1, 2, 3.

Welcome to the Rap Report with your host, Andrew Rapaport, where we provide biblical interpretation and application.

This is a ministry of striving for eternity and the Christian Podcast community.

For more content or to request a speaker for your church, go to strivingforeeternity.org.

well, welcome to another edition of the Rap Report.

I'm your host, Andrew Rapaport, the executive director of Striving Fraternity and the Christian Podcast Community, of which this podcast is a proud member.

And we are here to give you biblical interpretations and applications for the Christian life.

And in light of that, we are going to be talking about, well, one of my favorite topics, and some of you will already guess what that is just by me saying it.

But we're going to talk evangelism, and we are going to be talking with one of our fellow Christian podcasters at the Christian podcast community, the Gospel Exchange Podcast.

And I'm here with Pastor George.

That's nice to say, huh?

We'll talk about why that is.

I'm here with Pastor George, who has been with the Gospel.

Well, with the Exchange, I think is the actual name, but the podcast is the, is the Gospel Exchange talking about a course that they have available for evangelism.

So I want you to pay attention.

I want you to be listening.

And as you're listening to today's episode, before I bring George in, I just want you to be thinking this, how do I bring this to my church?

Okay.

That's the question I want you guys to think of as you're listening to the discussion so that you can sit there and go, hey, wait, I, I, we could do this in my church.

This would work.

Just saying, just saying.

We'll see.

But Pastor George, welcome to the RAP Report.

Hey, Andrew, thank you so much for having me on.

It's, it's absolute privilege to be on with you.

Now, last we had gotten together to talk when you were joining the, the Christian podcast community, you were not Pastor George.

I was, I was actually, I was an outreach pastor at a church in North Phoenix, but I was not a senior.

Not the senior past.

Okay, Right, Yeah, yep, yep, yep, Yeah, I was, I was kind of in between.

I had just come back from Africa.

We had planted a church there as missionaries, and, and I was kind of in between stuff.

But yeah, you're right.

It was kind of a, a different time in my life.

So let introduce yourself to folks, let them know a little bit about you and, and what, where your church is.

And a little bit, just a little bit, just a teaser on what, the exchanges?

Yeah.

Yeah.

Well, my family comes from the northern part of Iraq.

We immigrated to the United States in 1994.

We came here because of the second Gulf War, and my uncles and my dad were all members of the military there.

And they, they didn't want to fight people who had fighter jets.

You know, American military is incredible.

And all they had was Scud missiles.

So they, they fled through Turkey, got to Greece, acquired green cards via the embassy, got here to Detroit, Michigan.

And one of my uncles was INV Bible study at a house and was led to Christ by the believers there.

And then he led his brother to Christ.

And then they invited the third brother to go to church.

And he was reluctant, but eventually did.

And then they started working on my mom.

And so then we moved out here to Phoenix.

My mom became incredibly ill, lost the ability to drive.

And there was a church on the northern side of Phoenix that offered to give us a ride to church.

We, my mom wanted to enroll us in their Christian academy.

And so after starting at the academy, started going to church there, came to Christ at that church and went to Bible college, met my lovely wife.

We have two children together.

We felt very burdened for Africa.

So we actually went to East Africa for a little while and planted a South Sudanese church.

I speak three languages, and one of them is Arabic and the Sudanese speak Arabic.

And so that's kind of how we, we got into that.

And so what's the third?

Obviously English.

What's the third?

Yeah, English.

And then my family's Chaldean.

So we have a language, it's called Sudeth.

It's a very, very uncommon language, but primarily spoken by Chaldeans and Assyrians from the northern part of Iraq.

And so anyway, that's kind of.

That gets us to the mission field back.

And then when I got back from the mission field, my wife was incredibly ill and we got some treatment at Mayo Clinic while she was getting back on her feet health wise.

A little while after that, Jeff called me.

And Jeff Musgrave and Anna are the founders of the Exchange.

And they started about over 15 years ago.

And I was actually 18 years old when I first met them.

I was in one of their very first seminars that they did at a church.

They did at my church.

And after I saw the exchange, the way it was used, I used it at VBS.

I was.

I've spoken at 21 different children's camps in the three, four summers that I was kind of doing children's camp ministry.

And so, you know, 1500 kids each summer heard basically, the gospel presentation of the Exchange.

And it's a ministry that exists, The Exchange exists to basically teach people relational evangelism and discipleship.

And so we're, we're capitalizing on relationships, capitalizing on evangelism and then continued discipleship and, and that kind of a approach to evangelism.

You know, we.

We're very, very passionate about people, very, very passionate about a theocentric presentation of the Gospel.

So we basically present God in four parts and four parts of his character to an unbeliever.

And yeah, it's, it's, it's very inductive.

People read 150 different Bible verses, and we, we ask questions and we pray that God leads them to the truth.

And, and so that's kind of, in short, a way of introducing.

I wish.

And I, I pray that, you know, Jeff is traveling right now.

He's in Houston.

He's training a church.

But I know he'd love to come on and for you guys to meet him as well.

But, but, yeah, that's.

That's kind of it.

In short.

Well, when you joined the Christian podcast community, one of the things that I think, you know, because you've been on the receiving end as well, we would ask, we'd send out an email saying, hey, we got someone new joining, and if anyone knows anything about them, let us know.

And a lot of the times people are quiet.

They don't really, you know, we don't.

They either don't know the, the group.

They don't know anything about them.

Sometimes some people listen emails.

Yeah.

Listen to a couple episodes.

They seem pretty good.

When I posted about you, you guys, we got more email and more response than almost any other podcast we had.

I was surprised how many people in the Christian podcast community were familiar.

We had people say, hey, they, they, they did.

You know, we had that in our church, you know, or someone that was like, yeah, I went through their, Their.

Their training so, you know, use.

Use their materials.

So there were a lot of people that knew about you guys already in the Christian podcast community.

I was like, maybe I'm missing something here.

So, so, like, this is the, the diamond in the rough.

The, the needle haystack is the really great treasure that has been hidden away.

And so I've been.

I've been looking for opportunities to.

And I think we're just both extremely busy, but I've been just trying to figure, I gotta reach out.

I kept saying, I gotta reach out, I gotta reach out, I gotta reach out.

And then you reach out.

To me.

And it's like, oh, God's providence.

I keep saying I gotta reach out.

Yeah, yeah.

I mean, and honestly, I started looking down the list of podcasts of the Christian podcast community and I'm just encouraged by the number of podcasts you guys have.

But I think I'm gonna start hitting up a lot of those podcasts, be like, hey, we should jump on and have a conversation about the gospel and evangelism and we'd love to know your thoughts and hear your story.

I mean, it's one of the things we love the most on our podcast is I did, actually did a couple episodes where I just went around and interviewed people who'd been, who'd come to Christ through the exchange and the Bible study.

Yeah, I remember those episodes.

I'm hoping that at some point today I can hear your story about how you came to Christ and how you got to where you are right now in ministry, fascinated by your ministry.

And you're just an encourager.

I could, you know, every time I talk to you, you're an absolute encourager.

So.

But anyway, yeah, yeah, I mean, the,

the thing with the exchange is it's, this is about evangelism, but I, there's a key word I want to pick up on that you said, and I don't want the audience to miss it because this is one of the struggles I've always had with different evangelism groups.

You know, there's a lot of different styles.

There's, you know, explain Evangeline explosion, there's Way of the Master.

There's, you know, folks know that I'm, you know, I work with Living waters Way of the Master.

I would train up their, their evangelists on, in their academy.

So.

But there's a lot of different, I'm going to use the word program, but in a loose way.

I hope the struggle I always had was that it is, hey, let me get share the gospel with you.

Train people how to share the gospel.

Oh, you got saved.

Hey, go to church.

Yeah.

And yeah, there wasn't a lot of follow up.

And when I was doing evangelism and people would see me out on the streets, whether I was doing open air or just handing out tracks, and people would ask me about follow up and, and I always was like, well, I always give people my contact and I leave it to the Lord if they, if they're going to reach out to me.

And, and I have been blessed over the years.

I mean, for two decades I was in Union Square, New York City, doing open air Evangelism and so I had regular heckles.

I, I have a guy that's from Israel that has, he, he's here in the States.

He has heckled me for like 20 years.

The same guy.

We know each other well.

You know, it's, it took a lot of years, built a lot of rapport.

But, you know, by, by me going out there regularly and, and sharing the gospel the way that I do it, it built the respect and, and I can, you know, I can talk to him the way he'll, he'll listen to me that he wouldn't listen with other evangelists because he, he could be a very crude individual, but he won't be with me.

And that's sort of the thing that, you know, you go out there and people go, well, how do you, you know, do you follow up?

And I'm like, unless they reach out to me.

And I have had like a dozen people over the years that have reached out and contacted me, but that's what I'm doing it like in New York, where I don't live, but if I'm local, I, I started when we started striving fraternity, one of the big struggles I had was these, is, yeah, I see a lot of people doing evangelism.

I don't see people doing discipleship.

And that's what, you know, so many of the, the ministries are focused just on one thing.

We just do evangelism, we just do creation, we just do finances, we just do the Christian life was never supposed to be divided like that.

And I've often argued and so I'll be curious your thoughts.

I see evangelism as just the first step of discipleship.

The Great commission is not to go, but to make disciples.

And so the, if we're going to teach them all things Christ taught us, the first thing to teach them is to know Christ.

So you, you mentioned it's not just evangelism, but discipleship.

You guys have a whole pro, I'm going to say program loosely because it can, you know, it's not really that, but this way some people think of it, but you have a whole thing that's more than just, hey, share the gospel.

So let, so let's go through what, what is the exchange?

Because it's, it's I, the way I've always heard you described.

It's more of a discipleship program that starts with evangelism.

Would that be a fair ass Testament?

Yeah, I, I, I think that's, that's a good way of describing it.

So Jeff created this thing called the circle of ministry.

And we, we see this as a cyclical way of spiritual life in a church, right?

Is that you ought to, you know, be a follower of Christ, make followers of Christ, and make disciple makers.

And so there, there, there's a sense in which our curriculum actually all works together to be cyclical.

It starts with giving the exchange.

We teach people, this is how to be a disciple maker and just live out your faith in your community.

How do you get to know your neighbors?

How do you go from talking about football to talking about Jesus and what's that all look like?

And then how to turn the conversation, invite somebody to sit down, Bible study, look at verses with you, ask them questions.

And what we know is that when we're talking to somebody, we're talking to their soul, right?

Because we know they have a need.

When you think about the needs that people have, there are questions that nag people.

Every person, even the atheist, there are questions that nag them because they're created in the image of God and they weren't designed to be away from him.

And so we're getting at that.

But after they come to Christ, we equate that like a baby is born and you wouldn't leave them on the sidewalk, right?

And so what churches are supposed to be doing in their communities is thinking about assimilation.

And it's a big fancy way of saying, how do we integrate these folks to be part of our church family and feel welcome and have a purpose?

And so there's a.

There's a lot of education that has to happen.

That's the world's version of the word discipleship, right?

There's a lot of discipleship that has to happen in order to get that person to where now they are a contributor to the community of the church.

So living the exchange, which is a much, much longer book than the exchange Bible study, which is for short chapters.

So after we take somebody and introduce them to God is holy, God is just, God is loving, God is gracious and merciful, now we want them to live the gospel out.

And so this is what Paul says.

He says, having begun in the Spirit, do you now continue in the flesh?

Well, we all, I think, teach the gospel.

All the podcasts that I've run into on, you know, Christian podcast community, we all teach the gospel.

And in churches, the churches in our communities, churches we're all associated with, we're going to preach the gospel the same way.

Where we are going to probably differ.

Some churches differ, some churches are stronger or weaker on is we see this.

And Jeff and Anna have traveled and trained over 10,000 believers in hundreds of churches.

You see churches struggle after that person comes to Christ.

Now what do I do with them?

And so living the exchange is like a giant relationship incubator, where you're teaching that person.

Like Jesus said, teach them whatsoever things I've commanded you.

So go.

Jesus said in the Great Commission, make disciples.

That's one.

Baptize them.

That's two.

And then teach them whatsoever things I've commanded you how to live their life in a way that pleases God.

And part of that is then they are a reproducer of what's been given to them.

Now we're multiplying ourselves.

And that's the way, strategically, the exchange would look differently at the world.

You know, there's the evangelism by addition, and then there's evangelism by multiplication.

And so this starts slow, like a snowball at the top of the mountain, but at the end, it goes really fast and the numbers pick up.

And we see this in churches.

I mean, just this week, I think I've seen, oh, man, my goodness, probably a hundred books go out and to buy this.

Repeat customers, right?

Repeat churches.

And to me, that's encouraging because now I now every time I see that, even though I'm in the marketing department.

And so my job is to make sure all those orders are doing okay and everything in the website's working properly.

But as a pastor, what thrills me about seeing those numbers is not the money or anything like that.

I was just sharing this before we started the podcast.

We pretty much sell books for what they cost.

We raise our prices when the price of paper goes up is basically the idea.

But when we see churches coming back three, four, five times, we know they're multiplying.

And so we've been in the same churches training, and you know this.

You go around training churches, churches, you know, when you go back to the same church over and over again, that's just a healthy sign of they have so many new people.

They want you to come back because they didn't hear you the first time.

Those are the opportunities that thrill you.

I mean, all opportunities are great, but what we want to see churches do is really multiply.

Take this and see multi generational ministry.

I don't know, Andrew, I'd love to get your thoughts on this.

I know that you talk, you know, about different things going on in culture, society, in our country, and I love our country.

I'm here because God's grace and my original name is Not George.

My mom was studying for the citizenship test and absolutely came to admire George Washington, our first president, and named me after George Washington, but my original name was much more of a Middle Eastern name.

All that to say this.

When you look at what's happening in our country, you can't help but feel at some point churches stopped doing what they were supposed to be doing.

I know we think the problem is in politics, but the politicians would say, no, no, it's not our fault.

Upstream from politics is culture.

And so all the cultural leaders would say, well, you know, we want this or that.

But we know as Christians that upstream from culture and all these influencers is the church.

At some point, we lost our children.

And so this, what Exchange is passionate about, is seeing change on a grand scale.

But it starts one relationship at a time.

Yeah.

You know, if someone was to go back all the way Back to episode one of this podcast, now there were over 370 some episodes.

That was what I dealt with.

I dealt with what do we do with immigration as Christians?

Because, see, I think there's a difference between what we do about immigration as Americans versus Christians.

Okay, I, I'm, I, I'm not for illegal immigration.

I'm for legal immigration.

But if someone comes here, share the gospel, right?

I mean, we have the.

Look, even if, and we had this in, in a church I was in where we had a guy that came and he was here illegally.

And this is going back in the 90s and when it wasn't that popular.

And so he, he gets saved, comes to church.

He's, he's in church with him.

We find out he's here illegally.

And we were like, you need to go back and follow the law.

And he's like, but America, I won't get to like, will you trust God and then come back in legally?

Well, he goes back home, gets married, and he's like, hey, I got great ministry that I'm doing here because of all that, what you guys trained me.

And he's, he was now opening a church, you know, so it's like he didn't want to come back.

But, you know, there is that aspect of it that we could, when we look at culture, lose sight of what our responsibilities are as a Christian.

Because, look, George, we're going to be here for what, maybe 70, 80, 90 years, right?

And we're already halfway through that.

So, so what are we going to do with our time?

What, what, what's.

When we are in heaven for eternity, we're going to be sitting back and going, oh, man, I. I really wish I could watch more football.

Something I don't think I've ever said in my life.

But, you know, like, what are we really going to.

Are we going to be like, hey, you know, we really should have fought that immigration stuff harder?

I mean, all the politics that people get involved in.

And don't get me wrong, I'm.

I study politics and, you know, but it's.

You got to put it in that perspective.

And I. I think the.

The gospel is more important than a lot of the things we fight over, especially as Christians on social media.

Oh, I'm gonna get in trouble.

Yeah.

Yep.

Yeah, I know, I know.

As a pastor, it kind of rips my heart a little bit to see people, you know, fight more passionately for secondary, tertiary things that I understand they matter and I care about them, too.

But, you know, the real change that affects the world is the gospel.

That's right.

I mean, the gospel has.

I mean, it absolutely changed the Roman Empire.

It changed the world.

It changed Germany and Europe.

You know, after the Great Reformation.

The gospel is the reason our country had to start did.

I mean, it was founded by people who were really concerned by religious liberties and what they had experienced in Europe and the overreaching arm of the church and the mixing of church and state and all those things.

But people view that as the thing to strive for is a return to a certain politic.

I think what we should strive for is a return to revival that created the politic that so favored our country.

And that's all about going back to the gospel.

It's incredible to me, every time you see huge revival in the world, there was a going back to the text.

I even think of Erasmus, right?

I mean, Erasmus and the work he did in the original Greek text and everything he did with manuscripts was a lot of the cause for what Martin Luther could do.

And so truth and love.

Huge, huge, powerful ingredients.

Truth and love.

You could change the world with truth and love.

I look at what's happening in Iran right now, I can't help but think about it because it's right there in front of us.

But my prayer and hope as a pastor and as somebody who works with the exchange ministry, works alongside Jeff and Anna, my desire as a pastor is to see that place open up to religious liberty and missionaries be able to be deployed openly and freely to a place like Iran.

I think that's the best outcome.

I know a lot of people think about best outcomes in terms of politics in the world stage as being economic or socioeconomic, sociopolitical, or the dynamics of defense and all that.

But really the best outcome is that the gospel will be allowed to go freely everywhere.

That's what's going to change.

Policies can't solve the human heart.

Only the gospel, Only the Holy Spirit can solve the problems in the human heart.

Yeah.

So I haven't given out the website, which is bad of me yet so far, but exchangemessage.org is the website.

So let me tell you some things you can find on the website.

They get an online course and it only costs $50,000.

No, no.

Oh, I got that wrong.

Let me check.

I thought I. I thought I had that.

No, we wish.

No, I'm kidding.

I'm kidding.

No, it's.

I think it's 70 bucks for an individual license.

And then if you get the.

There's a book bundle plus the individual course, it's 99.

So 79 for the individual.

99.

And then if you want to get the course for your whole church and you could give it to anybody in your church for the whole lifetime of your church, it's 300 bucks, 309 bucks.

And that also the pastor gets a book bundle with that.

You know, as a matter of fact, Andrew, I want to.

I want to do something for you because I know you mentioned earlier that you've not had a chance to look at the course and some of the stuff yet.

So I was actually, while you were away for a second, I was emailing.

So we're going to give you the.

The course for free to you.

We're gonna put a big bundle of books in the mail, and I just need your address later.

You can email me your address and we'll.

We'll send you everything we got.

But.

But you know, we love you.

We love what you're doing, so we want to do that.

And for your.

For your whole audience, if you guys go on the exchange website.

We've never done this before, but we decided we'd do it for.

For Andrew's audience.

And so the.

Anything on our store, you can get 10% off the whole cart.

Like I said, we send it.

We.

We sell it for pretty much for cost.

So we're going to eat a little bit of shipping expenses there.

But that's okay.

We want to do it.

We want to be a blessing to all the believers out there.

We exist to equip you guys for evangelism and discipleship.

So just put in the coupon code, RappReport R A P P R E P O R T All lowercase, no spaces.

You'll get 10% off anything on the website.

If, if there's anything we can do to help you or your church or anything like that, just email me georgexchangemessage.org you can email Andrew, he knows my contact info.

But, but we're here to help churches, that's our donors make that possible.

We can freely help churches this way and so, you know, we're glad to do it.

Well, that is very generous of you guys.

For those in the audience, let me just say you heard him say that they do this at cost.

So yes, part of my Jewish background says if you get a good deal, I mean take a lot of it, get as much as you can.

But, but in this case you know that they're going to be eating the course.

So here's what I'm going to suggest.

Get a ton of books for you to get to give away for your church and get the discount.

But I'm going to ask a favor of the audience as well.

There is on the exchange message.org website where you're going to go to get the course.

There's also this little green donate button or well it's next to a green donate button I guess when I clicked on looked green.

But you, you'll go there and, and would you consider checking out, check out the ministry.

I hope that you, you start seeing how you could use this already in your church.

We've, you've already heard George mentioned he used it in vbs, you could use it in Sunday schools, you could use it on one on one groups.

But it's something that you can find a way to work into your church.

So would you do this me this favor?

Would you when you get a lot, get a ton of books but also donate a little bit and maybe, just maybe because you know they kind of have monthly expenses, would you consider donating on a regular basis set up for a reoccurring monthly donation so that just put it in, forget about it.

Pretend you don't even know that you're giving.

That way your right hand doesn't know it's not.

That's not how you use that verse.

But, but, but you can set up a monthly giving it.

It does.

Look folks, right now a lot of ministries are struggling financially because a lot of people are just either struggling themselves, they're nervous with where things are going.

And so a lot of people have, I've spoken to a lot of ministries and they're struggling.

Here's a ministry that's not looking to make tons of money.

They're not looking to make money off their, their products.

And so this is some group that is trying to get a message out.

Those are the people we need to support the most.

Right.

So I want, I want to encourage you guys to go and do that and, and not just get the, the products which, you know, as he said, I, I, we've, we've talked, I have listened to their podcast for, you know, when, when you, you joined us, which is I think been years now, I think.

Yeah.

And, and so I've, I've learned about what the program is through hearing you talk about it.

I hadn't taken the time to go and, and check it out, but they, if you go to the website exchange message.org they got an app that you can download on your phone.

They have the course, they have these different book bundles that you can get.

I encourage you to take advantage of it, but not just for yourself.

Plan to bring this into your church.

Let me ask George, how.

So let's say I bring this in my church.

How have you seen, and I kind of know the answer because I've listened to your podcast.

How have you seen some churches change?

How have you seen this affect churches over time?

Yeah, so that's the magic of the exchange seminar.

I mean this is what started Jeff and Anna is they actually started with focuses training churches.

Not really even having a website or selling books online.

But as it took off, that was a necessary thing that happened later.

But what happens is giving the exchange is really a way to set a culture of disciple making in your church.

And that's the big deal here.

If it's a one and done program, then when the program ends, the question, everybody's looking around at each other going, okay, now what?

But if this is a cultural thing, it's part and parcel of who your church is.

That's the effect we're going for.

That's the end we're going for.

So when churches really take a hold of giving the exchange and the exchange Bible studies, what we see is people coming to Christ.

We email stories, we put up blog articles on the website all the time.

You can go find 100 different stories on the exchange website of people who've come to Christ with this and you see the change and then that multiplication happens.

So now, you know, I think they went to the church that I grew up at.

I think the fourth time or the third time, just this last January, every time they go, they're training about a hundred new people.

I mean, if you think about over 10 years at that one church, there have been 400 people probably been trained in the exchange Bible study and how to give it, how to do relational evangelism.

Build a relationship with.

With your neighbor, your co worker, your family member, whoever.

That's real cultural change.

That means that church, every time we go back, grows and grows and grows and grows.

And now they're looking at planning a church.

That's what we see happening in the churches that we go to.

Jeff and Anna, this is their passion.

We have a podcast together.

It's hosted on Andrew's Christian podcast Community.

And we love doing that from week to week, Jeff and I.

But I will say the real passion that Jeff has is standing up in front of believers, Christians and doing the exchange Bible study.

And I can't tell you how many people actually come to Christ at these seminars.

You're there to train people you think are believers, and then boom, all of a sudden you start explaining the gospel.

Somebody goes, a light bulb clicks.

You've probably seen this, Andrew, many times.

A light bulb clicks.

And then you're like, oh, you weren't

a believer this whole time?

Well, let's introduce you to Jesus.

Jesus Christ.

Let's do the thing right here.

Yeah, it is funny because I.

You're saying that I'm laughing because I'm like, yeah, I've been there where someone comes up and goes, I think I just got saved.

You're like, oh, okay.

Like, I still remember there's one girl, her name was Tiffany.

I, you know, in the session, I close in prayer.

I open my eyes and she's standing in front of me.

So while my eyes are closed, she walks up.

She wanted to make sure she was first one to talk to me.

Yep.

And she goes, I came here because all my friends from church were coming here, but I did not know what the gospel message actually was until today.

And it was like, oh, okay.

So, like.

So we, you know, a bunch of us went to lunch and I just sat and talked with her and.

Really encouraging.

Like, you don't expect that.

But.

Yeah, it's.

But.

But this is the thing.

You mentioned something about the culture it creates.

Because that's the thing.

Those of you listening, raise a hands.

How many of you love to share the gospel and you have no fear in doing it?

George, do you see any hands up?

I. I don't.

I don't.

Yeah, I don't see any hands up.

What do you know, the reality is that all of us have that.

Look, I've been.

I've been evangelizing for, like, 40 years.

Now I'm only 25, because I'm married to someone that's only 25.

So you do the math any way you want, but it has to work that way.

So I still find the very first person I hand a gospel tract to or talk to is the one that's most difficult for that day.

They each get easier.

But if you cultivate this just a regular life pattern of sharing the gospel.

One of the ways I would share the gospel, George, is I would always ask someone, do you consider yourself to be a good person?

I was.

I was with this guy that I used to work with, and his name was Art Good Man.

And he always went by A right.

And he said, well, I do that because that way I'm a good man.

And, you know, I always had this policy.

I don't evangelize at work.

I take people out for lunch or things like that.

And I just went, oh, so you consider yourself to be a good person?

And he goes, well, yeah.

And then all of a sudden, he realized, wait, I'm sharing the gospel on work time.

This is not what I'm supposed to be doing.

But it was.

It actually became so natural that when he said, I'm a good man, I just fell right into that without.

It shocked me that day because I realized I didn't even think about it.

It wasn't like I said, oh, let me go share the gospel with him.

He just opened the door, and it was like, boom.

I just walked through.

And.

And after that, I found, like, boy, the more I share the gospel, the more I'm no longer looking to force a.

A situation where I could share the gospel.

They're usually right in front of me.

Yep.

I mean, you.

You mentioned something earlier about, you know, having conversations, being, you know, being able to swing from the natural world to the spiritual.

That seems to be the hardest thing.

Yeah.

That I have found for people is once you get Christians talking in the spiritual realm, it's their realm.

They know the Bible, they study, and they're good there.

But how do you go from football to the gospel?

That.

That's where the struggle is.

How do I know how I go about it?

But how do you.

How do.

With the gospel exchange?

How do you navigate that?

How do you train people to do that?

Yeah.

So, you know, we call it.

There's a chapter in Giving the Exchange called Turning the Conversation a section in that book, and that.

That's what we use when we go to church and do seminars.

That.

That's basically that book is the manual that Jeff and Anna created for their training.

And then it became giving the exchange.

When you're turning the conversation, you know when to turn the conversation, when the person that you've been building a relationship with at least reveals a soul need.

So that, that, that example that you use is a perfect example.

Here you've been working with somebody and then all of a sudden it came out, well, I think I'm a good person.

Which is about the time you pull out Ray's good person test and go, let's take the good person test, right?

And so, but, but, but for us, you know, if that happened to me in a work setting and my coworker is like, you know, I really feel like I'm a good person.

Like, man, you know what, we should go to lunch and talk about that.

Then I would ask a bunch of questions because now we just went.

They were willing to make us a moral statement, right?

They were willing to show a part of their soul, a part of their heart to me.

And so now it's like, okay, I have permission now to ask questions and pull on that string a little bit.

And so we're going to go and we're going to ask a bunch of questions.

And questions are a great way to lead, right?

Because questions and listening is the best way to gain an audience.

It's a much more effective, you know, 400 times more effective than talking.

So if, if, if, you know, and I struggle with this because I'm a pastor, and pastors have the gift of gab.

You know, you get in front of people, all you want to do is talk and, you know, give them a word edgewise.

And it's like, you know what?

Listening with people is, is the best way to build an audience in a relationship because it shows you care, you took an interest.

So you start listening to them, you ask them these questions, and you really get them thinking about the soul.

You really get them thinking about what they said.

I'm a really good person.

Okay, hey, what's the difference between right and wrong?

How do you know what's right and wrong?

Oh, this, this, this.

I said, what if, what if, what if there's a guy out there that says, this is right and this is wrong?

Have you ever thought about that?

Have you thought about what happens after you die?

Have you thought about God?

Do you feel like God's going to judge people about right and wrong?

How do you feel like you're going to make up for the wrongs in your life?

And do you think that you've done enough, right, and you ask enough questions, and then there becomes this obvious need for, you know, I'm not really sure that's the perfect time to say.

And this is one of the things that missionary Jim Elliott talks about.

He says, you have to be a person of crisis.

You shouldn't be a milepost on the road where you stand there waving as people as they head off into destruction.

You ought to be the fork in the road that they have to make a decision.

And so that's where you look at somebody and this is the first crisis that we.

We teach in giving.

The exchange that you're going to have in your relationship is, hey, how would you like to do a Bible study with me?

I'm not going to give you the answers.

I'm going to take you to 150 different Bible verses.

It'll take us four weeks.

We'll meet an hour a week, my treat, coffee, and we'll sit down and you come to your own conclusions.

We'll just ask questions.

You look at the Bible verse and you see what the Bible says for itself.

How would you like.

How would you like to do that?

And it's.

Let me tell you, whenever I ask that question, to this day, I still have some fear and trepidation about rejection.

But one of the things we teach in the exchange Bible study is you should never feel that rejection is a rejection of you, because ultimately it's a rejection of God.

And the rejection is not a dead end in the relationship.

It's an indicator of this is not the time.

They are not ready right now.

And so this is why relationship is a great platform, because it's very sustainable for repeated attempts of evangelism.

Now, don't get me wrong, and Jeff and I have talked about this on the podcast, too.

I'm sure you probably heard it.

Weigh the Master.

And there's some other programs out there, Evangelism Explosion.

We've used lots of different kinds of evangelism methods all over the world.

Sometimes we're on the mission field.

And let me tell you, on the mission field, sometimes the harvest is so ripe, it's so ready.

I mean, you're right there, you're on the street.

You're in a culture where people are open to talk and they have a slower pace of life.

But, you know, if I go in a Costco parking lot in America, most people are gonna be pretty irritated that I'm standing between them and their cart.

They just want to get their cart.

They want to get in there, get their stuff and get out.

And so it's a matter of whatever's going to be effective where you're at.

One of the things we do we've seen, because Jeff and Ann have traveled all over the world, different countries, trained the evangelism internationally.

By the way, if you're a missionary, you're listening, you're on the mission field.

If you email us everything, all our material, all our digital stuff, we give for free to missionaries everywhere in the world.

The only places we charge for it are in North America so that we can pay the expenses of the ministry.

But everywhere else in the world, we give for free.

We will give you the files of all the books and stuff like that.

That way you can print in your country.

You can find somebody who can do that for you there, wherever you're at, whichever continent you're working on.

But we've seen this all over the world.

What we see is, you know, different methods don't work necessarily everywhere, but you can build a relationship everywhere in the world, because God built us for relationships.

And so that's why Jeff and Ann have taught it that way, is just this realization of, you know, we're built for connection.

Yeah.

Because that.

I mean, the thing.

And you guys have talked about this, right?

You have friendship evangelism, which was a style that people were doing in the.

The only struggle I have with that is there is when.

When you're focused more on the friendship than the evangelism.

Yes.

Now you're afraid of losing the friendship if you do the evangelism.

This is not that.

And that's what I've.

When I first was listening to you guys, I was like, oh, they just are all about relationships.

And clearly I realized, no.

Very quickly, I was like, no, you guys are about, okay, we start with the gospel.

So now the relationship is based on a gospel presentation.

It's not only the gospel.

Right.

And.

And.

But you're not avoiding the gospel.

The.

The goal is to share the gospel.

And so I do for folks who.

Because there are some who think, oh, if you talk relationship, oh, no, you know, then it's just friendship evangelism.

You're.

You're not really evangelizing.

It's.

It's kind of like when people say they're doing missions and all they're doing is giving food and clothing, but they're not actually sharing the gospel or.

Right.

And so that's good, but it's not evangelism.

Right.

And so I. I have.

I've made a game of transitioning from the Natural to spiritual, because that was always the thing I found the hardest thing for people to do.

And I'll just say if you guys want, you take a look.

If you go to the Striving Fraternities YouTube channel, you'll see there's a playlist called the Spiritual Transition Game.

And we used to have evangelism conferences and I would get the speakers to do this.

And when I started this podcast, I used to have my guests give me some object and I would transition from whatever they gave me to the gospel.

When I used to do our, our live classes, the, the striving fraternity academy classes, I would start before we went live for the audience that was watching and do a spiritual transition.

And people in the chat would give me something to transition.

Because after practicing for 30 some years, I can take almost anything and find a way to get to the gospel.

I mean, artichoke hearts, sure, I could get to the gospel on artichoke hearts because that actually happened.

George.

Someone walked up to me at a conference and went, artichoke hearts Gospel go.

And they're like, there's a group of people around him like, okay, it's on.

I gotta go to you.

I have no idea how I did it back then, but, but, but, you know, the reality is you can, you could do that.

I mean, because look, some people like artichoke hearts.

I'm not one of them, right?

Some people love them, some people don't, you know, but the reality is you're going to have a feeling of that, that art of choke heart based on your opinion of it.

If you've never had it, you're going to base it off of what others do.

And that's not about people.

We, we tend to do that.

We tend to kind of just buy into what the crowd is doing, even if the crowd is wrong, because we feel more comfortable in numbers.

And yet we have seen time and time again in history, the crowd can often be wrong.

In fact, a lot of times they're mostly wrong.

Right?

Just.

Just because a crowd is believing something doesn't make it right.

But you know, there is truth.

And one thing that we know is true is every one of us break God's law.

Every one of us has, has committed a crime against God.

We, we lie, we sin.

You might be George far more moral than me, but we both are in the same camp.

We're criminals in God's sight.

We have a need.

We both of us rightly, because God's infinitely holy.

Both of us deserve infant forever in a lake of fire.

Because of the punishment against who?

We, we committed a crime.

But you know what?

There's some good news.

God made a way of escape.

God himself, being an eternal being, came to earth as a man.

Being an eternal being, he paid an eternal fine.

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

That's the beauty.

That's what's different with any other religion in the world.

Every other religion is a moral system because it's a bunch of things you have to do or don't do.

Where Christianity is about what God does did that we don't deserve.

Does that sound like good news to you?

Yeah.

And this is why we call it the Great Exchange is because 2nd Corinthians 5, 21, right?

God made him to be sin for us who knew no sin, that we might become the righteousness of God in him.

That, that verse pretty much sums up exactly beautifully the way you've laid out the gospel right there.

I mean that, that's, that's it is.

What we're trying to get people toward is, is, hey, Jesus did this for you.

There's no do, do, do, do, do.

The last three words out of Jesus's mouth before he gave up the ghost was, it's finished.

I mean, it's done.

Past, present, future, he's atoned.

In that moment, he achieved what would be necessary to satisfy God's wrath and all the sins of the world.

And so, you know, he is now the high priest.

His blood is now the blood that satisfies the mercy seat.

His blood is now the blood that satisfies God in his throne room.

And so I've been reading the book of Hebrews in my daily devotions.

And you know, along with Leviticus, it's, I'm on an interesting Bible reading plan this year.

But you're saying that.

I was going to say, I hope you're reading Leviticus at the same time because people don't understand Hebrews unless they understand Leviticus.

You know, I never saw that before.

I don't know who put this Bible reading plan together, but they're a genius.

But it's like, whoa, which Bible reading print?

Do you know which one it is

right in front of me?

It's called five Day Bible Reading Plan.

While you're looking it up.

So.

Because it is something, folks, if you.

Leviticus is a wonderful book.

Does that sound strange?

Look, if you, if you take a step back, I'll tell you what you could do, folks, if you haven't done this go search on YouTube for my name and Leviticus.

There's a couple of places where they've recorded me doing this, but I go through in one hour.

When I go to a church for a Sunday school, they give me one hour to go through the entire book of Leviticus.

And I have one thing that I'll say, you will love Leviticus when I'm done.

Because Leviticus is the gospel message.

You just got to step back and look at the big picture.

And the gospel is.

That's what the book's all about.

Yep.

Yeah.

I mean, this.

The 16th chapter of Leviticus is the day of atonement.

And that's the core.

The core of the book that is.

So.

So for Pl.

Don't know.

The way that a lot of.

Of ancient writing would be is the climax is not at the end like we do here in America in Western thinking, it's in the middle.

So the first half of Levicus is all working up to the day of Atonement.

And you come down chapter 17, you're on the other side of the day of atonement.

That.

That's the core.

Yep.

So what Bible reading plan was that?

It's called the Five Day Bible Reading Plan.

So it's.

It's www.fivedaybiblereadingplan.com.

i mean.

I mean, we're not affiliated anyway, but.

But it's an awesome Bible reading plan.

I love the way they've paired the passages together and the past.

The pastoral heart of me would tell your audience, you know, as a pastor, I know that for some of my people, it's really a struggle to read consistently every single day.

There's just one day we get behind and there's the day we're at church and things like that.

So the five Day Bible Reading plan gets you through the whole Bible in a year, but it accounts for days where you get behind, gives you days to catch up and, you know, all that kind of thing.

So it's.

It's.

We love it.

I mean, we love it for our people.

We're trying to, as a church, go through it together and.

And God's really blessing.

I'm loving it.

It's been spiritually beneficial for me as a pastor.

I've been really encouraged this year in my Bible reading.

Going through this particular.

I've gone through others chronological and different ones, but our church goes through a

different Bible reading plan every year.

Last year, I was trying to look up to see if it was the same one.

We did one where it was five days when you took the weekend off, just like that.

We're doing one now where it's, it's, it's kind of seven days.

It's really six days.

And on Sunday, you get one verse.

Oh, that's pretty cool.

That's pretty neat.

If you do need to catch up.

You got that one day.

There you go.

I.

So I gotta know.

And we're gonna play this, you know, for our audience.

So you mentioned it earlier.

You're from a Jewish background.

How did you go from, I mean, Jews are some of the toughest.

The Jewish people are some of the toughest people to win to Christ.

How did you go from that to where you are today?

Mathematics.

I always say that, and people just give me the strangest look.

But, yeah, it really was.

I.

So I.

You're right.

I grew up in a Jewish family.

At bar mitzvah, both mother and father are Jewish.

We were, you know, my father was Orthodox.

We've gone.

My family has gone the full gamut.

So from Orthodox to conservative and conservative in Judaism is liberal and Reformed in Judaism, which is what I eventually was Bar mitzvahed is really liberal.

So reformed in Christianity, some think is good.

Reformed in Judaism, really bad.

Okay.

And now my father's kind of like a practicing atheist.

He doesn't go at all.

But yeah, several years, like, like nine, 10 years of Hebrew school.

So, you know, prepping me for, you know, learning the, the back the Jewish culture, learning Hebrew, preparing for the bar mitzvah, even after, you know, I was in Hebrew school till 15.

So obviously I was born.

Mr. At 12, so it's been a couple years after.

And so I, I got saved at 16.

And one of the things that happened, I was on a.

Based on I, I.

When my mother died when I was young, so I had a lot of difficulty dealing with that.

And when I say difficulty, like, you know, how kids in school would tell mother jokes.

To this day, I do not, I cannot tell you what I did because I have no recollection.

I would actually black out when people would talk about my mother.

And I got really violent.

And I was like the smallest kid in school.

And I got thrown out of, like, every summer camp that my parents put me in because something, someone would say something and I would turn violent.

And I, I could not be controlled.

And so, and I had no, I had no knowledge of what I did.

And so we, my parents sent me on a trip where a bunch of Jewish kids on a bus and we traveled the country.

The bus driver was a Christian and he he starts sharing the gospel with me.

It started over a fortune cookie, right?

We talked about going from the natural world to the spiritual world.

I don't remember what the fortune was in the fortune cookie, but he took the fortune cookie as we had dinner.

And from there, as we're walking to a Dairy Queen, he starts sharing the gospel.

Wow.

And I now, yeah, just I.

For any Christians who haven't heard me say this, just hear me out.

But you have to understand the way Jewish people in my generation were raised and Jesus Christ represents Hitler's God because we don't.

Yeah, I see the look on your face.

But wow.

We don't make a distinction between Catholicism and baptism.

It's all just Catholicism.

It's different branches of Catholicism.

That's how I thought.

And the Catholic Church funded Hitler.

So when we think of Christianity, we think of, well, they, they killed the Jews in the Inquisitions and they killed the Jews in the Crusades and they killed the Jews in the Holocaust, right?

So I want nothing to do with Christ.

And so he's.

He's sharing the gospel.

And I still remember I got my ice cream, I'm walking away and I said, and, and this is really bad.

But I said, hey, Chuck, that's great for you, but I'm God's chosen people.

I'm in like Flynn, because I was told that by Judaism, like, we're God's chosen people, we're going to heaven.

That's not true, but that's what I was raised to believe.

And he said something that at any other time would have been really bad.

He.

He just yelled as I'm walking away.

My back was to him.

He says, what if your mother died?

So you'd be right here, right now, listening to his message and you walk away.

Your mother would have died in vain.

Now, okay, Theo theology aside, because that's not like God didn't take my mother just for that, right?

But it got my attention.

I remember.

I remember clenching my fists and turning around and then something happened where I just.

I let loosened up and I walked over.

I said, Chuck, if you can give me a logical reason to believe, I'll believe.

And so we sat down on steps of a Dairy Queen.

Now here's, here's something you just have to know about me at that time.

I, and I'm not saying this to brag, George, it's just, this is fact.

I have 168 IQ.

I've passed the test for Mensa, okay?

But I, at that time in my life, I, I looked down on anyone that I didn't think was to my intellectual abilities.

Chuck never finished the sixth grade.

I, I really had a very low view of Chuck, Even though he was in his 40s and I was 16.

It was just how I was when I was not saved.

And, and if you ever wondered, did you know we don't see the Bible verse that Jesus laughed, but this is, this is how I know God has a sense of humor, okay?

He takes a guy who's super arrogant and prideful about his intellect and has a guy who's never even passed the sixth grade giving him the most important message of his life.

Wow.

And stumping me because I sat there and as he's, here's a guy who didn't finish the sixth grade.

He knew his Bible though.

And so he starts giving prophecies from the Old Testament to the New and I'm putting them into one of two buckets.

That's either coincidence or self fulfilling.

If it's self fulfilling, I'm rejecting it.

Because if it's self filling, Jesus can make, you know, oh, the Messiah is supposed to do that.

I'll go do that, right?

So I'm calculating things like where Jesus, where the Messiah would be born.

Jesus has no control over that.

That's coincidence.

What family line he'd be born of now, you know, maybe betrayed by a friend.

That one's kind of tougher.

You, you, you know, you could self fulfill that one.

You just don't want to, right?

Yeah, but yeah, as he's got prophecy after prophecy after prophecy.

I stopped him, like, chuck, stop.

We're beyond statistical impossibility, which is 10 to the 48th power.

And he's like, what do you, what does that mean?

I said, it means it's statistically impossible for someone to fulfill these prophecies by chance.

I said, the only explanation can be that the New Testament had been written by God.

And he says, yeah, that's what I was telling you earlier.

I said, well, what does the New Testament teach?

So actually I'm weird this way, but I actually believed in the New Testament before I believed in Jesus, right?

So he starts talking about Jesus's death, burial, resurrection.

I was like, stop, Chuck.

Dead people don't rise.

They rot.

And I said, like, I thought I can explain away the resurrection I had.

If you read Josh McDowell's book, more than a carpenter or evidence demands a verdict, okay?

He gives like all these false views of the, the res of the resurrection.

They got the wrong tomb.

Jesus didn't really die.

It's a swoon theory.

I got all those.

The stolen bot.

They stole the body.

I have one that to date, George, I think is still original with me.

My last argument to Chuck was Chuck, maybe what the, the disciples did is they, they dug a hole underneath the tomb and they snuck the body out that way.

And he looks at me, goes, prison tunnel.

Yeah.

Hey, I was creative.

He goes, in three days, Andrew.

They didn't have heavy equipment back then.

Through solid rock.

And the, and the guards outside aren't going to notice.

And I just, I remember just taking my face and stuck it in my hands and shaking my head.

And he's like, what's wrong?

I said, if the New Testament was written by God and it's about Jesus who rose from the dead, then he has to be God and I'm accountable to him.

What do I have to do to get right with him?

So in three and a half hours, the very first time hearing the gospel, I went from believing Jesus Christ is Hitler's God to being a follower of Jesus Christ.

And it all started with mathematics.

Wow.

Wow.

Oh, that's incredible.

So did Chuck, did he stay in your life longer?

No.

So he, we lost touch when my family, my dad's health, he had to move to Florida for health reasons.

And Chuck at that time, at the same time, we did keep in touch for a bit, but he ended up moving to what he really felt.

Lord is calling him to New York to do missions work and share the gospel.

And so in that we lost touch, we.

We used to write back.

You know, like when I would.

I study the Bible as a new belief.

I had no one.

I was in a Jewish home.

I lived as a secret Christian for two years.

When my parents found out that I was a Christian, you know what the first thing they did was?

They went casket shopping.

Wow.

And to this day, I'm actually.

I praise God and thank God for the fact that they didn't go through with it.

I'm actually shocked that they didn't because I know they, I know them and I knew the day they found out, they would just tell my siblings I was dead and they'd bury a casket and I'd be cut off.

And I really, I praise God that I still had an influence and had an opportunity to share the gospel with them.

They don't believe yet.

I. I want to be hopeful, but.

But my parents would accept me being a homosexual, drug addict, murderer before being a Christian.

Wow.

You know, it doesn't surprise me because I have a friend who's a church planner in Israel.

And their people have to park their cars in different places in the neighborhood and not in front of the church, because if they park their cars on the street in front of the church, their windows will be broken by the time they come out.

I mean, it's just the.

The Jewish people are very hostile towards Christianity.

And I don't know that I understand all the reasons why.

But, I mean, I guess it's pretty offensive to them that they're waiting on a Messiah.

And we said, he already came, you know, and so I don't know what else offends them.

Well, what it is with the.

The greatest thing.

And so to any of you who want to share the gospel with someone that's Jewish, first off, don't mention Jesus until you have that relationship with them to where they understand that they have a need for a savior, because as long as they think they're going to heaven just because they're Jewish, they're not looking for a savior.

But you have to understand Jesus represents the Inquisitions, the Crusades, the Holocaust, the biggest offense to Jewish people.

And, and if you share the gospel with a Jewish person, I don't tell them I'm Jewish because then they see me as a traitor.

But I get this question a lot.

When I do evangelize a Jewish persons, they'll ask me the question, who killed Jesus?

This was something Ben Shapiro did when I think.

I think it was MacArthur was on his show.

Yes, yes, I remember that.

It's, It's a question to ask because the, if you look at the, the who.

Who killed Jesus, while the Jewish leaders said, his death will be upon us, that's what he said to Pilate.

And when Peter shares, you know, starts his.

His Pentecost preaching, he.

He points that out.

And so that verse is used against Jewish people as they killed Jesus.

And that's, that's the Jew, the Christian Messiah.

And so that's why they were killed in the Inquisitions and the Crusades and, and the Holocaust.

And so when they ask you that question, this is how I answer that.

George.

I usually say, well, you know, at that time, the people who brought Jesus to the Romans said, let his blood be on us, but they didn't physically kill him.

And who physically put him up on the cross were the Romans, but they didn't kill him either.

And I pause because the question I always get is, well, then who did?

And I go, jesus did.

When Jesus was on the cross, he said, it is finished.

And when he finished paying for the, the sin of you and I, he Said it is finished.

And he took his own life.

He couldn't do anything being nailed to a cross, but he had the power of God to give up his spirit from his body because he was God.

So the answer is not the Jews nor the Romans.

Jesus killed Jesus.

And that answer gets them where thr.

It throws them off, but it's theologically accurate and gets it away from.

You just want to kill me because I killed.

We killed your Savior.

Yeah, it's.

You know what's interesting is when you look at the Garden of Gethsemane, you know, Peter felt like, hey, they're trying to kill you.

So he put up a resistance.

And Jesus said, hey, that's not the way.

I mean, don't.

You know, I could call down legions of angels and we could, we could end this right now.

I mean, I'm.

I'm willful allowing them to do this.

And, I mean, there's a sense in which we all put Jesus on the cross.

Right?

I mean, it's like humanity is responding.

You can go all the way back to Adam and Eve.

I mean, we opened Pandora's box, so to speak.

I mean, God had eternally, sovereignly planned the rescue mission even before Adam and Eve made their decision.

Right.

But all that to say.

Yeah.

I mean, and we all bear a personal responsibility in putting Jesus on the cross.

But you're right.

I mean, he went there willfully, freely.

No man could keep him.

When they tried to break his leg, they couldn't break the bones.

And it's not because they weren't strong enough and didn't hit the gym that day.

It's not because they didn't have a protein bar.

Those Roman guys were brutal.

I mean, those were hardened war vets.

You know, it's like they knew how to break legs.

And so.

But all that was giving us problems, prophecy.

To show that Jesus Christ chose.

He chose.

He knew he was going to be on that cross for as long as it took to satisfy the wrath of God and be the propitiation of the world.

Nothing more, nothing less.

And no man, no man controlled the day.

Not even Pilate.

Yeah, you know, that's, that's why Jesus doesn't have to talk him out of it, you know?

Yes.

Like Pilot's, like, I, I just picture the scene, you know, here's Pilate, you know, like, I gotta figure a way to let this guy free.

He's innocent.

And then his wife is like, pulls him aside to say, have nothing to do with them.

And here.

What, she's distracting him.

Enough time for the Jewish leaders to rile up the crowd.

So when Pilate comes back, it's like, you know, stone them.

Stone.

You know, they want him dead at that point.

So pilots now like Pilate might have been able to have some say if his wife didn't pull him away to say, save this man.

Right, right.

Notice the only person that Jesus asked for permission to opt out was the Father.

I mean, he's the only one who really had a say in if this was really the necessary way to go.

And obviously it was.

But what's interesting to me is the person, I think, who felt the ultimate guilt was actually Judas because, I mean, he took his life.

Right.

But I mean, Jesus died.

And even in dying, though, he had a mission because the centurion looked at the end.

Remember, at the end, centurion looked after all these things and the world went dark for a second and earthquakes and all this stuff.

And the centurion believed.

So Jesus, I mean, his life had a purpose in salvation, obviously of itself.

That's the big purpose.

Right.

He provided salvation for the world, but he was a light all the way till the end.

And so I guess you could look at the cross as a tragedy, but it's not a tragedy.

It's a victory.

I mean, that's what Paul says in First Corinthians.

The.

It's a foolishness.

It's foolishness to the, to the Gentiles, a stumbling block to the Jews, but it is our victory and it's the only gospel we have to preach.

Yeah, you know, it's.

You mentioned Judas, but another one is Pilate himself.

I mean, Pilate sits there and says to Jesus what is truth?

And he's.

He's struggling.

But if you, if you study the history, Roman history, after Christ, Pilate kind of went mad.

I mean, that was when he sentenced Jesus to death.

That was a major turning point in his life where you end up seeing, just politically and emotionally, he became a wreck.

And I think that it's.

I think he was, he also was guilt ridden over, over what he did.

So.

Yeah.

So link, I want to, I want to give this out again for folks.

And I'll have this in the show.

Notes exchange message.org I want you guys to go check out the exchange.

You can check it out online.

You can get the app, you can get the books.

Okay.

It is.

There's.

I am not a proponent, even though, yes, I do.

I do train folks with Way of the Master.

I do at striving fraternity.

I do a different style of evangelism training.

I think that the more ways you can learn ideas, the more you're going to find something that works well with your personality, with who you are.

Because the reality is, is that even though they are.

George is this nice, good looking guy.

And.

Well, I got a foi.

I got a great face for print, you know, for like writing, you know, don't.

Great face for radio.

Yeah, no, it's not even that.

It's not even good for radio.

That's how bad it is, you know.

No, come on, man.

Do you know, look, seriously, you know, the way I know my wife is awake every morning, she rolls over and

goes,

you know, it gets, it gets our hearts going.

And I.

We know each other's alive that way and.

But that's hilarious.

But the, the thing is, is that we, if we look at more ways to evangelize, it's like, you know, I contributed to a book, Good news for Mormons.

There were, I forget how many of us, 20, 25, 26 authors.

We all wrote a different chapter.

Mine was on open air evangelism, but I wanted to do something else because.

But they didn't know.

Too many people they said that did that well, so I got with that chapter.

But the, the thing is that, the thing I liked about that book is that's geared toward Mormons.

But, but there were so many different creative ideas.

There's, there's, there's, there's a guy.

If you know anything about Mormonism, there's this thing about these gold plates.

There's one guy that has a will like a, like one of those red flyer wheels.

Barrel.

Not real barrels, but the things you put the kids in and you wheel them around.

You know, I'm probably dating myself and anyone that's like under 30 is going, what's he talking about?

Yeah, well, when I was a kid, your parents stuck in this little red bin, you know, barrel, Red rider wagon.

Yeah.

Red wire wagon.

That's what I'm thinking.

And so, you know, he, he has, he has these plates and he asked people to lift them up and, and they say, do you really think Joseph Smith could have ran three miles carrying this?

And yeah, and it's like, that's such a creative idea because they see it's something they know from their, their tradition and they look at it and they're curious of it and they go, yeah, I want to see how heavy that is.

And, and he takes that and shares the gospel with it.

That's how he transitions from the natural to the spiritual.

And so I'm, you know, whatever is the style you gravitate toward.

And you're saying, well, you know, I'm not really, I'm not into the relationships, okay.

And look, I've met those people, George.

Right?

The guys that like doing open air.

And if they're not interested in the relationship, they're.

They're really only may be interested in the open air because they like to hear themselves talk.

So there's a lot of people doing open air that shouldn't.

I, I'm just, I'm sorry.

I'm probably the most critical of open air evangelism and it's what I'm known for.

But it just, yeah, there's a lot of prideful guys out there that just are arrogant and shouldn't be doing it.

But, but even if you're like, hey, here's another tool you could put in a toolbox, right?

You can, you can have their app and, and it's okay, you, you, you start some, a co worker or you do meet someone on the street, you give them a gospel tract, you started a conversation and you want something that is more of a longer type of discipling evangelism, you know, relationship building method.

Well, that's the exchange.

It's there.

Yeah, it's like there's a couple meetings this year, a couple seminars that came as a result of me just sending a free bundle of books to a pastor.

And I just tell them like, hey, try it once, just try it once, man.

If it works great.

If you're like, nah, this is not going to do it.

Great, let me know, I'll point you towards three or four other kind of curriculums and stuff like that.

No problem, no big deal.

And, and I mean, they used it, liked it, called us, said, hey, Jeff and Anna, can they come down and do a seminar?

And it's like, hey, great.

No, it worked out.

And you said, no, no, they can't do that.

Well, it's like, we're not.

Jeff's is such a positive guy and so you'll never hear him be critical of another program.

It's like, no, this is what God has put in our laps.

This is what we're do.

Going to teach.

Other guys are serving the Lord, teaching something else.

I think the kingdom of Christ needs all of us using the gifts and talents, perspectives that Christ has given us uniquely, providentially in the way we were raised, the way we did ministry or whatever.

Ray, comfort is an absolute gift to the kingdom of Christ.

And so are you.

And so I will Say this.

At the end of Jesus ministry, what was left in the upper room was of the tens of thousands of people he had interacted with, what was left?

You know, you were talking about the crowd earlier, and you know, be careful of the crowd.

What was left in the upper room was 120 people.

But let me tell you, the Holy Spirit came down, empowered those people, and they changed the world through the power of the Holy Spirit and the power of the Gospel and the power of the Word and its preaching.

And so Jesus is.

One of the biggest dividends of his ministry was the relational time he spent with these people.

And I mean, he poured into 12 guys.

I mean, he just absolutely poured and poured and poured and poured and poured.

And so I think it was Adoniram Justin that said we have to be willing to do that kind of ministry until we're dead and be willing not to see seed, not to see a sprout until we ourselves are in the ground.

And so, and so having this, this long, long term view I think is important.

But also on Saturday nights, there's a place called Queen Creek Marketplace that somebody in the church just told me about.

They go and engage and evangelize teenagers that are just standing around in conversation like you're talking about, very similar to Way of the Master.

And it's like, hey, I want to go be part of that.

So I think God's going to give you different opportunities, and this is one of them.

And everybody's got relationships.

Everybody's got family, friends, co workers, neighbors, almost impossible to not have a relationship unless you live out in the woods in the middle of Oregon by yourself.

But, but anyway, it's like, you know, we all have relationships.

We all have opportunities to witness.

Yeah.

I mean, the only, the only programs, if you want to call it that, that I'm kind of against if, if I had to say that, are the ones that replace the gospel with good works.

Yes.

I, that's.

That's the thing.

If, if you're.

That's the only ones where it's like, well, we, we fed, we fed the homeless.

Okay.

We gave them clothes.

Yeah.

Okay.

You know, it's actually, it really hit home with me.

I went.

I used to go to a church and we, we did a church or missions trip to St. Lucia.

And that being that we.

We actually did a thing where we would sit and do a VBS for the.

All the entire school down there, even though it was in the summer, they would have the whole school come out.

We'd have their parents in the Evening, I'd go into town and do open air in the, in the afternoon.

And we shared the gospel.

Now there was a very interesting thing because the guy that organized it was from St. Lucia, he and his wife.

And he was, if I sound like I'm against the short term missions that do house building and things like that, he is far worse because he, he gave a very different perspective.

He says, you know, I can't stand the Americans that do short term missions trips and to fix homes.

And I went, that was weird.

Like, you know, like, I mean, I'm, I like would like to see them share the gospel, but what's wrong with fixing the home and sharing the gospel?

He goes, no, you don't understand.

See, here in St. Lucia, everybody lets their house go because if their house is the most, most dilapidated, they know the Americans will come in and redo their house and it's a house makeover for free.

The Americans go home feeling all good about themselves when they didn't share the gospel at all.

And the, and the person just goes, hey, that's great.

But they were already trained to not take care of their house, so it's going to fall into disrepair again.

He said it, it was, it's actually a problem in these countries.

Yeah.

He goes, and they don't.

And they, so they leave them with, they've trained them to not take care of their house and didn't even leave them with the gospel.

I was like, wow, okay, That's a perspective I never thought of.

Yeah, right.

Yeah.

So it's, it's interesting because we experienced this in Africa.

I mean, one of the, one of the key principles in ministry, right, is you win people to what you win them with.

So if you won the kids in your church to church with candy, then you won them two.

Candy.

Candy.

So take away the candy and they're gone.

This is what Jesus experienced with the, with the crowd who wanted to continue to be fed, right?

The crowd, the 5,000 men and their families.

The next day he goes, hey, you got to eat my flesh and drink my blood.

And they all go, they disappear, you know, and it's like, why?

Well, because they weren't there for the gospel.

They were there for welfare.

And so there's a book written by missionary called when hurting, when helping Hurts.

And there, there are ways you think that you're helping people, you actually hurting them because, you know, you might be enabling them or not helping them stand on their own two feet.

But, but, but, but we're here for the gospel.

We're Not.

It's not social programs.

It's not lifestyle evangelism.

We build the relationships to risk them for the purpose of eternity.

And I can't think of a better way to escape insignificance and impact eternity than engage in relationship and evangelism and discipleship and all those things.

Things well worth our time.

And anyway, and so I appreciate, brother, you, you having me on, and I've loved the conversation.

I, I, yeah, I'm thrilled.

I'm thrilled to meet somebody else who's as passionate about this as Jeff and.

And the rest of the crew.

Yeah, well, I, I'm really excited to see, you know, and thank you for the books.

I'm gonna, you know, now I have.

Please send me your address.

Yeah, yeah.

What?

Yeah, and I'm gonna be sending you some.

So.

So.

But I have no excuse now not to.

To get involved.

And, you know, in our church, the church that I attend, we are starting up something to do evangelism.

And so we, you know, this may be something I got.

And, and I, I teach evangelism.

I have another group that's coming into our church.

And so, you know, this might be another thing that we look at at our church.

So I'm gonna, I'm gonna talk with my pastor about it.

And it's a thing where I think that folks, folks, you can, you can get a lot.

Listen, if you're not someone who evangelizes, if you are listening to us and going, that's for them, they're gifted with the gift of evangelism.

I never saw that in the Bible, by the way.

I don't know what verse that is, because I think the great commission is to go and make disciples.

And the first part of that is evangelizing, because that you got to teach them everything that Christ taught you.

And so if they don't know the gospel, that's where it starts.

And then you find, continue discipling as Jeff said, or sorry, as George said.

And so as we do that, just, you know, it's a thing where we got to get out of our comfort zone.

And so the more we can use these, these different resources to help us.

I mean, one of the things that I've heard often with people with Ray Comfort's style of right way the master, is they would watch the videos and just hear him saying the same thing over and over and over and eventually go, oh, I can do that.

Right?

Get the exchange.

Go through it.

You may go, hey, I, I resonate with that.

That's something I could do, because the issue is not, do you, do you follow Jeff's way or Ray's way or my way or.

No, the thing is that you do the evangelism, right, and people get saved.

And if you're one of those, let's go back to what we, how we started with.

If you want to see this country change, you're fed up with things that you don't like in the country.

I got an idea for you.

Instead of fighting the, the culture, share the gospel.

And when they get saved, the culture will come along with it.

Right.

So that would be the encouragement.

So before you go out, anything you want to promote, anything you got going on, anything that you'd like to mention,

Man, I, I think, I think you did it for me.

You did all the heavy lifting.

So it's exchange message.org/stop.

And our podcast is part of the Christian podcast community.

We love that community and love what Andrew is doing.

And so the coupon code is rappreport, R A, P, P, R, E, P, O, R, T, all lowercase, no spaces.

You guys will get a nice discount, 10%.

And we, you know, it's, it's.

We just want to bless you guys, encourage you.

Just, you know, engage in evangelism, engage in discipleship, build relationships.

Let's impact eternity, let's escape the insignificance of this life.

Yeah.

And if you do want to get a hold of George, you could go to the ChristianPodcastCommunity.org, go to the shows, find the Gospel Exchange podcast, scroll down to the bottom, and right there is, is the way you can contact him that will email them and, and then he could respond to you.

And if nothing else, it'll get to me and I forward it to him.

But so with that, George, I want to thank you for coming on.

I do appreciate it and I want to, before we go, just give a shout out again to those of you in Portugal.

I don't.

What is going on with you in Portugal?

We've, we, we got into the top 50 in Portugal in the religion section again.

So we had dropped down to, to 150 and I, I got an email to this morning on the charts.

We're back up.

You guys must be sharing this, this podcast in Portugal.

So I want to give a shout out because when I see that, it's like, well, there's something going on there.

And we appreciate that those of you who are sharing this podcast out there.

So I again go and check out the exchange, use the discount, please do me the favor.

If you use the discount knowing they're taking at a loss, would you consider being a monthly supporter?

Look, get a ton of the books, be a monthly supporter.

5, $10, $25, whatever you can, you say, well, I can only do $5.

$5 is a.

Is going to help out.

Will it help out as much as the 50,000 some.

Wait, there's someone out there that can do that one.

Do it.

Maybe not monthly, but if you can do that one monthly, come talk to me.

All right, but let's talk some love too, man.

Yeah, yeah, but, but no, seriously, check out the Exchange.

I love their podcast.

I learned something all the time from it.

And so I want to encourage you guys in the audience to check it out and folks with that, as you know, that is a wrap.

This podcast is part of the Striving for Eternity ministry.

For more content or to request a speaker or support seminar to your church, go to striving for eternity.org hey, real quick, before you go, just allow to let you know that if you're listening to this right now, George was on or will be on, depending if it's future or not.

The Apologetics Live program on Mar.

Sorry, April 2nd.

April 2nd, he's coming on.

We're going to talk evangelism there as well.

I'm letting you know because if you, you got time now to check out the Gospel exchan and podcast and the Exchange, get their stuff, you have time to check it out and formulate your questions.

What I want you to do is come in and ask questions about evangelism, things you heard today.

I want you to take that and I want you to think about what questions you're going to have for us on Apologetics Live.

So that's going to be April 2, that's 8 to 10 Eastern Time, New York City time.

You just go to apologeticslive.com that's the same website you always go.

You can always join on Thursday nights, 8 to 10 Eastern, you go to apologetics live.com join us there.

You can join in the discussion.

From there.

You scroll down to a duck icon, join the discussion.

You can come and chat with us.

You can put questions in the chat or what we really like is people that come on the show.

Hope to see you there.

April 2nd, apologetics live dot com.