that.

You know, this is a very minimum initial level.

But what happened to me when I was reading the Bible, and like I said, I'm reading all these things sort of across times, is I see the Bible giving me a better explanation of the universe.

I start wondering if it's true and it is the evidentiary case for Christ.

That helps me say, yes, this is not just people wishful thinking here.

This is the reality of the world.

Yeah.

I guess where I would disagree with like Elise Strobel or, or folks like that is I, I wouldn't.

I think there's good evidence that we see that support what Scripture says.

But I don't try to prove God exists.

I don't try to prove God's word is God's word.

Right.

So that would be.

I think that's where we would end up differing a bit.

We'd never be in this particular argument.

Right.

Because what I'm saying is this is the case for Christ and you're saying I don't bring the case for Christ.

Right.

So it puts us in an awkward position.

We, we disagree, but not in the courtroom because we're never in the same courtroom.

Because you never brought the case.

Right.

Yeah.

Well, and this is where, you know, if we, if we do a formal debate, we gotta, we're gonna need to nail down exactly what we're, what we, what we're.

We're doing.

Speaking of debate, let me, you know, I don't think Brother John is still here, but Brother John is saying one day I'm going to debate Andrew.

Well, what might he debate me on?

Well, here, here we have another comment of his.

He.

He says the church, the church has always been continuationist by nature.

Cessationism today isn't anywhere near what the reformers believed.

And so that would be an issue that John and I would end up debating John is a continuationist.

I am not.

John's a brother, a Canadian brother.

I love him dearly.

He's a great, great evangelist, goes out there on the streets every day and I do appreciate him.

We do disagree and we've talked and.

But he's, he's a very humble man.

I do love him.

So let me get to a question that someone put up that I really would like to get to with you, Matthew.

With the, the little bit of time that we have, less since the, the chat has been quite quiet tonight.

I don't know why, but maybe, maybe the technology issues had a different effect because I don't see as many viewers as we usually would have.

A lot less, actually.

But, you know, Jesse asks the question, and this is son, I would have asked differently, but he says, why should God let your guest into heaven?

So let me let you answer that question, Matthew.

Why would God let you into heaven?

Good question.

Given all the things I know about me that the questioner does not know, it's a fine question.

But in general, I truly believe that God wants you to find the truth.

And so asking questions and looking around and puttering, you know, picking apart the case and doing it does not to me seem anti Christian.

It seems like exactly what Jesus is calling on us to do.

Paul himself says, I've.

Is it 1 Corinthians?

I can't remember which epistle it is, but he says, if Jesus, if Christ is not risen, then we of all men are most to be pitied.

And that is exactly the question.

Chapter 15 hits.

Yeah, first.

First Corinthians 15.

Yep.

And you know, that's the question.

Did he actually rise from the dead?

And that to me is an evidentiary question as much as we say, you know, as we were talking, as much as it's a philosophical question.

So to me that this is a perfectly valid line of inquiry.

So if you were my background, right, I'm Jewish, so before I became a Christian, how, how would you tell me how I could go to heaven?

You go to, you know, given my current belief, let's say you go to heaven through Jesus.

But even if you're Jewish, God can forgive all sorts of things, even not believing in them, if he, if he wants to or has to.

But at the end of the day, he has set certain guidelines and faith is the, you know, the path that we know gets us there.

You know, if you choose not to have faith, good luck, God bless, hope it works.

But what is, what does faith do in that case?

Is the, the, you know, Again, I'm taking this mostly from.

I think it's C.S.

lewis and others.

But, you know, your faith is the step that God is asking of us in this world, right?

To take the step of faith.

If you don't have faith, you are rejecting what God is offering you and making a choice.

And, you know, as I say, God can still forgive, but that's.

That's on him and not.

Not for you to say or for me to say.

So let me.

Let me go through a different set of questions with you to see.

So do you consider yourself to be a good person.

By accident?

Yeah.

I mean, I. I could see myself.

I'm not one of those people who says, I never stole, right?

I never had to steal.

Like, you know, I went off the Ivy League, life was easy, so why steal, right?

Like, I could see myself being a very bad person.

I don't, you know, pat myself on the back for the times that I wasn't bad.

And I know plenty of bad things, but in general, you know, I followed the moral rules.

So, yeah, sure, good person.

Okay.

But you.

You.

Would you admit that you've told lies?

Oh, yeah.

Would you admit that you may have stolen things in time?

Not only that, but I actually did the math once, and I think it was 10 sins a day for 80 years.

And you will commit 300,000 sins, so you don't need to continue with the litany.

I know there's a lot.

Yeah, well, actually, it's even worse than that because I would argue, you know, the average person makes about 20,000 decisions a day.

But just to keep the.

The math easy, you know, let's say 10,000 decisions, let's say you're really good.

I would you think that saying a thousand decisions you.

You make a day are because you absolutely love God, that you put him first and foremost most in your life?

Maybe that's being super conservative.

It would be for me, right?

Out of the 20,000 decisions, I'm going, yeah, maybe a couple hundred.

Right.

And so that's.

So let's go with the.

The.

The to be as kind as we can.

That would be 9,000 times a day, times 364 days a year, times however old you are.

That's the number.

That's just the first and greatest commandment that we break.

Right.

And so based on that, do you think you'd be innocent or guilty that you're in the court of law before God, you're an attorney.

Would God judge you as being innocent or guilty?

Oh, guilty.

Okay.

Would you deserve heaven or Hell.

That'S where things get weird.

Because hell, for the sins that I actually committed, probably not like the active consent, active sins that I've committed.

I mean, that seems like an awful, extreme punishment.

And if, you know, again, it gets into your view of God, but if God is merciful, then probably not for that.

But if you go into the sins of omission, I would say yes.

Yeah, well, see, but even the sins, not just of omission.

So if, if you threaten my life, would the police do anything with you?

Yeah.

I mean, they probably tell you to stay away from me, right?

Yeah.

You, you threaten Trump's life right now or, you know, what would happen to you?

Well, that's a federal.

Exactly.

Right.

So.

So you're looking at 48 hours in prison while they figure out.

Because that's how long they can hold you.

Right.

What makes the difference between me and Trump other than, you know, I'm better looking?

No, wait.

One is granted legal protection and one is denied for unjust reasons.

Yeah, Right.

So his position is the difference.

So, so I think, I think the issue being, is what we all do, right.

Is we want to make light of our offenses against God, but God is infinitely holy.

Infinitely just.

So when we look at the, the things we've done, when we've, we've broken his law, it has an eternal consequence.

I mean, it, it says in the book of Revelation that all liars will have their place in a lake of fire which burns with brimstone.

And so when you say, well, I don't think my offense would be that bad, like God wouldn't be that bad.

But I was assuming the merciful God.

Right, but you're right, without the mercy, that is exactly the ruling.

Right?

Yeah.

If God's going to be just as he is, he's going to punish the full consequence of sin, which means eternity in lake of fire for all of us.

Right.

So I think a core area of difference.

I don't know what you believe, but I know what the Roman Catholic Church believes because I've written a book on their, their beliefs and I've got it.

You know, I've actually had cardinals and bishops tell me that I'm accurate to it.

So I'm going to trust that.

So, you know, as I, I would have made a good lawyer.

But yes, when I wrote my book, what did they believe?

Not only did I systematize the different religions, but I then after, afterwards, I took it from their authorities.

I went to people of that, the different religions and, and said, take this and See if it, you believe it's accurate to your beliefs because like you, like you with your book, I didn't want to be misrepresented.

And so, so I say that to say, you know, I think the differ, the difference between what I believe and what the Roman Catholic Church would believe at least is that I would believe that our works do not play into getting right with God.

Now when I say, when I asked you like how, how do I get right with God?

You you were saying faith.

But what does that actually mean?

Is, is the issue and so I'll let me explain it what, how I would view it and you tell me what you think.

I mean I think the difference the Catholic Catechism and I always use that because that is, that's the latest authoritative work that the Catholic Church put out and so you know, their councils, things like that.

But that's the latest so, but it would say that we're, that someone is saying saved by faith plus works.

And this is where and, and for folks who are, who are listening or watching.

Matthew decided to go back to, to get an idea of this show and went back to old episodes and I don't even know how long ago the episode was, but he listened to the episode I did on the Catholic is the Catholic Church a cult?

So clearly he disagrees with me on vape use of the wrong Roman Catholic Church.

These things happen.

But, but he said, and he still came on.

So, so, but, but I think the big thing is, you know, and I don't know if you listen to me enough, you'll hear me talk about this.

But I, I, I would say that there's only two religions in the world, man made and divine.

And, and all of the man made religions say that humans do something to earn their righteousness with God.

And so where the Catholic Church would say it's faith plus works, I would disagree with that and say it's faith alone.

In fact that's what Ephesians 2, 89 says what Titus 3.

5 says that it's not by works but by grace.

But the Epistle of James says otherwise.

No, actually it doesn't because.

No, no, no.

But that's a good point because.

Well, the Epistle of James is talking about people after they've been regenerated.

So it's, it's not.

There's a difference between justification and sanctification.

I'm talking justification.

How do you get right with God versus after we're right with God we should have works.

And, and works are a sign, a way of seeing that someone is.

I couldn't tell if, if someone is a believer in Christ other than by looking at the works they do and seeing, okay, those works seem to align with what Scripture says a Christian would be.

And so when I look at this, I'm looking at it that way.

I'm looking at what is, you know, what are the, what's the fruit of someone's life, but that's after they're already regenerated or justified, right?

And so I don't think that James is talking about the same thing.

And the reason is, because what a lot of people make a mistake in James is they don't look at the question in verse 14.

They pick up in verse 15, his question in verse 14.

He says, what you say, is it my brother?

If someone says he has faith but he has no works, can that faith save him?

So what's the faith he's talking about?

He's talking about someone that claims a faith that they've already been a believer in Christ, they've already been right with God, they've already been justified and regenerated, but they don't have works.

That's the faith that he's talking about.

He's not talking about a true faith where somebody is, has the faith in the works that would follow with it.

And if you, if you go through the whole book of James, he lays out like 13 different ways of testing.

The whole book is about what genuine faith is, right?

And so when we look at the, when we look at a passage that's talking clearly about, about regeneration, right?

Ephesians 2, 8, 9.

For by grace you have been saved through faith, and that not of yourselves, it is a gift of God, not a result of works so that no one might boast, right?

That's, that becomes clearly that works are not involved in, in the regeneration, because that's what I'm talking about, right?

And, and this would be a thing, Matthew, apart from our, our differences of, of the canon.

And, and it might be fun to have you come on and, and we, we talk more and, and dig more because your, your book was quite interesting the way you laid it out.

I, I did enjoy it.

I, it's, I mean, like I said, I went through it.

It took me about four hours to get through because I can, I can read a, when I speed read, I can read about a, you know, a thousand words a minute.

It, it's, it, I mean, a thousand words, you know, it's, it's, it's, it, it.

But I'm not Picking up all the comprehension, right?

And so I, it is something that, the way that you did it, I would want to slow down and, and dig in deeper.

And so, but, but the point being, Matthew is my, my greatest concern with any guest that comes on is where they'd spend eternity.

And so I don't, you know, we, we've just met, right?

I don't know you, you don't know me, which is probably good for you.

But if you were to die Tonight, I mean, 160,000 people, actually, I got it.

I think that number now is like up to 180,000 people die a day.

But I still use the number 160 because that's the last time I checked, which was like a decade ago.

So.

But 160,000 people are going to die today.

If you were one of them, My greatest concern is where you'd spend eternity.

If you're trusting in your works, right.

If you're trusting in being a good person, I'd have concern for your soul, right?

And, and that's my greatest concern.

On my end.

I would say my works can't possibly save them because I know what my works are.

So.

And I know what my sins were.

So, you know, from my perspective, it is totally the faith that drives it.

But I, you know, I'm not an apologist.

I'm not, not going to argue with you over the details, but in general, I would say as, And I assume you would agree that for most of us, the real question is why don't your works represent your faith and therefore how deep is your faith?

Right?

And my question is whether you have a real faith given your works, Right?

Yeah, but I guess the question becomes.

And this gets back to that question I asked you earlier, right?

I'm a Jewish person and, and you may not realize this, but many Jewish people view Jesus Christ as Hitler's God, right?

So when you say have faith in Jesus Christ, I want nothing to do with that guy, right?

He wants to kill me.

That, that was my view.

That's how I was raised.

So, so what does it mean to have faith in God?

What does it mean?

Like, what is it that regenerates us or justifies us before God?

I'll use the word justify because you're a lawyer.

That's more your language.

Well, yeah, but I mean, not in a religious sense at all, because as I said, I'm not really an apologist.

So to me, it is a belief that God did create us, that he has a purpose for us, and that we are asking him to, you know, carry us forward into eternity with him.

Right.

And by making that request, that is what can become actualized.

And if you don't make the request, well, you know, you, you made a choice and it might not work out for you, but that, that request of God, please save me, God, please carry us forward is what I think it's all about.

Okay, so can I give you a different perspective?

Sure.

Okay, so, so here, here's would be my view is that because Jesus is truly man and truly God being.

And I'm just going to mute you just for the background, but just raise your hand and I'll unmute you.

So being truly God, he can pay an eternal fine.

He could pay in time, one event, and it can not only be count for all eternity, but count for more than one person because his nature is eternal.

Being a human being who never broke God's law, he could be a substitute for you and I.

And so in that case, what makes Christianity, what I argue makes Christianity unique?

And I put this in my book, what do they believe?

Is that as the epilogue and the uniqueness of Christianity is that it's not based on moral teachings, it's based on a person.

Jesus being truly God, truly man, he can now be the only one.

And this is why Christianity is unique in the second way, is the only one that can justify that where God is both just and merciful because the full weight of sin was paid on Jesus at the cross.

When he was at that cross, he suffered the full weight of sin.

So that's justice now because he paid that, he can now offer us mercy because he's both God and man.

And, and that is, that's why the, our regeneration is solely upon what God did on that cross and not anything that we do to, to add to that.

We can't add to that because anything, anything that we would add to the cross would diminish the work that Jesus did on the cross.

And so I, I would say that the, that the, this is where this is the major contention I would have with the Roman Catholic Church, to let you know, is is this one issue, because this is an issue that, that quite literally is the difference between heaven and hell.

Right?

It's the difference of have we truly been regenerated or justified by God?

And if, if we're expecting to be justified by faith plus works, when God is saying it's, it's by grace, not by works, then we won't be in heaven.

And, and that's my biggest concern.

You know, it would be for You.

Only because you're saying you're Catholic.

Right.

So I'm, I'm gonna, my starting point would be to assume I could be wrong.

To assume that you're believing in Roman Catholic theology.

You may, maybe.

I mean, there are Roman.

There are people in a Roman Catholic church that disagree with orthodox Roman Catholic theology.

I think there are people who are in Roman Catholic churches that are regenerate believers, but they do that apart from Roman Catholic theology.

So, so I guess my, my, my concern for you is just because I don't know you, I, and, and I, I, I never want to miss an opportunity when I talk to someone to explain how they can get right with God.

Right.

I believed, right or wrong, actually wrong, that I was saved because of my Jewishness.

I was raised believing that being Jewish, I was, I had an immediate ticket to heaven.

That's false.

Right.

I had to convert.

I had to turn from trusting myself as a good person or trusting my good works, or in my case, trusting my genealogy and trust only in what Jesus did on the cross.

And so I guess Matthew, my question, I guess for you is do you ultimately, and if you don't feel like answering, you know, I understand.

But do you ultimately trust just in what Jesus did on the cross for the forgiveness of your sins, or do you believe, as the Catholic Church would teach, that it's faith plus works?

And I'm asking this because even in what you said, it's like you, you lessen some of the works, you know, omission and commission.

And you, you know, it's like, well, not really bad sins, but even a lie, one lie condemns us to eternity in a lake of fire.

And so I guess because I wasn't hearing kind of the seriousness of sin, and so what is it you ultimately trust for your righteousness?

Well, again, I've already converted and I already believe in a God who is both just and merciful.

Right.

So when I say that, I, you know, when you're asking me a question of, you know, do I deserve, etc, I mean, if you're asking it purely with a God of justice, then no, of course not.

But I already believe in a God who's merciful.

So then when we're guessing or whatever, I mean, the truth is the sins have not been that not terrible.

And I would hope that God will forgive me for the ones that were.

But that is based on the forgiveness, right?

I am certainly trusting in the forgiveness.

I'm not trusting in my own actions.

I'm not bragging about my own actions.

I'M doing, I'm telling you straight up, I think I'm a terrible person and I think I would have been a much more worse person if circumstances hadn't been, you know, the lucky cushy life that I ended up leading.

So, you know, it's, it's a total faith in God, but it, it's, you know, and some of this is just.

I did the philosophical analysis of Christianity years ago.

Now in the last year or two I've been devoted to this book, right?

So it's been, you know, it's been a while since I've looked into these things or whatever, but I, I feel just as a lawyer listening to you, that you are placing an awful lot of emphasis on what I would consider to be semantics.

I know people debate over them, I know they discuss them, etc, but to me, God is going to look at you and whether or not you really converted, you know, whether you really had the faith that you claim to have.

And that shows through the works, right?

If you died instantly at the moment of conversion, well, then you wouldn't have works, right?

But if you have a life after that and your works don't show it, that is a problem.

It's a problem ultimately of the faith.

But it's the work showing the faith, right?

Well, yes and no, because you can look at Islam, which would, I would clearly disagree with and I don't know if you would, but I don't.

Okay, so, but, but Islam is actually in a, in a human sense, a very positive religion.

In one way is that, you know, when you look in prisons, people become Muslim and they turn around.

It has a better rate of, I don't know, a good word to use.

I want to say recovery, but it's not the right word.

Rehabilitation, that'd probably be a better word because what it does is it provides structure.

I mean, I drive by a Mosque at 5:30 in the morning on a regular basis by me and that parking lot is full at 5:30 in the morning.

Can you picture telling a bunch of Christians, Hey, 5:30 in the morning, let's, we're going to have prayer, they're not going to show up.

And what, what Islam is, it does provide a, a sense of structure.

And that structure outwardly does seem to, it seems to be helpful, right?

And so people could look at those works and say, well see, that's positive.

But you know, and I don't think it's semantics, I think it's an important difference because our eternal soul rests upon this, whether we get right with God by our works or not.

Right.

I mean, that's a major.

It's a major thing.

And I think Scripture says not.

Right.

And.

Yeah, but I.

Again, it's a little bit.

Is, you know, if your works are not showing your faith, your faith was fake.

So the real.

The emphasis on works is the emphasis that if you truly do have the faith, you're going to do the works.

Yeah, but even Jesus said that with the parable of the soils, two of those soils had works.

They just didn't last.

Exactly.

Right.

So the issue becomes that it's the.

You're looking at the outward.

I'm at.

You're talking.

I think we might be talking past each other because you're talking about the doctrine of sanctification.

I'm talking about the doctrine of justification.

Right.

And so I. I guess.

I guess the thing that I'm trying to get to is, do you believe that in any way your works add to your righteousness?

In other words, do you believe that, yes, you had faith, but part of your conversion was also doing good works?

Well, I mean, a.

Doing good works has increased my faith.

Right.

Doing things has actually helped with the faith.

But second is, I know myself, and if I did not engage in good works, I didn't have faith.

I know that like, you know, it is the faith that led me to do things.

Right.

Well, it could be.

I mean.

I mean, I just don't think that.

I think that there is a.

I.

Think there is an aspect where we could end up.

People can see what they would say is good works.

Right.

But in trying to earn.

Earn a salvation.

I'm not trying to earn a salvation, okay.

I'm trying to do good works because I have faith.

See?

And that would be a difference.

I see.

I'm trying.

I do good works not because I have faith, but because Christ died for me.

Because he.

He.

He paid a punishment I can never repay.

That's why I do good works.

Not because I'm trying to.

Not because I feel like I have to, but because I want my motivation changed because he.

He paid an eternal fine for me.

Right.

I. I feel like I have to in the same.

And I feel like I have to give you first aid if I see you dying.

I have to because that's who I am.

That's what I want to do.

Right.

Okay.

It's not happening.

Like, definitely don't think of it as I'm earning anything.

It's just that that is a.

It is because I have faith that I feel that I must get out in the world to do things.

It's not because it's God's crediting my good works in that sense.

It's that it is the faith that drives me to do it.

Okay.

Yeah, no, it's interesting.

It's.

It, you know, I, and I think, I think part of it, I think what we'd have to do is spend a little bit more time to get to definitions of terms to make sure we're talking the same things.

Right.

And again, and I would have to go back to the philosophy.

Well, it's not so much the philosophy, it's really the theology.

I know.

Yeah, yeah.

So, so evident.

Which is all I dealt with for two years.

So.

Yeah.

So.

But Matthew, I appreciate you coming on again, folks.

The book, his book, if you, if you do want to pick it up and get a copy.

And it is kind of challenging the case for Christ, you know, but it's called Cannon Crossfire.

It was an interesting read.

I've actually planned to back up and read it a little bit slower, but, but, you know, I, when, when I reached out to your publisher, they sent it to me and wanted, yawn, like this week.

And I'm like, oh, okay, well, then I'm reading it quickly.

I, you know, I can read at two different levels and this was one where, you know, I, I just read.

I, I can read very quickly, but I, I know, don't pick up as much as I would like in.

When I'm.

If I was actually going to do a debate for folks that don't know how I do my debate prep.

If I was going to debate you on your book, I would actually not only look at everything you've.

That you've written, but I would cross reference every single resource.

And so it, it's.

That takes a lot more time.

I mean, I, the thing, my position.

When I do it.

Yeah.

And that is exactly how I started the book.

I show people where it came from and where to go do it.

So you're the kind of reader that I'm looking for, somebody who actually does that.

The book is designed.

Yeah, no, I do original.

I do original source research.

When I do.

And because a lot of times people say, oh, this says that.

And when you go check it, it's like, no, it doesn't.

You took it out of context.

I say right up in front of my book.

My metric is 20%.

When I check people's footnotes, 20% of the time they were wrong.

Yeah.

That probably I might agree with that.

I haven't done the Math on that.

But yeah, amazing.

Yeah.

And so it's something where I would have to check all the references.

I end up.

I mean my view when I enter into a debate is that I know my opponents are argument as well as they do and if not better, but it's kind of hard to be better in that sense.

But.

Right.

But you.

But that's the extent folks.

And if you're going to do a debate, if you're going to exchange, because this is part of the thing we do here to projects live is not just do apologize.

We.

We also explain it right.

To teach it.

And so we weren't really doing a formal debate.

We're having a discussion discussion.

We're having some disagreement.

That disagreement is a debate.

But it, it's.

This was more of a discussion type really learning from one another and, and well, more me learning from Matthew in, in his views because I, yeah, I was, I guess I was explaining some of my views, but it was more me just kind of pushing back a bit on, on some of, of Matthews.

But this is how we, we would do it.

It is try to understand someone's position rather than just looking to poke holes in it.

Okay.

And so I hope that that at least came through tonight.

So Matthew, I do want to thank you for coming on.

I do.

You know, I love anyone that just has a thing debate me about the Bible.

I'll be, you know, in the picture that your, your publisher sent, I, I'm always happy to sit in that empty space seat that you have there.

The funny thing, the thing that made me laugh about that Matthew, is I had a debate on this program where we were supposed to have a debate with a guy.

Well, actually three guys that were claimed to be black.

Black Hebrew Israelites.

And they were the Israelites.

I was not.

Even though I can.

Even though you follow the line to Abraham.

Abraham.

Nope, that doesn't make work.

You have to be black.

And so they blocked us like on two.

The debate's gonna be Thursday.

They blocked me and the moderator on Tuesday.

And I said to the moderator, I said, here's what we're gonna do.

I will introduce me.

I'll do my opening and then just introduce our guest and let him introduce himself and, and then let him make his arguments.

And he's like, who do you have?

Like, don't worry about it.

I got, I got something set up.

He's like, okay.

So he introduces me, I make my case.

He says, I. I don't know who this is, but Andrew said we have, we have Someone that's going to, to debate him.

Would you introduce yourself?

And I put up a picture of an empty chair and it worked because someone was so.

Because I had so many black Hebrew Israelites watching that we actually had a guy that came on the next week and did a debate against me on, on the subject.

And now, Matthew, you know how, you know how you can know that you want to debate?

It's because, huh.

When the guy doesn't show up.

Well, that, yeah, but no, the next week when the guy did show up, I know I won the debate because I had so many black Hebrew Israelites afterwards telling me that's not the right guy to debate.

He doesn't know what he's talking about.

And so I said, okay, you want to come on?

How about you come on and, and let's debate?

And they never did.

So you know, when, when people that agree with him tell, tell you that he, he lost the debate.

That's, that's how you can know.

And so.

But yeah, I, I don't mind a good debate.

I don't mind discussion where we disagree.

You know, you're.

You're welcome to come on anytime you want if, if you think of things, you want to, you know, poke at me and, and challenge me with this.

This show is set up where we can always have anyone come on.

It was a kind of a quiet night tonight.

Maybe.

Maybe the technology was having more of an effect than I thought.

I will say this because we're now officially in November and I'm just gonna.

So Matthew, we don't have.

Matthew doesn't have to like, look all, all like serious.

I'll take them off camera while I talk about this.

So I will say this.

It's officially November, which means that the.

Anthony, the gentleman who.

And I know he's probably going to watch or listen to the podcast because he likes to stalk Anthony.

It's officially November.

October is passed.

In other words, your challenge that you said that you would debate me in October never happened.

For folks who are regular.

He wanted to up.

Let me put this comment up because this is really good.

I want to make sure Matthew sees this.

But this is a comment says very good discussion to exclamation points.

So thank you for that.

That's what we try to do here.

But Anthony wanted to come in and have a formal debate on the topic of, well, basically that homosexuality is, is in line with Christianity.

And so he wanted to debate that.

He's been on this show before.

We had a discussion.

I, I don't make A distinction discussion debate where you disagree.

It's a debate.

It's, you know, but he wanted, he wanted a formal debate.

And I said fine.

The only thing I said was his boyfriend can't be the moderator.

Now that was a sticking point.

Then I know they've gone online and said that I chickened out from the debate.

I only had one stipulation with Anthony did agree to that it would be unfair to make his boyfriend the moderator.

That would be not the best moderator.

He supposedly had a moderator, but his boyfriend said that he had to be the moderator.

I said, no, I'm not going to do a debate where you're, you know, you're the moderator and I'm debating your boyfriend.

Because if you, if anyone went, goes back to the time when Anthony came on, his boyfriend was in the chat being very irrational, very extrapolous.

I mean, just, just kind of a pain to work with in the, in the chat.

The, the other co host did not appreciate, you know, some of the having to deal with them.

And so I don't know that he could have emotionally handled himself as a moderator.

You know, monitoring debates is not an, an easy thing because you want to, you want to.

As a moderator, you're listening to it, you want to say something and you have a mic.

You have to refrain from speaking of, you know, from having your own opinion.

I didn't know that he could do that.

And so the debate didn't happen.

I waited till after October just to point it out.

I know that they're, they, they're running around saying that I am a chicken, I am a coward.

I won't debate him.

I do a show here every week where anybody can come in and debate me on any topic when I'm not prepared to tell me that I'm a chicken and I'm a coward and I'm afraid of a debate.

I'm sorry, the evidence is not on your side.

So you guys can make the claim and it may sound good in your echo chamber, but Anthony, I know that you're, you, you troll us.

You watch it.

Sorry, dude.

If you want to actually have a formal debate, we can find a moderator.

There's plenty of people that I know that can, can moderate debates.

We can have someone that can do it.

You claimed you had someone get the person to do it.

We could do the debate anytime.

So with that, I just want to, I want to thank Matthew for coming in.

Let me bring you back in in case you have any, any last comments you would like to make.

Oh, hold on.

You're muted.

Let me unmute you.

There you go.

If you need a moderator, I could do that.

Hey, there you go.

Because you, you and I wouldn't agree.

I, I.

There we go, Anthony.

We got the moderator right here.

I am available, but yeah, otherwise, I mean, I'd love to debate you, but we'd have to agree that we're in the case for Christ.

Right.

And that's not really your space, so I'd love to debate you anytime or talk to you, talk to you with you.

I actually wrote this book for Protestants.

Every Protestant who's actually read it has loved the book.

It's.

It's a lot of evidence in it.

It's just showing you that evidence, and you can make the decisions, do whatever you want from there.

But I'm making this point about the crossfire as I go, so that's it.

But thank you.

Really appreciate you having me on.

Yeah, I do appreciate it.

I always enjoy someone that wants to have a good discussion slash debate.

And, you know, whether formal or informal, this was more informal, and I think it was, it was a good discussion.

I think that, I think your book has a lot of things to think about.

I mean, I disagree with some of them, but we, we approach, we approach it differently, you know, and, and like I said earlier, I'll just end with this, is that, you know, I, I don't.

We didn't get into it enough to understand our views because I think, I think some of the, the, the definition of terms.

But my greatest concern for you, as it is with anyone I meet, is where, where you'd spend e with you or anyone listening.

If you don't know Christ, if you haven't, if you have not turned from trusting yourself as a good person, trusting your good works, or trusting your genealogy, and turn to Christ and Christ alone and trust in what he did on a cross as a payment of our sin, then may you do that today.

That's always my encouragement to everyone I come in contact with.

And may I encourage those of you listening to strive to make today an eternal day for the glory of God.

And we will see you next week.

Have a great night.