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Answering Brett Keane's Questions For Christians Part 2 | GodTVRadio LIVE · Brett Keane and Eve Show

0:39
Ladies and gentlemen, may I have your attention please?
0:47
The show starts in 98765 4321. Go, don't come back.
1:13
Here, don't Call My Name. I'm not the one I was before.
1:21
If you want me now, it's much too late.
1:25
This was the last time. Nights I stayed awake, lost in
1:44
your empty promises. I was the one you leaned upon,
1:53
but never the one you choose. And now I see it crystal clear.
2:03
You never knew how to love me. And don't come back here.
2:11
Don't call my neighbor. I'm not going.
2:18
I was before if you want. Me now it's the last time.
2:37
So easy to lie, so easy to hide when you've got nothing left to
2:44
lose. But I'm so done being your
2:48
shadow, picking you up when you fall.
2:55
And now I see a crystal clear you never knew how to love me.
3:02
Don't come back here, don't Call My Name.
3:03
I'm. Not the one I was before.
3:09
If you want me now, it's much too late.
3:24
Don't search for me in the dark.
3:41
I won't be. Yourself anymore, I lose myself
3:48
in you. I tried so hard to pull you
3:51
through, but in the end I finally see you were never there
3:59
for me. Don't come back here, don't Call
4:08
My Name. I'm not the one I was before.
4:14
If you want me now, it's much too late.
4:19
This was the last time. Tongues of venom weaving lies
4:44
spinning W beneath blood red skies to seek the crown.
4:49
The hearts of stone betrayers kneel on a self for throne.
4:54
No mercy waits, no truth to save.
4:58
Their twisted words dig their own grave.
5:01
Flames rise high, the judgement calls the liars and fire
5:10
crumbles and falls burn in the fires of hell.
5:17
They scream Annihilation tears their dream.
5:22
No escape from the molten fire. They're so Sebastian to save us
5:33
in their final land. Falsehoods caught in a world of
5:43
pain. Their silver tongues now bound
5:46
in chains. The ambitions it claims, their
5:50
fates. No lies can flee.
5:52
It's burning hate, soothing marks now with their soul.
6:01
Flames rise high, the judgement calls the liars and fire
6:07
crumbles and fires and fire crumbles and fires In the fires
6:13
of hell they scream annihilation tears their dreams.
6:19
No escape from the mulch in fire.
6:20
Fire, fire, fire. Screams echo through the endless
6:40
night. No saviour comes to grant them
6:43
light. Their words went sharp, now turn
6:46
to dust. Betrayalize their bones,
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compass. From the light,
7:12
annihilate, eradicate. No trees remains of their
7:18
deceitful fate. No mistakes from the bolts and
7:31
fire fire. There's such a nasty sense to
7:38
see that. My God.
8:00
Hello there everyone. Welcome back to GOD TV Radio.
8:04
I'm of course TTOR. And to my other side, there is
8:08
none other than the one, the only Brett Keene.
8:11
Say hello, Brett. Hey people, what's up?
8:14
I hope you're all having a blessed day out there.
8:18
As do I because it is the middle of summer and the temperatures,
8:22
at least in my state, are finally summer appropriate.
8:25
Mid 80s to low 90s just about every day.
8:28
So lots of opportunities to stay indoors and work on video
8:32
projects. I am especially happy about that
8:36
part. But.
8:38
My area too, Mr. TTOR. I only have third degree burns,
8:42
but I'm still alive. Yeah.
8:45
He's alive, guys. Of course I know your enemies
8:49
are like Boo, he's alive. That's OK though.
8:56
Anyhow, so last stream, Brett and I were going through a bunch
9:00
of questions that he had written to Christians, questions that
9:05
were mostly personal in nature. And yes, I do.
9:09
See you there, Adam. Hello.
9:12
Hi, all. Any who the questions in
9:16
particular we got through I think all but like 10 or 12 of
9:20
them. So we're going to finish that
9:22
list today and then we're going to go through or start to go
9:26
through a whole new list of questions that Brett recently
9:30
put out and we're just going to see where the chips fall.
9:33
Some of these questions, I'll have quite a bit to say, some of
9:37
them I don't know what I'll have to say, if anything at all.
9:41
Yeah, just like last time, if Brett wants to answer the
9:44
questions too, he is more than welcome to.
9:48
And with that, I'm going to go ahead and screen share the rest
9:51
of that other that first post just got to do all that magic
9:56
stuff. And the question that we left
10:02
off with is the one I have highlighted here on screen, how
10:07
do you approach conversations with people who hold different
10:11
beliefs or world views? Now, that's a very good question
10:16
because the way you approach those conversations is very, it
10:22
could be very different depending upon who you're
10:24
asking. Because if you're talking to an
10:27
atheist who claims to believe in logic and reason and
10:31
rationality, you really need to get them to talk about what they
10:34
mean by that. Because most of the time they
10:37
will tell on themselves. They often times are actually
10:42
diametrically opposed to what they claim to believe in.
10:46
Like they claim to be for logic and reason, but then they'll
10:49
hold positions that are against logic and reason.
10:54
Kind of like the people for Nature magazine back in 1999 who
11:00
said that even if all the evidence and reality pointed
11:04
towards intelligent design being true, such a hypothesis would be
11:08
excluded from science because it's not a naturalistic
11:11
explanation of origins. That is something where logic,
11:16
reason, rationality, evidence are being thrown out the window
11:19
entirely in order to uphold a faith position, a belief.
11:26
So if you're dealing with someone like that, you're going
11:29
to talk to them very differently than say, like a Muslim, for
11:32
example. Like if you're going to talk
11:34
about talk to a Muslim, then you're going to have to know a
11:38
little bit of something about Islam, which includes knowing
11:41
about stuff that's written in the Quran, stuff that's written
11:44
in the most authentic hadifs. Because the hadifs are just as
11:48
authoritative as the Quran is, especially the stronger what's
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considered their most accurate hadifs.
11:55
Because if you quote like a weak hadif with someone like that,
11:58
they'll just dismiss you. But if you're quoting A hadif
12:01
that's considered authentic, then you have a much better
12:04
ground to stand on when you're conversing with them.
12:08
It's also different than, say, if you're talking to a Mormon,
12:12
for example. So if you're talking to a
12:14
Mormon, you kind of got to know a little bit of something about
12:17
Joseph Smith and everything that he was into and taught and did
12:22
and all that in order to converse with them.
12:24
So really when it comes to people, you kind of have to see
12:29
what worldview they hold. And then when they tell you what
12:32
worldview they hold, you need to ask them questions that get them
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talking about what specifically they believe in terms of that
12:40
world view. Because as you know, Brett, not
12:44
every atheist believes the same thing on all topics.
12:47
Not every Muslim believes the same thing in terms of Islam,
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even though those who are against jihad stand in real
12:55
opposition to their own religion's teachings.
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But that's a whole other can of worms.
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The point is, you know, and I know that not every person under
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a worldview umbrella is like a cookie cutter copy and paste of
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the other. There are different people
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within those camps. And so you got to see where
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they're at by asking them some questions and getting them to
13:15
talk before you can know exactly how do you attempt to convert
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them? How do you attempt to
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proselytize? In other words, What about you,
13:24
Brett? Well with 90% of atheists in my
13:30
personal experience and I agree with you, not everybody's the
13:34
same. But when it does come to atheist
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90% of them seem program scripted and their arguments
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always fall to nihilism and emotionalism.
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It's always why is God mean? Why did God do it this way?
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If God loves us why don't he do that kind of thing?
13:51
As far as Muslims go, I was surprised because I've always
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been told all my life that Muslims study their from the get
13:58
go, but I ran into a lot of them that seem illiterate, uneducated
14:02
and never even bothered to look at the book that they're willing
14:05
to die for. It's weird.
14:07
Yeah, well, the Prophet Muhammad, in their defense, was
14:11
an illiterate 7th century caravan robber, so their
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illiteracy actually lines up with Muhammad's illiteracy,
14:22
ironically enough. But I get what you're saying.
14:27
Next question is what's 1 area of your faith you're still
14:30
working to grow or understand better?
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Well, I'd say when it comes to understanding end times, that's
14:39
always a work in progress when it comes to the Bible, at least
14:43
for me, because I have some things you can understand just
14:47
by doing a straightforward contextual reading of the script
14:51
of the Scriptures when it comes to that topic.
14:53
But then even when you know what the straightforward contextual
14:57
reading is of something, sometimes that reading is still
15:00
really hard to understand. And so that's something that
15:04
always is a work in progress in terms of trying to understand
15:09
that better. I know for a lot of people that
15:18
have families, they struggle to basically have a cohesive and
15:24
close, you know, healthy family. And you know, there's there's
15:28
people like me who aren't in that boat.
15:30
So that's not a particular struggle that we have yet.
15:34
But I would say for me, in terms of my faith, it's understanding
15:40
end times because while some things are clear, and while we
15:45
can look out in the world today and we can see what technology
15:50
exists that can make all of the end times prophecies happen in
15:54
terms of the beast system being global and how they, you know,
15:59
get people to only be able to buy and sell if they have this
16:03
mark in their hand or on their forehead.
16:05
That kind of stuff is becoming more and more plausible as time
16:09
goes on. So even with that stuff going
16:13
on, though, there are some things that they're still not
16:17
very well understood in the scriptures about end times.
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And so that's always something I'm working to understand
16:23
better. What about you, Brett?
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What area of your faith are you still working to grow or
16:29
understand better? Well the end times definitely a
16:33
a challenge but the most challenging for me is doing unto
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others. I went down to myself and and
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loving my enemy. I I didn't grow up like that.
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It's not. It doesn't feel natural to let
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someone treat you like a punching bag and just stand
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there and take it. I still have that desire to
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stomp on someone like a bug if they anger me.
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Yeah, I get that feeling entirely.
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There's some people on the Internet who've made videos
17:04
criticizing me and some of the criticisms are so out there
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that's just like, what the heck. And I know there's some people
17:15
on the Internet who would consider me an enemy of theirs.
17:17
But yeah, that definitely being a turn the other cheek and not
17:24
having not basically not having that returning attitude towards
17:28
someone where like if they hate you intensely, you hate them
17:31
intensely back and you basically just feel each other's rage.
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That kind of thing is it's definitely something that can be
17:38
hard to get out of when you're in.
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It takes some takes time and some growth to really get out of
17:45
that or past that phase. The next question is how does
17:49
your faith influence your relationships with family and
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friends? Well, most of my family and a
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lot of my friends are Christians.
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So my faith and their faith, well, we just get along together
18:06
because we have so much common ground and a fundamental
18:10
worldview level. And because we have that common
18:13
ground, a lot of our values are the same still here and there in
18:17
my friends circle. And then a couple areas of my
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family, there's some non believers there, but they all
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grew up in the same Christian home environment that the rest
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of my family did. And so they've been influenced
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by our world view and our values their whole life.
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So even though one of them is an atheist and another one of them
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is a couple of them I'm not sure about.
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They might be agnostic, they might be atheist, they might be
18:45
Christians. I don't really know what they
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are, but they don't behave like Christians entirely.
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They, they basically act the same as we do, at least when
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we're at our family gatherings. So I'd say that it's the faith
19:01
that I hold to has not been a negative influence on my
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relationships with family and friends because we all basically
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have the same faith for the most part.
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And even the ones that don't share in our faith, they're
19:15
they're welcomed, they're loved and they're not treated any
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different ways in my family. So that's about it.
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Where you want me to respond? You can, although I would say
19:32
that since I work at a church too, everyone I work with is
19:37
also a Christian so our faiths kind of influence each other as
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we work. I forgot to add that part, but
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how is your faith Brett influenced your relationships
19:47
with family and friends? It hasn't because the majority
19:52
of my family is either passed away, live too far away, and the
19:56
ones outside of my wife and my kids don't really give a flying
20:01
rat's ass about what I think of what my view is, no matter what
20:05
I believe. That is unfortunate, but I
20:09
understand that too. The next question is in what
20:14
ways does your Christian worldview shape your career or
20:17
work ethic? Now I work at a church as a full
20:20
time TV producer. So basically my faith in my job
20:26
go hand in hand because I'm filming and live streaming
20:30
Sunday sermons. I'm turning those Sunday sermons
20:33
into hour long TV programs and I'm live streaming a prayer
20:37
service every week and creating an announcement videos for those
20:42
related services. And I'm usually at various
20:45
events that we do filming things to make highlight videos like
20:49
our summer camps, like our upcoming car show at the end of
20:52
August, stuff like that. So it all goes hand in hand with
21:00
me, which is I think very fortunate.
21:03
But before I was working at my church, I was a caregiver for 11
21:07
years. So in terms of that job that I
21:11
held, I would say that the way my Christian worldview shaped my
21:16
work ethic and career in that area was that my Christian
21:21
worldview enabled me to have the patience that you need to be a
21:25
caregiver to individuals with developmental disabilities.
21:29
Helps with the patients, helps with the level of care that you
21:32
give them in terms of giving them adequate care instead of
21:36
just being there, collecting a paycheck and just making sure
21:42
that you're catering to their needs as much as reasonable
21:46
while still following their plans.
21:49
So yeah, that's where I would stand on that particular
21:52
subject. But yeah, so with the
21:56
caregiving, a lot of the biblical values influenced how I
21:59
took care of my clients. And if my current job, my
22:02
worldview and my career are basically on the same line.
22:05
So there's nothing to really have to work at to jive, they're
22:09
all they're all in line. So let's say you, Brett.
22:15
About whether I'm doing music or writing books or a website
22:19
designs or I can't, I don't want to get into the more how shall I
22:24
say private things and all that because, well, we are live.
22:28
But I always try to make sure that God's involved in
22:31
everything because I feel like if you want things to succeed,
22:35
you're going to have to do it the right way and it has to be
22:39
in a way that serves God. If you don't, it's just going to
22:42
fall flat. You are absolutely correct and I
22:47
just made a little faux pas right there visually, but that's
22:50
OK. We'll get right back into this
22:53
battle. A faux pas, a mistake.
22:58
But next question is how do you try to reflect Christian values
23:04
in your interactions with strangers and Co workers?
23:07
Well, it's kind of the same thing as what I just said.
23:12
Having that patience and being considerate of their feelings
23:17
and being able to try and help them to do the things they want
23:22
within reason. Like that's when I was a
23:24
caregiver who interacted with clients who I was just meeting
23:27
for the first time. In terms of Co workers, you try
23:31
to do the same thing. Although when I work as a
23:35
caregiver where I had to have Co staff with me and that was that
23:39
was hell on earth, that ended up being a whole cesspool where
23:44
they were lying about me to get me fired even though they were
23:48
pathetic staff compared to me. So yeah, that can go really ugly
23:53
really fast. So working with Co workers in
23:56
that situation can be difficult if you have Christian values and
23:59
they're worldly people who don't have a work ethic.
24:04
But in terms of my regular job that I have now that I've had
24:08
for the last two years and some change, yeah, it's pretty easy
24:14
to reflect the Christian values because it's the values that
24:18
we're living by and it's the values we're promoting through
24:22
our content. So there's really nothing to you
24:26
don't have to work to reflect those values in my current line
24:29
of work. It's just all there.
24:32
The next question is how does your faith guide your decisions
24:36
about money giving or material possessions?
24:41
Well, in terms of material possessions, when you believe in
24:46
the biblical worldview, you're generally not going to be a very
24:50
materialistic person. I mean, you understand that you
24:53
need money to pay your bills and you need certain kinds of
24:56
material possessions in order to get by and, you know, have a
25:01
decent enough life. But you're certainly not going
25:05
to seek to live an extravagant lifestyle where you have like
25:08
mansions and just really expensive material possessions
25:14
whose possession of them is just a reflection of your wealth.
25:18
That kind of thing is not something that's promoted by the
25:20
biblical worldview. And so if you I believe in the
25:25
biblical worldview, the faith that I have, then material
25:29
possessions will be kind of indifferent to you.
25:33
Like you can acknowledge that they're nice, but you also not
25:35
living for them. So they're kind of just there if
25:38
you have them. And in terms of how it affects
25:41
my decisions about giving, well, you're commanded by the Bible to
25:45
be a cheerful giver and to help support your local church body
25:51
with your finances because the workers worth their wages.
25:56
And then my line of work, we need donations and ties because
26:02
we have a lot of different ministries that do a lot of
26:05
different outreaches for our community.
26:07
And in order to do all those things free of charge to the
26:11
community, we have to have a certain amount of resources to
26:14
be able to fund that operation and keep things going.
26:18
So when it comes to giving, I try to give a reasonable amount
26:24
of money without, you know, being a detriment to myself.
26:29
And that kind of ties into my decisions about money when in
26:33
terms of my money, I really try to avoid spending money when I
26:38
can, especially if it's like software related stuff.
26:41
It's like if I can get a game for free, I'm going to get it.
26:44
If I'm going to get, you know, new software for editing, making
26:48
videos, I'm generally going to look for something that's either
26:51
free and open source or as cheap as possible if I have to pay
26:55
anything for it. Basically being frugal with my
26:59
money and not spending it is something that I think has been
27:04
influenced by my faith and also by just, you know, who I am
27:09
because there's some people out there that think if you spend a
27:12
lot of money, you'll end up getting more.
27:13
And that's never worked out that way that I can see.
27:18
So that's how my faith guides my decisions about money giving and
27:23
material possessions. Next question, What's an example
27:30
of a time you felt God working through you to help someone
27:33
else? Now that is a good, good
27:37
question. Now, I don't remember specific
27:40
videos that I've done in the past, but I know there's been
27:43
videos in the past where people have like commented on the video
27:47
or they e-mail me in private and let me know that, hey, this
27:51
video you did back at this time was really helpful to me with my
27:56
faith and really helped me with the struggles I was having on
27:59
this topic. And so I just wanted to thank
28:01
you for doing this work that's happened a couple of times.
28:05
And I would say that that has been God working through me to
28:10
help someone else. And that always feels good
28:13
because at the end of the day, someone like me is not putting
28:17
out this content, doing these kind of live streams in order to
28:22
benefit ourselves. My philosophy from day one, back
28:27
when I started writing blog posts in 2013, back when I
28:31
started making YouTube videos in 2015 for TTOR.
28:35
My goal since day one has always been well, my standard since day
28:39
one has always been if my material, my content helps one
28:44
person strengthen their faith, then it's all good.
28:49
If my content ends up helping someone clear out the
28:53
intellectual obstacles in their way and accept a saving
28:57
relationship with Jesus Christ through repentance, then it's
29:02
all good. And I can, I don't know if
29:04
anyone per SE has been saved from my content.
29:07
That's not something that I've been told explicitly by anyone.
29:11
But I have been told by people that my content has helped them
29:15
in big ways to them. So that always feels good when
29:19
you are a Christian content creator and that's always
29:22
something you'd love to hear even if you don't hear it all
29:25
that often. Now the next question is how do
29:31
you teach or share your faith with younger generations like
29:34
children or nieces, nephews? Now, unfortunately, I don't have
29:40
a lot of experience with sharing my faith with children or young
29:46
relatives like nieces and nephews.
29:49
I don't have any nieces and nephews yet don't have children
29:52
of my own. I'm not really involved too much
29:55
with the children's ministry of my church, and I'm barely
30:00
involved with the youth ministry, only in the sense that
30:03
I helped make their announcement videos, but that's about it.
30:06
And then I go film some of their events.
30:08
But I don't really have any kind of great insight into how to
30:13
teach the younger generation. But I do know that the younger
30:17
generation especially, you know, middle school up, they spend a
30:21
lot of time on the Internet. So they spend a lot of time on
30:24
social media. And so I've always felt that my
30:28
content, just based on the kinds of topics being covered, is
30:33
really targeted to people aged 13 and up, or maybe 12 and up,
30:38
because they're on the Internet all the time.
30:41
At that age, they're probably cognitively, cognitively
30:44
developed enough to understand at least some of my material.
30:48
And if my videos can help that particular age group with
30:53
strengthening their faith and getting closer to the Lord, that
30:57
would be a humongous win. Absolutely would be because the
31:02
enemy of our souls is also battling with God for the souls
31:07
of the next generation. So we have all the culture war
31:10
stuff going on, We have all the battles in our generation that
31:14
go on. But the next generation is
31:18
really important because they're the ones who are going to
31:21
influence and basically determine to an extent how the
31:24
world operates in about 3-4 decades.
31:27
So you really want to make sure that today's youth have a great
31:32
foundation for their faith, a great foundation for the
31:36
biblical worldview, so that they can hold strong to it and not be
31:40
swayed by anything that comes against it.
31:43
That way they can give themselves the best life
31:46
possible and potentially even make the world a slightly better
31:50
place going forward. That's how I see that issue.
31:57
What does your faith or how does your faith influence your views
32:02
on marriage, parenting, or family life?
32:05
Well, basically the way that the biblical worldview has
32:10
influenced my faith is that while there are some people who
32:15
God has called to be single and celibate their entire lives,
32:19
those people are rare and they usually are enabled in some way
32:25
to not be tempted and, you know, more intimate ways like most of
32:31
us are. And so because very few people
32:34
are called to that, I understand biblically that most people are
32:39
called to be married. So marriage is something that
32:43
should be on the table if you're a Bible believing Christian.
32:47
And it's not something that you should look down upon because
32:51
there are people out there who look at having kids.
32:54
They look at being married as a big negative, as something that
32:57
would be a drain on their life and would inhibit them from
33:01
doing the things they really want to do.
33:04
And that's great and all for them, but we are called as
33:08
Christians to have families and have kids and to teach our kids
33:14
the way of the Lord. And so if I ever get to that
33:18
position where I'm married and I'm able to have children that I
33:22
can parent and have a family life of my own outside of, you
33:26
know, the family I grew up in, I'm definitely going to hold
33:31
strong to what the Bible says about all of those things.
33:34
That's the influence my faith will have on those.
33:37
Basically, what the Bible says about being a parent, what the
33:40
Bible says about, you know, managing your family life, what
33:45
it says about marriage itself. That's what I'm going to go with
33:49
when I get to that point. Next question, What role does
33:54
gratitude play in your life and how do you practice it?
33:58
Oh, that is a great question because there's lots of things
34:02
that I have gratitude about. Like for example, all the people
34:06
currently subscribe to my YouTube channel, to my Bit Shoot
34:10
channel, to my Rumble channel, and all the other channels that
34:13
I have. I have lots of gratitude for
34:16
each and everyone of you because as much as I can put out videos,
34:21
make them as good as possible and share them as much as
34:23
possible by myself on social media.
34:25
You guys are the ones who actually interact with the
34:28
content and you're the ones who actually subscribe to the
34:31
channel. You like the content so much and
34:33
your guys are the ones who actually help with spreading the
34:36
videos around so they get more views.
34:38
So I look at each and every one of you who subscribes and who
34:43
hits the like buttons and who leaves your comments.
34:46
I have lots of gratitude to you guys because you guys, I make
34:50
TTOR what it is and I'm just very limited in what I can
34:55
actually do. You guys are the ones that make
34:57
this happen, and I have a lot of gratitude for you guys.
35:02
I guess I also, to an extent, have some gratitude towards the
35:06
alt tech platforms that exist so that I don't have to solely rely
35:10
on my YouTube, Facebook, Twitter, etcetera to put my
35:14
content out there. I got options, so that way if
35:17
any of the options goes bad, I still got others that I'm on,
35:21
and I think I have a lot of gratitude for alt tech platforms
35:24
because of that. I'm not limited in that way and
35:27
therefore don't have to censor my speech nearly as much as
35:31
someone who relies entirely on those platforms.
35:36
So yeah, I have a lot of gratitude for those.
35:38
And I definitely have a lot of gratitude for my current church
35:44
slash work situation because when I was growing up going to
35:48
other churches, I never even got the chance to be involved in my
35:52
church before. And that was really something
35:55
that was on my heart to do for a really long time, but I couldn't
35:59
do it back then because, well, various reasons, reasons I don't
36:03
even know. And then over time, I've
36:07
eventually got to the place where I'm at, where I'm at now.
36:10
And I have a lot of gratitude to my church for giving me the
36:13
opportunity to be involved in the role of ATV producer and to
36:19
be involved with the putting on of all the outreach events that
36:22
we do. It's an honor to be part of that
36:26
and something I have a lot of gratitude for.
36:29
Another question, how do you find a balance between your
36:33
spiritual life and other responsibilities?
36:36
Well, it's kind of the thing that most Christians have to
36:39
struggle with sometimes and they have to figure out at others.
36:44
Basically, you just find time to read your Bible, you find time
36:48
to pray, and you basically make it fit in with everything else
36:53
you have to do. So whatever hours your job makes
36:55
you work, whatever kind of job you have, you just got to
36:59
balance it out a bit. It's just a trial and error and
37:03
seeing what works best for you and when things change and if
37:07
that needs to change, figuring out what needs to change in
37:10
order for you to maintain that balance.
37:12
So I know for me it's making time to read my Bible, which in
37:19
my job, since I work at a church and since my office is just
37:23
across the way from our prayer room, I sometimes use the prayer
37:28
room as a place to do my own Bible reading because I know
37:32
that it's a nice peaceful, quiet environment and I have a lot of
37:38
time on my hands usually when I do that and then I don't have to
37:42
worry about doing it at home. But if I had a job where I
37:45
couldn't do that, then I would have to find time at home to
37:47
read the Bible and do all that stuff that I do currently at
37:51
church sometimes. Now the last question on this
37:56
original list says, looking back, what's one way you've seen
38:00
God's presence or faithfulness in your life story?
38:05
Well, I would say where I'm working at is the big, it's a
38:10
big way. I've seen God's presence and
38:12
faithfulness in my story because I've wanted to be in a media job
38:17
since I was in high school. And unfortunately, I didn't have
38:21
any luck with getting into like a local newspaper or local TV
38:25
station or anything like that. And I also wanted to be involved
38:30
in my church growing up, but I never had an opportunity to do
38:33
that either. So, and when I look at how I was
38:38
able to not only get a job at my church and be able to help out
38:44
at my church full time, but I also got to be a full time TV
38:49
producer, which is the kind of media job I have been wanting to
38:52
do basically since since high school, since my early college
38:56
years. And so I can look back on that
38:59
and go, wow, I had to go through a lot of years of being a
39:02
caregiver and a lot of time where I wasn't even able to go
39:06
to church at times because of my job.
39:09
I can look back on all of that and say as sucky as that was to
39:12
go through, it was God getting me ready to give me the things
39:17
that I wanted back when I was in high school, back when I was in
39:20
my early college years. You know, he gave me a job doing
39:25
media production and I do it full time for my church, which
39:29
means I get serving my church full time at the same time.
39:32
Just the way he was able to be faithful to me in that regard
39:36
and give me those things after all these years, I'd say that is
39:41
a big example of his faithfulness and presence in my
39:44
life. Just the fact that he got me
39:47
through that season of time and got me to where I am now.
39:51
And that is the original list of the questions for Christians
39:56
that Brett Keene had. This list is from back.
40:00
And I want to say, I want to say early June or maybe mid June.
40:06
But I do see you there, bubble gun.
40:07
And yes, I do see you there, Father Jido.
40:11
Glad to see you guys and I'm sure Brett is too.
40:16
Let's see if anyone's on Rumble. No, not right now.
40:19
That's OK though. But any who, I think we are
40:23
going to go into the next set of questions that Brett Keene more
40:27
recently did. And these questions, according
40:30
to Brett, are theological questions.
40:34
Yeah, the first set of questions should let people get to know
40:38
the person who's answering them, understand where they're coming
40:42
from and some of their influences, and then get to the
40:46
more grittier stuff. Which we're doing right now.
40:53
So this post is from five days ago.
40:57
You said I interviewed Smokey St. on his channel.
40:59
I will post the majority of the questions I asked him below and
41:03
if anyone would like to share their perspective, you're
41:05
welcome. Please don't bother me if your
41:07
opinion or dislike of him unless it's positive I'm not
41:10
interested. Some questions were off the
41:11
cuff, and so now we have this whole theological section of 50
41:17
questions, and we're going to start going through them and
41:21
we're going to see how far they go.
41:24
And I'm going to do a little bit of inception here.
41:27
OK? We're good on time.
41:29
Theological question #1 How do you reconcile the concept of a
41:36
loving God with the existence of suffering and evil in the world?
41:41
This is one of the most popular questions that you can ever ask
41:46
a Christian or a Christian apologist.
41:49
It's one of the big ones. It's basically the issue of
41:52
suffering and evil in the world. A lot of people would argue that
41:56
because suffering and evil exist in the world, that this somehow
42:01
proves that if there is a God that he can't possibly be loving
42:05
because he allows all this stuff to go on.
42:08
And this is just simply not true when you examine the biblical
42:13
worldview and what it says. Because The thing is, there are
42:18
people out there may want to be evil, may want to do evil
42:22
things, especially to basically give God the middle finger.
42:28
And so because there are people out there who are like that, in
42:32
order for God not to be a tyrant, He has to get them free
42:35
will and allow them to do what they want, even if that means
42:38
rejecting God and doing these evil things.
42:41
We also know biblically that diseases and physical death
42:45
entered the world when Adam and Eve sinned.
42:48
And so suffering of the various kinds of suffering that there
42:52
is, exists because of that sin that entered the world.
42:57
So suffering and evil in the world do nothing to disprove
43:02
God's existence. And they don't prove that he is
43:05
not loving because there's multiple ways of looking at it.
43:11
You see, if God was truly an evil maniacal monster who was
43:16
not loving, what he could rightfully do at this point is
43:21
he could decide to kill all of us.
43:25
Because when you look at the book of Job, I believe it is Job
43:29
chapter. I want to say 34.
43:32
Actually, I'm going to look this up.
43:34
Give me one second here because there's a passage in Job that
43:39
talks about how God's breath and spirit is holding all of reality
43:45
together and that if he were to withdraw that spirit and
43:49
withdraw his breath that everyone would die.
43:52
But I need to actually look the post up in order to make sure I
43:58
got the reference right. For those of you watching this
44:01
stream to look at later so you can see it for yourself.
44:07
Why is Bible Gateway down? That cannot possibly be not even
44:13
having Internet issues. That's weird.
44:20
That literally cannot be true. Hold on, let's try again.
44:32
Oh wow, that's really weird, Brett.
44:35
It's not letting me pull up the website on that browser and
44:39
let's try it on another. What's going on, guy?
44:45
When I try to open up biblegateway.com on my web
44:50
browser that I was on, it says that I have no Internet and yet
44:55
here we are doing this live stream.
44:58
Let me try bible.com. That might just work better.
45:15
Well, I've been weird. I've been checking the live
45:17
stream from time to time and it's been doing all right.
45:21
Yeah, that's what I'm thinking too.
45:23
Seems to be doing OK on my end. Yeah, see, hold on, I'm going to
45:28
try something else. Let's see, we're on Google, so
45:32
let's just Google Bible. Now, while you're looking it up,
45:42
I can tell you something I'd say to someone who asked that kind
45:46
of question. Yeah, go ahead.
45:49
Well you're absolutely right, it is a very popular question by
45:54
atheist. It was a question I had to ask
45:57
all the time when I was a non believer.
45:59
But then I sat back and got to thinking to myself, if I'm going
46:03
to agree and endorse the idea that objective evil truly
46:07
exists, then I also have to be lost, logical and rational and
46:11
intellectually honest and say that objective good must be real
46:15
as well. And in order for either one to
46:18
exist, there has to be an objective designer or God behind
46:21
it. So any atheist out there that
46:24
ever brings up evil suffering or objective good, they're they're
46:30
falling into their own intellectual trap.
46:33
They're basically implying that there's a God.
46:37
Yep, that is totally true, Brett.
46:40
Well, I'm just going to forego bringing it up on screen because
46:43
my Internet is being my computer's being weird.
46:45
My Internet connection's strong, our stream is strong, yet for
46:49
some reason, anytime I try to look up any of the Bible
46:52
websites, I get the no Internet screen on my browser.
46:56
It's really weird stuff. Well, do you need the?
46:59
Questions to you, Are you having problems?
47:02
No, it's not the questions. It's me trying to look up a
47:05
verse on a Bible website. That's where I'm having the
47:08
problems. Let's get back into the
47:11
application here, Blake. All right, so basically, if God
47:19
was truly evil, he wouldn't give any one of us a chance at
47:24
redemption. Basically, once we sin against
47:27
him, he would wipe us out and that'd be it.
47:30
But the fact that God gives us a chance to get redeemed, the fact
47:37
that he gives us an opportunity to get out of what we got coming
47:41
to us by repenting of our sins and entering into a personal
47:45
relationship with Him by bowing the knee to Jesus.
47:49
The fact that God does that in spite of the fact that we are
47:53
all evil criminals who have committed crimes against God and
47:57
against each other, and any good works that guilty criminals do
48:02
is just nothing but a bribe to God according to Isaiah, I think
48:05
it's Isaiah 60. Despite all of that stuff that
48:09
we have going against us and all that stuff that rightly condemns
48:13
us before God, He loves us enough to give us a chance of
48:17
what we got gain out of what we got coming to us.
48:21
And that's what the cross was all about.
48:23
The cross was about giving us redemption, salvation,
48:29
basically. We have a sin Ledger and God
48:33
himself paid for those sins by coming down in the 1st century
48:38
as a man, Jesus of Nazareth, going to the cross, paying that
48:43
penalty for all sins, past, present and future.
48:46
And so now in order for that payment to apply to us, all we
48:50
have to do is repent of our sins and bow the knee to Jesus and
48:55
enter into a personal relationship with Him.
48:58
And when we do those things, then Jesus's sacrifice on the
49:02
cross is applied to our sin Ledger, it is wiped clean, and
49:06
then we are in good standing before God and we can spend
49:10
eternity with Him. That is something that we do not
49:15
deserve because of all the crimes we have committed against
49:18
God and his laws and against each other.
49:21
Because when you sin against another being, you're human
49:24
being, you're sinning against someone who was made in the
49:28
image of God, which basically is you sinning against God direct,
49:32
indirectly. So the fact that God gives us a
49:36
chance to get out of what we have coming to us, even though
49:39
there's no one holding a gun to his head, making him do this,
49:44
that proves that God is not just loving, He is the most loving.
49:49
I could not do that. I could not give that kind of
49:53
opportunity of redemption like He does because it's just not in
49:57
my character. So that's how I reconcile the
50:01
concept of a loving God, the existence of suffering and evil
50:04
in the world. Suffering and evil in the world,
50:06
while horrible, do absolutely nothing to disprove God's
50:11
existence or His loving nature. Because the fact that He even
50:15
gives us a chance to get out of what we have coming to us in
50:20
light of our crimes against Him. The fact that He even gives us a
50:23
chance to get out of what we got coming to us and to get right
50:26
with Him before it's too late, That is a level of love that no
50:30
human being, I'm convinced, is capable of having.
50:34
So that's how I reconcile the issue question #2 What does it
50:41
mean to you personally to take up your cross and follow Jesus
50:45
in daily life? Well, what that means is that
50:50
you, well, at least in my life and the way I go through life,
50:54
that means to me that I have to adhere to everything that the
50:59
Bible teaches and records. And if anything I come across in
51:03
life contradicts those things, even if it's coming from people
51:07
who are on my side, quote, UN quote, Well, I have to follow
51:12
what the Bible says, teaches and records and I have to reject the
51:16
thing in front of me that contradicts that.
51:19
And that causes a lot of inconvenience that can cause
51:22
some uncomfortableness that can cause offense in other people,
51:27
that can cause all kinds of divisive problems.
51:30
But as Jesus said in the Gospels, he did not come.
51:36
He did not come to basically unite the world.
51:39
He came to divide people to the point where families are divided
51:44
against each other over Jesus. So when it comes to taking up my
51:48
cross and following Jesus in daily life, to me that means you
51:52
have to be ready to take the hits that come with submitting
51:56
to Jesus and rejecting the worldly way of doing things.
52:01
Number 30. I love this one because I talk
52:03
about this one all the time. How do you interpret the Bible's
52:09
creation account in light of modern scientific discoveries?
52:15
But now the way that the question is framed is done on
52:20
the premise that the modern scientific community, you know,
52:26
the majority opinion of the scientific academic community is
52:30
more authoritative than the Bible on origins.
52:34
And so therefore, in order to adhere to the Bible and not be
52:38
an idiot, you have to figure out how to interpret the Bible in
52:43
light of modern scientific discoveries or the modern
52:47
scientific academic communities consensus.
52:52
That's what the question makes me think of as I read it.
52:56
So it's already flawed and biased just in the way it's
52:59
framed. Because if you're a Bible
53:01
believing Christian, you have to read the Bible in a
53:05
straightforward and contextual manner.
53:07
And when you do that, you will realize that the Bible says and
53:11
teaches certain things, and then your job is to interpret the
53:15
world through that lens. The way that the question is
53:19
framed is the other way. It's framed in the way that you
53:24
have to look at what the modern scientific academic community
53:27
says on whatever issues they touch on.
53:30
And then you have to interpret the Bible through that lens.
53:35
So the Bible and how it tells you to interpret the world is
53:39
completely at odds with the kind of way of viewing the world
53:44
that's outlined in behind this question.
53:49
And what happens when I do the interpreting the world through
53:53
the lens of the Bible is I see the Bible teaching a 6100 year
53:57
old earth and universe. And I get that number from the
54:02
genealogies and time spans provided by Genesis, Exodus and
54:06
1st Kings chapter 6 verse one, which covers the entire time
54:10
between Adam and Eve being created and the fourth year of
54:14
King Solomon's reign, which was like 900 some years before Jesus
54:19
was born. And of course our modern
54:21
calendar starts at Jesus's birth, so it's been 2025 years
54:27
since Jesus was born. You Add all that together and
54:31
you get a 6100 year old Earth and universe, and the human race
54:35
is basically the same age, just five days younger.
54:40
So that's what you get when you read the Bible.
54:43
And so then you go into what the scientific and academic
54:47
community says and you discover that much of what they say is
54:51
completely backwards to what the Bible says, like Big Bang
54:56
cosmology for example. If you look up the order of
54:59
creation events in Big Bang cosmology, you discover that
55:02
they're actually the opposite of what the Bible teaches in terms
55:07
of the order of creation events like animals and land and humans
55:11
and all that sun and moon and all that.
55:15
Completely opposite. You look at evolution and it is
55:18
a godless, naturalistic process that no one has ever actually
55:22
seen occur in real space-time history.
55:26
But it's also the opposite of what God's, what God's word
55:29
says. Because when you read Genesis,
55:31
you read that God made the universe, the earth, the sea,
55:35
and everything that is in them over the course of three days
55:39
over. Well, hold on, I got to rephrase
55:41
that. Exodus 28 through 11
55:46
specifically teaches that God created the universe, the earth,
55:49
the sea, and everything that is in those three things over the
55:52
course of six ordinary days by the speech of his mouth.
55:56
Because when you read the creation account, God speaks and
55:59
then The thing is created immediately.
56:01
There's no delay. Evolution has you believe that
56:06
there was no God, there was no intelligent mind behind the
56:10
whole process, and also wants you to believe that instead of
56:14
things coming into existence almost instantaneously if not
56:19
instantaneously, they generally want you to believe that it
56:22
takes long indefinite periods of time for these things to come
56:27
into existence through this naturalistic process.
56:31
Even punctuated equilibrium, which is like the fast speedy
56:35
version of evolution, even something like that still takes
56:39
thousands upon thousands of years for evolution to occur,
56:43
much longer than the pre flood people in the Bible who were
56:46
living to be almost 1000 years old on average.
56:49
So yeah, when I look at that's kind of stuff through the lens
56:55
of the Bible, I see that in most cases, the evolution narrative,
57:00
the evolution paradigm of history completely contradicts
57:05
what the Bible says on almost every point.
57:08
Which ironically enough, if you go back and look at the guys who
57:13
created the concept of deep time, like James Hutton, Charles
57:18
Lyell, those kind of guys, they actually stated that it was
57:22
their goal to get people to reject mosaic geology and to
57:27
believe in this concept of deep time.
57:30
Because back when they said that most people believed in young
57:34
earth creationism in one form or another.
57:36
You go look at the earliest versions of the Encyclopedia of
57:40
Britannica, and it said at the time that the Earth was roughly,
57:47
roughly 5000, we think. Yeah, they the Earth was
57:54
roughly, you know, like 5800 years old at the time of that
57:58
encyclopedia. And it also said that the
58:01
geologic formations that we saw on the planet Earth were the
58:04
result of the flood of Noah. So in Cyclopedia of Britannica,
58:10
most of the world believed in young Earth creationism in one
58:14
form or another at the time that the concept of deep time was
58:17
created, at the time that Charles Darwin basically came
58:21
out with his evolution narrative with Origin of the Species and
58:25
all of his other works. All that stuff was done in order
58:28
to get people to reject young earth creationism, to reject
58:32
what the Bible says on origins, to reject the flood of Noah that
58:36
is recorded in the Bible, which is responsible for the earth
58:40
being in the shape that it's in today.
58:42
By and large, that's why evolution and deep time
58:46
specifically were created, was to get people to reject the
58:50
Bible. And this is according to the
58:52
people who came up with the concept of deep time.
58:56
So when you look at things and you understand that and you're a
58:59
Bible believing Christian, you just cannot ever reinterpret the
59:04
Bible in light of those things because you know that those
59:07
things were created to get you to reject what the Bible says.
59:11
That's literally why they were made.
59:12
And that's why whenever you see the age of the earth and
59:15
universe get revised, they never make it younger and then older
59:20
and then younger and older because that's what you would
59:22
expect to see. If they were honest, genuine
59:25
people who are just trying to figure out how old the Earth is,
59:28
they would find stuff that would make them think the Earth is
59:30
younger until they find something that makes them think
59:32
it's older, until they find something that makes it think
59:35
it's younger again. You'd see it back and forth on
59:38
the age of the Earth and universe every time that it's
59:41
the age of it is revised, but we actually see instead in real
59:45
life, every time they revise the age of the Earth and universe,
59:49
they always make it older. I know one thing Brett and I
59:53
have talked about in recent years is about how they're now
59:57
trying to convince us that the universe is 30 to 40 billion
1:00:01
years old instead of being 1314 billion years old.
1:00:05
They're basically almost tripling the age of the Earth
1:00:08
and universe at this point. And the way that that works for
1:00:12
them is that it hides evolution and Big Bang cosmology into this
1:00:18
eternal past that you can't see. And so basically, as long as you
1:00:23
believe that deep time is a real thing, then evolution will
1:00:28
always seem plausible, no matter how ridiculous and
1:00:32
counterintuitive it is. Because that's what happens with
1:00:35
a lot of people. They look at evolutionary
1:00:37
concepts, they look at what you see in reality, and they go,
1:00:41
well, I don't see that occurring in reality today.
1:00:44
But I mean, the universe and Earth are billions of years old.
1:00:47
So I guess with all that time to traverse, I guess evolution
1:00:51
happened at some point in the past.
1:00:53
I mean, it must have. It's just mathematically
1:00:56
impossible. I've seen that a lot of times on
1:00:59
the Internet. And that's what happens when you
1:01:05
you go through all this stuff and you go through it from a
1:01:07
worldly perspective, and you don't let the Bible be your
1:01:10
authority on origins. You don't interpret what you see
1:01:12
in the world and in science through the lens of the Bible.
1:01:16
You end up believing in evolution in billions of years,
1:01:19
and then you constantly revise the age of the Earth and
1:01:22
universe to be even older, to make evolution seem more
1:01:26
plausible. And basically to save the
1:01:29
theory, because that's how it's going to work out if things
1:01:33
don't change, is every time they revise the age of the earth and
1:01:35
universe, they'll always make the earth and universe even
1:01:38
older. And every time they make it
1:01:40
older, they create more of this unseeable, unobservable past
1:01:44
where evolution supposedly happened but no human being was
1:01:48
around for to record it or to perform an experiment to verify
1:01:51
it. Not even possible in principle
1:01:54
according to the evolutionary worldview.
1:01:56
And yet we're supposed to believe them because they say
1:02:01
so. Like there's some kind of high
1:02:03
priests that we're supposed to just believe.
1:02:07
I thought we weren't supposed to be in that kind of religion, if
1:02:10
you know what I mean. Now #4 is also a good question.
1:02:16
In what ways do you think the church has strayed from the
1:02:20
teachings of Jesus and how can it return to them?
1:02:24
Well, that is an excellent question because when we talk
1:02:27
about the teachings of Jesus, I would say it's not limited just
1:02:32
to the Gospels, because according to the Gospels,
1:02:35
according to the Bible, Jesus is God.
1:02:40
He's not a prophet from God, although he did fulfill prophecy
1:02:43
regarding a prophet that was listed in the Torah.
1:02:48
Jesus was not just a messenger, He's not some kind of a creation
1:02:53
of God. He actually is God himself.
1:02:56
He called himself Yahweh in John 858, and so Jesus is God.
1:03:02
And because God used the old test, used the writers of the
1:03:06
Old Testament as pens to write His written word to humanity,
1:03:10
just like He did for the writers of the New Testament, then it
1:03:15
stands to reason that Jesus is ultimately the author of the
1:03:19
entire Bible. Which means that the teachings
1:03:22
of the entire Bible are Jesus's. Which is why it says in
1:03:26
Colossians chapter 2 that all the treasures of wisdom and
1:03:29
knowledge are found in Christ Jesus.
1:03:31
Because Jesus is God. God is the source of all truth.
1:03:35
And so therefore, when you're talking about the teachings of
1:03:38
Jesus, you're really talking about the entirety of the Bible.
1:03:42
And so when you talk about how the church is strayed from the
1:03:44
teachings of Jesus and how can it return to them, origins is
1:03:49
one of those big issues where the church has strayed far from
1:03:54
what the Bible says. But this isn't surprising
1:03:58
because when you read the New Testament, you see that almost
1:04:00
immediately after Jesus ascended to heaven following his
1:04:04
resurrection, they had heretics and follow ways popping up all
1:04:08
over the place in the Christian world, even back then when the
1:04:12
New Testament documents were being written down and recorded
1:04:17
and put together. So people's churches and
1:04:22
Christians straying from the teachings of Jesus in the Bible
1:04:25
is nothing new goes back to the beginning of our faith.
1:04:29
But in terms of the modern age, we've strayed from what the
1:04:32
Bible says on origins, which in turn has allowed us to stray on
1:04:36
other things, like whether or not Jesus is God, whether or not
1:04:40
the Jews are still God's chosen people and Israel still his
1:04:44
chosen nation. Whether or not Christians have
1:04:47
replaced Jews as those things, or whether or not the church has
1:04:50
replaced Israel as God's chosen nation.
1:04:53
That kind of stuff occurs because people are straying from
1:04:59
the teachings of Jesus. They're straying from the
1:05:01
teachings of the Bible. They ignore stuff that blatantly
1:05:05
contradicts what they believe in order to maintain their false
1:05:09
beliefs. And so the way to return to
1:05:12
those teachings of Jesus in the Bible is simply to not just read
1:05:17
them and know what they say, but to accept them and reject the
1:05:21
lies. And that's something that people
1:05:24
have a much harder time doing. I have this concept I did a
1:05:28
video on called the Young Earth Creationism Triangle.
1:05:31
But really it can apply to any true thing that the Bible says,
1:05:38
'cause there's, oh, there's knowledge and there's a, Oh
1:05:45
yeah, that's how the triangle goes.
1:05:47
Basically. There's knowing what the
1:05:49
biblical worldview says, there's being willing to be obedient to
1:05:53
what it says. And you know what?
1:05:57
I'm going to look up the triangle on my end.
1:06:00
Just give me one second. Hopefully bit shoot comes up.
1:06:08
Well, apparently not. Look at that.
1:06:11
Might have to pull out my phone for this one.
1:06:13
I'm going to actually do that right now.
1:06:16
Just give me a second. Tell him a story, Brett, so we
1:06:18
don't have dead air. What kind of story you want to
1:06:23
hear? Whatever 1 you want.
1:06:27
All right, well, let's see. I just got done watching the
1:06:36
Happy Gilmore 2 with Adam Sandler.
1:06:40
I thought it was going to be a bust, but it actually turned out
1:06:43
to be even better than the first one, which is a shocker.
1:06:47
Usually the original movies and films are better than sequels.
1:06:52
You know, sequels are usually a a cash grab.
1:06:56
But they Adam Sandler was fantastic and it was really
1:06:59
funny. There's a lot more intense, more
1:07:03
dramatic, a great deal of the storyline.
1:07:06
Wow. Yeah, that's extremely unusual.
1:07:12
You ever seen Happy Gilmore one before?
1:07:14
Oh yeah, many times. Love it.
1:07:17
So I might actually have to get a Netflix account for a month
1:07:20
just so I can watch it. You are triangle.
1:07:27
Yeah, it's really, really good. It blows the first one out of
1:07:31
the water. All right, I found the triangle
1:07:33
I was thinking about earlier. The triangle, yeah, there's
1:07:38
three sides to this triangle. Belief, obedience, and
1:07:42
knowledge. Now, the triangle that I am
1:07:46
looking at in particular is for young Earth creationism and the
1:07:50
context of Young Earth creationism.
1:07:52
The three sides of the triangle are as follows. 1 You have to
1:07:56
believe in the biblical worldview because if you don't
1:07:59
believe in what the biblical worldview says, it doesn't
1:08:02
matter if you have the other sides or not.
1:08:05
As if you don't believe in the biblical worldview, you could be
1:08:09
the kind of person who knows what the Bible says and you
1:08:12
could be the kind of person who would obey what it says if you
1:08:15
believed in it. But if you don't believe in it,
1:08:17
then you can't be a young earth creationist.
1:08:20
Or if you believe in the biblical worldview and you're
1:08:25
the kind of person who would be willing to obey its teachings of
1:08:29
younger of creationism, but you don't know that the Bible
1:08:32
teaches younger of creationism. Well, then you'll never be a
1:08:35
younger of creationist, which is what I used to be.
1:08:39
But then there's the kind of people where they could believe
1:08:41
in the biblical worldview and they could know what the Bible
1:08:46
says, primarily that it teaches younger of creationism.
1:08:49
But if they're not willing to obey that teaching and adhere to
1:08:52
it, then they won't be a younger creationist, which a lot of
1:08:56
older creationists fall into this camp.
1:08:59
But the same thing can apply to other topics like Jesus being
1:09:02
God. You know, let's just do that as
1:09:05
an example. If you're the kind of person who
1:09:08
believes in the biblical worldview, and you're the kind
1:09:12
of person who would obey what the world biblical worldview
1:09:15
says when it says that Jesus is God, but you don't know that
1:09:20
Jesus is God according to the Bible, well then you're not
1:09:23
going to believe that Jesus is God.
1:09:25
Or if you know that Jesus is God according to the Bible, and
1:09:30
you're the kind of person who'd be willing to obey that, if you
1:09:33
believed in the biblical worldview, but you don't
1:09:36
actually believe in the biblical worldview, well, then you're not
1:09:39
going to believe that Jesus is God.
1:09:43
And of course, if you believe in the biblical worldview and you
1:09:46
know that the Bible teaches that Jesus is God, but you refuse to
1:09:50
accept that, well, then you're not going to accept the teaching
1:09:53
that Jesus is God. So belief, knowledge, and
1:10:05
obedience, you have to have those three factors.
1:10:10
We're all in play at the same time in order to believe
1:10:13
whatever is in the middle of that triangle, whether it be
1:10:16
young earth creationism, whether it be Jesus being God.
1:10:22
There's all kinds of things that could fit into that triangle
1:10:25
that the Bible teaches. But you have to have all three
1:10:28
of those sides in order to adhere and believe in those
1:10:31
things. So that's what the point of the
1:10:35
triangle was. And now that I've gone through
1:10:39
the concept of the triangle, let's get back to the list of
1:10:43
questions. So we just did, OK, That one,
1:10:50
number 5, how do you discern when a prompting is from the
1:10:53
Holy Spirit versus your own thoughts or desires?
1:10:57
Now, this is a very, very good question, Brett.
1:11:01
I'm glad you put it in this list because biblical illiteracy is
1:11:06
the problem at play here when we're talking about this
1:11:10
question, and it is biblical literacy that is the solution to
1:11:15
the problem. Because you see, most people
1:11:18
call themselves Christians are what we call biblically
1:11:21
illiterates. They may know a couple of things
1:11:24
that the Bible teaches, but in general they don't know anything
1:11:28
else that the Bible teaches or records, and so they're very
1:11:32
ignorant regarding what their own Bible says.
1:11:35
And this is a huge problem because if you don't know what
1:11:39
the Bible says and a lying spirit comes to you and puts
1:11:43
thoughts or desires in your head that sound good or sound true
1:11:47
but may really not be, well, then you're more likely to be
1:11:51
LED astray because you don't know any better.
1:11:54
Because you don't know what the Word of God says.
1:11:57
And because you don't know what the Word of God says, you won't
1:12:00
know whether the Holy Spirit's talking to you or not.
1:12:03
But if you do know, generally speaking, what the Bible says,
1:12:08
teaches, and records, and that will allow you to know when the
1:12:12
Holy Spirit is actually speaking to you versus a lying spirit.
1:12:17
Because as you know, objective truth is a real thing.
1:12:22
There is an objective truth that basically is encompasses all of
1:12:27
reality. And the thing about truth is
1:12:30
that truth can never contradict itself.
1:12:33
So the Holy Spirit, for example, is never ever going to tell you
1:12:39
anything that contradicts what the Bible says.
1:12:43
And so if you got a spirit coming to you putting thoughts
1:12:46
or desires in your head that contradict what the Bible says,
1:12:49
and you know it, you are free to dismiss those thoughts and those
1:12:54
desires because you know what the Bible says.
1:12:57
And therefore you know what the Holy Spirit's voice sounds like.
1:13:00
And when it tells you what to do in regards to these thoughts and
1:13:04
desires that are coming up in your head, well then at that
1:13:08
point, you know what to do. Otherwise you're being willfully
1:13:11
disobedient if you don't. So biblical literacy is the key
1:13:16
to that question because it is the lack of knowing what the
1:13:20
Bible says that creates the problem that the question
1:13:23
describes. And it's knowing what the Bible
1:13:26
says that is going to help solve the problem.
1:13:29
Because when you know what the Bible says, it will be very easy
1:13:32
to tell when your own thoughts or desires are entering your
1:13:36
head versus what the Holy Spirit says.
1:13:40
Hopefully I was fluent enough in answering that particular
1:13:43
question. Number six is another good one.
1:13:47
What role does doubt play in your faith journey and how do
1:13:49
you address it? Well, doubt comes to everyone at
1:13:54
one point or another when it comes to their faith.
1:13:58
Doubts are what keep people from embracing the faith in the first
1:14:01
place in some cases. And then there's some people who
1:14:05
they convert to the faith, but then they start to have doubts
1:14:07
about it. And when their doubts aren't
1:14:09
adequately addressed or dealt with, they end up deconverting
1:14:13
from the faith and doing something else.
1:14:17
So addressing doubts is very important because you have to
1:14:21
consider what you're being sold. And I think this is actually
1:14:26
dealing with the general concept of being deconverted from the
1:14:30
faith. Like if you're a Christian, for
1:14:32
example, and you got an atheist telling you that the biblical
1:14:35
world is not true, God doesn't exist, Jesus doesn't exist, or
1:14:40
at least is not existing in the way the Bible describes.
1:14:44
And he's trying to sell you atheism as an alternative
1:14:48
worldview to believe in. What you have to do is you have
1:14:52
to look at what they're trying to sell you.
1:14:56
But what worldview narrative are they asking you to believe in to
1:15:00
replace your belief in the biblical worldview?
1:15:04
Now, when I do that kind of comparison, I find that the
1:15:07
paradigm of history, the evolutionists and atheists are
1:15:11
trying to sell me is so much weaker than the biblical
1:15:15
worldview in terms of logic, reason, evidence, all that jazz.
1:15:21
Basically, they're trying to sell me damaged goods.
1:15:26
They're trying to sell me a big fat lie is what I come to the
1:15:30
conclusion of when I look at what they're trying to sell me.
1:15:34
But that can be true of Islam, that can be true of Mormonism,
1:15:37
That can be true of anyone who has a contradictory worldview to
1:15:40
yours. And they're trying to make you
1:15:42
doubt your faith by making arguments against it and making
1:15:45
arguments in favor of their own worldview.
1:15:48
So I would say to anyone, the most important thing to think
1:15:51
about when you have doubts and you have people who are
1:15:55
introducing these doubts into your head and try to convince
1:15:57
you to embrace an alternative worldview.
1:16:01
You always look at the object, the world view that they're
1:16:04
trying to sell you. Because when you get right down
1:16:09
to it, if you know what they're trying to sell you and you
1:16:12
realize what they're trying to sell you is a far worse and
1:16:16
false alternative to what you currently believe, well, then
1:16:20
your doubts won't seem so bad because, you know, Well, yeah, I
1:16:23
have doubts about this in my faith, but I looked at what that
1:16:26
other guy's trying to sell me on, and it is way worse.
1:16:29
There's no way I can embrace that.
1:16:32
Well, then you'll be OK with your doubts.
1:16:35
I think that's the way to deal with any doubts that you have.
1:16:37
Because there are some things the Bible talks about pretty
1:16:41
clearly, and then there's some things that the Bible doesn't
1:16:44
really talk about that people have doubts and questions on.
1:16:48
And so the important thing when dealing with doubt in your faith
1:16:52
journey is you need to, you know, just accept what the Bible
1:16:58
says on certain things that you may doubt the truthfulness of.
1:17:02
If the Bible has things that it doesn't address but that you
1:17:06
have doubts on, well then don't worry about things that it
1:17:09
doesn't address. And then when people are trying
1:17:12
to de convert you into another worldview and you have your
1:17:14
doubts about your worldview being true, always look at what
1:17:18
the alternative they're trying to sell you on is.
1:17:21
Always do that question #7 though how should Christians
1:17:27
respond to cultural trends that conflict with biblical values?
1:17:32
Now this may sound like a hard question to some, but to me this
1:17:36
is an easy question. If the cultural trend conflicts
1:17:40
with the biblical value, you throw out the cultural trend.
1:17:44
Easy. Of course, the problem is that
1:17:46
most people can't do that. Most people love cultural
1:17:50
trends. They love conforming to the
1:17:53
world because God is not the ultimate authority of their
1:17:57
hearts and their minds. They want to have their cake and
1:18:00
eat it too, at best, and at worst, they really don't care
1:18:04
about what God says. They just want to fit in with
1:18:06
the world. So with people like that, it
1:18:09
could be very hard for them to set aside cultural trends that
1:18:14
conflict with biblical values. So either they will reject what
1:18:18
the Bible teaches the biblical value and accept the cultural
1:18:21
trend, or they will try to reinterpret the Bible in light
1:18:26
of the cultural trend in order to make it seem like in their
1:18:30
head that they don't conflict. And therefore this allows them
1:18:33
to embrace the cultural trend without feeling like they're
1:18:36
rejecting their biblical worldview.
1:18:39
That's what I think about that particular question #8 is it
1:18:46
possible to fully love your neighbor as yourself?
1:18:49
And what does that look like in practice?
1:18:53
Well, I need to go use the bathroom really quick.
1:18:57
Brett, why don't you go ahead and give your thoughts on that
1:19:00
question for a SEC and then when I get back, I'll answer it.
1:19:09
Well, it depends. I've got some neighbors that are
1:19:12
actually really good and kind and sweetheart, so they make it
1:19:16
fairly easy to be able to give because they give back.
1:19:21
Some of them obviously are selfish, greedy and have all the
1:19:26
bad traits. What are you going to do with
1:19:28
that? You know, hold on a second.
1:19:32
Oof, that's an issue with my arm.
1:19:39
There we go. Well, hopefully TT Wire will
1:19:44
make it back soon. Oh, boy.
1:19:51
How's everybody doing out there? Hope everybody's doing all
1:19:54
right. I'm a little tired today.
1:19:57
The heat's been kind of rough. Now.
1:20:03
Let's see what we got here. Goodness gracious.
1:20:17
Hey, buddy. All right, I am back.
1:20:22
Good deal. Oops, did someone just enter the
1:20:28
room or? No, you did.
1:20:34
OK, as I play my headphones on it here, I hear, yay, buddy, I'm
1:20:38
like, who's joining the room? All right, got some Sprite on my
1:20:45
hands to help with that. OK, so we just talked about that
1:20:51
faith journey, cultural trends, love your neighbor as yourself.
1:20:55
And what does that look like in practice?
1:20:57
Right. So loving your neighbor as
1:21:00
yourself, part of that is the golden rule, as Jesus outlined,
1:21:05
You know, you treat others the way you want to be treated.
1:21:08
That's part of loving your neighbor as yourself.
1:21:12
And then love, well, love can mean different things to
1:21:16
different people. And that's where we can come
1:21:20
into something like enabling people.
1:21:22
Like if people have destructive habits and you're not doing
1:21:26
anything to deter them from that, and instead you're
1:21:29
accommodating them as they engage in those practices, well
1:21:32
then you're just enabling them and you're not really being
1:21:35
loving because you're basically enabling them to continue their
1:21:38
destructive life. And that's kind of where
1:21:42
evangelism is similar, because people who reject the biblical
1:21:46
worldview are, in effect, giving God the middle finger and going
1:21:50
the other way. And going the other way often
1:21:53
leads them into, at some point or another, living a destructive
1:21:58
lifestyle that is detrimental to their mental health, their
1:22:02
spiritual health, their emotional health, and in many
1:22:06
cases, their physical health. Basically, they destroy
1:22:10
themselves in slow motion over the course of the rest of their
1:22:13
lives if they reject God every step of the way to the grave.
1:22:18
And so in order to not be an enabler of that, sometimes the
1:22:22
loving thing is to tell people, hey, you're living and believing
1:22:26
a lie. This is the truth according to
1:22:29
God in His Word. And if you adhere to this truth
1:22:33
and you accept it and you reject the lies you believe, you will
1:22:37
be better off even if your life doesn't necessarily get easier.
1:22:41
That is a form of love that we need to display to our
1:22:46
neighbors. Because it's one thing to play
1:22:49
nice and get along, but there are times where you will have a
1:22:53
neighbor of sorts who is engaging in self destructing
1:22:57
lifestyles and if you don't say something to them, it is highly
1:23:01
possible nobody will and they'll be even worse off in the end.
1:23:05
So sometimes loving your neighbor as yourself involves
1:23:08
tough love, which simply means telling them inconvenient truths
1:23:13
they may not necessarily want to hear, but that is beneficial to
1:23:17
their long term well-being. That's kind of how I look at
1:23:21
loving your neighbor as yourself in terms of how it works out in
1:23:24
practice #9 though says how do you balance grace and truth when
1:23:29
addressing sin in your own life or others lives?
1:23:35
Yeah, that can be really tricky depending upon what the sin is.
1:23:41
In the case of people like Chris Jones, yeah, that's that's hard
1:23:47
to have a balance of grace and truth there when the truth is so
1:23:51
horrendously ugly. But, you know, when people's
1:23:57
sins are relatively minor, at least in our eyes, it's easier
1:24:01
to give them a lot of grace on that, especially if you can tell
1:24:08
that their remorse and their sorrow and their repentance over
1:24:12
it is genuine. It's generally easier to have
1:24:16
grace for people like that because, you know, they know
1:24:19
they messed up, they know they did wrong and they, they don't
1:24:23
want to do it anymore. They want to be better.
1:24:25
They want to change. Well, it's easy to have grace
1:24:28
for people like that. But when you're dealing with
1:24:30
someone who's not repentant, they're not sorry about what
1:24:33
they've done, they have no regrets whatsoever.
1:24:36
Well, and they want to keep living that way.
1:24:39
And yeah, it's, it's hard to, it's hard to give them grace in
1:24:45
that circumstance because it's obvious that they don't want to
1:24:52
be any better or different. But then again, you also aren't
1:24:57
their judge. So like God says in the New
1:24:59
Testament through the apostle Paul that basically God is the
1:25:03
one judging the world. So Christians should only focus
1:25:06
on judging ourselves and our communities in terms of being
1:25:10
really strict judges. So when it comes to the world,
1:25:15
there's a certain amount of grace we have to have for non
1:25:18
believers because after all, they're non believers.
1:25:20
They're doing what non believers do.
1:25:22
You shouldn't expect them to behave any differently until
1:25:25
they become believers. And so there's a certain amount
1:25:27
of grace you have to have for people like that.
1:25:30
But when you're dealing with so-called Christians who are
1:25:33
engaging in some very heretical teachings and practices, or
1:25:38
they're engaging in some really destructive evil behaviors,
1:25:41
well, then you need to be a lot stricter and a lot harsher in
1:25:47
some cases. Which is why when you have screw
1:25:52
ups in Christian communities, like having convicted pedos be
1:25:57
among you and having access to children, well, yeah, it's going
1:26:02
to be really hard to have grace in that scenario because of that
1:26:05
kind of thing is unacceptable. Or if there is people teaching
1:26:11
outright heresy in relation to fundamental core Christian
1:26:15
doctrines. The Bible says that we're
1:26:18
supposed to have nothing to do with such people as Christians
1:26:21
in terms of heretics and false teachers within our faith.
1:26:25
But yet so many times you see Christians giving that
1:26:28
fellowship and time and energy and focus to these people being
1:26:34
in complete disobedience from that.
1:26:37
So that's why sometimes you see in the world that Christians,
1:26:42
while they do criticize worldly unbelievers, they seem to be
1:26:46
friendlier to them than they are to Christians who teach heresy
1:26:50
or who have false teachings that contradict what the Bible says.
1:26:54
Because the Bible says we're not supposed to have fellowship with
1:26:57
false teachers and heretics. So that's why you see that kind
1:27:03
of behavior going on in the world and that's where the
1:27:06
balance of grace and truth can get a little murky because it's
1:27:10
hard to balance in all the commands.
1:27:13
OK, excuse me now. The next question is what are
1:27:22
the implications of Jesus statement?
1:27:24
I am the way, the truth and the life in a pluralistic society.
1:27:29
Oh, that's another popular 1 Brett, that you and I have come
1:27:32
across way too many times in our life.
1:27:36
The universalist approach where all religions lead to God, all
1:27:40
religions lead to heaven, all religions are true in a way.
1:27:44
They're all really saying the same thing.
1:27:46
So don't be exclusive, be inclusive.
1:27:51
Well, as you pointed out in the question, Jesus said in John
1:27:55
chapter 14 verse 6, I am the way, the truth and the life.
1:28:00
No one goes to the Father except through me.
1:28:05
So Jesus was the ultimate exclusive when it comes to this
1:28:08
line of thought. And so when we look at that,
1:28:13
when you say that Jesus is the way, the truth and the life, and
1:28:16
no one gets to God except through him, the pluralistic
1:28:19
society that basically says all religions are the same or
1:28:23
they're all equally valid, they're going to have a real
1:28:25
problem with you being so exclusive.
1:28:28
They'll accuse you of being intolerant, but then when they
1:28:32
do that, they become intolerant themselves and thus become
1:28:35
hypocrites, and their whole worldview falls apart.
1:28:37
But, but don't ask it to make sense, because that's the way
1:28:41
that people are. But yeah, what do you think,
1:28:44
Brett, about Jesus's claim of exclusivity in the pluralistic
1:28:49
society that we've been living in most of our lives?
1:28:54
Well, you have to elaborate on that the way you said that.
1:28:59
A pluralistic society or what Jesus said.
1:29:03
Well, Arne, I mean, go ahead and put it in a different way for
1:29:08
me. I'm a little my brains help me
1:29:10
all right now because of the heat.
1:29:12
OK that makes sense. Well Jesus said he was the way,
1:29:17
the truth and the life and the only way to God was through him
1:29:20
in John 14-6 and the world we live in today.
1:29:24
If they do embrace religion, they basically are pluralistic.
1:29:28
They say that all religions are valid or all religions are the
1:29:31
same or, you know, as long as you have some kind of religion
1:29:35
that you adhere to, it's all good and we should just embrace
1:29:39
each other's religions as all being equally true.
1:29:43
So how do you so how do you look at that issue?
1:29:49
Well it's weird because majority of the religions that exist
1:29:53
today actually endorse Jesus Christ, but they don't endorse
1:29:57
each other. Christianity is definitely
1:30:01
exclusive. Like if you look at Islam, they
1:30:04
endorse Jesus Christ. They just have a couple
1:30:06
different stories. And what's different from the
1:30:09
Bible? There's a lot of pagans I've
1:30:11
talked to that actually believe Jesus exists and that he did
1:30:15
miracles. There's even theistic Satanists
1:30:18
who believe in Jesus and believe God is real.
1:30:21
He just happened to believe God's the bad guy in the picture
1:30:25
and the weird. Yeah, and I know what you mean
1:30:28
too. Like when you look at Islam,
1:30:30
yes, they endorse Jesus, but he's only a prophet akin to like
1:30:35
Moses or Abraham. He's not God in human form
1:30:39
according to Islam. And so that's that.
1:30:42
And many other things they teach about Jesus is where they run
1:30:45
into problems with the Bible and contradicting it.
1:30:48
But you are right that they give Jesus a special place in their
1:30:53
religion. He's not a mere human being.
1:30:55
He's not some lowlife in their religion.
1:30:58
He's a prophet. Then you got Mormonism, which
1:31:01
teaches that Jesus is our spirit brother and so is Satan, and
1:31:08
they're spirit brothers of each other.
1:31:11
That basically Jesus was a human just like us at some point who
1:31:15
got elevated by going through the Mormon way of doing things.
1:31:19
So even though he is elevated in the Mormon religion, they
1:31:24
ultimately de, they ultimately demean him.
1:31:28
They ultimately devalue him by making him just like us, at
1:31:31
least at one point, because that religion teaches that we can all
1:31:35
become like God if we adhere to all the tenants of Mormonism and
1:31:40
make it to that ultimate tear of heaven.
1:31:42
They teach that you basically become your own God and you get
1:31:45
your own worlds and universes to create and do all the fun stuff
1:31:50
that God does, which sounds good for people in the Garden of
1:31:54
Eden, but it's not reality. Well, I, I hear you.
1:31:58
And I've actually, I enjoy having discussions with them
1:32:01
about the other worlds and all that.
1:32:03
And apparently they don't have that, that doctrine completely
1:32:07
straightened out in their head because I said, does that mean
1:32:10
that my wife has to live on the same world as me?
1:32:14
Do my kids get the separate planets?
1:32:16
I mean, how does this work? And why would anybody enjoy
1:32:20
themselves living on a planet all by themselves?
1:32:22
But as far as becoming like gods, doesn't the Bible have a
1:32:27
couple passages where it says like they have become like gods?
1:32:32
Their eyes have been opened. You hear what this from the
1:32:38
Bible. Yeah, I know that Jesus referred
1:32:42
in the Gospels to a passage from the Old Testament where there
1:32:46
was a particular group of kings that God called gods in one
1:32:51
context. So when people were going after
1:32:54
Jesus for claiming to be Yahweh in human form, Jesus pointed out
1:32:58
that, hey, you know, God called these people gods.
1:33:02
So why do you have a problem with me claiming to be God in
1:33:04
any sense? Well, don't, I mean, don't you
1:33:09
believe that if we, I, I don't know what your thoughts are in
1:33:12
heaven, are the glorified bodies that it speaks of in Revelation?
1:33:17
But don't we get some kind of inner knowledge and wisdom and
1:33:21
power and authority ourselves, but not, of course, anything
1:33:25
close to God. But we'll be powerful, won't we?
1:33:30
Yeah, the resurrection bodies which are going to be huge
1:33:36
because if you go in younger creationism circles and you look
1:33:40
at what their thoughts are on what the pre flood world is like
1:33:44
and why people were living to be over 900 years old on average.
1:33:48
And why you see people in Bible times who were like really
1:33:52
freaky tall, just to put it white lightly.
1:33:56
The common theory I've seen in creationism circles is that
1:34:00
prior to the flood of NOAA occurring 4544 hundred years
1:34:05
ago, there was a layer of water in some form around Earth's
1:34:09
atmosphere which not only blocked out the harmful rays of
1:34:12
the sun and outer space, but it also increased the oxygen level
1:34:16
of the planet from 21 to 30%. And this increase in oxygen,
1:34:22
combined with the other factors and other factors I'm not
1:34:26
listing, would allow people to become a lot bigger and taller
1:34:32
and stronger. And they'd be smarter too,
1:34:35
because they'd have more brain capacity.
1:34:37
And the aging process would be so slowed down that they could
1:34:41
easily live to be 1000 years old on average.
1:34:44
Which would also explain why in the Bible you saw that some guys
1:34:48
were having children at like 500 years old.
1:34:51
Because I believe the aging process pre flood was slowed
1:34:55
down so much that people who were 500 years old would have
1:35:00
the body of someone who could, you know, get pregnant and have
1:35:04
children. And that's why it says in the
1:35:06
New Testament that when the Kingdom comes and we have our
1:35:09
resurrection bodies and the world is restored to the way it
1:35:13
was prior to the flood of Noah, someone who dies at 100 years
1:35:18
old will be considered an infant, will be considered a
1:35:21
babe. Because in the pre flood world,
1:35:24
living to 100 years old was nothing.
1:35:27
Living to 1000 years old roughly was normal.
1:35:31
So I think our resurrection bodies are going to be very
1:35:35
similar to the pre flood bodies that we once had as a human
1:35:39
species. I think those bodies are going
1:35:41
to be a lot bigger, stronger, faster.
1:35:44
We're going to be smarter. And plus, even without these
1:35:47
bodies in play, even if you don't factor them in it at all,
1:35:51
we're going to have 24/7, 365 access to God himself, and we'll
1:35:56
be in relationship with Him, literally the fount of all
1:36:00
wisdom and knowledge we will have direct access to.
1:36:03
And so we'll get smarter just from talking to God.
1:36:08
We won't know as much as Him, but we will be way smarter than
1:36:12
we can ever be in this life. Because at that point in time,
1:36:15
those of us who are in God's Kingdom will be able to talk
1:36:18
with Him directly, and He will tell us whatever we want to
1:36:22
know, because He knows everything.
1:36:27
That's what I mean by we'll become almost like God, like
1:36:30
physically. The Bible says that there won't
1:36:33
be no suffering or pain and have the rights be joy.
1:36:37
And if that's the case, then no one can actually hurt us.
1:36:41
Nothing can physically hurt us. So in a sense we'd be like them.
1:36:46
I I suppose smaller like gods, but not in the sense like the
1:36:50
Supreme. I've heard people ask questions.
1:36:54
Can God make a God like himself? That's an illogical question
1:36:59
because God is the original creator and if he creates
1:37:03
something then it can't have the same origin story that God did.
1:37:07
Does that make sense? Yeah, it makes sense, but I just
1:37:13
saw a comment. Oops, somebody stopped sharing.
1:37:18
Gonna go for it, said. I recall you giving Jackson
1:37:22
Wheat your word that you'd come on his channel if he'd come on
1:37:24
yours first. Will you be keeping your word as
1:37:27
a man of God? Yes.
1:37:29
I actually did get an e-mail from him during fireworks season
1:37:33
asking if I'd do that. I haven't responded to his
1:37:36
e-mail yet, but I do plan on keeping my word and going on to
1:37:41
his channel. I just need to do other things
1:37:44
first. But I do intend to follow up
1:37:47
with him on that. Who's this person?
1:37:53
Jackson Wheat. Yeah, the person you're going
1:37:56
online with them, are they Christian?
1:37:58
Atheist. What's the deal?
1:38:00
Jackson leads an atheist. I believe you actually moderated
1:38:03
our first discussion that we had.
1:38:09
OK. It was almost a year ago, but it
1:38:12
happened and I believe you were the moderator and I did promise
1:38:15
him I would go on to his channel too, so I need to get in touch
1:38:20
with him to figure that out. Well, he behaved.
1:38:25
He behaved on our stream, so we'll see how his goes.
1:38:30
But anywho, I will get in touch with him later and when we have
1:38:35
an actual date for when I'll be on his channel, I'll let
1:38:38
everybody know on the YouTube community page of my channel and
1:38:42
on my social medias, Twitter, Gab, Getter, true social,
1:38:47
etcetera. So don't worry guys, that is
1:38:51
something I intend to do and I will keep my word on that.
1:38:55
And you can go tell Jackson that if you're watching this, going
1:38:59
to go for it. Anyhoo, let's get back into
1:39:07
share screen and we got some time for a few more questions
1:39:13
and let's go into it. So we were at OK, so there's the
1:39:19
pluralistic. All right, here we go.
1:39:24
How do you understand the concept of predestination versus
1:39:28
free will in your theology? Now, Brett, when you say the
1:39:31
word predestination, are we talking about like the Calvinism
1:39:35
way of things, where God's already decided before you even
1:39:39
born whether or not you're going to be saved or condemned to
1:39:42
hell, and therefore it makes your whole life feel
1:39:45
predetermined? According to my AI, because I
1:39:50
made sure to look it up, predestination is used nine
1:39:54
times throughout the entirety of the Bible. 9 times and free will
1:39:59
as mentioned a few times in the New Testament.
1:40:03
As you know, I myself call myself a compatibilist so I I
1:40:08
don't know what your view is on it though.
1:40:10
You don't. Ask.
1:40:13
Go ahead. I was just asking what
1:40:15
predestination means in the context of the question.
1:40:18
Well basically predestination would be that God understands.
1:40:23
Some people believe it means that your your fate is set in
1:40:27
stone because God knows from beginning to end.
1:40:30
Others believe that you know God opens it up and sets the
1:40:35
parameters for there to be free will.
1:40:37
That's pretty much where I'm at in the compatibilism area.
1:40:42
OK, well when you look at the Bible, it teaches that God is
1:40:49
all knowing. So basically he knows what
1:40:53
everyone is going to end up doing.
1:40:56
He knows who's going to end up saved, who's going to end up
1:40:59
not. And so when people hear that,
1:41:01
they automatically think, well, God's predetermined our destiny
1:41:05
and our lives, and nothing we can do changes that and
1:41:08
therefore we don't have free will.
1:41:11
But the truth of the matter is that you do have free will.
1:41:15
The thing is that because God is all knowing, he knows what the
1:41:18
outcome will be to any decision you make, no matter what choice
1:41:23
you make in that decision. So if you choose to get saved
1:41:28
and try being a Christian, God knows how that's going to go.
1:41:32
If you choose to reject that offer of forgiveness that God
1:41:35
gives us through the gospel and go your own way and go the way
1:41:39
of the world, well, God knows how your life is going to go in
1:41:43
that regard. Or if you are, you know, getting
1:41:47
in your car and you're going down the road and you have an
1:41:50
opportunity where you can either choose to do something risky on
1:41:55
the road to get somewhere faster, or you can choose to
1:41:58
stay in your lane and be a safe driver.
1:42:01
Well, God knows what's going to happen to you if you choose to
1:42:03
take that risk. And he knows what's going to
1:42:06
happen to you if you choose to stay in the safe lane.
1:42:09
The thing is, no matter what, no matter what happens to us in our
1:42:14
life, whenever we come into a situation where we have to make
1:42:18
a choice, make a decision on anything, God knows what's going
1:42:23
to happen when we pick one option.
1:42:26
He knows what's going to happen if we pick the other option.
1:42:30
So he's not forcing us to choose one thing or another.
1:42:34
He just knows what will happen to us regardless of which choice
1:42:37
we choose. So we do have free will to
1:42:40
choose what we want to do in our lives and with our lives.
1:42:44
And God knows what will happen to us no matter what choice we
1:42:48
make. And so that's where a lot of
1:42:50
people, that's where people are into problems.
1:42:53
Yeah. That's where people have a lot
1:42:56
of issues because they don't understand the difference
1:42:59
between God knowing something versus God making something
1:43:03
happen. Right, because God's not making
1:43:07
you choose those things. You're choosing them.
1:43:10
He just knows what the outcome of your choice will be no matter
1:43:13
what. You're just what you choose, and
1:43:16
it's like that for every decision you make.
1:43:18
And it's like that for every human being that has ever
1:43:21
existed, exists today, and will ever exist.
1:43:24
And when you start thinking on that scale, that's where you
1:43:27
realize, wow, God is so much smarter than we are because of
1:43:31
all that stuff He could see. That's a level of knowledge that
1:43:37
we will never attain ever, not even in our resurrection bodies.
1:43:45
But the next question is, what does it mean to be in the world,
1:43:50
but not of the world, in today's society?
1:43:54
Now, that's a good question because in my head in
1:43:57
particular, I immediately think of modern technology.
1:44:01
There's a lot of people out there in the atheist
1:44:03
evolutionist community who would look at a Christian like me, you
1:44:06
know, using modern laptops of all this streaming software,
1:44:10
editing software built in, you know, using smartphones and
1:44:14
taking advantage of modern medicine for, you know, healing
1:44:18
sicknesses and whatnot with the human body.
1:44:22
They would look at all that and claim that, oh, you Christians
1:44:25
reject science. And yet here you are using
1:44:27
science and using technology to, you know, better your life.
1:44:32
And that just goes completely against your worldview.
1:44:36
So when it comes to being in the world, but not of the world, in
1:44:41
that context, I think it's important to make use of the
1:44:45
technology that we have available to us today.
1:44:49
But we don't need to do all the things the world does.
1:44:52
We don't need to think like them.
1:44:54
We don't need to talk like them. We don't need to do the things
1:44:57
they do with this technology. We can use the technology to do
1:45:01
what God calls us to do, mainly to preach and teach, to
1:45:05
evangelize, and to attempt to help people get right with God
1:45:09
before their time comes so they can have a chance to get out of
1:45:13
what's coming to them, be in right relationship with God, and
1:45:16
ultimately spend eternity with Him in a resurrection body in
1:45:19
the Kingdom. That should be the goal of
1:45:22
Christians using modern technology in today's society.
1:45:27
That's a good example, I think, of being in the world but not of
1:45:30
the world. You're making use of the world's
1:45:33
technology, but you're not, you know, falling into their trap,
1:45:37
basically. That's kind of how I view the
1:45:40
topic. What do you think, Brett, about
1:45:43
the idea of being in the world, but not of the world in today's
1:45:47
society? Well tell you the truth, the
1:45:52
world never seemed to want to be very accepting of myself anyway,
1:45:56
so luckily for me that's been a pretty easy ride.
1:46:01
As far as I I think what it's basically saying though is we we
1:46:07
need not to get so used to things.
1:46:10
I noticed when you go further into the passages it says don't
1:46:15
get connected or obsessed with materialistic things.
1:46:19
Don't get attached to stuff. You know you'll get greater
1:46:23
rewards in heaven. Exactly.
1:46:26
Yeah. The next question, how do you
1:46:29
approach the tension between Old Testament laws and New Testament
1:46:33
teachings on grace? Now this question is a little
1:46:40
bit misleading because a lot of the teachings on grace that come
1:46:45
in the Bible actually come from the Old Testament, and some of
1:46:49
the teachings on God's wrath and judgement come from the New
1:46:53
Testament, not the Old Testament.
1:46:55
You can find both in both Testaments.
1:46:58
For example, Ezekiel chapter 18 I believe it is.
1:47:03
There's a whole passage and like verses 21 through the end of the
1:47:07
chapter where it talks about how God wants people to repent and
1:47:13
get right with him because he doesn't want to punish them for
1:47:16
their sins. And so he desperately pleads
1:47:19
with them to get in right relationship with him so that
1:47:22
they can be forgiven and they can be given a new heart and
1:47:25
they could have their desires to sin, you know, taken away from
1:47:29
them and all the stuff that it says.
1:47:31
But it's like a very New Testament teaching found
1:47:34
directly in the Old Testament. And then you go to the New
1:47:39
Testament, you find passages from Jesus condemning people to
1:47:43
hell and telling them that they're all going to go to hell
1:47:46
and talking about God's wrath and judgment coming upon them,
1:47:49
which a lot of people assume only comes from the Old
1:47:52
Testament when it comes to God dealing with like the Canaanites
1:47:56
and all of the related people groups that fall under that
1:47:59
umbrella. So the idea that there's any
1:48:03
tension at all between Old and New Testament teachings on grace
1:48:08
is not true. Both testaments teach the same
1:48:12
thing regarding grace, repentance, forgiveness, God's
1:48:16
love for people, wrath, judgment.
1:48:20
Both testaments, they teach the same thing.
1:48:24
They do not contradict each other at all, and anyone who
1:48:29
believes that they do, they either don't know this stuff or
1:48:34
just ignorant, or they do know this stuff and they're
1:48:38
deliberately misleading people. So when it comes to grace, there
1:48:44
is no tension between Old and New Testament on grace.
1:48:46
The teachings are the same. Now, the next question we have
1:48:54
is what is the role of the church in addressing social
1:48:59
issues like poverty, racism or injustice?
1:49:04
Now this Brett, as you know, can be a lot trickier.
1:49:08
Some of these more than others, like poverty, for example, is
1:49:13
something that my church addresses in a form through some
1:49:17
of our outreach ministries. Sunday mornings, we offer free
1:49:23
breakfasts that are open to everyone in the community.
1:49:26
So they can literally come through our church doors and
1:49:29
they can have, we usually serve like eggs, bacon, hash Browns,
1:49:34
biscuits and gravy. That's normally what we serve at
1:49:37
a Sunday breakfast. And then sometimes we have to
1:49:40
mix it up a little when supplies are low.
1:49:43
But generally speaking, on Sunday mornings, we serve eggs,
1:49:47
bacon, hash Browns, and biscuits and gravy to anyone in our
1:49:51
community who comes through our doors for free.
1:49:54
So they can get a free meal and they can also sit in our
1:49:57
services if they want to, which a lot of them end up doing.
1:50:01
And then on Wednesday nights and we have our men and women's
1:50:04
Bible study at the church as well as our Wednesday night
1:50:06
youth groups. We also have a dinners that we
1:50:10
serve to the community. Anyone in the community can come
1:50:13
in, they can have dinner, and they can participate in any of
1:50:17
the groups. Well, if they're an adult, they
1:50:19
can participate in any of the Bible study groups.
1:50:22
And if they're a youth, they can participate in the youth group.
1:50:25
So yeah. But the point is, the
1:50:27
community's open to that. They're given free food on
1:50:31
Sunday mornings and Wednesday nights.
1:50:33
And then three weeks a month, we have a food box drive where
1:50:37
anyone in the community can come through our church parking lot
1:50:41
and get a food box that has a week's worth of food in it.
1:50:44
And they can actually have their food needs met during the week
1:50:50
by coming through our drive through, which is really
1:50:53
important for people who are not necessarily broke, but they're
1:50:57
like stuck in a a rut in their life.
1:51:00
And their inability to get their own food is stopping them from
1:51:05
moving up in life. Like for example, right after
1:51:08
fireworks season was over, I went and got a haircut in my
1:51:11
local Barber shop. And the guy giving me my haircut
1:51:16
is someone who a few years back was in a much lower status in
1:51:20
his life in terms of his finances and whatnot.
1:51:23
And he actually had to rely on my church's food box drive every
1:51:29
month in order to get food and not have to use his money on
1:51:33
that until he got to the point where he didn't need the food
1:51:35
boxes anymore. But, you know, people like him
1:51:40
needed those food boxes for a season in order to get where
1:51:43
they needed to go in life. And then once they got where
1:51:46
they needed to go, they didn't need to use that anymore.
1:51:48
But that's the kind of community outreach that my church does to
1:51:54
fight poverty in a, in a sense. So we're literally feeding
1:51:59
people. We're literally meeting a need
1:52:03
for them if they're struggling in life and just trying to get
1:52:06
by. And then we do other outreach
1:52:10
stuff here and there to try and help people with their poverty
1:52:14
issues or poverty related issues.
1:52:16
So the church has a big role in dealing with stuff like that and
1:52:20
my church lives it out all the time.
1:52:23
Racism, however, is a little trickier because it depends on
1:52:28
what you're talking about, because there's some people who
1:52:32
use and abuse racism as a word so much that it loses all
1:52:37
meaning. But then there are people who
1:52:39
actually are bigoted against people on the basis of their
1:52:43
skin color. Like there are people who are
1:52:46
bigoted against black people simply because of the color of
1:52:48
their skin. There are people who are bigoted
1:52:50
against Jews because of the color of their skin or because
1:52:53
of the nation that they inhabit, you know, stuff like that.
1:52:57
So when it comes to racism, the role of the church in addressing
1:53:01
these issues is to condemn it. The Bible makes it clear that
1:53:06
all human beings go all the way back to the eight people who
1:53:10
were on the ark during the flood of Noah.
1:53:12
And those eight people trace all the way back to Adam and Eve.
1:53:16
So really all human beings in various very distant ways are
1:53:24
related. So this whole idea that there's
1:53:27
different races of human beings and you can tell that they're
1:53:30
different because of their skin color.
1:53:33
Biblically speaking, that's done because we all have the same
1:53:36
ancestors ultimately. And so therefore, skin color
1:53:41
should not be an issue in the biblical worldview, especially
1:53:45
if you look at passages like Galatians 326 through 29 where
1:53:50
it says that there's neither Jew nor Gentile in Christ will then
1:53:54
race shouldn't be an issue at all with churches other than to
1:53:58
condemn people who are bigoted against others on the basis of
1:54:02
skin color. And that injustice is another
1:54:05
term that's really tricky because the term injustice means
1:54:09
different things to different people, you know, like social
1:54:13
justice issues. Yeah, that stuff gets really
1:54:16
ugly really quick, because a lot of that stuff is actually
1:54:20
unjust. And there's a lot of churches
1:54:22
that got on board of social justice stuff, and it takes them
1:54:25
down a really dark path and it gets really ugly for them in the
1:54:30
long run. But if you're dealing with
1:54:33
actual issues of injustice, the role of the church in addressing
1:54:37
that is just to preach the word on what it says about unjust
1:54:42
things. Now, if you read the Bible, you
1:54:45
know that unjust things happen all the time, and you know that
1:54:49
even if it never gets addressed or dealt with in this life, you
1:54:52
know that God is going to deal with it in the judgment in the
1:54:55
next life. So the evil in the world that
1:54:59
goes on, the injustice will be dealt with by God at one point
1:55:04
or another in his own timing and his own will.
1:55:08
And the church needs to make that known.
1:55:11
So that's how the church can address the issue of injustice.
1:55:16
Now #15 and I think #15 is probably going to be our last
1:55:24
question here for the live stream.
1:55:27
Let me go ahead and put it back. I just didn't want to give the
1:55:31
inception look on the screen for people.
1:55:36
All right, so question 15 is how do you interpret the Book of
1:55:40
Revelation and how does it influence your view of the
1:55:43
future? Now, Revelation is a tricky book
1:55:49
to interpret in some ways, but it's not so tricky in other
1:55:53
ways. For example, when it comes to
1:55:57
the issue of the Great White Throne Judgment, Revelation is
1:56:04
actually pretty clear because there are multiple passages in
1:56:09
the Book of Revelation, as well as Jesus saying it in the
1:56:12
Gospels that talk about people experiencing a second death.
1:56:17
And then you get into Revelation, I believe it's
1:56:19
chapter 20 or 21 or it talks about the Great White Throne
1:56:23
Judgment, and it talks about how when Satan and his demons are
1:56:28
thrown into the Lake of Fire, they experience eternal
1:56:31
conscious torment. But when human beings whose
1:56:34
names are not found in the Book of Life are tossed into the Lake
1:56:38
of fire, they experience the second death.
1:56:42
Those are two very different things that happen to different
1:56:45
groups of people that are thrown into the Lake of fire.
1:56:49
And so Revelation, I believe, is teaching pretty clearly that
1:56:54
human beings who are tossed into the Lake of fire, their souls
1:56:57
are killed and they no longer exist.
1:57:01
And the reason why I think that is because if the idea of hell
1:57:04
being eternal conscious torment is true, then what ultimately
1:57:08
happens is nobody's souls are ever actually killed, and there
1:57:13
is no second death because that soul is being tortured and kept
1:57:18
alive for eternity. And yet when you read the Bible,
1:57:22
the only people being tortured eternally and consciously are
1:57:26
Satan and his demons. It's very explicit in the Book
1:57:31
of Revelation. And so the hell being eternal
1:57:35
conscious torment, people have a real problem biblically on their
1:57:39
hands, because the passage they appeal to to justify their
1:57:44
belief only talks about it happening to Satan and his
1:57:47
demons and then it later on it explicitly says that everyone
1:57:51
else who's a human being presumably experiences a second
1:57:55
death. Which a second death does not
1:57:58
mean eternal conscious torment, because death cannot be eternal.
1:58:04
Death is the end. So like when we die physically,
1:58:10
our physical bodies come to an end, they rot, they fade away,
1:58:15
but our souls are still alive because we are more than just
1:58:19
our bodies. We have souls too.
1:58:22
So when it comes to our afterlife, when it comes to the
1:58:28
great, the great White Throne judgment and being thrown to the
1:58:31
lake of fire, and second death, second death, biblically
1:58:35
speaking, has to mean that our souls are killed and we no
1:58:38
longer exist. It has to mean that.
1:58:42
So those are things that Revelation is clear on.
1:58:45
But then there's other things it's not exactly clear on
1:58:48
necessarily with regard to trumpet judgments and with
1:58:52
regard to exactly what things will look like in terms of the
1:58:57
world right before Jesus comes back or what everything will
1:59:03
look like when all the, all the, what's it called?
1:59:09
Not the trumpet judgments when all the seals are going down.
1:59:13
Because the Bible says when it says about the seals, but it
1:59:16
doesn't give great detail. It's up to interpretation.
1:59:21
So there's stuff in Revelation that's up to interpretation that
1:59:25
is not clear because of just how it's written.
1:59:30
But Revelation definitely influences my view the future
1:59:33
because it tells me that ultimately the devil is going to
1:59:38
get complete control of this world through the beast system,
1:59:42
the prison planet, and for a short period of time he's going
1:59:45
to have his way. Christians are going to be
1:59:47
killed, but then Jesus will come back and the trumpet judgments
1:59:52
will happen after the Christians have been raptured off.
1:59:55
And when those trumpet judgments are done, Jesus comes back on
1:59:59
his White Horse with his army of angels.
2:00:01
They destroy the beast system. They destroy and conquer the
2:00:04
Antichrist's army. And then the 1000 years of peace
2:00:09
happens. And then Satan and his demons
2:00:12
and all of the enemies of God are allowed to be free, and they
2:00:16
have one last rebellion and that gets crushed.
2:00:19
And then? They are destroyed and defeated
2:00:22
forever. And then we have eternity where
2:00:26
those whose names are found in the Book of Life spend eternity
2:00:29
of God the Father and Jesus and the Holy Spirit in the Kingdom
2:00:33
of God. Those whose names aren't found
2:00:35
in the Book of Life, they cease to exist all together.
2:00:39
Satan and his demons suffer eternal conscious torment in the
2:00:42
lake of fire. And that's it.
2:00:46
Because that's the end game. That's how it's all going to
2:00:50
end. That gives me a lot of comfort
2:00:53
as things get worse and worse in our world today, especially when
2:00:57
it comes to all the satanic evil stuff that happens.
2:01:03
But anyway, we're going to stop there because we're right at the
2:01:05
2 hour mark and I definitely need to go bake some chicken for
2:01:10
myself and have dinner. But I appreciate all of you guys
2:01:15
who tuned in and watched the stream.
2:01:17
I appreciate those who watched on Brett's YouTube channel, who
2:01:21
watched on my YouTube channel, and those who watched on Rumble,
2:01:25
and those of you who weren't watching us live, but you're
2:01:28
watching us after the fact. I appreciate all of you if you
2:01:31
got to this point in the live stream.
2:01:34
And so with that being said, love you all.
2:01:38
Hope to see you in the next video or the next live stream
2:01:42
and I look forward to seeing the other questions on this post
2:01:47
that we were going through. Have a good night everybody.
2:01:52
God bless.