So that's all that we need.

Not only sufficient, but the only thing.

That could be done for us.

Okay, so we don't need baptism then, because it's the only thing.

Is it?

Is it the only thing or is it not?

Do you need to be baptized or not?

Because if you need to be baptized, it's not sufficient.

It is true that you are an.

Extremely skilled debater and you're good.

This is Apologetics Live to answer your questions.

Your host from Striving For Eternity Ministries, Andrew.

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

As we say every week, we can answer any question you have about God and the Bible.

But just remember, I don't know is a perfectly good answer.

We're going to be doing something a little different this week, so we usually always announce that here.

You can always come in at Apologetics Live and join and ask any questions.

You will not be allowed to join live during the at least the first two hours.

You will be able, if you're watching on YouTube, to put comments and we'll see them if you have questions for that, we're going to be having a formal debate.

And if you have a question, and I'll mention this again later, just put the word question, colon, then ask your question and make it be a question, not a statement.

But what we're going to look to do is get to those if we have time.

At the end, we're going to be very tight on time, and therefore I'm going to jump right into this.

I first want to introduce Adam Parker from the Bold Apologetic Apologia podcast, which I was had the privilege of being on your show.

That's how we got to meet.

That is how I got to meet one of the debaters, Daniel, and I got to watch your debate with these two folks that you had.

So let me bring both Matthew McGuire and Daniel McAdams in, and I'm going to let Adam do the introduction since you know both these men better than I do.

And then I will.

Then we'll get into the format of the debate for folks.

Awesome.

Yes.

Thanks again, Andrew, for letting me be part of what you're doing here.

And it's great to just be a part of this.

So first I just want to introduce Matthew McGuire.

He's a great guy.

He wrote a magnificent book called A Magical World, and he and I actually started kind of talking a little bit over that, and since then, just has been really awesome getting to know him.

He's a very skilled debater.

He is just a great, great man of God.

And then we have Daniel McAdams and he leads six 12 ministries.

And both of these guys are really interesting.

Matth covers ghosts in his book and he has some great information on that.

And then Daniel was a ghost hunter for a number of years, and I'm sure a lot of you know that.

And so just from a previous appearance that he's had on the show.

And so these are some great guys.

And Andrew, I'll let you open the door for them to kind of introduce themselves a little bit more.

Yeah.

Matthew, anything else you want to add to to that introduction?

Thanks, Adam.

Thanks, Andrew.

I appreciate you having me on the show.

I am, like Adam said, I'm the author of a book called A Magical World how the Bible Makes Sense of the Supernatural, and I include a lengthy appendix on ghosts.

So a lot of the information I'll bring up is from that appendix, if people are interested.

And I did my undergraduate work at Crandall University in the Biblical studies, and I also am a student at the Rhine Education center, which is a parapsychology research center.

So there's some interaction with that field of work as well that I incorporate in my writings.

I write regularly on Substack.

You can find everything that I do on mattmcguire.net and also for anyone that wants to follow along, I've got a bunch of debate notes, so no surprises.

If you go to mattmcguire.net ghostnotes PDF, you'll get all of my notes, including you, Daniel, so you can follow right along, see everything I plan to say tonight.

No surprises.

But he's telling you that now a couple days ago.

I don't want you to have too much time to look over them, but it does have all of the resources, or at least the majority of resources that I'm going to be referencing tonight.

Opportunity.

That's kind of funny.

Michael Brown and I are supposed to be debating on charismatic gifts, and we both agreed that we would actually give each other our opening comments beforehand so that we have time to interact with it, ask any questions before we actually do it.

So Daniel, anything you want.

And Daniel, as was mentioned, Daniel, you've been on before and folks, it's the time when Daniel was.

We start talking about some of the paranormal and all of a sudden the Catholic guy came in and dominated the show.

But anything you want to ask that was paranormal for sure on that show.

But yeah, my name is Neil McAdams.

I've been on Apologetics Live before Talking about evidential apologetics.

And then I've been on Adam's podcast a couple times.

So it's a blessing to be back with you guys.

And then as mentioned, I got to debate Matthew on Adam's podcast and we had a wonderful time.

That was a, a grand time having that debate and talking with you, Matthew.

So I'm looking forward to this one as well.

As Adam said, I used to be a paranormal investigator.

I was involved in that field for about 10 years before God, God called me out of that.

I wrote a book, as you can see over my right shoulder, called Biblical Explanations the Paranormal.

Why go through what the Bible has to say about the paranormal?

Because it took 10 years of looking for questions about what the paranormal is, what are ghosts and all these different things, and wasn't finding him in any secular realm.

And then as soon as I opened the Bible, the answer started pouring out.

So I'm excited for this debate and discussion tonight and it's going to be a blessing.

Yeah.

And, and you know folks, you could tell that Daniel is trying to suck up to the host with a, with the, you know, book placement there.

He's got, he's got my book what Do We Believe and my book what do they Believe right next, you know, in prominent view before his own book, you know, sucking up to the host.

So yeah, Doreen says so this is going to be an in house debate.

Yes, this will be.

Before we start, let me also just since this question came up, not a question for you guys, but the question is how is Aaron Brewster and his family?

Are there any updates?

So I haven't watched for some time.

Brother John from Canada, Aaron is.

So folks who don't know, Aaron Brewster is one of our speakers at Striving Fraternity.

He was got affected by the storms in North Carolina and I know that no one knows anything about North Carolina.

It's just California.

That's all that matters.

You know, when millionaire Hollywood types, houses burn, that matters.

You know.

But when, you know, average people's houses burn or get flooded, it's not an issue for them.

But the media doesn't care.

So the issue is, yes, we've been able to raise over $10,000.

The total need that he has is about 50.

We have been able to raise enough money to basically replace his H VAC system which was good for the winter.

He has heat.

The bigger issue, which I think is in the 10, $20,000 range, is now dealing with all the mold.

They are having health issues because their house is filled with mold and they're so yeah, so if anyone wants to, to help out with that campaign that we're doing, just go to givesendgo sfe so I'll put that up there right there.

So it's givesendgo.com SFE that is where you can go to support him.

So with that this is going to be the format of debate that both men have agreed agreed to.

They will each.

We'll start with Matthew followed by Daniel.

Matthew is taking the position that ghosts can be human spirits, former human spirits.

He believes they could be demonic but they also could be former human spirits.

Daniel will go second.

His position is that they are only demonic spirits and they're not human spirits.

So that is the debate topic.

We'll start with 15 minutes each opening.

Then they will have 10 minutes each to rebut the opening of the others.

Then we'll have a 15 minute cross examinee from each of them and then a five minute closing.

If there is time left we will open to questions in the, in the chat.

Again if you have a question, put the word question colon and then put the question so that I can see it.

And so that is going to be the format.

We're going to jump right into it for time.

We will not be going much after 10 o'clock or at least Matthew will not.

So if you have quite for there's questions for Matthew we might have to ask those right away.

So with that I'm going to remove Adam and let's see, I will put in.

I'm going to go to that mode.

Okay, I'll remove Daniel and you have your clock.

So whenever you want to start I will hit the button.

All right, well thanks and I just want to say at the out front, thanks to Daniel for joining me again.

We had a really fun friendly time last time.

He's a brother and he's very genuine and in his position.

So this, I don't see this as a clobbering opportunity.

This is just like someone said, an in house debate.

The first thing I want to do before I dig in is just correct one mistake that I made in the last one.

I when I was talking About World War I apparitions of dead soldiers, I mentioned phantasms of the living.

That is the wrong source.

It was written before World War I.

A better source for that.

It's a great book but it's not the right source.

A better source would be it's a book by Kyle Falcon called Haunted Britain.

That's a new one that came out among other sources that document apparitions after World War I.

But anyway, back to the debate itself.

Like I said, a lot of the stuff that I'm going to reference comes from my book the Appendix to a Magical World.

And as I also said, you can go to mattmguire.net and I have a link right to all of the debate notes for tonight.

So I also want to say both views that either ghosts can be human spirits or they can never be, have support in church history.

So I'm not arguing that my position is obvious, but my position I think is probable.

I think it's more probable than not.

So on my side of the debate, you have people like Justin Martyr, Origin of Alexandria, Gregory of Nyssa, Augustine, kind of, and I can explain that later.

As far as post Reformation, you have Richard Baxter, John Flavel, John Wesley, Johann Blumhardt, and in the 20th century and 21st century, people like the Lutheran, John Warwick Montgomery, J.B.

phillips, Ben Witherington and Michael Heiser.

They all had a category for ghosts, as there's this deceased spirits of humans, which was a possibility.

On the other hand, people like Tertullian, people like Martin Luther, Martin Chemnitz, King James himself, and modern scholars like Craig Keener argue that ghosts are not human spirits.

In fact, they are demonic impostors.

So there's.

We have to respect both sides because there's a lot of precedent on both sides.

I'm going to be approaching this topic, like many things, from the epistemology of the Wesleyan Quadrilateral.

Not everyone is a fan of this, but I have found it very helpful in discerning truth in the Wesleyan Quadrilateral says we should determine truth first through Scripture, then through experience, then through reason, and then through tradition, as sort of a ways of balancing each other out.

Of course, Scripture enjoys a place of priority, and then the other three methods are ways of refining our thoughts and filling in the gaps.

So according to Scripture, I'm going to argue that the Bible has a category for ghosts, a legitimate category of the spiritual realm.

And this coincides with the majority report not only of the ancient world, but of the medieval world and even the contemporary world.

If we're talking about global culture, the Bible assumes the existence of ghosts and works within that framework, and we can deal with specific passages along the way through the category of experience.

It is pretty well conceded that some form of ghost is attested in pretty much every culture.

Now, some cultures like ancient Greece, the ghosts were considered like a shade and they weren't like the full person.

Plato had more of a More of a idea of a more substantial soul that survives death.

But in general, whether you're talking about ancient India, ancient China, ancient Mesopotamia, they all had this idea of a ghost.

And many of these ghosts exhibit common motifs, reasons for their existing, pointing to something that.

That may be objective rather than just a subjective hallucination.

On the reason perspective, I think the principle of phenomenal conservatism, which, for people unfamiliar with this term, basically it means you should take things at face value until you have reason to believe otherwise.

This is the reason I don't believe that we're living in a simulation.

If we lived in a simulation, I could never falsify it.

I could never know otherwise.

But because I would go crazy if I believe we were in a simulation, I'm just going to take my five senses at face value until I have reason to suspect otherwise.

And then from the.

And so with the area of ghosts, until I have good evidence to believe that a ghost is a demon or a psychic projection or something, I'm going to take the ghost at face value because I do believe in a supernatural world, as does my opponent.

And then finally, in the tradition, part of the quadrilateral, as I mentioned, the view of ghosts has a lot of support in church history.

It's impossible to argue which one is the majority and which one's the minority view, because as anyone knows who looks at early church history and medieval church history, it's really hard to track down majority views and minority views.

But there is a lot of names that argue the same thing that I argue.

And lastly, on the tradition category, I do want to point out that one of the big reasons that Protestants are so skeptical of ghosts is because of a polemic from the Reformation era, where Catholics were using ghostly appearances as a bludgeon to tell the Protestants that their doctrine of purgatory was correct.

And the Protestants are like, not so fast.

Purgatory is false.

And so these ghosts must be demons helping you prove your purgatory doctrine.

Now, that doesn't represent their whole argument, but we should be historically aware that that is a major motivation with ghosts.

So if we jump into Scripture, I'm going to point out some scriptures that seem to support my position, and then the ones that are more difficult, I expect Daniel will bring up, and we can deal with that in the rebuttal, of course.

So Daniel and I both agree, at least as far as the last debate.

We both agree that when Samuel shows up in 1st Samuel 28, that it was the real Samuel.

I think Daniel takes the position that this was sort of a direct miracle of God and it even surprised the, the, the medium or the ghost mistress at the time.

Whereas I, on the other hand, I'm open to the idea that the Bible presents this story as, as evidence that necromancy was taken seriously.

The Israelites are forbidden from getting their spiritual knowledge outside of Yahweh and his and through his prophets.

And so necromancy is a sin, but that doesn't mean necromancy is false.

Michael Heiser writes, the reason for this prohibition was not that it couldn't be done, it could.

Rather, God insisted that he be the lone source of information from the spiritual world for his people.

So the next passage, and we can go through, you know, the Isaiah uses terms like eteam and OV and mateem and these are all terms that refer to the dead in general.

And there's some ambiguity as to whether he's, he's affirming their existence or whether he's just critiquing people that try to consult with them.

So I won't, I won't put too much weight on the Isaiah passages.

When we get to the New Testament, there is some more telling passages.

I point out that in Matthew 17 that's the appearance of Moses on the mount of transfiguration is not a proof of, you know, ghosts being humans.

But I think it does undermine people that say an apparition of a dead person must always be evil or it's always, always a demon because we have Jesus himself accommodating this apparition of Moses who is a deceased individual.

So it's just principle case.

That kind of complicates some of the, the sweeping statements of the other side.

Now we're getting to more poignant episodes such as Mark 6 and Matthew 14 are parallel passages where the disciples are in the boat and they see Jesus walking on the sea.

They call him a phantasma.

And it's pretty universally agreed they thought he was a ghost.

So this wouldn't mean too much because of course, you know, Jesus could say, by the way guys, ghosts aren't real.

Like what are you talking about?

The problem is when you get to Luke 24, the disciples post resurrection, see Jesus again and they call him Enuma.

And most responsible translations such as the Lexham English Bible, the New Revised Standard and the Net Bible, they all translate this ghost, even though the word technically is spirit.

And we even have a 5th century textual variant that changes pneuma to phantasma.

Just to make everyone clear, these disciples thought they were Seeing a ghost.

So it's not conclusive proof, but it does show that these disciples retained this belief in a category, a spiritual category of ghosts, as deceased humans.

And one of the motifs of ghosts is that they have a violent death and then they're back for vengeance.

So it's, it, it makes sense that they're all startled and frightened when they see Jesus and they call him a numa.

They're like, oh, no.

And Jesus has to prove to them that he's not a numa, he's not a ghost.

And then you get To Acts chapter 12, this one's a little bit more ambiguous.

But it's been cogently argued that when the disciples, when Jesus is, sorry, excuse me, when Peter is at the door and the servant girl, Rhoda answers and says it's Peter, the disciples say, oh, it's his angel.

Well, angel is a euphemism for his ghost, because that would, that would make sense of why she would see or hear the voice of Peter or possibly see him through a crack in the door and say, it's Peter.

Whereas they're like, no, no, no, that's just his ghost.

He was probably killed at the Antonia fortress.

They probably murdered him.

Because we have a wicked king.

It's not 100% conclusive, but it's also telling.

We may have a third instance of the disciples continuing this belief in a category of ghosts after the resurrection.

These disciples aren't named, but they're still in, you know, Judea.

And so presumably they would, would have been connected with Jesus or at least his immediate followers.

Then you have John chapter 11.

This one is not.

This is just adds another layer of evidence where Jesus waits four days to resurrect Lazarus from the dead.

And we know from a couple centuries later there's written documents saying that Jews believe that a soul would hover around a body for three days trying to return into the body.

And even though that evidence is late, DA Carson has argued that the belief probably goes back to Jesus's time and it explains why he would have waited four days.

So even though Jesus doesn't say, oh, the ghost is lingering, he does accommodate the view of ghosts lingering.

This is also in extra biblical literature such as first century works, the Life of Adam and Eve and the Book.

For Ezra, they both talk about the soul lingering.

In their case, they have it for one week after death.

So we have a belief in Second Temple Judaism that the soul lingers after death.

So we're building this worldview that seems to be assumed by a Lot of the New Testament characters and followers of Jesus.

Now, getting beyond scripture, we point to experience.

And I point out that people like Homer, Plato, Socrates, ancient Egypt, all these ancient cultures, they all believed in ghosts in one form or another.

And Dale Allison and others have pointed out there's many, many common motifs among these, such as a violent death, people that didn't suffer, didn't get the right funeral rights.

And in the ancient world, it was almost universally considered a bad thing.

If you see a ghost, something has gone wrong.

If ghosts were just, you know, a hallucination or something, then you would expect all kinds of different reasons for ghosts.

But the fact that many of these ghosts share common reasons for, you know, appearing or becoming a ghost shows that maybe there's some sort of factor in the spiritual plane of existence that, that shows it's, it's real, it's not a hallucination.

I also point out that veridical information or corroborative information from ghosts points to it being a real thing and not just a hallucination, as well as multiple witnesses.

So I'm gonna cite from this, there's an award winning essay from the Bigelow Institute.

And they communicate a couple of these things called after death communications.

So the first one is the case of Lucille's biological grandfather, which you can find in the notes.

And this is.

Lucille was a 39 year old hotel housekeeper in Florida.

She was adopted after birth.

Her birth name was Mary, but her adoptive parents had changed it to Lucille.

So this lady, she, I'll try to summarize it because we're low on time, but basically she, she's always wanted to reconnect with her adoptive parents, but she didn't want to hurt the feelings of her, excuse me, her biological parents, but she didn't want to hurt the feelings of her adoptive parents.

She gets this dream from this person that she doesn't know and the person says, go find your mother.

And she sees what the person looks like and so she's motivated to find her birth mother.

And she joins one of these adoptive groups, finds the mother right away.

And then she describes this whole scenario and what he looks like, what suit he was wearing.

And then the mother says, wow, that was your grandfather.

As it turns out, that grandfather on his deathbed just, just recently had died.

And one of his last wishes that he said was, go find your daughter.

So we have this whole situation where we have information that she could not have gotten by natural means.

The question is, was this a demon?

Was this psychic functioning or was it the Spirit of the departed.

And I would argue that there's no clear demonic motivation that would make me think that another case is the case of Blair's father.

Just to summarize that basically this woman saw her.

Her father, the apparition of her father, and she just.

Her first instinct was, oh, maybe this is just.

I'm grieving, I'm seeing the image, but he looked very solid.

And then right at her, her little son was with her.

And then the little son said, oh, Grampy's okay.

Or grampy, excuse me, my granddaddy.

My granddaddy is what he says.

And she says to him, your granddaddy is gone, son.

And he said, no, my granddaddy was right here.

So we have a case of two witnesses seeing the same apparition.

I.

I have exam more examples of this in my book as well.

So I think this just points to the fact that these are objective experiences.

They're paranormal, supernatural, not.

Not just a hallucination.

Getting to the reason perspective, I have what's called the white crow advantage.

William James said, if you wish to upset the law that all crows are black, you mustn't seek to show that no crows are.

It is enough to prove one single crow to be white.

I just have to prove that one ghost is the spirit of a dead human.

Daniel has to prove that they're all demonic or they're all hallucination.

But going back to the phenomenal conservatism approach, I believe that some ghosts may be demonic imposters.

Some of them might even be a result of psychic functioning, such as some poltergeist activity or false apparitions of Jesus, like we have in the life of St.

Martin of Tours.

However, just in the same way that we shouldn't attribute every temptation to demons, I think it would be irresponsible to attribute every single ghost to demons as well.

So this.

This is sort of where I land.

I just don't find the.

The demon of the gaps approach to be very convincing, although it may be the case in certain episodes.

I don't see for a lot of these stories, I just don't see the demonic motivation.

That is right on time.

So let me bring Daniel in.

There we go.

Daniel, we will restart the clock here for you, and once you get going, I will start it, but you have to unmute first.

That will be helpful.

That is a good point.

Thank you.

All right, ready when you are.

All right, go.

So right off the bat, I'd like to just note that both Matthew and I do have a Belief in the supernatural.

So this is not a debate over whether or not ghosts or demons exist.

We both agree that they do.

There's tons of historical and cultural evidence for the existence of the paranormal.

That was part of the reason why I was a paranormal investigator for so long, because this stuff is real.

But when it comes to the question about ghosts and demons, or questions about faith, theology and the supernatural and eternal matters, the question we should be asking is what does the Bible say?

Sure, there is a a lot of historical and cultural evidence for this position, as Matthew made abundantly clear.

But as Christians, we shouldn't be seeking to understand these things based on the historical and cultural accounts or personal experiences.

We need to be turning to Scripture as our final authority.

That is why in the Reformation time, sola scriptura was the rallying cry of the Reformers Scripture alone.

So you might be wondering what sola scriptura has to do to this debate.

To do with this debate?

Well, it's foundational to this debate.

It's essential.

Sola scriptura means that for us as Christians, that God's Word is the ultimate and only infallible authority for our faith and for matters of theology and the spiritual realm.

It does not mean that tradition, experiences, church councils, philosophical musings, scientific findings, commentaries, pastors, teachers, scholars, or debates like this are are useless and need to be rejected by Christians.

But rather it simply means that while all these are useful, they are not to be the final and ultimate authority for the Christian, as that position is occupied by Scripture alone.

So we are to stand fast upon the Bible as Christians and examine all by the Bible and reject all that does not align with the Bible.

So this is critical to this debate because when you examine the thesis, are some ghosts the spirits of dead humans?

When you examine that in the light of Scripture, you will find that Scripture does not in any way, shape or form teach that the spirits of human beings can linger on the earth after death.

Now, Matthew already brought this passage up, but some of you are probably thinking about what about the spirit of Samuel when King Saul had the witch of Endor summon him.

Well, that was a one off invent and it is a descriptive passage of something that happened in the past.

It is not a prescriptive passage, meaning that it's not prescribed as something that we should follow or expect.

So it is poor hermeneutics to build a doctrine off a passage of Scripture that is descriptive of an historical event.

And Matthew and I are both in agreement on this passage, that the plain, normative, straightforward reading of the text makes it clear that God allowed the spirit of Samuel to deliver one last message to Saul.

So when we examine the question of Are some ghosts the spirits of dead humans?

Do we let historical accounts, cultural beliefs, and personal experiences dictate our beliefs about ghosts and the afterlife, as well as influence how we read the Bible concerning these things?

Or do we view these historical accounts, cultural beliefs, and personal experiences through what the Bible teaches?

Well, my friends, God's word is truth, and God's Word doesn't change.

So when we're looking at the biblical passages concerning death and the afterlife, we need to remember that the main things are the plain things in Scripture and the plain things are the main things, and that if the literal sense makes sense, we need to not seek more sense, lest we end up with nonsense.

So let's turn to some passages of Scripture and examine what Scripture says on this topic.

Looking at Job, chapter 7, verses 9 through 10 starting in the Old Testament, we see Job say when a cloud vanishes, it is gone.

So when he goes down to Sheol, that is, the place of the grave does not come up, he will not return again to his house, nor will his place know him anymore.

The Psalmist in Psalm 146, verses 3 through 4 says, do not trust in princes, in mortal man in whom there is no salvation.

His spirit departs he returns to the earth, and that very day his thoughts perish.

Thoughts, thinking, ideas, plans, they perish when man dies.

And then Ecclesiastes Solomon in chapter 9, verses 5 through 6, writes, for the living know they will die, but the dead do not know anything, nor have they any longer.

A reward for their memory is forgotten.

Indeed, their love, their hate, and their zeal have already perished, and they will no longer have a share in all that is done under the sun.

And we While we know that Ecclesiastes was written as a kind of cynical outlook on life, the book starts with Vanity of vanities.

Is it correct to think that King Solomon, the wisest man to ever live, would be incorrect when he wrote, under the Holy Spirit's inspiration that the dead no longer have a share in all that is done under the sun?

To insinuate that the Bible teaches an error here is thus to call into question the truthfulness of the entirety of Scripture.

So if we see that the Bible plainly teaches that the dead no longer have any interactions with the living, that their plans and thoughts and desires have perished, and that they no longer have a share in all that is done under the sun, then what does happen when we die now the Old Testament gave kind of a.

A shadowy view of the afterlife.

But in the New Testament, the apostles, writing under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit and filled with the Holy Spirit, give us a fuller picture of what happens when we die.

And Paul states the answer plainly and clearly to what happens when we die in two different passages in Second Corinthians 5, verses 6 through 8, he says, therefore, being always of good courage and knowing that while we are at home in the body, we are absent from the Lord, for we walk by faith, not by sight, we are of good courage, I say, and prefer rather to be absent from the body and to be at home with the Lord.

And in Philippians 1, verses 21, 24, he says, for me, to live is Christ and die is gain, but if I am to live on in the flesh, this will mean fruitful labor for me.

I do not know which to choose, but I am hard pressed from both directions, having the desire to depart and be with Christ, for that is very much better.

Yet to remain on in the flesh is more necessary for your sake.

So Paul clearly teaches that after death we are immediately present with the Lord as believers.

Paul didn't long to die and hopefully stick around as a ghost to tie up loose ends.

He longed to be with the Lord.

And if any person had unfinished business to fulfill back on earth after he died, it would have been the Apostle Paul.

And this is why Christians don't have to fear death.

This is why we don't have to turn to the paranormal and ghostly realm to seek assurance of what happens when we die, or to find hope for the life after this.

When we turn to Scriptures and we see as believers, our hope is in Jesus Christ.

We have the blessed hope promised to us that we will be present with our Lord and Savior when we depart from this life.

And Jesus gives insights into the afterlife in his parable concerning the Rich man and Lazarus in Luke chapter 16.

Now, for sake of time, I'm not going to read this all, but if you guys want to look it up, it's verses 19 through 31.

And while the immediate context of this parable is addressed towards the Pharisees, the parable contains spiritual truths which we as believers can learn from.

Thus, we can safely infer from the plain reading of this parable some thoughts and insights on the afterlife.

The first is that the saved immediately go to paradise in heaven, and the unbelievers immediately go to Hades, where they await final judgment.

We also see that there's no second chance after death.

And we see that nobody is sent back to earth to give messages to the living after death.

Which is in line with what I said earlier in the other passages that I quoted, thus showing that Scripture interprets scripture and is perfect and consistent in what it teaches.

And it also says in this parable that we do not need a message from the dead as we have the inerrant, complete, authoritative, sufficient word of God.

So based on these passages of Scripture, there is a clear teaching about what happens when we die.

The believer's spirit goes immediately into the presence of the Lord, and the unbeliever spirit goes into a place of torment.

And we know that the body returns to the dust of the earth, but at the resurrection, the spirit will be united with the glorified body in the believer's case.

But one's eternal destiny will not change.

So nowhere in Scripture is it taught, either explicitly or implicitly, that a person's spirit can come back to minister to the living after a person has died.

But that brings up the question, then, what are ghosts?

Well, we need to remember that personal experiences, historical accounts, and cultural beliefs do not trump Scripture.

We do not interpret scripture in light of any of these.

Rather, we interpret these through the light of what Scripture teaches.

If the Bible only teaches two options on a subject, in this case heaven or Hades as to where we go when we die, then any other options that are presented can be immediately dismissed as being wrong.

If it's clear from Scripture that human beings do not return to the earth after death to interact with the living, then what could account for, for all the ghost stories and paranormal experiences that so many people across cultures throughout world history, myself included, have?

Well, once again we ask, what does the Bible say, starting again with Paul In Ephesians 6, verses 11 through 12, he writes, Put on the full armor of God so that you will be able to stand firm against the schemes of the devil.

For our struggle is not against flesh and blood, meaning we're not fighting against each other, but against the rulers, against the powers, against the world forces of darkness, against the spiritual forces of wickedness in the heavenly places.

Our battle is against spiritual forces.

We are to stand firm against the devil, that is Satan and his schemes.

We fight against the spiritual forces of darkness that are allied with Satan, against God and his word and us as Christians.

Key words in this passage are scheme.

The key word in this passage is schemes.

Satan is a schemer, a deceiver or adversary, and so are those who serve him, his demons.

We see in 1st John 5:19 that the whole world lies in the power of the evil one world, meaning the world system of ideas, philosophies, teachings and desires.

And Paul echoes this in Ephesians 2, chapter 2, verse 1, when he states that Satan is the prince of the power of the air and of the Spirit that is now working in the sons of disobedience, the sons of disobedience being those who are opposed to God and His Word.

And then Paul, after stating all these things about the spiritual realm and stating that our fight is against the spiritual realm, and also tying in with what John said in first John.

Satan.

Satan.

Wow, that was a slip of the tongue there.

Paul warns us in 1st Timothy 4, verse 1, after he lays out the qualifications for church leadership and giving an exhortation for how we as Christians should live our lives.

Paul says that the Spirit explicitly says in latter times that some will fall away from the faith, paying attention to deceitful spirits and doctrines of demons.

Satan and his spiritual forces are darkness.

The demons are deceivers and liars.

Their whole mission is opposed to God and to oppose Him, His Word and the church.

And what better way to deceive people than to masquerade as spirits of those who have died, or to masturbate as familiar spirits who can give advice and wisdom through psychics and mediums and sensitive people, or give advice and talk to people who have an interest in the paranormal, who go out in an effort to communicate with these forces in the spiritual world.

Paul tells us in 2nd Corinthians 11, 14, 15.

No wonder, for even Satan disguises himself as an angel of light.

Therefore, it is not surprising if his servants also disguise themselves as servants of righteousness, whose end will be according to their deeds.

Once again, Satan's servants here refer to both living people who are false teachers as well as spiritual forces of darkness.

His demons.

These folks, these false teachers and demons can disguise themselves as servants of righteousness, we are told.

That is, they can deceive people into thinking that they have good intentions and are teaching good things.

This is why having discernment is critical as a believer and why the doctrine of Sola Scriptura is so important and foundational to this issue.

While we can learn a good deal about the historical and cultural beliefs in the supernatural by looking at the historical and cultural accounts.

And while we can learn a fair bit about the person from personal experiences that people have, we do not let those take precedence in shaping our view on them.

We have to view all those through scripture and scripture alone.

I know my little, little early on the end, but thank you guys.

Okay, let Me over to you, Andrew.

Yep, I had to unmute myself and let me go and spring Matthew back in.

Remove you and let us go to the next timer.

Matthew, you have a 10 minute rebuttal.

And, and for folks, just as a reminder for folks who came in in the middle, we are having a debate.

The topic is because someone, someone had put the question up saying that I don't think Matthew M is disagreeing that demons are real.

Nope, that isn't the issue of the debate.

They both agree that some spirits could be demonic.

The topic of this debate is on whether ghosts are human spirits.

So that is the topic of debate.

And if you have questions, please, in the chat, put question colon and then ask your question, give some context because you're listening to it and have the question right now.

It doesn't mean that they're going to remember exactly what they were saying when you actually asked the question.

So.

All right, Matthew, the time is yours for a rebuttal whenever you want to get started.

All right, so I just want to point out before I get into the specifics that this is not a debate as to one person arguing from Scripture and one person arguing from experience.

Even, you know, I pointed out, I use Scripture and then I inform my understanding of Scripture with, with reason, experience and tradition.

And even Daniel himself should admit that his argument is not taught in Scripture.

There's nowhere in the Scripture where it says ghosts, appearances of the dead are actually demons.

It's an argument of inference.

It goes like this.

Well, ghosts are a category understood by people in the Bible.

Demons are a category of spirit being.

Demons are evil.

Therefore, maybe demons are masquerading as ghosts.

And you can throw in text like, you know, Satan masquerades as an angel of light, but it's not a teaching of Scripture.

It's just an inference that you, you've taken and you're trying to fit into Scripture, which may.

It's a legitimate approach, but it's not like he's just repeating a scriptural teaching.

He's, he's making an inference there.

Now in the last debate, we dealt with some of these passages from the Old Testament, Ecclesiastes and Job.

Ecclesiastes is, is rather simple.

He, he says the writer of Ecclesiastes says things like the dead know nothing and you know, Job says he who goes down to Sheol does not come up.

And most people recognize there is a progressive revelation of the afterlife in the Old Testament.

You, you won't see a lot of people talking about the intermediate state.

You don't have any rich man and Lazarus stories in the Old Testament.

Not until you get to the Book of Daniel do you see really vivid afterlife pictures.

So Job is talking from his current perspective.

And in the same chapter you quoted, he's saying, I'm talking from the bitterness of my soul.

He's saying life is.

He's, he's very similar to Ecclesiastes right here.

He's basically saying, life is all vanity.

I'm not going to come back after all this suffering.

Likewise, Ecclesiastes, he'll say things like, better than both is he who has not yet been.

He says it's better to never have been born than be alive.

So I could say the same thing.

Oh, well, Solomon, if Solomon's the author of Ecclesiastes, well, Solomon, he's inspired by the Holy Spirit.

And he said that it's better to never be born than to be alive.

How could he be wrong?

Well, this is just a misuse of Scripture.

You need to read it in its context.

And the later passages of Scripture, especially closer to the New Testament, we, we see a picture of the afterlife that is conscious, it's very active, and it's not reflective of these passages of despair that reflect the mind of the author and giving up.

This is.

In the last debate, Daniel mentioned that he no longer quotes many passages from the Psalms that talk of a non conscious afterlife because he realizes these just reflect the angst of the writer.

They don't reflect God directly teaching on the nature of the afterlife.

So Job and Ecclesiastes are, are pretty poor sources to cite as far as debunking the idea that there's an active afterlife or the idea that on some occasions, some spirits may linger.

Now we talk about things like Paul saying, let's see, you cited 2nd Corinthians 5, 8 and Philippians 1:23.

In the Corinthians passage, we'd rather be away from the body and at home with the Lord.

So I will admit this verse is one of the stronger verses that seem to support Daniel's position.

So I'm glad he brought it up.

But in the first place, this verse, at best, best case scenario, this only rules out Christian ghosts.

So yeah, okay, Christians go home to the Lord, but it says nothing about what historically has been called the unquiet dead.

But I would even pick apart the idea that this rules out the idea that believers can never come back.

So this verse is a true hope for all believers, but it does not automatically preclude any interim time between the punctilia I like that word, punctilia, moment of death and then the reception into the presence of Christ.

So I point out even someone as super conservative evangelical, like Billy Graham, he's like, oh yeah, everyone that dies is going to get an angelic escort before they get to Christ.

So there's some, there's some kind of interim period that is pretty acceptable.

This idea of immediate is like, I call it the beam me up, Scotty view.

It's not necessary from the text.

And third, this verse also doesn't preclude the idea that a deceased saint, yeah, it could be in the presence of God, but God sends angels periodically to help his people.

Why wouldn't he?

Why wouldn't God have the freedom to just send down a saint to help people?

This was Augustine's view, even though Augustine was skeptical of most ghosts because his idea was, well, if ghosts were real, my mother Monica would be hanging out with me all the time because she loved me that much.

So obviously he actually thought most ghostly apparitions were angelic operations, at least like the, the ones that were helpful.

He actually has a ghost story in his book Decura Pro Amortuous, where a father appears to his son in a dream and he tells the son, hey, by the way, you know that, that, that debt collector that's after you?

Well, I actually paid that debt.

And you can find the receipt in X location.

The son finds the receipt to that debt and he pays it off and he's all freed.

And Augustine's like, huh, maybe that father is caring for his son.

But ultimately he decides this is probably just an angelic thing, and it's a, it's a likeness of his father.

It's not the real father.

But the thing is, with Augustine, he did allow for martyrs in what we call the very special dead.

Peter Brown's phrase is the very special dead did have this angelic task at times and could come on a holy errand.

So these passages from Paul do nothing to preclude that, and they do nothing to preclude the idea of the unquiet dead or, or people that don't know Christ and have this interim period.

You pointed out the parable of Lazarus and Dives, also known as the Lazarus and the rich man.

So the argument here is if they do not hear Moses and Lazarus, excuse me, the rich man wants to send Lazarus back to warn his relatives about the judgment in this afterlife parable, this illustration.

And he's told, if they do not hear Moses and the prophets, neither will they be convinced.

If someone should Rise from the dead.

This is a lesson on belief in hard heartedness.

We remember in Matthew chapter 12.

I'll read it here.

Verse 38 Teacher, we wish to see a sign from you.

But he answered them.

An evil and adulterous generation seeks for a sign, but no sign will be given to it except the sign of the prophet Jonah.

So does that mean that Christ never performed miracles?

And is also, does that mean Christ never performed miracles to engender faith?

And we know that he did because many people believe because of his signs.

So just as that account in Matthew doesn't rule out the working of miracles, neither does the Luke 16 parable.

Even if it's more than just an illustration, neither does that parable rule out the possibility of the dead ever interacting with the living.

I wonder if there's any sort.

We talked about Hebrews 9, 27 and 28, and I think Daniel, he does bring that up in his book as well, where it says it's appointed to man to die once.

And after that comes judgment and the following verse.

So Christ having been offered once to bear the sins of many, will appear a second time, not to deal with sin, but to save those who are eagerly waiting for him.

So this passage does teach the principle that we have one life.

It teaches that all men die once, although there are exceptions like Enoch and Elijah that didn't die.

And there's exceptions like Lazarus who died twice.

But leaving that aside, it does not rule out the possibility of ghostly existence.

I think it does rule out reincarnation, unless someone were to have a really convincing argument.

But I think it does rule out things like reincarnation, but it does not rule out ghost existence for the for an obvious reason.

He says it's appointed for man to die once and then comes judgment, just as Christ appeared once and will come again.

Well, in the second half of that analogy, there's a 2,000 year gap.

So judgment is assured.

There's a surety to it.

But that doesn't mean that there's nothing in between.

Most Christian traditions have held to something called the particular judgment and the final judgment.

So I do believe that there is a moment relatively soon after death where you are basically the same way that in our own system.

You know, I like to do jail ministry.

People get put in the county jail and then they have their court date for their final destination in the same way.

And I'm not arguing this is exactly how it is, but there's nothing that precludes the idea that people have an interim period before the final judgment.

At the end of cosmic history when everyone comes before the White Throne.

You know, we're reading, we're reading the Last Battle, the last Narnia book with our kids right now.

And they, they talk about how all these creatures came and they were all judged at once by Aslan.

And he said you couldn't tell it.

Sometimes it felt like just like an hour.

And then other times it felt like it was years long.

There's, the whole sense of time is distorted.

But anyway, my point is to say simply trying to proof text something like this without being sensitive to what the scripture is actually trying to communicate and using, you know, people just throwing off aside remarks and not actually teaching something directly, it's a very tenuous way to handle the scripture.

So I would really, I would really disagree with many of the, the teachings here.

I, I'll leave it at that.

At that.

Right there.

Okay, let me bring Daniel in.

We got, let me reset the clock for you, Daniel.

And I'm unmuted this time, so.

Yes.

So once you start, I will start your clock.

You got 10 minute rebuttal.

Go for it.

All right, so right off the bat, I do want to agree with something that Matthew said.

I do agree that the Bible rules out reincarnation.

The Bible makes, leaves no room for that belief in what it teaches.

In his opening, Matthew mentions Acts 12 as a passage that supports his view because he says that when Peter appeared at the door, they thought it was his angel.

And he argues that this is a euphemism for ghost.

But the Greek word used is angelos, meaning a messenger, a sent one angel.

And in ancient Jewish belief, they believe that each person had a guardian angel and that immediately after a person's death that that guardian angel would appear.

Which is why they thought that it was his angel that was at the door and not Peter.

And I would like to point out that the antiquity of a belief does not make a belief true, nor does one's personal experience, nor does cultural belief.

For example, just because people believe that the earth was the center of the universe in the medieval time, doesn't make it true.

And Matthew consistently refers back to the early church fathers and things that they taught to support his view that saints can come back to minister.

But Augustine and the other church fathers, as great as they are, and as much as we can learn from them, they are not greater than Scripture.

It's interesting that he argues from what they say to support his view, but he doesn't actually bring up any passages from Scripture that actually talk explicitly about his view, but rather he has to read into the text historical accounts, personal experiences, and cultural beliefs to infer that some that the Bible leaves it open that some people could come back to earth as ghosts.

And that's why I wanted to lay the foundation that I did in my opening that Scripture is our foundation and we need to view all these experiences and accounts in light of what Scripture teaches.

Matthew might call it proof texting, but every passage that I brought up deals with the afterlife and talks about the dead and whether or not they have interaction or know anything about the living.

And while he brings up that in Ecclesiastes that Solomon says the dead know nothing, and he argues that, well, the dead do know things because we're alive, either with Jesus or an eternal torment.

And Jesus makes it clear that in the afterlife you are conscious.

In his parable of the rich man and Lazarus, my arguments from the Psalms and from Ecclesiastes there is not that you're unconscious or that you're annihilated when you die, but rather the Bible's teaching that the dead have no knowledge or interaction with the living world.

And like I said my last debate, I did kind of hyper literalize some of those passages in Psalms to the point where it almost seemed like I was arguing for some sort of unconscious existence, afterlife.

And that would be incorrect on my part because I don't believe that.

But Matthew in his book mentions an experience by Rob Dreher, a Christian journalist, where Dreher was experiencing ghostly phenomena.

And after contacting some experts, they came and supernaturally located an old family portrait of Dro's grandfather Dede, and discerned a message for Dre's father Rey, that Dede cannot move on until Rey forgave him.

And once Rey forgave him, the priest performed a cleansing ritual and a Eucharist celebration.

And after this, Dre reported no more phenomena in his house.

Dreher then states, can I explain this theologically?

No, not really.

But I believe I saw the power of a living man's forgiveness free the soul of a dead man trapped by guilt and let him move on into the next life.

Matthew then states in his book, after some time of reflection, Drea's outlook became my own.

I may not understand it, but I have a sense that under some circumstances the departed may temporarily become stuck after death, vexed by some unresolved event from their earthly life.

And the error with this conclusion that he reached here is that he reached it apart from Scripture.

Nothing that was said was from Scripture.

It was from personal accounts and the account was subjective.

He then further solidifies his belief based on the fact that since ancient times people have reported stories of the dead being stuck on earth with unfinished business.

And then he looks through history at facts concerning ghosts and settles on two categories which are brought up the unquiet dead, which he states are spirits that have unfinished business or who are bent on causing mischief, as well as the blessed dead, which he states is a righteous soul that appears for a specific purpose or holy errand from God.

And Matthew attempts to defend this holy errand position by saying it has biblical precedent in angelic activity and has been affirmed by Christians of all brands throughout history.

And that sounds good and all, but he makes a category error here in assuming that since angelic activity takes place on earth, then so too could the spirit of a dead saint partake in a holy errand.

And he again appeals to history to support this conclusion.

And while this is excellent historical and journalistic research, it fails to take into account that the Bible does not teach the existence of either of these two categories of spirits.

He might say that I'm proof texting my position in concluding that it's all demonic.

But the Bible talks about demons and talks about demons being deceitful and talks about the fact that we are in a war against demons.

But nowhere does the Bible talk about people getting stuck in the spirit realm between this life and the next.

Nowhere does it differentiate between unquiet dead or blessed dead and the holy errands.

Rather, it says that the souls of unbelievers who die go to Hades and await eternal punishment in Luke 16 and that the soul of believers goes immediately to the presence of the Lord, as Paul states and angels are who God uses to minister to believers, not spirits of dead believers.

We see this in Hebrews 1:13, 14.

But to which of the angels has God ever said, sit at my right hand until I make your enemies a footstool at your feet?

Are they not all ministering spirits sent out to render service for the sake of those who will inherit salvation?

And considering the whole unfinished business historical theory, there are some major historical implications.

Wouldn't salvation be of utmost importance concerning unfinished business?

As if in an if an unbeliever dies, wouldn't it make sense that he would want to finish salvation before he stands before God?

But it's clear biblically that this life is the only shot that we have at salvation.

And forgive me, Matthew, if I missed in the last debate or in your book that you take a position against this, because I think I Might remember you saying something about that.

Secondly, if a believer dies, how would unfinished business on earth take priority over being in the very physical presence of Christ?

Because Paul says that he desires to be to die and be with Christ, but he knows that he is needed on earth still.

So why didn't Paul just stick around on earth after he died, since he had unfinished business?

And why does Paul make distinctions between life and death?

Thirdly, the Bible has absolutely zero support for sticking around to finish unfinished business.

And fourthly, theologically, what qualifies as unfinished business?

And what qualifies a person to stick around to finish whatever that unfinished business is?

Answers to these questions must come from Scripture if this theory is to be given credibility in his book.

In the concluding section, dealing with ghosts, Matthew makes another statement in the effort to support his position.

But he gives credence to the abilities and statements of sensitives, otherwise known as mediums.

He says, my own personal conclusion is akin to John Wesley's.

I cannot make perfect sense of ghost within a theological system, but at the same time I cannot deny their existence.

The wide testimony to the two different types of ghosts, the unquiet dead as well as the blessed dead, is too strong for me to reject.

Furthermore, the testimony of experienced exorcists, as well as spiritually sensitive individuals who seem to be able to distinguish between demons and ghosts, gives weight to the idea that not all ghosts are demons.

Well, Matthew has just committed the error of capitulation to phenomena here.

This is the error of allowing one's doctrine to be determined by phenomena.

Frederick S.

Lehigh says this about this.

The facts cannot be gainsaid, denied.

So it is decided that they must be accommodated by theology, and therefore theology is adjusted accordingly.

But is not necessary to do this.

On the contrary, the Christian should seek to interpret the facts in light of the teaching of Scripture.

He must not allow phenomena to determine his beliefs.

So he mentions that he cannot fit ghosts neatly into a theological system.

But rather than turning to the Bible to seek the understanding of the nature of the afterlife, he bases his conclusions strongly and primarily on historical accounts of the unquiet dead and blessed dead, ghost stories, as well as personal testimonies of exorcists whose whole mission is to deal with demons, who, by the way, are deceiving spirits.

He also bases it on the testimonies of spiritually sensitive individuals, which are nothing more than psychics and mediums by another name.

And this is why the doctrine of sola scriptura is so important.

We must base our views on these on Scripture.

Thank you.

All right.

Let me bring us both in and I will reset the clock here for 15 minutes each, starting with Matthew.

This is cross examination.

Let me explain for the audience how we will be doing this.

Both Matthew and Daniel have agreed that this will be 15 minutes for Matthew to ask questions of Daniel, then Daniel asking questions of Matthew.

They will have one minute in which to ask a question.

That one minute is not actually going to be timed because I'm just gonna, it's gonna be a little harder, but we will get two minutes to.

They'll have two minutes to be able to respond.

So I, I will be.

Although I trying to get the clock to show the one minute.

Hello?

Why is it not giving me my one minute one?

Technical issues, folks.

I will say again for folks that if you have questions, I may just have to use my phone as the timer.

I don't know why it's not.

Let's see.

No, that didn't work.

All right, I will use my phone as the timer.

So.

Which makes this kind of hard, but we'll get, we'll get you at least have the 15 minute countdown.

So also folks, just realize both Matthew and Daniel were told that if either one of them feels the other person is not actually answering a question, they can call in the moderator, which is me, to stop the clock.

And that forces the person to actually answer a question.

This prevents people from avoiding to answer and just trying to run the clock.

So with that, Matthew, you can start with your first question to Daniel.

Daniel.

All right, thanks.

So, Daniel, would you say that experience informs the experiences behind the reason that you think ghosts are demons?

No, the Bible is the reason why I think ghosts are demons.

Could you explain this statement from your book after you, after you viewed footage of yourself being demonized?

You said, this experience opened my eyes to what was out there and showed me that I had no idea what I was dealing with.

So up until that point, I believed that you had, like you're saying, a difference between some ghosts being the ghosts of humans and also demons.

And if you look at paranormal investigation today, you will see a lot of investigators that make a clear distinction between the two.

When that experience happened, it scared the daylights out of me because up until that point, I'd really only had experiences with benevolent spirits.

And so that experience, when I got demon possessed, it actually forced me to look for ways to protect myself from that happening again.

And I turned to New age philosophy for that.

But when God opened my eyes to what the Paranormal was in 2019, that was all demonic.

When I went back and saw that, I realized what was happening.

And at that time I realized I wasn't just dealing with ghosts, but this is all demonic.

So the Bible informed my experience on that, not vice versa.

Okay.

And to follow up on that, your whole reason for including that story in your book, which is a book teaching people explanations of the paranormal, what would be the reason?

Let me phrase it this way.

Do you think one of your reasons for including that story is to use an experiential anecdote to provide supplemental evidence for your Bible arguments?

I used that story in particular because people like hearing about demonic possession.

And I never told that story before.

So I knew that if I opened with it opened with a hook that would get people thinking it would keep them interested in the book.

It was not meant to.

It was not meant as an oh, I had this experience.

Now I need to go figure out what demons are.

Oh, hey, the Bible talks about this.

No, I hadn't looked at what the Bible said up until that point, and it wasn't for three more years before I looked at what the Bible said.

So that experience only affirmed my present belief that I had in 2016, that there were demons, but that there were also benevolent spirits.

And it wasn't until I actually was reading the Bible and saw what the Bible said about the spiritual realm that I realized that it wasn't just that one experience that I had was demonic, but that every single one that I was having was being involved with demons.

So.

So just to be clear, and this is the last time I'll emphasize it, you would say that experience of being demon possessed had nothing to do with your conclusion that ghosts were demons.

It was only the Bible completely divorced.

Correct.

That experience pushed me to the new age.

So when you were very harsh on my inclusion of the Rod Dreher story as a turning point in my own understanding, something that made me look into the scriptures deeper, you would say I my story is used as evidence, whereas your story is just used as, you know, just a clickbait.

I'm just saying, are you seeing a similarity with how we both use an experiential story to introduce a topic, or do you think yours is patently different from the way that I use it from reading yours?

I believe we both used an experience as clickbait to get people to kind of read further, to understand our positions.

But from yours, I understood it.

You read that, and that influenced how you then approached what you read in the Bible concerning the paranormal.

Whereas mine was just my personal experience I had at that moment and Then years down the road, the Bible influenced how I actually view that experience and viewed all my paranormal experiences.

Fair enough.

Are you familiar with the term burden of proof?

Yes.

All right, could you, could you just give like a tense 20 second version of what burden of proof means?

Oh, I hate being asked to define things because I know what they are, but I can never give a good definition.

The person making a claim for something is the one that has to prove said claim.

Yeah.

Okay, great.

Five seconds.

That was even better than I hoped for.

So you said there's no explicit teaching in the Bible that people can become ghosts, Correct?

Correct.

Is there an explicit teaching that people cannot become ghosts?

That's not an inference argument.

There is no verse that says people cannot become ghosts.

No.

So if that's what you're looking for.

Okay, so in your opinion, if the entire, or at least the vast majority of the surrounding cultures of Israel and of the Greco Roman world have a belief in some sort of ghost, with some exceptions, granted, I think some of the Greek philosophers milieu within which the Bible is written.

What do you think the burden of proof is if the Bible is not explicit and teaching whether or not people can become ghosts?

Can you ask that one more time?

Sure.

Yeah.

So I'm not trying to.

Is the burden of proof on the person that says every ghost is an imposter or is the burden of proof on the person that says yes, the Bible works unless it, it says explicitly otherwise it's working within that ancient supernatural worldview.

Not quite sure how to answer that question.

Because the Bible's ultimate goal is salvage redemptive salvation.

Tracing from the fall of Adam through in the first Adam to salvation through the second Adam, Jesus Christ.

So there was a lot of things in the world views at that time that the Bible doesn't explicitly address.

But salvation is that when we die, we go to be with the Lord as believers.

And everything that you see in the Bible doesn't really leave an opening for there to be a sticking around period on earth for the souls of humans.

So it does.

I would say that the Bible does address that, that position implicitly, though not directly or blatantly out in the open.

Okay.

And I asked you this in the last debate, but just for the benefit of listeners.

I reported very short version.

There's a scholar named Ben Witherington iii, very well known Wesleyan scholar, and he was struggling with whether or not to continue as a pastor.

And I he received a phone call through another parishioner, long story.

Basically there was an after death phone call from someone that had just died within his parish in the phone call was encouraging Ben to continue as a pastor.

So there's some sort of corroborative information that seems to go beyond just a hallucination or something.

And this came to him, and it encouraged him to stay as a pastor.

It wasn't the only decision.

Do you think that Ben Witherington III took advice from a demon?

Yes, that would be my position.

Okay.

All right, Just to be clear.

All right.

And then you mentioned that.

What's your source for saying that?

The angel of.

Of Peter, or the angel for Peter.

What's your source for saying the ancient Jewish belief that an angel shows up to surrounding people at the point of death?

I read that first in the Holman New Testament Bible commentary, and then I did some other research on it, too.

I.

That was years ago.

I just remember that statement off the top of my head.

So I don't have.

And I can't give you the exact.

Source, so are you familiar.

Next question.

Which is related.

Are you familiar with the ending of Stephen's speech and what some of the last words were after he gives his speech and he's dying, that he saw.

The heavens opened up and the Son of man standing at the right hand of God.

And.

See if you can finish the sentence.

And his face was like the face of an angel.

So I just point that out.

I.

I guess I shouldn't be making a statement in my cross examination, so I will stop right there.

I'll be fair.

I'm gonna leave it right there because I don't have anything.

That's.

That I'm gonna continue drilling down on, so I'll yield the rest.

All right, let me restart the clock here.

All right, Daniel.

And thank you, Matthew, for stopping yourself from making a statement.

Good debater.

Knew when you were crossing the line.

Very good.

All right, Daniel, whenever you're ready, I will start the clock.

Ready and ready when you are.

So I know I asked these in the last ones, but just for formality and so that the people on Adam's podcast can hear.

Do you believe that the Bible is the word of God?

Yes.

Do you believe that God is truth and that his word is truth?

Yes.

Do you believe that God can lie or contradict himself or his word?

No.

Okay, so how much weight do you give historical evidence and personal experiences and cultural beliefs when understanding a theological topic?

So the best way I can picture this, the Wesleyan quadrilateral of the four scripture, reason, tradition, experience.

Have you ever hung up a punching bag?

Well.

Oh, Wait, I'm not supposed to ask questions.

A punching bag hangs from the ceiling, has one, let's just call it one hanger.

But then to make the punching bag not swing too much, you can attach straps from the bottom to the floor to keep it from getting all crazy.

So scripture is the overhead hanger.

It's the thing on which you can't have the punching bag.

Without it, it is the final court of appeal.

But reason, experience and tradition are guardrails and guides for us to help inform and supplement our understanding of scripture.

So those are the little straps you tie at the bottom.

So scripture does have a.

It's called prima scriptura.

It has a place of priority.

But not every single thing about the world is described in the Bible.

So we use our God given reason, Justin Martyr, he called it the sperm Os, sorry, the Logos, spermaticos, the seed of Logos, which is in all of us.

We're gifted reason and we all have some natural revelation that we incorporate.

So they're supplemental, but they're not over and above scripture.

Okay, so scripture would be your final court of appeal.

You say, do you have any, any verses that support the blessed dead?

Matthew chapter 17.

Could you expand on that just a little more?

Yeah.

So Moses is dead.

Elijah never died, so I'm not going to bother citing him.

But at least on this one occasion, God saw fit to send down Moses on a.

What I would.

What has been called a holy errand.

And God is free to do so.

So who did God send Moses down to interact with?

Jesus and Peter, although I don't think he spoke to Peter at all.

Is there any other accounts in the Bible of God sending a dead person back to minister to the living?

Not that I'm aware of, no.

Are there any teachings in the Bible where God says that he will send a person who's died to minister to the living?

No.

No.

Are humans and angels the same thing?

No, I think humans and angels are two distinct species.

However, to bring to bear.

What I was getting at in that last question was there was a belief that humans would become angel.

Like in the sense of we're going to become part of a heavenly host.

And that's why you have statements like that his face became like the face of an angel.

And there's almost like that.

I guess the term would be apotheosis.

There's like a glorification.

So we go into a class of the heavenly host.

Even though we're not technically the same species as angels, we become like angels.

And even Jesus kind of alludes to this when he talks about marriage.

Okay, thank you for clearing that up.

Do you have any verse or passage that supports the unquiet dead theory?

So the unquiet dead is basically the concept that people linger around for unfinished business.

And.

No, I don't have.

You could.

There's a passage in Job where he talks about a spirit gliding past him, but it's way too ambiguous to use.

You also have the passages in Isaiah that talk about the rephaim and the metim and the e team.

And the E team is the cognate of the Akkadian word etemu, which is.

Unambiguously, it means ghost.

But again, even the Isaiah passage, it's ambiguous enough where I'm not going to, like, rest my case on that.

Do you have any passages or scripture that support the spirit of a person getting stuck between this life and the next?

Stuck.

No, I don't have anything explicit, no.

Theologically speaking, how would you explain a ghost coming back for unfinished business?

So I'm willing to admit this is something that I'm.

That I'm open to.

I am.

I don't want people to think that I'm arguing every single person becomes a ghost for 13 days and then.

No, this.

It's just something that's been observed universally.

And there are common motifs where some, like El Panor in Homer's Odyssey, is not given the proper funeral, so he begs to get the proper funeral.

And, you know, Paul had unfinished business is just.

It's a way of describing a common motif with ghosts and shows that because there's all these commonalities with ghostly appearances, it shows that there's something objective and not subjective.

I'm not trying to explain.

I know the exact parameters for what's an unfinished business versus someone that can move.

I.

That's way beyond me.

Do you think that a person's ghost can get stuck in this life if they have, like, a violent or sudden death?

Yes.

On what basis?

Temporarily.

Okay.

On what basis do you make that conclusion?

Experience, history and tradition.

Unfortunately, I don't have a scripture passage for or against that particular belief.

Okay, thank you.

Do you agree that some of the paranormal phenomena and ghosts that we hear about today, that they are of demonic origin?

Yeah, like I said, I believe some ghostly apparitions like.

Like the.

There's false apparitions to many saints, like St.

Anthony, St.

Gregory of.

Of Tours.

Sorry, St.

Martin of Tours.

And I also believe that some level of mysterious psychic functioning exists and people may just hallucinate things like they might.

Like have this.

They might get supernatural knowledge through psychic functioning and project a ghost.

I can't.

The reason I'm not inclined to that, but I also can't rule it out.

So I'm open to all of the above.

And like I said, I can't 100 prove that ghosts exists.

I just think my case is more probable based on the principle of phenomenal conservatism.

Okay, thank you.

Who do you think psychics and mediums communicate with?

All of the above.

I mean, there's a really good argument that mediums are just telepathically picking up on information from the sitters and then just like, conjuring up a fake ghost.

There was a.

A group called the Phillips Circle in Toronto, where they literally created a fake ghost.

They gave him a fake birthday, a fake history and everything.

And then they started seeing, like, table wraps and all kinds of really bad juju stuff.

But this ghost kind of acted on its own, and they created it out of their own projections, even though this guy never existed.

So I think mediums could be just using psychic abilities.

They could be contacting demons.

I'm.

I'm very skeptical about any medium that claims they can conjure up a spirit.

I'm extremely skeptical of it.

Obviously, it's something that is.

It's like, how would you rule that out?

I don't know, but it's.

I.

I am in favor of what's in the deliverance manual for the Anglican church, which practices spirit release, where they will do a memorial service or a Eucharist and they'll pray for a spirit to move on, because that's not like conjuring a ghost and trying to get an oracle from it.

Necromancy, it's releasing.

So I'm.

I'm open to that sort of thing.

So if.

How would you know that a spirit that shows up to give you a message is on a.

A blessed mission from God?

So you.

You have to exercise discernment.

If, you know, if a ghost gave me a phone call, you know, if I got a phone call from my deceased grandmother, I would.

First of all, I'd be very suspicious, and I would test it against God's word.

And, you know, if it's just something like.

If it's like, hey, you should move to Canada and.

And become a shaman.

Well, I would be a little suspicious if it's just something like, hey, you know.

Yeah.

What would be a generic message from the, hey, you should keep serving the Lord and keep praying and hold true to the end?

Well, I'll be like, well, it lines up with a Bible.

If it's something in between, it would be harder to determine.

Like, hey, if you're, like, if I was contemplating changing careers and I got a call from my dead grandmother about changing careers, well, that I can't tell for or against.

I would have to consult with other people, spend a lot of time in prayer, and test the spirits.

There's not.

Some of those messages would not have an easy answer.

Okay.

Do you think that there is a danger in Christians seeking out interactions with the paranormal if they believe that spirits can come back to give them messages from God?

Yes, I do believe that.

And I also, on the flip side, if you let me just mention this, I think the spiritualist movement and the New Age movement are what my friend Matt Arnold calls the unpaid bills of the church because we immediately rule out all ghostly apparitions as demonic.

We're not really seeking to understand what's going on, and people flock to mediums that are more than willing to go down that rabbit hole.

And I know we kind of discussed this in the last debate, but neither one of us really touched on it here.

Do you believe Christians should be involved with the paranormal?

It depends what you mean.

I, I, I study parapsychology.

My professor is a Roman Catholic, and I study with some New Age people, some scientists, some evangelical Christians on a scientific level.

But if you mean things like, hey, let's go astral project and go, like, spy on these people, which is a whole nother story in itself.

I'm not advocating, you know, crystal balls and tarot cards and if that's what you're talking about.

Okay.

To specify more, do you think Christians should be going out ghost hunting to try to interact with the spirit world?

So I hate the term ghost hunting because no matter what, it's bad.

If it's demonstration, you're in for more than you bargained for.

If it's human spirits, why are you hunting them?

And why are you trying to make an exhibition of them?

It's kind of like those exhibitionist exorcists, which I believe in exorcism, but I don't like that stuff.

So I think spirit release.

There's a book called Requiem Healing, and if you go to mattmcguire.net you'll see a podcast where I, I and my friend Brandon Spain, I think he's watching right now.

We interviewed two Anglican priests that would go to haunted locations and they would practice a Eucharist service and pray for the release of the spirit.

And many dozens and dozens of People just report the disturbance is ceasing.

So I do think the church should have a role there so that people aren't flocking to spiritualist and New age sources to take care of those problems.

Okay.

Do you think there is a danger about getting involved in the spiritual world?

Yes.

In fact, I don't want to keep plugging my stuff.

I wrote a three part essay in the last talking about psychic abilities and paranormal stuff.

And the third essay was called the Risks of Developing Psychic Abilities.

There's a lot of risk when you're starting to open these doors.

You really need to be careful.

You need to be soaked in God's word, soaked in prayer.

If you're going to be involved in any of this sort of stuff because you are vulnerable, if you're not, if you're not spiritually mature, I'd agree with that.

So just, just to expound on this a little bit more, how would you try to fit ghosts into a theological system?

I would say ghosts are part of the intermediate state between death in the final judgment.

They can be.

They, they don't.

Ghosts don't have to be lingering on the earth.

They could just be in some other dimension, some sort of Hades or paradise.

But it.

In either case, it's just one aspect of the intermediate state.

For a Christian, is it more important to stick around on earth to finish business or would it be more important to be in the presence of our Lord and Savior?

I think that's a.

That question is.

Non sequitur is not the right word, but it would be like saying, you know, if you're an angel, am I allowed to answer a question with a question?

Just to illustrate.

Is that okay?

Andrew?

Yeah, I don't wanna.

Yeah, okay.

That would be like saying to an angel, like, what's more important, worshiping God or going to save someone from being hit by a train?

Well, it's like whatever, whatever happens to be the mission at the moment.

I mean, why, why can't, like I mentioned the story of the New Testament translator J.B.

phillips.

He saw the apparition of C.S.

lewis a few days after Lewis died.

And he got words of encouragement that led to him finishing his translation of the New Testament that has blessed thousands of people.

Why?

Why?

You could say it's more important for CS Lewis to go to God and never.

And never do any kind of mission, you know, but like it's, it's a non sequitur or it's a false dichotomy.

That's the word I'm looking for.

It doesn't have to be either or there could be a purpose in something like that.

All right, fair enough.

And time is running out.

So here's just a fun question for you.

So for paranormal investigators, they investigate the paranormal, thus the paranormal becomes normal.

Normal for them.

So then what would be paranormal to a paranormal investigator?

Is that just a rhetorical question?

That's just rhetorical and kind of for fun since we ran out of time.

So real question is pineapple on pizza, yes or no?

No.

Yes.

All right, so before we get to closing comments, I'm just gonna have to, you know, call out Matthew here.

What do you have against me?

You're talking about bad juju.

You know, what has everyone got against us Jewish people?

You got like, come on, my friend.

My friend Justin Peters always says that too.

Like, bad juju.

I'm like, what?

What I do?

All right.

Daniel wanted to see you laugh at least once during the show.

I told him that we would make that happen.

I'll have to get a more culturally sensitive term.

All right.

Hey, look, you know, when people are looking to be offended, they can find it everywhere.

Right.

All right, we're going to get to the closing.

Closing arguments, which will start with.

With Matthew, and he will have five minutes.

So, Matthew, whenever you're ready, I will start the clock when you start speaking.

All right, so again, I just want to point out that I don't think my case can be 100% proven.

I think it's more probable than not that the scriptures assume this universal human experience that people have observed from all centuries and all cultures.

And there's nothing explicit in the Bible that rules it out.

There are some ambiguous passages in the Old Testament which really reveal more about the progressive revelation of the afterlife than they do about ruling out ghosts.

And so based based on that, no, no passages against it.

And based on universal human experience, based on reason and based on tradition, which there's a long history of this, I think that ghosts are part of the intermediate state.

And just to wrap up some of the final questions that were brought up.

So what Daniel advocates is he believes the Bible teaches what I call the.

Or what my friend Matt Arnold calls this straight up, straight down view where as soon as you die, you're immediately like.

Teleport would be a pedestrian word, but basically that's it.

You're teleported to some far away place.

But I would point out that that's a very flat reading of scripture.

Let's just take, for example, the.

The very likely probability that when Paul was stoned, he experienced a near death experience.

And this may be what he describes in Second Corinthians where he says, whether I was in the body or out of the body, I do not know.

And he went into the third heaven and he saw many majestic things and then he returned to tell us about it.

And there's a lot of crossover with the modern literature on near death experiences.

So it's not ironclad, but there's, there's good phenomenological evidence for that because of the similarities of his experience in this and what we read about in near death experience literature.

And I would also say just, just from a, again, I'm going to use experience here, so watch out.

But my own wife, when she had an emergency surgery, hemorrhaged a whole lot of blood and she exited her body and hovered above it and watched things going on for a while and then returned to her body.

So I can't prove that she was dead.

I mean, maybe this was a, like some sort of really advanced hallucination while she was passing out.

It's, it's possible.

I can't rule it out because she didn't have what we call corroborative information.

But this happens to people all over the world.

It is insanely common.

And if you, if you read chapter seven of my book, you, you'll see the literature in the, the resources to back that up.

So I only bring that up to say a lot of people will die and leave their body and linger around.

And some of those other cases, they really do see things that they couldn't have seen otherwise.

So am I to attribute this to, you know, demonic intervention?

Because, you know, the Bible says you go immediately up or you go immediately down.

I just think instead of just blinding our eyes to the obvious experience in front of us, we should go, hey, maybe I'm just reading scripture a little bit too flat.

Maybe I'm just, you know, over literalizing, as Daniel himself put it earlier.

I think that's what's going on here is there's a real fear and there's a healthy fear of people getting involved with the paranormal and getting obsessed with contacting dead spirits, which I do not approve of.

I, I think the biblical prohibitions on necromancy still stand, but I think there's, there's a motivation there, and historically as well, with, with the polemics against the Catholic doctrine of purgatory, there's a lot of motivations there that are tilting our interpretation of scripture to call, call all ghosts demons instead of just, you know, seeing what's in front of us and making fair sense of it.

That's I'll yield the rest of my minute.

Okay, let me bring Daniel back back in.

I'll put you backstage.

Danielle, I will restart the clock and you give your closing comments.

Go for it.

So then, what are ghosts and how do we account for paranormal activity from a biblical perspective?

Well, if you've seen a ghost, it's really either one of two things.

One, you're attributing something to a ghost that is natural and you just do not know what it was, or two it is a demon pretending to be the ghost of a dead person.

Concerning option one Ghost stories in the paranormal have become one of the most popular subjects for Hollywood television program Internet videos, social media and pop culture in general.

Just about everyone and their great aunt twice removed on their mother's side has heard a ghost story or seen a paranormal related video.

With this mass assault of paranormal media on us, we are becoming accustomed to watching for things that are out of the ordinary and we are becoming aware of when we are in situations that mirror what we have seen or read about in paranormal shows and stories.

Thus, when something happens that we can't immediately explain as natural, our brains quickly attribute it to being a ghost or something paranormal.

As our brains connect what just happened to us with a ghost story or paranormal show or horror movie that we have read or watched that is similar to the situation that we are currently in.

I believe this is the main reason there are so many claims of people having experienced paranormal activity today.

Concerning option two demons are fallen angels.

We see this in Revelation 12:4.

As such, they are superhuman and supernatural entities.

When you look in the Bible and see what angels are capable of doing, you see that they can manifest as human like beings.

They can move objects, they can speak to us so that we can hear, and irregardless of what language we speak and much more.

Thus, since demons are fallen angels, they have those abilities as well.

Demons though have a more malicious intent behind what they do.

They follow the will of Satan and they attempt to deceive people and keep non Christians from turning to God and keep Christians from following God's will.

And what better way of doing this than by pretending to be the spirit of a dead person?

The demon can convince a non Christian that it is possible for a person to become a ghost when they die, then that implies to that person that the Bible is wrong about there being only two outcomes to death, either going to Hades or paradise, heaven or Hell.

Thus the non Christian will now more or less seek other answers to what happens after we die and reject the Bible as in their minds they are convinced that ghosts are real.

If a demon can get a Christian to believe that a person can stick around as a ghost after they die, then that Christian will no longer be truly believe in what God tells us in the Bible and is on a slippery dangerous slope of becoming more focused on paranormal paranormal phenomena than in studying the Bible, praying and living to the glory of God.

A Christian who gives credence to the belief that ghosts can be spirits of the dead of dead humans really doesn't help to point a non believer to God and His word.

Rather, his supporter ghost will ultimately push that unbeliever further and further into the world of the paranormal and occult, thus justifying their belief in ghosts being the spirits of dead people.

This is why I say sola Scriptura Scripture alone.

We are to stand fast on the Bible, examine all by the Bible and reject all that does not align with the Bible.

While historical understandings, cultural context, personal experiences are all useful, they are not the authority in our life.

The Bible in no way, shape or form teaches a category of the blessed dead that God will send a spirit of a dead saint back to earth on a holy errand to minister to a living believer.

The Bible also in no way, shape or form teaches a category of the restless dead who have unfinished business who are bent on causing mischief.

While Matthew accuses me of proof, texting scripture and reading Scripture flatly in my cross examination of him, he even admits that he has no verses or passages that support the blessed dead, the unquiet dead, unfinished business or spirits getting stuck on earth between this life and the next.

Whereas I can provide Scripture for my positions and I did rather we see clearly taught in Scripture what we see clearly taught in Scripture is that the spirit of a believer goes immediately into the presence of God upon death and the spirit of the unbeliever goes immediately into a place of torment.

We also can see that concerning the spiritual realm, the only entities that interact with our world are angels and demons.

Angels do the work of God, demons fight against the work of God.

As J.C.

ryle said, the true Christian was intended by Christ to prove all things by the word of God.

All churches, all ministers, all teaching, all preaching, all doctrines, all sermons, all writings, all opinions, all practices.

These are his marching orders.

Prove all by the Word of God, Measure all by the measure of the Bible.

Compare all with the standards of the Bible, Weigh in all balances of the Bible, Examine all by the light of the Bible, test On the crucible of the Bible, that which can abide by the fire of the Bible, receive, hold, believe, and obey.

That which cannot abide by the fire of the Bible, reject, refuse, repudiate, and cast away.

This is the standard which Wycliffe raised in England.

This is the flag which he nailed to the mast.

You may never be lowered.

All right, I do appreciate it.

Sorry I had to cut you off there.

Just for the record, I never had to cut Matthew off.

He was early on, just saying.

I went over twice on Matthew on Adam's podcast, too.

So that was my biggest challenge.

Let me bring Adam back in and just look.

Blake actually solves this whole debate, okay?

Proves that Matthew is right here.

Here we go.

Here's the comment Ghosts he defines as the person who doesn't respond to your text messages.

There you go.

Blake just solved the dilemma.

That's awesome.

All right, so we want to get to questions that we had.

I'm just trying to see what Adam had said.

Are you bringing me in?

Yeah.

So, Adam, I'm bringing you back into.

Sorry, I wasn't sure.

I wasn't sure.

Just read that.

So sorry about that.

I.

I have.

And Brewster is backstage.

Aaron, I'm going to jump right to the questions right away.

Don't disappear, because I do want you to be able to give an update on your situation so folks can know.

And I'll just say up front, thanks for the person who donated $150 during this show for the Brewsters and helping them out.

We'll mention that again at the end.

So I just want to get some of the questions that came up for you guys.

Matthew, I'm gonna, if it's okay with you, direct all the questions that I could find that are directed to you first, because I know you have to go with a young family there at home.

So is that all right with you?

And then we will direct questions to Daniel after, if there's.

If there's time.

And some of them were not directed specifically to a person.

So let me see.

Let me just put this one up.

That came up.

And it would be for each of you, what would be the purpose of God allowing the souls of dead people to linger on earth?

It was more directed to you, Matthew, but I'll give you two minutes to answer, and then if you want to have a response.

Daniel, go for it.

Matthew.

Yeah, that's a great question.

Thank you, Deneen, for asking that.

And I think that's one of the things we scratch our heads of when these ghostly encounters happen.

So I Wasn't able to unpack it totally in the debate, but in, in the, the 50 pages I wrote on ghosts in my book, I distinguished the, the church's historic understanding of the unquiet dead and the blessed dead.

The unquiet dead are typically people that are troubled at the time of death, and the blessed dead are examples of saints that come down for a holy mission.

So I think the, the lingering thing is more associ.

Call the unquiet dead.

And as I said earlier, the, the idea of the intermediate state for people that are in what we call Hades or, or the underworld or the intermediate afterlife, there's a lot of different terms you could use for.

It is sort of a holding place before the final judgment.

So we don't know exactly what that looks like in the parable of the rich man and Lazarus, which is one of the only pictures we get, and we're not sure how much is symbolic and how much is literal.

The rich man is undergoing torment and he, you know, he wants his family.

He's.

He's anxious about his family and this and that.

So why would it.

I guess I would answer that with, with asking why do they have to be in some far away holding place?

Why.

Why couldn't they be suffering, observing what's going on in the world?

And, and I think the, the super spirits are supernatural beings and that we overlap with them.

Angels interact with us sometimes.

So perhaps spirits can interact.

I don't know if, you know, I don't.

I don't have a really great answer for that.

And I can see why that would be.

That would be someone resisting the whole idea and throwing it out the window, because I can't think of a good reason why God would set it up this way.

But there's a lot of things in the world that.

Why would God allow this?

Or why would God set.

Why would God set it up so Adam's sin made us all fall into sin?

You know, I don't know the answer, but I, I don't think that that rules out ghosts.

Daniel, do you want to respond in one minute?

Sure.

You don't have to have a very simple response.

Biblically speaking, I don't see any purpose of God allowing the souls of dead people to linger on earth.

The Bible makes it clear that we as believers go to be with the presence of the Lord when we die.

And the unbeliever gets kept in a place of torment, Hades, the underworld, until the final judgment.

All right, so I'm gonna.

I think you said that this is from A friend of yours, Matthew Brandon Spain, said, wouldn't I think Sadducee see all the supernatural as superstition?

Yes.

Oh, well, thank you, Brandon, for watching.

He's.

He's.

He interviewed these Anglican Deliverance ministers with me.

So he's a good friend.

So it's interesting he brings that up.

I think the answer is yes.

And in fact, at the time of the Restoration in England, ghosts were used by people like Richard Baxter to debunk all of the Sadducees, the Sadduceeism, where people were starting to.

Starting to doubt spirits and doubt the Bible.

And he's like, well, we know the Bible's true because of spirits like ghosts.

So, yeah, Sadducees would.

Would debunk all of supernatural, including angels and ghosts as superstition.

They'd also debunk demons too.

They didn't have any supernatural worldview.

Although I would.

Sorry, if I can just say one little thing, there's debate as to whether Sadducees believed in angels.

I actually think they did believe in some angels.

Just.

I don't want to get into this long thing, but basically, when it says Sadducees don't believe in the spirit or the resurrection or angels, sometimes it's understood as resurrection, as angels or like angels.

So there is some debate about that, but they certainly did not believe in a conscious afterlife for humans.

Yep.

All right.

Not sure if there's much debate within Judaism on that, but.

But yeah, so this one came up up earlier and this is when you were talking Matthew, so I think it was directed to you.

They thought John was the ghost of John.

I think they meant Jesus was the ghost of John when he came.

When he came to a door.

Why?

Oh, no.

They thought John was the ghost of John when he came to door.

Maybe they're thinking Peter was the ghost of Peter.

I think he might be thinking Peter.

Matthew mentioned Acts 12, so I think they meant Peter.

Yeah, maybe.

Let's assume Peter, unless he's commenting live and can tell us if he actually meant John, but let's assume Peter and Matthew.

I'll let you respond first.

I'm assuming he means Peter at the door.

So I'm just gonna pull up what I say about this passage and.

And while you, while you're pulling that up, Matthew, please make sure that you send me the link to your notes so that I can include that in the show.

Notes.

And for folks, I will be including the podcast, the Bold Apologia Podcast, where they did their first debate since they kept referring to that so you can see where Adam Parker is the moderator of that debate.

And, and my just, my suggestion is while you're there, maybe follow Bold Apology, a podcast, and check out some of their other episodes.

Okay, I, I, I pulled it up.

Thank you for that.

And like I said, it's all really good, you know.

Mattmcguire.net you'll see right on the left hand side, my notes for the debate.

Easy.

So this is what Dale Allison, he's a New Testament scholar at Princeton.

Don't hold that against him.

And he says, although this could refer to Peter's guardian angel, it's possible.

It's equally possible that angel here means his departed spirit.

Some early Christians, when hearing that Stephen's face became right before his death like that of an angel, might have supposed that he was turning into an angel or like an angel.

Furthermore, the martyrdom of Polycarp, which comes from the second century, claims that in the hour of their martyrdom, certain martyrs were no longer human, but already angels.

So there's this belief that people become angels, or at least angel, like in at the time of their deaths.

Therefore, that's the reason we would look at this phrase, his angel, and, and understand it as euphemism for his ghost.

But again, I don't claim that's ironclad proof.

I just think the weight of the evidence is, is probably that interpretation.

Daniel, do you want to respond at all?

No, I don't really have any response to that.

That's fine.

Did a good job covering that.

So this is again, Matthew from your friend Brandon.

Brandon said, and I tried to grab these questions, sometimes they lose context, but he just said, but how do we interpret without those tools?

I'm not sure which tools he was referring to at the time.

I think, is he referring to reason and experience?

I'm thinking that it might be when you guys were talking.

Experience.

Experience or the Wesleyan quadrilateral.

Yeah.

So, Brandon, let's put it this way.

We'll, we'll table this one.

Brandon, if you are still in the chat, just maybe give some context to that.

This was a question.

Okay.

This was a question for you, Matthew.

Are Roman Catholics correct in praying to Mary and the saints, since you believe they can hear us?

So I'm, I'm not there.

I can't approve of what Roman Catholics do.

I know.

My, my, the closest I can get is my friend Matt Arnold.

He says he will say he'll like pass along a message and ask, ask God to have the message sent along to them.

And we actually talked about this in our last debate, Daniel, where I've told people in ministry and I.

I've dealt with people that are involved in very tragic, tragic deaths of either loved ones or other people close to them.

And I've said, you know what?

I don't know if they're gonna get the message, but you can pray to Jesus and say, jesus, if it's okay, can you pass this message?

I don't.

I don't know if that does anything, but I think that's okay.

Obviously, I'm not.

I'm not a Roman Catholic, and I don't.

I don't.

I'm not there as far as praying to the saints or even some Anglo Catholics would do it, but I'm not there.

Daniel, any response?

I don't think they can hear us when we pray to them.

We're only ever directed in scripture to pray to God.

So I would disagree that they are correct in that position.

Right.

And I want to clarify.

I'm not saying all the.

The deceased are omnipresent.

Yes.

And I think that actually was a different question that we had come up.

Adam, it looked like you might have wanted to say something on that.

Were you.

I.

There.

There?

Were you guys made the clarification?

I wanted to help Matt out because I figured there's some people.

I've got.

I've just got to say there's some people in the comments here who, if they can misunderstand what Matt is saying, they will.

And it's kind of interesting to see.

I.

Denino kind of has my attention here in the chat.

She's like.

She's like, is Matt a Roman Catholic?

She.

She did ask that, and he answered it.

So there we go.

Yep.

And.

And then.

And then he says he had a Roman Catholic professor.

And she's like, see, he must be a Roman Catholic.

And she.

I think that's what got her to ask if he's wrong.

She first.

She first mentioned the Roman Catholic.

Oh, yeah.

Was the question that came first.

And then it was, is Matt a Roman Catholic?

And that or no.

Then it was c.

I.

Something like, I knew it.

And then she asked if he was a Roman Catholic.

And I think Brandon, Spain kind of.

Well, I don't clarify.

And I don't know if Brandon was busting on her or going after her, saying guilt by associated.

He made a comment about me being friends with Justin, Justin Peters, and said, oh, I see, that explains a lot or something.

So I.

I haven't gotten the clarification.

Was trying to do.

There was kind of point out the problem with what Deneen was doing there.

And it.

And it is a problem logically.

You know, and obviously, this is a debate.

And let's say Denine was arguing that as.

As her perspective.

Like, aha.

Matt had a Roman Catholic professor.

Therefore, he believes that Mary can hear your prayers.

And actually, that's a really bad argument.

That's actually a question that humble Clay asked.

Can Mary hear all the prayers in all languages all around the globe?

So I'll start with you, Matthew.

What do you think?

Is that a question for me?

Well, since.

Since Daniel just said quickly no.

Yeah.

I would just answer no.

Yeah, I.

I would agree.

Yeah.

That's kind of a.

That's one of the arguments I have against Catholicism.

Oh, by the way, I have to put this one up just because it was funny.

Matthew's comment.

But Vincent says a frozen juju.

Andrew Rapaport for Matthew and.

And actually for all you guys that may not get it.

Aaron Brewster gets it in the background.

I do cold plunges.

I'm looking forward to tomorrow morning when it'll be 14 degrees outside and I will be in a cold plunge.

So that is the frozen juju part.

Not the bad juju, but the frozen juju.

He spelled juju wrong.

Yeah, I know.

And it did.

It did snow today.

So I will be going out into the snow, into the cold plunge.

So, yeah, he's trying not to trigger YouTube.

YouTube algorithm.

Yeah, I.

I have a Facebook.

I got.

I got an, you know, blah.

Like a week I couldn't post on Facebook for commenting to a fellow Brazilian jiu jitsu artist that I was gonna choke him out, and I got accused of violence.

It's like, this is just something we do in jiu jitsu.

We.

We.

We choke people.

Like, it's.

It wasn't violent.

It's.

I had a similar thing with Facebook a couple years ago.

It's.

It's different.

But, you know, I.

I shared a.

I was talking with someone in a comment section.

We were just jabbing back and forth, and.

And I sent this picture of a big dog and a little dog, and I said, you're the little dog.

And this Facebook, like, cut me off for, like, three days because I called him a dog.

Well, a little dog.

Hey, now.

Now.

So offensive.

Now that they admit that they actually were censoring when they said they weren't.

You know, now it's all good, right?

I mean, I know.

I still don't think.

Absolutely.

I want retroactive amnesty.

I don't think they're gonna Go back and unmark my me.

So let me look.

There was another one from Brandon, Spain.

And I want to put this one up.

So I think, Daniel, this one may be more for you, but I wanted to do it while Matthew is here, so I'll ask it of you.

Brandon says, could one not be in the presence of the Lord on earth?

Does that not cut into the doctrine of omniscience?

Omnipresence.

Omnipresence, sorry, big difference.

But it was.

That wasn't as bad as, you know, referring to Paul as Satan.

So I kind of like that.

Of course you remembered that.

I.

Well, actually I.

I remembered it because I was thinking of editing that out, but now I can't because, you know, that comment would just.

So I'll let you start with that one, Daniel.

I mean, well, the Bible tells us we are in the presence of the Lord here on earth as believers.

We are the spirit of the holy Temple.

Christ dwells in us, so we are in his presence.

He is omnipresent.

So we're in his presence.

But death is going to be physically present with him, not just spiritually present as we are now.

Matthew, any response?

Yeah, I think what the question is getting at is if you can admit the fact that you can be in the presence of the Lord in some sense God is with you as a Christian, then the fact that, let's say you're C.S.

lewis appearing to J.B.

phillips.

It's not like he's out of the presence of the Lord, like, it's the verse that Paul says to depart and be with the Lord does not exclude the idea of doing something on earth.

So I think that's what the question is getting at.

I just have a hard time when Paul makes a clear distinction between being present physically in the body on earth, to do things on earth, as opposed to being present with the Lord in heaven.

He makes.

He makes a clear distinction there.

And he doesn't qualify it as still being able to stay in and help out on earth.

So it just seems odd to me that your.

Your view on that.

But.

Well, can I just jump in there on that?

Because I just think we see.

We see something interesting in Jonah right away.

God gives Jonah this seemingly impossible command, and rather than going north to Nineveh, he goes south to Joppa.

And it says that he went to flee from the presence of the Lord.

And it's obvious that, you know, like Psalm 139 says, where can I go from your spirit?

Where can I flee from your presence if I, you know, go Here, you're there.

If I go to the depths, you're there.

Could it be that this.

This idea of.

Of the presence of God, that there are moments in history, in salvation history.

Let's take even, for example, when God, with his two angels, shows up to meet with Abraham, he's in the presence of the Lord more than Jonah was in the presence of the Lord when he was in rebellion in that boat.

And so I think there's a lot of hyperbolic speech that goes into it with this, but theologically, you can never be outside of the presence of the Lord because he is omnipresent.

But I think this ties closely in with what you're saying there, Daniel.

Spiritually, you can step away from the presence of the Lord.

One can.

One can be in rebellion like Jonah was.

And.

And it's actually said that Jews believed that the presence of God was distinctly tied to the land of Israel because that was where the covenant was.

And so by fleeing away from the presence of the Lord, you've got Jonah.

He fl.

Flees down to Joppa, gets into the boat, and he's going to Tarshish, which was believed to be the furthest point west.

So he's trying to get as far away, spiritually speaking, from God as possible.

And so in that sense, I understand the idea of being outside of the presence of the Lord spiritually, while at the same time, you can't be outside of the presence of the Lord.

It's.

It's kind of a.

A hard thing to wrap your mind around, but I see a lot to that.

All right, let's see if we can get to the rest of these.

I know, Matthew, you do have to go.

Whenever you have to go, let me know.

I know.

Let me see.

I think this was more to you, Daniel.

So I'll ask it of you and then give it to Matthew.

Kathy says Jesus said that there was a.

This is dealing with the.

And I'm going to give away my position.

The parable of Lazarus and the rich man.

We could debate that sometime, maybe someone.

But Jesus said there was a great gulf fixed that you cannot pass over.

What did that mean?

And is not superstition involved in much of ghost speculation?

So I'll start with.

I think that was.

This question came up down, Daniel, while you're speaking.

So I'll start with you and then let Matthew respond.

Okay.

And I do agree it's a parable, but I also agree that there are spiritual truths that we can glean from parables.

And Kathy is correct because it says that the rich man also died and was buried in Hades.

He lifted up his eyes, being in torment, and saw Abraham far away.

And Lazarus in his bosom cried out, said, father Abraham, have mercy on me and send Lazarus so that he may dip the tip of his finger in water and cool off my tongue, for I'm in agony in this flame.

But Abraham said, child, remember, in real life you receive good things, Lazarus bad.

Now he is comforted here you're in agony.

Then Abraham says in Jesus's parable, so Jesus speaking, and besides all this between us and you, there is a great chasm fixed or a great gulf, depending on translation, so that those who wish to come over from here to you will not be able, and that none may cross over from there to us.

So Jesus in the parable is.

Is teaching that there's a gulf separating those who believe the righteous dead from the who are in Abraham's bosom, in paradise, and in the presence of God on one side versus the unrighteous, the unbelievers who are being held in Hades until the resurrection and their ultimate destiny in hell.

So that's what's being taught in that passage.

And I do agree that there is a lot of superstition that goes into much of the ghost speculation.

I think I talked about that in my closing statement.

We are so inundated with stories about ghosts, the media, Hollywood movies, social media, that oftentimes if you're sitting in your house by yourself and you hear two knocking sounds, most likely it's the house settling, the wind blowing up against the house, something natural.

But because we're so inundated with this belief in the paranormal, first off, your mind's gonna probably think that it's a ghost or something in the house with you that's made those sounds.

So I do agree that there's a lot of superstition that that goes into a lot of the paranormal beliefs.

Matthew.

Yep, I agree with what Daniel said.

The gulf is between compartments of the afterlife, not between the afterlife and the earth.

Although, again, it's just.

I don't know how much of that should be taken literally and how much is just a teaching moment.

Okay, let's see.

This was asked a couple of times, and I think it was when you were speaking, Matthew, but he kept asking, what are they dying, though?

And which death, physical or spiritual?

So as you guys kept mentioning death, a little bit of the context was missing in it.

But I think what he was asking is, when you speak of death, are you speaking of physical death or spiritual death?

I Think was the question.

I'm trying to read into the question.

Not all of them.

I'm not sure I understand the question.

Yeah.

All right, so then we'll pass on that one.

Let's see, this one doesn't have much context either.

I know Adam wanted to address.

Said that we should address this, that this person had said familiar spirits.

Not familiar spirits, demons.

Adam, I'll just ask you.

This wasn't really a question, but you were like, we should address this.

So.

Yeah, I just.

I suspect that he misunderstood what was being said with regard to demons, I believe, Matt, you were saying something at the beginning of your opening statement, and I just wanted to see if you were wanting to clarify what you were saying as far as familiar or familial spirits.

I don't think I mentioned familiar spirits.

Okay.

But if you have a specific question I could answer.

He said this during your monologue, so I was under the impression that he was responding to or trying to refute something you said.

I'm so.

It wasn't really.

Yeah, there wasn't specifically a question to it.

So.

Yeah.

All right, so this was.

Again, sorry about this, but context.

Brandon had asked this question of Daniel, but I don't know the con.

He just said, how did God call you out of that?

Yeah, it was.

It was being called out of paranormal.

Yeah, that's what I.

That's what I was assuming.

So I will.

I don't know that Matthew will have much of a comment on this, but he might.

So, Daniel.

So, yeah, this was in my opening statement when I said I was a ghost hunter paranormal investigator for about 10 years before God called me out of that.

Well, in 2019, I was having a talk with my boss at the time.

He knew I was a paranormal investigator, but also that I called myself a Christian, and he was asking me questions about the paranormal.

And I talked at paranormal conferences.

I talked at horror film festivals.

I'd written articles on this.

I'd made many videos and documentaries on this and considered myself an expert.

Even gotten degrees and certified as a certified paranormal investigator.

But all the questions my boss asked, I kept responding with like, we think it's this.

It could be this.

There's this theory.

There's that theory.

Some people think this.

I had no actual answer for him.

And that got me thinking.

It's like, whoa, how can I be an expert on this if I don't actually have an answer for him?

It's all just speculation at this point.

And he kind of realized that too, and laughed and went, well, that's why you keep going out there, isn't it?

I said, yeah, that's why we keep going out to find answers.

But in 10 years I had no answers.

Well then he asked, what are ghosts?

And so I dove right back into all the different, the categories and 30s at the time.

It could be the spirits of dead people, they could just be trapped here.

It could be this, could be that.

And then out of the blue I blurted out, and it could all be demons.

And now that was a position I hadn't thought about in forever.

That was one that my buddy Dylan and I, back when he started the team had kind of ruled out as just the Christian way of saying, well, paranormal, bad, all demons.

But even when I talked to some Christians about it, they didn't have answers as to why they said that.

So that just came out of the blue.

And that got me thinking, well, what are demons?

Well, demons are angels or fallen angels.

Well where do I know that from the Bible?

It's like, okay, well let's look at the Bible about what the Bible says about angels and demons and see if that adds up at all.

And as soon as I opened up the Bible and started reading the Bible and seeing what it had to say, it started answering questions left and right that I had been seeking about the paranormal from secular sources and from personal first hand experiences and in 10 years had gotten no answers.

And right there in the pages of The Bible, all 66 books, I was getting answers.

So that's how God called me out of that, using his word.

Okay, Matthew, I doubt that you have much to comment on that because.

All right, so down to two.

And then I'm going to bring Aaron in one.

That I don't think that that isn't for you guys, but I'll answer.

So Kathy is asking, has God confused us about his ability over souls or the human bodies at death?

And this was during when you were speaking there, Matthew.

So I think it's directed to you.

I'm not sure if it's a.

Again, some of the questions are not always, always super clear.

Sorry, I was just reading the chat.

Yeah, I can see why people would make that inference.

And Daniel earlier said, well if people believe ghosts then they're going to think the Bible's untrue.

When I would just say that's like someone that believes, like Harold Camping and his followers that thought, hey, I've looked at all the passages.

Christ is coming back in 2009 and when Christ doesn't come back, they abandon their faith.

Why would you say you Just had a wrong interpretation of the Bible to begin with.

Okay, Daniel, any response to this?

I would say no because God makes it clear what happens to our souls and our body at death and what will happen at the end of the resurrection when we get our glorified bodies for us as believers or for unbelievers, eternal torment in their bodies.

Okay, one, one last question that we have here.

I'm going to answer it.

I, I start it because I'm going to be the one to answer this.

So you guys are off the hook.

And then after that, I know Matthew's going to end up having ghosts and we'll bring Aaron in, but I just could not let this one go.

Bob Leander said, God's word doesn't give full revelation about the spirit realm.

This is when you were talking Daniel, he said example.

Very practically speaking, there are many very effective Christian deliverance ministries who use extra biblical deliverance techniques.

And he gave an example of some like Heidi Baker.

So let me be really clear.

We will probably have in February Jim Osmond, who is working on his book on the the these deliverance ministries and deep demon hunters.

They use extra biblical deliverance techniques because they are doing non biblical.

In fact, let me be more specific, unbiblical things.

Heidi Baker is a heretic.

If she's your example, you need to repent.

Bob, first off, she shouldn't be teaching in the first place as a woman according to scripture.

But what you see with the demon hunters and what they're doing, they are.

You start looking into their theology and there is, it is filled with heresy.

And we will get into.

We're going to do a whole episode on that in February with Jim Osman.

His book should be coming out probably this year.

I'm thinking where he's going to be diving into to this, this.

But if you want to dig more into this, you could look up the works.

Jim Osmond has a lot on this and so does Justin Peters.

I don't have a, don't want to get into a whole show on that.

Figured you guys, that's not really a question for you guys.

It was more something that someone put in the, the comment and see so you mentioned that and now you get someone.

Blake says, can a woman have a gift of teaching?

Yes.

She could teach children, she could teach women.

She could teach outside the church.

But inside the church, Peter, sorry Paul is clear.

See, mixing up Paul and Peter is not as bad as Paul and Judas.

Just saying.

I thought I'd get a joke, laugh at Daniel for that.

But you know, but yeah, so I just, I don't think that women should be teaching the church.

So with that, I want to thank both of you.

There wasn't any name calling other than when Matthew said that I was a bad juju, but I don't think he even knew that I was Jewish when he said it and didn't get the joke anyway, so.

But I do want to thank both of you for a very civil debate, very informative debate.

I think that either way, you gave people a lot to think about, a lot to discuss.

So I think that's helpful.

I will have links to both of your books and to Daniel.

I'll have your ministry link in as well.

Of course, I'll put in the Bold Apologia podcast and the first debate you had.

So I'll just let you guys, I'll start with Matthew.

Any closing comments you'd like to make before you get going?

So just thanks again.

I really enjoy discussing back and forth.

Daniel's very, he's a good faith Christian and I'm glad we can have a friendly talk about it.

If anyone's interested in seeing my writing, I'm easy to find Matt McGuire.net and I'm easy to get a hold of in contact.

So feel free to reach out through email.

And thanks again.

Thank you very much for coming in, Matt, and you're always welcome back on Apologex Live.

Any other Thursday night that we're not doing a formal debate, you can always come in, ask questions or bring up top topics for discussion.

So thanks for coming in.

I know you got to get to your family.

Daniel, any closing comments you want to make?

And.

I just want to thank everybody for tuning in.

I know Matthew just ghosted us, disappeared before I could say anything to him.

Well, he didn't quite see, he's, he's actually still, he's actually there, you know, he just, he took his camera off so he knew you were going to accuse him of being ghosting you.

So he.

There, there you go.

Being live on here and being gone.

Now he officially ghosted you.

Look, he just vanished.

Touche for Matthew.

Very good.

Hey, see, ghosts really are real.

Love it, Love it.

But Matthew, thank you for being a very, a very gracious and friendly debater.

I greatly appreciate that this was a very congenial and gracious debate and that we both agree on a lot of the essentials, I would say on all the essentials about Christianity and theology, especially the gospel.

So this was not, not in any way, shape or form trying to accuse either one of us of being heretics.

Just a, a tertiary issue that we had some disagreements on.

And his views gave me a lot to think about and forced me to, to study my position further to make sure I understood what I stood on and my position.

And I thank him for that.

I think Adam for hosting us first and Andrew for having us back on too.

And I've, I've had a lot of fun and I hope everybody listening was blessed by this.

And if you guys have questions for me, I'm easy to get in contact with as well.

Just search 612ministries on Google.

You can find my website, you can find me on Facebook and I'd be happy to answer any questions that other people have.

All right.

And before we get to Aaron, which we are going to get to Darren because I do want to get an update for folks and people have been asking for an update on his situation.

So Adam, give, give folks a little bit about what your podcast is about and you know, more than just the one debate that you did.

I know you did a great one where you had different people of different apologetic views and the presuppositionalist one.

Yes, yes.

So for those listening that particular, I guess you could call it, it.

Well, it was more of a discussion.

It was discussion and we took normal like this.

What we ended up doing was jumping off of that and we actually did with, with all of your guests except for me.

I, I ended up pulling in one of our speakers, Dan Kraft, to do pre sub.

And so yeah, that was, we ended up expanding on that and that was.

A really good discussion.

And, and so the Bold Apology, a podcast is a podcast.

It's apologetics based but we get into a lot of theology on my podcast as well as church history and other topics.

We deal with things like Church hurt and, and what is that?

And so getting into things like that where you can probably, where really the idea is to provide answers and responses and, and hope for people who have questions.

And so that is the, the gist of it.

I've had some really cool guests on.

I don't know if anyone's ever heard of Phil Dozer from Deuteronomy.

He came on for an episode.

He, we talked about Mormonism in that one.

I've had Troy Frazier from Revive Thoughts and, and he did a great podcast on church history with me there.

And obviously we've had a really great person to have on a podcast is Dr.

Donald Williams.

He's a prolific writer and he actually was part of that discussion that we had the apologetic methodologies.

And he represented the cumulative case for Christian apologetics.

And he's come on and he's talked about the resurrection.

We did a defense of Christmas, a defense of Easter with him.

And he also, though not being a presuppositional apologist, he did a really good job at explaining in one podcast the basics of what precept is.

So just a podcast that is a tool for believers and, and trying to go at it in a conversational way, bringing people on the podcast and doing it in a way that will be interesting for people to listen and hear what, what, what is being said.

So I've always said that a good, a good apologist will be able to argue a position that he does not hold to and do it it in a way that someone that holds to it can say amen.

Yes, that's, that's a skill that not enough people do.

So, Aaron Brewster, you came in late because you're just tardy.

Aaron actually teaches on Thursday nights, but.

Sometimes I have to be tardy.

Yeah, he teaches on Thursday nights and so he's got to come in late.

But Aaron, we did mention at the beginning about the situation.

I gave folks a little bit of an update as far as the fact that we were able to raise the money to replace your H vac system with the hurricane.

We know that now that there's, you know, million dollar Hollywood star homes burning up that no one even knows what, you know, North Carolina is.

And that hurricane, that's old news.

There was, you know, that was before an election.

So, but, but people may not realize that you're kind of still struggling there.

So give us an update.

You know, I know we, we, we just were able to send you like another, I think it was close to $2,000 for, for helping with some of the mold.

And we just actually during this program got someone that donated anonymously, another 150.

So what is an update on your, on the situation there with, with your family and the house situation?

First of all, thanks for asking, thanks for telling people about it.

And to everyone who's been praying and has been giving, thank you very much.

The situation.

Well, good news.

Yesterday was a marked a step in a different direction.

For the first time in three months, I was able to remove something from my garage and put it back into the basement where it originally was pre flood.

We finally got in the basement to probably about 95% where it needs to be.

So I was able to start putting things back down there.

We still have a lot of personal possessions that are sitting in our backyard.

The example that I use is my wife's china that she inherited from her grandmother.

I asked her.

I've asked her a number of different occasions, do we want to.

We want to bring those in because, you know, whatever.

And she says, no, honestly, they're.

They're just as safe there as they would be anywhere else we could put them right now.

And we don't have any space left in the.

In the garage or in the house.

So that's been sitting out there.

All of my.

A bunch of other stuff that was there in the basement, just sitting, you know, in the backyard still.

So the fact that we were able to actually get something back into that space and to start that process was really very encouraging.

We kind of had a mini celebration last night, so that was nice.

Financially speaking, there are still a number of needs, a number of things left to be done, a number of places where we haven't cut corners, but we've had to.

To take the less preferential route.

Just because the money hasn't always been there, it's not going to be at the end of the world.

It's not that way.

But certain things that we're waiting until we have the opportunity to put in the right amount.

For example, we had a couple humidifiers, dehumidifiers, excuse me, running underneath down in the basement.

And they were just ones that you go to Lowe's or wherever and you buy, but they are.

They're not.

They can't keep up with that continual usage.

And we had issues with the drainage and so on and so forth.

So getting.

Investing in a good dehumidifier that can continually work in that space is far better than just burning through cheap ones.

So things like that, I can.

I can recommend one.

I have one of my basement.

It took me a while to find one that was good.

So I'll tell you after.

Good.

Send that, because we're looking.

So we are praising the Lord again, obviously, because what we've experienced is far greater than what we deserve.

Far better off than many people experienced.

And we're very thankful to him how he's using you guys to be.

To help us in this situation.

And we are just trusting him day by day, taking that next step.

I project that.

As much as it pains me to say this, in my flesh, I'm trying to trust the Lord that His will, his best.

It could be potentially six months, six more months, total of nine months before I could actually honestly say, okay, we're back to where we were, minus the things that were lost and can't be replaced.

We could say, you know, all of our belongings are where they're supposed to be.

Everything is where it was before.

All of this started in October.

So Lord willing, it won't take another six months.

But one of the issues that we have is that a lot of these jobs, I'm the only one here in the family house, can do it.

My daughter does a great job.

She helps me out.

My son's in college right now, so he can't be here for that.

And everyone else in my family has medical restrictions that keep them from being able to help.

So it's just gonna be a slow process of kind of building back.

Yeah.

Please continue to pray, and if the Lord has made it possible for you, please, please continue to give so that we can not have to.

To go into debt to finalize this and get everything back where it needs to be.

Yeah.

So, folks, Again, it is GiveSendGo.com SF if you want to help support the Brewsters.

This is an opportunity for us as Christians to help a brother in need.

So if there's anything you could do.

We have raised about close.

Getting close to $13,000 for them out of the, like, 50 that we need.

They're still having a lot of debt in, you know, as he's mentioning, a lot to pay for to get the.

It was interesting talking to Aaron, you know, get too graphic, but you don't think about when floods come into the house, what else is in the flood water, like oil, the sewage that was backed up, and now all of that is in your house.

And so it's.

It's not just, oh, the water dissipates.

It dissipates and leaves behind way more than just water and may way more than you'd want.

And.

And so there's all that plus the mold now and things like that, and as you mentioned, health issues and some of the health issues with the mold.

So.

So it's.

It's quite costly to get that taken care of.

So, you know, if anyone can help.

Out, it's funny that you.

Go ahead.

I'll just say it was funny that you mentioned that I had a kind of a humorous conversation.

It was that.

It was one of those pathetically humorous conversations with my mom yesterday.

I had gotten a number of things.

Everything that we got out of the backyard that came out, you know, it was in the backyard had to be cleaned off and then put into the garage.

But a lot of the things that were left in the backyard, we didn't go through that.

Extra step to clean.

Not entirely.

And so she and I were, we still have a little bit of snow here and we were talking about, you know, what is it going to take to actually to clean this up the way it should be cleaned before it's put back into the basement.

And she and I were like, maybe we're just lazy.

Maybe we've just kind of given up.

Maybe we don't care anymore.

But some of this stuff, like, maybe we can put it back without having to like, because, because it, to get to clean this stuff off, you can't just hose it off with a regular hose.

You either need to use a pressure washer or you have to get out there with a scrub brush and you have to wash it off.

It's so weird.

It's like it just looks like dirt, but it will not come off with just water.

It has to be scrubbed.

And so for things like that.

So if my mom and I were both just sitting there feeling like, okay, maybe we're just, we've just kind of getting to the point where we've almost given up.

We're willing to put some of this stuff back into the space without completely.

Cleaning it or just throw it out.

I guess you're gonna get to the point of throw it out or clean it.

Yeah, there are, there are some things that still need to be thrown out.

There are some things out there.

I was looking at today as I was moving some more stuff down and I was like, I was like, I probably just should have gotten rid of this three months ago.

Yeah.

Well, folks, if, if you can go to givesendgo.comsfe if you can help out the Brewsters, if you can't help out the Brewsters, would you at least consider going to the website and then sharing it on social media so maybe one of your friends could help them out?

That would be very much appreciated.

As, as Christians, we should be taking care of our own, taking care of our fellow brothers and sisters.

And so I can tell you, as you know, Aaron is one of the speakers of Striving Fraternity.

He runs a non profit ministry on his own, does full time counseling and is living on a very meager means.

So, you know, not trying to embarrass him, but any help would be a great help.

So I'll just leave it at that.

Next week I, I'll be posting, I'll post the, the link for the debate that was had on Dead Man Walking some time ago.

And next week I asked Greg Moore if he wanted to come into Apologe live and talk about that debate.

I'm gonna say now the two people that debated would say they are both believers having a debate.

I will disagree with that because one of the people that was in the debate is someone I actually went to church with.

So I'm going to post a link for that debate in the, in the show notes for the show for next week so you can watch that.

I'll try to do it early this, I'll try and do it this week so you have time to watch the debate.

But it will be very interesting because I will point out some things that was said that was, well, not exactly true about the church he grew up in.

So.

But we're gonna, we're gonna have a discussion on that.

So after that, well, the 30th of January, we're going to talk about full preterism again because, well, I, I did an innocent thing.

You should, you just shouldn't do this.

You know, Adam, don't go doing this on X post a poll that just asks what's your view?

Pre mill.

All mill or post mill.

I mean it seems innocent enough.

I'm not taking a position.

Well, the full preterist came out in full attire in full attack mode.

And, and they were all hyped up to debate.

They wanted to debate there is unrefutable.

I said, good, you want to come on and debate it?

Yes, yes, yes.

And then one by one they dropped, dropped, dropped.

And then they had some guy, Michael Sullivan, who is like their key.

He'll debate, I'll debate it.

And when I said great, you know, I, I'm going to be bringing in Sam Frost.

And everyone was like, he's such a coward.

He can't, he can't debate.

He's running scared from, from Michael.

And I went, ge.

It's Michael that's going.

He can't debate.

Now all of a sudden h.

So I don't know, but we'll see whether having Sam on whether any of those guys will come in and actually argue for the, you know, unrefutable arguments that they have.

If not, we'll just talk full preterism and understand what it is.

I do love.

I, I was telling our new co host Tom Shepard about this earlier today and you know, you guys could, could enjoy this.

But this really good debater, their, their top debater, this guy Michael Sullivan, told me that I had to defend, you know, Armenianism.

And I said, why do I have to defend that?

I didn't make a claim.

He said, you put a poll out.

I said, the poll doesn't take a position.

He says, well, defend your view.

I said, but my view is not on millennialism, so I don't have to.

Well, why would I have to defend a position that I don't hold to?

Especially when I didn't make an argument?

To which this woman who wanted to do a written debate with me, she kept saying, why can't you do a written debate?

I'll do a written.

But I said, well, first off, you shouldn't be in a position of teaching, so I would never have agreed to a debate with you.

So.

But she, she actually, this is classic.

She went to our website at strivingford.

Org.

She went to the about section to what we believe, posted a link to our doctrinal statement and said, I read his doctrinal statement.

He's postmill.

To which someone later corrected her and said, I think he's premilling.

To which I said, if you would have done just a little basic, like, bit of research before you guys all started with telling me what I believe, you would have realized I'm pre mill.

It's really clear in my doctoral statement.

The fact that you put a link to my doctoral statement and said you read it and then came to the wrong conclusion and you want to debate me.

Yeah.

This is, this is the nature of Internet people.

They're like a whole different breed.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Both of you spoke at once.

Reasonable and rational and logic.

It's just too hard.

Yeah.

At least she did all the work for you, though.

Yeah, exactly.

You know, it really was.

I mean, my wife's like, why you do this?

I'm like, it was fun for a little while and then I just blocked them all.

But, you know, so, yeah, it's funny.

It's, it's just like, you look at this and go, do you even recognize the logic you're using?

No.

No.

You don't.

Like, oh, this is why we do apologetics.

Live here, folks, is so that you could see how to do apologetics.

We, we not just try to give examples of it.

That's what we saw tonight in a formal debate.

We try to teach it, we try to explain it why we do what we do.

And so, you know, and as I said, in February, I'm trying to schedule with, you know, with Jim Osmond.

We don't have a date yet, but I'll try to schedule with him, hopefully.

February on the Demon Hunters.

Aaron something.

You raised your hand like you're in school.

Yeah, I know, I did.

I, I.

There are so many things about this debate I'd love to comment on.

We don't have the time.

We are so, so far into Anthony time that it's crazy.

But I did want to say an interesting observation.

I was actually have to admit that I was kind of surprised to hear a couple guys, a couple of you guys say that you view the, the situation with Abraham and Lazarus as being simply parabolic.

Because it is.

We're sitting here talking about, well, different things.

And I'm curious, is, is it not interesting that of the nearly 50 parables that Jesus told told that this is the only one that actually names individuals in it and also names two of them?

Does that strike you as being, okay, maybe one of these things is not like the other?

No, it doesn't.

The argument.

Let's take a step back and say what is a parable?

We have a man made argument that says a parable.

Parable doesn't use personal pronouns or, or names, not pronouns, but, but personal names.

But that's not necessarily what a parable is.

Parable is just an illustration.

It's a, it's a, a, you know, a heavenly truth used by an earthly means.

It's, it's just that a parable is fictional.

Yeah, I don't, I don't think that, I don't think that there was a real man named Lazarus.

And, and I would argue it and maybe we should do a debate on this.

It'd be, it'd be a lot of fun.

But the issue being Abraham's bosom.

He's not going to God, he's going to Abraham's bosom.

That, that'd be one issue.

That's, that's more would be parabolic language since that's not the, a reference to heaven or hell.

So he, he'd go to God's presence, not Abraham's.

So there's a lot of parabolic language in there that's a figurative language.

So.

Yeah, so I'm not, I'm not, it doesn't bother me at all that Lazarus is named because that's, you know, that's just a human definition of parable.

It's not, it's just, it's not, it's a, it's a definition that's, that we use, but it will purposely leave out one that, you know, when you look at a broader definition of a parable that would be used in Judaism, it wouldn't, you wouldn't have that.

So what do you do with those who say Abram, Abraham's bosom is just another way of saying Paradise.

Yeah, it's, it's a parabolic way of saying it.

Yes.

Yeah, yeah.

But no, no, I, I guess the point I'm trying to get at is, is are you, are you saying that to be present of the Lord, they're in heaven, or do you believe what many believe, that there's paradise and then there is, there is a, there was a holding place for those who were evil and there was a holding place for the righteous and, and that was paradise and that, and Jesus descended and he.

Yeah, anyway, well, there is, yeah, there's a temporary place.

We, when we think of hell, that's a temporary place.

Right, because hell or Hades is thrown into the lake of fire.

So the permanent place for the undead is, is the lake of fire.

Right.

Hell or Hades is temporary.

Okay, okay, I'm with you now.

All right, so what we would call, what we call heaven is temporary as well, because they, they'll go to the new heaven and new Earth.

Okay, yeah.

Clarifying questions there.

Yeah, yeah.

So, so interesting to, to Adam's point, there is a, there are people, though, who do believe that there was a different holding place Old Testament than there was the different holding place New Testament.

Correct.

And there will be, you know, in the future.

Right.

And, and Jesus wasn't being the name of that place.

And, and in the Gospels where there, there were, there were those who rose up that, that, that, that was Jesus emptying paradise, and then they would, if I'm correct, they, they then ascended with him to be with the Father.

But yeah, so, I mean, I think that's a view.

So I actually came to, I, I spent a good number, like, like a good number of years, three, four years on that, you know, studying that passage out, actually taking the position, Aaron, that you, that you would have, that it was a literal situation.

And as I kept studying it and wrestling with it, I ended up realizing it's that I believe it's a parable.

And I actually had a friend of mine who challenged me and disagreed with me, and he spent probably a good portion of a year reading a lot of different books and, and dealing with the language and whatnot, and eventually called me up and goes, you know what?

I think you're right.

So, yeah, I hold the position.

Go ahead, go for it, Aaron.

All right, let's go for it.

You sure?

Okay.

I, I, I've been on the fence with it sometimes because I don't necessarily like the way some people extrapolate out different interpretations for what certain things mean, and therefore this, that, and the other things Like, I think sometimes they, they, they stretch the, the illustration beyond the reason that Christ gave it.

Well, and that's the problem that.

I'm going to stop you to say that.

That's what everyone does.

A lot of people do with parables, right?

I mean, that's the problem that a lot of people.

I mean, you want a great example.

You want a great example.

Leighton Flowers, we've had him on here, but that's what late.

That's my big argument with Leighton with his hermeneutic, is he takes parables and starts to read into the parables.

So, folks, when we have a parable, a parable is an illustration of something.

And if you take it beyond the main point of what the parable's pointing to, what it's illustrating, now you're starting to abuse the text or take it out of context.

Parables are not meant to be.

Earlier, I was just going to make the observation that you mentioned a definition of parables.

And I was just saying, to be honest, if I had ever learned that the definition of a parable is that there was no named individuals, I have long forgotten that.

And I was just going from my own observation, just when you look at the Scriptures, I find it unique that in God's perfect word that there are, I think, somewhere between 40 and 50 parables or like elements in there, that there would be only one.

Like, the odds of that are, we know it's not coincidental.

We know it's not accidental.

We know, you know, we know that this is purposeful.

So that's why, for me, the odds that God would say, no, this is going to be the only one that falls into this very unique category.

I'm sitting back going, well, why.

And I think potentially the answer to the, to the, to the question why is the fact that it's not parabolic.

It's actually, he was.

He's illustrating a point, he's teaching something.

Right?

And there might, One could argue that there is figurative language.

Obviously there's figurative language used, Abraham's bosom being perfect example of that.

But still, it doesn't mean that it all has to be from a fictional perspective, as most parables are assumed to be.

Another thing that could be brought up in this is that just because it's a parable, it doesn't mean that the people used or even the places used are not real places or real people.

That could be.

That.

That is, that in itself is kind of reading into what a parable is.

You can use real people and real places as an Parabolically as well.

And so it kind of swings both ways in a sense.

And, and you know, for the people who make the argument.

Well, if you say it's a parable, are you saying you don't believe hell is real?

That's not the only verse in the Bible that talks about heaven and hell.

So I don't need Luke 15 to make the argument of heaven or hell.

16.

Sorry, 16 to make the argument for heaven or hell.

If that's the, if that's the only verse you have for your argument, then I'd be concerned.

Right, but we have plenty others.

And so I, the, the illustration is still the main point of what he's trying to illustrate is, hey, you know, you got the Bible people.

If people aren't going to believe the, the word of God, they're not going to believe.

If someone like Jesus comes back from the dead, then you're gonna.

Only half the Bible, you know, the.

Old two thirds of it.

Yeah.

Daniel, you started saying something earlier.

I don't know if you remember it or.

I was just going to say I take the position that it's parabolic as well, but I think it's, it's special as a parable because like you said, I know there's some debate amongst modern scholarship as to whether it's a parable or an actual story since he names names in that parable.

But I think it's, it's parabolic, but I think it refers to their spiritual truths behind it.

Referring to like, as Adam said, it can refer to real people or real places that, that, that exist.

And like, I can't say one way or the other whether Lazarus actually lived as was named in the parable.

But I think it does that there's spiritual realities and spiritual truths that give insight into the afterlife.

And like Andrew said, ultimately it points us to the Bible as our source of salvific knowledge and not the need for dead people to come back and give us that information.

So that's why I use that as an argument against what Matthew was arguing for.

It's a head scratcher passage, that's for sure.

Yeah, there are.

Well, I, I think this was a good show tonight.

I think it was a good debate.

I think.

Helpful for many, I hope.

Let us know if you found it helpful.

Helpful.

If you want more debates like this, let us know.

I think, I think, you know, these are good to do once in a while.

You know, it is a different style of learning, so we will try to do more like these.

Oh, hey, there's a civil, civically minded podcast there, Mr.

Wing.

Well done, Andrew.

Very good.

I just actually wanted to put that up so I can promote his podcast.

So.

And I'm going to leave it up to.

So you spot the way it's spelled, civically minded is S, I, V, E, C, C, L, Y.

So I just want to come out.

There because no one else ever pats you on the back.

Well, he also said, thank you, Andrew.

See?

So real quick, Gail, I think that's how you say their name.

Tino says, seems like Matthew is on a dangerous slippery slope of New Age slash, new thought.

I just want to say on Matthew's behalf, he openly rejects and refutes New Age beliefs, and that's a large part of what he does.

And I appreciate that you put in their slippery slope because that is a logical fallacy slippery slope argument.

And so just be careful, because he is a brother.

He does believe in the scriptures.

He.

He believes in the true gospel, and he openly speaks out against New Age beliefs.

So just wanted to say that.

Well, thank you for that.

All right, and so with that, we will see you next week.

And remember to strive to make today an eternal day for the glory of God.

See you guys next week.