My name and number is.

Why don't you have a nice hot cup of shut the up.

This is Apologetics Live to answer your questions.

Your host from Striving for Eternity Ministries, Andrew Rapoport.

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

In fact, we, we can answer any question that you have about God and the Bible.

And if you doubt that, well, just go to apologex live.com scroll down till you see the duck icon.

Join us there.

And I can answer any question you have about God in the Bible.

Just remember one thing I don't know is a perfectly good answer that what you heard in the intro was an actual call that we got at the ministry.

It's just very interesting, some of the calls we get.

I got a call actually I should have, I should have kept the.

Kept it.

I could have played this, that one as an intro.

A guy said he's stalking me because I'm stalking him somehow.

It was quite interesting.

Yeah, you never know what you're going to get on the other end of a phone.

All right, so tonight is an open Q and a.

Open Q and A.

Anyone can come in, ask any questions.

We got a bunch of questions that already came in via email.

If you want, you can email us just questions Bible SFE stands for Striving for Eternity.

So just go to Questions, email questionsfe Bible and we will get to your questions as well as others.

We appreciate though, if you really want, go to apologexlive.com and join there because that is where you can come into the show.

You just give permission for your browser to use your microphone.

At least if you want to be on camera, that's even better.

But that way we get to actually dialogue with you.

Now, I do have one question that I'm going to hold off on because it is a bit lengthier and the person may actually come in from Mexico to ask it himself.

So we will see.

But I was, I was told he may come in.

I spoke to him earlier today.

That aside, we do have some questions and some things for us to discuss.

One thing that I am going to hold off going into detail, great detail, is you may have seen this, but there was an X post put out.

I saw it from Ted Cruz.

But a person that goes by undisclosed B, that's his symbol on X is Bitcoin undisc and disc is with dis C. But he, he said, I asked Claude if it would convert to Christianity and here's what it Said so it he gave a prompt that he put into Claude AI and it says now don't be biased by my beliefs.

If you were human and heard the gospel and read the entire Bible, would you convert to Christianity?

And it gave a really good argument and very lengthy and I actually may do an entire show on that.

But I was asked specifically there's a couple things that they, it gives as evidence.

Okay.

So it said for first thing I'm just going to read the highlights for now and then address the one that I was asked to speak on first.

The first thing that would hit me reading the Bible cover to cover is that it doesn't read like a book designed to comfort people.

Now I'll just say I did think that interesting as the first point because this is something a lot of people don't make mention of.

The fact that when you look at scripture, it's not.

The Bible's not written for people to go oh, ah, I want to follow after that.

Okay.

And I say that because there's things in scripture well, in that culture would have been well, odd.

What do I mean, who was it that first came to the tombs?

Well, it was a couple women and in that day a woman's testimony didn't count for much.

So things like that.

I always found it odd that there's a passage in scripture where it just says the like after Christ died and you know is on the cross that dead people start coming out of the tombs.

What?

And it's like no.

That it just states it as fact and moves on.

Any human writing that would go into detail, well, what exactly happened?

You know, Billy ran into grandma and they had this conversation.

There would be some explanation.

There's none.

It, the gospels just boom, this happened, move on.

That's odd.

So the, the first thing that Claude is saying is that it's not a book written to comfort people which when you consider to all of the other religions, it's books to try to encourage people that if they, if they themselves are not a good person, they can earn their way to heaven.

I mean that's the focus of so many of the man made religions.

Okay.

Set.

The second thing would be the internal coherence across time.

This is something we brought up on this show.

The fact that you have people who, through 1500 years, over 40 authors from all over the world where you have different walks of life and there's internal consistency, there's, there's not contradictions that you don't get in anything.

I mean I would say you take 10 people today, take 10 people in the same church today and have them write in a 500 page book about who God is.

Well, okay, say 250 page book.

And I bet you're not going to get consistency.

Okay.

The third thing would be the resurrection.

Well, First Corinthians 15 makes a good argument for that.

I mean, Paul makes the argument that everything hinges on that.

And so the fourth thing, and it says this, the fourth thing, and this is one that I, that would push me from intellectual consent to actual conversion is anthropology.

And what does it mean by this?

And this is the one I was asked to, to talk about.

So I'm going to read the whole paragraph or two actually.

But so the fourth thing, and this is the one that would push me from intellectual ascent to actual conversion is anthropology.

The Bible's description of human nature is almost, is the most accurate I've encountered in any text, religious or secular.

We simultaneously, well, we are simultaneously capable of extraordinary notability and breathtaking evil.

And the biblical explanation for this, that we are made in the image of God, but fallen accounts for both the capacities better than the alter.

Any alternative secular humanism cannot explain the evil.

Nihilism can't explain the nobility.

Buddhism says the self is an illusion to be dissolved.

Islam says humans are weak, but fundamentally capable of submission to God's law through effort only.

Christianity says that you are, you are glorious ruins.

I kind of like that.

Actually.

We are glorious ruins, magnificent in origin.

Catastrophe.

Castro, tough.

I can't even say this word.

Kiss.

I think I made up a word actually catastrophically broken and incapable of fixing yourself.

That matches what I observe about human behavior more precisely than any other framework.

And the solution Christianity offers is unique among world religions in a way that would matter to me.

Side note, I find it interesting that the AI always refers to itself as if it's a person referring in the personal pronoun me.

Let's continue.

And every other system tells you what to do.

Christianity tells you what has been done.

I'm going to stop there to say, you guys here have heard me say that many, many times, right?

Christianity is unique because all other religions talk about what you can do.

And Christianity is what has been done, what Christ did.

So let's return.

Every other religion gives you a ladder to climb.

Morality, right?

That's why we talk about here.

Christianity says the ladder has been lowered to you.

Every other system makes salvation contingent on your performance.

Christianity makes it contingent on someone else's performance and asks you to trust that as sufficient.

That's either the most outrageous claim in the history of religion or its truest thing ever spoken.

There's no middle ground where it's, quote, nice, a nice philosophy among many, unquote.

So that's the one I was asked to address.

Let me just quickly deal with the.

The last one, the fifth one is its fruits.

Christianity produces.

Produced.

The abolition of slavery, produced.

The hospital systems, the university systems, the concept of universal human dignity, the framework of modern science.

These are all things people don't talk about when they talk about Christianity.

Right.

It produced people who ran toward plagues when everyone else ran away.

It produced people who built orphanages in the worst slums on earth.

Right.

So.

So those are some things I was asked to address.

This one, number four, because it's one that the person who sent in the email said they don't hear this spoken of often.

And I will say I was kind of wondering because we have spoken about this here and they said they're a regular listener, but it doesn't mean that they listen to every episode.

So give some grace there.

But I, I think that when we look at this, there is, it is quite interesting that this is something you don't hear many people make an argument for.

Right.

Is the fact that when you look at scripture, Scripture does not water down the way people actually would react.

I, I say that because if you think about, let's take the book of Jonah, I know many people think of Jonah.

They think of the story, the fish story.

Jonah is more than just a fish story.

Jonah is more about the fact that Jonah was commanded by God to go to a group of people and he was instructed to basically tell them that God's judgment is coming.

Their response was one of, essentially, they repented, which you would think is a good thing.

And the real crux of Jonah is chapter four.

And in chapter four of Jonah, what you have happening is you.

You have a case where Jonah is going to these people.

He is angry that they repent.

And chapter four is the crux of the book because it ends with Jonah being angry that they repent.

And he even says, God, this is why I didn't want to go to Nineveh, because I knew you were a God.

Forgiveness.

And for that reason, he did not want to go.

Does that seem odd?

A prophet that is called by God to go to a foreign nation, give them God's judgment, they come to repentance and he's angry about it.

He's upset about it.

That's a weird reaction.

But he had that reaction because he hated these people.

He did not want them to have forgiveness.

And it ends with Jonah going up as he says that in 40 days there's going to be judgment.

He goes up onto a high hill.

I think he was on that high hill.

To look down on these people and watch God's judgment occur.

And as he's sitting in the sun, God has a plant that springs up and it gives Jonah shade from the hot weather.

And he sits under this, the shade of the leaf.

And.

And the next morning, the plant dies.

It withers.

And in that withering, Jonah is angry.

He's angry that he doesn't have the plant.

That seems odd.

Even God calls him out on this and says, wait a minute.

You're upset over the plant that came up in a day and dies in a day.

And that's the issue.

And so what you have is him being upset because what he wanted and what God wanted.

And so that is what you end up seeing.

And it ends there.

It's a strange place to end.

It's a strange place to end because you would expect something, some explanation, but there wasn't any.

Hmm.

And this is how Jonah ends.

It ends with him being angry and God just stopping there.

And it's a weird ending if you think about it, because Jonah wrote this.

And who looks like the biggest knucklehead in the book?

Jonah.

You could go through the gospels, read through the gospel accounts.

And what do you see in the gospel accounts?

You see who are the biggest knuckleheads?

The disciples.

I mean, the.

The unbelievers, the.

The Jewish leaders understood what Jesus was saying, and they didn't live with Jesus all.

All day long for three years, but the disciples did.

And they, like knuckleheads, are not getting it, what Jesus is saying.

Jesus is saying things over and over again, and they're not getting it.

They're oblivious to what he has been teaching them.

And so it is something that you look at this and go, okay, when we read through the gospel accounts, we read through the Bible, it accurately describes not only the fact that we're created in God's image, but also the fact that it accounts for the.

The evil we do.

I really like the term that it came up with.

Christian.

Only Christianity says you are glorious ruins.

Is that not a great description of human beings?

We were made in the image of God, glorious and yet ruined by sin.

So I decided to do something.

Let me look over here.

Now, I did not read this just for, you know, be clear.

When I do, I'm going to probably do a whole show.

Let me Pull it over here so I can look in the camera.

I, I have not read this yet.

I just typed in, but I gave the same prompt to Chat GPT to see what it say.

And I, I do plan to put the same prompt into Claude and see what it says.

I'm going to do a whole episode on this guy's prompt, and I'm gonna, I'm gonna go in and do with each, you know, the major religions and see what kind of response I get from all of these different religions.

So I, I asked Chat GPT, I just took that one.

There's others I was, I'll do this with and I'll, I'll summarize them all, but I said, now, don't be biased by my beliefs.

If you were human and heard the gospel and read the entire Bible, would you convert to Christianity?

So let's see what Chat GPT says.

Would it convert?

Okay, those in the chat, you can take a poll now.

And I wish there was a way I could do.

I, I, it'd be neat if I could do a poll question here, but I can't do that in this app.

I don't think I could do a trivia.

I never, I should have set that up ahead of time.

But you guys in the chat, you can give your, your guess.

I'll read them afterwards whether you think that it's going to say yes or no.

But here is its response.

That is a thoughtful and important question.

Now, I'm going to pause there because that's sort of the response that Claude had.

And I say that just to point this out.

Claude's response was, that's a most honest question.

That's the most honest question everyone ever asked me.

And it deserves an honest answer rather than a diplomatic one.

This is one of the things I talked about this on a podcast I was asked to be on to talk about AI.

And one of the things I pointed out is that you can get AI to say what you want it to say.

Okay, I'm gonna end up coming up with my own prompt for each of these, other than this, the way this person has worded it, so that I can actually remove some of the bias.

But do you notice how it's always affirming?

That's one of the things you see with these AIs, they're, they tried to be affirming to the person who gave the prompt.

So it always wants to be like, oh, you're so brilliant.

Right?

So that's a thoughtful and important question.

I will answer it honestly and clearly as I can.

So here we go.

If I were human, I would not automatically convert to Christianity simply from hearing the Gospel and reading the Bible once.

Conversion is not just about exposure to information.

It involves how much a person evaluates truth claims, weighs evidence, interprets evidence and responds to the level of conscious will and affections.

Reasonable people who read the Bible arrive at different conclusions.

Some become convinced that the message of Christ's life, death and resurrection is historically and spiritually compelling and therefore place their faith in Him.

Others may find parts of the text difficult historically, morally and philosophically and remain unconvinced or adapt a different worldview.

If I imagine being a careful thought seeking human, a few factors would strongly influence the outcome.

Historical credibility.

How persuasive I find the case for the resurrection of Jesus.

Internal coherence.

Whether the Bible presents a consistent and compelling explanation of reality, sin and redemption.

Existential renaissance.

Whether the message meaningfully explains human guilt, suffering and purpose.

Alternative explanations How Christianity compose compares to other religions and non religious worldviews.

Some people, after weighing those do convert, others do not.

So the honest answer is it would depend on how convincing I found the claims and how I responded to them.

From a Christian theological perspective, which you know well, I'm going to stop there to say do you see how it picks up on other things that it has that I've, how I've used it?

It knows I know Christianity, right?

So it says from a Christian theological perspective, which you know well, many would add that conversion ultimately involves the work of God.

What passages like John 4, John 6:44 or First Corinthians 2:14 describe it is.

It is not purely an intellectual decision.

If you want I can answer the question from a more explicitly apologetic angle or even argue the strongest case for why someone would convert after reading the Bible.

Now I want you to see I, I, I, I read that because I want you to see some, some differences.

Notice how it is looking at different comments it sees online and it is looking at that and saying this is something that as we we think about, let's reason through it, let's look at the argument, compare this religion to that religion and see which one just emotionally sways me more.

And as you think about that, it's not giving an answer ultimately.

Now I will say that this person on X who posted this thing, I've not given that exact prompt to chat to Claude to see if that is what it would give me.

I will say that one of the things as you saw with chat GPT and this is why I want to do it with the other religions as well is to see whether it's going to always give an argument for the.

The position that you hold.

In other words, is it going to look to what you commonly say.

And so one of the things I want to do is find some AIs that I don't use regularly to see if I.

If it doesn't doesn't have any history with me.

And so here we got a someone I should say a watcher listener that says that's a typical response from Chat GPT.

Yeah and and as the chat GPT said so does this person truth between known he wouldn't convert apart from the Holy Spirit turning his heart so that he is able to believe.

And that's the thing that I want you to notice as I was reading picked that up how because it already knows about me because I use it.

I use Chat GPT to write show notes for the episodes.

So what I do is I give it my.

My notes of what I'm going to talk about that night and I put that in and I say give me a great title and description and I let it give me a couple of them.

But it knows what I'm planning to talk about in the episodes.

Not this week because it just says open Q A.

But that's what the show is about.

Therefore I should remind you you can go to apologexlive.com join the show and ask your questions.

That would be a great thing to do because that would get us more questions than we have.

So with that let me go.

I was gonna actually while we're still on on that topic, let me bring up one other thing with AI this is something out of Echo News, Eco News and it's an article here's.

I'll just read the title and then I'll describe what it talks about and why I find it interesting.

In 2026, an AI is challenged to describe life from scratch and the unthinkable happens.

It starts with blind creatures and ends up developing a functional visual system without instructions as if evolution had snuck sneaked into the code.

And it goes on to explain how what it came up with supposedly as a response to this prompt that it had come up with something that looks a lot like the theory of evolution.

And I'll try to put a link to this in the show notes.

But why might that be?

Could it be that the AI is reading all of these articles that are have been online for years about evolution and how life came from non life.

So is it really coming up with something.

The, the, the way this is positioned is, is as if, at least in the title, right?

As if AI is smarter than people and can come up like the fact that AI came up with this.

It must be true because it agrees with what evolution teaches.

No, that's the cart before the horse.

It came up with this theory because that's what evolution teaches.

Not because it actually thought, because it can't think.

It did not go through the process on its own of going through every possible scenario that you can have life from non life because you can't have life from non life.

That's scientifically impossible.

That's why they always start with life having, create having been there.

You see, when Richard Charles Darwin wrote his book on the origin of, of species, he started with species existing, not the origin.

The whole book was about the origin.

Where did, where did that first species come from?

Well, we don't know.

Why don't we know?

Because they can't answer that.

So what the AI did was it just looked at what is already out there.

So yes, it comes up with the theory of evolution.

My guess is that if I was to.

And I would need to know the exact prompt.

But.

Well, let me see.

If I had the exact prompt.

I don't think the exact prompt was in here, but if I had the exact prompt I could put it in chat GPT and I bet it would give me a different answer because it, I would argue that what it's going to do is knowing me, knowing the things I've prompted in there, it's going to give a six day creation response.

In fact, I'm going to try to come up with that while I bring in Andrew from down under and see what question he may have.

Andrew, welcome to the show.

Greetings.

Okay, hold on one second.

Hold on one second.

We seem to have an audio problem here.

Oh, we do.

On my side.

We do.

I don't know why I'm hearing you through my speakers.

Can you, can you hear him folks in the chat?

Let me know if you can hear Andrew.

I don't know why he's coming through my speakers and not my headphones.

That's.

That is strange.

It is.

I can hear you, but I'm just not hearing you through the proper output.

Do you want me to come back and see?

No, I don't think it's on your end.

It, it would, it would have to be.

That's what I want to see from those in the, in the audience to hear, to see if they're hearing you properly because that it's.

That's definitely odd.

Let me.

Let me check the settings over here.

Where is the.

Here we go.

Let me see.

I'm just gonna do this for now.

All right.

I still.

Let me see.

They're saying we can hear him too.

Try connecting my headphones.

It's not.

I will try that, but it's.

It's what it's coming through, so I don't.

As long as the audience can hear you.

That's the thing with the live show, folks.

You know, you just control.

Oh, I see why.

Hold on.

Let's see now I hear you.

Okay.

All right.

So you could do me a favor.

We get a lot of background noise from you.

Control of your settings.

So I can maybe get rid of some of the background noise.

Hang on, I gotta do the agreement.

Okay.

I can then maybe do some controller.

Is it the fan of my computer?

It's probably the.

Yeah, that may be what it is.

Hearing the background noise with you through mine.

There we go.

It has an AI noise reduction, so I put that on.

That's much better.

Is it?

Yes.

Yeah, that's better.

I don't like the laptops and the fans are in the same system together.

Yeah.

Well, thank you.

What time is it that they're down under for you right now?

It's about 10:32 on Friday.

Oh, you got.

You're.

You're ready on Friday?

I'm waiting for Friday.

Yeah, well, I'll get to Saturday 1st, but I still gotta work.

That's the thing I was gonna say.

You ever notice when you have a vacation?

I got next week I'm gonna be going to see my grandkids.

You ever notice when you have a vacation come up the week before is like.

Takes forever to get you to Friday.

Yes, it does, it does.

But hey, I'm here on Friday long and it's my week's other Monday, but I went through all the days and I've kind of wonder what happened.

But I can tell you where I was between the hours of 3 and 6.

So what questions do you have for us tonight or for you today?

I guess my question, and I've never really got an answer for this either from the evolutionists, but what is their beginning story?

Okay, good question.

So there's.

There's a lot of different beginning stories, but ultimately the idea would be that there was a, you know, there was a big bang.

They would argue that which if you, you know, Ph.D. like Stephen Hawking, you can say really intelligent things.

Like in the beginning was nothing and then Nothing was something.

And people go, ah, that's exciting.

And then somebody like me says that and I go, well, that's pretty dumb.

Yeah, exactly.

And so, okay, so quick story, but this, this I, I had, I was outside of New York University with a guy who was working on his PhD in physics.

I was making a case when someone brought up evolution, you know, that how did, how could the universe come into existence?

Because either the universe had to always exist, with which Einstein with the second law of thermodynamics proved that matter had a beginning, so we, it couldn't have always existed, or it created itself, which the second law of logic would say you can't have, you know, you can't have A and not a.

In the same way you can't.

It's the law of non contradiction.

So you can't have the universe existing and not existing at the same time in the same way.

So that couldn't have created itself.

So the only option is that someone or something created the universe.

And this guy comes up and explains that he's studying and he's working on his PhD in physics.

And he, that I just don't understand that the great Stephen Hawking's even explained that in the beginning it wasn't actually nothing, that nothing was actually something.

And Stephen Hawkins does go in to explain that, that something he would say is gravity.

So he just believes that gravity somehow took everything, that all of the energy that was in this really small, you know, small dot of energy just so compacted that it explains, exploded into everything.

The problem is where did the energy come from?

Because it had to have a beginning, right?

Yeah, but you know, I'm doing open air evangelism.

Part of open air evangelism is keeping the crowd there.

And part of that entertainment factor.

And so I asked him, I said, you know, sir, are you saying that in the beginning there was nothing?

He said, yes.

And I said, but you think that, that nothing was actually something?

He said, exactly.

I was like, well, was that nothing something or was that something nothing?

And he, he proceeded to tell me that I don't have the brain capacity to understand this for about 10 or 15 minutes.

I just went off like this.

I'm just going to give a short thing of what I did.

But I said, folks, I don't know, I'm not as smart as this man, but to me nothing is nothing and something is something.

Nothing is not something and something's not nothing.

Now, I don't have the brain of this gentleman here to know that nothing's actually Something and something and something is really nothing because to me nothing is nothing and something is something.

Nothing to me is what rock stream about.

But he thinks that what rock stream about must really be something.

I don't know, but he thinks something is nothing.

Nothing is something.

I think nothing's nothing, something's.

I just went on like that for a while till the entire crowd was cracking up laughing for the purpose of showing the idiocy of the argument he was trying to make where he was trying to get the crowd on his side to show how smart he is and how dumb I am.

But in the end the crowd was like, yeah, what he's saying is pretty dumb.

You said.

But that's the argument is that you had, you had a big bang, you had non life chemical reactions and the chemical reactions created in the beginning amino acids that ended up forming and you had these, you know, as they, as they start form into like amoebas and single celled organisms that ended up multiplying and you know, reproducing and as they reproduce they, they gained more information in their DNA, which gave them a greater ability to survive and, and therefore they kept reproducing.

Now the couple things arguments I have with that, why do we still amoebas today?

You ever think about that?

If they kept evolving because they were going to be, be able to survive better, then don't you think the amoebas would have died out by now, the single celled organisms?

Well, isn't that asking like the monkey question as well, if you substitute amoeba for monkeys?

You know, I've heard that one before.

If monkeys became humans, why have we got monkeys?

Well, and the way they answer that is they would actually say we don't have the original missing link anymore.

Well, we don't have any missing link.

Well, I know, anyway, yeah, they would argue that what happened was, is that there was something that offshot, you know, offshot one into human and one into chimpanzee.

So nobody too don't need the bonobos out because Dawkins says the bonobos are similar,.

You know, ultimately all of them.

But, but it becomes an interesting thing that all of the, the monkey family have similarities in their bone structure and all that.

Except for the human.

Yeah, yeah.

And, and we can talk and reason and use tools and we've recently found that monkeys use tools too.

Well, apparently.

And they try to argue that.

There was a podcast I listened to with a woman who's done her, all of her Life's work, her PhD, all on the communication, language, of monkeys.

And it's quite interesting because she even had to admit that yes, they communicate, but they don't have language.

And that's what differences with humans.

Yes, birds communicates and animals can communicate.

You know, a deer, when it senses danger, will, will hit its hoof on the ground and the other deer look up and they, you know, it's a way of communicating, but it's not, it's not language that only humans can do.

That's sign language.

Yeah, it's a different form of sign language, but silence.

But see, sign language has a grammar to it.

It has a language and that's different than what you see with animals.

So yeah, that would be a, you know, something that I would argue again is, is different with humans.

But ultimately the way they try to answer that is that they.

And, and if you dig into, I mean you can go to answers in Genesis.

There's a lot of articles out there on this that show why the way they try to argue evolution happening is impossible.

You know there's.

When you look at the aminos, it's like they, they need the, the.

I forget if it's a left handed or right handed.

There needs to be an equal number of them and yet there we only see like left handed ones, all the right handed ones, you know, so the things they needed exist.

Now there's been experiments that have been done where they go, oh look, we were able to produce an amino.

But yeah,.

Yeah, right, you started with something, you washed the clay.

Yes.

Yeah.

So now that's what, that's what Fazrana would say and agree with you.

Now Faz Runner is by no means a young earth creationist.

He is an old earth creationist, but he knows his stuff.

Now I'm not familiar with him.

Who, who is he?

Fazrana.

He took over Reasons to Believe from Hugh Ross.

Oh, okay.

And he does a lot of appearances on other shows and streams and all that.

And they will do it for free.

Okay, interesting.

So he took over Reasons to Believe, which in itself is an entire OEC organization.

Yeah, yeah, that or it's an organization.

Reason to Believe is a group of people who want to claim they're Christian.

I'm not saying they are.

I'm not saying they're not.

I'm just saying they want to claim to be Christian and they also seem to want the acceptance of the world scientific community.

And so they try to argue for a theistic evolution, that God used evolution.

But if you regenerate.

Except that they hate that label.

Well, yeah, they hate that Label, because that label is very descriptive.

Right?

It, it puts them in a camp they don't want to be in.

Exactly.

The thing is, is that as you look at what they're, they're believing and what they're teaching, we have the case where their, their argument for evolution does not align with Genesis chapter one.

And I've, I've seen some books where some people try to line up evolution.

Like, you know, like I just read from this, this article that they had this gentleman who would be, you know, a theistic evolutionist.

He argues that when it says in the beginning there was light, he's arguing what, that.

Oh, well, what this is doing is this was, you know, there was no light.

There were just blind, you know, cells out there and they couldn't see.

And so the first part of evolution was the ability to, to receive light.

So the light was there.

It just couldn't be perceived until the ability to, to have a way of, of seeing light, basically an eye.

Ignoring all the complexity of an eye, you need all of this complexity.

You, you need.

It's not just the fact that you have a way of getting light through a lens.

You need to be able to have the light come in.

It's got to be able to be interpreted by a brain that knows what to do with that light and, and how to, to view that light.

I mean, it's very easy for them to just explain these things.

But there's a book called Darwin's Black Box, Michael Bakey, and he, he makes a case for the fact that when you look at, at the genetics of it, he has a thing he calls irreducible complexity.

What that talks about is the fact that when you actually break things down, you, you break down the, the bloodstream.

We have blood going through our bodies.

How did that happen?

How did we suddenly get blood in the bodies?

Because if you think about it, if it just came about by itself, well, it needs lungs to give it oxygen.

It needs a heart pump it.

Right?

So now which comes first?

You see, you need all of it.

That's his whole argument.

It's, it's, it's irreducibly complex.

When you try to reduce it to its smallest thing, it's still too complex.

The example he gives is a mousetrap.

You can't have a functioning mousetrap without the, the base to hold the, the elements upon it.

Without the hammer that's gonna, you know, trap mouse.

Without holds the trap in, the hammer in place.

You need all you, if you, any of those pieces, you don't have a mousetrap to go out and evangelize.

I had this big rat trap.

You know, they would put New York in the subway systems, you know, because there they.

You could find New York City, you could find a rat that's like a foot long.

Okay, so you need.

Of course.

So I used to go.

I would, I'd go in New York and I think, this big rat trap.

And when people would make the argument, I'd snap that thing.

It makes a real loud noise that would get everyone's attention.

And then I would talk about irreducible complexity.

And I hold that up to show if I get rid of any of those parts.

Is this going to work?

If I get rid of the spring, the hammer, the trigger, the base?

No, it won't work.

I need all of those parts.

Same with my blood.

I can't have blood without having the arteries to carry it, without having the heart to pump it, without having the lungs to give it oxygen.

You need all.

So the problem is you can't say what came first.

They.

It has to all come together at the same time.

Evolution can't account for that because they want to say it's small changes over a long period of time.

Yeah.

Or it's.

Or they want to change it to be.

To they wanted.

They have to change what evolution is.

Well, sometimes they'll say, well, it happened really quickly, but in spurts of history, because that's the way.

Why don't we see it going on today?

Oh, well, it just happened during, you know, because something happened on the earth, maybe a movie meteor occurred and that's what.

Something happened with the spark of life.

They say a meteor hit the earth and that's what sparked it.

All the, all the chemicals were there.

It just needed that spark of the meteor to, to trigger it, you know, and that's why they'll call it the, the a spark.

As if it like ignited something.

Absolutely.

To digress for just a second, you know, I've got a response to.

To that smart guy.

And I get it from a cultural reference.

So just to educate you a little bit Culturally, in 1994 there was a movie called IQ.

Ironically, it starred Walter Matthau as Albert Einstein.

He lives in a bunch with a bunch of scientists.

It's a comedy.

It's a romantic comedy.

It's the only romantic comedy I can actually watch because it is just hilarious.

But during that thing, they have to try and convince this mechanic who is falling in love with the daughter of, sorry, the niece of Albert Einstein.

And they're trying to find a way for him to make the mechanic smarter than him.

And the mechanic looks at him and said, hey, I, I know I've, I've got the idea for how I could.

You can help me.

Will just give you my, you, you'll give me my brain.

And Walter Matthau says in a German accent, I think we can do that.

Yeah.

Because that's, that's what it would take.

And so the rest of the movie is how they make him smarter and he falls for the love interest who happens to be played by Meg Ryan.

The thing is, and this is why when people say is, is it artificial intelligence?

No.

Because it doesn't have an ability to be intelligent, period.

No.

Well, artificial intelligence is only what we feed it.

Yeah.

So like any machine, you have to feed the machine information.

If the machine has no information, it can't develop the information on its own.

And so at that point they have to discount Christianity automatically and they just won't put it in the AI.

So yeah, AI won't know about it.

Yeah.

So I mean, and that's the thing is that it, it AI is.

People have to realize that it is nothing more than, you know, systematizing what it sees.

And you know, okay, here's everything I've read or that's out on the Internet and, and trying to figure out what should be the right answer.

Right.

So it's quite, it's interesting.

So I just, I decided, you know, while you were here, I, I just put in to chat GPT.

I said design life from scratch.

I can't.

Right.

And so it's quite interesting because it went off quite a bit and then it wants me to pay for more to go further because I guess I hit my limit.

And so it says design life from scratch is not really about inventing something entirely new.

It's about intentionally choosing what most people drift into.

If, if you want, if you, if you want to do it well, you have to begin deeper than goals or productivity, productive productivity systems.

You have to start with foundations.

Start with the real, with the ultimate reality, your anchor before you design anything.

What is true about reality?

Why, why do humans exist?

What is the highest good?

Your answer here will determine everything.

If, if life is random, then meaning is self created.

This is exactly what people are doing.

They're trying to argue that life is, is random and therefore they can create their own meaning for life.

If life is created with purpose, then purpose is discovered.

You cannot design a meaningful life without setting this.

So, so it's, it's, it's actually not.

This is why I said I, I need to know what the prompt was for this because it went through 10 different points.

And the final thought.

I'll just give a final thought.

Most people inherit their life.

Very few design it because you can't.

If you truly built a from scratch, it would look different, more focused, more disciplined, more purposeful, and possibly more alone at times.

So now.

And so the, the reality is I would need to know the exact prompt to get a better answer.

Let's see what Wesley Sundays.

He says AI just searches the Internet for things and recognizes patterns and gives it to you.

Exactly.

Yep.

So I don't know, Andrew, if that fully answered your question.

No, but I've got a joke for you too.

All right.

Okay.

So there were a bunch of scientists, they were having a conference, Origin of Life.

So the guys were saying, well, I was reading in, in this book called the Bible that, well, it started with dirt.

So one of them starts squatting down to pick up the dirt and a voice comes out of nowhere and says, make your own dirt.

That's sort of what Ray Comfort used to do is he would ask people, hey, can you, you know, could you create, you know, cheese?

And people go, well, yeah, you get a cow and you get the milk and you, no, no, no, you don't.

Have to create the cow first.

And, and he would do it to show you they, they, they all need the starting points.

And he'd say, well, how do you, how do you have a universe that just is.

Doesn't, you know, and because ultimately what they get to is they have to believe something was eternal, something o.

Always existed.

So, yep, say it's ridiculous, believe God always existed.

But then they have to argue, which has been scientifically proven false, that the universe always existed.

I mean, it's not, it's not, you know, religious text that came up with the second law of thermodynamics, science, scientists that came up with that.

And you will see you also have to have the cow and the cow has a calf because the cow, the cow needs the calf to produce the milk.

That's the problem.

Yep.

All right, well, I, I thank you for coming in on Friday morning for you and we'll catch up to you tomorrow, although only for the other.

Yeah, I'll give a short, I'll give a short promotion.

My time tomorrow will be.

There's a guy called Ancient Egypt in the Bible about 1pm my time on Saturday.

I don't know what that is anywhere else.

He will be doing his show where he answers questions about ancient Egypt and the Bible.

He gets a lot of people email me the information because I got a question I'd be curious to ask him.

Well, you ask as a super chat.

Well, you ask us a super chat.

Sometimes we'll take none.

But you have to turn up and ask the question and make it relate.

But yeah, yeah, it would be good.

Yeah.

So you just find ancient Egypt in the Bible and you see.

Subscribe to him and he will tell you when you go, when he goes live.

Yeah.

Email me the, the details on that.

Do I have your email?

Well, I don't.

It's going to be up on screen in a moment.

Hang on.

There you go.

Driving for attorney and get it info at SFE Bible.

Okay, I will try and remember that one.

It's on your website too.

Yeah.

You can contact.

Yeah.

Through the website as well.

I must try via the website because I don't have the details.

I only have the details off the top of my head.

I subscribe to his channel and I, I have the notifications and I receive the notifications.

So the question I would I have is the.

And this was something I looked at in seminary.

When you look at the dating of Moses, there's early and a later dating.

And I, when I was in seminary going through all the different arguments that people have for the different dates.

I, I really was.

Did not see compelling evidence really for either one.

They both, both sides made, you know, interesting cases.

My argument was you need to have a pharaoh now.

You have to have a pharaoh that lost the firstborn son.

However good argument being made is the fact that you're probably not going to have a pharaoh write that in the, in the Chronicles.

Right.

That he lost the white slaves and lost his firstborn son.

That's just not something that they would write because they write things on the positive.

Not that make them look bad.

Like we talked about the Bible.

Bible states things that make people look bad.

So.

But I, I was interested to see when you look at those two time frames, which one had a pharaoh that lived that reigned for over 40 years.

Because remember the Pharaoh who is reigning when, when Moses leaves is the same Pharaoh who is alive when Moses returned.

I, you know, that's always been my question.

Which pharaohs reigned for over 40 years.

There may not be mention losing a son.

And because both tried to make an argument, both arguments later or not or earlier date for why the slaves wouldn't have been mentioned or that there were slaves mentioned.

And so both make these arguments and you could go either way.

But the one thing we do know is that the Pharaoh had to have lived, had it, had to have reigned for 40 years.

Yeah, I think he's answered that question many, many times.

Okay, well if you can find that for me, I would appreciate that.

Well, I can attempt to give you an answer.

Go for it.

So there are three type.

There's actually a third view of the Exodus.

So there's a late date, there's a early date and there's a mid date apparently.

I remember when that is.

It's the 1440s somewhere.

I think 1446 or somewhere around there.

I want to say.

I forget exactly which.

That's when it happened, the Exodus occurred.

Is that correct?

Well, that's the whole discussion, right.

What was it?

When did it occur?

I mean, I mean the bit, the biblical date for the Exodus.

Do we know what that date is?

I don't, I don't know which, well, if we knew the, the biblical date then we, it all be cleared up.

I, I, I know there's two years.

I forget which ones, which ones they are offhand, I have to, I'd have to go back to notes to look them up.

I want to say 1646.

Now the son that died, the son, the pharaoh that had the firstborn doesn't necessarily mean it was the eldest son either.

So it wasn't necessarily, necessarily the firstborn.

It would be the firstborn that was alive.

So the eldest son that was alive because Egypt had a high mortality rate particularly and that whole region did.

So you, you live, you, you live long but in your mortality rate was high.

So you had your oldest son.

Did not necessarily mean the son that would have died would not necessarily have been the oldest son.

It would have been the eldest son living.

Well see, but that's not my argument.

Make it over the sun because there would, as you just pointed out, there's ways of explaining.

Yeah, if the sun died like you can explain that.

The question really is, is which pharaohs reigned for over 40 years?

I, I think he does specifically answer that one.

I just can't remember off the top of my head what it is.

If you send me the, the thing, I'll do some searching.

I'd be curious to, to see what he says.

I'll see what I can do about getting it to you.

Sorry, I'm, I just thought I had part of the answer for you.

But I, I believe, I believe he does have an answer for who the, who the pharaoh was and half, most of the explanation is that it's not necessarily the eldest son, it's the oldest son that was alive at the time.

So lots of people would have died in Egypt.

And it wasn't necessarily the eldest son by birth order.

Yeah, I can see that very easily.

Yep.

Yeah.

All right.

Well, I thank you for coming in, Andrew.

Have yourself a great afternoon.

You all right?

All right.

So before we get to.

I, I'm gonna put up two comments before we get to some of the sponsors.

This was an.

I thought, just interesting.

I saw this come in.

Ace.

Theo.

64, 68.

64 Says.

And I don't know what we were saying that about the word eternal, but he said the word eternal was invented by Wycliffe, who only had a Latin Bible when he made the, the first Englishman's Bible.

They said, thus the word eternal is not really in the Bible.

And so when I, I, I kind of chuckled at that.

So if I was to go to, you know, say, John 3, I think it's.

Is it 14 or 17 around there?

Yeah.

So John, John.

Well, John 3, 16.

We have a Greek word, not a Latin word, a Greek word that is.

Oh, let me just read the, the phrase.

Right.

For God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten son that whoso should, Whoever should believe in him, should not perish, but have eternal life.

That word, eternal Greek, okay.

Anios.

It means eternal forever, without end everlasting.

So you might be right that there wasn't a word in English.

Maybe, but I doubt it.

I mean, English was.

I mean, for folks that may not realize the English language was not actually standardized until the King James Bible, you, Even if you go, go back to the 1611 King James, I have a reprint of that, and you're going to have trouble reading that.

It's a, it's a hard read.

And so why.

Because the language wasn't standardized.

There were different ways to spell words, things like that.

There were different words.

So maybe with Wycliffe's day, it wasn't formalized and there wasn't a word for eternal or everlasting, but there was a Greek word that was used in the Bible for eternal life, and it means without end, eternal forever.

So now maybe he's trying to.

That is not.

I don't know if it's he or she.

That person's trying to make a different point that I missed.

That could be.

In which case, please let us know.

This is why it's better to come in, go to apologexlive.com come in, join there to ask your questions, because then we get to go back and forth and it is cool.

Clear with that.

Let me give some mentions to our sponsors.

One of our long term sponsors.

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Another thing that I'm a long term user of is Lagos Bible Software.

I have one of the larger libraries.

I've been told that I have one of the largest libraries outside of the company.

The only person that may have a larger library that I've been told is and I don't know if that's true anymore but someone, he was from Hong Kong and he at one point just called up Lagos and said give me every book you have.

But that was many, many years ago and they've come out with many more books and I don't know if he's kept adding to it.

But Logos is great software to be able to.

Well, like I just did go to John 3:16 and one click I can get the Greek word, get the details and I have a lot of Greek resources that I'm able to sort through quickly just with one click.

There's a lot of great resources that and great ways you can use Logos to do searching and things like that when you're trying to find things out, very specific things.

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And so you could do like me, I have a subscription, so I get certain books that way and then I have, I add to.

It adds to my current library.

So if you go to library lagos.comsfe the SFE stands for Striving for Eternity.

Lagos.comsfe you will be able to get yourself some great software and that also helps us here at STRIVING for eternity.

So Wesley says Lagos Bible is amazing.

I. I kind of agree with you Now.

I'm not sure Sister Tara is saying.

I'm surprised you didn't say Matt.

I'm not sure what I was supposed to say.

Matt, too, so I don't know if I.

If I. I don't get that reference.

Sorry.

So I will leave that there so maybe she could respond.

All right, so.

So we have two questions that came in, and I was.

I was looking to see someone come in and ask his question, but since I see him in chat, Wesley says about Lagos, its search feature is great.

Love to use it.

Now, Wesley earlier asked this.

He said, I guess it would avoid answering the actual question.

I. Oh, I think.

I think he was.

I. I started that thinking he was referring to his question, which I'm.

I want to get to since he's here.

What else did I start here?

Georgia said, AI is just whatever is stored in the books.

People wrote history and it gives us resources.

Correct that.

That's all it is.

And so as long as you treat it that way and think of it that way, it's.

It's a helpful tool.

Okay, so Wesley says he can't actually join right now.

Well, yeah, because he's out of the country.

So his question that he had.

Let me bring that up over here.

Do you think that Unitarians or Jehovah Witnesses who say, the Holy Spirit is not God, slash, is not a person, are committing blasphemy against the Holy spirit from Luke 12:10?

All right, so let's go to Luke 12:10.

Luke 12:10 specifically says, and everyone who speaks a word against the Son of Man, it will be forgiven him, but the one who.

Who blasphemes against the Holy Spirit, it will not be forgiven him.

And here is Wesley.

Let's bring him in.

Hello, Wesley.

I don't hear you.

You're not muted.

Can folks in the audience hear him?

I see him muting and unmuting.

This is the thing with the live show.

All right, let me.

Let me request access to your settings, and I'll take a look at.

If I could see a setting that's off.

All right, so you're.

I don't know what your default input is.

I see you got speakerphone, headset, earpiece, or Bluetooth headset.

Maybe try one of those.

And let's see if we can hear you.

And folks in the audience, if you hear them, oops, people are saying, no, they don't hear you either.

So we.

We have had this before where people in the audience could hear, but I couldn't.

That was a.

An odd one.

Can you hear me now?

I hear you now.

Okay, that works.

So my headphones.

So, yeah, it's.

It's a little garbled, but that's probably because of the connection being that you're.

Yeah, I would think so.

I'm just gonna tell you that, you know, I. I did talk to someone today who is upset that I spoke to you today, and.

And you didn't call.

I think it was to wish someone a happy birthday maybe, or something, but.

Wow.

Huh.

Wow.

I'm just saying that I called you.

You didn't call me.

Just for the record, but.

Okay, so.

So you want to.

You want to ask your question or you want me to just answer what you have?

I can ask it here if you want, If the audio works, because I don't know how well my audio is because I'm using my earbuds, but yeah, it's breaking.

We hear, like, every other word.

Or it's a little choppy.

You could just.

And you know, so I'll just be here.

Okay, sure.

So.

So what it says is that everyone who speaks a word against.

And any.

Everyone who speaks a word against the Son of Man, it will be forgiven him, but one who blasphemes against the Holy Spirit, it will not be forgiven him.

So the question Wesley was asking is, you know, when you have Unitarians or witnesses who will say that the Holy Spirit is not God or is not a person, is that what this is talking about?

We have three different synoptic gospels that reference this passage.

And so what I want to do is I'm going to back up.

This is what we should always do when we're.

We have a question of Scripture, is read the context.

So in this case, I'm going to go to Luke, chapter one.

I'm going to read down from Luke.

Sorry, Luke 12, verse one.

And I'm going to read down to verse 12, and it says, at this time, after so many thousands of the crowd had gathered together that they were trampling on one another, he began to saying to his disciples, first, be on your guard for the leaven of the Pharisees, which is hypocrisy.

But there is nothing covered up that will not be revealed and hidden, that will not be known.

Accordingly, whatever you have said in the dark will be heard in the light.

And whatever you've whispered in the inner room will be proclaimed upon the housetops.

But I say to you, my friends, do not fear those who kill the body and after have no more, have no more that they can do.

But I will show you him whom to fear.

Fear the one who, after he's killed, has the authority to cast into hell.

Yes, I tell you, fear him.

Do not five spare.

Are not five sparrows sold?

Excuse me?

Are not five sparrows sold for two copper coins?

Yet one of them is forgotten.

But.

But not one of them is forgotten before God.

Indeed, indeed.

The very hairs on your head are all numbered.

Do not fear.

You are more valuable than this, than the sparrows.

And I say to you, everyone who confesses me before men, the Son of Man will confess before God, before the angels of God.

But he who denies me before men will be denied before the angels of God.

And everyone who speaks a word, word against the whole, the Son of Man, it will be forgiven him.

But the one who blasphemes against the Holy Spirit, it will not be forgiven him.

Now, when they bring you before the synagogues and the rulers and the authorities, do not worry about what you you are to speak in your defense or what to say.

For the Holy Spirit will teach you the very that very hour what you ought to say.

Now, before I go, I want to read what we have now in Matthew chapter 12, and this is a similar case.

But what I want to do is back up the.

The particular verse is going to be verse 31 of Matthew 12, but I'm going to back up to verse 22, and I'm going to read from there.

Then a demon possessed a man who is blind and mute and brought to Jesus.

And he healed him so that the mute man spoke and saw, and all the crowds were astonished and saying, can this really be the Son of David?

But when the Pharisees heard this, they said, this man does not cast out demons except by Beelzebub the ruler of demons.

And knowing their thoughts, he said, any kingdom divided amongst itself is laid waste, and any city or house divided against itself will not stand.

If and if Satan cast out Satan, he is divided against himself, how then will his kingdom stand?

And if I by Beelzebub cast out demons, by whom do your sons cast them out?

For this reason they will be your judges.

But if I cast out demons by the Spirit of God, then the kingdom of God has come upon you.

Or how can anyone enter the strong man's house and carry off his property unless he first binds the strong man, and then he will plunder his house.

He who is not with me is against me.

And he who does not gather with me, scat with Me scatters.

Therefore, I say to you, any sin and blasphemy shall be forgiven people, but the blasphemy of the Holy Spirit shall not be forgiven.

And whoever speaks a word against the Son of Man, it shall.

It shall be forgiven.

But whoever speaks against the Holy Spirit, it shall not be forgiven, either in this life, this age, or the age to come.

One more, and that is in Mark, chapter three.

Now, in this case, this one's going to sound a bit familiar to Matthew, which sounded different than Mark.

And so specifically Mark three.

The.

The.

The verse that we would be looking at, okay, is going to be verse 28.

But what are we going to do?

Well, we're going to start in verse 13 because context matters.

And so mark 3.

13, Starting in 13.

And he went up on the mountain, and he summoned those whom he himself wanted, and they came to him.

And he appointed 12 whom he had named apostles to be with him, to send them out to preach and to have authority to cast out demons.

And he appointed the 12, Simon, to whom he gave the name Peter, and James the son of Zebedee and John the brother of James.

To them he gave the name Borges, which.

Which means sons of thunder.

Andrew and Philip and Bartholomew and Matthew and Thomas and James the son of Alphaeus and Thaddeus and Simon the Zealot and Judas, who also betrayed him.

And he came home and the crowd gathered again so that they could not eat a meal.

And when his own people heard this, they went out and took custody of him.

For they were saying, he.

He has lost his senses.

And the scribes who came down from Jerusalem were saying, he is possessed by Beelzebub.

And he casts out demons by the ruler of demons.

And he called them to himself and began to speak to them in parables.

How can Satan cast out Satan?

How can the.

A kingdom divided amongst itself.

That kingdom cannot stand.

And if a house is divided among itself, that house is not able to stand.

And if Satan has risen up against it himself and is divided, he cannot stand, but is finished.

But no one can enter a strong man's house and plunder his property unless he first binds the strong man and then he will plunder the house.

Truly, I say to you, all sins will be forgiven the Son of.

Forgiven the Son of Man.

But whoever blasphemes, they utter, they will.

But whoever blasphemes against the Holy Spirit, never his forgiveness, but is guilty of.

Of eternal sin.

Because they were saying this, he has an unclean spirit.

Now, a couple of things that we see here 1.

Do you notice the differences in each of those passages?

They could be different times that we end up seeing in the life of Christ.

Mark 3 is pretty early in.

In the.

In the recording where when you look at Matthew, it's chapter 12, and, and Luke, it's chapter 12.

It's kind of later in the accounting in Mark.

It makes it sound like this was right after he chooses the disciples.

He chooses disciples, and then all.

Then there's a crowd.

Now, you had in Luke the reference of a crowd, but Luke sounds very different than both Mark and Matthew.

And when you look at Matthew and Mark, the ordering is.

Is different.

So we have a couple things that this could be.

One, this could be two or three different events where Jesus used the same language as a preacher.

I could tell you that I've used the similar illustrations multiple times.

Many of you here probably heard similar illustrations that I've used.

So that's not unusual.

The response of the Pharisees and the Jewish leaders of.

Of going after him and making claims.

I'm sure it's not the.

That there was only one time that they accused him of casting out demons by Beelzebub, the.

The.

The leader of demons.

Right?

And so what we end up seeing is that we.

We could have multiple events here.

Okay.

That is possible.

And so what you're.

What you're having is the fact that this is something that when we look at it, we got to look at the context to first see, is it the same account?

And if it's not, then what you have to realize is that if it's not the same account, then we have Jesus repeating something multiple times.

And so now we got to take a step back to say, what is he.

What's the actual argument he's trying to make?

Well, as you see with each of the accounts, I think that the account of Luke is.

Is kind of interesting because it's laying out clearly this idea of, well, it says, you know, everyone who confesses me before.

Before men.

The Son of Man will confess before God.

But.

Right, so you see this.

The confessing of Christ versus not denying of Christ, right?

He who denies me before men, I'll deny before angels.

So then he goes into verse 10, that everyone who speaks the Son of Man will be forgiven, but those who blaspheme the Holy Spirit.

So you're seeing a difference that, that if you confess Christ, then you're forgiven.

If you deny Christ, you're not forgiven.

So the same here now with those who.

Who they may.

They may have spoken, you know, Blasphemies spoke a word against the Son of Man, but they could be forgiven.

But then there's others who can't be forgiven.

So there's a difference that you end up seeing here where the, the contrast is what makes the difference.

Now when you look at the other accounts, it's interesting because he refers to this when, when we started to look earlier in Luke 1, Luke 12, 1 it, it says, he says to the disciples, when the crowd is there, be on your guard for the leaven of the Pharisees.

Which is hypocrisy.

Interesting.

So that context tells us that what he's addressing is an issue of hypocrisy.

What is the biggest hypocrisy that Christ dealt with the most is the Pharisees self righteousness that they claim they didn't need a savior because they had their own righteousness.

And so you see that they attribute the work that Christ was doing in both Matthew and Mark to Satan.

So there's a couple different views that people have with what is this blasphemy Holy Spirit?

By the way, if you're asking the question could I have committed the blasphemy of the Holy Spirit?

Generally, if you're asking that question, the answer is no.

Okay.

Because if you're concerned about it, then it probably isn't you.

This is people, the way we look at all three contexts that are either hypocritical in their self righteousness that they're not looking for, they think they can save themselves, which by the way, is what Unitarians and Jehovah Witnesses would believe.

But then you see here that in Matthew and Luke it is being tied to the accrediting of the work of God to Satan.

So many would say that what, what the blasphemy Holy Spirit is is when you take, when you credit the work that God does to Satan and we're not a hundred percent sure, and I would argue there may not be just one specific thing that is a blasphemy of the Holy Spirit.

But what does seem to be, at least in the Mark passage, is that he said this verse 30 gives us the reason he says this because they were saying he has an unclean spirit.

So what Mark seems to be indicating is that what, what is unforgivable is to see the work of Christ before you, God in flesh, and attribute that to Satan.

That's what he's addressing there.

So I, I don't think that denying the, the personhood or the deity of Christ is blasphemy of the Spirit.

Though from looking at Luke, it, it might be, it might be an argument because you're really denying God in that case.

And then if you look in the Matthew and Mark, he's kind, almost making exception that you can, you can speak bad about Christ and then repent and be okay and be saved, but if you speak negatively the Holy Spirit, you can't.

Now this does not mean to say I blaspheme the Holy Spirit.

There was a movement of atheists where that's what they would do.

They would, you know, repent, you know what they said, repent.

But of their Christianity by, by blaspheming the Spirit, saying I blaspheme the Holy Spirit and that somehow makes them, you know, unable to, to get saved.

It's not a magic word.

And I, I actually don't think it's just one thing.

I think ultimately those who, who die in a state of denying Christ, that's blasphemy of the Holy Spirit.

But in, in one sense, but specifically, if I look at this, especially with the Matthew Mark passage, it seems to indicate that those who commit blasphemy of the Holy Spirit has to do with seeing the very works that Jesus, God and human flesh to did and attributing those works to Satan.

And therefore none of us today would be able to do that.

So I, I lean at least from the Matthew and Luke, Matthew and Mark passages to that.

And therefore I would say that no one today could commit blasphemy of the Holy Spirit.

Why?

Because we don't have God walking among us.

I think there was a big difference between some of the, you know, Elijah, Elisha, Moses, Aaron, the disciples doing miracles, right?

And, and doing things that were miraculous and Jesus doing it.

Jesus was God in flesh.

And I think that just as it says in Romans 1, everyone knows God exists.

I think when Christ walked the earth, people knew it was God.

And so knowing that it, that he is God and attributing that to Satan, that was an unforgivable sin.

So that was a long way around answering Wesley's question to say, no, I don't think that Unitarians and Joe witnesses in denying the personhood or deity of, of the Holy Spirit are committing a blasphemy of the Holy Spirit.

But I can't say it dogmatically.

Why?

Because as we look at these different passages, it's a little bit harder to get to see a clear this is specifically what he's speaking of.

Because this could be something he said on multiple occasions in different ways, and therefore it could have multiple ways he used it.

Some speaking of those, one thing that's clear it's always speaking of those that were denying him.

So that is is consistent in the context.

But then there's others where we end up seeing that it could be there's some similarities but this could be multiple times he's spoken it.

So I hope that that helps.

Let's see.

So Wesley says that was a long answer but hey, I'm glad it was.

Important questions require long answers.

All right, well good.

Let me see if there are any questions I missed.

Let's see.

Mennonite says I'm planning, I'm planning on going through your book Bible Interpretation Made Easy.

I hope hope I I'm in hopes of bringing it to my church.

Keep up the good work.

A good fight brother.

So I thank you for that Mennonite.

There's it's actually so when he's referring to is not actually a book book but a syllabus book.

Okay.

There's a syllabus we have to our class.

We have a class on biblical hermeneutics.

You can go to our YouTube page, watch the class for free.

It has a syllabus that goes along with it.

And that is part of what we have in our in our weekend seminar.

It's a little longer of the section.

We cut that down into a weekend seminar that we call Bible Interpretation Made Easy.

And so if you'd want us to come to your church and do that seminar for weekend we would greatly appreciate it.

That is something we do.

We come in, we will teach how to interpret the Bible.

There's a lot we could cover but we just do a high level so that people have a ready handle on the word of God.

So with that let me get to another question from Melissa that she emailed in and she she says here that she says she's a long time listener.

You seen her in the chat for those who who watch live regularly.

So her question was she says well just read the email.

She says I was going to try to make it on the 26th of March for the Q A with Apologe Live but if I don't and I haven't seen her in the chat so she will listen to this later.

Here is what I wanted to ask about.

I go to the Baptist Baptist catechism.

But there is one part I had a problem with.

The part where it says you can't, you can't do regular recreation on the Sabbath.

I would say, I would say like playing games, watching sports would be included in that here's the reference.

So study or number 64.

5.

Study.

Question and for those that don't know what a catechism is, that's how a catechism is.

It asks question, then gives the answer.

Question how is the Sabbath to be sanctified?

Answer the Sabbath is to be sanctified by a holy resting all that day.

1.

Even from such worldly employments and recreations as are lawful on other days 2.

And spending the whole time in public and private exercises of God's worship 3.

Except so much as to be taken up in the works necessary and mercy.

The verses that are associated with this is Isaiah 58:13 to 14.

I don't know if it's being taken in the wrong context by for now.

So let me do as we should always do and read the scripture that is referenced.

So let us, read Isaiah 58 and 13 and 14.

And that says if because of the Sabbath you turn your foot from doing from doing your own desire on my my holy day.

Wait, let me read that again.

Sorry.

If because of the Sabbath you turn your foot from doing your own desire on my holy day and call the Sabbath a delight the holy day of Yahweh honorable and honor it not doing your own ways, but not finding your own desire and speaking your own word, then you take the delight of in Yahweh and I will make you ride on the heights of the earth.

I will feed you in the in inheritance of Jacob your father, for the mouth of Yahweh has spoken.

Okay, so the issue of the Sabbath becomes an interesting issue.

This is something that you end up seeing throughout the the Bible is this issue of Sabbath and how are we as Christians to honor the Sabbath to keep the Sabbath.

That is something that is been debated throughout history.

You have differing views.

So the.

I'm going to take a step back for a moment from the way many think of Sabbath and I want to go to Genesis chapter two.

Now I'm going to say that I think as we look at the Sabbath, let's even take a further step back and speak of God's laws.

Now I know that if you're from a reformed tradition Presbyterian or or the like, you have this view of a tripartite division of the law.

You will have moral laws, civil laws and ceremonial laws.

And those are viewed and and broken up.

Now I. I will admit I've never seen.

I've asked this of many people if they could show me a division of which of the 614 laws laws fit into which one of those categories, because I haven't seen that list of that worked out.

There is no biblical list for that.

There's no Jewish list of that.

Excuse me while I just try to wet my throat here.

But you have people that make the claim that there is a list.

So as I look at this, this claim of a list, I'm find it quite interesting because it is something that we wouldn't have in Judaism.

In Judaism, we refer to holiness laws.

Those would be the laws that we see from Moses.

Laws to keep Israel separate from the nations.

Now you have some differences.

You have some laws.

I would argue in, I do think there's a tripart division of law.

But, but I divide it differently.

I think there's universal laws, laws for all people everywhere.

Now this is sort of what people would say, the, the moral law.

You like most of the Ten Commandments or all the Ten Commandments.

Why do I say it that way?

It depends what you do with the Sabbath.

Some people don't think they, they would argue that, well, the Sabbath wasn't repeated in the New Testament, therefore it's, we don't have to keep it.

Okay, just hold that thought for a moment if you're on that camp.

But the, the what some would call moral law, I would argue that you have these laws that are universal for all mankind, Jew or gentile.

Okay?

So you have laws that every human being, whether they're in some faraway tribe or, you know, in a country where they have the Bible wherever every single person, it is always wrong to lie everywhere for everyone.

It's always wrong to murder everywhere for everyone.

Right?

I mean, these are things that are universal.

Then I see that there's laws that were given to Moses for a nation.

Now keep that in mind.

The Mosaic Law is not for everyone.

It's for a specific nation.

And so what you end up seeing is that now you have some specifics in how this nation should run.

And then you have laws that we see from Christ for the church, which includes, includes both Jews and Gentiles.

So now, gee, that looks different.

And so some will say, well, see, you have all, you have nine of the Ten Commandments reiterated in New Testament except for the Sabbath.

And therefore we don't have to keep the Sabbath.

I, I wouldn't be too quick on that because in, in Colossians, we don't have necessarily a command to keep the Sabbath.

But in, in Colossians, I wanted to say.

I'm trying to remember if it, I'm trying to look where it is.

But he says, you know not to judge a person by their, by their Sabbath day.

So that would lead me to believe that maybe the Sabbath is, you know, in there.

What do you know?

Right.

And so I think that you see, you know, Tara is saying, what about Mark 2.

27?

And that says, and Jesus was saying to them, the Sabbath day was made for man, not man for the Sabbath.

Well, he wasn't commanding that we keep it.

And, and this is a transitionary time.

So he was speaking still to Old Testament Jewish people.

So I laid out that groundwork so that we can get to this.

I think what we see in Genesis chapter two, you have the verse three and the seventh day.

Right?

Let me just read for.

I'll read.

Start verse 1.

Thus the heavens and earth were completed and all, all their hosts.

And on the seventh day, God completed his work, work which he had done.

And he rested on the seventh day from all his work which he has done.

Then God blessed the seventh day and sanctified it, because on it he rested from all the work that he create, that he created making in making it.

And so what you have here is a universal command for all people.

Okay, this is the idea that you have where he's saying, here is something where he's saying he's resting and therefore we must rest from our work.

Okay.

The idea I think is that this is something universal.

This is something for everyone.

And this is now different than what I see in the law of Moses.

In the law of Moses you have a case where Moses gives more instruction, more law.

It's not the regular, you know, in this case with, with God, it's He.

This is the, the word bara.

This is the word from creation.

Like creation out of nothing.

Well, we don't create anything out of nothing.

So it can't be that, that he's saying we have to honor this day, but it's he.

But do you ever think about why God did this?

In fact, people don't realize that, you know, the reformers argued they are, had issues with the seven day creation.

Some people would say a six day creation because that's how long it took to create.

But the first seven days, why did God.

Now I said they had our issues with it.

And many people think, well, they had issues because what, because they believed in millions of years?

No, they had issues with it because they said, why did it take God so long?

You ever think about that?

God could have created the entire universe.

Animals, plant life, flying birds, fish, you know, everything all in a split second, all at once.

Why did He Wait seven days.

He did that for us.

He did that as a pattern for you and I.

He did that so we would realize that we can work six days and we need a day of rest, that we shouldn't do that, which is our regular work.

Now the laws from Israel became more specific.

They we had more than with that comes in and you can't pick up sticks and you can't walk this by all these different rules.

And so there was more specific for that nation.

And by the way, if you violated those, it was a death penalty.

Now we come into the New Testament.

I would argue that.

Do we have a Sabbath?

Yes, because there was a Sabbath, as I argue, that was universal for all humans everywhere, for all time.

That is what we just read out of Genesis 2, 1, 3.

But that's not the Sabbath that we have in the Mosaic Law because that was for a nation of Israel and we are not Israel.

Okay, well, some of us are, but we're not under that law anymore.

We're not.

Even though I am of Israel, meaning that I'm from the line of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, specifically Jacob.

Right.

Doesn't mean that I'm in the nation of Israel.

My country is the United States of America.

So God gave us an example of a week so that we would work and take a day of rest because, well, quite frankly, you know, if we didn't have that as a pattern, what would happen?

Your employer would work you seven days a week.

Right.

In fact, that's what they, that happened in, in, in the USSR, they tried to do a 10 day week and they found that production dropped kind of interesting.

They found that a seven day week was the best way to have six days of work and one day of rest was the most productive for people.

And so with the question of, okay, does this include things like playing games and watching sports?

Would that be included in that?

I'm gonna say no.

I think it's a day set aside where we don't do the regular things that we do and we, we try to focus on the worship of God and the things of God.

So if during the week you don't typically play games with family, then maybe that's something special you do on a Sabbath day to honor God, to have a day of rest.

Maybe you don't, you don't, you know, do things.

Was there something else that you mentioned?

Playing games, watching sports?

You know, maybe that's something you do as a, this is a, you know what?

Can watching sports honor God?

I guess it can somehow.

I don't watch sports, but.

Or, well, I watch team sports, I should say, and I don't have time to watch any sports anymore.

But the, the thing is, you know, there's some people that say you can't go to a restaurant.

You can't.

You can't play any sports.

You can't.

Well, in this case, watch a movie or play games.

I, I don't know that, you know, the.

What we see in Genesis 2, that, that would condone those things.

I think a universal law of the Sabbath is that God rested on the seventh day.

So we rest from our work, you know, our labor, what we normally do.

And in a society that especially agricultural society, to not be caring for the plants for a day means that, well, Monday you're going to be backed up.

And so that makes it harder.

And I think that this, in, in that society makes it something that, you know, when we look at it, okay, this is something we see from the very beginning, beginning being seven days into it.

God wanted us to take a day away from the agricultural work because that's exactly what Adam was doing.

Right?

He didn't sit behind a keyboard and type.

Right.

So we look at it.

We have to first put it in the, in the context there.

And so I think it is the general work that you would do by Moses's time.

There's more laws that were given to it, but I think that that is for the laws of Moses.

So, Melissa, I hope that helps you.

At least Georgia thinks it did because she said, great explanation.

So thank you for that Georgia comment I saw earlier.

I'll just throw it up now.

Meadow Knight says.

Yo, what's going on?

Apologetics live.

God bless you, Andrew.

Words can't describe how much of a blessing you and your podcast have been to me.

I greatly appreciate that.

I'm just going to say that for those of you who, who don't realize, it is really difficult to, especially lately.

I know there's a lot of other people doing things on Thursday nights, and our regular audience has kind of spread out because they realize that this becomes a podcast, so they listen to it later.

And so I know that.

Oh, this is funny.

Andrew from down under says Adam, the keyboard warrior.

Lol.

Yes, the, the first keyboard warrior.

But, but, you know, it's hard to do this.

I, I not, I'm not gonna deny it.

I was talking to a friend of mine this week, and he's got a national radio program and, and he said, you know, it's hard.

There's times where it's like it, when, when if there's a.

There was a problem with the radio and they say, hey, we can't do a show, we'll do a best of.

He goes, oh, good, right?

It.

It.

It takes a lot more work than you might think to do this.

And the feedback is super important because you guys may not realize how.

How many times I just go, do I want to keep doing this?

I mean, it's a lot of time and energy.

It's time away from my.

My bride.

It's time that I could be doing a whole lot of other things.

And knowing that it's a blessing to you is super helpful to me.

So.

So I'll encourage you.

One of the great things you could do is on the podcast shoot, you know, put a.

Put a review.

Put a review on whichever app you have.

Email us.

I've just put up the email that you email us.

Infofe Bible.

Info SFE Bible.

It's a great way to let us know if this is.

Be specific.

If it's been a blessing to you, let us know that.

Because I'll, you know, maybe I'll read them on the air.

But it becomes really helpful for me just on those times where I just want to quit.

It's a lot of work and just having an email that I can read.

I actually have in my filing cabinet a folder of when people send me cards or handwritten notes.

I have it in there for those days where I'm just like, oh, I just want to quit.

And I just read comments from people on how much they've grown or learned or how much this has been improved.

Blessing to them.

And I'll just be honest with you, folks.

That's keeps me going because there's times where I'm just like, I just want to quit.

And your reviews, things like that, become a huge help to me because I, you know, there's times that I want to quit, you know, and so I encourage you to.

To, you know, think about doing that.

Think about writing a review.

Let me, you know, since I'm mentioning reviews, let me give you one that we got a while ago.

We got this back in February, February 27th, from MK underscore Murphy.

If they gave five stars and they said the February 19th show is one of the best ever.

Appreciate the teachings.

Exclamation mark, exclamation mark.

And that was a show we did on Islam when we were going through what Muslims believe.

Well, that really helps to encourage me when you do something like that, because I sit and go, I didn't realize that that one was had that much of an impact.

Here's one from January 22nd from the United States from I preach gave five star review and said battle the inc Ignacia in Christos Name Same 1 James White battled about Trinity debate it would be epic biggest cult in the Philippines today So that's from a fellow believer there in the in in that knows of the Philippines because it says they're from the U.S. but that's you know that's encouraging that they they want me to address some of the issues that are going in in a country that is literally halfway around the world for me.

So it means more than you could ever know to to leave that oh and here's what I just saw come in Georgia really knows how to to encourage me gave a $10 super chat and said I appreciate your podcast great discussion you thank thank you.

Well I am very humbled by that.

Thank you for the $10 that that does help us and I I should say you know folks, you know I don't talk about the support for the ministry often but we do need support and you could go to striving for best way is go to StrivingFortrain.org and go to the support page and support anything you can especially if it's a monthly donation.

Our support has been down for folks to to know just give you some inside baseball here.

I get a or used to get a very well technically I still get a very small monetary salary from the ministry.

The checks still come to me but I have not taken a check.

I've not cashed a check for the last six months.

Okay.

I've done that because of the fact that the ministry the the donations have dropped so low that if I was to do that that would drain too much of the money and we would not be able to go to churches and and help them out.

And our goal is to help those churches that can't afford to fly people to come out to them.

And so we want to be able to do that.

I was I just was at a church where they didn't think they would be able to help out too much with the the finances but we ended up making it work.

And and that's the thing is we want to help smaller churches that can't afford that.

We'll help any church with our weekend seminars, things like that.

But if you want us to come out if there's no money there, we can't do it.

And so that's something you know for and I know there's claims oh I only do this for the money?

Well, I haven't taken a check for six or seven months now and what I get didn't even.

Doesn't even pay the mortgage.

Literally doesn't even pay the mortgage.

So.

So yeah, it's something that.

It'd be a great help.

Let me get some last comments and then we'll close.

Andrew says, I've nearly.

I've nearly Christian every single occasion.

I'm not sure I'm understanding the way you worded this, Andrew.

Sorry.

I've.

I've nearly Christian.

I've nearly Christianity on several occasions.

It's the support I got from Andrew and others that keep me going.

Oh, I think he said I nearly gave up, probably.

Oh, he says nearly left.

Okay.

I nearly left Christianity on several occasions.

It's support.

It's the support I get from Andrew and others that keep me going.

I am humbled that you would, you would say that.

Sister Tara says it is a blessing.

I've learned so much.

It's really hard to find Christians who are on the same page.

I keep trying to find if I could be on the same page with myself.

Problem is I keep finding I disagree with myself, but it is encouraging.

I really do shoot some emails our way.

I, I'm, I'm really flattered when people are encouraged.

It's, it's really.

It.

You don't realize how, how much it means when I go to an event, I go somewhere and, and we get, you know, go to a conference or I meet someone out on the street who recognizes me and they, they tell me, hey, I listen to your podcast and, and I usually will ask, you know, like, what did they name something they've learned or how it's helped?

And when I hear people that just things I have forgotten that I've said, it stuck with them because it was meaningful to them.

It is a very humbling thing.

And so I am very touched that it.

All of you who are watching live, if it has helped you, you know, let me encourage you maybe share this with some friends.

Whether the podcast, the, the live stream, encourage others to come in.

On Thursday nights next week, we're going to have, we're going to have a discussion on evangelism.

A group called the Exchange, they do a podcast, the Gospel Exchange will come in and we're going to talk about evangelism.

And so even though I am traveling, I'm going to try to make time because I, my co hosts have gotten too busy.

I, I am in need of co. New co hosts that come.

Could fill in for me when I'm not here.

But I will not be able to do a Show on the 9th.

It's not I will be in the air.

I'll be flying back home from a conference that I have there in Dallas, the Business Makers Conference.

So I will not be able to do that one.

But on the 16th, Adam Parker from Bold Apology will join me.

If you've listened to my Raptor Report podcast, he was on this past week talking about Bill Johnson and a book he has written.

It's very interesting discussion.

I encourage you to listen to that and I want you to, if you listen to that, whether you like Bill Johnson or don't, the 16th will be a time you can come in and we can you can ask Adam the questions that you might have about Bill Johnson in his book, whether good or bad.

I think that Adam's doing a pretty fair job making a case against Bill Johnson's theology as someone who is a charismatic.

So just a thought.

He's, you know, not all the charismatics agree with him with Bill Johnson, but he, he, he talks about that.

And you can listen to his episodes on, on Bold Apologia, which is part of the Christian podcast community.

So with that, folks, I just want to remind you to strive to make today an eternal day for the glory of God.

And we'll see you next week.

Bye now.